We need a director. You need involvement.

This is an email I just sent to my team:

To: OKS' team
From: OKS
Subject: Today's quitting time

Hi, team! Workin' hard or hardly workin'? <-- That is exactly how my dad would start this email.

Anyway, [Team Lead] confirmed that we are free to leave at 1:30 today so please log off or take off at that time. Just a reminder-I will be out of the office all next week. I'll have my Blackberry so you can reach me in an emergency.

Everyone please have fun, safe and happy holidays! See you next year! <-- That is exactly how my mom would end this email.

This is also exactly why I will never move up the corporate ladder.

I am currently working at home because two lights on my dashboard came on last night. My car's a Christmas miracle! Oh...no wait...it's a piece of shit! Sorry-got my sayings mixed up there.

Anyway, the good part about my car being horrible is that I am now working from home. Which means I am watching "Charlie Brown Christmas" while I work. And also blogging. Is there no end to how valuable I am to this company?

I just wanted to hop on here and make sure I bitch about my car. Oh no-I mean I wanted to make sure I wish you all a Merry Christmas. For real I hope it's your best one yet, and that you take some time to be thankful for the things you have. Like a working car. Am I putting enough negative energy out there on Christmas Eve yet? Seriously thanks to all of you who read this. You complete me.

One more thing...on Saturday the Okay Seriously family is going to Florida for a week. Please take a moment to eat it, bitches (Merry Christmas!). I don't know if I'll be able to post while there, but I'll definitely be Twittering. If you have done the math, that means I will be in Florida over New Year's. I will miss my friends greatly, but the thought of not having to make New Year's plans is making me giddy. New Year's sucks.

Recap:
My car = suck
Working from home = rule
Christmas = rule
New Year's = suck
Florida = rule
You guys = rule

Rule wins!

Merry, merry Christmas, everybody! Be safe, be grateful, be overeating, be pantsless (indoors only), be drunk and most of all be happy! For those of you that don't celebrate Christmas, be all of those things, too, and Merry December 25th!

Never gonna give you up

- I am obsessed with "The Sing Off". I swear if Nota doesn't win, I will freak the eff out. They are just heads and shoulders above the rest talent-wise. Also I love me the cutie lead singer. Is he adorable or what. Also I fast forward every time the girl from the Pussycat Dolls speaks. Nothing she says is useful or helpful or doesn't make my brain bleed.

- Am I supposed to know who Ke$ha is? She's in my face on iTunes, but I don't understand her or her $.

- I wrapped my friend Woody's Christmas presents for him tonight. I did it for him last year, too. He hates wrapping. What is that about? Sidenote wtf: he has no scissors. At all. Anyway, in return, this is what he gave me:

I am fine with this trade. When he called me to come over he said, "I have the Rolling Stone with the vampire on the front for you." And I said, "He's a werewolf." And he was like, "Yeah I don't care. At all. Make him stop looking at me."

- This is so not going to mean anything to anyone, but I am going to tell you anyway because it is a personal high for me. My friend John is hilarious. Over the past, like, 2 years, he has Rickrolled me dozens of times. Sometimes in video, mostly over the phone when he's in his car. He'll call me, I'll answer, he'll say he has something to tell me and BAM! Rickrolled. I fall for it every time. Mostly because he calls me lots of times in between for real stuff. He lures me into a false sense of safety and friendship all the while biding his time until it's time to strike. It is annoying. And brilliant. I have never, ever Rickrolled him. Ever. I just don't possess the talent necessary to trick him into it like that. I'm way too obvious, and John knows me far too well and can always sniff out stuff like that. Like I said-annoying.

For John and his wife's birthday last month, I made them a ton of CDs. Six of them were mixes. These mixes presented me with my opportunity-really my only opportunity ever. I lovingly put together these mixes and at the end of some of them, I put bonus tracks. Like I literally marked it BONUS TRACK as a little surprise for him. They were fun songs I knew he wouldn't have. For example, "Let's Go To the Mall" by Robin Sparkles (what's up, HIMYM fans!). Awesome. I knew John would listen to the CDs in order so I put a bunch of awesome bonus tracks on some of the first 5 mixes. The bonus track on cd 6? Rick Astley. My hope was that he would expect another fun cool song like the others and not see it coming.

I did not feel confident with this plan at all. I figured I had a 30% chance of it going right. But I decided that I had given it my best shot, and there was nothing else I could do. It's been a month, and he never said anything about it so I assumed my plan had failed.

Until I received a call last night on my way home from work.

John: "I'm on CD 6, and it's awesome. I was so excited for the bonus track. Like literally I was giddy with excitement. It started, and I was like, "What is this? Is this Tarzan Boy? AH GODDAMMIT!!" I just want to say I love you and hate you for this."

You guys, for real? Best. Rickroll. Ever. He walked right into my trap exactly how I had planned it! God he was so mad. Our unedited text conversation that followed:

John, 6:22pm: for 1.5 seconds i was like tarzan boy weird bonus song but awesome. then blammo worst rickroll ever.

Sarah, 6:23pm: Im keeping this text 4ever

John, 6:27pm: this must be how lincoln felt after years of effing with john wilkes booth when booth finally got him back

Sarah, 6:34pm: Its exactly the same as that

Sarah, 7:20pm: I am still glowing over my genius

John, 7:47pm: retaliation will need to be aged like a fine wine

Sarah, 7:48pm: Its like the slap bet-i dont know when its coming

John, 7:52pm: i am going to have a clock counting down. you will know the exact date and time. i will still get you

Sarah, 8:15pm: Until that day i will revel in the glory of THIS day

And I am totally still reveling. I am aware that in all likelihood this will be the one and only time I will ever get him. If that is true, I will not be disappointed. This is enough to get me through...forever pretty much. As he said himself, "This is one for the ages." Indeed it is. Today I'm Queen of the Rickroll.

I'm #1! (and #2)

Please add "plumber" to the list of roles I fill in this world. This is in addition to mediocre writer, professional couch potato, perpetually injured/sick clumsy moron, winner of all movie trivia games given at any party thrown by my friends, borderline alcoholic and Minesweeper expert.

Last week, my toilet stopped flushing. Because the handle broke.



















See that white stick laying on the bottom of the tank? That's supposed to be attached to the white plastic thingie up on the side of the tank. Sorry if this is hard to understand-I am using professional plumber language.

Well, I needed a new toilet handle. So like plumbers do, I went to Lowe's. I picked up a handle that looked like it would work, and then had this conversation with an employee who was walking by:

Me: Excuse me-will this toilet handle work on any toilet?

Lowe's guy: Let me take a look. No. See this says it's for American Standard toilets.

Me: silently blink at LG (Lowe's Guy)
Me: Is that a brand of toilet or something?

LG: Yes. American Standard.

Me: Ohhhh! I thought that meant like it's an American standard. Like I have a standard toilet, made in America.

LG: stares at me for a second.
LG: bursts into laughter.
LG: No. American Standard is a brand of toilet. We have universal fit handles over there. Just make sure it says "Universal fit".

Okay so mental note for my new career as a plumber: Learn the different brands of toilets.

Despite my first misstep, please take a look at my handiwork:































Isn't it beautiful? So what if took me 3 times longer than the Internet told me it would take? And so what if I accidentally flushed my toilet 12 times while attempting to fix it? And so what if sometimes the handle sticks almost straight up instead of going to the side like in that picture? I fixed my own toilet kind of in a way. I am a grown up!!

God you have no idea how badly I want to draw an upper decker on those pictures.

Double 3

Well, gang, it happened. I turned 33 despite my best efforts to avoid it. I spent the days leading up to my birthday trying to forget the fast rate at which my eggs are dying. Thankfully my friends and family reminded me once again why I am the luckiest person alive.

Friday we went to Steph's for happy hour. She has recently decided to embrace Christmas, and she wanted to show us her decorations. And give us wine. It just so happens, I enjoy both of those things. Then she, Meg and I went to see New Moon again. Well, again for Meg and me. First time for Steph. She spent the entire time either lusting after Rob Pattinson or admonishing Meg and I for lusting after Taylor Lautner because it's "illegal". Whatever-Steph thinks she knows everything about the law since she went to law school. By the way, I was totally not sober for the movie. Awesome. How my being drunk made the movie different: my thoughts about Taylor Lautner were more inappropriate and, frankly, more surprising. Oh also I forgot that I threw a couple of Irish Cream Hershey's Kisses into my pocket before we left Steph's place so by the time the movie was over and I stuck my hand in my pocket, they were a nice melted pool of sticky goo. Whoops.

Saturday morning, Diane, Drew and I did a 5k. Doesn't that sound like an awesome birthday activity? No. It does not. I was totally tricked into running this thing because they gave us jingle bells for our tennis shoes. I mean, come on. Jingle bells! So Drew and Diane agreed to run it with me. As you know, I am the slowest and crabbiest runner in existence. But I had 2 goals for myself: 1. Run at least half the race. 2. Beat my normal 5k time. Oh wait-3. Not die.

I am happy to say I accomplished all three goals. And I did it without any whining. And by that I mean that literally every single thing my sister said to me, I told her to shut up. That was my only response. I essentially blamed her for how hard the running was. That is pretty reasonable. Fortunately, my sister knows me and knows I didn't really want her to shut up. And I mean let's be honest-even if I had actually wanted her to shut up, she wouldn't have. They teach you that when you become a little sister.

Immediately following the race, I retired from outdoor running in the winter. Because I'll tell you what. It was fucking cold. And it fucking hurt. Yeah. F-bombs. That's for real. Oh and a small sidenote about the race: there was a dude dressed in tiiiight running pants just standing on the corner watching everyone run. He was not running himself even though he was dressed like he was. Diane and I called him Package. If it's not clear why, let me just reiterate: his pants were very, very...very, very tight.

Saturday night, my friends absolutely refused to let my birthday go by without celebrating so they took me out. So many people came out, and I just want to say thank you so much to everyone. I am so lucky to have you in my life. I've said it before but seriously I have the best friends.

While at the bar, a bus load of Santas came in. I'm not joking. There were like 30 people dressed up as Santa, and they arrived on a bus-just like the real Santa. They were on a pub crawl. Also like the real Santa. One of them, while talking to Renee and I, found out Renee was pregnant. Then he asked me if I was. Mildly insulted, I said no. Then he said, "Do you want to be? RIGHT!? I'm Santa-I give presents!" then he high-fived me and said something about bare-backing. I was scared. Oh also all the Santas gave us candy canes which I thoroughly enjoyed. If there is one thing I love, it's taking candy from strangers who threatened to get me pregnant 5 minutes prior.

Sunday my family came over and took me out to PF Chang's where I ate my weight in honey chicken and fried rice. Then they showered me with too many presents. On Monday I came in to work and John had decorated my cube with Christmas lights and garland. See how it is hard to be depressed about aging when the people in my life are doing things like that?

Please look at this:








Is this not amazing!? Be cuter.















Fact: I LOVE Grover. Fact: He is the best character on Sesame Street. Fact: Saturday Diane, Drew and I went into a toy store, and I saw this and freaked out but didn't have my wallet so couldn't buy it. Fact: Diane was so heartbroken by my sad face after realizing I didn't have my wallet that she went back and bought this for me. Fact: I am 32-excuse me-33 and I love Sesame Street, the Muppets and stuffed animals. Fact: I am single.

I will leave you with this picture of the balloon bracelet that a guy behind the counter of Chik-Fil-A at the mall made me on Monday:
















Someone at Sephora asked me if it was a watch. For real.

Clarification

Okay so my sister wants me to clarify that I'm not actually a lesbian. She thinks it sounded like I came out as a lesbian to the entire Internet and not just to my family. So, while I think being a lesbian would be a perfectly lovely lifestyle, I am not actually one. Especially not after this. (How many times can I post that link until you revolt?)

We were talking about Oregon during dinner. I don't know why. I've never even been there. Anyway my dad was talking about how great their health care system is there. And I commented that maybe I should move there given how sick I've been the past couple of months. Only before I could say my comment, my dad interjected a second observation about Oregon, but my brain was already sending the message to my mouth to form words out loud. So this is what happened:

Dad: Oregon has a great health care system.
Slight pause.
Dad: Also they were one of the first states to allow gay marriage.
Me: I should move there.
My sister bursts out laughing. Grandma looks confused.

I didn't bother to address it. I just giggled and ate more noodles. God I love noodles.

On Saturday I fell off a step ladder while putting up my Christmas lights. I won't tell you how close I came to breaking my neck and/or cracking my head open on my coffee table because my mom reads this, and I don't want to her to come over any time I have to use the step ladder. But suffice it to say, it was so close I almost threw up thinking about how close it was. Luckily all I did was hurt my wrist, scrape up my ankles, mess up my toe, hurt my left ass cheek and destroy my back. A half hour later I ran my arm into my bicycle handle. I'm moving into a bouncy house next week.

Some thoughts on current entertainment issues:

- Avatar is totally in my face. And I really don't get it. They have a hot guy starring in it, but they turn him into a weird looking blue thing for the whole movie. How am I supposed to lust over that? Boo.

- Tiger is at once disgusting and a huge mega dork. I really have never gotten this guy's appeal-beyond his wallet I guess. Which, in this sad day and age, is enough for a lot of women. I'm not kidding it makes me sad. Ugh. Also seriously he's a F*CKING DORK. And not the good adorable kind.

- Who watched Glee last night? "Jump" was amazing. I love you, Glee!

- My sister and Drew went to Star Wars: In Concert tonight. Drew was geeked out beyond belief. Hopefully they met a man for me.

Quick Thanksgiving rundown

I love to eat.

I totally suck at Boggle. Seriously I haven't played in 20 years, and my vocabulary has not improved at all since then.

The most drama we experienced all day is when Henry, our dog, tried to eat the plastic turkey popper timer thingie. There was an all out panic and my grandma and I literally shoved our hands inside his mouth. What ended up working was me prying his mouth open and then tipping him over upside so it would fall out. It reminded me of what you would do in a cartoon situation. And it was awesome.

I accidentally came out as a lesbian to my family.

My grandma tried to give us this:










No, Grandma.

On my father's side of the family, noodles are a really big deal. They are cooked for pretty much every meal-especially Thanksgiving. This is foreign to almost everyone except our family. While we all love this tradition, my Dad and I are obsessed. with. noodles. And we totally tried to start a full on Stuffing Versus Noodles war. Not surprisingly, we were not victorious. But our love of noodles does not wane. We may have lost the battle, but we won't stop fighting the war.

I didn't wear a jacket on Thanksgiving. Then I woke up Friday to this:




















We went shopping. While at Dick's, I walked by a display and knocked over a gigantic 12 foot poster of a lady skiing. It was loud and right by the checkout where everyone was standing. I tried to put it back up, but then a nice worker lady came over and did it for me. Then she said, "Don't worry about it. She's a bad skier." Thanks, nice lady.

We saw "The Blind Side". I literally had to hold back tears every 5-7 minutes. Normally that would be an exaggeration. I am not exaggerating. At all. It was lovely. The guy who played Michael Oher was freaking amazing. Plus I heart Sandra Bullock. It's too bad she's so ugly.

When I was a senior in high school, I used to babysit for 3 kids across the street from me. A boy who was 8 and his two little sisters who were 4 and 2. While at the mall Friday, I saw the boy working at a store. He's like 7 feet tall, and I saw him kiss his girlfriend. After some quick math, I figured out he is about 22. Which means he's almost done with college. Which means I'M AN OLD F*CK. Uh oh...he's 5 years older than Taylor Lautner. Ew. I feel dirty. Wait just saw the picture again. Aaaand back to lusting over a 17 year old.

How was everyone's holiday? Did you see any kids you used to babysit for that made you feel old which then threw you into panic about your life and where it's going and how fast it's going there?

It's...pretty obvious I haven't really slept in a few days

- How was everyone's New Moon Day? I've decided the opening day of all Twilight movies should probably be their own holiday. Obviously 14 of us girls (all over 30) went Friday-the day it opened. We bought our tickets like 3 weeks in advance (sad), went right at 5:30 which means most of us left work early-if we went to work at all which Renee and I didn't (sad) and then most of us got there 45 minutes early and stood in a line until they would let us in the theater (sad).

Kim and I were the first ones through the ticket taker so we made our way to the theater to save seats. 11 and 12 year olds went rushing by us in a blur. They were already squealing. It really was so cute. I remember when I used to be THAT excited about things: Kirk Cameron, Michael J. Fox, NKOTB, Twilight. Okay fine I still get THAT excited. Whatever shut up.

We picked a good time to go because it was too early for most high school kids. Since I am a crabby old lady, I hate going to movies with high school kids because they are obnoxious. This crabbiness also tends to result in me making sweeping, unfair generalizations. But seriously. Shush it, high school kids. We're trying to listen and some of us are hard of hearing because we were blasting Def Leppard on the way here. Damn kids and their sexting.

Our theater was mostly junior high aged girls who took pictures of the movie screen whenever Edward or Jacob was in a close up (seriously), other women our age (holla!) and one group of 3 high school boys with a mom who sat in the back. Awesome. Be proud of your Twilight love, boys.

I loved the movie. It's not for everyone, of course, but I loved it. I am not going to get into any discussion about its sexist nature and the negative message it may or may not be sending to our young females because blabity blah blah. It's an effing vampire/werewolf movie. Young girls already have a weird idea of what love is because, well, they are kids and they are girls. Fact: In junior high and high school you will experience infatuation with another person. And it will own you and make you dumb and then crush you and you will think you are going to die (I am looking at you, DL). When you're that age, it's the absolute most important thing that will ever happen to you ever. Then you grow up, realize there are more important things, and you can appreciate the books and the movies on a different level-for entertainment value. And for ogling.

Let's just get this out of the way: Taylor Lautner is beautiful. He's a beautiful, gorgeous man-boy. I spent literally the entire movie lusting after him and trying not to feel guilty about it. I have questions. How is that kid only 17? Why does he make me think dirty things about him when I know he has only been driving for 1 year? When does he turn 18? Why am I so creepy? The first scene in the movie where he takes his shirt off is so ridiculous and contrived, and instead of laughing-the appropriate response-I was like, "Take me to jail." Please more. More of him.

Oh also-and this is really just secondary-I thought his acting was superb. I was a little worried, but he did a great job. So did his abs. Okay we need to switch topics before I accidently break a law or something.

-Please watch The Muppets singing "Bohemian Rhapsody" immediately. You will not be sorry.

- I hate myself for liking Chris Brown's new song. I haven't purchased it and have no plans to. But it's really good. And I am having many conflicting thoughts. Man this post is full of angst. Just like high school (dammit, DL).

- Now that Oprah is retiring, I really feel like it's time I got my own talk show. Basically it would be me sitting on a couch offering everyone Salt & Vinegar Pringles while we gossip about how Josh Duhamel TOTALLY cheated on Fergie (right?) and then I interview Shia LaBeouf about why he's only been in 3 movies this year and we end the show by singing the theme song to "Growing Pains" (I sing the boy part, you sing the girl part). What the hell just happened here. I just completely lost it, right? I wrote that sentence without even thinking, and now I'm scared.

Hold me.

A stitch in time saves nine is not a good saying

Really quick apology: I'm sorry to Anita and Becky for showing up at your respective baby showers with the creeping crud and breathing all over everything. I swear I was bathing in hand sanitizer so as not to pass on my germs. And Becky, sorry I was so sick that I showed up with wet hair to yours. I literally only had enough energy to run my favorite pick through it (from Fantastic Sam's) and put on eyeliner. Truly it was a miracle I showered at all in my condition. You have a big beautiful belly with those 2 babies in there. I want to hug it and sing show tunes to it, but I will refrain. As long as other people are around.

So growing up, our maternal grandmother was always getting Diane and I to try different types of crafts. We would make Christmas ornaments for our parents and things like that. When I was about 11 or 12, she bought each of us a little starter kit to learn cross-stitching.

Diane made this for me when I graduated high school:







She hates it and thinks it's lame. But I love it and think it's sweet. Plus it looks a lot like me.










This is what I made:





















I call it "Minus Sign". Also you should know, that is from the starter kit my grandma gave me. That's literally as far as I got. I spent, like, 36 minutes stitching this 21 years ago, and that was it. I know what you're thinking: My commitment is unparalleled, and my grandmother is probably really proud. Look the way I see it, this is the only piece I ever did. That makes it more rare. More rare means more valuable. Amiright??

Yeah I'm probably gonna throw it away after I press "Publish". Just kidding. No way am I throwing this away. Now I don't have to buy my parents a Christmas present.

Whoa!

Well, guys, I know you will be surprised to hear this, but I'm sick. I know, I know. I am usually the pillar of health. But it's true. I have bronchitis. And it effing sucks.

Naturally my parents are convinced I have swine flu. I mean I will keep an eye out for it, but everyone knows I am like the last person to grab on to the latest fad. If I got swine flu now that would make me terribly in vogue, and let's be honest, that's just not me. It's more likely that I have SARS.

Speaking of SARS, when I went to Urgicare tonight, they made me put on a surgical mask since I was coughing. I have never worn a surgical mask before. They are extremely funny and extremely uncomfortable. As soon as I put it on, I was making SARS jokes in my head. Because as we just discussed, I am like 6 years behind. I quickly admonished myself for being so lame so instead, I started reenacting scenes from "Grey's Anatomy" in my head*. And sort of outside of my head.

When I left the office, I noticed there were a lot of people in the waiting room. So I left the mask on as I walked out to freak them out. I definitely saw some looks of horror. I am a bad person. That's probably why I've been stricken with bronchitis swine SARS.

While I've been home battling sickness, my sister has been in L.A. for work. Monday night, she and her coworkers happened upon the premier for "Old Dogs" which, by the way, looks terrible. Well, they ended up standing in the crowd watching the red carpet. They saw Jon Voigt, Seth Green, Breckin Meyer, Uncle Jessie's wife Becky from "Full House", Kelly Preston, John Travolta, Robin Williams, Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson. She said that Kelly Preston and Becky from "Full House" were otherworldly beautiful. Skinny and gorgeous and just ridiculous.

So after Diane saw some like actual major mega movie stars, she saw a commotion and ran over to see what it was about. And she ended up about 1 foot away from...are you ready?

Joey Lawrence!

Yes. The man. The legend. And here is one reason why I love my sister. Her reaction to all the major mega movie stars? Excitement. Some "Wow this is so cool" type statements. Her reaction to Joey Lawrence? "I LOVE YOU, JOEY LAWRENCE!!!!!" She completely lost her mind. And screamed that at him. From a foot away. He looked up and smiled at her. So now I'm pretty sure her life is complete. And I'm pretty sure mine has a hole in it that can only be filled by a look from Joey Lawrence.

I just want to say that 5 years ago I was in New York City for work, and my hotel was next to the premier of "Troy". So I went outside to see some Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston and get them to be best friends with me (seriously I bet I could've saved their marriage), but I was too late so all I saw was a lousy Olsen twin.

By the way, when I told my friend at work that my sister saw Joey Lawrence at a movie premier, he thought I meant that he was in the crowd with her watching the red carpet. Now that's effing funny.

*Um...how freaking awesome have the past few episodes of Grey's been? So awesome!

Halloween happenings

The week before Halloween was Suz and AJ's annual Halloween party. Every year they have a Halloween movie trivia quiz, and they give out prizes and everything. The past two years, I have won this trivia game. It has brought me much fame and glory and also angered all my friends to the point that when I won the Christmas movie trivia quiz at Brian and Anita's Christmas party last year, I was booed. So I had a lot to live up to this year. Luckily, I. Am. Awesome. That's right-3 years in a row!! As predicted, I was booed again. But I know it's all in good fun plus everyone can pretty much bite me. I also won second place in the best costume contest so I was given a bottle of Riesling that was in the shape of a black cat (this will be important coming up).

I was insanely sick the entire week after we got back from Vegas so I was entirely unprepared for the party. Three days before, it dawned on me that I did not have a costume. As usual when costume anxiety sets in, I began looking through every drawer and cabinet in my house praying for an idea to strike. What I found was one of those plastic hair bonnets that old ladies wear when it rains. My dad had given it to me a couple months ago. Obviously. Why wouldn't he.

Using the rain bonnet as inspiration, I went to the party dressed up as me. At age 90. Ugly blouse that had a clip on pearl necklace attached to it, ugly skirt, knee highs showing, slip-on tennis shoes, reading glasses on a chain, clip-on earrings, hair in a bun, plastic rain bonnet and ginormous bra on the outside of my shirt. Because I mean I figure I'll be one of those old ladies-you know so senile I wear my bra on the outside? The best part is that I bought the bra at the Salvation Army. Did you know they sell bras there? Just one word on that: ew. But yeah I got a huge old lady bra for like $2. I felt pretty cool purchasing it in front of people who probably later went home and told their families to be thankful for what they have and to not take for granted that they don't need to purchase used undergarments. Sadly I did not have to purchase the knee highs or slip-on tennis shoes. Those were mine, you guys. Parts of my 90 year old lady costume were things I owned. Sigh.

Notable quotes:

Me as I walked into the party: "I can't stay. I have a date."

All my guy friends: "I feel gross because I can't stop staring at your bra."

Suz: "You're keeping that outfit, right?"
Me: "Well I plan on having teenagers someday who need dropped off and picked up places. So yes."

My mom: "Cute. But weird."

My dad: "I'm so proud."

Note: My parents weren't at the party. My sister and I sent a picture to their cell phones. Hopefully they were with friends and had to show them the picture and then wordlessly shrug as their friends said things like, "Your daughter's 32, right? No boyfriend? Wow. That's shocking."

On actual Halloween night a big group of us went to Diane and Drew's to hand out candy and eat chili. It was really fun. Especially when Meg laid down in the front yard to demonstrate her P90X moves. She was rolling around covered in leaves then convinced Matt to lay down and do the moves with her. I'm pretty sure this made us the most terrifying house on the block. At one point Lisa had to say to some clearly nervous children, "We're not scary. We're just loud. I promise." After Diane's we went to Renee and Darren's to hang out, make fun of the candy they bought to hand out and play musical Catch Phrase. During several rounds of this game I came dangerously close to peeing my pants from laughing so hard. Matt was completely freaked out by my black cat bottle of Riesling so naturally I held it up to him and made it talk. He goes, "Get your black pussy out of my face." And then I laughed so hard I choked on my own saliva.




Good luck getting this image out of your head the rest of the day.

Update on my first couple weeks with King Nano

Number of songs: 1,771

Space free: 7.17 GB (God I love you King Nano)

#1 most played song so far: "Photograph" - Def Leppard (obviously)

#2 most played song: "Defying Gravity" - Original Cast Recording of "Wicked" (I am part gay man)

#3 most played song: "Fader" - The Temper Trap (everyone listen to The Temper Trap immediately)

Time I spent loading George Michael/Wham! songs onto it tonight: 1 hour

# of times I've listened to "Everything She Wants" by Wham! since I downloaded it: approximately 17

How awesome is that song on a scale of 1-10, 10 being most awesome: approximately 17

How much do I want to add an exclamation point to my name so I'm known as Sarah!: a really lot

# of Shia LaBeouf movies I watched today: 1 (Transformers 2)

# of times I changed the batteries in my smoke alarms and after testing them couldn't figure out how to get them to stop beeping: 4

# of Halloween decorations I own that I realized today contain a misspelling: 1 (Autumn Greetngs)

How much do I want to see the new Sandra Bullock movie, "The Blind Side": so effing much

How often do I cry when the preview for that movie is on: every time

When did I buy a ticket for "New Moon": last week

How old am I again: 32

When did this King Nano list go off the rails: Right around Wham!

Picture Pages!

I wanted to show you a picture of my new boyfriend. While taking his picture, I found some other pictures I would like to show you. They are, in a word, life changing. Okay in a words.

First my new boyfriend:










This is King Nano.










I know what you are thinking. What happened to my old boyfriend Lance Cpl Harold W. Dawson? Look it's nothing he did. It's just that he couldn't really give me everything I needed. I shouldn't talk bad about him. There is still a lot of love there. But he is moving on to Drew's sister, and I am moving on to King Nano who is 16Gb has video, FM radio and Cover Flow. Sigh...I love him.

Here is a picture of the pocket watch Steph bought for Europe:





See? It's a for real pocket watch.









Check out my train whistle:








Phallic much? The way it works is you just blow into that round tip and then it erupts with sound. Ahahahaha. Sorry, Dad.

A bar near us does these crab races on Wednesdays. If you want in, you pay a couple bucks and pick a number. Each crab in the race is numbered so the number you pick corresponds to that crab. Everyone stands around a big round table, and they dump the crabs in the middle. First crab to reach th edge of the table wins. It. Is. Awesome.

This is the starting point of the race. All the crabs are in the middle and will begin walking outward any minute. First one to cross that white line you see around the edge of the table is the winner.

We got to name our crabs. I named mine Herpes. In the picture below you can see just how competitive Herpes was:















Nice job, Herpes. I actually turned to Diane at this point and said, "I'm pretty sure my crab is dead." Other crabs were literally crawling on top of him and using him for leverage, and he wasn't even moving. Turns out he wasn't dead. Just slow. Like me. But not like herpes.

Lastly, here is a picture either Diane or Sharda took while hanging out the window of my car while we were driving on the highway on our way back from Miami University last year:

What is that, you ask? That, my friends, is a monstrosity. It's called the King of Kings statue, and it sits outside of Solid Rock Church in Monroe, Ohio. It's 62 feet high and cost a quarter of a million dollars to build. A quarter of a million dollars. And it's not even a water fountain. I'm sure there aren't any needy families or children in the area who could've used the church's donation of $250,000. THIS IS DISGUSTING, SOLID ROCK CHURCH! But damn-it is funny.

I do have a suggestion for improvement, though:

Aaaaaand cue lightning strike.

We're back!

If you followed my tweets you know that I was on a hot losing streak while in Vegas. I was also on another kind of streak: a drinking streak. I'm not kidding I think I was drunk for 3 days straight. Luckily I have it all on film. Check out these pictures:



Yeah there aren't any pictures. I took my camera with me everywhere and took no pictures. Let this be a lesson to you all: being drunk = forgetting to take pictures. Sometimes it = taking horrible pictures that you can't post anyway because you need to remain gainfully employed and on speaking terms with your family.

Actually I do have one picture. And I really can't post it because it's a picture of a stack of porno cards that John took from the porno hander-outers in Vegas and then stuffed in my purse when I wasn't paying attention. I found them 2 days later.

Some Vegas numbers for you:

People on the trip: 15
People on the trip who I love with all my heart: 14 (I'm excluding me here not because I don't like myself but it's super douchey to say you love yourself with all your heart)
Dollars lost: $270
Drinks drank: 30+?
Times Drew almost walked in on me naked: 1
Times I screamed "No" when Drew almost walked in on me naked: 16
Amazing steaks eaten: 1
Amazing steaks I'm still thinking about: 1
Times I tripped and fell on my ass by the pool: 1
Bruises I obtained as a result of that fall: 3
People who had stomach issues: 3
Times I played my favorite slot machine game ever, The Frog Prince: 900
Horrible toasts I made: 1
Times I had my champagne glass refilled for free at brunch on Sunday: possibly 17
Times I laughed so hard I almost peed my pants: lost count

I seriously need to hire someone to always be bringing me champagne. Like for real.

I was ready to go home Sunday afternoon to get away from the smoke and the losing of money. And now I am ready to go back. I'm not even kidding-who's in for a trip next year? Let's do this. I will show you the proper way to drink an absolutely ginormous plastic Eiffel Tower full of strawberry daiquiri and get so drunk in the afternoon that you pass out at 5:30pm and get up an hour and a half later ready to go again. Also you can see me in my giant sunhat. Renee said it makes me looks like J-lo, but I know it really makes me look like a grandma. I am okay with that. My varicose veins make me look like a grandma, too. You guys are gross. So are varicose veins.

Oh by the way, I've been meaning to tell you guys: 2 weeks ago I locked my keys in my car after pulling into the parking garage at work. Not just my keys. My cell phone, my work laptop, every single thing I needed. It was awesome. I mean I guess it's not as embarassing as locking myself in my car. But still. Anyway, John made a Top Ten countdown before Vegas of reasons why it was going to be awesome. I thought about posting it, but it's too inside jokey, and unless you know all the people going, wouldn't be fun reading for you. So I'll just show you #6:

6. Is it possible to lock yourself inside an airplane? A hotel room? Out of an airplane? Sarah is going to Vegas with us. We will have our answers soon enough.

Apparently this made everybody "laugh hysterically" ha ha ha. But you know I would just like to say that I did not lock myself out of anything this trip. Although I did kind of get stuck in the airplane bathroom on the way home, and a flight attendant-a good looking male flight attendant who earlier in the flight had had to stop and show me how to lift my armrest because I couldn't figure it out-had to push on the door from the outside to help me open it. So...yeah. Dammit. Whatever I hate you guys.

P.S. Our flight home had this service where you pay $6 on your credit card and you get to watch DirectTV-live happening now DirectTV-and movies that haven't been released yet for the whole flight! The screen is on the seat in front of you. I just want to say: this is hella awesome. Diane was all, "Whatever I'm not paying $6!" because apparently she can lose $200 gambling in Vegas and pay $15 for a drink by the pool but $6 for 4 hours of entertainment is careless spending. Me on the other hand? As soon as I realized what it was I was looking at, out came the credit card. Diane obviously came around a half hour later. Continental, please hear me: GREATEST IDEA EVER.

Holy crap it's Vegas Day!

I'm getting ready to go to the airport to leave for Vegas. Incidentally, I got up way earlier and with less fuss than I do for work. I had this whole post planned, but my Internet provider was down last night for "maintenance" so now we all lose. I'll post it when I get back because it's awesome.

My Blackberry won't let me post to my blog anymore (uncool!) so follow me on Twitter for Vegas updates. They will probably be really informative like, "Just drank 7 free vodka crans in 20 minutes. Damn the casino man!" and "Just puked. Don't remember eating that."

Have a great week, everyone!

Caliente Pocket!

When speaking to a crowd (do my parents and Steph count as a crowd?), you should try opening with a joke. So here goes:

What has two eyes, two arms, two legs, two ears and accidentally brought two coats to work on Friday? ME!

Wow that was a pretty effective joke. I can see everyone here is now loosening up, we're all kind of jiving and on the same page. Did I just say jiving? No seriously though I brought two coats to work on Friday. I wore one and after I hung it up at my desk, I realized I had also carried one in. Hey-you can't put a price on that kind of flakiness.

Okay this was a pretty solid opening. On to some announcements:

- Two very big announcements for our group: ALoyd and Sharda are engaged and will forever be joined as Shloyd. Also Gordo actually found someone patient enough to marry him! I kid, I kid, Gordo. Gordo and Tracey are also engaged. Fantastic news all around! Congratulations, you four! May I offer one suggestion? Double wedding!

- Giant Eagle just lowered the price on their rotisserie chicken to $4.99, and I can think of no reason why I shouldn't buy one of these every single day. My life is sad.

- You guys, for 10 years-10 YEARS-I have been sitting...hoping...patiently waiting for my time to come. For my friend to return to his rightful place in the sun. I'm sure by now you know I'm talking about my friend...Flannel. Flannel is back, baby. Take a look around you. IT'S BACK. You can't fight it so don't even try. Just embrace it. Love it. Take it into your arms and feel how soft and comfy it is. How it makes you want to snuggle up in front of a fire or drink hot chocolate with marshmallows or chop wood. I've wished for this for so long, and now it's finally here: Flannel. Is. Back. In. Style. Yay!! Thank you, fashion gods!

- Um...who watched "The Office"? Okay seriously-that episode was freaking amazing. The rehearsal dinner speeches made me so uncomfortable, I was literally hiding under my blanket. Then Andy's accident. Then the wedding. The greatest half hour of television ever! When they stopped the organist, and Dwight went up and pressed Play on the iPod, and I heard "Forever" start, this was my exact reaction: "This show is fucking brilliant." Then I laughed so hard my stomach hurt, and at the same time, I cried like a little girl. The Maid of the Mist scenes were beautiful. The whole thing was just perfect. Especially Michael's genuine emotional response to Pam and Jim actually getting married. It was only on the screen for maybe 3 seconds, but it was beautiful. If you missed it, go back and find it. It's really lovely. I love you forever, Office!

- Speaking of television, Flash Forward, anyone? I decided to record it "just in case", though, I was really expecting to watch one episode and let it go. Then the one episode decided to be THE MOST AWESOME EPISODE EVER! Dammit, Flash Forward. Why are you so good?

- The big news is that we are leaving for Las Vegas on Thursday! 2.5 days. I keep forgetting about it, though. And by that I mean that it's literally all I think about every second of every day for the past 3 weeks. John is going. For you old schoolers, you know him as Shop Dungarees and one of the funniest m-effers in the world. We are going to Vegas. Just the two of us. No I'm kidding, obviously, even though that's what he keeps telling people at work. That makes for a comfortable working environment. A big group of us are going including John and his wife Leah. The only problem with John going is that since we see each other every day, we talk about Vegas every day, and all it does is rile us all up for the trip and then we just become useless. Well, more useless than usual. We actually tried to play craps at my desk last week. Finally I was like, "We have a problem."

Between last week and the week prior, I had 3 Hot Pockets for lunches. On Friday, while I was eating my Lean Pocket, this conversation happened:

John: I'm concerned with the number of Hot Pockets you're eating this close to Vegas.
Keith: What do you mean?
Me: He wants me to be gambling with my money-not with my health.

We all laughed. Two hours later, I got a horrible stomachache that lasted for 2 days. Let this be a lesson to you all: Jim Gaffigan is right about Hot Pockets.

Still among the living

Sorry I have been MIA, but last week not a good week for me. Not only was I not home before 10pm any night of the week, but the weather is changing. The changing of the seasons-especially from warm to cold-always wreaks havoc on my head, and I spent the entire week with a migraine that had varying degrees of pain associated with it. It was pretty horrible. How about some random nonsense?

- I just found out that the first thing my grandpa said when he heard my sister had broken her nose was, "Well how's she goin' to pick her nose?" Awesome. I love my grandpa.

- It's possible I was so drunk at Meg's 30th birthday party Saturday that I yelled at Anderson Varejao as he was walking by me with his bodyguard on the way to the bathroom. I feel I should explain. Obviously I like Anderson Varejao as he is one of my beloved Cleveland Cavs. However, he used a bodyguard to walk through a crowd of roughly 10-12 people. What did he think was going to happen? In my defense, I don't think he heard me. And also the bar where we had Meg's party was awesome and amazing until about 11pm when it became a playground of douchebaggery, and it annoyed me. It annoyed all of us. Then Varejao walked by with his bodyguard, and I had just had enough. Sorry, Andy. I still really like you and your hair.

- Speaking of birthdays, yesterday was Steph's. We went to happy hour at Light Bistro where the manager instantly recognized Steph even though she's only been there twice before. We think it might have something to do with her/our volume. As Steph said last night, "We can turn any nice place into a keg party." Anyway, Steph is roughly 10 months younger than me. I turn 33 in December (shut up). Please do the math. So we were sitting at the bar, and Steph said something-I can't remember what-and this happened:

Manager/bartender: "Honey, you're thirty now. You need to act your age."

I slowly turned to look at Steph who was sipping on her drink, eyes down avoiding mine. "You told him you were thirty?"

Steph: "Sshhh! He doesn't need to know!"

Diane: "Steph! Hey, Ron, she's not thirty. Think higher."

We are mean friends.

P.S. Steph, Christy and Meg are back from Europe with awesome stories, but since this isn't their blog, I probably shouldn't repeat them here. I'm just happy they are home and had a wonderful time. But...I just need to tell you one thing: Steph held hands with someone. Steph...does not hold hands. She doesn't hug, she doesn't like touching. It's just not her. But she held hands with a boy. Anyway, it might not be obvious from this blog, but I am really weird about safety. Ever since my friend Matt died, I am a stickler for making sure my friends are being safe. It is annoying to everyone including me. But I can't help it. Matt's death changed me. So I heard some stories about some questionable things that happened in Europe (nothing illegal-we are not those kind of people), and I was yelling at Steph about it-right after she had told me about the hand holding. As I was yelling she goes, "Christy was bad, too!" So I said, "Okay let's go yell at Christy." And Christy turned to us and said, "What?" And Steph said, "We're yelling at you! You held hands with someone, too!" I had to stop, turn to Steph and whisper, "That's not actually what we're mad about. Holding hands is okay." She looked confused. I missed Steph.

I love my weekends

So I just realized that I have not been keeping you apprised of my weekends. And they have been super fun. So let's get it started with my last two weekends in August. Which were awesome.

Saturday, August 22 - So the day after Krusty's, we went to breakfast. At breakfast we were lamenting that we would have to wait a full year until we got to go to Krusty's again. Then it came up that we could probably recreate the event in Diane and Drew's backyard. Thus, Krusty's Redo was born. In retrospect, we probably should have called it Honorary Krusty's or Krusty's Part 2 because Krusty's Redo implies something was wrong the first time which required it to be redone. That was obviously not the case as Krusty's is the greatest day ever. In all of history. Anyway, we had a big cookout, invited all our friends and drank all day long. Steph had cups made (!) that said "Summer's the season for brew so it's Krusty's re-do!" I was obviously in charge of bringing the girly drinks since I am the core audience for those. However, I caught many people partaking of the girly Mike's Hard Lemonade drinks, and I just want to say: Quit pretending they aren't completely delicious, everyone! Because they are. Steph also made us all wear wristbands. It was how we "registered" (you have to wear a wristband at real Krusty's). In fact one of my favorite things of the whole day was when Steph would see someone without a wristband and take their drink away until they put one on.

I got to the party about an hour late (at 1:30pm). My sister was already drunk. I followed suit soon after, and that is how it went all day long. For everyone. We had a big beer pong tournament which turned everyone into a giant ahole. So much so that Paul, who had left with his 11 year old son earlier in the day to go to a Browns game, came back later in the day, saw what state we were in and immediately took his son home. Probably a good idea. Good parenting, Paul!

One thing that was different than Krusty's is that it rained all day long. We all surmised that we probably pissed off the Krusty's gods by trying to recreate the event. But hey, Krusty's gods, we did manage to make a little money to donate to the Malachi House. You have to forgive us now, right?

One thing that was the same as Krusty's is that we went to the bar afterward. Like we really needed to. While at the bar, not only did I have a stimulating conversation with my friends Mike and Fats about infomercials, but then Diane and I put money in the jukebox to pick out some songs. We had 1 pick left and obviously went with "The Chipmunks Christmas Song". As soon as we picked it, we walked over to Woody and Matt,and Diane said, "Yeah...we should probably head out now."

All in all, nothing beats original Krusty's (first weekend in August 2010-mark your calendars now!), but our homage to Krusty's was pretty damn fun. Oh and a sidenote: Steph held two babies and cooked food at Krusty's Redo. For those of you that know her, this is a big deal. Babies freak her out, and as for cooking...well let's just say that last year for Girls' Christmas she brought Chicken McNuggets. I think you see where I'm going here. And it's that any mention of Krusty's brings out the best in people.

Saturday, August 29 - Most of our friends were going to a wedding so Steph and I were the ones left without plans. We both decided we hadn't done a Choose Your Own Adventure Cleveland Day in a while so Steph came up with CYOA Cleveland Day: Recession Edition. All of the activities would be ones that were cheap or free-but still fun-so that our total expenditure for the day would not exceed $40 a person. See how Steph is sensitive to the economic crisis even in her event planning?

The adventure started at 3pm and went in 2 hour intervals. Here were our choices for the 3-5 timeframe (verbatim from Steph's agenda that she typed out):

1. Dragonboat festival – As Styx says, Come sail away, come sail away. Come sail away with me. I thought that they were angels, but to my surprise…Instead I found out about an awesome dragonboat festival. No lie! www.clevelanddragonboatfestival.com Free

2. Come on, Ride the Train…and ride it…Choo-Choo…Peninsula Depot leaves the station at 3pm. Want to climb aboard and ride the Cuyahoga Valley train. $15.

3. Come on Get happy! The flying Fig can make this happen with their Saturday $5 Happy Hour special. We’ll also cruise the West Side Market.

Well I have wanted to go on the Cuyahoga Valley train for some time. I've never been on a real train ride before, and I thought it would be a super cool 45 minutes to an hour ride. Steph agreed because in her mind we were going out during the Great Depression, and she pictured us carrying knapsacks and "riding the rails" for free by hopping into a passing freight car like they did back in the day. Steph has an active imagination. So we got to the train station, and we bought our tickets. We said, "We would like 2 tickets for the 3:40pm train." The lady said, "Okay that's $30. It leaves at 4:05." Already I was like why the hell do they call it the 3:40 train if it doesn't leave till 4:05? The lady clearly sensed my confusion and said, "The train arrives here at 3:40." as if that makes it make sense. If a train leaves at 4:05 it should be called the 4:05 train! Period. Anyway, I decided to let this go. Steph handed over her credit card to pay for the tickets. As she was signing the credit card receipt she casually asked, "How long is the train ride?" The lady goes, "3 hours." Steph and I completely froze and looked at each other in horror. THREE HOURS!? I'm not joking when I said I thought it would be 45 minutes. After a few seconds, it became clear to me that Steph had been shocked into silence, and it was getting awkward because no one was talking, and Steph had stopped signing the receipt. "Oh okay cool," I finally said, and we walked out of the little ticket booth. Then we sat down on the bench and started laughing hysterically.

At this point, Steph and I were a little panicky about what we were going to do on a train for 3 hours. So she got up and went back to the ticket lady and said, "So what is there to do on the train? Is there food or anything?" And the lady looked up at her, paused for a moment then said, "There's beer and wine on the train." Because she knew, you guys. She knew. Steph ran back out to me, and we went through our wallets to see how much cash we had. $25 between the both of us. We quickly did some math and decided $25 would not be enough for the two of us on a 3 hour train ride. So what did we do? What any normal person would do. We left the train station, went to a movie theater across the street that had an ATM and took out more cash. A lot more cash. Before our recession adventure day had even begun, we had already blown the budget.

When we went to get on the train, we didn't know where to go so we saw a guy who was dressed up in the traditional train conductor gear and went up to him. He told us we were in the right place, and then Steph said, "Can you say 'All Aboard'?" And he TOTALLY DID! It was amazing! Then we walked up to two other train workers-a man and a woman-who were right by the door and said, "Are we in the right place?" The man, who I'll call Our Friend, took one look at us and said, "First time on a train?" Awesome. Once we were inside the car, Our Friend came over to show us how these little headphone things worked. If you wore them during the train ride, they recounted the area's history and fun facts and stuff. We immediately and excitedly put them on, and then he said, "Girls, it hasn't started yet."

A few minutes later, the ticket lady came up and we showed her our ticket. Steph said, "Is there where you need to punch our ticket?" And she said, "No we don't really do that. We just count heads." Simultaneously, I made a sad face and Steph said, "Can you please punch it?" The ticket lady laughed and then totally punched our ticket. Then she said, "Girls, there's beer and wine up in that next refreshment car." Is it that obvious that we need alcohol wherever we go? Yes. It is.

We wasted no time in going to the refreshment car. Then we wasted no time in getting drunk on the train. You had to drink the alcohol in the dining car so guess who spent the entire train ride in the dining car? It ended up being the best place anyway because that's where all the train workers hung out. And by train workers I mean they are all volunteers. Most of them are retired men. Retired men love us. Not in a creepy way. In a we remind them of their daughters so they want to talk to us and take care of us way. Our Friend was in there, and he really loved us. He was like, "So did you girls just wake up today and say, 'Let's go on a train ride.'?" And we were like, "Yeah pretty much." And he said, "Yeah I can tell that's the kind of girls you are. That's terrific." Then he proceeded to tell us about all the best train rides available to us in the US. Awesome. Eventually Our Friend had to leave because his work day was over so he came up, handed us each a Kleenex and said, "Ladies, I have some bad news. I'm getting off at this stop. The tissue is for when the tears come. And they will come." Dad, can you please be friends with this guy!? I want to hang out with him!! Oh another anecdote about this guy: Steph and I bought train whistles from the gift shop (I'll post a picture tomorrow). Our Friend saw us with them and said, "Aw-just like the little kids." By the way, I am obsessed with my train whistle. I literally blow it all the time (you guys are gross). Mostly when people call me to be funny and annoy them and ensure they don't call me ever again.

We also made friends with the young guy and girl who worked in the refreshment car. Obviously. Because we were buying drinks (and candy and toys) from them every 10 minutes. We told them they were our best friends, and when the girl had to leave she came up and said, "I have to get off at this stop. But it doesn't mean we aren't still friends." I am officially in love with everyone on that train.

After Our Friend and our beer girl friend left, we were sad. But then the train conductor showed up, and he loved us, too. He told us all these train stories and stories about the area and about his kids and his friends and how he met his wife. Steph and I were so happy. So happy that somehow we ended up volunteering to work on The Polar Express train they do during Christmastime. Look I don't know how it happened, but suddenly Steph was saying she wanted to be an elf on the train,and I said I was too tall to be an elf so maybe I could be something else then we were given volunteer forms. It was all very fast, and I looked at Steph and said, "Wait do we work here now? What just happened?"

When we got close to our last stop where we got off, the young guy who worked the register at the refreshment car just came and sat down with us. But not after giving us free popcorn. He is in a band, and we are going to keep an eye out for them. I just need to remember what they're called. When we got off the train everyone who worked there said, "Ladies, we really hope you'll come see us again." And Steph was like, "Well you'll see us in December when we are elves." Then we got off the train, and there was a person standing outside it dressed in a chicken suit holding a bunch of balloons. Talking to no one. He/she was just standing there.

Sigh...

I LOVE THE F*CKING TRAIN!

I forgot how much I missed TV

Oh happy day, TV is back! The opening sequence of The Office where Michael, Dwight and Andy are running around knocking everything over and screaming "PARKOUR!" made me pee and it's exactly why I love this show. A few more choice reasons why:

- Creed freaking out because if a rumor gets out that he has asthma then he won't be able to scuba and if he can't scuba then what has he been working toward his whole life.

- The interview with the interns at the end each saying what they learned. "Well, I guess I learned nothing then."

- Andy, pleading: "Michael…am I gay?" I love you, Ed Helms.

- And my favorite line of the entire show which belongs to Oscar: "Is it really my job to comfort insecure heterosexual men? Does that really fall to me?"

Please tell me you guys watched Community. After one episode I am convinced it is and will be the best new show of 2009 and possibly my new favorite show. Holy crap I laughed hysterically from the minute it started. The writing is perfect (there are way too many amazing one liners to write them all down, for example "You seem pretty smart, you got a sport coat"), the cast is perfect, Joel McHale is perfect, and I cannot even begin to express how happy I am that Chevy Chase is on my TV again. Did you see how he introduced everyone in the study group? And when Joel McHale told everyone to look to the person to their left, he did a quick glance down at his hands to figure out which way that was. If you blinked you missed it, and it's all so classic Chevy Chase and so exactly why the man is a genius. I am elated to get to see him every week. Plus, they ended the show with a remake of "Don't You (Forget About Me)" and dedicated it to John Hughes. Perfect.

Only like 17 more months until Lost comes back.

How is it September 15th already

So lately I have been having all these dreams that are so boring and so like my real life that they are actually messing up my real life. Because I dream about work and working on things that I need to turn in then when I wake up I can't remember if I've actually done those things or not. Or like I dream that my sister asked me to do something really mundane then I go to do it and can't remember if I really was supposed to or not. Or like yesterday. I had dreamt that I made a doctor's appointment then couldn't remember if I really did. So I actually had to call and ask, "Did I call recently and make an appointment?" Guess what makes people think you are either dumb or have mental problems? Calling them to ask them if you recently called them for something.

Okay so I'm not going to go into a lot of details here because I don't want to give the impression that Steph doesn't have it together because she so does. Except on Saturday she was really hungover and therefore dumb (our friend Laura calls it "dumbover"-awesome) and here are a just a few things that took place:

- She accidentally bought lip gloss from a line of makeup specifically marketed toward black women (reminder: Steph is literally the palest woman on Earth. She's almost see through.)

- She (and Matt and Laura and Kube) went to an art gallery and ended up in the kitchen eating food that was sitting out because they thought it was for patrons. Until they saw the sign that said "HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JANET!" above it and then Janet came and escorted them away from the food.

- And this is my favorite thing ever: While driving around, Steph realized she and Matt where on the road where she works, but she didn't recognize it. Matt didn't know how that was possible since her work was only like a mile away. While investigating this, it came to light that every morning that Steph has been going to work, she has been driving past her exit, going to the next one and driving back the way she came to get to her building. Oh did I mention Steph has been working there for TWO YEARS!?!? Matt showed her her new route, and I asked Matt, "How much time will this cut off her commute?" And he said, "Easily 10 to 15 minutes." And then I peed my pants laughing for the next, well, roughly 3 days. Because I am still laughing about it. Steph, seriously, my life would be so boring if you weren't in it.

This afternoon Meg, Christy and Steph leave for Italy. I would just like to wish my girls a safe and fun trip. Meg, don't spend all your money on Italian clothes and purses. Christy, spend some money-buy yourself something. Steph, don't accept money from strange men because I really don't want there to be an international incident because you were mistaken for a hooker. I love you all-be careful.

Speaking of the Europe trip, Steph doesn't wear watches because she's so anal about time that she would be OCD about looking at her watch every 3 minutes. So she uses her cell phone to get the time. However, her cell phone won't work in Europe. So what's a girl to do? Oh how about buy an old fashioned pocketwatch? That is what our Steph did on Saturday. And while she was purchasing it, she was yelling at Matt, who was looking at watches, about not wasting his money on impractical things he doesn't need. I repeat: I love Steph.

Okay so...I am not okay today. I am taking Patrick Swayze's death pretty hard. How is he not here anymore? No more Patrick Swayze movies? No more Patrick Swayze dancing? No more real life Johnny Castle!? Here's the thing, obviously I love 80's movies and everything to do with the 80's, but I also really, sincerely loved Patrick Swayze. Maybe he wasn't the number one actor in the universe, but something about him was so genuine and just so likeable. I am so sad. I'm totally going to be on the lookout for floating pennies and Whoopie Goldberg under my window which could be considered a tasteless joke if I was joking. I miss you already, Patrick.

Naked ambition

So I am still alive, I'm just sick so really all I want to do is curl up into the fetal position, but instead I'm working. I keep trying to take sick days, but work keeps sucking me in. Why can't I just win the lottery so I can just be a lazy piece? And also give to charity so I don't feel bad about myself?

Anyway, I'm working on a couple posts, I promise, but I just feel like crap so I'm going to tell you a quick story. Sunday morning after the wedding, my sister, Drew and I were getting ready to go to NYC to visit our friend, Sudha. Since my parents and my grandparents had left earlier in the morning, we used their rooms so we could each have a different room to get ready. Drew was in my grandparents' room. He got undressed, turned on the shower and then heard voices outside the room. He took 2 steps out of the bathroom to see if he could figure out who it was...and was suddenly face to face with my aunt. Face to naked face. As a reflex, he covered his junk with his hands and then sidestepped back into the bathroom. Then he came out a few seconds later with a towel on.

Our questions for him:

1. Why did you come out of the bathroom naked if you heard voices? Answer: I thought it could be you two girls.

2. That answer makes no sense if you thought Sarah was there. Why would you come out naked if you thought your sister in law was there, sicko? Answer: No I mean I thought you two were outside of the room and needed me for something.

3. You still don't make sense. Anyway, what did our aunt do? Answer: Nothing.

4. What did you say when you came out of the bathroom the second time-after "the incident"? Answer: We pretended like nothing happened. I think, in retrospect, that made it more awkward. I should've made a joke. Goddammit your aunt saw me naked.

Us: "Well she's probably the right one to have this happen in front of. I mean we don't get to see her too often since she lives so far away."
Drew, smarmily: "I have a feeling after this, we'll be seeing a lot more of her."
Us: "Ahahahahaha-ew."

Awesome.

Overheard in Ohio City

I've been so stinking busy lately making me a horrible blogger, but I have so many great stories to tell you-I swear. However, right now I'm packing to leave for New Jersey for my cousin's wedding so yeah, this isn't the time either. But I will leave you with this.

The other day I was walking down the street and walked by a house. A woman was on the front stoop having just arrived and the man who lived there was opening the door for her. Right as I walked by she yelled, "You are so lucky! I took a huge dump before I came here!" And the guy was like, "Oh yeah? Wel-" That is when he saw me. Though I tried to remain nonchalant, I was in tears laughing already. And the girl freaked out without turning around-cuz she knew, you guys-and ran inside the house. I walked away quickly to spare them more embarrassment, but laughed for the next 15 minutes.

1. I love that girl because that so easily could have been me or any one of my girlfriends (except for Steph who has no tolerance for scatological talk or humor).
2. Awesome.

I'll talk to you guys after I get back from embarrassing myself in front of my entire family by getting really drunk at the wedding and stuffing cake down my dress while doing the "Footloose" dance.

Flashdance

Oh my gosh, you guys, today I was in a clothing store at the mall, and this girl came out of the dressing room to talk to her friend. She was wearing a button up sweater that she had been trying on except the top half of it was completely unbuttoned. She had obviously forgotten she wasn't wearing anything but a bra underneath it so, essentially, she flashed her ladies to the entire store. Not only that but everyone was looking at her because she was yelling her friend's name really loud to get her attention.

Oh did I mention it was me?

@#%!

Dear everyone at the store, that one was for free. Next time you all owe me drinks.

Pants-off Dance-off

You know how sometimes you're at a bar and then suddenly you're in a dance off with a circle of people around you and you do your final move (a sideways hip bump toward your competitor) and your competitor then rebuttles by jumping down during his dance and doing a push up? Oh you don't? Well I do. Because that is what happened to me Friday night. I was in a dance off.

Now, it wasn't an official bar-sanctioned dance off. I was simply standing around with my work friends (yes I was with work people, you guys), dancing around one of them as if he was a totem pole, and a guy came up and goes, "I want you to be in a dance off with my friend over there." I looked behind me to see who he was talking to because obviously it couldn't have been me-a chubby, 30-something white girl. Then I saw my competitor: a chubby, 20-something white boy. And it started to make sense. However, I watched that kid dance earlier in the night, and he was good. And I...am me. You guys know. I'm an ass. I'm clumsy. I don't dance for real. Any dance moves I have are purely to make my friends laugh and nothing more. And it usually works because I am a horrible dancer.

I looked at the guy with wide eyes and said, "Wait-me? You want me to be in a dance off?" And he said, "Yes. You." And I said, "Oh no I don't dance. Not for real." And he goes, "I think you do dance. And you will be in this dance off." I looked over at my adorable competition, and he was like, "Let's do this." And suddenly, I was in a dance off, coming as close to my dream of living in the movie "Step Up" as I will ever get.

He went first, and I could tell he was taking it easy on me. Then it was my turn, and I have no idea what happened. I lost control of my body and was pulling out anything I had-including...The Running Man. The Running Man, you guys! After my aforementioned hip bump, the guy who had pulled me into the dance off came up and goes, "It's the end of the first quarter, and you are up 10-0." That's when my competitor did the push up, and I was down 14-10. Then some drunk mess of a girl who no one knew walked into the middle of the circle and started dancing, so I danced all up on her to try and get the lesbian points. I know it's shameless, but I was out of moves except for The Fake Run, and there is no way I win on The Fake Run. My ploy worked. After that, the drunk girl wouldn't leave so the dance off fell apart. My competitor and I decided it was a tie, and on my way out of the bar I saw him almost walk into the women's restroom by accident. When he saw me laughing, he came up and gave me a hug. I really wanted to say, "You got served," but he totally didn't get served.

On the way out of the bar, my friends and I were kind of quiet and then suddenly my friend Jen said, "You were in a fucking dance off tonight.

"Yes I was, Jen. Yes I fucking was.

This post has no theme

Follow up:

I went to the bathroom where the incident took place today and peered into the stall to take in the scene of the crime. This is what I saw:



















That is a result of me kicking the seat. It's 6 days later and has not moved. Who knows how many ladies have been saved by my immature angry outburst? Probably at least 3. On the other hand, someone's been in to clean it at least 12 times since then, and yet it has not been fixed. Awesome.

Guess what I did tonight? Played tennis with Steph. Obviously. Because I haven't played tennis in 19 years so why wouldn't I be playing it on a Tuesday night? Steph has decided this summer she would implement Tennis Tuesdays. It's not like she's a tennis player. She bought a racket for $10 at Target, and now she picks someone new every week to play with her. Tonight was my turn. Items of note:

1. I took out my racket after 19 years and spiders were living in it. I was like, "This is no longer a racket. This is someone's home now."
2. I wore my mom-slip-on tennis shoes ("tennies" if I was actually my mom), and they tore up the back of my heels so bad that now they are literally burning.
3. We went to the bar afterward, and despite the fact that were the sweatiest women who have ever walked the planet Earth, our adorable bartender was in love with Steph. Here is just one example of what happened: I ordered a drink. He made it. Steph ordered a drink. He carded her saying, "You definitely don't look 30." W. T. F. Shortly after that, Drew, Woody and Matt showed up and totally cockblocked her. It was sad but funny when Steph put her credit card out to pay the bill, and he absolutely refused to take it. He ignored it for 20 minutes easily while he took the cards for all the boys around her. I heart that bartender, and I want him to marry Steph. Speaking of marrying Steph I may have said if given the choice I would marry her over Matt because she has nice boobs, and I like redheads.

And the award for Greatest Thing I've Ever Seen goes to my sister, Diane, for Incident at Golf on Sunday. I was in my cart about 15 yards behind her watching her take her shot. My mom was to my left in a cart, and Drew and my dad were on my right in their cart. Diane went to hit the ball, but she top it and it bounced. I didn't see where it went so I was looking around when Diane turned around, mouth agape making a face that clearly said "No. Effing. Way." I looked at her quizzically, and she slowly pulled up the skirt part of her skorts*, and there, nestled between her thighs, was the golf ball. She had hit the ball, it bounced up and she caught it between her thighs. Ho. Ly. Shit. I honestly can't remember the last time I laughed that hard. This is how she described it after we somewhat gained our composure: "I felt it go in between my legs, so I just squeezed."

There are just way too many jokes here. But I'm going to avoid them because it's my baby sister. I will say this to maybe help explain why she caught it: she used to be a softball catcher. And a slut. Just kidding, Dad. By the way, "I felt it go between my legs, so I just squeezed" is the best quote of 2009.

Good Grief

I wanted to post last night, but I got home late after searching the Cleveland Museum of Art for naked people. I'm not a complete perv, you guys. It was a scavenger hunt. It was for young professionals, and they had food and drinks, and you seriously went on a scavenger hunt to find pictures and sculptures of naked people. Obviously the only young professional events we attend are ones involving naked people. Meg is actually the one who got an email with a link to the event, but she thought it was weird and might make her seem perverted so she immediately deleted it. That's where Steph came in. Obviously. All in all it was a good time, and we got to eat afterward, and I really like eating. It was definitely a good ending to a crappy day.

'A crappy day?', you ask. Yes. I had what I like to refer to as a Charlie Brown day yesterday. This included, but was not limited to, the following:

- Oversleeping
- Tripping on the way into the bathroom and running into the doorframe
- Stepping on a plug
- Dropping the hair dryer on my foot
- Dropping the hair dryer a second time and watching it break
- Spilling/squirting lotion all over the bathroom
- Dropping one of my prescription drugs down the sink
- Losing my keys
- Losing my sunglasses
- Spilling something all down the front of my skirt immediately after I got to work

And then...the piece de resistance (I don't know how to put the accents on that). This happened:

Sometime in the afternoon I had to use the ladies room. I don't want to be unladylike so I'll just say it like this: I had to piss like a racehorse. So I headed to the ladies room, carefully laid down the tissue paper toilet cover and then sat down on the toilet. Immediately, I slid off. Now, I don't have a slippery butt nor was the toilet seat greased up (ew). So what happened? Well I quickly surmised that the toilet seat which, as you know, is normally connected to the toilet by two bolts, was only connected by one. The other bolt was broken, and instead of someone fixing it or putting up a note, they just laid the seat back into place to give it the appearance of a fully functioning seat. Enter me who sits down and immediate slides off the toilet along with the seat.

First of all, this is a girl's worst nightmare. Just the thought of touching the part underneath the seat is enough to give me hives. Men, this is why it is crucial that you put down the damn seat. Because if we come in and-God forbid-forget to look, then we a) fall into the toilet and b) have to take a steel wool shower afterward to get rid of the feeling of touching the part under the seat. Ugh I can't talk about this anymore. I'm getting sick.

Okay, so there I am sliding off the toilet seat about to touch the under part. The good news: The tissue paper thing stayed in such a position that it was covering the lower portion of the toilet bowl. Thank heavens for small favors. Also I caught myself by throwing my arms and hands up against either side of the stall and by using all the upper thigh strength I could muster. The bad news: While catching myself, I tweaked my knee-this is the knee I refer to as Osgood Knee, Weather Knee and most recently, Bike Injury Knee. Sadly, I am not recovered yet, so when I tweaked my knee, I was in excruciating pain. Also I was totally wedged in between the toilet and the wall to my left and was not sure how to stand up without a) feeling more pain in my knee and b) touching anything gross (i.e., everything).

Eventually, miraculously, I was able to push myself up, and in the process got stuck on the metal tampon/maxi pad waste container on the wall and ripped a hole in my favorite skirt. The only saving grace is that no one else was in the bathroom or even near it as this was happening. But if you had been standing outside the bathroom, this is how it would have sounded:

Loud cracking noise.

Holy shit! What the...?!? Are you kidding me right now?

How do I?

lots of grunting

Riiip!

Pleasenopleasenopleaseno. [pause] Goddammit!

I hate you bathroom! I hate you toilet! I hate this day!

Loud bang (Ed. note: This is where I kicked the toilet seat into the opposite wall)

Water running

grumbling

Door gets thrown open in your face as you watch me give the bathroom the middle finger and walk away, briskly.

Fin.

Krusty's 2009: You're Still the One

A few key indicators that Krusty's was a success:

- Your skin is fried and your tan lines are, in a word, ridiculous (and they are a good indicator of just how low cut your top was. Note: very, very low)
- At some point, you were wearing a t-shirt on your head
- You find upwards of 16 moist towelettes and 3 Blow Pops in your pockets (sorry, Tony)
- It's a week later and you can't stop smiling.

As usual, the weather was absolutely perfect, and I finally got to meet Tony-the wonderful man who inexplicably put me on the VIP list for this event. By the way, not only was I on the VIP list again this year, but they had me under "Media Credentials". Media Credentials! That's the highest-and most ridiculous-honor this blog has ever received. When we pulled up, they asked us all for our tickets, and the guy goes, "Okay we're one short." And I said, "I'm on the VIP list." He goes, "Oh...yeah I've never heard that before. Man I haven't even had a drink yet and you're already trying that?" Then had asked me my name, and I had to say, "It's under 'Media Credentials'." and he scoffed and said, "Oh please! Yeah right!" Then came back nodding and laughing and said, "Okay here you go." The best part is he worked with Christy. Christy was like, "Man, if you weren't on the list, how would I be able to face that guy at work?"

This year we had three Krusty's virgins with us: Lisa who was nervous about proper Krusty's behavior (note: proper Krusty's behavior = drink, sit and give money to charity), Woody who literally couldn't believe he was allowed to be somewhere out in public all day wearing a shirt with no sleeves, and Chicken Noodle whose middle name is Chicken Noodle. For real, you guys.

All of them have been, like all of us, permanently changed by the wondrousness that is Krusty's. This year there was some volleyball playing, but not by me. I walked over for a minute to see my sister in a sundress rolling around in the sand and diving for the ball. She's a real lady, that one. There was also a little frisbee-tossing by Christy and Steph. By Steph's own admission this is the only time she was not sitting or going up to get beer. Awesome. I, on the other hand, can only remember pieces of the day. But that is customary around these parts when posting about all day drinking events. Here's what I remember:

- Lindsay made us all snack bags. I'm sure it will shock you to find out that she is a teacher. These were not little snack bags filled with a couple pieces of candy. These were gallon freezer bags filled with crackers, gum, tons of candy, fruit roll ups, etc. In a word: amazing. Except for when the Hershey kisses melted and got chocolate on everything. To solve that issue, Loyd, Sharda and I took out some moist towelettes and cleaned everything off. We're problem-solvers.

- Our age became really apparent while planning for our day out. The first couple years we went to Krusty's, we didn't bring anything. This year our planning including working out who would bring toilet paper, paper towels, hand sanitizer and a first aid kit. Plus I made sure to bring my insurance card.

- I got to meet the lovely Alexa from Cleveland's a Plum who I'm pretty sure I totally freaked out by staring at her and whispering to my friend Lindsay, "I think that's Alexa. Do you think that's her? I think it is. Should I go introduce myself? I probably should now since I'm scaring her." Alexa, sorry for being creepy. Let's go get a drink!

- Lindsay put her red drink tickets in her bra and stained her boobs. I laughed so hard a little pee came out.

- I saw my friend Kyle who is my age. He told me that everyone at his work thinks he is 26. And when I laughed he said, "What-look at my cool hat and Child's Small t-shirt. That obviously means I'm 26."

- At least one wallet was lost and 2 credit cards were left at the bar

- We recreated the scene from last year when I pulled up my skorts and poured popcorn in them. This scene cannot be recreated enough in my opinion.

- We played electronic Catchphrase (dorks!) which ended up driving away our younger and hipper friends. One of whom, Lardiss, had come over only to steal our Chex Mix. I tried to give him the opportunity to lie to us, to make us feel like he came over just to see us, but he said, "Okay listen-I'm just here for the Chex Mix. And that's the truth."

- Steph brought a little table in a bag that was about 3 feet x 3 feet and 8 inches off the ground. A minimum of six people played flip cup on this table...on their knees. Meanwhile we had two big normal sized card tables in the cars-about a 20 second walk away.

- We met the woman who originally put Krusty's together. Her name is Gina and she is lovely. Sharda tried to embarass us by instantly saying, "I'd like to talk to you about something. Do you have recycling bins here?" Oh my God. Sharda! Obviously because I was mad, I told Gina that Sharda would help her set up recycling bins next year.

- Woody, who is very pale, went to sit in a shady spot after volleyball. We couldn't find him for like a half hour. He spent the next couple hours asking everyone if they wanted to "go to the shady area". I eventually took him up on it to get a break from the relentless sun, and he was so happy. The shade was amazing, but it had some sort of effect on Renee and I because we promptly moved from drunk partygoers into poofaced nonsensical tards. At one point, we were yelling at a guy who was peeing kind of nearby:

"We can see you!"
"We can see it!"
"We can see your pee pee!"
"We see your thingy! Nice cloth belt!"

That last one was Renee, and I laughed so hard I cried. I don't know why. I was delirious. Plus she had just made some joke about a neon head (I don't know) so I had the giggles already. Also we saw a guy playing volleyball who was wearing camouflage shorts, and we were screaming, "I can't see that guy's lower half!" Apparently we came back to our group yammering on about a floating torso that we saw, but we never explained it. Look I can't be bothered to explain stuff when I am trying to eat Twizzlers and put sunscreen on Woody's head. P.S. Making jokes about not being able to see people when they are wearing camouflage is my favorite thing ever.

- I found 2 dice on the ground. I know that doesn't sound that exciting, but you would've thought I found money. I ran back to Steph with my prize to tell her all about it. Then I opened my hand slowly, and let everyone gaze upon them. Then Steph stole them from me, and we immediately made up a drinking game with them. We changed the rules with every turn, all of which made it so we were drinking more and more-almost through the whole game. My favorite rule, though, was if you got a 7 or a snake eyes, you got to give out a drink to anyone. They didn't even have to be playing the game. Drew started handing them out to people walking by, and because everyone's awesome at Krusty's, they all obliged. Sidenote: I still have the dice.

- At about 8pm, 8 hours after we got there, it dawned on me that I had not gone to the bathroom yet. Steph was absolutely horrified. Meg goes, "That's impressive." Steph goes, "That's unhealthy." She beseeched me to drink water, and I'm glad she did because I think she saved me from a) a horrible hangover and b) a kidney transplant.

- FYI-Krusty's is held at Whiskey Island. In the cab ride on the way home, Drew told our cab driver that we were the coolest people he's ever had in his cab. The driver said we would have to prove it, and that we were part of a contest. A minute later, Renee said, "Hey-I found out why Whiskey Island is named Whiskey Island." Then she told us the history behind it. After a beat our driver said, "You guys are not the coolest."

- Shortly after Renee's history lesson, we asked the cab driver if he was a Cash Cab. Renee told him he could use her fun fact as his first question in Cash Cab. Then we stopped at a red light next to a restaurant. Drew rolled down the window and yelled to a guy sitting outside, "Hey! Do you know why Whiskey Island is called Whiskey Island!?" The guy replied, "Because people get trashed there?" Which is an awesome yet incorrect answer. Then Drew yelled, "Wrong! You lost Cash Cab!"

- Sunday evening, I got this voicemail message from Steph: "I just wanted you to know that the reason Renee said Whiskey Island got its name is wrong. I'll be sending out an email tomorrow. Goodbye."

- At the bar, I had to physically restrain Meg from eating other people's food. Then she begged Diane to drive her to Taco Bell, but Diane was like, "We don't have a car." While we were all standing outside, Meg ran across the street, flagged down a giant 10 person cab and hopped in the front seat. Then we watched the cab turn around, start driving then slow down and pull into Taco Bell. Then perhaps the greatest thing ever happened, and none of us witnessed it. Meg apparently force fed the cab driver a burrito. She told him she had too much food then shoved it in his face. Are you effing kidding me? Man I wish I would've seen that.

- Here is a quote from Steph: "The worst part of Krusty's for me was when you jackholes slept in for days and I had to walk 20 miles uphill in the snow to get my car." She is referring to the fact that she woke up at an ungodly hour on Sunday and was mad that we are normal and were still sleeping. Her car was still at Whiskey Island so instead of waiting for us to wake up to take her to get it, she did what any sane person who spent the entire previous day and night drinking and doing shots would do-she walked. It's 3 miles. 3 mile walk + hangover = even worse hangover that you blame on your friends.

Some other things happened, especially at the bar, that I have not received clearance to tell you about so let me sum them up in a few words: choke on your own spit funny.

Tony and all, Krusty's was again amazing. My favorite day of the summer, hands down. Plus it's for charity! At one point in the day, Steph took a giant swig of her beer and said, "Man I really love helping people." Really, guys, you do a wonderful job for a wonderful cause. Great job on the food line. I have only one suggestion for next year: 80s/90s cover band. Please. I need to dance.

Clevelanders who weren't there, why weren't you there?

Everyone else, support the Malachi House and hospices in your community. Then go get drunk.

Krusty's, see you next year, love of my life.

Readers, um...all I'm going to say right now is August 22nd. More to come on a plan we are cooking up.