All Good "AG", the coolest sushi zenmaster ever.

We then headed over to the pier and went to Patrick Malloy's. Along the way, I passed the FFFF Bar and took a picture of the sign, for my BOS contingent.

From the Best Coast, with love.

We headed into Patrick Malloy's which was like many of the usual 6th Street haunts in Austin. A few vodka sodas into the night, we came across a group of MMA fighters from No Wimps and Extreme Fighters World Championship. I started proselytizing about XFC blogging and this in turn caused them to assume I actually know something about the MMA world. I heard more information regarding names of fighters and fight records and various other details that completely went over my head. I did manage to spar with one of the fighters, a Gladiator heavyweight champ, and after my unsuccessful guillotine choke, I took him down with a foot stomp.

Manager Robert Driml, Jesse Juarez (whom I asked "Did your parents name you Jessie because you look like Uncle Jessie from Full House?") Emmanuel Newton and my sparring partner Chase Gormley, world heavyweight champ for Gladiator Challenge. In other words, a whole lotta mean.

At closing time, I demanded to walk down to the beach and feel the sand beneath my toes and walk in the waves. This seemed like a good idea until I was actually in halfway across the beach barefoot and my toes began to freeze off. So I came running back and said that I'd felt enough sand. Instead we opted for some 2 AM photos on the beach which are just as good.

Not givin' a good goddamn in Hermosa. Yes, that is my shoe.

As close to surfing as my spine will ever come.

After a short cab ride back to Redondo and a phone call to Alli my cab driver back in Texas to wish him happy new year, Saturday night ended with Shirioke and me both falling asleep and dreaming of Pinkberry.

Yesterday we headed back down to Hermosa Beach to retrieve Shirioke's car, and had a great breakfast at Martha's Corner Grill. I really like the Hermosa/Redondo area, mainly because it reminds me a lot of San Diego and the Pacific Beach area there. There is a lot of old surf-shop character to the area and quiet little streets with old houses. Of course there are also the new mansions dispersed throughout. I saw a house that Shirioke said had burned down on the main drag in Hermosa, and thought it made for an ironic juxtaposition with the other newer houses on either side.

We then drove to Hollywood and Highland, where Shirioke took me down Sunset into West Hollywood and I kept my eyes peeled for The Hills sightings. We made an obligatory stop at the Walk of Fame and I chose to get down with my inner tourist with the Roy Rogers & Trigger star.

I mainly took this for my dad.

We then endured more shopping (we had to validate our garage parking) and headed down Sunset to Toi, a rockin' Thai food place with a grunge-feel inside. I kept thinking Toi sounded familiar and initially thought it was because my coworker had mentioned it. But then I remembered, halfway through dinner, that Toi is where Audrina and Justin Bobby on The Hills go for dinner on one of their dates. So this was stop numero uno on my road to fame. Because of that very reason, I took a picture of the bathroom door.

MeanRachel.com was here.

We decided to take it easy last night in order to rest up for the big New Year's festivities tonight. Also because Shirioke had to get up early and go to work for a half-day today. After Toi we went to the Pinkberry in El Segundo and ate even more froyo. Today we got up early and headed down to Anaheim. I have since had the tour of her office, which I never knew was basically in Disneyland, in a shopping district called Downtown Disney. They are having a big event here tonight for New Year's (Slightly Stoopid is playing) and everyone is here working on scheduling and coordinating events for tonight.

Shiriously! Off to Los Angeles for a much-anticipated New Years weekend with The Wife. Big plans are in store, including (but certainly not limited to) divebar karaoke tonight in Redondo Beach, filming several videos bound for YouTube, The Edison on Saturday night and Blue 32 on the big 01/01/08.

Whatever you do this weekend, mean it!

Last year I did this and it was rather entertaining, so I did it again. This year wasn't nearly as fun or interesting but I have very little ambition to write anything else tonight so enjoy.

Oh -- and -- don't bother going to see Juno or Charlie Wilson's War. Both were snoozefests that reminded me why I rarely see movies anymore.

The first sentence from the first entry of each month for 2007:

01/01/07: ...after finding out he succeeded MR in pointage for New Year's weekend.

02/01/07: Dear Scrubs Writers, I know I haven't watched the show, other than the syndicated 2 AM episodes, in over a year.

03/01/07: Congrats to Austin Adventure Boot Camp and its great trainer, Stephanie McDonald, on their mention in the New York Times today!

04/01/07: I will not bore you with lengthy, lengthy details of last night but I will say the following: We brought the house down.

05/01/07: SATC will be the end of me.

06/02/07: After a rough week on all fronts, I am glad to say it is now Saturday and I have managed to get 11 hours of sleep in so far.

07/01/07: Four nights at the Ivory Cat does not an Awake Rachel make.

08/01/07: I'm sitting here watching the coverage of the I-35 West bridge collapse in Minneapolis and feeling somewhat stunned by the coincidence of a collapsing overpass, on the freeway that goes directly from Minneapolis to Austin, in a city where I was exactly a year ago.

09/02/07: It is easy to under appreciate the functionality of an alarm clock, until it ceases to function. (This one made me laugh out loud. So true, so true.)

10/04/07: Barely, but I'm back.

11/01/07: I really don't get that into Halloween normally.

12/01/07: In what I can only describe as a moment of pure insanity, during which I may have still been intoxicated from the night before, I committed to going to boot camp twice a day the rest of the month.

And apparently define my memoir are...

The road diverged; I took it. (pg. 205)

Yeah, sounds like something I would write.

Well it's Merry Christmas from the 8 lb. baby Jesus these days! This morning I grabbed my phone and was looking at my emails and I had one from the publishers of a new book called Not Quite What I was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure. Apparently I submitted a six-word memoir to SMITH magazine and now the whole concept has been picked up and is being turned into a book. My submission made the cut. I spent some time pondering whether I fall into the "famous" or "obscure" writer category but then I realized I have bigger things to worry about:

I vaguely recall submitting something but have no idea what six words I chose to summarize my life with.

So this could be thoroughly funny, or interesting, or awkward, depending on how it turns out.

I randomly got a message from Schmap asking if they could have permission to use one of my photos from Flugtag this year for their new Schmap Austin guide. I haven't had enough time to look and see what it's all about but I immediately said "Yes" and changed the photo credit from my name to MeanRachel.com. Genius.

Please note the conspicuous product placement of the Boston Red Sox.

Last night my dad invited me to go with him to see an advance screening of The Savages, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney. It seemed like the kind of movie I typically like: human drama heavy on dialogue and emotion, where the odds of something actually happening during the two hours are slim.

First of all when I got to the theater, my dad was in line and the woman ahead of him in line when I walked up said (in a stage whisper to her husband) "Is that Mean Rachel?" Leave it to my dad to be promoting my blog in the movie theater line and trying to trick me into a false sense of fame (because I'm so totally grounded right now).

The movie is centered around two siblings, Wendy (Linney) and Jon (Hoffman), who are forced to reckon with their previously estranged father when he becomes unable to care for himself. They deal with not only the responsibility of taking care of someone who was supposed to take care of them (but never actually did) by putting their father in a nursing home, while also being forced to reckon with the reality that their dad will soon be dying.

Both Wendy and Jon are somewhat listless, noncommittal drifters: Jon burying himself in perpetual academia and avoiding marriage despite having a loving girlfriend; Wendy working temp jobs while writing plays that never get produced and sleeping with a married man.

The Savages, no doubt tagged with the name for the purpose of the movie to imply the savage cruelty of putting loved ones in nursing homes, struggle throughout the last few months of their father's life. Wendy feels enormous amounts of guilt that she tries to placate by purchasing lava lamps and throw pillows for her father's otherwise barren, double occupancy room. A rather uncomfortable scene occurs when her father first is wheeled into his nursing home room and the nurse says "Would you like to meet your neighbor?" She throws back a curtain and like the Wizard of Oz, there's the man behind the curtain, just waiting out his turn to die. He waves at his new neighbor and then the nurse throws the curtain shut again.

The central theme depicted in the movie -- the modern way we shroud death behind sheets and curtains and how conflicting that can be to our psyche -- is most evident during one scene when the Savages take their father for an interview at a more upscale nursing home and tensions run high. Jon yells at Wendy that it's time to face reality: "People are dying Wendy! Right inside that beautiful building -- right now! It's a fucking horror show! And all this wellness propaganda and landscaping is trying to obscure the miserable fact that people die and death is gaseous and gruesome and filled with piss and shit and rot and stink!"

At the end, the filmmakers do a beautiful job showing that while death may be filled with rot and stink, it is usually more miserable for those who are left behind. When the father finally dies, its a shallow, short denouement -- one moment he's breathing and in the next he's not. His children stand over him, quietly crying, looking dumbstruck.

Perhaps not as awkward as sitting through Knocked Up with my dad, the movie did stir up the uncomfortable sense of inevitability. During slow scenes in the movie I found myself doing the math on how many years would pass until I would find myself in a similar situation (waw-waw-wahhh.). I came up with twenty to thirty years, which seems incredibly far off.

But hopefully my parents will keel over on their own accord.
And I say that with love.

In lieu of a holiday party, they decided this year that we would volunteer at a holiday party for the homeless people in Austin. We were graced with a gorgeous winter day, weird-Austin-style: sunny, breezy and about 75 degrees.
We all met at Progress Coffee shop this morning because it was close to Fiesta Gardens where the event was held and also is one of the few coffee shops where they sell alcohol -- mimosas and hot toddies. After literally knocking a few back (we were running late) we headed down to Lady Bird Lake where Fiesta Garden is perched.

There was a large crew of homeless (or almost-there) people roaming around when we got there and people started trickling in one by one. We all signed confidentiality agreements (not to disclose anyone's names that we met there) and slapped on our own name tags. There wasn't a whole lot for us to do for most of the morning. They told us the best thing we could do was just to talk with the people, make eye contact and socialize.

You don't have to tell me twice. I sat down at a table next to a Latino who I'd seen hobbling around on crutches. Another man mentioned he was from Jackson, Mississippi and the man on crutches said "Isn't that where the bridge fell down a few months ago?" I said "Oh I think you're thinking of Minnesota, but it was over the Mississippi River." The man from Mississippi said to me "Had you ever driven across that bridge?" and the other guy responded quickly "No, never been over it." The Mississippian said "I was askin' her, I know you ain't never been over that bridge." I felt a little caught in the crossfire but the two men kind of chuckled remorsefully and I said that yes, I'd driven over that bridge just a year before it collapsed.
At some point the conversation turned into the Latino talking about his leg and how he'd been hit by a truck a few months earlier. I said "Were you driving?" and he said he had just been crossing the street in Corpus Christi and the man hit him. He said the man got out of his truck, a "brand new truck, really nice lookin'" and immediately began inspecting it for damage, while he lay on the ground with his leg twisted inside out. He then started talking about an ambulance chaser lawyer who tried to help him and said he'd gotten six thousand dollars, but that he could barely work because of his leg. I asked him how much his hospital bills had been and he looked up from his Mountain Dew and said "Forty nine thousand."

I was instantly reminded of the line from a poem called "Dinosauria, We" by Charles Bukowski a poet Gingy introduced me to:

Born into this
Into hospitals which are so expensive that it’s cheaper to die
Into lawyers who charge so much it’s cheaper to plead guilty

(read the rest here)

So I did the best I could - wrote down the phone number for his state representative's office, told him that there surely is some sort of program in place where he could get help with his bills and wished him luck.

Forty nine thousand fucking dollars.

He's going to need a lot of luck.

Later in the afternoon, we handed out the donated gifts. It was sort of a mass free-for-all, people grabbing things out of your hands and the more aggressive people hoarding gifts while others went empty-handed. Someone at one point handed an alarm clock to me and said "I don't need this." I realized he was probably right. A watch, maybe. But a battery powered alarm clock seems somewhat futile when you wake up on a street corner or curled in a ball under the overhang at the Ivory Cat.

Someone then said "R. could use a clock. Yeah, he'd like that a whole lot." I turned around and said, "Who is R.?" The man pointed at a hunched, very frail man with snowy skin and sores all over his hands and face. He was staring at the ground, not in a distant way but in a sort of rejected way, holding a little stuffed Chihuahua.
"Fine," I said. "I'll give this to R." I held up the clock, waiting for R. to look at me and take it.
"He's blind," the other guy said grinning. "He can't see you."
So I started to walk over to him but then I said "What the heck is R. going to do with a clock if he can't even see it?"
"He can hear it."
I held it up to my ear and heard nothing, just the din of the crowd. "R. can you hear this?" I asked and handed him the clock.
He held onto the stuffed Chihuahua with his left thumb and forefinger and put the clock in his other hand. "It's okay...I'll get my friend to set it."
"But--" I stopped myself.

There is nothing I will understand about a homeless blind man, or why he needs a clock or even wants one. I could talk to the man with the crutches about life and hear his story about medical bills and relate. I could even think "Yeah, that could be me." But a blind man with some nameless disease causing his eyes to shrivel and skew and his skin to blister and fester escapes my realm of imagination.

So I went and found some soap. And some sunscreen. And some lotion. I took it all back to R. and said "Here. This one is the soap." I put it in his free hand, his other still hanging onto the Chihuahua.
"Okay...and this is lotion, it'll be good for your skin." Then I handed him the bottle of sunscreen and said "This is important, this is sunscreen and it will protect you from the sun so make sure you wear it. You're very pale so you're prone to skin cancer."
"Can I have a bag?" R. asked.
I went and found a plastic bag and put the soaps and the lotion and the sunscreen and the clock in the bag and put the bag in his hand. I tried to take the toy Chihuahua but he held onto it and I suddenly realized it was muddy. I then realized it wasn't something he got as a gift that day.

"Happy Holidays, R."
"Thank you Rachelle. Happy holidays."

Our day was done and we went and had ribs and brisket at Ironworks. We talked about our adventures, our vignettes of the people we'd met.

There are so many people in the world that we'll never be able to help. There will always be the injured and the indebted and the starving and the crippled. We'll never be able to help them. And somewhere tonight is R. and a clock that he'll never be able to see.

So today I received an early Christmas present, something I have been asking Santa for yearly. No, not a pony, damnit. I gave up on that back in 1994. However, this might be even better. I'm talkin' about a little thing called fame.

I was asked to be the celebrity guest on an improv comedy skit in Austin called "Stool Pigeon" that the ColdTowne Comedy Troupe puts on. I'll give you a minute to stop choking on your candy canes.


It's true. I guess that by "local celebrity" they actually mean "a person who likes to talk about their self" and where better to start the search than with the bloggers of Austin. Let's see...so that leaves me, the guys at Burnt Orange Report and Eileen Smith. Being that the other two are, well let's face it, gainfully employed in the writing profession, they probably figured that I wouldn't ask for money. And I like to think my Leave Brad Alone! video factored into the Miracle on 6th Street. Nevertheless, I'm never one to ask questions so let's move on.

I am going to be the "celebrity guest monologist" referenced in the image. Yes, I am going to continue to use the word "celebrity" as much as possible in this entry. Basically it sounds like I am going to tell a story and they are going to make it funny which in the comedy world I believe means "make me run from the stage crying." This is just the cost of fame so I'm going to proceed with unbridled enthusiasm. At the very least my life is funny in a "New York Minute, Mary Kate & Ashley made a crappy movie and we laughed our asses off at its pathetic-ness" sort of way.

So save the date! February 23, 2008. This means that you will be berated into attending two events in the next two months, my piano recital and my celebrity guest night. If you fail to make one or both of them you will be stricken from the friends list and possibly lose your spot in my Top Eight on Myspace (did you hear that, reader #8?).

And, before I get a flurry of emails, of course I'll be staying after the show to sign autographs, don't worry.

The National Enquirer is reporting that John Edwards has a love child with some woman who is being kept in hiding. If I sound vague, that's because my source is the National Enquirer. This is basically the equivalent of me citing my cat.

So I apologize if I seem a bit underwhelmed by this news, because the last time I checked the National Enquirer was not a valid news source (unless there actually are aliens born to Catholic nuns?).

And is it just me or do the words "love child" immediately conjure up images of Dr. Evil and Frau Farbissina getting it on?

On Sunday, I navigated my way down Deane Keaton and found the Law School Building at UT. I parked (without a permit), got out of my car and entered the UT School of Music which resides behind the law building (presumably to give the Devil a little background music while training future assholes [A-to-theBZ, my apologies]).

I waltzed into the music building, walked over to the elevator, went up to the 5th floor and then I was in piano mecca. Because I don't have a legitimate piano, I currently lack an octave and a half as well as a pedal. For my upcoming recital my teacher wanted me to practice with the pedal so she suggested I use the soundproof practice rooms at UT.
Normally I avoid UT at all costs but the temptation of hallways filled with Steinways won me over and I figured most people would be out on holiday anyway. I was not disappointed. I now know why people are in debt up to your eyeballs from college. Anyone who doesn't believe me needs to go peruse the music school. I hate to say it but it seemed like a wasted resource.

Being that I'm the ultimate free loader, I decided to use some of that wasted resource. There were literally dozens of empty rooms, each with a piano and a bench. Some were beautiful Steinway baby grands and others were just regular pianos. I decided that the odds of getting yelled at were better on an upright piano so I opened one of the doors, flipped on the light, and walked into the room.

The next hour was insanely cool -- the sound quality is so different than what comes out on my keyboard or even on my teacher's piano. The piano was a Sohmer & Co. - I have no idea whether that is a good piano or not, but it was incredibly fun and exciting to be able to hear the music I could play.

Later that night, when I was telling my dad on the phone about my covert piano operation, he laughed and said "So you finally went to college?"

That's right. Autodidactism at its finest, most resourceful and cheapest.

Mrhe sent me this picture with this text message this morning: "I hate NE."

Had to make sure you guys south of the Mason Dixon checked out this site: Rap Represented in Mathematical Charts & Graphs. Came across it on Toxic Participation.

Represent!

The Bachelor is back with Laurel & the Giant Peach(es). I feel the need to issue a statement today, but words escape me. You will just have to imagine my Crazy Hillary-esque breakdown.

While this will allow me to dedicate more time to my first and only true love -- stalking Mayor Wynn -- I have to say I will miss my heart-to-heart conversations with Brad, poignantly yelling at each other over the sweet sound of the bass pumping out Nelly at The Marq.

Dede: you, me, some Silly String and toilet paper. Call me.

Dear Man That Sounds Like Harry Carey,

When your cell phone rings as you are about to leave the coffe shop, do not loudly answer it, and stand around yelling, "HELLO? YES! I'M ABOUT TO LEAVE THE COFFEE SHOP TO GO TO LAURA'S...MAYBE WATCH A DVD I'M NOT SURE. YEAH. NO. NO. YES. UH-HUH. ARE YOU CALLING FOR THE GERMAN WORD OF THE DAY? DIDN'T YOU LIKE "pickelhauben?" HA-HA-HA! WELL, MAYBE. I ORDERED THE GRE BOOKS. YEAH! THEY WERE $35. NO, SHIPPING & HANDLING WAS FREE IF YOU ORDERED OVER $25. YEAH."

Seriously! Can't you have that conversation, I don't know, like, in the parking lot?!?!

Thanks.

Signed,
The patrons of the South Austin Scooter's

After my piano lesson today I drove down Bee Caves Road to meet everyone at Mother Eagan's for Tuesday trivia night. And by "drove" I mean "sat in traffic cursing Mr. Mayor due to the fact that they had Mopac blocked off thanks to the Trail of Lights." Whose idea was it to detour all of Bee Caves Road traffic down to Barton Creek Mall in order to do a turnaround and get on Mopac?

After my lengthy detour, I found a parking space at an empty meter in Round Rock and walked over to 6th Street to Mother Eagan's. I met up with my mom, Gingy, my cousins and assorted others. When I got there (late, it goes without saying, thanks to my detour through the Nordstrom's parking lot), everyone was trying to come up with a name for the team. In an inspired moment of rage, I suggested "And You Will Know Us By Our Trail of Lights..."

So I wrote down the team name on all 9 rounds of paper, making a note to self that in the future we should pick a team name with less words in it. Finally I finished writing the last "..." on every sheet of paper and the trivia began. It started off with a few easy questions - "how many wings on a dragonfly" and "George Jetson's dog's name." My mom complained several times about the thematic questions that I think she found too easy. Near the end it got a little more difficult and I think the night really redeemed itself when my mom was able to blurt out the world "fulcrum."

The whole night they never announced our team name in the top three, until after the last round when Mayor Will Wynn (my mom leaned over and said "Don't get too excited, Rachel...") read out the winning names and then they asked for a representative from "And You Will Know Us By Our Trail of Lights...?" to come to the front. It turns out we tied for 3rd place with a respective 42 points. We were just excited to finally hear our name and I was just excited to be able to loudly protest the traffic jam that the Trail of Lights causes every year.

We nominated Drew for the lightning round and I noticed when we went inside to cheer him on that whoever had entered the team names into the computer system had actually taken the time to put the "..." on the end of our team name. This attention to detail, frankly, impressed me. Thanks to the Hefeweizen, I was feeling impressed enough to shout out "Thanks for the ellipses!" One of the moderators turned around and said "What comes after that ellipses, anyway?"

We didn't win the tie breaker round but we were proud to have made it as far as we did. We all filed out to go home and as I drove westbound on Barton Springs Road, headed for Mopac, I suddenly realized that the roadsigns ahead were detouring traffic away from Barton Springs onto Robert E. Lee because of the Trail of Lights.

The irony started to sink in only as I wound along Robert E. Lee in a long line of traffic passing the Umlauf Sculpture Garden. I looked to the west and saw the Zilker Christmas tree peering cheerily over the treetops, couples hiding under jackets walking slowly back from the tree in the settling fog. The Zilker tree always catches me off guard -- in my childhood memory, it was so big and magical. But twenty years later, it appears more like some outdated yard ornament. Nevertheless, the sight of its retro lightbulbs always causes a twinge of nostalgia for me.

I grew up in the Zilker neighborhood, so the drive along Robert E. Lee and then along Bluebonnet is a very sentimental one for me. In other words, not a drive you want to be taking on a drizzly, dark night during the Christmas season, alone and reflective. I drove slowly past my elementary school, Zilker Elementary, and thought about the day I learned how to spell "Bluebonnet" in first grade. We were learning about the Gulf War, Ross Perot was that funny old guy with big ears, and the notebook paper I wrote on still had three dotted lines across it showing me where the middle of each letter belonged.

When I got to the intersection of Bluebonnet and Lamar, I first noticed the unfamiliar glare of the cellphone store and the new Walgreens on the opposing corner. I also saw some sort of lit up condominium building, the schwanky new downtown lofts glittering in the mist. But still there on that very same corner that now looks so foreign is Rudolph's, the Christmas tree lot my mom and I always used to go to; our "lucky" spot. They would always chop off the bottom of the tree and use the dead end of the tree trunk and a spare branch stuck in the middle of it to make a mini-Christmas tree, a la Charlie Brown, which I would carry home in my lap, breathing in the sweet smell of pine.

Along the drive, all I could think about was "Damn. Things have changed." But life is all about that elusive ellipses, or rather, what comes after it. There's no telling what your perspective becomes or what kind of person you are from year to year.

So you may know us by our trail of lights...but what defines us next year, and the next, no one really can say. And that I suppose is why in the meantime, while we're still here, we simply live...

On Friday night when I was having dinner at Waterloo Ice House, I couldn't help but notice that there was some sort of video footage running on CNN showing a young girl with a piano and they were giving out awards for the CNN "Heroes" of 2007. I made a mental note to look up the show later because I was curious as to who was getting an award for being a hero with a piano.

Since I have been on a 12 month news purge, I apparently have missed some actually interesting news bits like this one. An 18 year old girl named Kayla Cornale from Ontario developed a science fair project a few years ago linking piano keys with letters of the alphabet in hopes of helping teach autistic people. Her cousin was autistic and Cornale noticed how the girl was talented at memorizing lyrics of songs and connected with the piano. So she put a letter on each of the main 26 keys of the keyboard and started working with her on how to "spell" words by using the sounds of each key. She also designated some of the lower keys on the keyboard to make chords of emotion, so her cousin could express her various emotions.

Long story short, it worked and her cousin started to actually learn how to spell and could figure out the alphabet. It's really pretty incredible how it seems like such a simple idea, but one that is so very innovative.

Who knew a science fair could be so worthwhile. My foam-ball solar systems certainly never made any difference.

File the following events from yesterday under "Things I Never Thought Would Happen":

-Drive to Dallas and back in one day so Chrisy could get this fuzzball.


-Eat at a Cracker Barrel.

-Have Duckman spill Asian Love all over me at 11 PM. He was redeemed by giving me a pack of sugarcane, as per our tradition, which I then distributed at The Marq.

-Pick up a can of Lysol while drinking a vodka soda.

-Have "East Meet West" and take this picture of me sandwiched between two Austin fitness gurus, the irony of which I needn't point out.


-Watch some random friend of McD's named Jeff who happens to live twenty yards away from me read my blog on his giant screen TV which he somehow had hooked up to his laptop.

-Immediately feel the need to get a giant screen TV of my own for the sole purpose of reading my blog.

So that was last night. It was what it was. I have to enjoy my next 3 weeks of freedom because starting 01/01/08, I am going to be alcohol-free for 3 months in preparation for the Capitol 10K which for some reason I committed to. Shocking, I know.

I am now going to go into article-writing mode for the next 12 hours. I really need to get this knocked out today. Wish me luck.

Inspired comedy, by yours truly.



Brought to you by several vodka sodas and Andre champagne.

Text messaging is not an appropriate form of communicating the following:

Births
Deaths
Love
Hate
Commitments
Break ups
Arranging meetings and/or dinners
Cancelling meetings and/or dinners

There's a little green "Call" button on your phone for a reason. I suggest
everyone implement it.

Signed,
Someone who doesn't appreciate being called out on an email distribution
list for "standing up" poorly communicated dinner plans.

Dear The Marq:

Please don't serve me alcohol on Thursdays.

Thanks.

MeanRachel

I don't think I can even comment on the day I had today for fear that it might actually make someone living vicariously through me toss themselves off the Lady Bird Lake pedestrian bridge.

Random Guy emailed the following video to me today, under the subject header of "Blogging in the Womb," saying he thought I might enjoy it. I have to admit, despite the fact that he is Random Guy and I originally thought it was some sort of pregnancy blog, it was pretty on-point. I mean, it combines my three favorite things in the world: Blogging, dot-com start ups, and Billy Joel. So, thanks Rando!

The Austin American Statesman article ran this morning. Click here to see it. It features Maaaaaaattt making his debut as Caring Dog Lover. If you look closely, you just might see the socks I borrowed from him to wear to boot camp last night. Ew.

Thanks to Lilly Rockwell from the Statesman for the great press and Bret "Fish Killer" Gerbe for coming out to take pictures and not judging too harshly on my enjoyment of Atlanta tourist destinations.

In what I can only describe as a moment of pure insanity, during which I may have still been intoxicated from the night before, I committed to going to boot camp twice a day the rest of the month. I have no idea why I did this and having completed day one of AM & PM sessions, I am even less impressed with my lofty ambitions on Saturday morning. I blame the musical hoodie.

Naturally, it managed to become freezing cold in the twelve hours proceeding my alarm going off this morning. This really gets my goat, because all weekend long it was tolerably warm. This morning I hobbled out of the front door, felt a sharp northern wind hit my barely-open eyes, and said "Oh you have GOT to be kidding me." I turned around, went back inside and immediately put on every single item of clothing I have.

Two chain gang runs, 120 push ups, and countless other diabolical exercises later, I'm spent. And it's T-minus seven hours until my next set of push ups. Outstanding. Tomorrow is being advertised as "Bring a Friend Tuesday." I think what they mean to say is "Bring Someone You Never Want to To Talk To Again" Tuesday. Nevertheless, I tried to talk Gingy into joining me, for old time's sake and since it meets her requisite subzero temperature requirements, but she refuses to come.

Oh! And if you get the Statesman, be sure to check out the front page of the Business section tomorrow. We're on it, yo.