After breakfast at the Bagel

Nice picture, Ryan!
...Why does it look like I'm petting Aa's arm?

The smarty club that dare not speak its name

My sister joined Mensa a few years back, and when she moved to Omaha, she sent an email to other local Mensa-ites to try and meet new people. Nobody ever responded. Earlier today I was emailing with her about birth order and intelligence and she reminded me again about the smartypantses who never bothered to respond to her social overtures. This reminded me of the events that transpired at a Friday night happy hour with some of my co-workers. I emailed her back with this description:

"At some point this guy approached our table and asked "Are you guys the mensa happy hour?" We all stared at him for a beat or two, looked at each other, stared at him again. Then we were all like, "uh, no, that's not us. Nope." Except for one of my co-workers who actually used this dopey voice and said "YEAH! We're with mensa!" I felt kind of bad. He walked away and I was like, we need to apologize to that guy. Every person I was with got pissy and said he was making fun of us. But there's no way he was making fun of us. He looked so embarassed after he saw our reaction. It was so weird and awkward."

I think this may be why nobody from Mensa ever responded to my sister...because they've learned not to go be social in situations where they have to admit they're part of Mensa. Because apparently everyone who's not in Mensa becomes kind of a defensive jerk when they're around.

I LOVE LA

or do i?
it's super sunny. the people are fantastically nice. not sure if it's real or not,but it's refereshing compared to the false smiles and stuck up noses of seattle.

excellent. EXCELLENT mexican food. esp. the taco truck kind (my favorite kind...)

not sure if the sushi is better though. ol' seattle might have that one in the bag.

went for a run this morning. way way too hot for what i'm used to running, but nice to really sweat out last nights tequila and beer.

my hosts, amy and ken, just moved here from seattle. they are fellow midwesterners who are transplants to the west coast. they seem to be fitting inquite well. super happy for them. and they are super nice to be having me here this weekend.
saw old friend from chicago (ala rollingstone.com days)...nice to rehash old times and meet his new wife. they seem to really like it here. he from indiana. her actually from LA.

do i love LA? i sure do like it, that's fer sure.

On Martha Stewart's show today

-a segment called "Chafing with Christy Turlington". This was coupled with a shot of La Turlington holding something close to her chest and shyly rotating her torso from side to side.

-a basenji!!, which erased all memory of how weird it was to look up and see a segment called "Chafing with Christy Turlington". Until right now. So now I need to go look at pictures of basenjis to get my brain in an ok place again.

"I think some of the sportswriter women probably think they do"

Cubs manager Lou Pinella on women, kicking dirt, and the last challenge of his career

I took the wrong bus to work this morning. I took the WRONG. BUS. TO. WORK. I was reading the paper and looked up and realized, hey! I'm not on 45th Street! I'm on the Aurora Bridge, heading downtown! This fun little field trip in the exact opposite direction of my office made me late for work. And, also, it made me kind of grumpy and pretty embarassed.

So what's the lesson here?

1. When I travel, take a goddamn day off between the day I travel and the day I go back to work. Air travel is fun because I get to sit on my butt and read but it always makes me feel lousy.

2. If something feels weird when I get on the bus, pay attention to that feeling! I noticed the bus was way more crowded than usual, but I ignored that and found a seat and cracked open my paper.

3. That teevee show 30 Rock is funny. (uh, that's actually a lesson I learned yesterday thanks to United In-Flight Entertainment)

4. Consider two cups of tea before leaving the house in the morning.

This week in insects

I just got back from Chicago, where the cicadas are making their once-in-every-17-year appearance. Hearing them make their weird noises, seeing their pudgy bodies zoom around, powered by those fast, massive wings...it was pretty awesome. The last time they emerged, my sister and I were babysitting some of my Uncle Terry's neighbors' kids. We'd try to take the kids to the park and on a few days, the cicadas were so thick we couldn't even stand to go outside. They'd buzz our heads, land in our hair. Their shells were all over the ground and crunched under our feet. My cousin Marty, out of...revenge? Frustration? Boredom? 13-year-old-boyness?, took to carrying a baseball bat around with him and smashing cicadas who were mating. He said he wanted to kill them while they were happy.

Last night, I hung out with Cindy the Superwoman and her two beautiful kids. We sat in the backyard as her son swam around in the pool. While we were out there I got to see lightning bugs, one of the things I just miss terribly about summers in the Midwest. Seattle's beautiful and all, but in Illinois, they have these bugs with butts that light up. What mountain can top that?

Other stuff that happened while I was home (very, very briefly):

-much time spent with fabulous parents
-more information gathered about a coupla different things
-went to a Cubs game, which they won, I think by accident
-time spent with cousins
-saw Aa's band play
-time spent with some, but not even close to all, of my friends
-pizza ingested many, many times
-withered repeatedly in the thick, hazy heat and humidity of Midwest June
-ran into two of my favorite people, my Aunt Maribeth and Uncle Dick, while in the security line at the airport this morning

Now I'm home. The Zacker's passed out on his perch. Aa comes home tomorrow. I head into work in the AM. Aside from seeing my dog, I am not yet happy to be back.

shawnee national forest...

For the first time since 1995 i'm going to be in the shawnee.


i like the forests of the northwest..fer sure...(the "fer" was for you kevin...)..but there is nothing quite like the deciduous trees of the midwest in summer time. everything is on fire with life. so great. lots of fond memories of the being in the shawnee with my bestest friends(GV, LEB, KB, TW, LA, SB)!

anyways. good times on our day off. crazy night last night with tim seely's band (another seattle band). those boys party like a real rock band. not quite like our flipflop wearin' selves...

louisville kentucky.
bourbon.
god damn.

Aaron

wanna know what happens on the road?

ryan, a super kick ass photographer...is touring with the band...he's putting some of the pics up here...check 'em out:

http://hobodisco.com/sf100/

that's what life is like on the road.

well, except for the escaping from kansas city on backstreets at 2am to avoid nefarious people part..

The most important vote you'll make

Whether Family Circus gets funnier when its caption is switched out for another cartoon's.

A gift from the Internet

Holy. Crap.

Why in the Sam Hill have I not been using Pandora all along??!! Jesus Jesus Jesus.

Also - today was the last day of a 4-day hosting stint at the radio station. Usually I produce the show, but the past 4 days, well, I was on the air.

-I did not start crying at any time, either on-air or off.
-I did smell like nervous sweat every day after the show was over.
-I'm pretty sure I became a bitchy pile of freak-out at least once.
-I do have renewed respect for and question the sanity of the man who does this gig on a daily basis. How does one function while doing this job? How does one not become an alcoholic doing this job on crazy-ass deadline? (also how does he have the presence of mind and energy to find shit like Pandora? He was the one who told me about it in the first place.)

Hot Sunday

Today's a hot day for Seattle...it's somewhere in the 80's.

(Midwesterners who read this -- yes, we've become babies about weather. Ok?)

Zack is so hot all he can do is pass out near Aa's stinky feet. (Aa is also similarly passed out from the heat.)

Also, my shiny skin from sweating all afternoon! Yay!