December 2010
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Two Gentlemen Of...
Though I’ve never mounted a production of Two Gentlemen of Verona, and giving no thought to the actual feasibility, I would make sure the Two Gentlemen were like Statler and Waldorf, but I digress.
However, this duality seems present in my now-two-weeks-old Italian existence. People either come up to me, asking questions entirely in rapid-fire Italian leaving me dumbly blinking and, for...
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...Where We Lay Our Scene
True story, because I have street smarts 4 DAZE sometimes it becomes necessary in the course of human events to appear as though you are talking to yourself, rendering you either: on the phone and someone will know what happened to you or; crazy.
When I have to use this strategy, I recite the opening Chorus part of Romeo & Juliet. It’s so romantic, saving your own life.
And so it is,...
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For My Next Trick! BIVOUAC.
HeChat: Is it pretty there?
MeChat: It's really nice. The day I went to Pisa I couldn't believe how picturesque. So pretty. Medieval.
HeChat: I love you for spelling medieval right.
MeChat: You should. It makes me awesome.
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Ketchup Ain't a Vegetable...
Resolutions are fine, but I’m more in love with starting projects than making declarations. Though most of my 2010 “resolutions” were geared toward my big leap into the Army, I squeezed in a project I felt wildly passionately about. In 2010 I fundraised and ran for the women of the Congo, 2009 was for veterans and Honor Flight, and now 2011 needs a focus. A mission. Something...
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25 Book Challenge... →
I am so entirely in. Twenty five in a year is wholly feasible. I am going to renovate this plan to include a wing of “WHAT?!? You Haven’t Read X? You’re Sorely Intellectually Deficient Because of That.” And I’m going to subdivide it to challenge my…weaker areas: fiction; non-narrative biographies; history; and classics. Five of each. Easy. OMG and she does math...
And Finally...
You realize that you live in a world where one can buy a bottle of wine festooned with pictures of golden butterflies and the words la dolce vita, and that it is just about the precise beverage equivalent of Mariah Carey and Lindsay Lohan’s tattoo.
And you realize all is good.
Except even Lindsay gets a phone…
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Don't Call Us...
Me: What are the chances this is actually going to work?
She: Oh, of course. This is absolutely the last time you will have to be BFFs with us, chatting all the live-long day about how your phone will never work again.
Me: Do not make me be that person. Do not make me break my morally superior sneer of internet haught and take this incredibly boring problem of tech out on the innocent.
She: Of COURSE not. This is the magic angel tears of solutions!
Me: [Tries.] Yes. Well. When can I expect Catherine Zeta Jones herself to come and fix this? Should I put on a pot of tea? Or maybe you'll just put a tin can and string kit in the post for me.
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B&W / Read All Over...
Squirreled away at training for most of 2010, I have a hole in my experience of popular culture—kind of like the year we lived in England left a 1987-sized gap that seems mostly My-Two-Dads in nature. I missed out on a lot. I did not see the A-Team reboot in theaters. I didn’t see the LOST finale with the rest of the world. And I didn’t know that one of my favorite writers had a...
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Buon Natale!
Or: How I Learned to Love Christmas Music Again.
I’m going to go ahead and admit it—I lead a pretty charmed and wholly lucky existence. I woke up this morning, Christmas Morning the Solo Show, and g-chatted with the Bro.
“What are you doing today?”
“Mmm. I’m going to run into the village. There’s this really old church, I’m going to see...
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Nooooo! But SANTA!!!!
Remember that one time when I was four and I forgot to ask Santa for a Huckleberry Pie doll and I was in tears because I thought I wasn’t going to get one, and then one of our family friends called pretending to BE HIM on Christmas Eve?
Dang it! This necklace is like that! Why elves, why must you forsake me on this the Eve of Santa?
Alas. It’s cute. So. Cute.
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WatchLet us not focus on the fact that I just set off the nuclear fire alarm cooking, thereby summoning a postful of emergency personnel and waking up every neighbor I haven’t even met yet, and remember yesterday. Yesterday! When my adventures were of a wonderful nature not at all doused in burning humiliation. I suppose some people would consider it poor planning to wander off into the...
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Buzz, Your Girlfriend. Woof.
While it seems like I just roll around in the putrid bliss of own my horrendous taste, some of my predilections have reason. To wit, the reason Home Alone is in, and forever will be, in my top 5 films of all time.
Way back when Christmas morning was exciting enough to make sleep impossible after 0400, Christmas Eve was a corresponding horror show of antsy kids under foot. And since it was just me...
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“It could be a fracture, we need more images to be sure.”
– I keep forgetting, it was a huge day! I had my very first x-ray, from the Ye Olde Fall Down the Stairs. Oh. Yeah. Hey, Bro! Please to feel bad, because apparently a splint AND an I.V. could have been totally in order.
I’ve been riding side-saddle for a month. I can’t believe the first...
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The Edges...
I’ve never not lived on the edge of something. I’ve lived in broadly a dozen places with an untold subset of hathooks therein, and they’ve always been on a coast. Not by design, but by happenstance. Though I actually can’t imagine anything more claustrophobic than living in the midst. Not having a port, an exit route, a spice tradewind of exodus. That, and my skin is...
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It Doesn't Take Much...
Today? I got issued a fleece and succeeded in getting internet in my room. There is nothing else I want for on this planet.
Okay, I also have a pretty amazing family and friends, people I dig a whole lot, delightful people to work with, a job that makes me happy to do (and they sent me to Europe to do it,) a walk-in closet that looks like the Army opened a GAP, and a severe Pollyanna Complex....
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I stood atop the sea-wall and watched your convoy... →
A love letter, from soldier to soldier, celebrating an affair of the heart in Northern Africa during World War II.
A sentiment, a remembrance, a missive entirely poignant from the days when don’t ask, don’t tell wasn’t capitalized. To title would be to acknowledge something too forbidden for taxonomy, but too beautiful to ignore.
Read it. All of it.
Once I got to sit in a...
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“The most difficult part of the month will come on the total eclipse of the moon,...”
– From the Church of Susan Miller. In related news, hide yo’ kids, wife, etc.
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Benvenuti...
I have been stationed at the Army’s Catskills. It’s the Southern destination of choice for R&R, with half the post taken up by log cabins under spindly evergreens called Sea Pines, a swimming pool, and BBQ pits. My existence then seems entirely Good Morning, Dirty Dancing. But forget Baby, I’m totally Johnny. After four inches of snow closed the whole joint down at 12:30...
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yellowbricks:
One Republic > Good Life
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Cool Story Bro.
Eesh though. Here’s where this rantery gets awkward..
I gave my brother the new Tucker Max “book” for Christmas. Am I:
A) A cool sister who recognizes different kinds of art, even this, as a lampoonish performance of hyper-genderized identity, while giving credit to Max for being a proud connoisseur of his own ethical inferiority, and possessing a writing style which she...
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Sad Face... →
Yes, friends, John Boehner will be allowed to perform whatever displays of uncontrollable emotion he fancies, and can be praised for “being himself” and defying gender stereotypes the very moment women in power are allowed to do that which engendered the stereotype in the first place CUE VIDEO OF HILLARY IN THE BLUE DRESS AT THE END OF THE CAMPAIGN.
And that was once. Once.
Though!...
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Then Stepped Away...
“You know how in action movies, the dude always walks away all tough and the explosion goes off behind him and he doesn’t look back?
“Yeah.”
“Okay. Well, you know how on the car, if you push the door lock button and shut it, it takes a minute to hear the click?”
“No. What are you talking about?”
“YOU KNOW. It waits and then clicks as you...
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