Live & Kern

The Modern Gal wrote one of my favorite things this week:

“I had a major epiphany on the elliptical today. I know what I want to be when I grow up.”

I don’t know what it is, but I have to assume it’s fantastic wrapped in awesome, because that’s how the MG rolls. (Note to self: You are not cool enough to say that. Second note to self: It also shows your age.)

It was also the perfect time to find this article: 11 Famous People Who Were in the Completely Wrong Career at Age 30 The MG is not that old, but since I am … it’s a little comforting to know job changes in the past couple of years, and any future ones, offer some hope that someday I’ll figure out what I want to be too.
By the way, you really should go visit the MG’s blog — she’s posted a mash-up of
Barney Stinson from “How I Met Your Mother” as Frosty the Inappropriate Snowman. (The MG’s posts on HIMYM is one reason why I started watching the show.)

OK, I have more than two rules, but these two are relevant to this week. Learn them:

Rule No. 1: Do not call and try to sell me things. When I say no the first time, I mean it. When I say no the third time, I am getting angry and will dodge your future calls.

Rule No. 2: Do not send me religious forwards or otherwise try to convince me to join your religion. I will not. I will make jokes about your religion being a cult, and mean it; you will get angry. You have your God, and I think that’s great; I have Bear.

On my drive home from Kansas City on Sunday (which should be a post of its own), I hung up on Mark to talk to a friend from high school. We’d been playing e-mail tag for awhile (and I’d been deleting her religious-themed e-mails), and threatening to call each other. I’d planned to call her Friday when I was driving to Kansas City, but I left later than I’d intended, didn’t know where I was going and was forced to suffer with bad cell phone reception. So I was excited when she called.

Until she tried to sell me things. I was a little intrigued (but quite skeptical) at first, because she (and someone else who happened to be available and on the line) talked about this exciting opportunity, but couldn’t explain what it was. You have to see it to believe it, she said. So when I got home she sent me a link to a very bad Web site and a very bad Webinar.

I can explain it in three words: Online buying club.

(Unsolicited advice to the folks at the buying club: Create a video. If you can’t create and edit a video, then ask your college- or high-school-age child to do it, because they can. If your children refuse to talk to you, which I can kind of understand, at least learn how to create slides that can be read.)

I’m sure there are benefits: If you’re interested, watch the Webinar. But if you join, do not call and try to recruit me, or I will be forced to turn my god loose on you.

A friend invited me to add an application to my often neglected MySpace page.

Using Own Your Friends you can:
Buy and sell your friends as ‘pets’.
Make your ‘pets’ hug, punch, and poke each other.
Change your pets’ status messages to whatever you want.
Find out how much your friends think you are worth!

Are you kidding me? I know what I’m worth. I’m not for sale. And the only person I’m going to punch or poke is you.

In much better news, I won a book!

Vanessa from Random Ramblings About My Crazy Life had a contest the other day, and I was one of the winners. My prize, “Quirkyalone: A Manifesto for Uncompromising Romantics” by Sasha Cagen, is a book I’ve been wanting to read for awhile — so it’s perfect! Sadly, I can’t remember the last time I read a book … at least a year ago, I’m sure. Lucky for me, though, I expect to have some time to read this weekend.

I got to see two friends from college last night, which was fun. They were in town for the Royals/Cardinals game — Kansas City fans, of course. (And the Royals swept the three-game series!) The last time I saw B. was 1999, before I graduated; we all used to work on the college paper together. I last saw M. about five years ago. I flew back for what was supposed to be his wedding, but he and his fiancée split about a month before. Instead we went to a Royals game with Valerie (Hi, Val!) and Paul.

But sitting with Val and her favorite boys (Bevo and Paul, in no particular order) and talking to the visiting boys made me very thankful for my normal, nonjudgy friends. If you were to describe a stereotypical, homophobic bachelor, that’s the guy we were talking to. But there were two of them. And they were drunk.

After baseball and before the “who do you still talk to from college” discussions, they:
• Discussed strip clubs. They’d been to East St. Louis the night before. Need I say more?
• Drooled when two (very drunk) girls smooched near our table.
• Were uncomfortable when one of their female friends told them she was going to a party at a gay bar.
• Are so determined to prove their heterosexuality that one of them had T&A wallpaper on his cell phone. (Which was fine, until Valerie tried to give him her phone number — in case of emergency; she’s a happily married woman! — and then he got embarrassed and blushed.)
• Explained several times that they were staying in town with a friend — but in separate rooms.

And when I called something as a hot mess? Valerie got it. Paul got it, or at least played along. The boys, though, were confused. “What’s a hot mess?” they asked.

Wednesday night. Wednesday night was a hot mess.