Sarah: Just a head's up... there's a bottle of vagina support vitamins in the refrigerator.
I probably would never have noticed it if she hadn't mentioned it, but... yep, there it is.
Sarah: It's actually not for my vagina. It's for my stomach. It's probiotic, so it's good for your gut.
Me: Okay.
Sarah: You have some stomach problems too, right?
Me: Uh...
Sarah: You should take this vagina medicine too. For your gut.
Me: ... I'll think about it.
Drinks (and group picture (minus Alex)) after the last People in Your Neighborhood show.
Meador: I'm glad the last show was a good one. It was good right?
Megan: Yeah.
Me: It was good.
Meador: It's good to go out on a high note. Especially since, well, I mean, this was very likely my last improv show ever.
Me: Really?
Meador: Probably. My life is different now. With nursing I've got new stuff to focus on. Different priorities. So this is probably it.
[long pause]
Trupe: But not really. Nick will probably talk you into doing another show eventually.
Meador: Well, sure, yeah. That'll probably happen.
In the car, listening to music from my iPhone.
Sarah: Ugh. This is that song that I hate, isn't it?
Me: No. This is the song that you always think is that song that you hate because they sort of start the same, but this is actually the song that you like.
Sarah: Oh... yeah. I do like this song.
Me: See. I know you.
Tom and I had lunch at the giant new Whole Foods by our office. With numerous deadlines looming, things have been extremely busy and more than a little stressful at work lately, so it was nice to get away and hang out.
Tom: Well... I guess we should head back.
Me: No! Let's not! Let's never go back.
Tom: [laughing] Okay. Good plan. Oh wait... shit... my keys are on my desk.
My sister, Julie, sent out pictures of Ty's first day of kindergarten.
Julie: We followed him to his room.....but no need, he didn't look back once.
This prompted my mom to e-mail out memories from the first day of kindergarten for me and my sisters.
"I was teaching diagonally across from Arnie's Elementary parking lot. I spent a lot of time in back of study hall looking at that parking lot for a possible lost Little Arnie on his first day!?!? I still remember that some friends came over and told me that Arnie was 'so dramatic' and gave me a look like what did you do?
"For some strange reason I remember that Julie's kindergarten teacher had the same birthday as Julie!!! I can't remember if this was the year when _________ did all of Julie's cutting and that if _____ wasn't around, Julie had a headache when she was supposed to cut?!?!
"Ah, Sherry couldn't stay awake during the first few days of kindergarten. Her teacher was so embarrassed that Sherry slept right through a fire drill and she didn't notice that she was missing until she was outside. The teacher kept telling Arnie & Julie that she was falling asleep during school so we kept putting her to bed earlier and earlier. . . then a few days later she got the flu and that was the end of Sherry falling asleep.
"When Allie went to kindergarten, Julie's job to earn some money was to fix Allie's hair for school. She had all kinds of braids. One was even kinda like a crown around the top of her head. Allie and her class were hard on teachers. Her kindergarten teacher retired after her class as did her first grade teacher."
My old computer at work is dying, so I'm swapping it for a new one. Like any move, this involves a lot of digging through files and figuring out what to keep, what to delete.
I've worked on this computer for almost four years and apparently, I collect just as much weird shit digitally as I do in the real world.
Audio clips of a co-worker saying, "rimshot rimshot rimshot rimshot"? Delete.
Photoshopped picture of the Virgin Mary rising out of a pizza, melting the faces of the nazis from Raiders of the Lost Ark? Keep.
One of the nice things about The People In Your Neighborhood shows I’ve been doing lately with friends, is that we’ve fallen into the habit of bringing things for each other to borrow. It's a swap-fest backstage.
I borrow ‘The Walking Dead’ from Nick. Meador borrows ‘Twilight’ from Megan. Alex borrows ‘Green Lantern’ from Brady.
Here’s Trupe with some comics he borrowed from Martin.
Trupe: Wonak makes fun of me when she sees me reading them. "Are you reading your pictures again?" She’ll go get other pictures around the house for me to read. It's really an extended bit.
Me: I like that you both loath the books the other is reading.
Wonak is reading the same Song of Ice and Fire books Sarah and I are enjoying.
Trupe: I always ask her if there are any dragons in the part she's reading.
[Also… Jill, the blur in the back of this picture, trying on her new People in Your Neighborhood t-shirt, was asking around if anyone owned season one of True Blood on DVD.
Jill: There’s a lot of Netflix drama at home right now. Robb’s working his way through Mad Men. He says. But the disc has been sitting there, unwatched, all week. And I can’t get the next True Blood disc until he returns it!]
Our plants haven't been doing so well, so we headed over to Gethsemane, a fancy plant store, for supplies and advice.
Me: Isn't Gethsemane from some Bible story? A Biblical place?
Sarah: Probably some Bible place with plants.
Me: It was where Jesus fought the plants.
[Looking it up online now, it was where Jesus hung out the night before he was crucified. I'm not sure why I recognized the name. Maybe because it was the title of an X-Files episode.]
We wandered among the trees and shrubs for awhile, looking for a plant expert that looked approachable.
Plant Expert: Dying leaves are a sign of stress. Signs of stress are how the plant tells you something's wrong. But being transplanted is stressful by itself. It could just be adjusting to the move. I'd say, be vigilant. Watch. You may not be doing anything wrong. Or you might.
These things are hard to know.
On my way home from work, I stopped at Sam's Wine to pick up some drinks for the weekend.
The check-out girl was lazily flirting with one of her co-workers as I walked up to the counter. She pointed to my t-shirt and said, "Two players. I'm like two players." The guy laughed and said, "It says two player." I actually think it's meant to read "Player Two" but I kept that to myself.
Girl: Well, whatever, I'm two players. More than just a player.
Guy: Oh really. Do you hear this?
Me: I do.
Girl: I've got two boyfriends.
Guy: No you don't. Really?
Girl: Sure I do. One of them's imaginary, but I got two.
Guy: That don't count.
Girl: Sure it does. He's great.
Guy: You're not a child. You don't get to have imaginary people if you're not a child.
I do one of these blogs every year (more or less) and now it seems that I also, less intentionally, put up a different podcast each year.
This time it's Stupid Nerd, a podcast where I interview people about nerdy things I'm interested in but probably won't ever get around to reading or watching. The first one is on The Green Lantern. The second is about those Twilight books.
You can find it in iTunes by searching for "stupid nerd." I'm too lazy to make an official web page for the podcast, but if you don't want to go through iTunes, you can also find the audio files here.
Sarah, on her way back from the dentist. Six Novocaine shots in one side of her mouth.
Sarah: I'm smiling as big as I can, but one side doesn't work. Isn't it sad? It looks like I had a stroke.
Me: From the side, your mouth sort of looks like Ray Liotta's when he laughs.
We went to CVS to fill her painkiller prescription. While she waited by the pharmacy, I went up to the front counter to get a Diet Coke. The man in front of me was maybe in his early fifties, with matching jeans and stonewashed jean jacket. "I don't know what cigars to get. I'm new to this. Let's see, what uh... what kind of cigar is best for making, you know, a blunt?"
The teenage girl behind the counter seemed taken aback for a second, then, "Uh... these?"
"Okay. Okay. Maybe I should get a flavor. I don't know. I just don't want her bitchin' at me for getting the wrong thing, you know?"
Getting ready to head home. Everyone gets a little cranky the last day.
No one wanted to write in the cabin log book, so Nick did it.
Excerpts:
"Who I met (friends and creatures): Dopplegangers, dirty dirties, Syracuse Cafe racists, the swan..."
"Favorite moments/special highlights (fun): the corn field turn-off, Cobra puns (Cobraffee), Arnie's menu illiteracy..."
"Notes: Martin - missed."
During a supply-run to the Walmart in town, Young impulse-bought a trashy paperback from the "burgeoning" series "Billionaires and Babies." A sort of romance novel perfect storm.
Hansen sat on the back porch skimming the book for smut.
Hansen: Boo. 72 pages in and no boning. Although... this is a great piece of dialogue. "Connor North? Of the Phoenix Foundation?"
Young: [laughing] Oh man, this might be the best $3 I ever spent.
Meador, Nick and I drove out to the cabin a half day earlier than the rest of the crew, anxious to get as much out of our last gasp of summer as possible.
Nick starts teaching again in a couple weeks. Meador's first day as an honest-to-goodness nurse is Monday ("I'm nervous. It's the hardest thing I've ever done"). Me, I just need a vacation.
We grilled brats, drank beers, then sat around speculating on how long it would take everyone else to show up.
I noticed a recurring theme in the text messages sent between Sarah and I. Here are the last ten messages from my Sarah folder (not counting those pictured).
Sarah: Okay. When will you be home?
Me: Leaving now.
Sarah: Omw back.
Sarah: Be there in 30 minutes.
Sarah: On my way home. Love you very much.
Me: Just got home. Love you too.
Sarah: I'm just going to take a cab.
Me: Okay. See you soon.
Me: Heading home.
Me: Leaving in a couple minutes.
Sarah's new class is every Saturday for about six or eight hours. It's only four weeks, but that's a long slog.
She needed a devil costume for her show last night, for a musical number to open the Hot Karl 10th Anniversary performance. Because she was so busy with her class I went out during the day to pick up devil costume accessories for her.
Walking out of Party City with the purchases in hand I noticed the car parked next to mine was packed full of balloons. The whole back seat, the passenger seat, full to bursting with colorful party balloons, so many that some of them were peeking out of the partially open windows. It reminded me of the day Sarah bought so many plants for our apartment they barely fit in my car.
Standing next to the balloon car was a maybe twenty year old woman, crying, talking on her cell phone. "Mommy. The car won't start. I can't get it to start."
I don't know much about cars. I figured there wasn't really anything I could do to help. So, plastic pitchfork in hand, I quietly got into my car and drove off.
For their 35th anniversary, my parents took a trip to Boston. Mom sent me a fun email with several pictures and captions (sort of like her own little photoblog).
Sarah lived in Boston for quite a while when we were first dating. Long distance was tough, but the up side was having an excuse to visit Boston a couple times.
In fact, just shy of three years ago, I posted a picture on one of my old blogs of Sarah in the same church that my parents visited. You can see that picture here.
Dinner at the Ethiopian restaurant in our neighborhood.
This is our second time eating Ethiopian, so we're experts now! The food is served on a communal plate and you eat with your hands (actually, I guess, supposedly just your right hand, unless you're a leftie like Sarah), scooping food up with sheets of pancake-y bread.
There's a nice Ethiopian tradition ("gursha") where you feed someone your first bite and they'll feed you their last.
Here's Sarah eating my last bite of dinner.
I didn't see anyone else in the restaurant doing this.
Hung out with Young at his place. My old place.
It was only the second or third time I've been over there since moving out. Being in the old neighborhood gave me a pleasant sense of deja vu. Walking past the dry cleaner I always went to. Going up the stairs hearing the guy on the second floor playing his violin.
Young and I watched 'The Venture Brothers' and ordered from Andies. I hadn't eaten Andies in a while because Sarah doesn't like to order it.
At the end of the night, on my way back to my car, I saw that the crazy guy, the one that would sit on the stoop by the side of the building, was still there. He always had a mean serial killer face, and he'd sit by the side of the building drinking a six pack of beer, laughing and laughing to himself about who knows what. And tonight he was still there, still drinking, still laughing.
I think he might have lost a little weight.
Sarah: I was doing some research online today about our new plants, and one site said that our russian sage can cause hives or allergic reactions.
Me: Uh oh.
Sarah: Wait, maybe not hives. I think it said skin irritation.
Me: Still...
Sarah: People can be highly allergic. It's poisonous. And it attracts bees.
The russian sage has been moved to our back porch.
Sarah and I took Allie (and Sarah's brother, Jesse) to a White Sox game. Our tickets included access to the "Patio" before the game, which was really just a depressing concrete cafeteria. Still, there was free food and beer.
Allie: It's nice to see you and Sarah together. And kind of weird. I don't think I know anybody that's at the same stage as you two. Most of my friends are, you know, just in college and dating. And then there are, like, Mom and Dad, or Julie and Matt. Adults, married with kids. It's interesting that I don't know anyone else in that in-between place.
I was going to tell her that it's just her age. She's just in college. Soon she'll see there are tons of couples like Sarah and I. But then, I couldn't think of many myself anymore.
Allie and Sarah wanted to get pedicures, so, to be a a good sport, I decided to get one too. My first pedicure. It was mostly pleasant. Relaxing if slightly awkward. When it was done, I over-tipped slightly because it felt weird that someone was forced to work with my feet.
That evening Allie watched my Whirled News show.
Allie: I was sitting next to... I guess, the owner, Charna... I was sitting in the front row next to her real estate agent. She told me her whole life story.
Allie also explained that during intermission she overheard several people say that the show was, "better than they expected."
