The Modern Gal

Teach a gal to fish

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 20:33:00 +0000

So a few months back I decided I'd done enough hemming and hawing about moving my blog from ye ol' Blogger to a self-hosted Wordpress site. I went ahead and snapped up themoderngal.com and nailed down a host. The Modern Gal needed freshening up a bit too, so what better time to send her to the powder room? Well, I contacted a designer who's work I admired to inquire about a redesign and migration of archives from Blogger to Wordpress, and well, let's just say this designer quoted me a price with four figures. I love the MG with all my heart, but that broad ain't making me enough money to justify spending that kind of money on her (especially since I'd already spent the money on the domain and hosting).

You know what the proverb is -- give a man a fish, feed him for a day, teach him to fish, feed him for a lifetime. Here's where I decided it was also time for me to learn how to fish, metaphorically speaking. I know some basic HTML -- enough to allow me to tweak my design and make text do what I want it to. Some of my most dedicated readers might remember the MG's original design -- one with purple and green and newspaper background -- that was all my own doing as well (I wish I had a screenshot of the misery, but alas, I did not save one).

Basically, I've spent a little time here and there in the past few months banging my head against the computer screen and googling the crap out of 'wordpress,' 'hosted,' 'blogger,' 'transfer,' 'godaddy,' etc. until I figured it out. I'm sure some of you probably could have helped me, but I needed to figure it out myself so I knew the how and why behind the whole process. Lo and behold, things started clinking in place last week, especially thanks to the biz ladies series at Design* Sponge.** $1000? Hell, I'll do it for $50. Well, maybe $100.

Along those lines, in my quest for a new career I've begun taking some online web design courses in an effort to move my knowledge beyond the basic text and photo HTML codes to one that can handle CSS and other more complex matters that will allow me to get a better handle on creating my own blog design and even fully functioning websites, in case I ever need one of those down the road.

I've still got a long way to go and about a semester's worth of classes before I'm there, so my current Wordpress design is just a tweak of the standard theme they give you when you sign up. I'm working on one with the help of a theme generator that has an extra column, so consider it a work in progress. I promise not to update more frequently than Facebook.

Also, I'm in the progress of migrating my RSS feeds so they automatically redirect to the new site. If you're so inclined, I'd ask you to go ahead and update your feeds now to reflect the MG's new location. If not, hopefully that will happen automatically in a day or two.

So, without further adieu, I present to you: themoderngal.com!

**Cheers to Noodles for pointing me in that direction. Noodles, once I nail down these design skills, you get a free redesign of Patches and Paws.

Public service announcement

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 01:15:00 +0000

Modern Friends, after several months of banging my head against the wall I've managed to tie down a slightly better domain name in themoderngal.com and have located hosting space and have installed wordpress.org and all that great jazz that the rest of you figured out a long time ago. I'm in the process of attempting to migrate my blog over that way. Take that obnoxious comment spammers!

*Hopefully* you won't notice a change in your RSS feeds, but if you do, I apologize in advance. I'm totally feeling my way through this as I go. I'll try to make you aware when the deed has been done, but if you notice things seem wonky around here, check themoderngal.com instead.

Stay: The lady behind the book

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 01:00:00 +0000

Have you gotten your copy of Stay yet? No??? Here's the Amazon link. I'll STAY here and wait until you take care of that.

...

Now that you've taken care of that, Allie did me the huge favor of answering some of the questions I had about Stay, and I hope you'll enjoy her answers as much as I did:

MG: While reading, I noticed several Allieisms in Stay: Van and her mother's love of Boston and an exchange where Van and Agnes call each other 'Lady.' How much of your own personality did you put into Stay, and are there other big examples of yourself within the book?

AL: I think it has kind of become one of those life imitating art imitating life things. A friend of mine in college had a Boston CD, and played it all the time. When I left college and was feeling nostalgic, I got my own copy. I liked Boston, but it was more about the nostalgia than the music. But the CD turned into a joke between J and I.

In an early draft, I was trying to figure out what CDs Norman would have in his car, and which one Van would actually like, and it occurred to me that Van would like Boston, and that it would be a closet obsession. But then, in the process of writing Van and listening to the Boston laden playlist I made for her, I started loving Boston on a level that goes way beyond nostalgia. And there is no better way to get myself in the right mindset to write Van than to listen to More Than A Feeling.

Another big “Allieism” are the locations in the book. I moved up to Rochester in 2000. I grew up in Westchester, about 30 minutes north of Chappaqua. And I used a lot of real locations or elements of life in Westchester. My friends used to go bridge jumping. I still dream of Bueti’s sandwiches, and when I was a nanny, I used to take my youngest charge to Gedney Park to run around.

But all of these things are very much seen through Van’s lens, not mine. It’s sometimes a very subtle difference, but it is a difference. And I swear to you that I am not in love with any of my friends’ husbands, nor have ever bought a dog off the internet.

MG: Joe seems like such a great dog! Is he modeled after any dogs you know? And is it really possible to order a German Shepherd online? Should I warn the Modern Love Machine about potential drunken dog ordering?

AL: Argo was absolutely the inspiration for Joe. But Argo is an incredibly easy-going dog. He’s really amazing, and I wish we could take credit for that, but he just showed up that way – open and loving and happy to meet anyone who comes his way. He is quite eager to please, so he responds very quickly if he knows he’s done something wrong. Using Argo almost verbatim as the model for Joe, didn’t really ring true. In earlier drafts, Joe was too perfect, and it didn’t serve the story as well. Luckily, Stella became a member of our family, and brought with her several months of floor pooping, crate chewing chaos. Joe’s incidents are not Stella’s, but she certainly gave me lots of inspiring material before she calmed down and stopped making me want to run away from home.

Yes, you can actually import a dog from Slovakia. One of my friends posted the book trailer on his Facebook wall, and his friend commented that she got her dog from Slovakia and had him flown over. That said, getting a dog from your local German Shepherd Rescue organization is a wonderful way to go.

MG: Since we're on the topic of characters ... you've mentioned before on your own blog and Twitter that you really got to know your characters and you missed them when Stay was finished. How did you make them so realistic? I feel like I've known them my whole life!

AL: Thank you so much! I am thrilled to hear that you related to the characters in STAY so well. I feel like I’ve known them my whole life too.

I originally went to school for theatre, and I think taking acting classes has been a hugely positive influence on my writing. We really learned how to dissect characters. When we studied a scene or a monologue, what wasn’t on the page was just as important as what was.

At one point, I worked on a student directed scene from a play called Betrayal, by Harold Pinter. I played a wife who is confessing to her husband that she’s had an affair with his friend. The scene is incredibly tense and loaded, but, because it’s Pinter, there are very few words. What isn’t said is just as important as what is. The student directing the scene knew that it was important for my scene partner and me to have a strong sense of context. Before we even got to the script, he had us spend a week or so improvising scenes from the life of a couple becoming a couple and then starting to fall apart: our first date, the marriage proposal, a typical night in our home, when the fighting started, the concealing of the affair. When we finally got to the scene we performed, there was a sense of loss. There was a context for the argument that went far beyond words.

I learned SO much in that process. I don’t hang out in my office acting out background scenes for my characters, but I do make sure I give them that kind of context. I spend a lot of time thinking about the things that don’t happen in the story, and I allow myself to write scenes I need to work through, even when I know they won’t end up in the final draft.

MG: And lastly, when should we be expecting your next novel? Do you have any ideas what it might be about?

AL: I’m not quite ready to talk about my next novel in any kind of specific terms, but I can tell you that there will be no mention of grape Kool-Aid anywhere in it! Writing those scenes where Van drinks way too much of it created a pretty bad aversion to all things fake grape flavored.

Pennypup reads Stay aloud to Lucydog, who really is interested despite appearances

For more by Allie, check out her short story Bathtub Mary and her personal blog Incidents and Accidents.

Stay: Four paws up

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 03:04:00 +0000

So this post is way, way, way overdo, but I didn't want to sit down and write it until I had legitimate time and brain power to give it the focus it deserved. You may have read on some other awesome blogs about Allie Larkin's new novel, Stay, but just in case you didn't, I wanted to introduce you to Allie and Stay! Really, even if you know about Stay and lucky enough to know Allie, I think you should still read :)

Almost three years ago I got to reading Allie's blog about all things green, then known as Allie's Answers (now The Greenists, and yes, the same Greenists that I contribute to ... P.S. I posted there yesterday about green wedding dresses, feel free to give it a look-see.). The thing that set her blog apart from all other green-oriented blogs was her voice -- it was incredibly clear, personal and warm, despite Allie's Answers not being a personal blog per se. Through mutual blog commenting, Twitter exchanges and e-mails, I found about Allie's passion for writing and her love for her dogs, Argo and Stella.

Like all of Allie's friends, real and internet-related, I was cheering her on big time as she wrote, sold and edited Stay. When the time came for me to get my hands on Stay, I absolutely could not wait! It arrived at the new house just as I was moving in, and it was the only thing that distracted me from my duty of unpacking the new place because it was THAT GOOD. (Seriously, when I move to a new place I let nothing interrupt my quest to get settled in.)

Stay in its now permanent spot on our now unpacked bookshelf

It's a story about a gal named Van, a grape KoolAid and vodka-fueled drunken impulse purchase, a dog named Joe and the puppy love -- both the human-to-human kind and the human-to-puppy kind -- that ensues. This video will say it better than I can:

Tomorrow I'll have an interview with the author herself, so stay tuned!

Baseball, and a whole lot of it

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 15:57:00 +0000

Thank you so much for all of your comments on that last post! It's reassuring to know there are others who have either gone through this or feel the same way. Let's figure this all out together. I'll be sharing more details about what I'm studying and considering as time goes on.

But it's Friday, and I'm so terribly excited because these weeks are starting to stretch out longer and longer (although my life will start getting super-busy again next month, so I'm trying not to complain). In celebration of Friday and the fact that my beloved Cardinals are back where they belong in first place of the NL Central, I'd like to share some observations on all the baseball parks the Modern Love Machine and I visited during the two-week road trip.

I think I mentioned this last year after attending the game at U.S. Cellular in which Mark Buehrle threw a perfect game for the White Sox, but I've made it my business to attend a home game of every MLB team. I mean, I went to a game at Tropicana Field in the NINETIES, back when the Rays were the Devil Rays and they didn't know how to play baseball. Heck, I've even been to a Blue Jays game in Toronto, which, if you're from the South, Toronto might as well be in Russia because it's so far away from home.

This trip added two new stadium experiences to my list, bringing me to a total of having witnessed 11 MLB teams at their home stadium and 13 stadiums (I've been to two out of the three incarnations of Busch Stadium and San Fran's Candlestick and AT&T parks).

1. Cinncinati, The Great American Ball Park

I liked Cinncinati's Great American Ball Park the least of the four we visited, but probably for reasons that have nothing to do with the park itself. I mean, it's not horrible. It's settled on the banks of the Ohio River with a view of northern Kentucky -- not that there's really anything to see when looking at northern Kentucky. I was more irritated by the weather that delayed the start of the game by an hour (we were on SERIOUS deadline to get to Milwaukee that night) and the fact that it alternated rain and extremely steamy heat throughout the game. Plus, I could not care less about the Cincinnati Reds or Cleveland Indians, despite the fact that the Reds at the time were ahead of my beloved team.

I guess I'd never experienced a serious weather delay at a ballpark before, because when we saw the sky turning black over right field, I wasn't really sure what we were supposed to do.

Now I know that during severe weather delays you crowd the concourses below the stands and try not to tempt the weather gods into striking you with lightning. You also attempt to Facebook from your iPhone only to find that the other 30,000 fans are doing the same thing, thus rendering your phones useless.

2. Milwaukee, Miller Park

I had never been to Milwaukee's Miller Park, and I have to commend Brewers fans for their commitment to beer and tailgating. Their tailgating commitment rivals that of Southern college football fans. The MLM and I joined two friends in Milwaukee and had a proper tailgate, which was cut fairly short because of afternoon naps and a need to assemble the tailgaiting grill. Still it was glorious.

I really enjoyed Miller Park, possibly because I was overstimulated with things to look at inside. I happen to love the coziness enclosed ballparks, and if I remember correctly, the game that was going on between the Brewers and the Houston Astros was one of the better of the four games we saw.

I was most excited about the Sausage Races. Unfortunately, my companions decided to place their dollar bets on which sausage would when while I was in the restroom, so I was stuck with a choice of Chorizo or Italian Sausage. I chose Chorizo because of his cute sombrero. I should have gone on taste and chosen Italian Sausage, because of course he won.

The MLM chose the Brat, who I believe is not in this photo because he was busy tripping somewhere behind home plate. Yes, Mr. Brat came in dead last.

3. Chicago, Wrigley Field

Either it's ridiculously hot or ridiculously cold every time I go to Wrigley, so you'd think I would plan accordingly. Nope, I wore shorts and a T-shirt when we went to watch the Cubs and Pittsburgh Pirates, and my teeth chattered until I broke down and bought a long-sleeved T-shirt that neither mentioned the Cubs nor was blue (it was brown and said Wrigley Field and eventually became a gift for the Modern Mom). But it's hard to argue with the beautifully blue sky.

As much as I hate the Cubs, Wrigley is a wonderful place to see a ballgame. I love the minimal commercialization there (though hate the constant ads for Six Flags on the monitors -- serously, get a new theme song, Six Flags!) I had mixed feelings about the scoreboard this time, though. I love watching for the numbers to change in hopes of seeing one of the dudes that man the scoreboard, but missed out on all the stats and details that you glean at parks with honking huge videoboards.

I did not actively root against the Cubs, although I didn't need to as they managed to beat themselves against the worst team in the National League.

4. St. Louis, Busch Stadium

Busch is clearly my own personal promised land.

Though I miss the old cookie-cutter Busch Stadium, I think new Busch does it best among the new old-timey parks like Great American or Atlanta's Turner Field. Downtown St. Louis provides such an awesome setting, especially with the Arch in the background.

The Cardinals obliged by winning the night that we were there, so that added to the beauty. I will bitch about one thing though, Cardinals: your concession prices were the most ridiculous of any along our trip. The logistics of transporting beer from the Anheuser-Busch brewery a few blocks away from Busch Stadium cannot be so difficult that you're required to charge $8 for a Bud Light.

Reinventing myself

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 21:58:00 +0000

I had a really crummy week at work last week for reasons I won't get into, but suffice it to say I'm tired of dealing with the same old BS that makes work difficult at times. It's not something that bothers me 100 percent of the time, but it keeps rearing it's ugly head.

BUT. I'm not just going to complain about it. I am finally doing something about it. Really.

No, I'm not quitting. I'm too practical to do something like that, and I'm a whore for my paycheck because it's a pretty decent paycheck for what I do. I even enjoy it occasionally. I'm just finally working on plans for life beyond this job though, whenever that time may come.

My major challenge is that I have a very limited skill set. I'm really, really good at writing but not much else. Despite what my advisers may have told me in college, being able to write does not immediately open up a myriad of doors for you. Writing plus a few other skills like web design or expertise in a particular field can, but writing alone does not. So I'm working on adding some skills. My other challenge is having a work schedule that does not allow me to plan for things like night or weekend classes or seminars, etc.

That's ok, I'm starting small.

The first thing I've done is check out a stack of books at the library to explore things I'm interested in. It seems a little third gradeish, but I need some ideas of what to pursue.

I've also enrolled in online courses at the local college and kicking myself for not thinking of doing that sooner. I knew I couldn't commit to in-person courses, but why couldn't I commit to something that's done entirely on my own time? I mean, I get something like two weeks to complete each lesson -- even I can work with that. The courses are not for credit, just to help me get proficient in other areas.

The Modern Love Machine and I also sat down last night to create a household budget, wherein we pay all our bills, commit to some serious savings but still have a little room to eat well and do some fun things. One of the savings funds we've created may or may not be dubbed 'Exit Strategy.'

I'm considering making a visit to the local college's career counseling center to help me explore some ideas. They have all kinds of aptitude and personality tests that help narrow things down for the undecided student, and I didn't bother to take advantage of that service when I was actually in school. Better late than never, right?

Anyway, I'm writing about this all just to make myself accountable. I'm finally setting some career-related goals that I'm excited about, and I'm trying to do everything I can to follow through. I'll probably write more about what I'm doing down the line, but for now, please share your own stories and career-related advice. I'm looking for inspiration :)

Am I old enough to stop having them?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 19:44:00 +0000

Tommorow is my 28th birthday. I know you probably won't believe me when I say this, but I honestly kept forgetting that my birthday was on deck until two days or so, and even then I haven't given it a whole lot of thought.

I told the Modern Love Machine that I really wasn't feeling my birthday, and he said that was sad. Except that I've never been one to care a whole lot about my birthday.** I tried making a big to-do about it last year, figuring it had been an up-and-down year and I need to celebrate myself, but it just felt weird and awkward to me when it was all said and done.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the cards and Facebook messages. It's nice to be thought of, but I don't want anyone to go out of their way for a day that I really had nothing to do with. Credit the Modern Parents with that one. I didn't even decide to be born -- the docs had to C-section me out.

The MLM offered to cook me a really nice dinner or take me out to wherever I wanted. After a few days of forgetting to think about it, I eventually decided I just wanted pizza -- crispy thin crust pizza like the type that my favorite pizza place of all time serves. And strawberry cake from my favorite bakery.

This year I seem to care less than ever. When the Modern Mom asked me what I wanted for my birthday, I struggled to come up with something. I almost always have ideas for what to ask my parents for. I guess all I really want is for my house to be fully furnished and decorated in a way that I like, all the yet-unpacked boxes of stuff gone, the yard weed-eated and landscaped, the MLM and I to agree on paint colors and more time to enjoy it all.

And world peace.

Seriously on the world peace bit, though.

**The lone exception being my 21st birthday, naturally. Currer Bell and I had a party of epic proportions that still gets mentioned from time to time, thanks to Noodles and Modern Angie. We're talking all-day, moonwalk, drunkenly created homemade slip'n'slide epic.

Kroger fail

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 17:47:00 +0000

The Modern Love Machine, who, as a teacher is off work for the summer, has done most of our grocery shopping and cooking since we moved into the new house, God bless him.

While at work today, I received this text from him:

Look how much I can save! ...

This post ends with gay square dancers

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 02:58:00 +0000

So Auntie mentioned she was going on a road trip soon with her boyfriend and was worried about the trip possibly ending in killing one another, likely over what was being played on the radio. Fortunately, the Modern Love Machine and I didn't have too much trouble agreeing with what to fill the air waves during our countless hours on the road.

The MLM is a huge World Cup soccer fan and has helped me get a bit more into the sport this year, and two segments of our drive coincided with two of the US matches -- the match versus Algeria and the match versus Ghana -- of which ESPN Radio graciously provided us coverage during the drive. I know it's been a few weeks, but you may still remember the meeting with Algeria. The match was tied at nil until the 91th minute when Landon Donovan knocked the rebound off a missed shot into the net and all his teammates piled on top of him at the corner of the pitch? I made the mistake of letting the MLM drive during the match and he nearly wrecked the car for screaming his head off when Donovan scored and then proceeded to honk the horn a few times.

While in Florida, we spent part of a day at a place that had go-karts, mini golf and an arcade because the beach was so seaweedy. We won this little guy playing skeeball, named him Donovan Duck and placed him on the dashboard. He was the mascot for our drive.

Unfortunately, Donovan Duck was no good luck charm as the Yanks followed up that dramatic win with a 2-1 loss to Ghana. The MLM was driving again during that match, and though he didn't nearly wreck this time he did end up moping for many miles.

What we really love to fill the dead space in the car are podcasts of Wait, Wait ... Don't Tell Me, NPR's weekly comedic news quiz (the podcasts are free on iTunes and worth every penny). We always listen to the show if we're in the car when it's broadcast on Saturdays, but I started downloading the podcast replays about seven months ago to get me through some really long drives back and forth across the state of Tennessee. We probably listened to a half-dozen of backlogged podcasts in a row during one particularly long stretch of driving.

When we got to Chicago, we were thumbing through a guidebook that Noodles had left for us at her condo (she graciously let us stay there while she was out gallivanting around Hawaii) and my fingers somehow turned right to the page that mentioned you could observe a taping of Wait, Wait ... Don't Tell Me at the Chase Auditorium in downtown Chicago (which if you listen to the show you already knew) on Thursday nights. 'Wait, wait!' I said. 'Tomorrow is Thursday!' I never realized what day they actually taped, I just presumed it was Friday or early Saturday morning before the show aired.

Thursday afternoon we scouted out the Chase Auditorium a few hours in advance, just to see if POSSIBLY there were any tickets left. We ran into house manager Don Hall, who told us of the waiting list to get in if anyone with tickets didn't show (since the show sells out about 45 minutes after tickets go on sale each and every week). We were a little early to get on the waiting list, so we waited. It was a Wait, Wait wait wait, if you will. We ended up being numbers three and four on the list. We waited some more. We watched about 400-some-odd ticket-holding fans cram in the lobby for general admission seating. Then came the time to see who off the waiting list would make it in. Let's just say it's a good thing we weren't any farther down the list than third and fourth.

So we made it in. And we found (separate) seats in the third and fourth rows! Which looks like this:

And this:

No, no Mo Rocca or Roxanne Roberts or Tom Bodett. We did have Paula Poundstone, P.J. O'Rourke and Julia Sweeney, who were pretty funny although not terribly informed on the week's news. All I can say is it's worth the $22 a ticket or couple of hours of waiting for the Wait Wait wait list if you're in Chicago on a Thursday night. It's waaaaaaaay raunchier and far funnier. Your sides will hurt after laughing for two straight hours. You can get autographs of everyone on stage, or if that isn't your cup of tea, you can have a conversation with Julia Sweeney (she of SNL fame) about peeing in wedding dresses. Yeah, I did that.

They tape two hours' worth of audio for a 50-minute show, which means A LOT got cut. Paula sometimes doesn't make much sense during the broadcasts, but she's much funnier when you get to hear her ramble. We were there for the July 3 broadcast. If you listen to the podcast you won't hear the jokes about how Tang cause erectile dysfunction or anything about the troupe of gay square dancers who happened to be in the audience.

Gay square dancing troupe. And Carl Kasell.

I chatted with a few members of the troupe while we were in line for autographs and photos with Carl. They have clubs around the world and an international association and they take fun field trips outside of practicing their hobby of dance. Clearly they're my kind of people.

At the home again, with apologies to Willie Nelson

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 15:24:00 +0000

I wish I had kept stats on our beach-to-Midwest road trip just to quantify how ridiculous of a plan it was, but I didn't so I'll now estimate a few stats for you ...

14 days
10 states (three of them we crossed through twice) ***
3,000 miles of driving
4 MLB games and stadiums
12ish fast food stops
2 soccer games listened to on the radio
7ish podcasts listened to in the car
1 taping of an NPR show
2 Stieg Larsson books devoured by the MLM (you know, The Girl Who ... books)
1 stop at Ikea
1 million calories of junk food and beer ... well, maybe 2 million

Did I enjoy it? A million times yes. Was I glad we went? Absolutely. Will I ever do it again? Hell effin no.

Oh, I'll do road trips again. I love road trips because they allow me to see new places, new things, new landscapes. I like stopping at landmarks and national parks and scenic overlooks and such. Herein lies the problem. Have you ever roadtripped through the Midwest? I would say boring as hell, but hell is probably a hella lot more interesting than driving through the rural Midwest. Sure, the rural Midwest is beautiful in its own flat sort of way for the first 100 miles or so. Then it just gets old and painful to drive through. If we're going to be driving 3,000 miles, I need the scenery to change more frequently or at least give me some cows to look at.

I will give the Midwest credit for something, it's an expert when it comes to cities. I've loved Chicago since I first step foot in it. I love St. Louis. I discovered on this trip that I love Milwaukee and that Columbus, Ohio, is way more tolerable than I would have expected. Fortunately, those cities made the hundreds of cornfields and wind turbines worth it.

The Modern Love Machine and I neither killed each other nor eloped on the trip. We managed our time together wisely and still enjoyed each other's company by the time we were headed for Knoxville (or at least, that's how I feel ... I guess I could have him do a post sharing his own feelings).

Still, we were gladish to get home. I say gladish because as wonderful as sleeping in my own bed and sitting on my own couch may sound after two weeks on the road, the air conditioning fairies did not come to fix our AC while we were gone, dang it! Which made Monday night a very restless and unpleasant night. Oh, and the couch I ordered almost 10 weeks ago from a local furniture store still hasn't been delivered, so no couch to sit on.

But now, we at least have cool air in the house again and we're mostly unpacked and the fridge has been restocked and the laundry is almost done. The moving fairies also neglected to show up while we were gone to unpack what was remaining from last month's move, and I'm trying to find the number for the painting fairies, but I'll have a little more free time for the next six weeks or so. I have more stories and some photos to share from the trip, which I promise, promise, promise I will do in a few posts this week. I still have many posts which must be shared with you.

In the mean time, tell me what I've missed! I'm trying to get caught up on my blogreader, but if you have big news or an interesting post that needs to be read five minutes ago, please let me know.

***I passed through the cities and states where many of you live, and I missed getting to see you. For that I am sorry. We were on a super-tight schedule and ended up seeing only the people we stayed with along the way because that's how the dice fell. My next trips to your fair city/state will be more leisurely and I will do a better job of getting to see you, my friends.

The best day of Adrien Brody's life

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 10:02:00 +0000

I will now take a break from personal posts to present the following to amuse you on a Monday morning. The two are not related, save their inherent weirdness.

And now this:

Beechy keen

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 21:26:00 +0000

After having some very last-minute work done on the Modernmobile and despite the air conditioning at the new place not getting fixed (did I mention the air conditioning stopped functioning properly on the first day of summer, about the time that the temperatures in Knoxville reached the upper 90s? Yeah, that happened), the Modern Love Machine and I departed on Tuesday for our two week-long road trip.

The first day was spent on a really obnoxious drive between Knoxville and Nashville thanks to some really obnoxious traffic (note to the general public: in Tennessee, if you're driving slower than the people around you, you should be in the right lane. kthanxbai). We stopped briefly in Nashville for a rendezvous with the Modern Parents and to-be Modern Mom in Law over chicken fingers and to distribute the Modern Pooches between the MPs and the MMIL. According to their reports in the past few days, the Modern Pooches seem to be suffering from separation anxiety, poor things.

Then we were off to Destin, Fla, for a wedding on the shore of the Gulf of Mexico, which you may or may not have heard is having it's own sort of life crisis at the moment. The oil slicks have reached Pensacola Beach, which is about 50 miles west of Destin. Everyone here is talking about the oil ~~spill~~ leak. You can even buy T-shirts at the local Walgreens decrying offshore drilling and such. I personally have not seen any tar balls, though my dear friend the groom says he saw a few outside the condo where he's staying. This is the scene on the beach where the MLM and I set up shop yesterday**:

That would be seaweed, I think, and a thick carpet of it to boot. Fortunately, that's the worst it looks -- there are parts of the beach that are significantly clearer, but the water does still have quite a bit in it. The black spots in that photo are not oil, just footprints to give you an idea of how deep that crud is. I'm not a fan of getting in the ocean unless it's pristinely clear and calm, but the MLM coaxed me in anyway to the tune of, 'Come on baby, I want to get into the ocean with YOU.' It lasted all of about two minutes until a cresting wave knocked me on my butt and I ingested a huge noseful of salt water, which is precisely why I stick to the refuge of the sand in the first place.

We spent the day today at a amusementish park that my family and I used to visit during my childhood trips to Destin playing Putt-Putt and riding go-karts. I'm pretty sure I haven't driven a go-kart since before I became licensed to drive a car, but I'm happy to report that they're still as fun as they were then. And I'm good at leaving the MLM in the dust when I drive. But he's pretty good at beating me at mini-golf.

The food has been pretty darn good though.

Tonight we attend the wedding of a dear college friend of mine, one of the first people aside from the BFF and my suitemate who befriended me as a freshman and who, as someone who was two years older than me and had a car when I did not, provided me needed refuge away from campus from time to time. And went to sporting events with me, which will endear you to me for life.

Speaking of sporting events and being endeared to for life, that's how the MLM and I will be spending much of the rest of this trip. We'll be taking in Major League Baseball games in the following cities: Cincinnati, Milwaukee, Chicago and St. Louis, which will include combinations of the following teams: Cincinnati, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Houston, Chicago (cough, spew) Cubs, Pittsburgh, St. (woooo!) Louis. In case you're keeping score, that covers the entire NL Central, and therefore the only MLB division I really care about. And in case you're wondering, the MLM is an Astros fan, having lived part of his formative years in Houston. I'll forgive him for that, so long as he's not a fan of that most hated and self-righteous team.

It's going to take us a whole lotta hours in the Modernmobile to get us from one ballpark to the other, which means one of two things will likely happen by the end of our trip. 1. The MLM and I will hate each other. 2. We will elope. I'm entertaining bets on either.

**All photos taken on the iPhone as I forgot to bring the cord that connects my camera to the computer.

In which you are the therapist

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 17:41:00 +0000

I have a whole list of posts I've been dying to write but haven't written out of sheer exhaustion -- more about the movecation/moving in with The Modern Love Machine, some weird videos and a post about NY that's about four months overdue. The MLM and I are about to go on a long road trip, so I may try to type those up while he's driving through the cornfields of the midwest.

But in the mean time, I have this to say: 2010 has kicked my ass, and I am exhausted. And not in the I-woke-up-a-little-too-early sense. More in the I-haven't-slept-in-about-six-months sense. Except that I have slept, and I'm still ass-tired.

This is not a complaint. Nor is it me being in a cranky or depressed mood. I'm actually quite happy right now, despite having a bag of garbage explode on me this morning. A bag that contained wet papers that had been soaking in old mayo and chicken juices that had been cooking outside in 90-degree heat for about four days. It was as disgusting as you're imagining, and probably more so. Nope, I've had a good week at work in which good means I've enjoyed it for the the first time in months and months and which has translated into being productive. It's Friday. I'm staring down the face of a two-week vacation that includes a Florida beach (allegedly) not yet tainted by oil sludge, the witnessing of the marriage of one of the first people who befriended me in college (and holds a special place in my heart for that reason), four Major League Baseball games, my first Fourth of July home in years and a visit with the first person who befriended me in Nashville (who also holds a special place in my heart for that reason). Also, I'm drinking a Diet Coke. Plenty to be happy about.

Nope, this is me just admitting that I'm tired. And my ass has been sufficiently trounced.

The ass-kicking actually predates 2010. December was crazy, although because there's been so much crazy I don't even remember why. This probably had something to do with it. I think it actually goes back to November, when the company took away my officemate and therefore my daily therapy sessions (when I was in the office, that is). Work has been at least 50% of the force behind the ass-kicking, and officemate used to help lessen the blows by saying, 'Don't worry about that,' as in 'Don't worry about doing that small thing that is clearly your responsibility. You've got more on your plate than is humanly possible, so I'll take care of that small thing and let you focus on the big stuff.' I do occasionally hear that now, but mainly from one person who never offers the 'Don't worry about that help' for free -- it always comes with payback, and just like the Modern Mom always warned: payback is a bitch.

Like I said, this is not a complaint. Many of the things that have contributed to the ass-kicking have been very good, happy things. I got paid to live and work (and really, it didn't feel like work) in NYC for over a week. I bought a house. The MLM and I became engaged. We're (kinda, sorta, when we're not otherwise busy) planning a fun wedding that very much reflects our spirit. We finally moved into the aforementioned house. These are very good things. And I would quite prefer to be exhaustingly busy to the flip side of the coin. I know there are people in this world who find their lives incredibly boring. I am not and never want to be among them.

But it is a fact: I am exhausted. For over six months, there have been clear sources for the exhaustion -- much of it mental. I've come close to having a few breakdowns because of the mental exhaustion, though fortunately that bit seems to be behind me now that a few life events are behind me.

Still, there's a physical exhaustion that remains. I've been spending the recommended 7 to 8 hours in bed each night for the past two weeks, and I have yet to feel rested. I think part of that is sleeping in a new place, but usually that weirdness usually only lasts for two or three days at most for me. I hardly ever sleep all the way through the night anymore, and I've been waking up early every day on my own accord. If you know me, you know this is not like me. If left to my own devices, I can typically sleep until about 10 a.m. every day. I've struggled with insomnia before, and this isn't it, or at least it isn't the kind of insomnia I've had in the past. That insomnia wouldn't ever let me fall asleep in the first place.

Pause for happy photo** to break up the heavy.

I've got only two things staring me down in the next 12 months: 1. A wedding that's only about 50% planned (Oh, hey, did I mention exactly 365 days from today I will be wearing a white dress and committing the rest of my life to the MLM? Weird ...) and 2. When my busy season cranks back up at work in August and remains that way until Marchish. This is all per the obligatory knock on wood that hopefully will insure there are no surprise Nos. 3-20 that get added to that list anytime soon.

So with only a blessed two ... TWO! ... stress-impacting events staring me down, I plan on forcefully slowing down my life a bit, come hell or high water. Did you hear that, Universe? I know when I say things like this I tempt you to dump more on me, and you always give in to that temptation. I will cut a bitch, Universe, if you do this time (knock on wood). If I decline your social invitation, please don't take it personally. In fact, if I drop off the face of the planet for a month and half, please think nothing of it. My body needs to be cared for to make up for the lack of care in the past six-plus months.

Also, if you notice more long, rambly therapy-session-like posts here, don't think much of that either. Just bill my bosses for your services.

**And so help me, Universe, if the Gulf isn't that pristine when we visit it next week, I will personally smite BP and all its minions.

And half of half is ...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 20:52:00 +0000

Well, Movecation 2010 is over, and I deem it a success for the most part. Success in that I got all my crap moved in by yesterday and technically I'm supposed to be out of the old place by today, although my roommate is taking an extra day to move, so technically I was out EARLY. Early is not generally a part of my vocabulary.

A success, despite the fact I have bruises and cuts all over my body from playing one half of the Modern Moving team that consisted of myself, the Modern Love Machine and a U-Haul. I'm surprised the gals working at the bridal gown salons the Modern Mom and I visited this week** didn't report the MLM to the police for beating me.

Speaking of the MLM, I've already learned so much about him by both spending a week moving things with him and actually sharing a house with him. I'll share all those lessons in another post.

The only reason I'd hesitate to dub Movecation a complete success is because despite having far more square feet of my own than I've ever had before and despite the MLM not having much stuff to contribute to our collective collection of stuff, there's one thing I can't seem to find enough room for: my clothes.

Boy howdy, does this house have space, but because it's 100 years old it has no closets in the bedrooms. The townhouse I lived in over a year ago had a closet so big you could have fit a twin-sized bed in and still had room for clothes. Sure, there's something that resembles a closet in the master bedroom. It has a door. And a pole running across the middle. But it can only seem to fit about a week's worth of clothes in there. There's one more of those wannabe closets in the study and nothing but the armoire I obtained for free from Modern Jay's fiancee in the guest bedroom.

I bought this house knowing this would be a problem and seeing a fairly simple way to expand this wannabe closet into something a bit more useful, but in the mean time I have to put those clothes somewhere and it drives me CRAZY that they're out in the open. Sure, I could put them in a box and under a bed or on a rack and cover them with a sheet, but in my mind there is only one place for clothes, and that's in a closet. So I spent yesterday cutting my wardrobe IN HALF. Which is something I did last year when I downsized from the townhouse closet to the smaller closet in the house I'm currently moving out of. So we're getting down to the nitty-gritty of wardrobe selection for a gal who loves to clothes shop.

I managed to talk myself into getting rid of quite a few items that I'd been hanging onto just in case I ever got shuffled back into a fancy, schmoozy, office job like the one I left behind when I moved to Knoxville three (holy crap) years ago. I'm coming to terms with the fact that I'll probably go work at Starbucks before I ever find myself back in the type of job where I can't wear jeans to work.

But still, there are a few straggling clothing items that I can't bear to part with but don't quite fit into the current closet situation. I'll spend some more time tonight trying to talk myself out of keeping a few more items before they end up on a clothes rack in the guest room. The MLM is currently occupying the pretend closet in the study.

I mentioned this on Twitter, but the Hypercolor shirt totally made it into my closet in the first cut.

**Yes, we did some wedding dress shopping. I thought I would find nothing at those stores that suited me because we all know the wedding industry caters to 22-year-old sorority girls, but lo and behold I found FIVE dresses that I would have been thrilled to wear. I eliminated two pretty quickly because of their ridiculous prices and a third because it didn't seem to fit the style of our wedding. Choosing between the last two feels as if someone has told me that I could either choose to eat pizza every day for the rest of my life or never eat pizza again. I mean, even I'd get tired of pizza but NEVER EAT PIZZA AGAIN? How could I survive?

Movecation 2010

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 13:01:00 +0000

You guys, it's June 7. Do you know what that means?? That means I survived six weekends of being on the road. It means I survived a weeklong work assignment away from home (and one that involved an average 10 hours of day of work OUTSIDE in the South in June). Most importantly it means that I'm on vacation and finally in possession of my new house.

Those last two things are directly related.

Yep, today kicks off Day 1 of Movecation 2010. Before this year it would have been unheard of me to take an entire week off and not leave the area code. Why waste a perfectly good week of vacation on staying at home? Sure a day or two of staycation can be great, but I've got places to see!

Now I'm just so freakin' thrilled to be off work for a significant amount of time for the first time since December that I don't care.

The Modern Love Machine and I are going to pick up the U-Haul in about an hour, and we'll spend the rest of the day moving furniture into the new place. Once that's done, we'll start moving all the little stuff that I have not bothered to box up. Who needs boxes when you're moving less than a mile away, right? Right? Ok, really the plan is to just throw things into Rubbermade containers and unpack them immediately. I've done it before, and it worked beautifully.

On Wednesday evening, the Modern Mom arrives. I asked her to join me this week, knowing she's the best at kicking my life back into order when it needs it the most. On Friday and maybe Saturday morning while the MLM takes some super-important teacher exam, the MM and I will go wedding dress shopping. Yee haw.

So that's the update on what's going on in my little corner of the world. Posting might or might'nt be light this week -- depends on how easy or difficult this move turns out to be.

In the meantime, make sure you've pre-ordered Allie's new book, Stay! I just got my copy in the mail, and I am dying, DYING, to start reading. Once I'm done, we'll have a little virtual book club meeting here to discuss.

And I feel like I need to leave you with some form of entertainment. The MLM and I have been getting caught up on Glee, and we just finished the episodes Throwdown and Mashup, both of which were very, very good (I mean, hello, Neil Diamond shout out!)

Anyway, this is quite old, but in honor of Mr. Schuester's search for a good mashup, here's one of my all-time favorites:

Who's going to see SATC2?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 27 May 2010 17:08:00 +0000

Um, not me. I know, I'm probably letting some of you down. But I just can't do it.

I've said this before here, but I wanted the writers to leave the ending with the TV series and not screw up Big's coming around with a movie, especially one where he leaves her at the altar (briefly). Yet, in the name of loyalty I went to see the first movie on opening night and found it mediocre at best.

No more.

I've watched the previews and read every plot summary and review that my eyes have come across in the past week, and all I can say is I'm embarrassed for the Sex and the City franchise.

The TV series was groundbreaking in the way it portrayed single 30-something women. It was smart and thought-provoking and managed to survive the groan-worthy puns Carrie occasionally unleashed and the unreality of a designer shoe-obssessed newspaper columnist (and not one for any of the big three NYC papers) being able to financially survive. It was smart enough that I know plenty of dudes who got into watching the occasional episode, even if they were slow to admit it.

SATC2 appears to take the worst of the TV series -- the unrealities and the puns -- and plays them up while forgetting what made the series so good. I loved how the characters in the series were able to grow through the changes in their lives without the show losing its edge. Now it just seems the characters have had plenty of changes in their lives but no growth. And in this day and age, they're neither breaking any new ground nor representative of how the world/economy has changed in the past few years. And BTW, Stanford and Anthony are such polar opposites and hated each other so much in the series I'm not sure there's anything this movie can do to convince me they'd be getting married now.

'But it's like visiting old friends,' someone said on my Facebook wall when I declared I was skipping SATC2. I have six seasons of DVDs if I need to visit old friends. The disc with 'The Agony and the Ex-tacy' episode is ready to go in my DVD player for whenever I need a dose of SATC.

Maybe I'm overanalyzing here, but I just can't bring myself to spend the $10 (or however much the going rate is these days) to see what I know will disappoint me. I know I'm probably in the minority here of SATC fans, and I won't judge you if you do decide to go see the movie. In fact, if you do, report back here and tell me if I'm totally off base. But, if you're on the fence post, I'd encourage you to skip the movie too. Because the last thing we need is Michael Patrick King mulling a THIRD Sex and the City movie.

And in the mean time, here's a slightly unfair but also kind of funny mockery of SATC2 done in 60 seconds ...

Be in the moment

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 21 May 2010 14:16:00 +0000

Last night the Modern Love Machine picked me up for us to head to a local track to run and noticed one of my car's tires was flat. That nail was the straw that almost broke the camel's back.

I've been super stressed out lately, and in a way that's completely of my own doing. I'm in my slow period at work, where my work pace slows down to about 0.1 mile per hour after being 1,000 miles an hour for about nine months straight. I have a lot more free time in which to let my mind wander. And when it wanders, it stresses about things that would never bother me when I'm working 1,000 mph. I stress that I'm not working hard enough. I stress that I don't know what I'm doing in trying to plan a wedding. I stress that it will be months before I feel settled into my new house. I stress about the fact that I can't even move into my house the first week that it's in my possession because I have to go on a stupid work trip. I stress about gaining some of my weight back and struggling to lose it. I stress about the fact that I've been out of town for the past three weekends straight, and I've got three more weekends of being out of town before I get to see my city on a Saturday. I stress about the fact that I'm not even going to be in town for the MLM's birthday and I don't even have a birthday card for him yet.

Most of these worries are not legit at all, they're all a figment of my own brain. Still, I saw that flat tire and thought, 'When the F am I going to take care of this???'

Since then I've cried a few tears, run a couple of miles, declared I was going to hire a wedding planner (which may or may not actually happen), slept, had a doughnut (yeah, that won't help the gaining weight stress) and drank some coffee.

I also got to spend five minutes seeing and talking to one of my best Knoxville friends, whom I haven't seen since before my weekends became consumed with travel. It was only five minutes, but it helped me feel so much better.

And I remembered something Noodles told me right after the MLM and I got engaged: Be in the moment, especially when it's hard to be. It's kind of a vague concept, but this is exactly what she was talking about.

So I'm taking a deep breath right now and am just being. I'm callling it mental yoga. Things will take care of themselves -- I mean with some effort on my part -- but there's nothing to worry about.

Happy Friday :)

To dream the American Dream

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 18 May 2010 19:49:00 +0000

In the past couple of months I've managed to all but moved in with the Modern Love Machine in his teeny one-bedroom apartment. Except all my stuff is at the house where I pay rent. If you've been following my blog for a very long time, you might know this has happened to me before (but on a slightly more long-distance basis) and that having my life in one spot and my stuff in another makes a homebody like myself absolutely insane.

Adding insult to injury is the fact that I OWN MY OWN HOUSE BUT HAVEN'T BEEN ABLE TO MOVE IN FOR THE PAST MONTH AND A HALF AND STILL HAVE TWO MORE WEEKS TO GO BEFORE I CAN. Sorry for the all caps, I just can't do the frustration of that situation justice without them. Really it's going to be more like three weeks before I can move in because I'm having to hit the road for a work assignment that I very much wanted no part of in the first place.

I started hanging out at the MLM's place daily when Lucydog and the roommate's cat started getting snippier with each other and we moved her in with the MLM and the Pennypup. That means the four of us spend all our free time at his apartment instead of spending any of it at the house where I pay rent.

Then the oven at the house where I pay rent stopped working (in the kitchen where there was once an indoor waterfall), so I basically gave up eating at the house where I pay rent. I just started grocery shopping with the MLM and leaving all my groceries at his place. That hasn't been a problem except I can't seem to make myself cook in anyone else's kitchen besides my own. I have to know where things are. I have to know what's on hand. I have to know how that saucepan with the warped bottom is going to perform over medium-high heat.

This isn't a gripe about hanging out with the MLM or his apartment (although the drive to and fro is a little longer than I care for). I love him so dearly and love spending the time with him and am forever grateful for him taking Lucydog and essentially me in (not to mention it's been good practice for the "as long as we both shall live" bit we're going to get ourselves into in exactly 13 months).

This is just me needing all of my stuff and my dog and my life in one place for my own sanity. And needing to be closer to work. And my clothes. And the YMCA. And a TV with cable. And a kitchen that has all my cookware and cookbooks. And an oven that works.

RIP, Single Ladies

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 12 May 2010 19:17:00 +0000

I am now officially declaring the Single Ladies fad dead and deceased because of the super skeevy video I've posted below of some 7-year-old dancers slutting it up to our favorite Beyonce song. Single Ladies has had a great life, with a heelarious spoof by Justin Timberlake and a shout out from President Obama when he demonstrated his own hand-flipping ability, but now it's time to bid it farewell (and I do so with great sadness) because it's just gone too far.

BTW, the Modern Love Machine and I have finally gotten around to digesting the first season of Glee (and it is delightful), and I finally saw the episode that involved a whole lotta Single Ladies, and it was spectacular. I mean, it blended my love of Beyonce and football. What more can I ask for?

And now, prepare to feel icky:

I'm not accepting nominations for the next Single Ladies fad. Until then, here's Beyonce's latest. It ain't bad (and it's sure a hell of a lot better than that Telephone song with Gaga, which I really wanted to like.)

"Why Don't You Love Me" - Beyoncé from Beyoncé on Vimeo.

And now for a word from the Modern Love Machine

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 12 May 2010 00:39:00 +0000

The Modern Love Machine asked one day if he was allowed to blog here at The Modern Gal, and I said, 'Of course! I'd be thrilled if you wrote regularly at the MG.' And then he claimed he had no idea what to blog about. Sheesh. Amateurs.

So instead of come up with his own idea, he asked his students to submit a list of interview questions to him, and he has graciously answered them here so you can all get a chance to know him better. Keep in mind he teaches Algebra and Geometry at an inner-city school, so, yeah.

Here we go ...

Q. Why no changy my sucker?
A: Because you don't know how to spell change.

Q. If you could travel the world were would you go or visit?
A: There are so many places that I would head off to that I'm not sure where I would start. Spain, New Zealand, Japan, Italy, Germany, Vatican City.

Q. Have you ever...been skydiving?
A. No. I'd like to say that it would be a blast, and I would love to do it. I have a feeling though that once I was up there it would be hard for me to jump out of the plane.

Q. Who's your favorite Marvel hero or villain?
A. I don't read comic books anymore, but when I was a kid I read a lot of Spiderman and really enjoyed it b/c he was a nerd before he became Spiderman. I always hoped that I would get bitten by a radioactive spider and get those powers too. It didn't happen.

Q. Why do you teach at XXXXX High School?
A. In reality they are the first ones who offered me a job. Now it's b/c I love teaching here.

Q. Have your got drunk at a party?
A. I assume you mean have I ever gotten drunk at a party. The answer to that question is yes.

Q. Why are you bald?
A. Technically I'm not bald, I have a receding hair line. So I'm in the process of going bald. To answer your question though I would assume it's genetics. Also the Modern Gal loves my hair, or lack there of. (Editor's note: True story)

Q. What kind of music do you listen to?
A. I really enjoy rock, pop, 80's, 90's alternative, 90-2000's rap, old school country, and various other musical stylings. I've really been into Ok Go, Them Crooked Vultures, and The Beatles of late.

Q. Why is the ACT so friggin hard?
A. If it was easy then everyone would be able to go to Harvard and they probably wouldn't like that.

Q. How old was you when you first got drunk?
A. I believe I was a freshman in college, so 18.

Q. Do you party?
A. All the time. My life is one big party.

Q. What inspired you to become a teacher?
A. My parents told me that I had 4 years to graduate from college and then they were going to stop paying for it. I picked something I was good at (Math) and kind of wanted to do (teach). That plus I had an amazing high school calculus teacher by the name of Mr. Stelmaszak. That guy could teach math to a stick.

Q. Was you bald in high school?
A. No I were not.

Q. What's your name?
A. Bill Liverwurst

Q. What is the meaning of life?
A. I'm not really sure.

Q. Did you party in high school?
A. I did not party a single bit. I was a huge nerd in high school and was often found in my garage with my other nerdy friends playing nerd games.

Q. What does parabola mean?
A. The curve formed by the set of points in a plane that are all equally distant from both a given line (called the directrix) and a given point (called the focus) that is not on the line.

Q. I heard freshman year that you were an atheist is it true, just curious?
A. No that is not true. I haven't picked a major yet and am still pursuing my options.

Q. Next time you get candy can you get chocolate?
A. I can, although I do believe I went out and bought dum-dum suckers instead. Chocolate is expensive and I don't make that much.

Q. Can you get me a soda from the teachers machine? I'm really thirsty!
A. No. I'm mean like that.

Q. Who's your favorite musical artist?
A. Of all time I would have to say Queen. Right now though Ok Go rocks my socks off.

Q. Are you a morning pooper?
A. I'm a pooper. Like most guys I enjoy my poops and don't like to rush them if I need to, which can often happen in the morning. However sometimes you just go to go.

Q. If you were a fruit what would you be?
A. A lime b/c I would go great with a G&T or tequila.

Q. Have you ever fight at any school?
A. I used to get beat up all the time in middle school. I haven't been in a fight since then.

Q. Are you two faces with student?
A. I generally try to treat everyone the same, but I will admit if you're an asshole to me on a regular basis I probably won't treat you the same as everyone else.

Q. What's one thing you want to do before you die?
A. I really want to see one of those billboards that shows you what the Powerball jackpot is change numbers. Not sure why, but I think that would be kind of cool.

Natural disasters can be funny. Except that they're not.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 06 May 2010 00:11:00 +0000

Oh my goodness, modern friends, I am emotionally tapped out. So many major things have been going on -- both good and bad -- that to say I've been stressed out lately is kind of an understatement. Who knew that buying a house, preparing to move, getting engaged, working a stressful job and watching a natural disaster engulf your former hometown would be taxing on the emotions?

Yeah, on that last little bit about the natural disaster engulfing my former hometown ... Nashville is underwater. Or at least, it was underwater for about four days. Fortunately the waters are starting to subside. The Modern Love Machine and I made a trip there this weekend to catch a Jimmy Buffett concert with my family (don't knock it 'til you try it ... with beer or tequila, preferably) and give our respective families time to hang and bond and become one.

The hanging and bonding and becoming one didn't really happen. It started to rain late Friday night. And it did.not.stop. Imagine the hardest rain you've ever been through. And then imagine that going on for two and half days. I've experienced a hurricane in Florida, and this was very much the same without the gale-force winds. By Sunday night, Nashville had received 13 inches of rain. Let me put that into context for you. It was twice the amount of the previous record for a two-day rainfall. It was over 25 percent of the city's annual rainfall, and Nashville isn't exactly a dry climate.

The city also has a fairly large river running through it -- the Cumberland River, a tributary of the slightly better known Tennessee River. The Cumberland crested 12 feet over flood stage, swamping the honky tonk district, the Grand Ole Opry, Opryland, parts of the Tennessee Titans' LP Field and the downtown hockey arena. It also has countless smaller rivers and creeks that surround it, and those rivers and creeks have taken out thousands of homes. I think the death toll is up to about 24.

Need visuals? Look at these photos. Or watch this classroom (yes, classroom), float down Interstate 24 (yes, an Interstate)

.
It's been a little depressing to watch.

But, as with most situations there's been some humor. There's a gigantic mall that's essentially underwater. There was a restaurant there called the Aquarium Restaurant, where one would dine among gigantic fish tanks filled with exotic saltwater fish. Those fish, sadly, drowned in the fresh waters of the overrun Cumberland River. Except for one kind of fish which CAN survive in fresh water -- the piranhas. Who are now swimming around the mall's concourses.

Or this:

We barely made out of town on Sunday afternoon because all the interstates but one were closed. I'm guessing my old townhouse sustained some damage because of its proximity to one of the flooded creeks. I still have plenty of friends (and the Modern Inlaws) in Nashville. Most of them were spared, but they're all hurting. If you can find it in your hearts to donate a little money for the flood relief (because trust me, this city needs it -- this was a once-every-500-years kind of thing), here and here are two suggestions of where to do so.

Rain delay theater

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 02:08:00 +0000

It has rained A LOT in the past two days, so I feel like today is an appropriate day to share this video, which the Modern Love Machine shared with me. It combines my love of my favorite sport (baseball) with ridiculously choreographed things. There is some choreographed dancing, but my favorites are the roller coaster and the Shake Weight.

dance off
Uploaded by freestylerama. - Watch the latest news videos.

I have an anger problem

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 14:44:00 +0000

So we've been trying to make wedding plans these past few days, and let me go ahead and say I have yet to find the fun in wedding planning. I'm sure I'll enjoy it more when I'm shopping for dresses and thinking of reception decor, but finding venues and getting a date nailed down is maddening.

Couple that with some really crappy drivers I encountered this morning, and Monday did not start well.

And then I saw this. And it made me spit out my coffee. (Please for the love of all things modern, go check out that link. It is so worth the five seconds of your time that it will take.)

Also, this is really adorable too.

Happy Monday, Modern Friends.

P.S. The Tumblr wedding blog thing turned out to be less than ideal, so the Modern Love Machine and I started an actual blog under -- wait for it -- OUR REAL NAMES (GASP!!!). If you want to keep up with it, e-mail me at themoderngal(at)gmail(dot)com for the URL. I shall not be linking to it from here as I've managed to keep my real identity separate from this blog for two and a half years, and I don't intend to blow it now.

I fall in love whenever we meet

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 01:21:00 +0000

Holy crap, you guys. I knew there was lots of excitement to be had when you get engaged, but my goodness, I can't keep up with the outpouring of excitement in person, on the phone, on Facebook and here at the ol' MG blog. Thank you, thank you, thank you for all your kind wishes. I cannot begin to express how much it means to me and the Modern Love Machine.

So only one person got the "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum" reference? Shame, you should all go rent that movie (or see a production of it). It is slapsticktastically hilarious.

Sorry about the whole bait-and-switch approach to the last post. I just really wanted it to be a surprise. The MLM and I had discussed the whole idea of marriage a little while back, so I knew an engagement was coming, I just didn't know when. And believe me when I say IT WAS KILLING ME NOT TO TELL YOU GUYS. I have been in agony over what to write in the past couple of weeks, because all I wanted to do was share the news. But I also didn't want to get ahead of myself.

So yeah, after we grabbed lunch from one of my favorite local restaurants and got some treats at the local farmers market (complete with running into some friends of ours), we took the Modern Pooches to a very beautiful local park where anyone who either runs or has a dog or runs with a dog goes. It's very scenic, right on the river and somewhere where the MLM and I went for like our third outing together 10ish months ago (and with our dogs). He claims he usually scares the gals away after three outings, so he knew things were good at that point.

We were strolling along the path by the river, talking about how absolutely beautiful the day was and how nice it was for the doggies to get to play outside and how successfulish the triathlon was. I had been pulled a little in front of him by the Lucydog (or I thought that was the case), when he said he knew something that would make the day even better. I thought he wanted to go buy some gelato, because gelato makes every day better. Instead I turned around to find him on one knee with a ring and a grin on his face.

So there's the real story, and I could not be more excited. The practical Modern Gal would wonder if getting engaged after 10 months of dating is too fast. I used to balk at the phrase "when it's right, you'll know," because as Whitney Houston put it best, "How will I know??"

Time out for a message from drug-free Whitney Houston.

Well, Whitney, I can honestly say that after surviving the roller coaster of relationships I've been through in the past, oh, 13 years or so, I know this one is different. And right. Every fiber of me has been happy since he's been in my life, and apparently it shows because people seem to notice. I am completely able to be myself with him -- and he loves me for just who I am -- and I'm a better person with him in my life. I used to wonder if I was even meant to be married, but I know I want to be with him for the rest of my life, so again, it's right.

And to answer all the questions that seem to be the standard when you tell people you've gotten engaged: we're aiming for June or July of next year, we'll get married in Memphis (because it's an awesomely fun city) and that's about all I know. The MLM is really, really excited about planning a wedding. Seriously. He's even got our colors picked out: green and purple, although I might have something to say about that.

I will go ahead and let you know that I likely won't be talking much about planning the wedding here. I don't want wedding planning to consume me or my blog, so I'm just going to keep the bulk of it off (unless something happens that's just so ridiculous, it's worth a good post here). But if you're interested in this sort of thing, I've rejiggered my Tumblr blog to share everything blog related, and you can find the link to it here (and it's a work in progress).

Once again, thank you friends for all the love!!

A funny thing happened on the way to the triathlon*

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 00:31:00 +0000

*Props to anyone who gets the reference in that post title.

Like a triathlon, this post requires endurance. I promise it's worth it to get to the end.

Having successfully swum, biked and run as much as I could in the past two weeks, I woke up this morning pumped to complete the triathlon I'd registered for two weeks ago. I knew it wasn't the best idea I'd ever had -- doing a triathlon on only two weeks of training -- but my primary goal was to finish. Sure, I would have loved to have beat my time from last year, but finishing seemed like the smarter priority.

Well, the first thing that went wrong was my contacts. I had gone to see my optometrist on Monday because I needed new contacts, and he talked me into trying disposable (as in wear once and then dispose) contacts because I wear them so infrequently. He gave me 10 pairs to try out, and I tried them out twice this week. Of course today was the day one decided to malfunction by rolling all the way to the top of my eye rather than staying put. As my friend Currer Bell said, I was a tricyclops.

Then, when we got to the aquatics center where the swim portion was being held, we discovered that the swim would be held in the outdoor pool, despite the fact that the informational e-mail said the indoor pool and despite the fact that the National Weather Service said it was between 44 and 49 degrees. We stood out on the outdoor pool deck in our bathing suits -- in 44- to 49-degree weather -- for 30 minutes before jumping into a pool that was probably not much warmer than the air.

I survived the swim (mainly because motion = warmer body) and got on the bike. Lovely, I love being on my bike and was very familiar with most of the course as it's one of the places I do my long training rides. Except that I hadn't really scoped out the end of the circuit (on which we did two laps). Yeah, HILL OF DEATH. DEATH!! Don't take my word for it, though. Take the gmap pedometer elevation map of the hill's word for it:

HILL OF DEATH, it ain't messin' around.

So, I did make it up the HILL OF DEATH twice thanks to help from my bike's lowest gear, which meant it was time for the run. I actually ended up running more of this bit than I expected, which is to say I was able to run down the hills and in the flat areas. But the first chunk of the course was super-hill, so I ended up walking everything that was uphill. The nice thing was the last mile or so was fairly flat, so I was able to run that. Until I was about a third of a mile away and running on a sidewalk where I caught my toe in a groove on the sidewalk (I'm nothing if not ungraceful). And I fell hard. Fortunately I fell into grass, so I didn't hurt anything but my pride, which after 400 meters of swimming, 6 miles of biking and about 2.7 miles of running was enough to have me in tears. Which is not good when you need more oxygen than you usually require to function.

I got back up and started running again, gasping for every breath and tears fogging my sunglasses. I stumbled up the last hill and across the finish line, into the arms of the Modern Love Machine, who took photographic evidence of myself in this state (I'll delete those the first chance I get.)

So yeah, I survived, despite the universe's best efforts. I haven't seen my official chip time, but the MLM has estimated it at somewhere around an hour 20 minutes, which isn't fast by any means, but it's good enough for this race.

Oh, and then a few hours later the Modern Love Machine asked me to marry him. And I said yes. (duh)**

And the contact stuck at the top of my eye popped back out after I took a shower. So yay for that too.

**Another story for another post.