Oh hooray! It's that time of year again. Time for the Insect Fear Film Festival. This year's theme? The Deadly Mantis!


I know where the Aussie and I are going to be tomorrow night!

For Valentine's Day I'm listening to The Magnetic Fields' 69 Love Songs. The Aussie introduced me to the albums last month when we were on a drive back down from Chicago and I've been fascinated with them ever since. They appeal to the part of me that loves good lyrics and the part of me that loves slightly obsessive detail about a subject. I'm especially in love with "All My Little Words," "Reno Dakota," "The Book of Love," "Abigail, Belle of Kilronan," "Time Enough for Rocking When We're Old," and "The Grand Canyon."

I hope everyone, single or coupled, has a wonderful Valentine's Day. Remember, I love you! Now go out and buy yourself a heart-shaped donut at the grocery store. You deserve it.

And remember, Valentine's Day isn't all about the killing. It's about the love.

I'm so jealous of all of you in New York and Boston who got piles and piles of snow this weekend. During the entire five years I lived in New York we never once had one of those big, shut-the-entire-city-down storms. I first visited NYC in 1996, a day or two after a giant snowstorm. Then while I lived there I got to see a few storms that left a few inches and reminded me of how gorgeous the city could be when you could walk unimpeded down the center of 7th Ave. But there was never a huge snowstorm, until, of course, the winter of 2002, 6 months after I had left the city for Champaign-Urbana. Yesterday, while the East Coast was blanketed in fluffy cold, we got a powdered sugar-style dusting, and it still made me say to the Aussie that this was the only way winter should be. Maybe it was growing up in Texas where we never got much of anything snow-wise, but to this day it makes me happy like few other things during these long winter months.

I'm not envying you today, as the shovelling and the melting and the grey slush starts, though.

In other news, I've spent the morning watching a little ongoing drama at my apartment building. When I came home last night the car that has the space to the left of me (and who's been driving me nuts for months with their inability to park at the same angle eveyone else does, thereby making it harder to fit everyone's cars in the lot) was parked in the spot to the right of me, instead of the spot they pay for. This morning I woke up around 7:30 to cursing and honking from the occupied spot's actual owner who now had nowehere but the street to park his car. I think boys worry less about being confrontational, because, where I might have put a note on the usuper's car and fumed about it until he moved it, the guy who's spot was taken promptly called the towing company and I woke up again around 8 to the sound of a tow truck idling outside my window and the offending neighbor's car disappearing to the impound lot. The rightful owner of the space is now parked in it, but as far as I can tell hasn't left a note, so I wonder if the guy whose car was towed will realize what happened, or if he'll just freak out and think someone stole his car. Maybe when he gets it back he'll learn to park the right way like everyone else. Yeah, I know. I think it's time for me to stop living in housing with undergrads, because it's making me feel like their mom. "Now sonny, maybe that'll learn you to think about how your decisions affect others!"

Hmmm, I debated whether or not to do this, because Kirk had four other people whose answers he was more interested in hearing than mine, and because he seems to think I'm not holding up my end of this website-dating thing. (Which, well, what exactly has he been doing? Plus it might be easier if I had even the slightest idea of what it means for two websites to date each other, ya know?) :-P But anyway, here's...

Four Things

Four Jobs I've Had

1. Administrative assistant at a place that sells golf tournament insurance. Yeah, you heard me right. No, I didn't know such a thing existed either until I worked there. You know how places have charity golf tournaments where if you make a hole-in-one on a particular hole you win a _____ (trip, Cadillac, whatever)? Well, the tournament organizers buy insurance coverage beforehand, so if you actually win someone else has to handle the verification and prize distribution. Yep, thrilling.
2. Standardized-test grader. Technically, I don't start this one for another few weeks, but for the next couple of months (or until someone hires me) I'll be determining the competency of our nation's third through fifth graders in the language arts.
3. Editorial assistant. Before you go into book publishing, think about the possibility that you will one day be working for a crazy person who makes you cry on the first day of work because you aren't photocopying fast enough (like you can bend space and time to make the copier go faster?), throws her phone across the office just as the CEO of the company walks by, and sits down in front of your desk and bursts into tears because a FedEx package is late.
4. Bookstore employee. "Shelving" in the children's department was the best, because it was in the back of the store and I was shorter than the shelves, so no one could see me. Plus the books made for such quick reads. Downside: the large portion of my paycheck that went to employee discounted books.
   

Four Movies I can watch over and over

1. To Have and Have Not
2. Desk Set
3. Clue
4. 1776
   

Four Places I've Lived

1. Saudi Arabia (age 1 month through 2 years)
   
2. Iran (age 4), 1978-79. Remeber what happened in 1979? I hope someone got good use out of my tricycle and all the other stuff we had to leave there.
3. London (age 16), 1990
   
4. New York, Brooklyn and Manhattan (age 22-27)

Four TV Shows I Love

1. The Amazing Race. The other night the Aussie was talking about how much he hated reality tv, but how he had his own "guilty pleasures". That's where he's wrong, though. I am absolutely unabashed about my love for this program and for
2. America's Next Top Model.
3. Futurama. The best cartoon ever produced, excepting The Simpsons.
4. Jeeves and Wooster. You know, I could probably list many other favorites, even though I hardly watch more than 4 hours of tv a week total anymore (God bless the TiFaux), but I thought Fry and Laurie deserved some acknowledgement for one of the best book-to-screen transitions in... well.... ever.
   

Four highly regarded and recommended TV shows that I've never watched a single minute of

This category would be easier if it was four highly regarded shows that I've tried for an episode or two and responded by shutting the tv off with a resounding "meh." In fact, let's do that instead.

1. ER
2. Nip/Tuck
3. Gilmore Girls
4. Alias
   

Four Places I've Vacationed

1. Australia/New Zealand/Fiji. Thanks to my Dad getting crazy frequent flyer miles back in the day, our family of four was able to get all of the flights on this itinerary for free.
2. Alaska. See my earlier post for a link to the blow-by-blow of the whole shebang.
3. Scotland. My favorite part of the world so far.
4. Hawaii. Although this one comes a close second.
   

Four of my favorite dishes

1. Mussamun curry
2. Sushi (any kind)
3. Any good seafood. I had this calamari once in South Africa that just melted in my mouth. Mmmmmm...
   
4. Peanut butter and dill pickle sandwiches.
   

Four sites I visit daily

1. Ask Metafilter. To which I outsource the duties normally performed by my brain when I can't figure out the answer to something.
2. Comics.com. Where I keep up with whatever regular newspaper comics are still worthwhile.
3. C'est la Vie. My favorite web comic that doesn't yet have an RSS feed.
   
4. Bloglines. How I keep up with all the rest of you who, like me, don't update daily.
   

Four places I would rather be right now

(These are the current top four on my list of places I want to see.)

1. Italy
2. Vietnam/Thailand/Japan
3. Key West
4. Iceland
   

Four bloggers I am tagging

1. Ben. Who, even if he doesn't answer the rest, I'd be interested to hear what his four favorite foods or restaurants are.
2. Ashlee
3. The Way I See Things
4. And Josh, because I think he should write more stuff for the Internets.
   

According to Blogger this is my 100th post. If this blog were a tv show I'd be eligible for syndication!

And like all good tv shows, it's time for a clip show. (Plus a special treat. Click the picture to the right to see me back when I was young Miss Molly.)

Two years ago I was telling you all about my imaginary boyfriends.

Then my car tried to throw me off a building. (I never wrote about what happened after that. Basically, the mechanic couldn't find anything that would have caused the acceleration, but he did find a cracked cylinder head, which lead to me looking for a new car, and ending up with my little Prius, Claudia Jean.)

Then I spent the summer working with the Senior Moistener, passed a milestone and celebrated with some scotch, and adopted a personal motto.

This meme tells you a little bit more about me.

This one is a fairly good example of the times when I just post a stream of counciousness rant. Plus I talk about getting into a guy's pants.

And in honor of the upcoming Valentine's Day, this is still one of the best comic strips ever.

In which I contemplate the words "puppet butt" and answer the question of how many girls can fit in a hammock.

In April I learned something about ways to start conversations with t-shirts.

May: got a list published on McSweeny's.

August: posted some pictues of me in a fancy dress.

Then I went to Alaska and wrote an excruciatingly long post about it.

You know how sometimes the past seems so real you just want to punch someone? No?

Hearing the Mountain Goats in concert was what introduced me to The Daily Kirk, my web-site's hysterically funny boyfriend.

Then in October I got socked by The October Curse.

But things turned around, and in November I got together with my hysterically funny real-life boyfriend, as well as spent some time contemplating my inner child.

Phew! It was a busy two years, I'll tell you what. I can't wait for the next two.

Last Friday night, I spent $80 that I really don't have right now to take the Aussie and myself to see Lyle Lovett in concert at Krannert Center here in town. Despite listening to his music for more than a decade now, this was my first chance to see him in concert, and he didn't disappoint. Instead of his Large Band, he was backed by four musicians (drum , electric guitar, keyboard, and upright bass). They played for a good two and a half hours without any intermission, and chose songs that ranged over his entire career. Lyle was pretty chatty, too, and explained a few things I had always wondered about, like, what the hell is going on in "Penguins"? (Short answer: there was some girl he went to A&M with who had an entire apartment filled with penguin-themed decor. The song was just a riff making fun of her.) He also talked about the reason he mentions his own name and Robert Earl Keen's in "Record Lady"; they were total unknowns at the time, and figured it might help their College Station audience remember who they were!

We had seats up in the second row of the balcony, although I spied a couple of friends that had been lucky enough to get seats only four rows back on the main level. The heat was turned way up high, for some reason, so we were all roasting a little, and the guy next to the Aussie smelled like feet. Other than that, pretty much a perfect concert experience.