See it to believe it

I have a favorite stripclub -- Personalities, it's called, like people really care about their personalities. It's not my favorite because I've ever been there. Alas, I've only been to one strip club in my life -- more than a year ago I drunkenly stumbled into Mons Venus with some friends.

No, Personalities is my favorite for a different reason: the signs. These people put up the funny signs. Like the bicycle graveyard on Fletcher. Weird, funny signs. Once a week they change the sign. I know I've talked about this before.

But today there's another sign: Mediocre people are at there best. "there" best?

Is it a typo? A clever joke? More likely, sadly, just stupidity.

I love San Francisco and I'm not even there yet!

I made reservations at The Stinking Rose for our first night and I MADE THEM ONLINE.

God, I'm looking forward to this trip.

"Do you know how big the crack is?"

... innocent question overheard many times at my job.

I'm excited for a variety of reasons. a) The Gators are in the Final 4. Say what you like about basketball and the Gators, but they've been my team for always except six months in 9th grade when I was dating FSU fan Mark Nelson. But then we broke up and I went back to my first love -- UF. And the Gators are the only team that will drag me into watching my most loathed "game" -- basketball. I detest basketball. But I'll watch it for my boys.

Reason for excitement b) I only have 11 more days of work before I get my vacation for my wedding. Hurrah! I need to set up appointments for mani/pedi (Shell, same place as usual? I need to see Leeney) and mostly I need to relax. God, I need this vacation. Everyone should get married just to get 2 1/2 weeks off work. What? Is that not reason enough?

Reason for excitement c) My bachelorette party is starting to come together -- yay for free (hopefully) drinks! We've got a hotel room for all the girls at the Hyatt Regency, and we're going to go to Spain for tapas (I know, seems like a ways to drive, right? But no, it's only a block from the hotel) and take the trolley to Channelside so that we may get sloshed without having to worry about having a DD. God love the trolley system. We have the worst public transportation system in the entire US, but trolleys to drinking areas? We've got 'em! I'm hoping not to be embarrassed to thoroughly, but with this group who knows. As long as I'm drinking, god help us! Who's bringing the camera? :) If you're in the area, come join us at Channelside! Buy me a drink!

Reason for excitement d) I finally got new earbuds for my iPod that are so extremely comfortable that I could be listening to my iPod for the next year. Awesome. In case anybody is wondering, they're these:

which they make in metal too, but it wasn't worth it for another $20. I lost my last pair, and I tried to get a cheap pair but they hurt my ears so I went back to these -- the best $30 EVAR.

Reason for excitement e) I finally found something on iTunes worth using my iTunes gift card that Shell gave me almost a year ago -- I bought Hello Radio: Various Artists play TMBG. Just so you know, don't go out and get it. But I'm glad I used my gift card on it, because I really wanted to hear it, and now I'm not so upset that it sucks. Because it's not real money anyhow, and all that.

Madness

I watched college basketball this weekend.

.
.
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And I liked it. Where's the real April?

Been awhile :)

a meme courtesy of NPR Junkie

Look at the list of books below:

-- Bold the ones you’ve read
-- Italicize the ones you want to read
-- leave blank the ones that you aren’t interested in.

1. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10.A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)
12.Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13.Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16.Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (Rowling)
17. Fall on Your Knees(Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. The Hobbit (Tolkien)
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (Orwell)
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. Bible
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrew Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolstoy)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
69. Les Miserables (Hugo)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According To Garp (John Irving)
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
86. Down (Richard Adams)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100.Ulysses (James Joyce)

Coincidentally, I have several of these books but haven't read them yet ... and I did read the 3rd book of Harry Potter before realizing I had no interest, but I'm not even sure which one that is :) and I've never seen the movies ...

Anyone else feel like playing?

demented mouthpiece

So a couple weeks ago I bought a mouth guard. It cost $18.99 and entailed boiling in water, shaping to my teeth and submerging in ice water. A real ordeal, I'm telling you. The reason I bought such a thing is because I grind my teeth while I sleep. It keeps Christen awake, and I'm pretty sure it is the source of my migraines. TMJ disorders beware!

The first night I woke up early and it was still in my mouth. The second night I woke up and found it underneath me. Since then I've found it back on my nightstand, between pillows, under me, under Christen, and tangled in the sheets at the end of the bed. The good news? I haven't been grinding my teeth. The bad? I'm having anxiety over losing this damn mouth guard in the middle of the night, it falling on the ground and Lola having a new chew toy. I wish I could silly putty it to my teeth so it would stay in my mouth. It's really tight -- I have to actually be pushing it out in the middle of the night. Or it's getting up and running away, which I wouldn't put past it.

Very short on the very long

Here's the skinny on the friend, per True's request.

We've talked, and it's better. Not perfect, but better. She just needed time away from everything, and decided to ignore her phone for a week. But since I'm conditioned to believe that when people don't call me back (especially her) that they're mad at me, I obviously thought that she was mad at me. And since I thought that she was mad, I didn't go over to see her, so it just got worse. But finally Wednesday we got in touch and had a long talk, and then went for some lovely sushi. Friday night I called her on the drive down to St. Pete, and shot the dung for a bit.

Hopefully it'll all last. I hate losing friends.

"You've got to hydrate it a little. Just hold it in your mouth and let it moisten up a little"

-- Christen to me after I cooked my turkey bacon to pork rind status

My mom bought chocolate double stuff Oreos and sent me home with some to dip into my fat free organic milk. Yum :)

I'm incredibly exhausted tonight. The library officially broke me. We spent all evening moving large-print books so that the movies can be at the front. I got two new bookcases on Sunday and I can't bear the thought of having to move my books. Those bookcases are going to sit in the foyer for a bit while I think about it. In the meantime, they talked me into coming in again tomorrow to move more books. Hehe ...

Sunday we went to see Zodiac. I actually liked it, although most people I know didn't. No special effects. Crap, right?

The divine and the bored.

Recovering from a weekend that was half delicious and half lazy and boring is a bit of a challenge. Do you rest from the crazy fun night you had Friday night? Or do you get out and do something to combat the lay-in-bed-and-watch tv night you had Saturday? I haven't decided which needs to be done, but I suspect some laundry washing is in store.

Friday night I went out with L and had a marvelous time. We went to dinner at Ceviche -- I had the mussels and the baked goat cheese, and I snacked on everyone else's tapas as well -- there were mushrooms, salmon, artichokes (which I've never liked before, but they were wonderful), and an amazing duck in chocolate sauce. The sangria was a little weak but tasty, and since we were moving on to more alcohol that was definitely fine.

Afterward we hit the Independent, which was very enjoyable, but probably would have been more fun if there were slightly less people. It happened to be First Friday, which always brings out the less regulars, and since the bar is between Central and 1st, people tend to migrate. I drank Ococim and whatever Bill poured in my glass between beers ... the people watching was great. Bill and I drooled over barely legal frat boys, watched two girls make a show of making out on the sidewalk, there was a boy-fight, I fell once, L fell at least once, and I met lots of yummy people whose names elude me.

Saturday was more of a recovery day, I suppose. I slept in, which never happens (about 9:30), and we did very little all day. We registered for china at Macy's and wandered around Westshore mall for a bit, had Evo's for lunch (mmm, garden grill) and then came home. I climbed into bed around 6pm because I was exhausted, but didn't sleep and instead watched more than my share of DIY shows and Law & Order (most definitely not a DIY show -- that would just be weird).

Things are better now. I'll blog more later.