Maybe if I jam it in the fax machine.

Randy's been itching to get a Wii for the last few months and I've been swinging wildly between "yes" and "no". Fundamentally I want one, of course, because this is the United States and if you spliced open my genome you'd find expensive technological whizzbang gadgetry right there in my DNA coding. But there's a whole other DNA sequence that carries my common sense inheritance, and while it may not have kept my twenty-year-old self from playing 2 AM chicken in my underwear atop the unfamiliar, herculean shoulders of a gentleman who called a quick Time Out to touch base with his parole officer, it has managed to keep me from selling my car and buying an iPhone.

I was really hoping to similarly fend off the Wii because I knew once that thing was in the house, I wouldn't be able to withstand the gravitational pull of Zelda. I've written about Zelda before:

"When I was living in my first 'sans roommates' apartment, Blockbuster was offering a three-day rental of the second-generation Nintendo (I can't remember what it was called) for like $14.99. And being the completely strapped, full-time employee-slash-college student that I was, I bit. And I played Zelda for 72 straight hours. I called in sick to work. I didn't make it to class. I checked the Yellow Pages for Zelda support groups. I didn't eat. I drank cheap beer. I checked the Yellow Pages for Church of Zelda locations. When I took that machine back, it was with a heavy heart and a vow. I'm not telling you a vow of what."

I guess I could have just linked to that post, but I'm too lazy. Because we got a Wii yesterday and I was up all fucking night playing Zelda. It's about eleven steps beyond my technological comfort zone (I'm really at the top of my mechanical game when I'm squatting in the backyard banging rocks together) but I don't care. Link needs me. Randy stumbled into the family room about four this morning and thought I was having a seizure-- I was just trying to use my sword. The dog will no longer come within ten feet of me. He's a quick learner.

I don't even know what's going on with the game; I turned into a wolf at some point and there's some weird green chick on my back, riding me around. I keep plummeting off a castle tower and falling into nether space, and that can't be good for my wolf joints. After eleven straight hours, that second strand finally kicked in and I shut the system down, practiced bending my legs, sponged my enthusiasm off the Wiimote and came to work. I brought the Zelda disk with me, but I can't seem to get my calculator to play it. 
¶ posted by Erin on Friday, June 29, 2007

  Brain Surgery College Credo: If You're Pale, Go To Yale.

If memory serves, I first started working out in a gym when I was nineteen. I'd just been turned away by the “You Bleed It, We Need It” plasma sales center because my arms were three inches in diameter and completely veinless. It was like trying to find a vein in a piece of elbow macaroni. The medical student staff—after running several somewhat inconclusive tests to determine that I was actually a human and not a giant, pulsating lasagna—sent me on my way with all my plasma and instructions to do some bicep curls or to occasionally lift my arms above my head or something. And to stop drenching myself in marinara sauce because that was just misleading.

So I started going to the university workout center. There was liquid cash pulsing through my tiny, limp veins and by God, I was going to suck it out. That unlimited monthly membership at Tropique-All Tan wasn’t going to pay for itself. Suffice it to say, all the money I was making actually working was going toward my tuition at Brain Surgery College. After a couple of weeks curling toilet paper rolls and washing my hair for extended periods of time, I went back to the plasma center with one proud trembling blue vein shimmering in my right elbowpit. A vein that was promptly strapped to a ripped vinyl chair arm and pillaged ruthlessly. Have you ever sold plasma? It’s the opposite of donating blood in almost every capacity. First off, you donate blood because you’re driven by an altruistic yearning to help your fellow man; you sell plasma for acrylic nails and a half-tank of gas. The needle they use to draw blood is a thin, diminutive thing and you have to sit and squeeze a rubber ball to force the blood to pump down your arm and into the passive, anti-war needle. The needle they use for plasma collection is the same needle that shot out of that floating robot probe in the original Star Wars when Darth Vader was trying to get Leia to cough up the location of the rebel base.

You sit in this recliner, right, and a technician comes along to jam this enormous, war-mongering needle into your arm and he tapes it down like he’s roping a calf. And this needle doesn’t hang out and wait nonchalantly for you to ball-pump some blood into its vicinity—this needle physically sucks the blood out of your body. There’s a machine about the size of a refrigerator next to your chair and you can watch, petrified, as your blood slowly leaves your body and rolls through the clear compartments and hoses of this machine. It’s kind of like Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, except instead of a chocolate river it’s all your critical fluids, and instead of fizzy floating soda pop it’s all your critical fluids. Just at the point when you start becoming mathematically uncomfortable with the percentage of blood that appears to be ebbing and flowing outside of your skin cocoon, just when you’re on the brink of screaming, “It’s DANTOOINE, alright?!” you hear the machine hiss to a stop. The needle stops sucking, the gears quit turning, and everything slowly reverses direction because NOW all of the red blood cells that were sucked out with the plasma are being shot back into your body. Quickly. So you don’t die. And, hey! There’s an anti-coagulant mixed in there, too! So you don’t die. In fact, the number of vague safety measures in place to meet the “so you don’t die” requirement manages to be both maniacally high and completely subpar at the same time. Sometimes, for example, one of your many plastic hoses full of blood generates an air bubble and your machine starts beeping. It’s a loud beep, an assertive beep, an “I’m Having Serious Issues” beep that causes everyone else to shift in their recliners and stare at you, wide-eyed, because you’re potentially seconds away from a B-movie death. But then a technician saunters over and flicks your rogue hose. Flicks it. Flick! All fixed! I flicked it. You won’t die now. Flick.

Or—and this is a lot of fun—sometimes the needle sucks so ambitiously it actually sucks up the other side of your vein. Then everything goes all to hell. You thought you had problems with the hose; now you’ve got beeping, you’ve got bubbles, the needle’s standing straight up and clicking around like a shop-vac sucking up a bowling ball… It’s a bad scene. Now you get a couple of techs on you, flicking things, reinserting, mopping. When it's all said and done, allowing for assorted close calls, it takes about an hour to get a quart of plasma. An hour’s a long time to sit while most of your blood is three-and-a-half feet away from your brain. A lot of shit can fall down.

But then it’s over and you get thirty bucks. Oh, and sometimes you get to watch a movie or Young and the Restless. Depends who’s on shift. I sold plasma twice a week for about a year, and I probably would have kept doing it (my white ass wasn’t going to light up and tan itself) except that I got really sick. I had a low grade fever all the time and no energy, so I went to my doctor to see if maybe I had mono. I sat in the exam room explaining my symptoms to the nurse, and she nodded and reached over to press her stethoscope to my inner arm. Unfortunately, the track marks that looked like I’d been shooting heroin with a staple gun stopped her cold. I’m not kidding, you could stitch a saddle together with that needle.

“Oh!” I said quickly, knowing how it looked, “No, I sell plasma.”

She blinked at me. “How often do you do that?”

“Twice a week.”

Blink.

“For… like, a year.”

The nurse stood up. Took her gloves off, threw them in the trash.

“Quit doing that,” she said.

So I quit. And surprisingly enough, I felt better. The timing was pretty good, really; I got skin cancer right after that and had seventeen stitches put in my back, so I had to drop off the professional tanning bed circuit. See, when God shuts a door, He really does open a window. Or… when God gives you plasma and you waste it, you get cancer. Wait… when God tells you to sell all your plasma in a dream and then gives you cancer later, at least you finally got your manicotti ass to the gym. Yeah. That one.

 
¶ posted by Erin on Tuesday, June 26, 2007

  Can I just rope an actual baby sheep around my waist instead?

Is Gwen Stefani answering a dare of some kind? I pretended to be on board with that "bananas" bullshit just to avoid looking crotchety, but this? When your ear drums spontaneously seize up and try to slink down into your neck it's not "crotchety", it's bare bones self-preservation. If she continues along this current path of music magic I won't be surprised to see her on Letterman next month with a new guy in her band on backup chalkboard. I hope it's a dare, frankly, because it's either that or she's plotting to bend us all in half from the ears down and then take over the world. And that's going to be tough on my wallet-- I'm guessing with Stefani in charge all this LAMB shit's going to be mandatory dress code. 
¶ posted by Erin on Monday, June 25, 2007

  Get that hamstring in there.

So you know when you're trying to two-hole punch a stack of stuff and it just WILL NOT punch no matter how hard you crack down on the thing, and you start thinking maybe you should take forty or fifty sheets out for another run? Yeah, you're just not stepping on it hard enough.You've got to reeeeally stomp on it. 
¶ posted by Erin on Thursday, June 21, 2007

  Where I will also be receiving my mail.

Randy's back on Atkins again. Which means no bread in the house, no sugar, no alcohol, nothing fun. I can't do Atkins because it renders me completely mute but, in the spirit of teamwork and like-minded goals and not letting Randy get even the slightest edge up, I will be driving to the gym tonight where I will enter, find a treadmill, and run on top of it for a concentrated period of time. I will be doing this loudly with a maximum amount of breathing and tripping, and also I will have these on my head which I expect to throw my balance off considerably. If you're going to be in the neighborhood between 6:47 and 6:54 I suggest you stop by, should be quite a show.

Or you can wait until 6:58 and just meet me at the bar. Think about bringing some ice cream with you, or maybe some croutons. 
¶ posted by Erin on Wednesday, June 20, 2007

  Rrrribbit.

In addition to its host of other problems my car started making a really weird sound last week. It's like a slide whistle sound. Yeah, no, I'm serious. And it's loud. In sixteen years of neglectful auto ownership I've heard my fair share of jacked up car noises, but nothing that ever sounded like the circus came to town in my center console. It's always so out of nowhere and so ridiculous that when I hear it I can’t help screaming something. It seems like the only acceptable response to a loud noodle noise in my car is to yell, “OH MY GOD, WHAT?” It’s happened that I spaz out and bark something rhetorical at the sound only to hear it again immediately, only louder. Then I get kind of scared so I just settle back to ten-and-two and shut my mouth. The first five or six times I heard it I tried to convince myself it was my imagination so I wouldn't have to tell Randy my car's generating spontaneous clown noises. Because the second I go, "No, it's like a bloooooooooo-oooooooooop! sound," he's going to completely lose his shit.

And you know it's going to be one of those sounds that no one else will ever, ever hear-- the Michigan J. Frog of car noises, if you will-- and after four years of me going, "No, wait, shhhh! Just listen. Keep driving. Shut up! JUST KEEP DRIVING! FUCKING LISTEN!" and Randy twirling his forefinger near his temple and throwing me under the bus every time anyone mentions the word "car" and "noise" in the same paragraph, I'll go loudly insane and jam a fondue fork in his ear.

Having said that, I have to do something. I can't go on like this. The upshot is that I'm pretty sure a slide whistle sound isn't indicative of something morbidly wrong with the car, but it's like I'm driving around with Peter Frampton all the time. A Peter Frampton jack-in-the-box. Do they make those? Because they shouldn't. 
¶ posted by Erin on Monday, June 18, 2007

  It would have been convenient if those cups had wheels on the bottom.

That was the funniest, sweetest, most awesome consecutive nineteen hours I've ever spent. It's always amazing when I meet someone face-to-face for the first time and it's as easy and familiar as family, and Jen and Mark both fit that bill to a tee. While Mark was playing hardcore poker Jen and I beat 'em up at the nickel slots-- I half expected Samantha Marquez to offer me a free suite after I got four raspberries in a line and won that eight dollars, but then I remembered we weren't at the Montecito. Or on television. Jen would have you believe I made her drink a foot-and-a-half tall margarita, but I don't think that's how it happened; admittedly I'm a little cloudy on this, but I'm pretty sure she made me drink a foot-and-a-half tall pina colada. Which should be illegal, by the way, it was like sticking a straw in a building full of pina colada. We both woke up in the wee hours of the early morning looking for drugs to ease the pain and we settled on Dramamine. I don't know what that means, exactly, the fact that we needed a motion sickness medication at four in the morning, but it's doubtlessly indicative of a kick ass time. 
¶ posted by Erin on Sunday, June 17, 2007

  Eyes the blue-green color of the Pacific.


So no shit, I was in the Terminal C restroom a minute ago when I heard them page "Jessica Wakefield" to her gate. Fucking Jessica, man, so irresponsible. Elizabeth's no doubt already on the plane. Reading something productive, thinking chaste thoughts, rolling her eyes. 
¶ posted by Erin on Saturday, June 16, 2007

  Boarding Group A

Oh, wow, I never expected this! I don't even know where to start! I'd like to thank my father, Mike, who taught me if you can't get to the airport five-and-a-half hours early you might as well not even go, and Southwest Airlines, of course, for offering a flight that leaves when the sun is up and the Earth is actually rotating. A special shout out to everyone who's ever had to sprint through the terminal with me with wet hair and no shoes, screaming... Bet you never thought you'd see this day, am I right? But seriously, everyone, thank you for believing in me. For believing that ONE DAY I'd be able to get on the plane before it was moving a little. 
¶ posted by Erin on Friday, June 15, 2007

  I've updated this post like sixteen times.

In California last week I ran out of foundation and the only department store around (Macy's) was out of what I usually wear, so I improvised. Badly. I don't have great skin and it's not particularly tolerant of... anything, so today I drove into Scottsdale to exchange it for something that isn't the equivalent of poisoned mineral oil. And for some reason I locked onto the idea that the salesgirl was going to give me a hard time about returning the foundation since I'd used it, and I orchestrated this whole One Act Confrontation during the twenty minute drive. Here's how it went:

ME: "Hi, I need to exchange this foundation."
SG: "Did you use it?"
ME: "Yes."
SG: "Then you can't exchange it."
ME: "But... I have my receipt. And I only used it once. It ran off my face and into my collar where it left acid burns on my clavicle."
SG: "I don't care. No. Absolutely not."
ME: "It left hives on my eyelids. I was blind for two days."
SG: "That's totally your problem. I'm not taking that back."
ME: "Okay, I need to see a manager."
SG: "There isn't a manager here."
ME: "There's no manager. In the whole store."
SG: "No."
ME: Not a general manager? Not an assistant general manager?"
SG: "Nope."
ME: "So you're running the store then, is what you're telling me."
SG: [cries]

By the time I got there and parked I had worked myself up into a good and proper froth. I burst into Macy's and had my lines down and everything but then the salesgirl just took the foundation back after Line #1. It seemed like I was going to have to work pretty hard to make her cry after that so I just went to the food court and consoled myself with a Great Steak because ever since I got back from Monterey I have to eat something every twenty-seven minutes. It's inconvenient, yes, but fucking delicious.

Patrick's book just came out. I ordered mine yesterday. It could be HALF as funny as his website and still be funnier than any book I've read this year. Go get one.

I packed for Vegas today, and by that I mean I threw a tank top in my purse. I've decided I'm going to spend the entire flight shuffling a deck of cards on my tray table. And winking at other passengers.

Oh my God, Scott linked to this video today and it's so unbelievably funny that I actually came back in to Blogger to update this post.

This one has to be my favorite.

HA! Or this one. Somebody come take this computer away from me, please, my lap is on fire.

Oh shit, The Slowskys have a blog. Goddamn you, Scott. My lap's going to need a skin graph now. 
¶ posted by Erin on Thursday, June 14, 2007

  I'll just have breakfast this evening, get myself back on track.

To say I’m not a “morning person” does a horrible injustice to people who aren’t morning people. When I flew to Atlanta last month I naively booked a 6:00 am departure and it took me eighteen days to fully recover. I didn’t even know Earth life existed before five in the morning, I assumed it was like The Truman Show and the whole set got struck between like two and five. I swore a phlegmy oath that day—sweaty Dramamine and warm Diet Coke held high—that I would never again attempt to get on an airplane before the set decorators had a chance to get the goddamn Terminal A Cinnabon open. So last week when Randy informed me our flight to San Jose left at 6:30 am, I immediately fell asleep. Bam. Like a defense mechanism. I wasn’t even sure I could take that flight if I wanted to—my previous oath hadn’t been a personal thing, the in-air flight crew had kind of insisted. But Randy was not to be deterred. The man is apparently forged from belts of titanium and rubberized asphalt; Tuesday night he worked at the office until midnight, came home whistling, poured a vodka-tonic with a squeeze of lime, and got busy packing his bags. Until one-thirty in the morning. Four o’clock found him driving on the highway, bright-eyed, hair shower-wet and combed, full of… words. Four o’clock found me trembling against the car door, eyes squeezed shut, praying for Jesus to come back before 4:15 so I could just go straight to hell already and cut out the airport middle man. I was half-man, half wildebeest. And I mean half-man, there wasn’t a shred of a woman anywhere near that car. I was half dude, half extinct/possibly totally fictionalized animal. I was seriously surprised they let me on the plane for roughly fourteen separate reasons, not the least of which was that I kept asking for a dialysis machine.

Other than that the trip was fantastic.

I didn’t make any forward strides with the fundraising set, surprisingly enough, and while I could go into laborious detail as to the subtleties of why, I’ve determined the source of the problem is most likely that Randy keeps emailing the group the link to this website. Ohhhhhhhhhhh! Oh. Well. That was one way to go, I guess. There’s actually a new girl in the group this year as one of the men recently started dating a woman around my age. I can only assume she isn’t yet privy to the listserv so friend-making time is necessarily of the essence. On Thursday Randy and I walked around the aquarium while he sold her to me with all the subtlety of an arranged marriage broker out on bail. After forty minutes of hearing about how we both graduated from blah-blah and we both majored in blah and we both blah-bla…

“Okay, fine, yes,” I relented. Deep in the recesses of his titanium frame I heard Randy’s heart ping! in rejoice. “Is she here? On this trip?”

“No,” Randy explained, “She’s in training for a triathlon next week.”


I stopped then in front of a giant tank and tried to determine how my obvious Friend Soulmate had managed to stay hidden from me for so long. Is she running the “Quick, Find The Remote” leg of said triathlon? This big ass fish didn’t think so. And that’s a shame; I came in fifth in the Seriously Where The Fuck Is The Remote Olympics of 2002 and that fact might have given us something to talk about. But probably not.

Saturday morning I met Amanda and her seriously beautiful babies in Santa Cruz at the Wharf, and I have to say that the number of awesome people I've met on the internet exceeds the number of awesome people I've met by bumping into them at cocktail parties by one thousand percent. Just ask anyone you happen to meet lying on the floor in formal wear. Amanda is every bit as sweet and funny and gorgeous as you think she is, and her kids! Alex started talking to me the second I sat down about sea otters and speed boats, and he was full of hugs and "'scuse me's!" and construction noises. Genoa was content to grin a lot and toddle after her big brother on the beach, generally being really, really cute and letting me squeeze her perfectly round baby feet to my heart's content. Or at least until I left. She wouldn't let me take her feet with me.

Plus I only got lost driving there and then driving back. A personal best. I have the directional instincts of a blindfolded mole after a kegstand-- tell me to make a left and I will turn right faster than Barbara P. Bush on Sunday morning. On my way back into Monterey I called Randy on his cell, pulling him out of a meeting to announce I was lost. I knew there wasn't anything he could do to help but I wanted to let him know that I was currently shuttlecocking my way upstream on a one-way street, and in five minutes I would either be back at the hotel or in police custody. So set a timer.

And then this Friday I get to fly to Vegas to hang out with Jen for a day and I CANNOT WAIT. She called me yesterday to tell me she made us pedicure appointments and I have to say, her timing is perfect; my current pedi got jacked up when I tripped over a brick in Carmel and flailed my way down to a crawling position on the sidewalk. Randy sucked air through his teeth and picked me up.

"Oh, are you okay?" He picked up my purse for me. "You should have grabbed me, I would have caught you."

Yeah, you're right, Randy, wish I'd thought of that. My bad. Next time I trip over a brick I'll evaluate my options before I decide on a gameplan.

And this is completely irrelevant, but I put a giant pork roast in the oven last night to slow-cook until this morning and now it's 8:48 am and I have no choice but to fix dinner. It's like an OCD reaction-- if there's a steaming roast on the counter my body starts involuntarily making mashed potatoes. 
¶ posted by Erin on Tuesday, June 12, 2007

  Oh good I almost brought mine from home.

Hey, look, the hotel provided a scale in the bathroom! Excellent. Nothing says vacation like the ever present reminder that you're gaining weight at the speed of delicious sound. I can only hope they've included similar luxuries, like "Six Minute Abs" on pay-per-view, or maybe Slim Fast in the minibar. 
¶ posted by Erin on Thursday, June 07, 2007

  Tag.

It looks as though I've been tagged by Emily to list seven things you don't know about me. My plan is to just write a normal post and shoot in arbitrary numbers every few sentences or so. Let's get started.

1) The closet situation remains unresolved. Late Saturday there were rumors of a key in the bathroom drawer, but unfortunately all hopes were dashed when it turned out to be a key to an Office Max computer desk I had in my apartment in 1996. Back Up Flops and Right Flop held a vigil yesterday.


It was poorly attended; Randy's shoes are surprisingly inanimate. And uncaring.

2) Panajane has bravely offered new evidence of closet monsters:


Apparently all of her bras are missing. Taking into account that the simplest solution is generally the best solution, it's a solid deduction that sexy slimy monsters are on a global, intimates-eating rampage. I love that she took time out of her slithery day to get a manicure. Or... a pedicure. I'm not really up on my tentacle etiquette. It can't be comfortable, having your underwear tucked up around your neck like that, but hey. She's clearly in charge of her game. Look! There's my missing leather lace-up boot I tell people is from a Halloween costume! I thought for sure my other rhinestone platform stiletto would be in there, too, but it probably just got kicked behind the headboard. You know. Last Halloween.

3) Randy and I are going to Monterey on Wednesday. That fundraising charity group he belongs to is having its annual meeting and retreat. Randy's been in this group for six years now and on the eve of this, our sixth retreat, I would like to share a story I think neatly tallies my cumulative experience with this group thus far. So quick, curl up on the couch with a loved one and get ready to turn on your heart light.

Stop me if you've heard this. And good luck with that.

4) Once, three or four years ago (it was actually at this party if memory serves), I was sitting conspicuously alone at a table valiantly trying not to look completely dejected when suddenly an attractive older woman came and sat down across from me. My eyes shone bright with the promise of newfound friendship and all my internal organs began to softly glow. Yes. Like E.T..

I sensed I had limited time to make an impression here so I immediately dove into the unmitigated praise pool. "You have really beautiful posture," I said. She did. I wasn't even lying. "Are you a dancer?" She looked like she could have been a dancer. This was all true.

She looked up from... whatever she'd previously been looking at to avoid me. Tight smile. "Yes," she said, "I was."

My organs got brighter. I set my purse on my lap to block the glare from my pancreas. "How tall are you?" I asked. She told me.

"Oh, you look much taller than that," I said. She pinched another smile at me.

"How tall are you?" she deigned to ask. I told her.

"Now, see," she observed, pointing, "I would have thought you were shorter."

And just like that all my organs turned to coal. The mothership sailed blindly past, no longer able to pinpoint my location. I just sat there at the table, head bowed, waiting for Randy to come unbuckle my booster seat and help me get my coat on over my hump.

I'm really only going on this trip because the siren song of the 24-hour hospitality suite is too loud and beautiful for me to ignore. Plus this year I get to visit with Amanda and her gorgeous kids, which in addition to being the total highlight of my week will also give me an answer to the "Are you coming to the womens' brunch on Saturday" question that's not my usual, "fuck to the no."

What number are we on?

5) A while back Erika posted some doodles she'd done of animals at her toddler's request. They were so adorable I asked her to send them to me so I could turn them into transfers and embroider them onto something. And she did! Erika's good like that.


Click on the picture to see the whole set. This was so much fun to work on because GOD, ARE THEY CUTE. Even Randy-- Randy, a man who recently referred to his impending first granddaughter as a quote, "cry monster"-- had to admit these animals are adorable. But he bit the head off a snake right after that to counteract his concession. I don't think that works, but whatever. Wasn't my snake.

6) In two weeks I'm going to jet up to Vegas to spend a whirlwind twenty-four hours with Jen. In Vegas. With Jen. Jen! In Vegas! I know! The first question she asked me after I booked the flight was whether I wanted to see any naked ladies while I was there. And just like that? I felt my gall bladder and my left kidney spring to life, glowing faintly in the dim recesses of my... general torso area. There may be hope for me yet.

7) Last week I got home and discovered that Styro had scoured the earth for the most perfect present and had mailed me this:


A toothbrush that plays two minutes of Jamiroquai's "Canned Heat" through the bristles, so the song transmits directly into your skull and reverberates off your bones! The way Canned Heat was meant to be heard! It's like a straight shot into your soul. I've brushed my teeth more in the last five days than I did in all of 2004. Yesterday I brushed my teeth while I was driving, cut out the disk changer middle man. Yet another reason why my will stipulates my ashes are to be spread in and around Styro's house and/or car. See, Styro? You knew I loved you but you didn't know how much.

Was that seven? Because I'm like four hours late for work. 
¶ posted by Erin on Monday, June 04, 2007