inspired by ray, everyone’s favorite cartoon cat, here is my list of 5 things i am thankful for:

1. my family is healthy and supportive. there aren’t any big troublemakers and everyone pretty much likes each other and gets along. there aren’t any blatant bigots or intolerant types so that’s good. sadly, my dad voted for bush, but i love him anyway 🙂 in fact, way to stick to your guns, dad – even though everyone (your in-laws, sister, daughter) kept decrying your presidential choice, you did what you felt was right.
2. i am free if physical or mental disease. ok, the latter is probably up for debate in some circles, but IN GENERAL i am healthy, always have been and i am glad i don’t have to worry about some horrible food allergy or dialysis or chemo or herpes or, you know, death, so i am fortunate in this area.
   • corollary: this is maybe shallow, but i’m thankful that, despite my body’s irritating refusal to get any taller, i came out pretty well in the genetic lottery. i’m not fugly and i’m not dumb (even though i do a lot of stupid things, posting this corollary possibly included) – when people see me they don’t shrink away in horror and i look back fondly upon high school calculus and that simpler time when i wished all of school was as fun as deriving. [commence laughter and ridicule at my love of mr. docherty’s aretha franklin rule.]
3. i have a super boyfriend. i am not thankful that he is 2000 miles away, but at least now we get to work on our phone skills. five minute long silences have been almost entirely eliminated, although we’re both looking forward to him getting dsl at home so we can resume our choice method of communication: instant messaging.
   • corollary: i am also thankful that eric is healthy (i’m also thankful that he’s 6’2″ so he can reach things from high shelves and whatnot, but that’s more of a perk and not so much a thankful-ness-worthy thing. but still. it’s pretty handy).
4. i am financially secure. i don’t have to worry about living paycheck to paycheck. i have money saved and invested.
   • corollary: i have a stable job at a stable place. it is hard to imagine how awful i felt at this time last year (when i still worked you-know-where) and the very fact that i have a hard time remembering…that tells me that i am much happier now.
5. i’m thankful that i live in a country that recognizes and, in general, protects rights and freedoms that a lot of other places would laugh (or probably shoot) at. things aren’t perfect, but perfect is boring anyway. remember what happened in be a perfect person in just three days? all of the perfect people just sat around in a dim theatre, talking in whispers if at all and sipping weak tea. who wants that? no one, that’s who. speaking of which, where the heck is my copy of that book? it’s one of my favorites!

so far hugh laurie‘s the gun seller is fantastic. he has a really witty, clever writing style and a sense of humor that is distinctly british, whatever that means, but works well for him, since he is, in fact, british (most commas ever). the book is about a man who is unwittingly caught up in some international intrigue involving arms dealers. allegedly. i’m just now getting into the arms dealing thing and while the plot is really interesting – particularly the way he reveals tidbits of information, resulting in frantic flipping back through what’s already been read – i couldn’t care less if it was just about a guy sitting and doing nothing. it’s that good.

read the first chapter of the gun seller.

from recent spam:

The Ass and the Horse your hands will only make me more watchful, lest under these (…) and live with us as brothers should? We differ from you in one A GROOM used to spend whole days in currycombing and rubbing down The Ass and the Horse

i set my conscience at ease and finally buckled down and ordered a bunch of albums that i’ve been listening to and loving for months, if not years. better late than never, yeah?

also, i changed my desktop image to a character wallpaper from the very good adventures of yam roll in happy kingdom!, and every time i hide a window, i mentally jump in shock, surprised to see a little green dude with a crown staring at me.

september 19 is ‘talk like a pirate day’. now, we know that pirates are key players in flying spaghetti monsterism (aka ‘pastafarianism’), so if you’ve been touched by His noodly appendage, you might want to pay special attention to this holiday. some pirate delights:

• pirate training clip via boing boing
• pirate phrases
• british HQ
• t-shirt (shown above) via diesel sweeties

when i was a freshman in college our friends used to tease meghan and i about our compulsive IMing. or – i guess it wasn’t that we did it all the time that bothered jay and andy and will. it was that we did it even though we lived on the same floor no more than 50 feet away from each other.

well, now that eric has his little pismo powerbook, my brand of lazy IMing has reached a new low. that’s right – IMing someone who is in the same apartment, nay – the same room.

…ok, i have to be honest…we’re not only IMing each other from the same room…we’re both sitting on the same couch.

i know, i know. totally. lame.

i wrote this entry about a week ago. i’m not sure why i didn’t post it right away.

my parents aren’t particularly religious, but my dad has gone through several sects of christianity during his life – an interesting side-effect of multiple marriages, probably. he was raised catholic and went to a catholic school and has all kinds of nun-and-ruler stories, he was an altarboy and everything. when my parents got married my dad gave my mom his st. christopher‘s medal, the patron saint of travellers. my mom has always kept the medal in her change purse – she always has her wallet so the medal is always with her. i remember having to go back to aldi’s when i was little because mom had accidentally paid with the medal (which is the same size as a dime).

the medal was one of my favorite things when i was little – i don’t know why, i just liked to look at it and feel it’s little ridges and the tiny broken loop where it once connected to a chain – but as i got older i forgot about it. the summer after my senior year in high school i went on a school trip to europe. it was the first time i was away from home for a long period of time and the first time i’d been out of the country by myself (except for that whole immigration thing, but whatevs).

when i got to the hotel in london, our first stop, i was digging through my backpack, trying to find something – change, receipt, who knows. and what did i find? my dad’s st. christopher medal. he had slipped it into my bag and he didn’t tell me he had done it. in fact, i think he didn’t expect that i would ever find it, but he knew it was there. even as i type this i’m getting all choked up and teary; something about that gesture has always stuck with me…my dad and i had a sort of rough relationship when i was younger – we were too much alike, probably – and the fact that he took the time to put that little medal in my bag, even when he knew that i wasn’t religious and we were never a religious family, really made me feel good. ok, i guess maybe my mom could’ve put it in there, but i’ve always thought it was my dad. when i saw that medal in my bag i think it was the first time i realized that he really loved me – that i felt it, that it wasn’t just words or a vague warm feeling – i knew that his love was real and for always and no matter what.

on kathy & judy this morning they are talking about gynecological exams. one of them thinks that the whole thing is overblown and women should suck it up and deal with the 5 minutes total of discomfort involved in a mammogram and the dreaded speculum. i completely agree. i haven’t had a mammogram, but i found the pelvic exam to be completely anticlimactic. it had been built up as this awful experience but it took all of 60 seconds and i was left thinking, “that was it?” i remember afterwards my mom was really concerned with how i was dealing with the whole traumatic experience and i was more concerned with getting across the loop to sign my new lease. actually, i found the whole experience to be too warm and fuzzy and i thought the doctor seemed overly sympathetic. i felt like i was being treated like i was 5 years old and now i can’t help wondering if women freak out so much because every societal cue tells us we’re expected to. i don’t want to marginalize anyone’s feelings here; i’m sure a lot of women are genuinely terrified of the whole experience, the same way a lot of people are paralyzed at the thought of visiting the dentist…something else i’ve never understood. i guess my first reaction to these sorts of situations is one of curiosity.

i’ve always thought that my neutral, or even warm, feelings about going to the dentist had a lot to do with dealing with braces for 4 years. once you’ve had someone rummaging around in your mouth, using that little hammer to see if everything’s cemented properly and causing eye-watering pain for extended periods of time, a little cleaning and flossing seems pretty tame. however, when i really think about it, i’ve never been afraid of the dentist. i think it’s because my pediatric dentist was really great – he was funny and did voices and was friends with my mom. also my parents never made me feel anxious about it.

which brings us back to the pelvic exam – i think a lot of times if you’re told over and over that something is going to be awful, no matter how not-unpleasant the experience is, your mind will find a way to make it seem as bad as you were conditioned to believe it would be. like that passage from junior year hs english – probably one of the most “holy shit, it’s true” things i’ve ever read – the mind can make a hell out of heaven or a heaven out of hell. on the other hand, some people are just more squeamish about certain things than others. i’m okay with the dentist and the gynecologist, but show me a lobster or a herring and i am reduced to a puddle of horrified goo.