I was never one of the people who related to Catcher in the Rye, as a teenager or as an adult. Like most books, it entertained me and made me think, but that’s about it. I always felt bad for Salinger and wondered, if he didn’t want fame so much, how come he didn’t publish under a pseudonym? When he wrote it, did he just assume it wouldn’t be that popular? The sad thing is that now that he’s died, no one will ever get him to answer those goddamn questions.

One of my favorite sections in (most) books these days is the Q&A with the author in the back. If a book is good, it leaves you with all sorts of lingering thoughts and questions, and a good portion of the time the Q&A answers them (or suggests new ones). Plus, it’s a great marketing addition to convince you to buy the author’s next book.

Sadly, my brain now outputs a steady stream of marketing ideas re: virtually everything I see, hear or read. It’s highly entertaining to me, and probably highly irritating to everyone else.

Because yeah, still don’t have the best filter for this mouth of mine.

The Chop is still recovering from yesterday’s Vikings loss, we had torrential rain today and not one, but TWO windows are leaking, the Chop left the (poo) shoe out on the porch, so that’s ruined and I just finished working at midnight.

Some days are really rough.

I think Anthony Bourdain is one of the most entertaining authors and personalities on TV. I loved Kitchen Confidential and we watch No Reservations pretty regularly, so when I heard he was going to be in town, I jumped at the chance to hear him live.

So following a ridiculous amount of sushi (we sat at the counter and one of the sushi chefs was all, are you hungry? uh, yeah, we kinda are, lol), we went and heard him speak.

And let me say, he’s funnier in person than on TV, he curses with every other breath and crazy women are totally in love with him—and they will proposition him in a Q&A session in front of hundreds of people. It was awesome.

So we’ve been following this late night nonsense for the past couple of weeks and honestly, I feel like this is the funniest these guys have ever been. If they had been this entertaining before, perhaps this little experiment would’ve worked out.

Normally I don’t like late night — Daily Show and Colbert, yes; Letterman and Leno, no — but we’ve been catching some of their spiels and guests and wowza, the rage makes for some beautiful television.

We’re watching the last episode now, and they’ve just run recaps of Conan’s “greatest hits”… it’s really too bad this show comes on so late, because I think we’d watch it if we didn’t have to get up for work in the morning.

This is the first time since I moved to this coast that I’ve had a boss that I actually respect and admire, and it’s a different experience for me.

My boss gets in before most everyone and is undoubtedly the last to leave. She works weekends, she works from home and she’s run this company for over two decades. She doesn’t ask her staff to do anything she wouldn’t do herself and damn if she isn’t smarter than all of us, with a Master’s and a PhD and did I mention she graduated with those concurrently? At 24? Yeah. She got into business young, then got married, got fired for being pregnant (ha, she showed them) and started running her dad’s company. Now she’s raised four kids, three of whom work for her, and she’s running one of the most successful businesses in the area with a staff of 150 and contracts easily totaling over 15 million a year.

Every day she allows herself four cigarettes… six if it’s a particularly draining day. And you can always tell what kind of a day it is by which cigarettes are missing—she places them strategically on shelves and power boxes on the way out the door. If they’re all gone by 2PM, it’s a bad day; if there’s one still on the apple shelf, it’s a good day.

I find it endearing.

The Chop had to go to the DMV today to get a new license… it did not go well. He took a credit card bill, his ID and his passport, but he ended up coming home (after waiting 1.5 hours) because he needed either a) a utility bill, b) a lease agreement or c) a bank account statement that was mailed to the house.

Three problems: all the bills are in my name (always have been), we bought the house (so no lease agreement) and we get our bank statements online (we’re green! mostly! somewhat! we try.).

We found the quitclaim deed I had to get to be able to pick up our recycling bins (seriously, who the fuck is going to come steal recycling bins that aren’t from their area? THEY DON’T LOOK THE SAME) and he went to the bank to have them print out a statement (we printed one here too, but you never know).

Ironically the printed statement from the bank? No good. And the deed? The person who helped him had to go ask the manager if that was OK.

Seriously. Can the DMV be any more of a complete fuck up? It’s like the ugly stepchild of government agencies, that went to prison for murder, got out on a technicality and is now torturing the rest of us because it hates life.

I started a new project last week, and it’s exactly the kind of job that I adore—complete freedom to rebuild and redesign an old school HTML site into a database-driven WordPress site. Over 400 pages and 40 hours later and I think it might be my favorite job to date. And, if I do say so myself, it’s a thing of beauty.

I’m currently driving the Chop crazy talking about it… but the up side for him is that I was so focused this weekend that he watched not one, not two, but FOUR football games. In their entirety.

It was a momentous time for both of us, lol.

My job yesterday required me to look up advertising rates on several national fashion magazines. It was sadly quite boring, but I did learn important things: no definitive proof of a G-spot, men think about sex all day—and they think about having sex with 9 out of 10 women that they meet and most importantly, Oprah wants to steal Barack from Michelle.

This photo was on her site:

Now correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t it look like Michelle is the friend of the family and they are the couple? Nice positioning, and with just one little crop in Photoshop… voila!

I kind of feel like she had it cropped and it’s framed in her house somewhere, lol.

A very quick way to my heart involves combining things I love, like raw fish and cucumbers, reading and bed, wood fires and chocolate, vodka and anything, etc. In this case, Sara Bareilles and Jersey Shore. Hilarious.

One of our resolutions was to drink less at home. The plan of attack was to just not have anything here, so we wouldn’t have to have a lot of willpower… just concentrate on the work that would be required to get in the car and drive to the store, and that would convince us to not bother. As it turns out, the need for a stiff drink quickly overpowers our laziness—well, the Chop’s really. It’s too damn cold for me to go outside unless I absolutely have to.

Last night I worked till around two on a new site from a client. She had hired some self-proclaimed “experts” and they blew her site to hell. It was loads of fun.

Today has been no better. Eleven emails to build and send, three separate conference calls, one server that went down and a complete lack of alcohol. There are two bottles of wine from the wedding, half a bottle of peach schnapps and an almost full bottle of Kahlua—and sadly, I have no interest in a wine-schnapps cooler and really, WTF would you do with Kahlua?

So as it turns out, I’ve figured out a really good way to not drink. Only have crappy stuff in the house and hold firm to not letting your husband go buy vodka for you and voila! Problem solved.