After many days of deliberation, several astronomers have decided that Pluto is no longer a planet.

Um.

New guidelines? Come on. Who decides that we need new guidelines, huh? I liked the old ones.

And I liked Pluto.

Stupid new rules.

My momma and I were talking the other day and I mentioned that I was seeing someone and oh, btw, since you’re coming to town in a few weeks, I thought maybe you could meet him. Dinner, you know?

She was a little quiet, but said OK, rapidly followed by, I hope your dad likes him.

Yeah, no pressure right?

She called me yesterday.

“What are you doing for birth control?”

No hello, no how’s it going… just straight for the jugular.

“Hi mom. How’re you doing? I’m doing fine. Why are you asking me about birth control?”

“Well you can’t use it and you’re seeing someone so I’m just assuming and what are you doing?”

“Um, well a) who says we’re sleeping together and b) I guess I’m going to use condoms, seeing as how pills and such are out of the question.”

“Condoms aren’t 100% effective you know and ….”

“Yes mom I know, but neither is birth control.”

“You aren’t ready to have a baby yet and condoms don’t always work and abstinence is the only effective birth control method and…”

“Mom, I’m almost 24. I’m not looking to have a baby anytime soon, but at least I’m not 16. I could handle it if I had too.”

She continued with the abstinence speech.

“Mom, did you abstain? OK then.”

“You and your sister just refuse to learn from the mistakes of your mother.”

Sigh.

“Mom, can you just chill? Do you now see why I don’t tell you things? All you’re doing is making yourself and me upset. I won’t be abstaining, just so we’re clear, and I plan to use condoms and if I get pregnant (sweet LORD not for a little while) I can handle it.”

“How do you know he’s the one you want to have kids with anyway? Or would even be around?”

“Geez mom, I hope I know how to pick them better than that… sheesh.”

So it went on like this for a little while.

And now they’re coming to town and we’re all having dinner.

…

In other words, I’ll be starting to drink again in oh, say, three weeks, for sure. 🙂

One of the best questions in an interview is, “Where do you see yourself in five years?”

Which makes the second best one, “And in ten years?”

I had a really great interview the other day with an interesting multimedia company. I spoke with the people with whom I would work, and then they brought in the owner of the company, who posed, among many others, those two questions.

I smiled at her and chuckled. We had already achieved a good rapport, so I felt perfectly comfortable saying, “Well, in ten years? Hopefully in a position similar to yours.”

Fortunately she laughed and said, “Well that’s blunt.”

I actually had no answer, so I figured going with a joke was the best response. I had managed to parry most of her questions with relative ease, but that one threw me for a loop.

Was she asking about my long term goals? What are they? Well, I mean, I know what they are, but technically they have nothing to do with this job. Ugh… I can’t say that to her, she won’t hire me. OK, OK, option B. She looks like a family lady, and I want kids, so maybe I’ll toss that out…. oops, she really meant in relation to my career…

“Well I’d like to kinda be doing what I’m doing now, but… you know, bigger office.” And I laughed and winked at her.

“And obviously more money,” she pointed out with a smile.

“Well, money isn’t my biggest goal, but I’m a vegetarian who likes sushi, Grey Goose, regular pedicures and facials and traveling, so money’s good too.”

In the end, the interview went well, but who knows.

So tell me, does everyone already have a plan for five years? Ten years? Do you know what you want to be doing?

This stunned me… Suspect arrested in JonBenet Ramsey case.

It’s been over ten years, yet I still have a crystal clear memory of when this all happened.

I have always wondered why women douse themselves with so much perfume that you can smell them a mile away.

Today, I realized that the cloying scent is actually buffer for when said women use public transportation.

If I could figure out a way to pass out deodorant on the T, and ensure that the MEN would use it, I would. I would sink all of my savings into a giant stick of deodorant that would swab each and every one of them before they passed through the doors.

On the bright side, I have this incredibly fun contract job in Cambridge with a great group of MIT and Harvard grads. On the one hand, I feel brilliant and on the other, not so much. It’s highly entertaining. 🙂

But the T? Not my favorite thing. A two hour commute is one thing, in my car, and a completely different thing when an hour is spent on the T, with smelly people. Who crowd.

Like most mothers, mine is paranoid… and it’s more so than normal, seeing as how a) I live far, far away, and b) I was sick this year.

In other words, I get called on a daily basis and it’s mainly just to see “what’s up.”

Last week she called and requested I urgently take my car to the dealership to get it checked out, as she had just heard of a recall and if I don’t get the part replaced the car might wreck and I might die.

I was sitting on the beach at the time, lazily debating having a cocktail for lunch. I murmured agreement to my mom, hung up and rolled over.

Not an hour later the phone rings again. Unhappily roused from my nap, I said, “Yes?”

“Are you at the dealership?”

“Um.. no. I’m still at the beach.”

“What? You have to take it in right away. You can’t drive with the problem… why didn’t you take it in? Didn’t you hear me? It has to do with the steering pin and what happens is the front end will drop onto the wheels and you’ll be COMPLETELY unable to drive the car and it will go off the road and you’ll probably be on the freeway!”

“‘Cause I’m at the beach?”

Much grumbling and grousing came over the line and I finally agreed to call the dealership and make an appointment.

Today was the first spot they had available.

“I have a Jeep and apparently there’s some sort of recall and my friend’s boyfriend [granted we had ALL been drinking and I was riding in a different vehicle while he drove mine home.. in the dark. on back roads that are old.] thinks something might be wrong with the alignment and that being said, the recall thing might be part of the problem…”

Yep, the car people love me.

“Well darlin’ [I love them too. Car places are the only ones that being chauvinist is not only acceptable, it’s kinda cute.] we’ll take a look at it, but we just heard about that recall and Chrysler won’t be sending the parts out until September.”

“……”

Forty-five minutes later darlin’ comes to get me in the waiting room.

“I drove your car and while it might drift a little, it’s hardly at all. Let me tell you about the recall…. blah, blah, blah.. only have enough parts for 40,000 cars and there are 2 million or so.. blah, blah, blah.. it’s just ball joints and it’s because they wear too soon and your car is relatively new and doesn’t have that many miles…. blah, blah, blah.. and why did you bring it in? ‘Cause you heard about the recall? They haven’t even mailed that stuff out yet sugar… blah, blah, blah. It looks good and you’re all set.. when you get the recall notice just bring it on in and we’ll change the ball joints.”

“… so this won’t kill me? And I probably won’t even have the problem?”

“Nah.. the problem is mainly with the older jeeps with lots of miles. The ball joints wear too soon.”

“So this was pointless?”

He laughs. “What, you don’t like getting up at 7AM to bring your car in? C’mon darlin’, you know you wanted to come and see us this morning.”

So thanks mom, for making me get up at the crackass of dawn to take my jeep to the dealership whereupon I got harassed my men who thought it was “cute” that I was worried.

Grrr.

Right now I’m what you would call… unemployed. And let me tell you, it is SO boring. (I don’t care what you say Andy, you’d be bored—trust me.)

I’ve been doing contract work here and there and finishing up the summer project from hell, but when it all comes down to it, not having a job to go to every day is weird… and boring. I can go to the beach when I want, sleep in as long as I want, stay out as long as I want and drink as much as I want.

The freedom is KILLING ME!

My dad has decided to help ::cough:: and I use that term very loosely.

He called the other day and left me two messages, the second more urgent, excitedly telling me that he’s found my dream job.

I called him back to see what it was, thinking, perhaps, it could be something really awesome… maybe he met someone who knew someone who had something. You know?

No.

He (and he was still VERY excited) quickly told me about a friend who’s wife just fell and broke her hip and they needed a helper IMMEDIATELY and oh, did I mention you’d have your own place above their garage and he’s a millionaire so it’d be a mansion’s garage and all you’d really have to do is dishes and help her get around. And oh look, it’s about 10 miles from their home (um, 3500 miles from where I am NOW) and even though it wasn’t perfect I could do it as an interval job while I looked for something I really wanted.

Dead silence on my end.

“Dad.”

“Yeah? Doesn’t it sound great? It’d only be an interval thing until you found something you really wanted.”

“Dad. I live on the EAST COAST. That’s the opposite side.”

“Mmhmm. You could put your stuff in storage or bring it back here with you.”

“Dad I don’t WANT to move back there. I want a job here. And if I’m going to get an interval job, wouldn’t I do that somewhere near where I am NOW.. you know, close to where I want to be, perhaps?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Oh, and Dad?”

“Yeah?”

“Seriously, you think that’s my dream job?”

“Well you’d get a lot of free time and you could probably learn to invest from such and such…”

Oh. my. GOD.

Yeah.

Good times.

You Belong in Dublin

Friendly and down to earth, you want to enjoy Europe without snobbery or pretensions. You’re the perfect person to go wild on a pub crawl… or enjoy a quiet bike ride through the old part of town.

I love when these things are right. 🙂

My street is blocked off right now, and has been for the past 30 minutes or so. I heard the accident—actually, I think everyone within a good five mile radius heard the accident—and now there’s a fire truck, a couple of ambulances and a cop car sitting on my street.

Seeing as how my street is a one-way dead end, and we all park on the one side, there will be no getting out of here for awhile. Lovely.

Anywho, so I had a pretty good weekend. A little beach time, a little liquor and oh yeah, a bit of a date. 😉

Mmmhmm, the insider is kinda sorta seeing someone, so anywho, you might be hearing about that on occasion. I don’t date lightly.

We escaped this morning, and have spent the past couple of hours here at the airport.

Drinking.

We all got doubles… but not on purpose. Apparently my dad meant to order a Corona with a lime… a slip of the tongue resulted in a double Cuervo and a Corona… with four slices of lime.

It’s been a long few days.

My parents and sister boarded their plane about 20 minutes ago. It’s a nonstop and they should be home by five. I, on the other hand, get to change planes in Detroit—after a two hour layover—so I won’t be home until 11 or 12. Lovely.

And then I have to unpack the box that’s coming home with me.

Box, you say? Why do you have a box?

Oh, well you see, the family (my dad’s) wants to scan old pictures in and make sure everyone has copies (a very good idea, yes). Originally one of my crazy ass uncles was going to do it, but everyone was afraid it’d never get done… so my dad volunteered me. Uh huh. Which is technically fine, ’cause originally it was a small bag of pictures—maybe 100 in all.

Then we went to the warehouse last night, the last giant stockpile of my grandparents’ stuff, and lo and behold, it’s now a huge ass box filled with pictures and papers and medals.

That I get to scan, date, arrange in date order and then burn onto discs for all five siblings and their families.

Yeah.

I need another drink.