Hometown: The Roch, MI (aka. The Crotch, aka. Crotchscratcher, aka. Crotchmolester, aka. Rochester)
Currently Living: Clawson, MI
Height: 5'8
Weight: Ha ha, yeah right
Favorite Color: Blue (preferably navy)
Profession: Researcher
Favorite Nickname: Trick, Sloan
Favorite Drinks:Vodka Tonic, Guinness, Diet Dr. Pepper, Dirty Martinis, red wine
Favorite TV Show: Friends, Sex & The City, Project Runway, The Amazing Race, Iron Chef America
Least Favorite TV Show: A Baby Story, I Love Lucy, Martha Stewart, Everybody Loves Raymond, every hour long drama
Favorite Books: The History of Love, Beloved, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Fight Club, A Prayer for Owen Meany, The of Being, SurUnbearable Lightness vivor, Empire Falls, The Corrections, The Bell Jar
Favorite Movies: Little Miss Sunshine, Anchorman, The 40 Year Old Virgin, Wordplay, American Beauty, Life is Beautiful, Amelie, Breakfast Club, Singin In The Rain, Sixteen Candles, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Sleeping Beauty, Dancer in the Dark, Duets, The Virgin Suicides, The Manchurian Candidate (1962), Austin Powers I, II & III, My Best Friends Wedding, Moulin Rouge, Tommy Boy, Billy Madison, The Shining, Gone With The Wind, Bridget Jones' Diary, Chicago, Love Actually
Guilty Pleasure Movies: Xanadu, Dirty Dancing, Overboard, Groundhog Day, Steel Magnolias, 10 Things I Hate About You, Bond movies, Footloose, Clue, Murder By Death, High Spirits, A Cinderella Story
What I Do Too Much: Check email, crossword puzzles, complain about my job to friends and family,
Obsessions: sushi, Indian food, ranch dressing, toenail polish, song lyrics, hands, awards shows, symmetry, avocados, maps, dreams, This American Life, the display in my car that tracks my MPG
Pet Peeves: loud eaters, slurping, gulping, arrogance, snoring, bad grammar, repetition, late mergers, ripping cardboard, the word "chunky", intolerance, couples in a restaurant sitting on the same side of a booth, pop-up ads, privacy manager, men that drive without shirts on, being foolish, unfairly jumping to conclusions, being made fun of, cat-calling, people who type too hard
Greatest Fear: crossing bridges
Relaxing Activites: late night drives to sing by myself, headstands, hot baths,
Wish I Was: Ansel Adams, Jenifer Aniston, in love, living alone
Prized Possessions: ring from my grandparents, flower pot of my Grandma's, electric blanket (temporarily broken), tongue scraper, my bed
Craziest Thing Ever Done: getting a tattoo, strip Jenga
Things I Eventually Want To Do: skydive, buy a guitar, learn how to play the aforementioned guitar, take flying lessons, travel to France, write a novel, learn how to play the harp, tap dancing lessons, run a marathon
Thursday, December 30, 2004 I know I don't know you....Two mysteries mysteriously solved this week. I feel like friggin' Matlock or something. Which, coinicidentally, I sat down and watched an entire episode of this week. Man, is that show bad.
Mystery #1:
On Thanksgiving, my parents received an email from my aunt and uncle who live in Kalamazoo. They have two kids (my cousins), one who recently moved to Los Angeles (my future superstar cousin Ryan), and one who had been working on cruise ships for the last 8 months, Nicole. In the email, giving my parents an update of what their family was up to, my aunt mentioned that both Ryan and Nicole, in their respective locations, had run into people who knew who I was. Say what?
Now, I only know a few people in L.A., but Ryan did meet Pnut when Suzy went out to visit. So that is a likely explanation of who knew me. But on a cruise ship? There seem to be a limited number of individuals on a cruise ship at any given moment in time, so what are the chances that two people I know are on the same one and actually figure that out?
Last Monday, Amy and I got together with two of our friends, Heidi and Holly, who were the two girls that were our first friends when we moved to Rochester. And although I have multitudes of stories that I could tell about all of the most amazing fun times we've had with these girls, suffice it now to say that most of the laughing that I did between the ages of 8-17 were with them. So we met up for dinner and it ended up being a large family affair -- parents, brother, cousins (who I haven't seen since they were about 2 years old, currently now teenagers), brother's friends. It was quite a posse. And lo and behold, the first thing out of their brother, Eric's mouth was, "Did you know that I've spent the last 8 months working on a cruise ship with your cousin?" Amy and I let out a cross between an "Ah HA!" in celebration of discovering the mystery, and an "Ahhhhh," as though it were somehow obvious and we had just over-looked it. It was a moment akin to the point in Amelie when she discovers the mysterious man in the pictures isn't a ghost, but the photo booth repair man. The light shone around and the satisfaction of discovery was wonderful.
Mystery #2:
Everytime I've been getting into my car in the last couple weeks, I acknowledged an overwhelming smell of what reminds me of a cleaning solvent. I most certainly have not taken the time to ArmorAll my car recently, as evidenced by the fine layer of dust accumulating on my dashboard. And I just threw away most of the crap that had been collecting in my car. So I knew very well that there wasn't any nastiness hiding under any of the seats. So it was just a mystery. Maybe just the heat or something? Who knows.
Well, I went to put groceries in my trunk the other day, when the perpetrator of the solvent smell made his presence known. When I got my new car, I took everything from the trunk of my old car and tossed it into the trunk of my new car, including jumper cables, a gas tank, and a jug of windshield bug remover stuff. I had been warned not to put the bug stuff in my windshield wipers due to the fact that it wasn't designed to withstand extra cold temperatures. Well, this in fact still holds true if the liquid remains in the plastic container as well. Considering that many of the days of the last couple weeks were barely double-digit days, the fluid froze inside the container and cracked the plastic lid. So by the point I opened the trunk to put in my groceries, the only amount left in the container was a still frozen core that amounts to about 1/3 of the original jug. If anyone has any suggestions on how one would go about cleaning this mess so that my groceries don't smell like Windex, it would be greatly appreciated.
I'm hoping that I will be able to get my detective badge sometime in the near future....fat chance.
1:57 PM
