Hey, news shows, can you please, for the love of all that’s holy, stop showing the GoDaddy commercial. It grosses me out. And you keep telling me that it grosses you out, but then you say “Let’s take a look at it.” STOP IT! Don’t make me go all Eric Sims on your arses.(And I’m not mentioning that ad anymore. Other than to say, I think the GoDaddy team really hates women. It isn’t just the “oh we’re so controversial” nudity and gross necking. Their GoDaddy.co (totally different than GoDaddy.com) ad featured nagging wives and a “sky waitress”. WTF? Also, I’ve used GoDaddy before and they suck.) Now that that is over, let’s talk advertising. Everybody and their brother Al has opinions on the Super Bowl ads. They are all wrong, here’s the only recap you’ll want to read. (In no particular order): Sweet criminy, I love goats! Granted, I’ve never owned a goat. I did used to feed them my bus transfers when I would stop by the petting zoo that was in the park next to my apartment in Chicago. They’re cute, and apparently smart as dogs. After the past few years of picking on animals in their commercials, I was glad to see Doritos give the goat the upper hand (hoof?): Screaming Goat Doritos commercial: Cute baby goats you need to see that have nothing to do with the Doritos commercial: Full disclosure, I hate Budweiser products. Ok, smarty pants, I know that Stella Artois is now made by the same people, but for some reason Bud, and any Bud derivative gives me an instant headache. To me, Bud Light seems like something I’d drink while smoking Marlboro Menthols. Thought you should know that before I told you that the new...

You inspire me. Several people I know have taken amazing journeys this year. Some are family, some are friends, some are acquaintances or old relationships tracked only via Facebook. Some are at a height of success in their ventures, some are just starting out. They all have one thing in common, they are sharing their accomplishments and struggles. Whether they do that by posting status updates, newly created blogs or sharing in person. You folks inspire me. The other thing I noticed from a couple of these adventurers, they wonder if sharing their story means anything. Sometimes writing about yourself feels self-indulgent at worst, or like you are echoing into an empty canyon at best. I can only tell you that you hooked me. Your example of persistance shines like a torch when I’m in the middle of dark doubt. My older sister is one of the best examples. When she was a little girl, Janet made up her mind to be a “travelling art teacher”. She always had talent, and smarts. Janet studied graphic arts in college. She married a year out of school and devoted herself to being a wife and mother to two kids, who have recently flown the nest. While she’d always been creative during that time, she has decided to re-engage her artistic self, and to share it with the world on her blog They Gave Me Sketchbooks. It’s scary to start up something you love after a few decades. It’s even scarier to push it out into the world for judgement. But she’s inspired me. Anytime I’m too tired to write, I peruse her blog and then get busy. Part inspiration, part sibling competition. Other inspiritors include: An old college buddy who I haven’t spoken to, aside from...

There are probably around a dozen books in my library that I either haven’t started or haven’t finished. It’s a shame, sort of. A few are loaners from family that I’ll get to when everything else around me is exhausted. Several I purchased because I love the author, and the premise sounded interesting, but I get distracted by shiny new stories, so I lay those older books aside, promising to pick them up at the soonest opportunity. And admittedly, there are a couple who I’m half-way through but found myself getting so overwhelmed or bored with minute detailing of history (I’m looking at you 1491) that I had to book mark them and cleanse my mind with some YA before even thinking of cracking them open again. A good number, of these neglected tomes, are books on writing. So my house is over-run with books. Also, I live with somebody who has lots of books of their own. If I mention wanting to buy a new and exciting book, he’ll eyeball the stack of unread novels and history books precariously perched on the nightstand next to my pillow. “Why do you want to buy another book when you still have these to read?” (It should be noted that this person always gifts me with at least one book on Christmas and birthdays.) Since I’m not made of money, and my storage space is finite, the library is my go-to book fix. Libraries are easy. Borrow a book and then hand it back once you’ve thoroughly examined it’s world. But some of those books affect me so much, I must own them. There is an odd power that story has over a person. When it really connects, it’s as if a piece of my soul...

The initial Poll on This Star Trek/Star Wars poll started a Facebook discussion on cos-play. It seems a lot of what solidifies your decision on your franchise favorite is how you’d get to dress up for the storyline. Since we nerds love to play in the costume scene, I’m curious to find out how you’d dress up for a sci-fi convention. I generally just wear the ‘gawking tourist’ uniform, but I do play dress up in my imagination. I would love to rock a Borg costume at some point. Let me know in the comments what your ideal (or actual) costume for Comic-Con would be or if you think grown-ass adults should stop playing already. [poll...

At the tender age of 8, I bought a vinyl album that had the story of Dracula on one side and Frankenstein on the B-side (kids ask your parents about B-sides). When Kim Gibbs had a sleep-over, Halloween party at her house, I brought the record for everybody to listen to. Of course, I had to run from the room in terror half-way through the Dracula side. I was an impressionable child and Dracula freaked me out. At around the age of 11, I read Salem’s Lot for the first time. We had a enormous lilac bush in our front yard, large enough so I could walk through the tunnel made by the growing plant. Now, I just knew that vampires were hiding in that tunnel and would come out every night to watch me through my bedroom window, waiting for me to let them in. Even though the thought of a vampire terrified me, they also fascinate me. It all made sense a bit later, with the introduction of the pure sexual hunger of the vampire, Lestat. Then Gary Oldman gave sensually seductive appeal back to good old Vlad the blood-sucker. The creatures showed another side of primal need. Now we have brooding Edward Cullen: The reluctant vampire. He doesn’t scare me at all. This generation of vamps is leaving a bad taste in my mouth. So I figured you might have an opinion too. Click below to weigh in on who sucks the most. And feel free to add your own fav versions of the photophobic in the comments below. [poll...

We’re starting up a weekly poll here at Fierce And Nerdy. We thought it would be best to ease you into sharing your opinions, by asking something familiar, something we all have strong opinions about. It’s Star Trek v. Star Wars. Some of you like both, but you know it’s not equal. So which is your favorite child of the two? Let us know by clicking below. Choose wisely. [poll id=”28″] Choose the Darkside (click the button above) The prime directive, click the Star Trek...

“What are you fellas staring at? I’m not a pole dancer.” growls cranky old Gus (Clint Eastwood) in a trailer for Trouble with the Curve. Eastwood is once again playing a grumpy old man. But wait a minute. In the middle of watching that clip, a lightbulb illuminated above my skull and I was overcome with the sudden realization that pretty much every character Clint has ever played has been a curmudgeon. He didn’t start this grumpy schtick when he got grey and wrinkly. Even that young, gun-slinger eating western spaghetti (did I get that right?) was a put-upon anti-hero with a hair up his heinie. Testing this revelation, I made a visit to IMDb, reviewing the work of Mr. Eastwood for any comedies he may have tried his hand at. Nothin. Well, maybe Every Which Way But Loose could be considered funny, but he was still pretty grumpy in that one. While I was laughing my ass off at his take on Invisible and Crass: The President and I at the recent Repub convention, I don’t think that show will make his filmography, nor do I think he shook the cloak of cantankerous-ness in that performance. Why do we love such a crusty character? And boy do we love us some Clint! Eastwood has been popular for 50+ years because we see ourselves in the everyman he portrays. Trust me, even the most perky and positive-zen-light among us have days where we wish those damn kids would just stay off the lawn/turn down that music/pull up their pants/get a damn job. Alternately, we want to be the one who saves the irascible lonely jerk from his own foul mood. Ya see, while Clint is cranky or difficult, he’s never downright mean. Sure he...

I really wanted to choose my story about finally being okay with wearing glasses in public for best of FaN, but the column below needed to resurface because I can’t stop saying stupid stuff. People tell me that I’m an excellent listener. One of the reasons people think that, is that I’m keeping my damn mouth shut before I remove any doubt you have of my idiocy. I am always saying the wrong thing and I can’t for the life of me tell you why. Here is a little story I like to call “Ruining the Moment”: We are at an idyllic ranch in Wyoming. My extended family on Mom’s side; cousins, aunts, uncles, nieces and nephews, have all gathered for our every 5 year reunion. The property is lovely and the sun is melting into the pond and reflecting blues and purples and pinks that color the end of our warm day. My 23 year old nephew and his young wife walk into his Mother’s, my sister’s, cabin and asks the noisy crowd to leave so he can talk to his Mom alone. “Why!?!” I blurt, a little too loudly “Is it because you guys are pregnant?” Of course it was because they were pregnant, with their first child and he wanted to share a special moment with his mother. So do you know who has two thumbs, a big mouth and ruined that moment? This gal. That occurred in 2001. Normally I let go of the stupid crap I say, because otherwise it would weigh me down. That one was a biggie though, so it still sits on my head. Most of the time, I know immediately after the fact when I’ve said something idiotic. Take today at the animal rescue where...

My parents read books to me. They were pretty busy people, Dad was a farmer and ranch hand, working up to 22 hours a day, 7 days a week. Mom had five kids to care for out in the middle of the country, but they read to me. Since I was the fifth of those five kids, and a late surprise at that, I’m pretty sure my brothers and sisters read to me as well. It’s time to thank them all for giving me a love of story that has lasted my entire life. I don’t remember much about the first few years, but there is a tale my Mom likes to share of how I sat at my second birthday party and “read” The House that Jack Built. Because I had carried it everywhere with me and insisted that my family read it to me so many times, I had memorized the words and when to turn the pages. That might be a bit of a stretch of my Mother’s pride in an exaggeration, but I like that the legend has floated through my life with me, as a part of my origin myth as a reader. Most of my reading was unsupervised after the age of seven. I remember discovering Salem’s Lot when I was in the 4th grade. While it totally freaked me out and made me terrified of the dark forever (yes, still to this day) I got hooked on Stephen King. I read a lot of the classics too, but lost myself in the worlds that the horror master created. Until my early 20’s I bought every book he wrote on the day it was released. Around that time, I discovered Clive Barker. Clive’s work came to me the way...

So you went and saw The Amazing Spider-Man to witness Andrew and Emma fall in love. Sweet. A lot of critics, comic geek bloggers and my FB friends have been praising The Amazing Spider-Man, mostly for the relationship between Gwen and Peter. I whole heartedly disagree with all of you. There were about a gazillion critical story errors and the script was dull as clipping dry toenails. My one sentence review is: “I’m assuming it’s better than Battleship.” Reading positive reviews has me ranting at my computer screen, wanting to respond with all the reasons the film failed, when it occurs to me: I have a bi-weekly online column. I hardly ever post anything controversial or offensive, and I am inspired by this genius Promethius review, so I figured it was about time to express a contrary opinion (sorry to butt into your space On The Contrary). So here are the reasons The Ambianzing Spiderman super disappointed me and the people who saw the movie with me. I do address that relationship thing in my final point below. (yes I know it’s Spider-Man, but out of disrespect I’ve been calling him Spiderman in one quick blurt. Take THAT mysterious corporate movie production overlords!) WARNING: There are spoilers out the wahzoo in this piece. Plot Problems Once Dennis Leary makes Peter Parker realize Spiderman is just a vigilante (by chasing guys who look like his Uncle’s killer) they just DROP the whole “Who killed Uncle Ben?” thing. Did the writer/director think “Ok, well we’ve used that plot point to get us to here. We don’t really need to tie that storyline up do we? Nah…” How did Peter Parker get the “super tensile spider web” vials from Oscorp? Isn’t that stuff worth a ton of...

Yesterday was my 10th wedding anniversary, so I figured I would share one of the secrets to long-term marital bliss. You don’t make it through 21 years in a relationship without learning how to use the “C” word. My not so secret, secret? Communication. When I was super-young and single and really bad at relationships, I met Seen. We had some heated fights in the first few years. I’d screech and cry and he’d sleep on the couch. I would shut down rather than discuss problems or find a solution. My move was to steam in silence, waiting for him to figure out what he had done wrong. I wanted him to intuitively know what my mood was, why I was so damn grumpy and the cure for it all. TV shows and chick flicks showed me what perfect was. Women were rescued by a prince. You know, the guy who “got” her even though her current beau didn’t. That was true love and how to know your soul mate immediately. In my humble experience, I can tell you that TV, chick flicks, love songs and most fairy tales are full of shit. Being involved with somebody isn’t effortless, but it isn’t ‘hard work’ either. It’s about talking to each other. Not being an ass-hat helps, but mainly it’s the talking. For me, one of the hardest parts of this communicating thing, was actually knowing what I am trying to say. Sometimes I have to stop, think about what’s happening here and figure myself out before I start talking. Here’s a simple little example we just lived through: When making weekend plans, more often than not, Seen will say “We can do whatever you want to do.” which always made my hackles rise. I...

“My sole inspiration is a telephone call from a producer.”–Cole Porter Deadlines and I are frenemies. Without a deadline, even if it’s just a scrawl on my to-do list, I would never get a thing done. Having a deadline is a light at the end of my creative tunnel. Sometimes that light is the finished project coming out into the sun. Most of the time, a deadline seems like a train, carrying a cargo of procrastination that is about to run me over. Even when I’m super excited about something, say things like writing a bi-weekly column for this online publication, I put off the inevitable. Usually I start a bit of writing a few weeks before the item is due, committing myself to bits of research, looking at other points of view, digging up thoughts and memories. Then suddenly, somehow, it’s an hour before deadline and all I have are a few scratchy notes that that seemed much, much more comprehensive in my head than they do on that sheet of paper. Here comes that train, barreling towards me with little regard for my excuses, no matter how valid they sound. Time and tide wait for no man, or writer. This is not a new phenomenon. I sucked at homework. I can admit now that I was a fairly good student, but I would have accomplished a lot more if I had focused on history or geometry problems at the kitchen table instead of my chosen way of spending an evening; either reading a book or dancing around in my room play acting out little skits about how Gopher and Isaac the Bartender were both in love with me. Most mornings you would find me in the school hallway, about 10 minutes before...

Groupon had me climbing the walls yesterday. Every morning I wade through email offers from Groupon, Living Social, Amazon Local, Daily Candy and tons of other trickle down copy-cat sites. Today alone, I tossed 14 offers into the trash including: 60% off eye lash extensions, a reduced rate on a body-fat scale and discounted limo service. Lots of stuff I didn’t want, need or even look at. Back in November, however, one day after I had an extensive conversation about how rock climbing could boost my strength and temper my anxiety, a deal popped up for an indoor rock climbing gym. It seemed like one of those glorious, coincidental timing things. So this girl, who is usually only swayed by discounted massages, bought a climbing session. I printed the voucher, but the Groupon languished, magnetized to the fridge. Every time I reached for a snack, I was reminded that I was a total slacker who needed to climb. With only a week remaining before my deal expired, I called and made the appointment to do just that. Rockreation is tucked into a nondescript office strip mall in West Los Angeles. Walking in the door, I was struck that this is climbing practice nirvana, which happens to also smell a little bit like feet. Every wall is covered with hand holds and cliffs, some have overhangs that jut out at various angles, just like a real cliff. Climbing ropes were already hung on about 50% of the walls. In order to climb here, I needed to first fill in a waiver stating I wouldn’t sue Rockreation no matter how I managed to injure or kill myself at their facility. That pumped my anxiety a little, but I figured climbing nirvana was as good a place...

Two nights ago, someone said to me “I really don’t like most American-made cinema anymore.” I didn’t ask him to elaborate because: a. I agree and b. I’ve heard the same thing from a lot of different people. From the Transformers franchise, Battleship-type movies and most crappy romantic comedies, a lot of the mass produced, mega-million budgeted crap that emits forth from the studio machine seems like a bunch of rehashed dog biscuits. I’m all for being entertained, and can’t wait for to go see The Three Stooges re-do, but for the most part, Hollywood blockbusters suck. So I told this person, the guy who didn’t care for movies now-a-days, he should give Asian cinema a shot. The majority of sub-titled movies I’ve seen aren’t dumbed down for the audience. Most Chinese directors and writers know how to weave a story that is complex and relatable, while incorporating realistic, heart pounding action sequences Americans can’t seem get away with outside of Skywalker Ranch. I would point to the layered brilliance behind Infernal Affairs, which was remade by Scorcese, DiCaprio and company as The Departed (that won Scorsese his first Oscar). When I was reading The Hunger Games, I knew Suzanne Collins must have been inspired by Battle Royale, a Japanese movie that came out in 2000 about 9th graders made to hunt each other. (To cash-in on that Hunger Games cache, the Battle Royale producers are re-releasing the movie into American theatres in 3D. Or you can just borrow the DVD from me if you want.) Actors Jet Li, Andy Lau, Tony Leung, Stephen Chow have all captured my imagination in the past decade. Right now, Donnie Yen is a huge hit in Hong Kong Cinema. He’s handsome, tiny, brilliant and has bad-ass moves....

To be perfectly honest, I was always a lousy driver. Less then a year after I got my license, I began my reign of terror. Side-swiping my Dad’s 1960ish green van, one of those behemoths that was made entirely out of Adamantium. After that followed a series of unfortunate events, the last happening just a few years ago when I totaled my SUV. Now I can’t drive at all. It started when I was a Senior in high school, coming home late from theater practice one night. I tried to park my tinny Ford Fairmont in front our house and ran up against Dad’s van front bumper. The back passenger door caved in and one of my hub caps knocked off and folded in two, like a PB&J made on one slice of bread. Dad’s van didn’t have a scratch. We didn’t report it, so my car never got fixed. That incident was followed by a series of one-car mishaps. I backed into poles, spun out on icy country roads and scraped garage walls. I’m thinking now that maybe it had something to do with depth perception. Or maybe there was a correlation with how often I hit things when I was singing along with the radio. In between accidents, I loved driving. My chosen college sat exactly 10 hours from my parents house and I would drive back home every few months. Ten hours, by myself, rattling across Kansas in my old Ford Fairmoni (the “t” in Fairmont had lost it’s top at some point, so my car was a unique individual) with only an AM radio for company. The trip was boring, so I popped into the discount store of my college town and purchased a few fake animal nose masks. It...

I’m going on vacation this Wednesday. Work has been overwhelming lately, so I’ve been eye-balling my vacation start date like it’s a big ole turkey leg and I’m a hungry cartoon character. Even though I’m excited to turn on my out-of-office and unplug from the world of stress and too many emails, worry sweeps over me about the upcoming days off. What if we get in a car accident while driving through the mountains: what if the ceiling of our apartment caves in while we’re gone: what if the zombie apocalypse occurs when we’re in the middle of Utah? That’s my role in the game of life, I am The Worrier. This is a title I’m trying to grow out of. Pointless worry brings stomach aches, shooting head pain and useless grumpiness. But I’ve been a worrier my entire life and this is not an easy addiction to kick. In some sense, I feel my worry is a wonderful preventative. I control the universe with my visions of trouble; either I’ll be ready for the worst or pleasantly surprised when all goes smoothly. Yes, I realize this is totally ridiculous, but knowing a superstition is ridiculous and internalizing it are two totally different things. After years of trying traditional methods of dealing with worry, and all the health problems it incurs, I decided to seek something different. This is where an acupuncturist steps in to fix me. I’m laying on a table in a wellness clinic. The legs of my standard black leggings are pushed up, over my knees and my socks are off. It’s really cold in here and I can hear the woman in the room next to me YIPEing every few seconds as she gets poked with needles. Normally anxious, my...

When I was around 11 years old, the local PBS station started playing episodes of Doctor Who. I immediately fell in love, with the show, The Doctor and his companions. When The Doctor brought Sarah Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen) on board, I was transfixed by her. The character was like no other companion before. She challenged him, refusing to be anything other than his equal. At 11 years old, I was probably to young to understand that her insistence that humans were just as important, intelligent, capable and brave as a Time Lord, given equal circumstances, was a metaphor for the female population standing up for their rights. Sarah Jane taught me to not be embarrassed by my brains, my wit or my own fear, but to embrace them and bravely charge...

This year I will have been married 10 years. It’s still a few months away, so save the congrats until we actually make it. Since we kinda eloped (I bought a dress, he rented a tux, we grabbed a preacher off the internet and got married on the beach about eight days later), I had the brilliant idea to throw a fun party for our 10th Anniversary. So it goes to reason that after a big shindig, we should take a second honeymoon, right? Let’s go to Paris! Other than a day trip to Tijuana for me, and some childhood visits to Southern Canada from WI for my hubby, neither my husband, Seen, or I have traveled outside of the United States. We haven’t been static by choice, just by circumstance, lack of finances and lack of time. We both come from money-poor, love-rich families so we didn’t travel much as youngsters either. For our original honeymoon, we took 10 days off work, drove to Colorado for a wedding reception with my family and then tooled back to California by way of various National Parks that dot the Southwest. It was a fun trip, but I’m aching to put my feet on foreign soil. I’ve polled my co-workers and friends who travel. For a first trip abroad, everyone recommends Paris. The romantic City of Lights, filled with visions of figures from history, literature, fashion and chocolát. There is a possibility I’ll hit up fellow F&N blogger, Gudrun, to show me where the best macarons are. As a cemetary-phile I’m very excited to visit the Père Lachaise Cemetary where Jim Morrison, among others, rest in peace. I want to see Mona Lisa in person, stroll along the Sienne and cower in the elevator on the...

Ernessa asked “Are you going to do a column on the Super Bowl commercials again?” I had a good time doing the reviews last year, so the only possible reply was “Hell, yeah! I get to watch TV and be judgmental?! Sign me up!” So here are my Ultimate Pronouncements on the Best and Worst ads of the game. (I totally didn’t see the pre-game. Let me know what I missed.) Everyone has been talking about the Ferris Bueller Honda CRV ad for the past two weeks, so I’m starting off our Super Bowl recap with my thoughts on that. (Please feel free to add your thoughts on any commercials, game action, Faith Hill’s sparkly pants, etc., in the comments below). I thought the CRV ad was clever but sad. Clever as an homage to a classic movie. Loved that Chinatown parade. Sad because only Matthew Broderick was a player in this show. Where were Cameron and Principal Rooney (is he still in prison?) and girlfriend Mia Sara (Sloane) and Jennifer Grey? If this commercial had been sprinkled with the original cast, it would have been a classic. It wasn’t. Now can we please talk about something else? The Good Ads – You Get My Vote/Money Vrooom: Maybe I’m a little biased, because I am a proud Hyundai owner (2012 Cherry Tucson y’all!), but I thought The Dude and the creative team working for Hyundai brought their top game to Super Bowl 46 (that’s right…no Roman numerals for me. Keepin’ it simple.) The employees singing the Rocky theme was awesome and inspiring. My fav part was the bumpy road-test singer: The surprise for the Cheetah trainer in their Veloster commercial made me happy. I always root for the animals! If I weren’t a happy...

I was always the vocal luddite who advocated for paper books and damned the e-reader. Then, in June, my birthday came on the heels of a week spent traveling around Colorado, my shoulder bag loaded with three library books. I came home from Colorado with a pinched nerve in my neck, from carrying around three big library books in my shoulder bag. Two weeks later, my husband presented me with my birthday gift, a Nook! (He’s an excellent gift giver, noticing my subtle hints, such as “My neck hurts sooo bad from travelling with books. You should get me a Nook for my birthday.”) When I flew back to Colorado in August, the Nook took the place of all books. My carry-on felt about one thousand times lighter. I loved my Nook! I loaded it up with library books and a few purchases from the BN.com site. An availability of titles at our local library was the reason I chose a Nook over the Kindle, they didn’t have Kindle ready files (then, they do now.) I just wanted the simple e-reader, (not the ostentatious tablet) so that saved us the expense of possibly considering an iPad. The Nook rocked my reading life. It went everywhere with me, especially to bed. I loved it so much, I tossed the original packaging, just to show how committed we were to each other. Then, for Christmas, I got the surprise of the decade when I opened a present to discover an iPad2 (3G no less). “Are you Freaking KIDDING me?” I stammered about 8 times. Just so you get the full effect, the present came via delivery about 3 days prior to the holiday, while I was on a very contentious conference call for work. You know...

Presents excite me. It doesn’t matter if it’s a gift for me or from me, I can’t wait to have the thing unwrapped and opened. There is a mystery under that red dancing snowman paper and the anticipation is killing me. I’m pretty sure the root of this impatience is all my parents fault. Every Christmas Eve when I was a kid, we would head over to Grandma and Grandpa Berg’s house. My Mom’s whole family of siblings and cousins, about 45 of us, loaded into the living room. We started the evening off with a round of Christmas carols, which always ended with Grandpa singing “Silent Night” in German (I still remember all the words to the first verse…Stille Nacht, etc…) After the, let’s be honest, really horrible singing, presents were handed around. Mom’s family did a name exchange, so everybody got two presents, one from the gift exchange and one from the grandparents. With 25 grandkids to buy for, I do remember the year we all got tube socks from Grandma. Then Mom and Dad would pile all 5 of their kids into the car and drive us 30 miles down the chilly country highway, back to our home. I remember looking at the millions of stars in the clear sky, singing more Christmas songs and wondering where Santa was at that exact moment. At home, we were scurried off to bed hastily. The bedroom door was left open a crack, so the flashing lights that wound around the tree reflected down the hallway and across the bunk beds I shared with my sister, Janet. Even though we were so excited for Christmas morning, all the sugar we’d consumed at Grandma’s party had us crashed pretty quickly to the sounds of our...

This is a beautiful apple galette. It was the first galette I’ve ever made and it came out of the oven so gorgeous, I could hardly contain my need to take a bite. But these simple, country pies were meant for the dinner party later that day. So I didn’t even nibble (ok, a little pinch of crust, just to be sure it wasn’t too bland or salty.) They smelled good, looked great and based on my nibbling, tasted yummy. But the success of these gorgeous pastries was undone by something as simple as a missing band-aid. These were made to impress our downstairs neighbor, who had invited my husband and I to her standing Tuesday night dinner party. Christina, the neighbor, is friendly and interesting. I had been building social circles in my neighborhood and this seemed like a great opportunity to make a buddy. In the building no less! Since baking makes me happy, but I only bake stuff to bring to other people, because if I ate as much as I wanted to bake, I’d weigh 4,000 pounds, this seemed like a good opportunity to get my bake on and feed my new friends. The recipe is super easy, especially as a galette, which is kind of free form so you don’t have to get too fussy. I adapted this recipe for apple pie cookies from Smitten Kitchen, into the galette form. I’d made the cookies for a dinner party earlier and they were a big hit, so I was confident the galette would rule. (You can see here that my cookies were a bit bigger than Smitten Kitchen’s. That’s because she had about 40 steps, which I was too lazy to follow. I also didn’t have various sizes of cookie...

Reading this book, I was reminded of being halfway through a bath; It’s warm, but cooling off, you’re already clean and at this point just sitting in your own dirty water. Ok, mostly it’s just the luke warm thing. I Married You for Happiness, a novel by Lily Tuck (who won the National Book Award for 2004’sThe News from Paraguay) is about more than just happiness and marriage. It’s about the depth and breadth of life itself. Even with that whole menu of experience to choose from, I found myself getting bored reading the thing. Let’s start with the details. IMYfH begins when Nina discovers her husband, Philip, has died very unexpectedly in the upstairs bedroom while she was making dinner. Instead of calling the police or for an ambulance, Nina cracks a window and sits next to the bed, where Philip has expired, and spends the night sipping her way through a bottle of wine. (Shock and grief make a person do weird things, so this actually does seem entirely feasible to me.) The book takes us through a night of her reminiscing about their entire life together, the highs, lows and the mundane. We are occasionally returned to the room where Nina sits and Philip cools, to see her current state, before she hops onto another memory stream and rides it for 8-10 pages. I really enjoyed the idea of this book. To travel through the life of a married couple in memory was like finding a new treasure each time Nina came to a new memory. Honestly, I liked the painful and dull memories as much as I did the happy ones. That was so very real-life. In my own life, I try to find the happiness in the day-to-day, because...

I was knocked loopy by the Pacific Ocean yesterday. But I didn’t let that big, sloppy liquid kingdom ruin my day. I got back on the horse (or the orange, plastic ocean kayak, in this case) and conquered that bitch! (By conquer I mean I managed to kayak for an hour up the coast and then realized I’d rather not do that again.) The short back story starts like this: The first time I kayaked, it was in the Oxnard marina. We saw sea lions, rowed close to pelicans, slid under gorgeous bridges and ogled million dollar channel mansions. Kayaking is relaxing, a get-away, mellow. I liked kayaking. When sporting good stores would advertise kayak sales, I’d eye the product, but couldn’t really justify the rather large expense for an occasional hobby. I planned on sticking to renting the occasional kayak. That plan was working fine, until we stumbled into a yard sale find. This yard sale was held in that fancy neighborhood between Santa Monica and Brentwood, where the houses manage to be huge, stunning and still homey. The guy had 2 ocean kayaks on his lawn and as we were walking up, my husband, Seen, had stopped so short that it took me a full minute to realize that he wasn’t hearing me tell him about the waffle iron that looked interesting. He was enrapt with kayaks. The guy was selling them both, together they cost less than the price of a normal used one. Aside from one missing a seat and hatch, they were in great condition. Even though we had no clue where to put them, or really how to even get them home, we couldn’t pass up that deal. They were now the Robinson kayaks. Once we figured out...

Let me start off by clarifying that the Bed and Breakfast I am referring to is lovely. The proprietor was very nice and her breakfast, consisting of platter bacon, two types of crustless veggie quiche and blueberry clafloutis was divine. The rooms were immaculate and the resident cat spent the night on the foot of our bed. We had a perfectly lovely experience. Now down to the nitty gritty, or rather, lack of any nitty or gritty. I’m not sure who came up with the idea that a Bed and Breakfast stay was “romantic”, but now I honestly think they were people who liked having strangers listen to them getting down. A B&B is cozy, yes, homey, sure, but romantic in a sexy way, no. The word romantic is so commonly paired with B&B, that it seems natural to just say “We’re going to a romantic B&B up the coast!” and when I made the reservations, that is exactly the thought that ran through my head. Me: “Ooh honey, this room has a fireplace and overlooks the river” Seen (the honey, sneaking a peak at a picture on the Inn’s website): “Oh wow, that looks romantic!” Me: “The place is all booked up except for this one room. Let’s stay here for our romantic night away!” This would be a much needed getaway. By both our estimating, we hadn’t had an overnight outting together, by ourselves, since December 2004. It wasn’t for lack of interest, just life kept taking over and getting in the way. After a few years of overwhelming family commitments and being broke due to double unemployment, my hubby and I lost that ‘we need time away’ mindset. But now everything has calmed down, and I decided on Friday afternoon that...

When I turned 8, I got my first pair of glasses. They were HUGE and I immediately felt self conscious in them. It was the beginning of my dorkness. As puberty hit, so did a bigger pair of glasses. My eyeballs only wanted to see things close up. So, as my nearsighted-ness worsened, so did the lenses. They grew thicker and thicker through my teen years. I was sure that I was hideous. I was sure that no one would ever find me attractive. I was sure that about 75% of my problems were caused by the fact that I had to wear glasses. (I’m now aware that my tendency to be over-dramatic, and towards depression, and that I lived in a small town where I fit in like a flamingo at a drag race, didn’t help. But mostly, it was the glasses.) So 10 years into the vision enhancement experience, my parents decided I could finally get contact lenses! Woo Hoo! Maybe now, boys would make passes at me, because as everybody knows, boys don’t make passes at girls who wear glasses. My nose might not be getting thinner and my boobs may never get bigger, but at least I didn’t have to wear those ugly-ass glasses! I remember breaking my contacts in. When I was 18, my summer job consisted of mowing lawns for old ladies. As it was a small town, the job options were few. The eye doctor said I could only wear the lenses for 2 hours at a time, and I planned those times when I would be out pushing a mower in high August heat. The sweat and dust totally got into my eyes, but the usual red imprint of sweat on my nose wasn’t there! Everything...

That is the question I ask myself whenever I see a Hyundai commercial. Yes, I know that Jeff Bridges is a man, and The Dude is a character. But, when I hear that voice, I can’t help but think of how a new Hyundai would really pull the room together. If you look in my driveway tonight, you’ll see how compelling that argument really is. Our old Saturn, Blue, was falling apart. At 8 years old, she was way past warranty. The struts rattled incessantly, the Saturn dealer had told us that was standard. Ole Blue’s check engine popped on and off at random and the mechanic said it had to do with a part that turned the check engine light on, which is an expensive and unnecessary replacement. So we lived with it. Over the past two months, we’d been scanning other cars, checking them out in ads, looking them up on the web, sneaking glances at them while we drove down the street. It felt illicit and to be sitting in my trusty car and lusting after a new one. This blue sedan had ferried me back and forth when I lived in Santa Clarita and worked near LACMA (that’s about 50 miles, in LA traffic). She had moved us from the Valley to the Sea. Blue was the car that had carried sick Weasel and Munchy to their vet appointments. That was the backseat where I had curled into a fetal position on the drive home after getting food poisoning at a wedding in Northern California. There were traces of my eye-liner, mascara, lip-gloss and a variety of lotions and sunscreens wiped under the driver seat. She has a indentation in her hood from my butt, from when I thought the...

That is the item at the top of my to-do list today. So I spent the morning in the backyard, squatting in the blazing sun, gathering piles of dried dog doo and several pounds of fallen apples, into a giant garbage bag. Ya know – l.i.v.i.n. – livin’. Next on that list is that is ‘run to the cemetery’, followed by ‘biscuits, noodle casserole and cookies’. That may seem like a odd, and random, list of to-do’s, but life out in the country is definitely odd and random. I’ve been in rural Colorado since August 4th, staying at my Mom’s house and helping her recover from hip-replacement surgery. My mom has lived in this house for the past 34 years, things are pretty settled in here. The dog poop creator is a 14 year old blue-healer mix named Belle. Belle is mellow and extremely well behaved, aside from a little age-related incontinence (ya gotta watch where you step if she sleeps on the kitchen floor for over a ½ hour). Belle wakes me up at 5:17 a.m., on the dot, every morning to be let into the massive back yard, where she runs to the very back corner and does what dogs do in the morning. Then she comes back into the house and eye-balls me, weighing me with guilt, until I get her leash and we go on our run. In Haxtun, the cemetery is on the West edge of town, up against a corn field. That’s where everybody walks to and around in the morning. It’s where Belle and I head to before the heat swells up and takes over this tiny town. Once we get there, she is unleashed. In younger days, she would run, heady with freedom and in search...

When Spotify came to the U.S. scene a few months back, every one started jumping up and down about this genius, streaming music device that would change their dull and dreary lives. I gave Spotify a wary once over, but added my name to their list for an oh-so-special invitation and waited for my golden ticket to audio wonderland; while listening to MOG on my Droid. You see, this Spotify craze wasn’t that super exciting to me. Sure, it’s from England and has that dreamy accent, but it’s old news. I’ve been in love with streaming music for over 6 months. Way back in the early days, of November 2010, I upgraded from my old fashioned Sanyo 3810 flip phone to a Droid Incredible. It was one smart phone. After lugging both phone and iPod to the gym for 10 days, I decided to leave the iPod at home and try the Incredible’s free music app, Double Twist. It sucked. The app seemed to choose random songs to upload from my library to the phone. I had no control over what was selected and then, no motivation to go those 5 extra minutes on the treadmill after a soothing rendition of “Meditation for Sleep” came through my headphones. So, I started researching streaming music apps for HTC Droids. There were a ton of free trials available, after a Google search of the top-rated apps, I gave these three a whirl. First I tried Pandora. Pandora is an old friend of mine. The online radio station has been with me through several ill-fated office type jobs, soothing, in the background while a variety of bosses drove me insane. The Pandora app for Incredible is free, even after the trial. That sounded like a great price-point....

Captain Kirk and I have a date tonight. We’re meeting at a cemetery in Hollywood a little after sunset. Picard, Janeway, Sisko and Archer will be joining us, along with Kirk-2.0 (Chris Pine) under the Milky Way and on top of dimmed stars, to raise our Romunlan Ale and celebrate The Captains, an Original Documentary produced and directed by William Shatner. Sure, Kirk will be about 30 feet tall, and our conversation will mostly be him monologuing, but for me, it will be a dream come true. Thanks to infinite reruns, Kirk was my first nerd crush. Long before Dr. Who or Prince, Captain Kirk strutted across my 20” TV screen and into my pre-teen heart. During my dateless teens, the cocky space traveler was my Midnight date on quiet Saturdays. Since my parent’s bedroom was only 20 feet from the TV, the volume would be almost inaudible. Kirk’s swagger shouted over the whispering crew, loudly powerful and not so subtly sexual. Before I even knew what ‘sexy’ meant, I knew that Kirk embodied it. I would pretend to be the green painted alien or Yeoman Rand, bewildered at the power the Captain held over me. Resistance was futile, long before the Borg came into the picture. Each Captain who came after Kirk had their own, whole different kind of sexy. But none quite equaled Bill Shatner. I’ll admit to having a nerdy-fit before I saw J.J. Abrams’ reboot of the Star Trek legend. He was re-writing how Kirk and Spock met, he was using this pretty Hollywood actor who said he was happy to be in “Star Wars” during an interview. Clearly J.J. didn’t understand the love of the geeks! Of course I took all that back when I actually saw the movie. I...

I chose this as my favorite blog so far for 2011 because it was a cathartic blog for me. My genetic slant toward indecision is on full display here as I battle the demons of finishing a project or abandoning it. After writing this, I decided to move forward with the project, a choice I might still be weighing if I hadn’t discussed it here. Originally published 03/21/11 Great art often comes out of pain and tumult; Picasso’s Blue Period work, Hemingway’s novels, Rumours by Fleetwood Mac. My novel, The Year That Sucked, follows a year of multiple pains, but I need to decide; Could it be great art or am I just beating myself up? The book is driving me crazy, literally. So now I am wavering if the book should stay alive at the cost of my sanity or go into that dusty box of the Almost Finished that lives in the closet. The first draft of the memoir flowed out of me last November during NaNoWriMo. Aside from the occasional crying spell and self-medication with mid-range scotch, its birth was smooth. Now, as I work through the second draft, it’s getting a whole lot tougher. The physical manifestations of the stress I had during that sucky year are resurfacing. Today’s moodiness, anxiety, jumpiness and stomach issues will make for funny story some day, but right now just makes my husband glad we have two bathrooms. Do you think Lindsey Buckingham had IBS during that amazing recording session? It also brings me into a daily confrontation with mortality, often causing a deep depression. While the first draft was a race against the clock and calendar to build a framework of story with a minimal amount of words, it was basically fingers on...

6:00 a.m. last Thursday morning, I stumbled into the living room and popped on the TV morning news. There was a pretty newscaster breaking news that James “Whitey” Bulger had been arrested in Santa Monica. ‘Hmm’ I thought ‘Whitey Bulger, that name sounds kinda familiar.’ I called my husband into the room and told him that a gangster, Whitey Bulger, had been arrested. They then flashed his address and we realized he had been living one, singular block from our apartment. News trucks and gawkers filled Third Street and the old man’s picture quickly became a standard image on every news broadcast. I studied the image, had I seen him on my daily walks in our ocean front park? Had we passed each other while shopping on the promenade? Did he hog any of the cardio equipment at my gym? Through national news, we got to know our, now former, neighbor. He was serious bad news, a mob boss who, among a long list of nastiness, murdered of at least 19 people. Nineteen lives gone due to him. As a non-murderer, I have a hard time getting my mind around that. When the loss of one life is overwhelmingly tragic, the loss of 19 lives due to the violence of one man is hard for me to understand. That stuff isn’t mythic or romantic, it’s just effing horrible. All this got me thinking about who else might be living around me. Santa Monica is a friendly beach neighborhood, that is part of LA, but definitely it’s own town. Santa Monica creates a sense of community with fun and free activities on the pier, the beach, the promenade or the library pretty much every weekend. Locals tend to befriend each other with a proud camaraderie....

Since my Dad passed away in 2009, Father’s Day has become a weird sore spot on the calendar, reminding me that I’ve been orphaned by the male part of the my parenting team. This day in mid-June makes me miss my Pop and riles up my urge to go fishing. Though I hadn’t been fishing with Dad for about a decade, I love that his passion for the pasttime created a big piece of my childhood. Dad loved being on shore, or out on the water, with a fishing pole in his hand. One of the big reasons for his affinity was that he so rarely had free-time, and he loved being a Dad and husband, so taking the family to the lake and sitting with all the kiddies on the beach fishing was fun and relaxing for him at the same time. My earliest memories in life are standing on a grey sand beach, at the Jumbo reservoir in Julesburg, CO with a fishing pole staked in the ground by my feet. Probably around my 6th birthday, I finally got my own rod and reel. It wasn’t anything fancy, just something from Gibson’s, enough to catch small, oval pan fish or the catfish that seemed to have taken over the Jumbo. It was a deep brown pole and about double the height of me. Dad patiently taught me how to cast the hook overhand out into the water.  He would try to get me to pierce the slimy, pink night crawler onto the hook, but that was a little too icky for me at that point. It still is. Yuck. The night before any fishing trip, Dad and I would traipse around the backyard, through long grass made dewy from an hour under the...

One week ago I was blissfully unaware of how UPS was going to drive me completely insane. Picture a happy lady, skipping through a green meadow, a collection of wildflowers in one hand, wide brimmed hat bouncing to the beat of her joy. Hell, I could have been in a feminine hygiene commercial, that’s how blissful I was. Then, on Wednesday afternoon, I received a postcard in the mail from UPS, with my correct name and address, stating that they couldn’t deliver a package because, and I quote “A correct receiver or company name was needed”. Cue puzzled look. If the name on the postcard was the same as the name on the package, wouldn’t that be the correct receiver? I called the 800 number on the postcard. “Yeah, my name is on the intercom out front, which is right next to the front door. I’m not sure why the driver said a correct receiver was needed, when the correct receiver is here and obvious.” Operator at UPS – “Ok, they’ll redeliver tomorrow before 7:00 p.m.” Thursday night, at 7:15 p.m., we decided that UPS either wasn’t coming or they could leave the package in our lobby, which they have done a million times before, without ever telling us a package was here. After leaving a post-it note on the front door explaining the driver should look to his right, dial the correct entry code and deliver the package, the husband and I decided to go out for a lovely dinner. Thursday at 8:30 p.m. we returned from dinner to find, stuck next to my bright yellow post-it, one of those delightfully dingy brown and yellow post-it notes on the building’s front door with a hand-written scrawl “Buzzer not working”. Now, you should know...

I am suffering from a little something I like to refer to as Captain Tripps, but the rest of the world calls Walking Pneumonia. It sucks, I’ve been in bed for almost a month. I’m tired of everything in my apartment that could possibly entertain me; the TV is annoying, I’ve reached the last page of the internet, and the novels I’ve been reading since Easter have all jumbled together so that the Nazi’s of Heidegger’s Glasses were somehow ordering around southern maids in The Help. Sleep is illusive as well, every time I start to drift off into snoozeville, here comes a big, fat coughing fit that wakes me up, scares the cats and almost rouses my husband from his deep, enviable slumber. Since I haven’t done anything for a month, I can’t be entertaining or as clever as usual, I thought I’d just show you the coolest thing on the internets for American music history buffs. (I’m not exactly a “buff”, so apparently this site is really cool for us casual American music history listeners too.) The Library of Congress created a jukebox of select recordings between 1900-1930. The songs are searchable by a variety of criteria. Let me just say there is a nice selection of yodeling. There are lots of fun and funny songs that you can play, create your own playlist or listen to their sampler. You can find it at http://www.loc.gov/jukebox/ That is my bequest to you, should I not see the other side of this (cough) mild illness...

The felines have taken over my home. We currently have 6 cats in our 2-bedroom apartment. They outnumber the people now, 3-1. I know what you’re thinking but, no, this isn’t the beginning of my audition tape for Animal Hoarders; Seen and I have become kitten foster parents. It started about 10 days ago. The no-kill rescue kennel, Lange Foundation, where we volunteer every Saturday, put out a call for people to help foster kittens. The founder, Gillian Lange, heads to the local county shelters daily to rescue dogs and cats that are scheduled to be put down. She brings them to the Lange kennel (either in West LA or at their beautiful ranch in Canyon Country) where they are safe and sound until adopted. As it’s kitten season, due to overpopulation in shelters, kittens are often euthanized when they are too young to be adopted out and get sick easily at the kennel. Stats are grim for animals entering an animal shelter, according to the Humane Society, four million cats and dogs—about one every eight seconds—are put down in U.S. shelters each year. While a big solution to this problem would be convincing everyone to spay/neuter their pet, immediate action to save animals in danger now rests with rescue groups. With foster parents, more kittens can be rescued into the Lange family. Attached to the call for fosters was a picture of 5 fluffy, orange kittens with a note ‘These 5 kittens were scheduled to be put down, but now they’re safe with a foster family until they can find their forever home.’ That was like bait and I was the sucker for such adorable tactics. After a few conversations with Seen, my kitten-loving husband, we decided to let the staff at Lange...

As blog comments go, the comment Ernessa left on my blog about giving up finishing my memoir, The Year That Sucked, was pretty intense. I’m not saying it’s the only reason I decided to keep on trucking with the novel, but it did sway me. Draft Two just went to my writing group for their feedback. Sending my writing for feedback is almost as scary as being chased through abandoned woods by a hockey-masked psychopath. Almost. If anybody in my group insists on wearing a hockey mask to give feedback, then I might be equally as scared. Every single time I share writing, whether aloud in a class or here with you folks, I feel an intense and overwhelming desire to add qualifiers. When I sent the second draft of the novel to the group, I wanted to write about 40 different things in the email about “I know I need to do more character development for Bubba…” Or “Some of these scenes are just rough sketches, I know I need to fill them in more.” Basically, a qualifier is saying ‘I know this sucks, oh and here are the areas that I know that suck. Just so you know that when you realize it sucks, I’m with you on that one!’ I hate that I use qualifiers (even stating that is a qualifier)! My desperate need to add qualifiers reveals my tender lack of self-confidence. Realizing that, I fight the urge to qualify, I think I’m successful about 70% of the time. I would love to display the sense of pride I have in my work all the time, but sometimes the neurosis wins. At its most basic, sharing creativity is displaying your inner-most thoughts, feelings and desires, which is something most people...

The year is 1985. My hair is feathered, my glasses are big and I am a scrawny, awkward teen.  But on this warm September night, I’m cool, because I’m at the town dance with pretty much everybody in Haxtun.  The lights are low in the high school gym. The paper streamers draped over the basketball hoops are the HHS colors of cherry and black. The DJ is totally whipping the crowd into a frenzy. I’m dancing with a senior, which adds to my cool points and is almost unbelievable, as I am a first class nerd. We’re jumping and sweating and singing along with Eric Clapton.  The entire population of the gym is belting out the lyrics, “She don’t lie, she don’t lie, she don’t lie…” and then I yell out “OK!” My dance partner looks at me with a smirk on his face and asks: “What did you say?” Awkward, and suddenly realizing I should be embarrassed, I don’t answer. “You know that line is ‘Cocaine’? Right?” Nope, I didn’t know that. At that age, I probably didn’t even know what cocaine was, aside from a reason for Crockett and Tubbs to shoot somebody in Miami. I ran home shortly after that little scene. That was my first experience with publicly messing up a song lyric.  It was pretty embarrassing. Now, at a distance of a few decades, I think that’s hilarious. That little dorky kid, finally letting go and having fun, yelling “OK!” while pumping her fist in the air.  I couldn’t stop myself from being nerdly. That certainly wasn’t the last time I heard the wrong thing in a piece of music. There are some songs where I believe that singers are actually messing with us, trying to get us to...

This week we find your Tall Drink of Nerd wandering in the wilderness, continuing a personal Zenquest. It all began a few weeks ago, in an effort to shut up the internal vulture voices of self-doubt, the “mullygrubs”. When last we met, I pondered on the search for peace in a perfect yoga class. What follows is the tale of how my failure at yoga led me down the path to the forest. Emboldened by my own navel-gazing blogumn of two weeks ago, I bravely ventured forth and attended a class at a local studio. I quickly discovered 3 things: 1. I am out of shape. I almost hurled after the first series of simple, quick-paced poses. My shoulders are still sore and the class was 5 days ago. 2. This teacher/class wasn’t for me, so my search continues. I’ll practice yoga on my own, but keep looking for a group.  When engaging in any activity surrounded by people, I usually try harder and do better. This also happens to me every single time I take a writing workshop, I’m usually surprised by the depth of stuff I create. When I do Yoga in my living room, I don’t push as much as I do in class.  I don’t think its entirely competition or showing off, either.  There is something about being in a group with people who are all trying to attain a similar goal. The collective energy elevates me. 3. Yoga is nice, but my mullygrubs are easily bored. I need more than one outlet to keep them occupied. So today I pulled the next chill-out tool from my trusty, tried-and-true box of unguents and curatives.  I went for a hike. Over the years, my husband Seen and I have visited several...

Last night, I was really, super mean. My mind spewed so much nasty venom, spite and vitriol, that it’s embarrassing. No use trying to shine it up, I was a downright bitch. The victim of this bile was me. Fairly quickly I realized that I was beating myself up for no logical reason or lesson to learn. I did what I usually do when the mental record starts to skip on “Amy Sucks,” I cranked up the smoky sweet maple, vocal styling’s of Sarah Vaughn, cracked a beer and started to cook something yummy for dinner. Singing with Sarah and cooking can usually chase my mullygrubs away, but last night, they had grown gargantuan, stomping around, slinging mud. They were very persistent. I knew it was time to yoga. When I first moved to Los Angeles over a decade ago, I tried my first yoga class at the 24-Hour fitness in WeHo. It didn’t deliver the Zen mellowness I was expecting. In a class of 20 people, I turned competitive, trying to show off how stretchy and flexible I was. My mind was not on my own mat.  I kinda missed the point and didn’t go back. The PMSy evil voices stayed secure in their snippy lair. My second attempt at yoga was about 3 years later. I picked up a VHS of the Buns of Steel Yoga workout. My life consisted of a full time day job, trying to be an actress and producing a play in Hollywood. I also lived in a house with my boyfriend of 8 years, 3 of the members of his band (all male) and the drummer’s girlfriend. My stress level was rapidly scooching upwards, the mullygrubs were nipping at my heels. This time, without the distraction of...

Some people yell at coaches and players on the TV during the big game, I yell at commercials when they are stupid.  Because I’m planted in front of the TV on super Sunday, I’ll take this opportunity to fill this issue of Tall Drink of Nerd with my visceral reactions to Super Bowl XLV’s commercials. Let’s see if these ad agencies can convince me to patronize their clients. Groupon – Good to see Cuba Gooding Jr. working.  He’s a talented guy.  Why is he not working more, or in film.  This guy won an Oscar, right? Who is his management? (I already use Groupon., so Yes I will some more.) Living Social – That was possibly the best use of “Change Your Life” I’ve ever seen.  The sequence actually addressed what the service does and the variety of things Living Social covers.  The reveal made me laugh out loud.  Really liked the “Star Trek lighting” they used in the final shot (basically a box of light across the eyes, check out old Star Treks it’s in every single episode on Kirk or his lady friend of the day.)  Yes, I will Teleflora: If you got flowers and the card said you had a terrific rack, is it the thought that counts? Yes, I would.  (How many girlfriends are gonna get that exact card this Valentimes Day?) Movies Just Go With It – Not going with it. Not going to it. Battle: Los Angeles – Aliens invading LA?  I’m totally in for this movie.  It looks kick-ass.  But since they’re invading LA, I’m thinking that the aliens are going to have a treatment for a movie script of a pitch for Real Housewives – Mars. Cowboys and Aliens? Holy Crap! Yes, please! Oh Michael Bay…I,...

I understand why men hate shopping for clothes.  It’s a pain in the rear cushion to find a combination of anything stylish and affordable.  This is one of those times when I am super happy to be a woman, except when shopping for a clothing gift for my husband, then I just wish he would like a pretty necklace or scarf. Ladies, we are so lucky to have fashion options out the wahzoo.  Finicky men, like my husband Seen, are basically screwed. We went shopping for him today, to buy button up shirts that he could wear when meeting clients. We live a few blocks from a major outdoor walking mall and a newly opened high-end mall.  Finding some clothes for the guy shouldn’t be too tough.  He knows what he wants; button up, collared dress shirts that he can wear to client meetings with a bit of style to them.  Oh and we can’t afford to spend $200 for one shirt.  This proved to be a difficult search.  I’ve started referring to Seen’s wardrobe as the Snipe.  To replenish it we must catch the ever-illusive Snipe. Over the last two years, most men’s dress shirts, aside from the basic oxfords, have had little “V”’s sewn onto the shoulders and pearlized buttons.  They effectively look like cowboy shirts.  I think that bit of fashion whimsy came from hipster bands buying old cowboy type shirts at the Goodwill and wearing them on tour.  This season, every stinking dress shirt has epaulets.  OK, maybe not every one, but like 95% of them had epaulets.  So Seen would either look like a cowboy or a soldier.  He is not a fan of epaulets. Maybe you like cowboy shirts or soldier shirts, but they are both a tad...

A few nights ago, a man in his early 60’s stopped me outside of Michaels Craft store. He wasn’t drunk, didn’t appear to be high.  He was clean-cut, in chinos and a button up shirt, and looked very similar to our tax accountant, actually.  The man was asking for money.  While talking to my husband, Seen, shaking his hand several times and making a point of repeating Seen’s name, he told us his tale. The money was for his rent, he was $75 short and facing eviction.  His story-telling technique was disjointed, contained the occasional mathematical equation and included repetition of the phrase, “I moved from Seattle and don’t have my ID” about 20 times.  From his speech patterns, and his agitation at any bus that drove by, it was clear that this man was suffering from a mental illness. Earlier, before we had left the house, I removed all the cash from my wallet, a single $10 bill, and folded it into my back pocket.  I don’t like carrying a purse in my touristy beach town.  I’d rather keep my money and ID in a pocket and away from would-be thieves.  I especially don’t want to be whipping out my wallet in the middle of a street when somebody asks for money. After about 10 minutes of talking with the twitchy accountant in front of Michaels, I said “Look, we live on unemployment, but I’ll give you all I have on me right now.”  I handed him the folded 10-spot and extricated myself, and Seen from any further conversation. Inside the Michaels Craft store, amid t-shirt paint and teddy bear cake molds, Seen, told me that he has seen the beggar inside of the grocery store a few times.  The guy is always...

It’s 4:00 p.m. on Sunday afternoon and I have no frigging idea what I could possibly write about for FaN.  Normally, I have something sketched out the week before hand, even if it’s just a few random words thrown together, it’s an idea.  Then I fill it in with all kinds of genius wittiness.  Today, I got nuthin, nada, pfft.  My mind is like a giant sand pit of a desert, empty of all ideas with a hot wind just blowing some dust around. This morning, when I didn’t have even the faintest clue of what to write about, I figured I would take my usual cure for writers block and go for a walk.  Guess what happened; I got some exercise, possibly a little bit of a tan.  Those ideas weren’t in the mood to let me catch them. I came home and started to write about my new Droid phone (which is totally awesome) but that ended up as an Andy Rooney type ramble, about how I wish we all still had crank phones and couldn’t bother each other with stupid text messages and email alerts when we went on our creative-healing walks. Not wanting to be negative, I tossed that into my computer trash and ate a banana. Spoiler alert:  The banana did not help me get any ideas on what to write. As this is my last blogumn of 2010, I wanted this blog to be all sparkly fireworks and zen wisdom.  I wanted to lay down some deep shit that y’all would be quoting to your grandkids and the like.  Instead, my mind is giving me a finger.  I’ll let you guess which one. I asked my husband, temporarily playing the part of The Muse, what I could write...

I am The Girl Who Translates Stieg Larsson Movies for Her Husband.  After stumbling across the first movie, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo on Netflix Instant queue, I got hooked into the intricate storyline and decided to read the last two books.  From Larsson’s prose I found out the people of Sweden are: horny, kinky, buy things from Ikea and spend 18.45 kronor on 6 Billy’s pizzas, a pint of orange juice and a copy of the paper. Also, did I mention they swing and are horny? My feelings on Larsson’s writing are complex; love the story, dislike the writing style.  I waded through the dry, detail heavy prose wondering if the original Swedish version was this stiff or if the translator had burnt the prose to a crisp.  The important part, the story was uniquely compelling, dramatic and humane.  The story kept me in a book that, normally, I would physically toss across the room to punish it for wasting my time. (It begs the question; If it was this dry before translation, did this book get a pass from editors because ole Stieg was dead when it was published?  How does one collaborate with a dead author?  Do the Swedes just really get into minutia?) I could have waited for the next Girl Who… movies that were coming soon, but the majority of movies that I’ve seen made from novels leave out so much.  In order to get the whole experience, I needed to push through heavy novels filled with minute details of how much a cheese sandwich cost and lengthy lessons of Swedish political history (I started to skim through the extraneous bits).  Persistent reading was rewarded with rich characters, a LOT of rich characters and a plot that got...

I’m so sorry that I don’t have a blogumn for you today.  I’m currently under the Rhino. It’s day 15 of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and I have, for some reason I can’t recall (which now seems crazy), decided to write a novel in one month.  This madness is known in our house as ‘Nano Rhino’, due to my mumbling and my husband’s hearing affected by sinus allergies.  My life has been overwhelmed by a tiny rhino. At this halfway point, I am convinced that I am probably the worst writer in the world.  At 23,162 words (almost halfway to the challenge of 50,000 for the month), I am spent.  I have been averaging about 2,000 words a day and my brain is having a hard time with the English language.  I have never been so hyper aware of how many words I am typing in my entire life.  About 5 minutes after I wrote this paragraph, I got a pep-talk email from the NaNoWriMo team that stated “at this point in the process, you might be thinking you are the worst writer in the history of the world.”  It’s a psychic tiny rhino! The goal of NaNoWriMo is to get writers writing.  If it wasn’t for deadlines, I doubt I’d ever get anything done. The challenge of 50,000 words in a month allows precious little time to think and no time to edit.  It also gives you no time to futz around online or really any other distraction.  Oh, but I have found myself procrastinating, like writing this blog or feeding the cats in the middle of the day or IMing with my sister for way too long.  The one thing I excel at is futzing. Thing is, I imagined the writer’s...

There is a restless spirit in my Mother’s house. It dwells in the dark under my old bedroom.  As a kid, I felt the haunting, but tried to convince myself if was only my vivid imagination.  Recently, my niece Katie told a story about her run-in with the ghost that kept me awake, hair standing on end, when I stayed at my parent’s house. The basement in that house has always made me uneasy.  It’s cold and musty, because it’s not insulated or finished beyond the dark wood paneling hung on concrete walls.  The only light comes from a bare bulb clutching a cobwebbed cord. Creaking raw wood stairs lead straight down into the earth, bordered tight on each side by unfinished drywall.  Long after I moved out, I learned that my bedroom was directly above the spot where the previous home-owner had died of a heart attack . Being alone in that bedroom always made me uncomfortable. At night I would hear whispering, off in the distance, impossible to make out what was being said, but clearly someone was talking.  I used to think that’s just what happened when you fall asleep.  Now I know that it doesn’t happen anywhere but that room. In 2009, due to my Dad’s cancer, I spent more time than usual visiting my parents, staying in my old room every 2-3 months or so.  During a random conversation with my, now grown, niece, I told her that I still get creeped out sleeping there.  Then she told me about her encounter with the spirit: Shortly after I had gone off to college, a 9 yr old Katie, her sister Jennifer and 2 other girl cousins had a 2-day sleepover at Grandma and Grandpa’s house.  They all piled into...

The less money I have, the more I fantasize about what I would do if I won the lottery. Because I’m financially challenged right now, I’m currently avoiding situations where I have to spend money.  So I’m at home, working, writing and yes, getting sucked into cheap cable shows like “How the Lottery Changed My Life”.  Hello lottery fantasy fuel!  It’s like gambling porn! Surprisingly, the ratio of people improved by the big cash is high, according to this show. Yes, buying a lottery ticket means paying the Idiot Tax, but seriously, I absolutely know that I am destined to be a lottery success story.  Here is what I’d do, just so you can hold me to it when it happens: 1. Charity – Yup, for real. Winning the lottery always enters my mind when I am on my way home from volunteering at the animal shelter.  I know, I know, people say “Oh I’d give money to charity” all the time, but I have the recipient and ideas on what I’d like that money used for already.  Plus, there is that whole tax deduction thing that charity helps with. 2. A Jet – It’s a good investment, I could rent it out to corporations when I wasn’t using it, donate time on it to charities and fly directly into my home-town to visit my Mom whenever I felt like it. 3. Trip around the world – Being broke/poor I’ve never been anywhere.  After I win the lottery, you’ll be getting postcards, from me and the hubs, from everywhere.  The Jet will come in handy here too. 4. Family – Yeah, you guys would get some of it.  The amount depends on how much you love me and how good your story is.  Seen (my...

Skinny but cranky, I can’t eat anything and it’s my doctor’s fault.  Around a year ago I told you how I was going gluten-free (GF) and what a pain in the keister that was.  I had no idea that my dietary life was about to get much more challenging. After a year of countless visits to my MD, to find the cause of/cure for high anxiety levels, chronic fatigue and recurrent vertigo, I decided to make an appointment with an Osteopathic specialist.  She was recommended highly by more than one friend. Her staff extracted various fluids for a battery of tests.  Two weeks ago, we received the test results. First, I discovered that I’m allergic to peanuts and soy and chocolate.  Boo! (It’s Halloween-time, and I am denied mini Reece’s cups?  Not cool.)  Secondly, she told me about the yeast (Candida-like yeasts) present in my body, which was over-abundantly reproducing.  The yeast was causing havoc and needed to DIE!  Since yeast feeds on sugar, all sugar had to be cut from my food roster.  And by all sugar, she meant fruits and sweet vegetables (including yams, which I am madly in love with).  Bye-Bye to most grains.  So long to dairy.  Arrivederci caffeine.  Booze is blacked out and beef and pork stroll off into the sunset.  This left me with the question; ‘Aside from chicken breasts and brussel sprouts, WTF can I eat?’ Turns out, the answer is, basically, I get to eat chicken breasts and brussel sprouts.  This is not hyperbole.  Alright, it might be a slight exaggeration.  Green veggies and lean proteins are what I’m down to.  I’m rocking the avocado and quinoa every now and then, to avoid total boredom. My thought was, ‘this is going to be tough, but we...

Can working from home cause insanity?  When I discovered that I could work from home at my current job, a little Homer Simpson popped up in my brain and exclaimed “WOO HOO!”  Not only would I save money on gas and bus fare, I would get 2-4 hours of commute time back in my day. Sweet! Well, I’ve been working from home for a little over 2 months now and there are plenty of perks:  I control the temperature of my workspace, get to eat food out of my own fridge, walk to the beach at lunch, use my own bathroom, scratch things that itch, listen to music at inappropriate volumes or do leg-lifts during long conference calls.  My cats alternately love that I’m home to give them mid-day treats or wish I would stop waking them up all day long. Not working in a conventional setting has also been a psychological adventure of contrasts.  The first thing I noticed is, it’s a little too quiet in here.  In the various office jobs I’ve held and the variety of co-workers I’ve worked with over the past few decades, one thing has been fairly constant, socializing.  Whether it’s talking about weekend plans, new clothes or babies before a morning meeting, or shoehorning 7 people into a car for an afternoon ice-cream run, socializing on a daily basis makes office life fun. Keeping in touch via IM with co-workers and friends is okay, but working from home can get a little lonely.  Working with bosses and co-workers only through email lacks a human connection.  Empathy and sympathy can fly out the window and there is little time or need for small talk or socializing.  There have been moments where I catch myself talking, out loud, to...

. a repeat blogumn by Amy Robinson Amy Says: This is the blog I think of when I think back on my FaN career.  It’s mainly fierce with just a little, jelly baby, of nerdy.  This blog reminds me to push past my excuses and fears (and hills) so I can enjoy the beauty on the other side. From February 9, 2009 Sometimes, it seems like every experience I have is a huge, neon metaphor from the universe about my life. This past Sunday, one such metaphor threw itself at me in the form of the Chinatown Firecracker 5k. There is one thing you should know before we continue into this life lessony type story; I am not athletic. I’m moderately active for my heart and mental health. If I could be happy and healthy sleeping in and eating cheese-fries, I’d do it. But then all of the gyms would be out of business because most of us feel the same way. So as the story starts, we find Amy signed up for a 5k run as part of a New Years Resolution to “Run two 5k’s this year”. My husband, Seen, and I love Chinatown + proceeds for this run benefit Chinatown + we’ve been talking about this run for 3 years = Firecracker 5k is the first 5k Seen and I attempt in ‘09. So, I started running at the gym, getting my time down, wrecking my knee. To insure that I’ll actually go through with this, and not wuss out, I tell everyone around me that I’m running this thing. On a Friday, only 9 days to race-time, a co-worker of mine gives me a frightened look when I tell her how jazzed I am about the upcoming run. It seems she was...

. a blogumn by Amy Robinson If Amy cannot go to Mount Midoriyama, then Mount Midoriyama will come to Amy, or Venice Beach, which is close to Amy.  G4tv brought Ninja Warrior to SoCal this weekend, to test American Ninja Warrior wannabes.  That made the super-fan nerd in me squee with delight.  Even though the pinky toe on my right foot is broken, swollen and barking at me to sit still, I wanted, no needed, to go meet Makoto Nagano, the coolest Warrior of all times.  Lurching through the fancy decorated, temporary gates, I caught Warrior fever.  Pain is temporary, now my only goal was to achieve the total victory of having fun despite a lame injury. Quick background on NW; it airs in Japan under the name Sasuke, consists of 100 “warriors” running an obstacle course on Mount Midoriyama that looks absolutely impossible to conquer, with 90 seconds on a clock.  If a warrior clears the first level, 3 more levels follow that would challenge the personal trainer of Captain America.  In the 25 times that the contest has occurred, only 3 (THREE) people have completed all levels (aka Total Victory).  So you know these guys have mad skillz. Two years ago, G4 began running reruns of the show and it became one of their biggest hits.  The best part about NW is that in addition to being mesmerizing and addictive TV, the athletes inspire me to get off my hiney and work out.  Perhaps someday even big-ole lanky me could dream of achieving Total Victory!  I must not be the only one who dreams of Midoriyama, as this is the second year that G4 has held auditions on our own soil for the next American Ninja Warrior. So Ninja Warrior is visiting...

. a blogumn by Amy Robinson Truth be told, even with all the Zen stuff I spout and do my best to follow, I get in a funk sometimes. Usually it’s related to being a lady and monthly timing and stuff. My recent funkiness is starting to lift and one little girl at Target today illustrated funk-lifting beautifully. I queued up in the checkout line with a young woman unloading her cart. In the back of the cart, with the paper-towels and fruit snacks, was a happy 3 yr old boy. Seated in the front of the cart was a 2 yr old girl. That girl was distraught, massive shiny wet tears rolled down her red cheeks.  An elongated cry of misery wailed from her soul.  Her mouth was open so wide in sadness that I could see little white teeth and baby tonsils. Being no help to the mother, I was laughing. Clearly the girl was just mad, the mother didn’t seem too terribly distressed by it.  She seemed rather calm for a mother of two with a yowling child.  The mother turned to her baby and said, “Somebody is cranky!” I stuck my tongue out at the girl and smiled, she just stared and continued to wail away. Then a Target cashier came over from an adjacent register, with a red balloon floating on the end a white nylon string. She tied it to the handle of the cart in front of the baby and the little girl looked around, looked up at the balloon and her crying slowly turned to shoulder shrugging sighs. Then she smiled. My husband, Seen, who was waiting for me about 10 ft away, witnessed the entire scene.  He was smiling too. I pointed at the balloon...

. a blogumn by Amy Robinson Recently, I found the secret to being really happy.  It’s fairly simple and I didn’t even need to read a self-help book or watch a movie on The Secret.  All I had to do was be honest and follow my to-do list.  Really. If you’re like me, a born procrastinator, your daily list of 15 things to-do normally has only 7 things crossed off when you crawl into bed at night.  Good intentions start me moving on that list, but bad habits creep in and steal time and productivity from me (I’m looking at you, Doctor Who, Season 3 on Netflix Instant Download).  So between the best laid plans and half-assed action, lies the gap.  This is where the crummy feelings start. Let’s say you plan to start the day with a workout, but sleep late and don’t get to the gym.  By missing that goal, you’ve created a gap.  Or you plan on writing 20 minutes that night, but get home late, watch the news on TV and get sucked into Facebook. That writing goal sits on your list, undone.  So after a few goals aren’t reached, guilt sets in and you aren’t living life the way you want to.  You’ve fallen into The Gap, but there aren’t any 100% cotton khakis here, kiddo. Because I’m lucky, I have also received a nice dose of the “worrier gene”, so my mind spins silk around things undone, half-done or unachieved.  The worrier gene absolutely loves the gap.  I mentally race around the things I wish I had done and that takes up more energy, so fewer things get crossed off. Queue the whirlpool of happiness swirling down the drain. So if you want to stop the worrier gene...

So happy to kick off our THEN and NOW series with Amy from “Tall Drink of Nerd.” I had no idea she was a cheerleader until I saw this pic! Anywho, click on the pic to read her THEN and NOW thoughts and see her AFTER picture at...

. a blogumn by Amy Robinson Volunteering has always been something I knew I wanted to do.  On the handful of occasions when I have had the opportunity to donate my time, an elated feeling of helping others followed me for days.  In particular, volunteering at an animal shelter has been on my to-do list for years.  I kept putting it off for a few reasons.  I thought I didn’t have the time, but mostly I was terrified of bringing home every sad-faced, sweet-hearted critter who would steal my heart.  I could see an Animal Planet special in my future, featuring my face as a crazy hoarder, surrounded by a puff of furry cast-offs. In December, our 18 yr old tabby cat, Munchy, passed on after a prolonged battle with, many, progressively more expensive, medical issues.  That loss, and the loss of her sister, Weasel, the previous year, caloused my heart.  Loving and then losing a friend who had been with me nearly all of adult life was too hard.  I was determined to not feel that pain again.  No more new pets. We decided to donate Munchy’s left-over medical supplies to a shelter that our vet suggested, The Lange Foundation.  It’s a no-kill shelter.  They rescue death-row animals (dogs, cats, horses, etc…) from City & County facilities, and then gives those pets shelter as long as it takes to find them a forever home.  When I dropped off the medical goods, I was drawn to the large, well-equipped cat pens near the front desk.  Like furry orphans trying to get a visiting couple to take them home, several felines skipped toward the fencing and yelled for me to stick my fingers through the wire.  They yelled and rubbed and gazed needily at me. ...

Listen, I’m a good tipper. I nearly always tip 20% wherever I go. At restaurants and bars, figuring out the tip is easy.  Good service – 20%, adequate service – 15%, crappy service – 10%.  I can’t go without tipping, it feels wrong and I’d rather err on the side of being to too nice than too cheap. When it comes to massages and haircuts, standard tipping gets iffy.  Do I tip more because they are touching me? To gin up more confusion, my local massage office (it’s an office, not a spa, because it is just small rooms off a hallway with no other amenities) posted a note in the treatment room that made my eyebrows go roller-coastering. This past Saturday, I set up a much-needed 60 minute Swedish massage.  In the massage room, as I was stripping all my clothes off, down to my skivvies, I noticed a sign on the door just below the clothes hangers.  It said (I’m paraphrasing, because I don’t have photographic memory): ‘Because we offer high quality for such value, if you appreciate your massage today, please tip your therapist.  Your tip will ensure they can earn enough to continue working here.’ Then the sign had bolded, large font amounts you should tip – 60 min massage (which is $47) – Tip $15 – $25 90 min massage – I didn’t look at this sign because I was only getting a 60 min massage. Is it fair, or even ethical, to request a 32% – 53% tip?  Most people are going to this store because they can’t afford anything more.  Add 53% to that price and it decreases the ‘value’ of the massage and stops folks from getting a treatment.  I felt especially vulnerable to be reading...

. a blogumn by Amy Robinson I have too many things running about in my cranium.  I know you guys have this problem too; So many ideas, some good, some that seem really good until they get out of your head and into the daylight.  It takes serious effort to focus on one thing at a time. Brilliant ideas pop up, all shiny and new, seducing me for a few hours, days or weeks.  Then another idea rings the doorbell and distracts me from the scheme that’s already been cooking.  I fall for the whole seduction again, setting aside the previous genius thought to tend to the new one.  Swear to god, I don’t have ADD. Focus has taken hold of me in the past, so I know it’s possible, it just requires some discipline.  Outside of hiring a really good organizational therapist, the best helper for someone who is easily distracted is (hold on I have to read an article about building a better writing practice…Okay, what were we talking about? Oh yeah…) a deadline. Having a deadline helps me get my FaN column in every other week.  It’s helped me produce kick-ass plays in a timely manner and, most recently, helped get one of my more persistent ideas off the ground.  A unique project has been jumping around the ole cabeza over the past 3+ years.  I call it Moons Over Monuments. The idea was to head out with my husband, or one or two very close friends, to take pictures of scenic landscapes or those plentiful historical markers that dot the highways around America, while I would be mooning the camera.  The shots would be PG and tastefully done, as tasteful as mooning history and nature could be. In addition, I...

. a blogumn by Amy Robinson As I type this, I’m shamelessly stuffing my face with chocolate chip banana bread cookies.  Given my proclamation to go wheat free on a previous FaN blog, chocolate chip banana bread cookies seem dangerous, contradictory, hypocritical even. Nope! That blog got much love and support from friends and from peeps suffering from Celiac Disease, thank you very much!  At the time, I also admitted to being thrifty.  I promised you that if I found any cheapish Gluten Free (GF) recipes/solutions that I would share them here on FaN.  Well I have found some!  I humbly apologize to Fierce Foodie, who is the true FaN recipe guru. She is responsible for any drool damage I have to my laptop.  (BTW, try her rice pudding recipe; it’s gluten free and so addictive, I just go ahead and leave the spoon in the dish in the fridge for easy snacking access…) Just to be difficult, I also have a serious sugar jones and love to bake.  I think I have written 4 blogumns about pastries here on FaN.  A few weeks ago I decided to make traditional chocolate chip cookies.  They were meant to be a pre-emptive apology to our downstairs neighbor for our recent Wii Fit Plus purchase and activity.  We get bouncy on the Wii. You know that all of the cookies didn’t make the trip downstairs. After savoring 1/2 a cookie, I had a horrific headache, tummy troubles and a tremendously bitchy personality change.  But the 20 minutes they took to bake, and 1 minute of tasting, were happy making.  I only wanted to bake cookies that wouldn’t make me miserable. Luckily, the very next morning, one of my favorite food porn sites, 101cookbooks.com, posted a natural chocolate...

Whatta fierce and nerdy week! Here are my thoughts: 1. I just love that France requires a chest x-ray from its would-be citizens. I wonder why… 2. Poor Robin actually asked me if it was okay to self-promote on the blog, and I answered something along the lines of “Absolutely not, b/c I don’t believe in it — especially when it comes to my own projects.” Then she profusely apologized and rewrote her piece before I could tell her that I was just kidding. Luckily, she had the original saved, but I really do wish there was a a way to indicate sarcasm in email.  I think it would be cool to just be able to indicate sarcasm with a ~ mark after the sentence that you don’t really mean. What do you think? Anywho, if you have a second, use it to help Robin and her fiance get a free wedding from Crate & Barrel. 3. Monique’s piece on David Patterson got me to thinking about how so few of us have good back-up plans for anything b/c we just don’t think we’ll ever need them. I guess one good result of being cynical, morbid, and anxious is that I have (at the very least mental) back-up plans for just about everything. That’s the only way I can function day-to-day. 4. What’s funny is that Amy has never struck me as particularly shy. But then again, so many people, including my sister and BFF, have accused me of not being shy, even though I often proclaim that I am. My BFF is not shy and my sister is much shyer than I am. But I do wonder if we all just have a general inability to recognize shyness in others. I feel that...

. a blogumn by Amy Robinson “Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.” – Anais Nin.  That quote sometimes plays over and over in my brain like an annoyingly catchy Smashmouth song.  As a perfect test subject, my life proves the theory of this quote to be true. At the present moment, my life is quiet and simple and as shrunken as a lamb’s wool sweater that has spent 3 hours on high in your clothes dryer.  A Barbie-sized life. The past year I retracted my various curiosity tentacles, internalized meditation on the meaning of life and focused on healing my psyche.  Visiting friends, going to parties, meeting people or being creative seemed mildly terrifying.  Invitations were ignored or responded to with a clean “No.”  One of the problems of continually saying “No” is that eventually people stop asking. Being social may not seem all that courageous, unless you find it scary, which I do.  Unfortunately, a big bite of this tendency to fold-up into myself is genetic.  Agoraphobia is known, in my family, as Grandma Berg disease, or “acting like Agnes”.  My Mom’s mom, Agnes Berg, was terrified of going places.  She lived on the wide-open Colorado Northern Plains, with 7 kids, on a farm, with no electricity or plumbing for most of her life.  That’s crazy brave to me, but she absolutely hated getting in a car, traveling to weddings or other family events.  Her panic vexed her children and grandchildren.  They still tell stories about how limiting and annoying it was. I always knew I had a bit of ‘The Agnes’ in me.  When the world scared me, I retreated inward, writing stories about imaginary pals who would never judge or let me down.  God forbid I let people...

. a blogumn by Amy Robinson I keep having dreams about donuts.  I’ll just wait here a moment while you get all the Freud jokes out of your system.  Donuts in my dreams are copious, specific and there is not a hot dog or cigar in sight.  One night I dreamt about mysteriously being sent a case full of Hostess Donut Gems, the crumbly kind that are a bit like coconut, but not really.  Then I dreamt about eating fresh and warm, unfrosted cake donuts straight out of a machine I had in my kitchen.  A few nights later, the star of my dream was a mixed dozen box of Krispy Kremes.  My dream self dove, elbow deep, into the box and began downing plain glazed, raised with sprinkles and cream filled maple long johns. We all know that a dream is a way for your subconscious to deal with things you aren’t dealing with in the real world.  My interpretation here is literal.  I want a donut. Recurring dreams are not unfamiliar to me. I rarely have a dream once and let it float away.  Most of my sleepy-time picture shows revolve around trying to befriend the girls in High School who laughed at me, or I get stuck in increasingly smaller caves as I try to get to work/school/awards ceremonies.  These are pretty much straight-up literal interpretations too.  Since the rise of Facebook, High School chicks have befriended me, but there is still that anticipation of blocking, or mocking even if it’s just left over, cruel-kid juju.  As for the caves, that’s just perceived obstacles.  I usually end up just flying over the problems, which makes a spectacular entrance, btw.  I highly recommend flying into your next award ceremony. But here come...

. a blogumn by Amy Robinson Christmas cookies, that’s just sugar and flour and frosting to some people.  To me Christmas cookies are more sentiment than sugar.  Every year, while I was growing up, we’d gather in a ritual of rolling chilly dough onto a flour dusted kitchen table, sprinkling sugar on the 2 dimensional holiday characters and sneaking so many bites of uncooked dough that I got a tummy ache.  No, I never learned my lesson. Every year after I moved away from home, I would either have cookie-making parties or bake a big batch for co-workers.  Even then, I would sneak bits of dough and yup, good ole tummy ache.  At the very least, 5 or 6 cookies would arrive in the mail from Mom.  She’d send them with presents from home when we can’t make it in person.  This year, the cookies did not arrive. These cookies are conjured from a recipe out of an ancient issue of Farm Journal magazine that Mom keeps tucked away in a cupboard corner of her kitchen.  There is a secret ingredient in these cookies that makes them more magical than any other pastry.  One taste and that slightly bitter bite of nutmeg pops open my personal Way Back Machine and suddenly I am 8 years old again.  I become the yellow haired girl, singing along to Alvin and the Chipmunks with my sisters and falling asleep on Christmas Eve with sugarplums in my head and blinking tree lights dancing on my bedroom wall. I didn’t make any cookies in 2009 because I’m avoiding wheat.  We were headed home for my family’s Christmas celebration, so I figured I could have 1 or 2 cookies over the weekend without too much pain.  Unfortunately, as we were...

. a blogumn by Amy Robinson I know I’m a little late in my greeting, but Happy New Year FaN readers!  So I guess I’m already blowing my resolution to not procrastinate (except, of course, on Friday afternoons when the Procrastinate on This blogumn appears.). I had a head start on all ya’ll.  My resolutions started last September.  Since a lot of big changes had happened with slight effort on my part, I chose to make a few little adjustments.  Those little things fixed me right up.  Happily, the interwebs are chock full of free tools, that helped me with my September resolutions. Here is the ‘before’ picture of me: In 2009 I left my job, my husband got laid off the day after my 40th birthday, my Mom had skin Cancer Surgery, we were robbed, we moved, my 18 yr old cat – who needed constant home medical treatment – died, my Dad was diagnosed with Leukemia and then passed away. Late last August, when I came back from my Dad’s funeral, the stress of 2009 took me down.  People who misuse the word ‘literally’ is one of my grammar pet peeves, so believe me when I say that I was literally knocked over by stress.  I had vertigo, the world swam when I tried to stand, or simply turn over in bed.  I had a fever for around 3 months.  Life consisted of pushing myself through the day at my temp job and sleeping.  Driving was impossible with my frazzled nerves, so my hub would cart my carcass to work and an express bus would ship me home. After blood tests and x-rays and other doctor-y type investigations, we discovered the most obvious cause of my dysfunction was stress.  Well, duh. Normally,...

Wow, I’m not trying to say that people don’t get much work done between Thanksgiving and Christmas, but you guys came back from vacay, roaring — which was awesome. PHILOSOPHICAL MONDAY re: Tall Drink of Nerd: Bye Bye Wheat, in which Amy Robinson decides to give up wheat after finding out that it’s making her sick. Joshua from GeeksPodcast.com: I really enjoyed reading this, but it does hit a little close to home for me. My grandmother, who I was closer to than anyone in the world just about, passed away about 4 years ago from Celiac disease. Information about the disease was more scarce and there wasn’t a lot of awareness surrounding it. She was up in years and doctors couldn’t seem to figure out why she kept losing weight after all sorts of testing. Finally, near the end my mother (who works in the medical field) was able to figure out the symptoms and get doctors to concur, but it was already too late. While I can’t deny a twinge of sadness when I pass the gluten-free section at the grocery store or see a post like this, it’s usually replaced by a happiness in knowing that a lot of families now won’t have to go through the same frustration and heartbreak that we did. Thanks for writing this :) OH, IT’S TUESDAY re: Procrastinate on This! Mama, I Just Killed a Muppet, in which we posted the Muppets take on Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.” DebraB from Notes from a Nester: Thanks for posting this — my friend Jason actually edited this. They are thrilled with how much attention it has gotten. Apparently it was released on the anniversary of Freddie Mercury’s death, though they didn’t realize it at the time. WOW, IT’S...

. a blogumn by Amy Robinson I’ve attempted to quit a lot of things: TV, sugar, that love I found on Brokeback Mountain.  The TV, sugar and love remain, in healthy moderation. Now I’m giving up wheat. This is not to be cool, because believe me, it’s much cooler to be able to join in the cupcake party than to sit it out.  I quit wheat gluten because it was making me sick. I haven’t been diagnosed with Celiac Disease.  I just know that cutting out the wheat makes my joints move more smoothly, my sinuses clear up and keeps the farty bloat down to a minimum.  Celiac sufferers can’t process wheat or barley or rye.  It messes with your small intestine & immune system. That is all the detail I’m going into here, because I’ve already given you more info than you needed on my intestines.  Wikipedia and/or the Mayo Clinic can break it down for you better than I can.  I’m not saying I have CD, just saying I’m sensitive. Wheat hasn’t been in our house, or my tummy for about 3 months now and I’m feeling fine.  It hasn’t been easy because I love beers, breads and baking.  The main problem with a GF diet (that’s Gluten Free folks) is that my wallet is suffering now.  Trying to replace breads and beers with GF products is pricey, especially during this experimental “what’s good and what’s lame” phase.  So far I’m only attached to 1 beer and 1 hydrox-type cookie. Look, I’m a cheap, er, frugal shopper.  A trip to any store results in long pauses of peering at labels for ingredients, then bargains.  I’m proud of my skill at buying quality, healthy foods on a budget.  But with all these GF...

What an awesome week! Sami got her baby back on Days of Our Lives and Al Gore was on 30 Rock. Plus I’m in the middle of a really good book. Seriously could life be any better? HELLO FRIDAY re: FIERCE ANTICIPATION: November 13-15, in which Ryan Dixon dissed both 2012 and Cincinnati. Kyle: I just watched 2012 at midnight last night, and it was like 10,000 time better than I thought it would be, I actually kind of enjoyed it. Cincinnati has Graeter’s ice cream, and unless you have tried that you can’t really say anything bad about Cincinnati. I had to bribe a security guard at the school post office to brake in so that the ice cream my grandma send me would not melt… it was the best money I ever spent. PHILOSOPHICAL MONDAY re: Tall Drink of Nerd: Bonding Over Board Games, in which Amy Robinson confessed that she hails from a family of cold-hearted trash talkers and solicited suggestions for more board games for them diss each other over. (Thought) Chuck: My brother turned me on to “Settlers of Catan” and that’s a really fun one – too bad it’s only good for 4 players (6 with the expansion set.) Another one we played this weekend which we enjoyed a lot was “Bang” – it’s a spaghetti western card game where outlaws and renegades try to shoot the sherrif and vice versa. We played with about 10 people and it was hysterical. We also played a farming strategy game called “Agricola” which was cute. Another fun one that is similar is “Guillotine” – a card game where you collect nobles from a line of people on their way to be executed. You can play cards that screw other players...

. a blogumn by Amy Robinson The Holidays are seriously here, seriously.  Thanksgiving is only 10 days away and I can already smell the roasting turkey, hear the happy babble of a house full of relatives and taste the spicy squish of pumpkin pie.  Which reminds me, I should get to the grocery store soon.  After the eating part, my favorite thing about holidays is playing board games. Board games are like a big ole ice pick, cracking past the regular chatter and getting right to the warm and steamy competition that makes friends like family and brings family closer.  That rectangle of colored cardboard brings everybody to the same level.  Before my boyfriend became my husband, Mom suggested we play Monopoly.  He held his own as a clever smart ass with a bad sense of humor.  He fit right in. On Thanksgiving we’ll drag out Monopoly, Clue or Pass the Pigs and ramp up the smack talk until we have each other chuckling and my Mom giggling herself teary eyed and red faced. Christmas at my house always meant a new board game from “Santa” for the family.  Not exactly patient kids, we would tear into the plastic shrink-wrap around the box and set up the monies, pieces, etc… while my Dad would insist on reading the entire instructions, out loud.  More often than not, we would start the game before Dad would finish his elocution, anxious to start kicking each other around.  Dad would tell us to hold on and, since we didn’t listen, of course we’d have to refer back to the little rules pamphlet ½ way though the round. There is something about a board game, or cards if that’s how your crew rolls, that warms up the room.  I...

. a blogumn by Amy Robinson Where do you live?  I’m not asking so I can inundate you with campaign mailers or just pop by and drink all your beers.  It’s come to my attention recently that geography can have a significant effect on a person.  I suppose my real question is: Where should you live? I’ve lived in a lot of places.  I grew up in a town of 900ish folks.  We didn’t have a 7-11 or a movie theater or even a stoplight.  There is a town whistle that sounds at 7 am, Noon, 1 and 6 pm.  There are benefits to living in a small town.  Those benefits weren’t as clear to me as an out-of-place teenager. The positives came into crystal focus when my Dad got sick and the town was there to support my parents.  That was pretty awesome. My whole adult life I’ve bounced around a lot of different places:  College-town Kansas, Suburban and Urban Chicago, Suburban and Urban Los Angeles and finally The Beach.  I was always more at home in urban situations that matched conditions to where I grew up.  Seems contradictory right? Well, I like to walk everywhere and would rather shop small, local businesses than load up at the Wal*Mart. Chicago was perfect for most of this, but it was frickin cold! My life and soul are totally affected by my locale.  In the ‘burbs my colors dim.  I rarely venture forth or experiment with anything creative.  I do fit in a lot of sleeping though.  It’s the mix of convenience and opportunity that urban areas offer that lights my fire. When we moved to Santa Monica in April, after a dozen years in the valley, it was like we moved home.  It’s not...

. a blogumn by Amy Robinson My house is much cleaner today, thanks to a deadline to get my FaN blogumn to you.  After all the stress of the past year: double unemployment, pet illnesses, parental illnesses and lengthy hospital stays and finally the passing of my Father, I went into a funk.  Not the George Clinton kind, more like the Virginia Woolf kind (only no river or pockets or rocks.)  I didn’t eat, I caught some version of the stress flu, I slept a LOT and my house turned messy.  Also, no writing was done during this time.  Words seemed an extravagant luxury of self-indulgence.  I think my brain went into the human version of the spinning beach ball of no return that happens when your computer freezes. But now, after sleeping for a month, or what I refer to as “convalescing”, and receiving much family and friendly support, I feel re-booted. I figured it was time for a new FaN column.  Only now my apartment needs a serious tidying.  It’s amazing how sparkly clean my place gets when I’m trying to write.  The plants get watered, the laundry is finished, the groceries are re-stocked, and the animals get brushed.  Clothes get buttons sewn back onto them.  I have even resorted to ironing shirts when trying to write.  I am a professional procrastinator. You might assume that I find writing difficult/painful/tedious, yes?  No.  I love to write.  The actual moment of writing, the editing and the way I feel after creating words on a page, I get high on it all.  Writing makes me feel like “I am what I am” to crib a phrase from Popeye. But, procrastination is my version of Sirens singing me to my doom on the rocky shores. ...

. a blogumn by Amy Robinson After 5.5 months of job-searching and unemployment, I found it ironic to start my 12 week temp job on the Friday before Labor Day. All Hail the Three Day Weekend! During recent walks and talks with my husband, I’ve come to realize that my search for the perfect job is very similar to the modern day search for true love. I sign up with agencies to find the right place for me, I scour the internet for keywords that fit my ideal work vocabulary and then I arrange short meetings to see if their employment ring fits on my unemployed finger. Because I honestly and truly want to find a work home, somewhere to stay for the rest of my work-life. After a recent failed job interview, garnered from CareerBuilder.com, I thought “I can’t believe I shaved my legs for that interview.” This job seemed perfect, like a commercial for eHarmony. Their job post matched my 26 points of compatibility. The pre-interview, phone call was wonderful. Then, while meeting face-to-face, the job was entirely different than what I had expected. It was as if the job had posted a picture of itself from 15 years ago, but had since lost all it’s hair, gained 155 lbs and had moved back in with it’s Mom. Most often, I’ve taken jobs that seemed fun and challenging because they’ve been readily there for me. The company offers a job and work home and I would be so ready for the opportunity that I say ‘Yes! Yes! A thousand times yes!” And I mean it, I look forward to getting to know them, learning their quirks, showing them mine, but then the honeymoon period wears off. My perfect job shows it’s true...

Greetings from Santa Fe! I’ve been road tripping all week, but lucky for us, your comments totally didn’t take a vacation. Check ’em out: HELLO FRIDAY re: Fierce OR Nerdy: Geek Love Memorial, in which slpc honored John Hughes in the best way possible — with a huge poll of his movies. If you haven’t put in your vote yet, pick your favorite Hughes movie now. Oh, and here’s a pretty convincing argument for The Breakfast Club. (Thought) Chuck: While I think FERRIS BUELLER’S DAY OFF is an overall better movie structurally and story-wise, THE BREAKFAST CLUB is the quintessential John Hughes movie and an archetype for 1980’s misunderstanding & disillusionment, and therefore it gets my vote. Cue “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” from Simple Minds. It should also be noted that PRETTY IN PINK, though written by Hughes, was not directed by him – those honors went to Howard Deutch. All the more reason why THE BREAKFAST CLUB should be the winner. PHILOSOPHICAL MONDAY If you have a chance the thoughtful comments on my mother-of-a-biracial-baby post which advises/rants against asking a woman holding a baby if that baby is hers are all worth a read. But I loved that we had our first sibling argument in the comments of Amy Robinson’s post, “Bad Cook,”  in which she put forth that her mother was a good baker but a really bad cook. Amy’s sister totally disagreed. janicpanny: LIAR!! Did we really grow up in the same house? I fondly remember Mom’s cooking as good ordinary comfort food. Perhaps your memory is skewed by the silly note your silly “friend” wrote? No gourmet food at house, and I hated liver & onions and all things veggie (which kept me at the dinner table for sometimes...

. a blogumn by Amy Robinson I start thinking of dinner around 3 in the afternoon.  Then I eat an apple and don’t think of it again until I get in the car for my drive home. By 6, as the commute starts, I am so hungry I could eat my key chain.  I put my earpiece into my ear, plug the other end into the phone and relay my hunger to my husband.  Seen is at home, standing in front of an open fridge and listing out contents, usually starting with what we don’t have. “We didn’t remember to thaw the ground turkey, but we have chicken breasts and red peppers. I can grill…?” He offers, my wonderful chef of a husband. “OMG…that sounds divine” I moan, “I am so hungry, I could eat a skunks tail.” “Gross.” he always knows the perfect response. “Just pick up some beer on your way home.” That is how I contribute. I am a mildly awful and tremendously lazy cook.  It really is fortunate that he gets home before I do.  I inherited the bad-cooking gene from my mother. Mom was a phenom at baking.  Her pies and cookies and cinnamon buns and angel food cakes were heaven sent and disappeared quickly from the reunion buffet table.  It’s a mystery how such a talented baker could be such a bad cook. Once, while in the 3rd grade, after a friend had spent the night at my house, I found a note tucked into my coat pocket.  “Your Mom’s cooking made me sick.” it read.  The note was anonymous, but I didn’t need Nancy Drew to help me figure out who wrote the thing.  That note of cruel, childish honesty bobs around in my memory to this...

Just what is in Sauce Americaine and how should one properly spell “yay?” We’ve learned a lot this week at good ole Fierce and Nerdy. Check it out: HELLO FRIDAY re: Fierce Anticipation: July 24-26, in which Ryan Dixon told us the worst guinea pig story in the history of ever. Seriously, you’ve got to read it to believe it. Larry: Was that the original script to “G-Force”? Troma Films present…a Lloyd Kaufman film…”G-Force: The Carnage.” I’ll have to show this to my daughter when she grows up. Oh…and thanks for mention of my late mother’s breast. Classy! PHILOSOPHICAL MONDAY re: Tall Drink of Nerd: Recession Recess, in which Amy Robinson gives us a bunch of great free, recession-ready workout tips, including monkey bar pull-ups. Her husband co-signed that check in the comments: Seen: Just to reinforce what Amy said, she does look ridiculous when she’s doing her exercises. (I’m just kidding, she looks sexy, but she’s too modest to say that), but it’s not about how you look, it’s about feeling better and I can tell you that nothing makes you feel better than getting out in the fresh air. Here’s a website and podcast to prove it. http://www.alleghenyfront.org/story.html?storyid=… OH, IT’S TUESDAY re: Political Physics: Dying for Reform, in which Monique King-Viehland put forth that self-serving, insurance-company pandering Democrats may be the biggest obstacle to getting healthcare reform passed. Donna: See this reminds me of the old saying……You Cannot Trust Anyone!! WOW, IT’S WEDNESDAY re: How Do You Spell “Yay!”, in which we wondered after the proper spell of this popular exclamation: is it yea, yay, or yeah? Final verdict: slpc: I’m usually a nice person, but not when it comes to people who write “Yea” for “yay.” It’s “Yay! I’m excited!” Like...

One of the perks of being “funemployed” is that you have all the time in the world to work out and be healthy. Now that my husband has joined me in funemployment, I have a workout partner. Because neither my workout partner nor I have an income, we have cut our expenses down to the necessities; food, Internet, beer and shelter. That means we’ve opted out of our gym membership. There are dangers to unemployment, including ennui, feeling disconnected, boredom and depression. Working out can fight these. Even if you are still employed, but with more pressure, less pay and more responsibilities because the guy next to you got cut, working out will keep you sane. Getting your sweat on, in these crazy times, is vital. Seen and I have become creative in our fitness pursuits and I thought I’d take the opportunity to share some of our free/cheap ways to keep your mind centered and your butt from couch potato-ing. Try the park! Every town has a park with fresh air and ample workout opportunities. We’ve taken advantage of local jogging paths in the last 3 places we’ve lived. I tend to jog until my lungs cave in, about 3 minutes, and then walk at a healthy pace. If your park is just grassy lawn stuff, try wind sprints in those areas. That should get your heart rate up, your lungs burning, and it’ll transport you back in time to 10th grade PE, when you thought the coach was just a sadistic jerk who liked to see teenagers hyperventilate. My sister from Kansas showed me the best tool to use in a park workout. It’s called FitDeck. It’s basically a deck of cards with loads of exercises for every inch of your jiggly...

Whatta week. CH got an Emmy nomination, and of course the comments were off the hook. Check ’em out: HELLO FRIDAY re: Fierce Anticipation: July 10-12, in which Ryan Dixon made a case for Sheetz being the best convenience store in the history of ever. One reader/former employee agreed: Laura: I now live in CA, but used to live in Northern VA and worked for Sheetz for 3 years as an assistant manager. They were the best convenience store around at that time, and have only gotten better from what I can tell. (Side note, there were also a pretty decent company to work for!) Nobody out here knows about Sheetz, and when I try to explain, some people go ‘Oh! Like am/pm.’ or Jersey transplants go ‘like WaWas’ and the answer is NO. There is nothing like Sheetz. End of story. PHILOSOPHICAL MONDAY re: Tall Drink of Nerd: Father Time, in which Amy Robinson struggled with her father’s recent diagnosis of leukemia. jenny: My grandfather had leukemia, and sadly pasted away this year due to stomach cancer. It’s hard being far away from family. Every moment is precious. This thanksgiving I went home to spend the last holiday with him, and it was wonderful. I would curl up in a chair a drift off to sleep with him, just being close was a comfort. Oddly enough, he was more comfortable with the fact of his time left, yet none of us were. My grandparents had 6 kids, and I know that it was great for them to all be together and a space of support. But I do want to tell you, my grandfather did overcome leukemia, and at the age of 83 without any major surgeries, etc. OH, IT’S TUESDAY   re:...

. a blogumn by Amy Robinson This week I wanted to write something fun, kicky, summeresque for my FaN blogumn.  I wanted to talk about the resurgence of mobile food coaches like Cool Haus, the handmade ice cream sandwich truck here in LA.  I pondered on writing about my love of Vuze.com, a new peer-to-peer file bit torrent app where I downloaded the entire 2006 season of Doctor Who in HD for free!  I wanted to talk to you about a gazillion different cool things that the nerd in me loves/is excited about, but I can’t focus on anything other than my current reality. My Dad has Leukemia. That sentence just keeps rolling around in my brain like a mean-ass pinball.  It’s amazing how much space a 4-word sentence can occupy.  As I write today, I’m sitting at the cluttered kitchen table in the house where I spent my formative years. Lappy and I are in a little burgh named Haxtun, a tiny town of 900 brave souls on the Colorado prairie. Before Dad’s illness began, I would travel to Haxtun every other year or so, usually catching up with family news on the phone.  I was an awkward, artsy, odd child who packed up and moved to a bigger town as soon as my 18th birthday hit.  Haxtun is worlds, planets and galaxies, away from the fierce life in LA.  There are no stoplights, no ice-cream trucks and the only grocery store in town doesn’t sell beer and closes at 10pm.  You have to walk across the highway to the liquor store for that.  There is a town whistle that blows at 7am, Noon, 1pm and 6pm.  My parents have lived in Haxtun for 36 years, 32 spent in this house. Today, Mom...

. a blogumn by Amy Robinson My husband thinks I am a secret emo-girl.  He is basing this label on my fascination with cemeteries.  Big or small it doesn’t matter, any cemetery we drive past makes me tug on his arm and ask him to stop so we can shoot some pictures of the Dirt Nap Motel. Honestly, cemeteries just get my imagination going.  The hallowed ground could be in a big city or rural back-road, I will want to hop out and examine the histories, the abbreviated life stories.  In today’s terms, the headstone quote is like your final micro-blog on Twitter or Facebook status update: “Mother to Harvey and Edith”, “Angel in Heaven”, or the one I thought was odd as a farewell “No More Pain.” It could be your last thought or what your family thinks your last thought would (or should) be. It’s no mystery to me why I’m relaxed in the cemetery.  My paternal Grandma died when I was 8.  Her resting place is just off the narrow park road that borders the wheat field to the west of our tiny town.  I visited her grave a lot when I was a miserable teenager, talking my troubles out to her and the deep purple marble that bore her name.  I got comfortable in the Haxtun burial ground, spending a lot of time reading headstones and imagining relatives, friends, loved ones who were lost.  There were lots of folks who’d lived full, long lives.  There were also plots that radiated sadness; many teens who had died in car crashes on our country dirt roads; rows of babies lost to the flu epidemic in 1918; so many stories, so many ordinary tales waiting to be told. When I left town for...

. a blogumn by Amy Robinson The time at the tone is Zen O’Clock. Time to be. I just realized, I’ve been wishing my life away; wishing the weekend was here, wishing it were the end of the day, wishing it was time for dessert, basically wishing my life away. I’m gonna stop that nonsense now. My plan is to try and live my life in real time and not constantly in fast forward.  To steal a line from The Peaceful Warrior, I’m going to live like ‘there are no ordinary moments’. With any luck, and a little teeny bit of focus, I’ll stop pushing and worrying and wishing for the next thing to happen and I’ll enjoy where and when I am. Here are the 3 big reasons for my decision to chill-the f-out and stop pushing time: 1. Aging parents – I just spent 6 days with my folks in CO. Mom was having surgery to find out if the rare, and aggressive, cancer had spread, from the teeny bump on her arm, into her lymph glands. (It didn’t! YAY! She is cancer free with only 24 stitches on her bicep to show for it.) Dad was diagnosed with Myelodysplastic Syndrome (MDS), an incurable blood disease, last June. He was given 10 mos to live at that time. He has beat that prognosis by 2 months already and his doctors say he’s stable now. He’s a tough old bird and has always been the picture of strength. Now, some days are good days, some days suck, but he’s living every day, in that day. So, I went home to help out with the gardening, yard mowing, dog walking (and the icky clean-up involved with that), Dad shoulder massaging, suture-antibiotic goop applying and...

. a blogumn by Amy Robinson Music.  It’s everywhere. Every day music is all around you; morning alarm, drive to work, soundtrack under your fav TV show.  Heck, Ernessa even does a daily blog about guessing song lyrics.  Sorry cotton, music is the real fabric of our lives. Photo by Epiclectic Today I’m wondering who your musical influences are.  That’s a standard question usually reserved for rock stars when they make the cover of the Rolling Stone.  They answer with timeless, occasionally obscure, musicians in history but what I’m wondering is who, in your life, has influenced your musical taste?  Who introduced you to Opera or Punk or Reggae? Who took you to your first concert or gave you your first Parliament CD? My Dad was my first influence.  He wanted to be a crooner, like Eddy Arnold, but life didn’t work out that way.  Though Dad’s job was construction, and being a father to 5 ornery Henrys, he had an overwhelming compulsion to croon. From the time my little pink ears could determine noise, I remember him constantly warbling snippets of old cowboy tunes or spirituals.  He has yet to sing a full song, of anything, all the way through. He wanders around the house intoning the first verse of Peace in the Valley, and then hums a little before moving into El Paso.  Because of him, I know half of the cowboy songs ever written.  Or I should say, I know half of the lyrics to half of the cowboy songs ever written. My siblings contributed to the play list in my brain too.  My brothers brought in the 70’s roots rock, Sister #1 added Barry Manilow and Bob Seger then Sister #2 piled Styx and Journey on top of the list....

. a blogumn by Amy Robinson Did I ever tell you about the time I was a model for Hustler? Have you ever said “YES!” to something you wouldn’t normally do. because it sounds like a fun and unique experience only to realize that at some point during the experience, you should have known better? That’s pretty much what happened here. (Don’t worry, this is still the family friendly FaN that you know and love.) My wonderful friend Raquel called me on a cloudy Sunday afternoon. She had been hired to art direct a photo shoot for the Hustler clothing catalog. As a friend, I was jazzed that she had landed a nicely paying gig. Then came the unexpected. She popped the question; “I need 2 models for the day, would you like to be one of them?” I would be fully dressed the entire shoot. (Even fully clothed though, it is something I have yet to mention to my Mother.) Let me tell you this before I proceed further. I was 35 at the time, about 20-25 pounds overweight and working a nice, desk-y day job in a creative placement agency. Maybe I was a candidate for the “Dove real women” ad campaign and in hindsight, maybe I should have seen my own limitations and said “Wow, thanks Roxy, I’m flattered, but I’m gonna pass this on to the younger generation.” Nope, I said “HELL YES!” and prepped for the shoot in 10 days. The day of the shoot dawned and I was still, as expected, 35 years young and carrying around 20-25 extra ell-bees. But I was ready for the adventure. I packed my car with what I assumed you’d take to a Hustler shoot: gum, fun polka-dotted bras, slutty heels, a...

So NEXT week, I’m doing another series, which will hopefully be fun. So far we’ve done Money and Kids, and the topic that will be dissected within an inch of it’s life next week is … Modern Love. The novel I’m working on right now is somewhat centered around dating in Los Angeles, so I admit that the topic has been on my mind lately. But before we get into next week, let’s revisit the past five days.   HELLO FRIDAY re: Fierce Foodie: Masala for a Rainy Day, in which Roya Hamadani extolls the virtues of a good Indian food buffet. This next comment really made me want to go to Tokyo: BabySmiling: I love mango lassi; my local Indian restaurant makes a nice version with ground pistachios and a definite hint of rosewter. I’m a mango fan anyway, but it’s also usually the only flavor available. I’ve only been to a few restaurants with flavors aside from plain or mango, and then it’s only one or two others. Except in Tokyo. The random Indian restaurant I went to had literally a dozen flavors of lassi — many were fruits that I’m pretty sure don’t exist in India. One of hundreds of surprises that Tokyo had for me. PHILOSOPHICAL MONDAY re: Tall Drink of Nerd: Lappy Come Home, in which Amy Robinson laments not backing up her hard drive and therefore losing 8 months worth of pics and writing after thieves stole her laptop. crystal: I came across this article on new software and service that can track your gadget (laptops included) and then you know who has your laptop, iPhone, BlackBerry… wonder how well it really works? http://ca.tech.yahoo.com/experts/tedkritsonis/art… OH, IT’S TUESDAY re: The Order of Good News, in which we discussed the list and...

. a blogumn by Amy Robinson With a sigh of relief, I’m writing to you this week from my new-to-me Mac Laptop.  My legs are warming nicely and I’m slumping into my couch while Stephanopoulos grills Boehner.  It’s amazing how addicted I am to technology. If you had asked me at the beginning of the year, what would you grab if your house were on fire and you had to get out in 2 minutes?  I would have responded immediately with, Lappy, the Mac Titanium laptop.  After my cats and my hubby, the laptop would have been the first non-living thing on top of the list.  Ole Lappy contained decades of pictures, scanned and stored.  It held all types and manner of drafts of writing I’ve done, an iTunes Library built up over the last 5 years and passwords, spreadsheets and assorted necessities that we’re tracked since Lappy came into our lives in August of ’04. Then some jerks broke into my home and stole the laptop.  It was Friday, February 13th, the day before Valentines Day, not cool.  Some punk kids (we think) broke in and took the new Wii and iPod Nano I had given Seen for his birthday 2 weeks before.  They stole some video games, the PS3 that had been our Christmas present to each other and then the idiots went into my office and took my friggin laptop. Now, Lappy was old and didn’t quite work right.  I’d dropped her on the floor one too many times so the case was cracked, the DVD drive didn’t work anymore and the power source needed serious finagling just to plug in.  I’m sure they didn’t get much money for her. I kept wishing they would just say ‘oh this is broken’...

. a blogumn by Amy Robinson A civics geek, I am thrilled to be working for the 2010 census.  As a writer, I was excited to take on this unique experience.  My plan was to take copious notes of my census experiences and within the year, publish a Pulitzer Prize winning novel about the crazy exploits of a census taker. But my dreams of success were dashed during training, all the census taker types were sworn in with an oath.  Basically, everything we see or discuss is confidential.  The records we are compiling will be released for public consumption in 72 years.  Fudge.  So, maybe my novel will bring me fame when I’m deep into my Hundies. Though the confidentiality rule prevents me from telling you anything I see or discuss, it doesn’t prevent my imagination from whirling while I’m walking around the LA Suburban Valley for 7 hours a day.  Today I was dreaming up a hit-movie about a kooky census canvasser (that would be me). She would meet Mr. Right through some wacky set of circumstances (dog bite, plumbing mishap, fender-bender, libertarian debate) and a beautiful romantic comedy type situation would ensue.  Okay, I already have a Mr. Right, but I was in RomComland, so lets set that aside in this fictional story.  It occurred to me, while I was spinning this yarn in my noggin, that I always cast the same person in the role of Amy in my mental movies.  I am always Drew Barrymore. I think Drew got stuck in rotation after she was in Wedding Singer.  I’m not a huge Drew Barrymore fan, I like her in some stuff and steer clear of other stuff.  Our lives couldn’t be much more different, I had a stable family, don’t...

. a blogumn by Amy Robinson This weekend, I’ve been catching up on the dating exploits of FaN bloggers.  Laughing vicariously at the exploits of the single folk and remembering, through a Scooby-Doo wavy memory wipe, back to my own dating days. George H.W. Bush was President the last time I had a “date”. I was a horrible dater. I was hella shy and when I tried to impress a boy I liked, my killer move was trying to be funny but really just coming off as weird.  Basically, I acted a fool and floundered in a beer-soaked sea of Chicago boys.  Clearly, I was a different kind of crazy than the guys I was meeting.  No connection worked, every attempt I made seemed awkward and mismatched, like eating caviar on Doritos. Then I met Seen. Eighteen years ago, this Saturday, is when I, a precocious, free-spirited 20-something in a hippie dress and a straw hat, shook hands with the oddly named fellow and found my match. Seen was my friend first, for all of 6 hours until we started macking.  He was the guitar player for a pick-up band and I was recruited by a mutual friend to be the back-up girl singer.  After the first rehearsal, we went out for drinks.  My roommate hooked up with the drummer and I got my Seen.  The first time I saw Seen, there wasn’t a chorus of angels or a halo of light surrounding him, but he was so clever and so nice.  I didn’t act weird and he thought I was funny. We were bent on each other right away.  His kind of crazy matched mine. Eleven years after we met, we made it all legal by marrying on a Malibu beach at sunset. ...

. a blogumn by Amy Robinson I can see by the box-office numbers that many of you saw Watchmen this weekend.  Heck, Clark Perry even wrote his blogumn about it for Friday’s FaN.  I haven’t seen it yet.  Please, I’m begging you, don’t tell me about it!  Here’s a little quirk of mine:  I hate knowing anything about a movie when I go into the theatre.  Okay, maybe not anything, but keep the details, key plot points, character developments, those types of things far away from me.  I enjoy being surprised and delight in weird, random turns movies take along the way to get to the point.  After I see the movie, I’m all up for breaking it into parts/pieces and talking about it with you, but before I see it, don’t tell me!  I’m a very impressionable youngish gal who might pick up your bias, good or bad, and let that color the movie slightly for me. What makes me mental is when the studio releases previews that include a slice of a scene that seems pivotal.  My suspension of disbelief drops until we get to that scene. I end up not buying the moment when Jack Nicholson is going to die early on, because he obviously has to pee on James Spader’s shoes later in the movie. When really big movies open, I avoid all media about them.  I change the subject if a friend starts to talk about their opinion.  There have been times where I even avert my eyes from billboards that seem to reveal a major plot point.  I like to keep the ice of my brain nice and clean.  I cannot zamboni away a Gene Shalit review, even if it’s ridiculous and all I really remember is his...

a blogumn by Amy Robinson Today commemorates my one-year anniversary of working again at an officey-type day job.  While it’s great to keep this job in this dung-beetle fodder of an economy, I do miss my freedom.  For a year and a half prior to that monumental “first day”, I had the opportunity to work on my own home business. I did miss the day-to-day socializations of a structured corporation, but I started becoming the person I had always tried to be.  That lady was fun and mindful, healthy and creative.  I was open to any prospect the universe threw at me and I prospered as a human, if not as a business owner.    About a month after I put the golden shackles back on, I realized my life was slowly changing.  The small detail that alerted me to the change was simple.  I had put my shirt on backwards and wore it that way all day long.  It was a plain white cami that I wore under a sparkly blue button up, so no one else noticed that I had a shirt on backwards.  Early in the day, I glanced down and noticed a tag sticking out of my cleavage.  That little white flag of surrender, with laundry instructions, signaled much bigger things than just my backwards attire. Wearing backward clothes meant I was losing it, unaccustomed to daily working life of; waking, exercising, showering, dressing, driving, sitting, socializing, eating, typing, chatting, etc… This was a world for suckers, the world for everyone I knew and now for me again.    After that teeny wardrobe malfunction, I made it my goal to still live mindfully.  I try to only let thoughtful and attentive words slip from my mouth, to only eat healthy...

. a blogumn by Amy Robinson Sometimes, it seems like every experience I have is a huge, neon metaphor from the universe about my life. This past Sunday, one such metaphor threw itself at me in the form of the Chinatown Firecracker 5k.  There is one thing you should know before we continue into this life lessony type story; I am not athletic.  I’m moderately active for my heart and mental health.  If I could be happy and healthy sleeping in and eating cheese-fries, I’d do it.  But then all of the gyms would be out of business because most of us feel the same way. So as the story starts, we find Amy signed up for a 5k run as part of a New Years Resolution to “Run two 5k’s this year”.  My husband, Seen, and I love Chinatown + proceeds for this run benefit Chinatown + we’ve been talking about this run for 3 years = Firecracker 5k is the first 5k Seen and I attempt in ‘09.  So, I started running at the gym, getting my time down, wrecking my knee.  To insure that I’ll actually go through with this, and not wuss out, I tell everyone around me that I’m running this thing. On a Friday, only 9 days to race-time, a co-worker of mine gives me a frightened look when I tell her how jazzed I am about the upcoming run.  It seems she was thinking about running that race, until she saw the course. It’s uphill to Dodgers Stadium.  Sunday, one week left to train, we drive the Firecracker 5k course and holy mackerel:  It’s 3 sizable uphill runs.  I start to worry, building those hills up in my mind.  I’ve only been training on flat tracks.  I...

. a blogumn by Amy Robinson What I’m about to say might sound like sacrilege to some FaN readers, and I know that it definitely will to some blogumnists; I’m seriously thinking of getting rid of our TV. I’m thinking this scandalous thought not because we never watch TV, and it’s not a resolution.  I’m pondering the unthinkable because, well, I have a problem.  My name is Amy and I am a television addict. This all started years ago.  Even as a child, with only 3 major networks and PBS to choose from, the glowing box held me tight in dulling chains, invading every memory of my girlhood.  At Grandma’s house, my cousins and I would watch Godzilla movies in the basement on an old TV that needed 10 minutes to warm up. Outside playtime was usually based on Little House on the Prairie (of course, we really did live on the prairie, so it wasn’t much of a stretch).  At sleepovers, terrifying scenes from Night Gallery would run over and over in my imagination, making sleep impossible.  Even my first kiss was just a reenactment of a scene from Guiding Light. As a friendless teenager, empty weekend nights were wasted on Fame and The Love Boat.  I shared Cheerios on Sunday morning with my TV best buddy, Doctor Who. On the Sunday morning when Adrick, the Doctor’s faithful sidekick died, I was devastated.  To say that I was hooked is an embarrassing understatement. There have been a few times in my life when I was sans TV.  I gained more friends, produced theatre, sang in cabarets and was prosaic in my writing. Museums were frequented, adventures undertaken and life stories built. But now, nearly at the middle of my ages, I look back...

. a blogumn by Amy Robinson Where do you find your muse?  My muse is waiting in the car.  She rides shotgun and spritzes magical fairy dust at me every few miles.  If I could write and drive at the same time, I would have been as prolific as Stephen King by now.  I think my muse likes the car because I’m not distracted in there by work, TV or chores (just by that whole driving thing).  It’s either that, or my muse has a cruel sense of humor and takes pleasure in filling my head with ideas that I can’t write down while my hands rest at 10 and 2.  Most likely the latter.  Did I mention that the muse doesn’t visit the car when I am the passenger?  Nope, that would be too easy. When, and if, she decides to come into the house, she steers clear of my home office.  Do you have a space set aside just for being creative?  Just for being crafty?  Just to clear your head?  I am lucky enough to have a room just for creating.  Does your creative space welcome the muse?  I think mine does, it’s painted a light lilac, has candles and soft music (and a litter box, which has been an occasional source of odd inspiration.) But when I sit at my new desk, all the brilliant ideas I’d had only two minutes earlier, have left me.  Somehow, those clever ideas have thrown a rope ladder out of my ear and have scrambled down to freedom, leaving my skull good only for widening hats and holding down my neck. My muse is finicky, but I, too, can be sneaky.  I know of the sweet spot in the house and if I jump...

. A blogumn by Amy Robinson Traditional Girl Last Thursday, known to most of you as Christmas Day, I braved Santa Monica pier with my handsome husband Seen.  It was freezing.  Many of you are thinking, “Hey, lady who lives in Los Angeles… It was blizzarding here in [insert Northern/Eastern/Mountain town name here]  You don’t know cold.”  Oh, I know cold.  Colorado is where I was born and raised.  I remember days when it was too cold to snow.  Then I spent my 20’s in Chicago.  I know that if you get stuck waiting for the 151 bus to take you downtown in January, the wind rises off Lake Michigan to whistle through all 3 layers of your coat, scarf, and clothes then bites into your flesh, your viscera and settles in your bones.  It’s a bitter and painful cold. On Christmas Day of 2008, the Santa Monica Pier was cold.  The rain was not so much falling on us as slicing at my face in a horizontal pattern.  On any other rainy day I would have tucked my hiney under a blanket and vegged out to the flicker of A Christmas Story on TBS.  But we have a Christmas tradition, hubby and I, we go to the beach at Christmas. I grew up with tradition.  We always went to my maternal Grandmother’s on Christmas Eve.  We always listened to the same three Christmas albums on the record player while we baked cookies, made candies and wrapped presents.  We always used the same decorations on the tree and each kid in my family had their set of ornaments to decorate with.  My favorite Christmas tradition was waking up between 3:00 and 4:00 AM on Christmas morning and sneaking into the living room with my...

. A blogumn by Amy Robinson Christmas tastes like a sugar cookie made from my Mother’s special Christmas Cookie recipe.  Every year since 1963, the Henry’s have made Christmas cookies from a recipe Mom found in a December issue of Farm Wife Magazine.  She keeps the yellowing magazine zipped safely into a gallon Ziploc bag hidden behind the Ball Jars in her pantry.  As a kid, I would slip the Chipmunks Christmas album out its cardboard sleeve and onto the record player.  Then, with Alvin & his brothers in the background, we would get to the business of making cookies.  Mom would form the dough and manage the oven.  My older, better sister Janet and I would press angel and bell and reindeer cookie cutters into the dough. Dad would help us decorate the shapes with red and green sugars and chocolate sprinkles. Our small rural kitchen warmed with baking cookies, but winter peeked in through the windows, keeping the glass panes chilled and iced with frost. No office sugar cookie or shared holiday treat has ever tasted like those cookies.  The secret ingredient is nutmeg.  It’s such a simple little spice, but it changes these cookies from regular sugar cookies to Christmas cookies.  I have had cookie-making parties with friends and shared with non-family.  It just doesn’t taste the same to them as it does to me. All my Christmas’s past are wrapped up in that little bit of nutmeg.  One bite defines Christmas.  It transports me to my Grandparents house, with all my Aunts and Uncles and cousins singing by candlelight every Christmas Eve.  The Henry’s were tasked to bring the cookies. Our whole family would sing carols before we opened presents. The caroling would end with Silent Night as my Grandpa...

. A blogumn by Amy Robinson The consumerist push of BUY! BUY! BUY! at Christmas has always cheesed me a little.  Every year, some dufus is interviewed, camping out in front of Best Buy on Thanksgiving night saying he “doesn’t know what he wants, he just wants to SHOP tomorrow morning.”  Ah, the true meaning of Christmas “Spend Mindlessly!” That mentality has brought us Wal-Mart stampedes for at least the past 3 years. People are getting KILLED for a $10 DVD player. Ick.  I try to avoid that nonsense and aside from a few presents for my husband, I usually donate to charities for my family members. In years past we’ve donated to Heifer.org, which sends livestock or trees to needy people around the world.  Even for a very good cause, the responsibility of sending adorable bunnies or goats to their ultimate doom makes me a little squidgy, so I usually send the bees or the trees.  Last year, the Humane Society received a gift in my parents name to help kittens and puppies.  Maybe this year we’ll donate to the Clean Water Project, which was posted on FaN over Thanksgiving.  These are just a few of the places I know of.  There are a TON of charities, most are hurting in our crappy economy.  Feel free to add the charity that is closest to your heart in comments!  A charity donation may not be the most firework-inducing, breath-stopping, jig-dancing present to open on Christmas Day, but it’s hella better than a stuffed, singing, ninja hamster that was made overseas. (okay, not as funny, but the universe will be happier with you.) Still, there are times when presents are necessary and I’m not saying that all presents are a hum-bug. My family does a...

. A blogumn by Amy Robinson I can’t bake a pumpkin pie like my Mom’s.  I asked her for the recipe once, many years ago, hoping she’d share the family secret.  She said, “It’s on the label of the canned pumpkin.”  My Mother – the gourmet.  All the variations I’ve attempted from this little orange paper scrap of a recipe don’t measure up to anything I grew up with.  Maybe it’s the difference in altitude, she’s Rocky Mountain high and I’m at sea level; maybe it’s a difference between my brand new oven and her 25 yr old oven; maybe pies taste better when you’re surrounded by 30 noisy family members. I can’t make a piecrust like my Mom’s.  Once, many years ago, I made a kick-ass piecrust, lovingly spiced with cinnamon and nutmeg, but couldn’t repeat it.  After years of failed attempts at a crust, all of them crumbly and puzzled-pieced into the pie tin, I asked my Mom what I was doing wrong.  “I haven’t made a crust in 20 years.” She told me.  “Go buy the Pillsbury crust.  They’re just as good as homemade” She’s right about the crusts, but they still don’t taste like they used to. I can’t make an apple pie like my Mom’s.  She uses pie filling she’d canned earlier in the year.  Every fall, Mom heats up a big black kettle on her stove, tosses in a few bushels of cored apples from the apple tree, a few dozen cups of sugar and a sprinkle of cinnamon.  Her kitchen smells like apple pie.  The teen me hated helping her can, all that coring and peeling of apples wrinkled my fingers, but I would love coming home from school to that cinnamon smell warming the kitchen.  Mom...

. A blogumn by Amy Robinson Last time you heard from me, I shared the reasons I’m no mommy.  Today, I figured I’d share my story of kid replacements.  Here is where I am at my nerdiest.  I am a crazy cat lady.  Crazy, to me means that you own more than 2 of any kind of animal.  For two years we had 4 cats, but we lost our Weasel in May.  Currently, we are spoiling 3 cats very rotten. Reading FaN posts about animals (felines and doggies) I know that many of the readers/contributors here love their animals too.  Where does that love come from?  My parents always had dogs and cats around our house. We had a mutt-wiener dog named Puddles who was 2 yrs old when I was born. There was no shortage of cats/kittens, because it was pre-neuter/spay campaigns and the cats were allowed to run loose in my rural town.  But those animals weren’t spoiled like the ones who control my house now.  I think my folks taught me to respect animals and treat them like living creatures.  But where did I get this desire to cater to their every whim? How do we spoil them, let me count the ways: the only vet I trust is the vet who ONLY makes house-calls, not exactly a bargain, because I don’t want them to have respiratory problems I buy them “Worlds Best Cat Litter” which is made of corn (but priced like it’s diamonds and platinum), in order to get Munchy to take her Pepcid without trauma, (yup, we give the cat Pepcid for her nervous stomach issues) we’ve invested in Pill Pockets which are around $6 for a bag…of treats…they are so worth every penny.  I could go on,...

. A blogumn by Amy Robinson Everybody is having babies.  So many woman around me are new mommies, have the baby bump or in serious talks to get knocked up.  An originally rural gal, most of my friends started having children right out of high school.  A few girls from my class actually have kids in college at this point.  And as the youngest of 5 in my family, I’ve had nieces and nephews since I was 10, and nearly all my nieces and nephews have gone on to creating more and more family members. Me, I’ve never had the baby jones.  My first memory of a “we’re having a baby” announcement could be the reason. My oldest sister was 17, she was about to graduate from high school and was suddenly with child.  Our folks were anything but thrilled.  They were pretty much out of contact with thrilled and making a close acquaintance with extremely upset.  Mom had us praying the rosary every night for a few months.  Then my brother knocked up his 16yo girlfriend.  More rosaries. I’m thinking that the psychic energy of that reaction to out-of-wedlock, teen-mothered babies clung to me.  (Just to clarify, both those babies, now in their late 20’s are PHENOMENAL people.  We’re all very glad they exist.)  Most of my 20’s, when I heard “We’re pregnant” my first thought would be “OH NO!!”  Now though, having named and shaken the source of the “oh no’s”, I am sincerely thrilled for people when they announce gleefully that they’re cooking a bun in the oven. There are a bunch of other reasons to keep me out of the family business; free-time, uncertainty about the future of the world, disposable income, mini-van ownership, total life-change, over-population, massive laziness. Those...

. A blogumn by Amy Robinson Sugar and I have a deeply unhealthy relationship.  I love it but have tried to kick it out of my life many, many times.  For a few months last year, while working from home, I was successful.  No more sugar, wheat or dairy in my diet.  I was happier, smarter, had glowing skin, luxurious hair and I swear I smelled like peaches.  Then I went back to the office. I tried to maintain my uber healthy lifestyle for the first few weeks of employment, but I wanted everyone to know how cool I am!  I’m low maintenance, really.  I’m not the girl who can’t get pizza with everyone because of wheat allergies.  I’ll go to lunch at the Chinese place and share the custard sticky buns or take a slice of your home-baked pie while exclaiming what a good cook you are.  Then it hit me, right in the middle of buying Girl Scout cookies from my bosses daughter, it hit me.  Food is overwhelmingly social.  All the cool kids in the office are in the sugar clique.  It’s more fun to join in the ice cream run and get a single dip cone of Peanut Butter Cup Swirl than it is to stay at your desk and finish the FY2008 Q1 analytics spreadsheet.  Staying behind is the equivalent of being a junior high kid in headgear. It is possible to join the gang for lunch and get the healthiest thing on the menu, or order the thin-crust, no-cheese, veggie pizza when you’re all working late.  It’s possible to get a Green Machine on the Starbucks run.  But even then, being part of the inner sugar circle with the Blended Chai Vanilla Late seems much more fun, everybody...

Many thanks to Fierce and Nerdy contributor, Amy Robinson to responding to yesterday’s Obama boxer brief item with a more family-friendly, but no less fun example of Obamamania. I was going to wait until Halloween to post this, but I’m flighty and didn’t trust myself to remember to post it. Anyway, enjoy three of my favorite pumpkins after the jump. And go here for the entire collection. Hipster Carvers — shockingly not from California The only way to free the trapped Obama from the pumpkin is to vote! Careful this will read “OBM” once Pacman discovers where the last two ghosties are hiding....

. A blogumn by Amy Robinson Shopping for a Book at the Airport – Denver style I wouldn’t recommend buying a book at the airport.  I would highly recommend buying a book that you really like beforehand and bringing it with you.  But, if you’re like me and go visit your parents and end up finishing Uncle Tom’s Cabin, because your parents’ house is haunted, so you stay up late reading to give your lame adult ass a reason to leave the light on, then you are forced to shop for a book at the airport. So when, like me, you’re tired and all jittery, walking into the WH Smith Newsstand to buy a Time or Newsweek or just a People, something to keep you entertained for a 2-hour flight. AND you are just out of the 1 hour airport security line behind British folks who get stopped for having powder in their suitcase, which turns our to be lemonade powder.  (Apparently you just can’t buy lemonade powder in the UK.  Hilarious!)  Unfortunately, every single scrap of Printed Media is splashed with the visage of Pit-Bull Be-Lipsticked Hockey Mom Sarah Palin.  Can’t. Buy. That. At Denver International Airport the books are tucked back in the corner next to the storage entrance like porn at a video store (the actual porn at this newsstand is kept just over the Times and Newsweek’s.  Who buys Juggs or Barely Legal to take onto a plane?)  Now you’re faced with the choice of the New York Times Top 10, the collection of Harlequin romances, and the complete collection of Chicken Soup for the Fill In The Blank.  So the choices are down to 10 books. After about 15 minutes of back of the book reading and disappointed pondering,...

. A blogumn by Amy Robinson The Public Library – Home Sweet Home I am madly in love with the Public Library.  Our affair began when I was just a wee lass of five years.  My mother led me into the small Library of our teeny hometown and told me to pick out any book I wanted.  How could I focus on picking just one in this ridiculous wealth of books!? My first choice was Yertle the Turtle. Then I stood on tip-toe, my little blue eyes barely peeping over the librarian’s desk as she made my first library card, which she handed over to me with Yertle and a clear, lime green sucker.  I get to read Doctor Seuss for free and you add sugar to the mix?  I was hooked. Since that time, oh so very long ago, I’ve always found a home-away-from-home in the public library.  No matter where I’ve roamed; Kansas, Colorado, Chicago or Los Angeles, the public library is there.  It trusts everyone enough to lend books, music, movies and art, even when you don’t have a job. There have been days, underemployed and in need of inspiration, where I would head to the Central Library (both in Chicago and Los Angeles, impressive structures by themselves.)  As storms of rain, snow or economic madness raged outside, I could tuck into a big leather armchair, safe and warm amid the mountains of ideas wrapped in jewel colored book bindings.  Encouragement can be found in the brilliance of great writers like Mark Twain, Sherman Alexie or Willa Cather.  Books you couldn’t believe had found a publisher is also good inspiration. I’ll admit that I neglected the library for a while with the advent of Amazon and a good paying “regular” job. ...