who do I want to be my mentor?

NO. CONTEST.



Actually, any of these people would work:



Baba booey.

Hey, enjoy this picture of my cat folding sweaters.

You know what? I feel better. Ryan brought me some chocolate pudding, and his kindness healed my foot.

Mindy Kaling is the shit.



She has exactly the right attitude about the little joys technology brings us, plus she's a writer/actor/producer on The Office (she wrote one of my very favorite eps, "The Injury"). Oh, yeah, and she wrote what is sure to be the greatest book of all time Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns) due out this spring.



You can read a lengthy excerpt here (and you should, it's very funny and smart). A tidbit:

I have never had a one-night stand. Apparently, this is impossibly lame. Every romantic comedy I watch depicts our adorable heroine walking sheepishly back from a stranger’s place in the morning, with bedhead and her eyeliner all sexy and smudged. The problem is, I don’t understand the allure of the one-nightstand at all. Here’s why: in my mind, the sexiest thing in the world is the feeling that you’re wanted. The slightly nervous asking of your phone number.The text message asking you for dinner. The simple overture of wanting me can satisfy my ego for a good long time. The sexualsituation that could come of it? Well, that’s just less appealing to me. I don’t mean to say I don’t enjoy sex; I’m a properly functioning mammal and everything. I just think, like, who is this guy? Don’t you need to know some more about a guy than an evening’s worth of conversation at a bar to make sex appealing? Also: safety.

There is also a great section on Best Friend Rights and Responsibilities and I really funny story about celebrities and Twitter. Speaking of: she is a genius on Twitter. She says the things I think and the things I wish I'd thought.





MENTOR ME, MINDY. I want to be you. Or at least your best friend (I agree with all your rules).

And here's the part that hurts the most: Humans cannot ride a ghost.

You guys, ugh. Why do I live in the Old Testament? Lightning struck my house yesterday for the third time in three years, frying who knows what all. I mean, inside the walls it fried who knows what all. Outside the walls, it fried all kinds of tangible things like TVs and DVD players and video game consoles and laptops and my modem and router. I'm at Starbucks right now until AT&T and a master electrician can come fix my Internet. And let me tell you what is happening in this Starbucks: Nothing. You know why? BECAUSE THE INTERNET IS MOVING SLOWER THAN WHATEVER IS THE SLOWEST ANIMAL ON EARTH! A sloth? A snail? Slower even than both of those things! So slow TIME IS MOVING BACKWARDS! Also, there is music playing and people are talking, neither of which I can abide when I am trying to use my brain. Usually, I just dial right into simplynoise.com, but I can't do that right now. You know why? BECAUSE THIS INTERNET IS BEING ROUTED THROUGH 1986!

Yesterday I got into a fight with someone I love very much, and fighting is my least favorite thing ever. Then I got trapped in the woods during that thunderstorm that blew up my house, miles from civilization, with Margaret and Scout. It was like every scary thing: Darkness and lightning and the trees cracking and falling and the wind whipping around like a beast of a thing. Basically have you ever imagined a Dementor attack? That. And so then we finally got back to the trailhead and back home, but our house was broken. And then I finally got to sleep and when I woke up, guess what? MY FAVORITE TV SHOW HAS BEEN CANCELED.

The last 24 hours have not been a pleasure.

A guy just came into Starbucks while I was writing this and he looks like a truck driver, a big ol' grey-haired burly fella with a hat that says ROADWAY, and he sat down next to me and he is reading Breaking Dawn and drinking a giant cup of frothy something. That's making me feel better for some reason. Oh, and hey! Mouse Rat's 5,000 Candles just shuffled onto my iPod. (My music is better than Starbucks music. If I have to listen to something, it's gotta be something I picked out myself.)

Can I tell you a secret? I don't know this week's Collective topic. I can't get into the Google Doc to see it because of this GODDAMN INTERNET. I think, and I'm really just guessing at this point, that the topic is: Who would you like to be your mentor?

If that really is the topic, this really is my answer:



Merlin as my witness, there isn't a mountain I wouldn't climb, an ocean I wouldn't swim, an Internet connection I wouldn't endure, to submit myself to her tutelage. I'd crawl naked through the desert on my hands and knees, I really would.

My actual mentor, though, is Bridget Jones. I am her. Though perhaps ever so slightly less elegant under pressure.

phoning it in from the beach

 

Dear lady in the confederate flag bikini that is at least two sizes too small...WHY?

6

I have bumps on my bumps and bruises on my bruises.

Firefox

I was going to tell the truth, but I decided to open another tab instead.

Conjunction Junction (What's Your Function)

Of all the legitimate reasons I could think of for her not to marry him, the thing that came out of my mouth was, "He doesn't even know how to use a semicolon!"

Here lies Carrie. She had two loves and lots o' shoes.

The thing about shoes is that... I kind of hate them. It's been a life long battle since my feet grew into size 11 longfellows when I was only 14. For the longest time it was hard to find cute shoes that weren't a million dollars. Eventually, in the last 8 years or so Target and Payless have slowly rolled out passable shoes in my size and things got compulsive in there for a bit and then I realized (like all my other compulsives buys before) that I don't actually need any of that stuff.

These are all the shoes I got now:



It's pretty basic. One pair of black heels, one pair of brown heels. One pair of black flats. Snow boots. Chucks. Tennies. Running shoes. Old running shoes for doing chores. One fancy fun pair of green shoes because I love green. And that's it. That's all I need.

Except some flip flops. I would really, really, REALLY like to put some shoes onto my feet with little to no effort. Unfortunately I'm battling two fronts: I have gross-you-don't-even-want-to-know feet sweat and I have knee problems. Which means that nothing works. I'm a whiner. And it's summer. So I'm whining about this problem A LOT. You're welcome.

there's no place like home, there's no place like home

I don't have any red Chucks, but I do have some with cherries on them (which is close?):



PLUS ALSO, I've got some ruby slippers:



So far, they haven't displayed the magical power to transport me home when I click my heels three times (maybe they need more sparkles?) but IT COULD HAPPEN.

No, I am not Abigail.

And I do not have a favorite pair of shoes as far as I can tell. But here are my red Chucks:



Apparently you should get some too.

I saw Cady Heron wearing army pants and flip flops, so I bought army pants and flip flops.

There was a time, not too terribly long ago, when I did not love fantasy TV. I know, I know, that sounds so weird coming out of my mouth, especially because I'm some kind of Doctor Who evangelist these days. I mean, I spent all day Saturday watch the BBC America marathon twice. But I only started watching fantasy TV because I had to recap it for work, and for the first six months I bitched about it pretty much non-stop. (Sorry, Ashley.)

And then I met Gwen Cooper.

She was the sexiest, funniest, Welsh-est, alien-crime-fighter I had ever seen. Plus, she wore red Converse to save the world.

I got myself some red Converse.

And then I got myself a full-on obsession with fantasy TV.

The Pretty Reckless

Tell us, friends, what's the most reckless thing you've ever done?

Today is 6/9. That is all.

I wouldn't call myself a particularly risky person. No, it's more like, I do something dumb without thinking about it and later I think, "wow, that could have ended really badly." Like the time(s) in Chicago when Mary and I walked to Lake Michigan at 4 AM and sat at the edge of the dark water, our feet dangling over the water, flip-flops hanging precariously off of our feet, a bag of beer that we bought on the way sitting between us. We'd watch the sunrise and I once stumbled upon a couple in the midst of a sexual encounter, because the noises they were making sounded like frogs and HEY I wanted to see some frogs. How neither of us ever fell in the lake or ended up being murdered is a mystery to me.

I don't think those times count because I wasn't willingly being reckless, it just happened on account of all the stupidity and the beer. The most willingly reckless thing I've done is put my heart up for sale on these here internets. I'm actually pretty reckless with my affections, handing them out all wily nily, and my affection, once given, is very, very difficult to get rid of. It's possible, of course, but you really have to be a dick about it. In any case, I suppose if I hadn't been so reckless with my heart, I never would have joined Match all those years ago and I wouldn't currently be spending my evenings doubled over with laughter with Joe, which is ALSO reckless because one of these days, one of us is going to actually STOP BREATHING and I hear that's, like, not good for you and stuff.

Also, one time my friends and I jumped the fence to other-friend's pool to go night-swimming after all-day-drinking. That wasn't just reckless because I almost drowned but also because if other-friend found out that we had snuck into the pool, after she told NOT to many, many times, she would have LITERALLY killed us.

Pointless artifacts, a mediocre past.

I am what they call risk averse, but like ridiculously so, to the point where I should be called RISK AVERSE!!! all big and screamy like that lest you mistake me for someone who would ever, at any time, willingly take a risk. In fact, the riskiest thing I've done in a great long while I did this past weekend, while drinking wine and eating dinner with my boyfriend. The television was on, and during some random Corona commercial I looked up from my plate and totally recognized the dude lounging shirtless on the beach, but I couldn't quite remember what I'd seen him in before. And before it even really truly registered what I'd recognized him from I blurted out, "I HAVE TOTALLY MADE OUT WITH THAT GUY." Because I had. In college. Senior year. At and/or near The Boot.

In future I think I will refrain from hollering such things over the dinner table.

it's looking like a limb torn off

I've done a lot of reckless things--writing a very personal blog under my real, full name comes to mind--but I tend to shrug them off as par for the course. But! One time I did something really really really stupid.

I saw a mama bear and two cubs trolling the Yosemite Valley Floor campgrounds in the early morning hours. It's not rare, but it's very dangerous and that's why you have to put all your food and crumbies and trash and colorful things into the steel bear lockers every night. And then you're supposed to hide. FROM THE BEARS.

But I was freezing cold (it was only 2 degrees Fahrenheit once the sun came up) and trying to jog around to keep myself breathing and there they were being a cute bear family and the cubbies were wittle and fluffy and they were just looking for some foods. Just sooo cute. And so instead of getting back in my tent or getting in my car and driving far away, I started following them. Bad idea alert. But look! So cute!

Danger is my business.

Hi, you guys! Hi! Sorry we’ve been on a bit of a hiatus. I take full responsibility again, on account of I dropped the ball two weeks in a row because -- well, honestly, the first time was work deadlines and the second time I was at Six Flags riding about one bajillion roller coasters. Which, by the way, is a perfect segue to the thing we’re talking about this week: What’s the most reckless thing you’ve ever done?

Pretty much once a week, Amy and Jenn take it in turns to tell me I don’t have any kind of survival instinct, all, “I mean, you’ve heard of the Darwin Awards, right?”

And it’s true. I do some really reckless shit, physically and emotionally. But it never feels reckless, even in retrospect. But let me tell you something that DID feel reckless. When I was at Six Flags last week, I rode a roller coaster called The Superman, and I thought for SURE it was going to kill me. The coaster track isn’t anything special, but the way they lock you in, it’s like you’re flying, and I seriously nearly pissed my pants when the feet restraints clamped my legs into position and the coaster tilted us forward.

(And I mean, I LOVE roller coasters. Love them, love them, love them. There were hardly any lines last week, and I rode The Batman like six times in a row.)

Anyway, whatever. The Superman scarred me for life.

See, it looks like this:

And then like this:


When we finished, the teenage dudes in front of us started chanting, “One more time! One more time! One more time!” And then we got off the coaster and I punched them in the nuts.

Like a superhero.