If It's On Sale, It's On The Bank Statement

Michelle's birthday's coming up soon. She's turning 12 plus or minus 6; it's hard to tell at that age. As always, I'm short on ideas for presents. It's been a long time since I was a twelve year old girl, and with all these "forty is the new twenty" and "seventy is the new twenty one" I can't even narrow down which millenium she belongs to. Should I get her a tricycle or some razors (for shaving; it's too early for her to be clinically depressed), a bib or a wheelchair? I've asked some experts, they're still analyzing the data. Wish me luck.

We went to Kroger's for some grocery shopping today. They're all set for Christmas, and there's a massive sale. Except for grapes, which at $964.99/lb seemed to be compensating for all of the other items put together, literally everything was marked down. So now, not only are we broke, but in two days time we'll be fatter than Señor Christmas stuffed with Dasher and Blitzen's entire family trees. Christmas trees of course.

I followed a schedule today for the first time in 22 years. Not the whole day of course, but from 1:00PM to 4:30PM I lived a life of order and premeditated action. This included an hour of Chinese, half an hour each with two guitar books, and half an hour of ear training. I am not skipping out on the chance to brag about it since there's no predicting how organized I will feel tomorrow. Clap your hands if you believe I can stick to this for more than just today. Now if you clapped your hands, go see a shrink. Clapping to yourself for no reason is a first-rank positive symptom of schizophrenia according to the Schneider classification. Either that, or you're a Nazi for following orders blindly.

An hour and a half ago, Mario put a 10oz frozen pizza in the oven. Usually within 10 minutes we hear the first hissing sounds of cheese globs committing suicide on the red-hot coils. I just went to check on it. The oven was set to a comfortable defrosting temperature of 0. Fahrenheit of course - this isn't a magic oven, and only I'm loony enough to take a pizza out of the box and plastic wrap and put it back in the freezer to cook.

Mario (seeing me at the oven): is it burning?
Mark: dude, you forgot to turn the oven on.
Mario: that wasn't the question. I said, is it burning?
Mark: nope, this one's a champion.

Monkeys

Today's daddy's birthday. On people's birthdays you're supposed to tell them what you think about them without holding anything back, no matter how horrible it is, right? Or is that at people's funerals? One sec, researching... What? That's lame. Apparently you're never supposed to tell anyone the whole truth about themselves, unless it's 99% complimentary or you're at a writing workshop. Or if you don't plan on them being useful to you in the future. Nation of liars and wusses. But...I guess I can abide by the rules this one time. Don't want to completely conform to non-conformity. You get a freebie today, daddy-oh.

Tomorrow's Sunday, but I'm afraid they'll miss me at church. If there's one thing I don't want to overdose on, it's Jesus' blood and body. Cocaine's bad enough.

Some random scenes from today/yesterday that seemed funny to me (I play the role of Mark):

(watching the climax scene of Soldier)
Mark: are they holding hands?
Mario: yea, they're about to die.
Mark: so if we were about to die, you'd be trying to grab my hand?
Mario: of course
Mark: I'm glad we're not dying then

(Mark's holding the remote and trying to turn off the tv, button sticks)
Mark: I keep pressing this button but it won't work. I think it's a sign...
Mario: of what?
Mark: ...that I need to keep pressing it

(pre-sleep discussion/meditation in their respective beds)
Mark: that was a good idea that Bill Gates had, to name his operating system Windows. Cause now everything's a window, browser window, game window...
Mario: yea, I'm pretty sure it was in the reverse order though.
Mark: ah. Good point. That makes more sense.
Mario: but who knows? If he called it Wildcat, we might be saying "man, I got all these Wildcats cluttering my screen."
Mark: haha. "Can you imagine if he called it Windows instead? Bill would never have sold a single copy!"
Mario: "well yea, not with stupid name like that. And Wildcat would never have been the multi-thousand dollar corporation it is today."
Mark: "the economy wouldn't even be in the thousands yet. They'd probably still have centi-cents."