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Sad Day

This morning I learned that CBS has cancelled their entire 97.1 Talk FM lineup in favor of Top 40.

This means that I can no longer listen to the Adam Carolla show in the mornings! I'm so distraught!

I console myself with the fact that this also means Tom Leykis is fired. Ha ha.

Ode to Cola

O Cola! (Coca-Cola or Pepsi, it matters not)
How you comfort me when I am down.
When I drink you I feel so happy and strong,
like I can take on the world, and laugh, and smile.
I try to replace you with diet soda or juice or cold water
but nothing can make me feel the way you do.
I dream of you in my sleep and thirst for you when awake.
Drinking you gives me a reason to live...
until three hours later, when I just want to die.

On Sunday I found in my purse a slip of paper with a phone number and a woman's name written on it, and have absolutely no idea how it got there.

I feel like that makes me sound infinitely cooler than I really am.

Happy Crane Day

Crane Day is traditionally celebrated by truancy and drinking beer shockingly early in the day.

Today I had nothing to be truant to, and I've given up alcohol, so I celebrated a little differently: by getting lost in Redondo Beach trying to find the restaurant where I was meeting a colleague for breakfast. Of course, if I only got lost in Redondo Beach on holidays, we must have had a lot of holidays this year.

Two of my friends had babies this week. This is a good illustration of the amount of baby-having that's been going on the last 10 months or so. If I change my facebook status to "Andrea is not pregnant", now you'll understand.

I just joined a choir in Torrance. I missed the registration deadline, but I begged the director to audition and he made a special arrangement for me to register and get music. I'd like to think that I was so fabulously talented that he couldn't live without me, but judging from my audition after 7 months of not singing, I think he was just nice and could tell I was desperate. I'll keep you posted on how it goes.

Positive Thinking

Over several months I created a massive art installation that came to me in a grand stroke of inspiration but took quite a bit of planning and experimentation to pull off. Even in the picture, it was not quite finished. When I bought my place in LA, I instantly found the perfect place for it, right over the fireplace.

When I moved into my new place, I wanted to christen it by hanging my hand-made installation. I opened every box the movers brought, but it wasn't there. Neither phone calls nor searches would find it. My beloved art was gone.

For weeks I was inconsolable. One day I got a letter from the moving company saying "We'd like to reimburse you for your lost items. Please let us know their value." How dare they? I asked, indignant. The material cost was almost nothing, but the piece is invaluable!

They paid me $200. That makes me a professional artist.

*snort*

My uncle sent me a Tibetan Personality Test, and I got a kick out of some of my results:

The way you describe a DOG describes your own personality: HAIRY
The way you describe a CAT describes your partner's personality: SOFT
The way you describe a RAT describes your enemy's personality: FURRY
The way you describe THE SEA describes your own life: SALTY
The way you describe COFFEE describes how you interpret sex: BITTER

www.memoriter.net/flash/test.html

Carmalyn, say hi to Ethan; Paige, say hi to Andy; Andrea, say hi to... your cats.

When family conversations end in this way, it's time to start drinking.

So I haven't provided an update since before Solstice. Now is as good a time as any. Yes, I'm watching the SuperBowl, I'm just not entranced enough that I can't blog a little as well.

I took off the last two days of work before the break to use up some of my banked vacation and rest/prepare for my holiday travel, and to finish my e-Solstice Letter, of course. I sent it to my former co-worker B-Rad the same day he left Cupertino to go to San Diego. We met up for dinner on his way through LA and shared many good stories. The hostess took a good picture... of him.

I met the family in Florida for Christmas, as usual. We went to the beach a lot. I snorkeled quite a bit (not a tour, either, just the beach) and was rewarded with up-close sightings of parrotfish, a skate, a horseshoe crab, what looked like a blue and green relative of the porcupine fish, and a seahorse. A seahorse! My life is complete. There was much reading, relaxing, cooking, and card playing. There was mucho family drama. It was exhausting.

Since I was on the east coast anyway, I popped up to see Saima and Sajid and their new addition, Safan, at their new home in Orangeburg, SC. Not much in South Carolina was open New Year's Eve and Day, but we still entertained ourselves quite well. We spent New Year's Eve watching Indian movies (my perfect vacation!) while Saima and Sajid plotted to arrange my marriage to a nice vegetarian Desi who cooks. New Year's morning, I took it upon myself to get Safan to smile. After a few tries, it worked! Then we visited an old plantation. I have to admit, it was a little creepy driving past the tiny cotton field and slave quarters beside the house. On our way home, I asked them to take me to Waffle House - I was suffering from withdrawal as I have yet to find any in California. I had a waffle and eggs and, oooo, grits!

The day I returned to work I was asked to make good on my promise to see the Worker's Comp doctor about my wrist. I was diagnosed with tenosynovitis (the precursor to carpal tunnel), fitted with not one but two wrist braces, and sentenced to "hand therapy" 3x per week for an undetermined length of time. The black wrist brace I named my "ninja claw", and the bone-colored rigid one I dubbed "skeletor". I decorated skeletor with shiny butterfly stickers and that tickled the guys at work. Hand therapy is not so bad, I get paid for my time, the people are nice, and sometimes I can read while doing the hand-o-cycle, swinging a mallet, or any of the other crazy things they have me do. But there's this one anti-inflammatory medicine that absorbs into the skin only under an electric potential. That's right. So five times they've taped two electrodes to my arm and shocked me for twenty minutes. Can you believe it? Absolutely diabolical.

The family drama escalated. It was a freaking nightmare. But it looks like it's getting better now.

Observations

1. Barack Obama is not black. He's mixed race. He's black and he's white. Growing up I was taught that it was rude to define a person by what is only a portion of their heritage. People think Kentuckians are racist, but even we knew this simple courtesy.

2. What, precisely, is so great about Joel Grey? I mean really?

3. In what subject did Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. have his PhD? Did he do a dissertation and defense or was it honorary? If I'm so curious why do I never look this up in wikipedia?

4. Whatever happened to Tempestt Bledsoe? I liked her.

5. When you meet someone for the first (and sometimes second) time, and they introduce themselves by giving you their name, you are under an obligation to give your name in return. If you respond by saying "Pleased to meet you" and nothing else, you should be punished.

6. If a movie trailer includes one or more shots of the main character falling down or tripping over something, that movie is not worth seeing.

7. At 2AM I literally sat bolt upright in bed and said "Aha! John Galecki played Sara Gilbert's boyfriend on 'Roseanne' and now Sara Gilbert is playing John Galecki's girlfriend on "Big Bang Theory"! Amazing!" I feel like this is the definitive proof that I watch too much TV.

8. John Williams would kick Stephen Sondheim's ass in a fight. Or, if I were lucky, they would gang up on John Rutter.

9. If the press doesn't stop talking about Aretha Franklin's hat and Michelle Obama's dress and Justice Roberts' tongue twister, I will personally declare war on someone just so they will have something else to report.

10. On TV, people sometimes refer to their sisters as "sis". Does anyone in real life actually DO that?