Random Like Ralph Macchio*

Hey there. Did you ever just click that "New Post" button without really any idea exactly what you were going to write about? You have? Great. Then, you have some idea what you're likely in store for here, I guess.

Frankly, I have several various thoughts in mind, but none are particularly post-worthy on their own. So let's try one of those bullet-point posts of randomness, shall we? It works so well for other people... Might as well give it a try myself...

• List-a-licious
  Those of you coming in through Bloglines or Google Reader may have noticed I added a new post to my "Lists" list tonight. (Yes, I added it tonight, even though I post-dated it for sometime in January. Surely you're all familiar with this mechanism.) I don't imagine my list of concerts attended in 2007 is any more interesting to the average near-stranger from the Internet than any of my other lists are, but my selectively obsessive nature led me to create it anyway. I was a little surprised I didn't create this list sooner, but I realized after the Badly Drawn Boy show a few weeks ago that it was actually my first legitimate concert of the year. So much for all those people who think I go to "so many concerts." Three-plus months with no live music is not "so many" in my book.
  
  Speaking of books, I suppose I don't even really need a list to help my feeble, near-middle-aged mind recall all the shows I've attended recently, as I now have a lovely and practical book in which to aesthetically arrange the ticket stubs as evidence of all these events.
  
  
  
  This handy and awesomely obsessive-compulsive tool came into my life last week as a belated birthday gift from Stacy, who saw it on my Amazon wishlist and rightly assumed it was something I would find useful and yet would not likely splurge for on my own. Whoo! Clearly I was wrong to think birthdays get ever less eventful with each year. Getting surprises from Internet friends a full two weeks past my birthday? It really doesn't get much more spectacular than that.
  
  
• Seriously, how would they fit a razor blade in there?
  I hope everyone had a very happy Easter. Or, for my non-Christian friends, I hope you had a lovely and relaxing average Sunday. Me, I took part in the third annual Urban Orphans and Heathens Easter Brunch, which this year was held in an Italian restaurant in Uptown instead of the retro haven that is Nye's Polonaise. (L Sass, these local references are for you, OK? Try not to miss home too much.) Nothing says Easter like pizza, pasta, waffles, and cannoli, right? I think a fine time was had by all.
  
  On the afternoon of Easter Eve, my doorbell rang, and despite the ever-present knowledge that a doorbell can mean only clipboard people and beggars, I answered it anyway. At my door was a polite and smiley woman with an Easter basket for me. "We're just here from [name of new church apparently opening just down the block]," she said, "And we want to wish you a very happy Easter and let you know we're in the neighborhood. Happy Easter!" She also told me I have a beautiful door. No one's ever complimented me on my door before. Do you think she actually meant it, or does she say that to all the heathens on my street?
  
  In the basket was a handful of Hershey's kisses, a Ziploc bag of Jelly-Bellies, and various bits of church-related propaganda. The What on Earth Am I Here For? pamphlet might actually be useful to me, frankly, if I could get past the fact that its title ends in a preposition. And who knows--the Changing from the Inside CD might actually contain some lovely, soothing tunes. I will have to remove it from its plastic packaging to find out.
  
  Speaking of plastic packaging, the question of the evening, following this event, was this: When handed a bag of re-packaged Jelly-Bellies from a presumably harmless church-representing lady and two innocent-looking school-aged kids, do you trust that they are wholly un-tampered-with and safe to eat, or do you toss them in suspicion and cynicism? I was on the fence in this dilemma myself. Two of the four friends I asked immediately said not to eat them, while a third friend shrugged and opened the bag to dig right in. The bag is nearly empty now, and neither she nor I have died as of yet. Score one for trust in humankind after all.
  
  
• Also, I eat caviar and rare truffles for breakfast
  I think perhaps my small-town-dwelling father may be right after all: I have become an urban snob. His point of proof was the way I scoffed a few Thanksgivings ago when my older sister and I asked the bartender at the Manitowoc County supper club where we were dining if he had any red wine on hand and he answered, with a straight face, "Well, I've got this Mer-lott..." Not only did he pronounce the "t," mind you, but he pulled the bottle off of ice. I honestly am no wine snob (in fact, the only red I can recall ever complaining about with any insistence is a glass I had in San Francisco several years ago that was so pale it resembled Kool-Aid, and had the legs of Cherry Kool-Aid as well. But still, to my father, knowing red wine should not be chilled = urban snobbery of the highest offense. I may as well have been shunning Wal-Mart and Velveeta as well. (Oh. Wait...)
  
  Anyway, my point is he may be right. Clearly I have become a snob to some obscene degree. I cannot even imagine what he would say if he knew I purchased an $11 tube of deodorant. He would likely have a second stroke right on the spot if he knew that not only did I use that whole tube, but I recently bought a refill to replace it. And to hear that I made my shipping dollars go further by adding a backup tube and a $13 lip gloss to my order as well? Well, that might just be the very nails in his coffin, so to speak. Yes, thank God my father thinks the Interweb is a crazy fad that will disappear any minute, because reading this might just kill him, I'm afraid.
  
  
• I'd file this under "Strangest thing I've done while sober this week," but I really couldn't justify this even if I'd had the better part of a bottle of wine beforehand, honestly
  Last night, I went to a movie with The Magical Boy. It was a last-minute plan that left little time for chatting and catching up before the lights went down and the previews started rolling, so after the show, we ended up sitting in my car for a good thirty minutes just rambling on about various things. Because no topic is verboten with MB, we somehow segued into the hazards of making out whilst wearing glasses (lenses smudged due to icky facial oils and all). MB claimed never to have noticed this problem, so I did the only logical thing following such an assertion: I blotted his forehead with a nearby library receipt in search of proof. Amazingly, (1. The paper remained clean and grease-free, and (2. MB did not immediately wave my hand (and the aforementioned library receipt) away in horror. My discoveries following this absurd event are thus: (A. The Magical Boy obviously is magical, because seriously, what mere mortal has no shiny spots by 9:00 p.m. in the evening-time? and (B. A true friend lets you blot their face without question or fear. This might be a new test to implement from now on.
  
  

All right; that oughtta give you enough to ponder for a while, I think. I'm off on the second-last of my meMarmony dates for this round tomorrow, so perhaps a Round 2 wrap-up of some sort is in the works for later this week. I'm a little concerned that such a recap will only depress me, but if there's anything I've learned about blogging in the past year, it's that you guys can make even the most painful and mortifying events feel amusing, so I look forward to that, anyway.


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* This title makes little more sense than the flow of this post, but see here for an explanation, if you'd like. (That title was for you, of course, FunkyB.)