Late night grab-bag (a Friday Five of miscellany)

As you may know, Staying In on Friday is the new Going Out, so I had big plans this evening to come home, have some dinner, post a Friday Five, return some e-mails that have sat unanswered in my Inbox for way too long (Hi, Darren; still remember me?), do a little reading, and be in bed by 11:00.

Instead, it is now 2:46 a.m., I have posted no Friday Five, answered no e-mails, and read nothing other than the last of the unread entries in my Bloglines list. I did, however, have a lovely two-hour(!) chat with my pal Guinness Girl, who really should live closer to me so we could drink wine and chat in person rather than via long distance. Before that, I spent another hour and a half or more talking with a friend who has no link to accompany her name, but who I have not seen in months and who I very much enjoyed catching up with tonight. I hate the phone (hate, hate it, as a general rule), and yet, I spent close to four hours on it this evening and enjoyed every moment. What am I--16 again? Why yes, it seems I am. Case in point: remember the high school friend I ran into at the Andrew Bird show a few weeks back? He had not called me, and I played this ridiculous "Should I call him?" game in my head over and over until I finally sucked it up and called him last night. This is not a man I plan to date. It is simply an old friend I would enjoy having lunch with sometime. Why should I turn into a crumbling mess of insecurity over it? Because I am 16. Clearly. And I am dumb. Gah.

That story was not particularly amusing or important, but it is nearly 3:00 a.m., remember? You can't expect much from me right now. Here are five other mini posts of no import.

1. My initial excitement over the Lily Allen CD that I finally bought while at Waterloo Records last weekend has waned with the sudden suspicion that what I thought was a catchy and can't-lose album is actually a rare and unexpected instrument of torture most likely thrust upon us by terrorists (or possibly our own government). Seriously. Listen to any song on that album and then just try not to have it on constant loop in your head for the next 17 hours. At my desk. In the car. While listening to other songs. While trying to fall asleep. All I hear in my tired and addled brain is "At first, when I see you cry-eye-eye, yeah it makes me smi-iii-ile, yeah it makes me smi-iii-ile..." Aaaghh! Get out! GET OUT! Frankly I'm a little terrified to ever press Play on this one again.
   
   
2. A week and a half ago, I started the bi-annual process of rotating my closet for the change of season. It started out well and productive, but I found some sort of distraction or interruption and abandoned the project with no fewer than four disheveled piles of clothing still strewn across my floor. Have I moved anything in those piles since then? No. Apparently I plan to dress from the floor for the rest of the summer. Who needs hangers, after all. Seems a fine plan, if you ask me.
   
   
3. Sometimes I realize just how much I am still prone to being a goody-goody rule-follower and boat-not-rocker, even years after moving out of my parents' house and living my own life presumably not under the scary shadows of Catholic guilt. For example, I probably shouldn't take personally the automated reminder message from the Target Pharmacy, right? My auto-refilled prescription was ready a week ago, but since I didn't actually need my next month's supply for two more weeks (and since I was busy flying off to Austin on a whim), I hadn't yet gone to pick it up. So they called me again. The robot lady's voice on the reminder message basically said, "You have had your auto-refilled prescription waiting at your Target Pharmacy for ten days. If you are not able to pick it up within the next three days, you will need to call to request the order be filled again." Did she mean to scold me? Was she deliberately conveying how much I have inconvenienced all of the white-coat-wearing pharmacy staff by taking up a small slot in the filled-prescriptions baskets for too long? Probably not. And yet, that's what I got out of that. When I finally picked it up tonight, I wanted to apologize to the pharmacy girl for being such a delinquent ne'er-do-well. I was convinced there would be a note affixed to the bag, informing the Target staffers what an unappreciative customer I clearly am and instructing them to wag their finger disapprovingly at me in response. Yeah, I might need to lighten up just a tad.
   
   
4. Remember when I asked a few weeks ago just how long that new-found and uncharacteristic cooking kick would last? The answer was "Not long," apparently. As proof, let's take a look at my fridge, shall we? If I were to attempt to assemble dinner from the contents of my fridge, the best I could do would be a cinnamon bagel topped with a Kraft single and rice pudding, with seedless red grapes on the side. Yum. (Note to self: Really must go shopping this weekend. Must.)
   
   
   
   
5. Last night, I woke from a relatively sound slumber because someone on my block (in which home or car, I'm not at all sure) decided that 3:40 a.m. was a perfectly reasonable time to blare loud electric guitar riffs for the entire neighborhood to enjoy. At 3:40 a.m. On a Thursday night. On a usually quiet, tree-lined residential street in Minneapolis rarely overrun by hoodlums or heavy metal rockers. Nice.
   

I suspect that last one had at least a little something to do with why I was so tired all day today, and why I fully intended to be in bed by 11:00, not 3:00 a.m. So with that, I'm out. It's well past time to go to sleep. Happy weekend, all.