You can do it. We can help... you load it into your car, at least.

OK, this just in, in case you weren't aware. It is now a mere FIVE DAYS until Christmas. I'm not exactly sure how that happened, but I remain convinced that my house is riddled with worm holes or some such thing. Frequent stumbles into time warps are the only explanation for what on earth happened to large chunks of 2009. On a related note, it seems the Internet does not stop just because I'm too busy working, making Christmas treats, or obsessing about bathroom tile. No, I just clicked over to Bloglines for the first time in over a week, and the rest of you have still been busy writing away... It reminds me of that episode of Growing Pains where Mike stayed home from school for a day and had a really obvious epiphany that the programming on television goes on even when he turns the set off, and the day at school went on as normal even though he was not there. It's an obscure reference, I realize, but the Internet taught me that I'm not the only one who thinks of Tom Hanks as Elyse Keaton's alcoholic brother every time I use vanilla extract, so you never know, I guess. Incidentally, I also think of Mike Seaver seeing his dead relative jogging through the kitchen in the middle of the night every time I need to buy buttermilk. (Anyone? No? Moving on then.) My point is I will catch up eventually. I have very little planned socially in the week following Christmas, so I suspect it will be me cozied up with the Internet for at least a few nights there. See you then.

So. What have I been up to lately? Well, I successfully finished on time all but two of the hand-made gifts I'd planned for friends this Christmas. Here are three of them, modeled by their lovely recipients last night.



That picture was taken at my pal Lisa's Christmas party, for which she promised prizes in various holiday spirit categories, much like the Ugly Sweater parties that have become so popular in recent years. Lisa added a similar challenge to the Evite for her last Christmas party, in 2007, and several attendees stepped up to the plate. If you're the sort of person who somehow manages to remember everything I write, perhaps that rings a bell. If not, again, here is the photographic evidence from that event. Me in a ridiculous outfit? Check. But alone in the ridiculousness? Hardly.



(I hate that picture of myself, by the way. Unfortunately, it's the only one I have that serves the purpose at hand.) 

This year, however? This year I was THE ONLY ONE TO PARTICIPATE. Apparently in two short years my friends have all gotten too busy or dignified for such nonsense. People, I was just following instructions. The invitation called for holiday flair, and I brought it. I planned ahead, even. I went to freaking eBay, and I bought these silly, festive tights from a shop that I'm pretty sure deals mostly in stripper wear and "I'm a sexy [insert any occupation or person-noun here]" supplies. I bought those tights, and I wore this ridiculous outfit, like I was bound directly for my part-time job at Santa's photo booth at the mall.



I wore that outfit, and I went to the party, and I was THE ONLY ONE not in normal Saturday night gathering attire. (No, red and white striped tights do not fall under the category of "Normal Saturday Night Gathering Attire" for me. Thanks for wondering, though.) It was not unlike the year in college when my friend Sarah had a Halloween party on November 1. It was a mere DAY after Halloween, which was presumably a very logical night for a Halloween party, given that it was a Friday, and Halloween itself did not fall on a weekend. And yet, when we went out to the bars, all the usual Friday night bar-goers in their usual Friday night outfits looked at us as confused and appalled as if we had walked in wearing Halloween costumes in the middle of May. I am prone to finding myself unknowingly inappropriately dressed and out of place, it seems. Perhaps that explains a lot. On the upside, obviously I won a prize last night, given that the competition was so slim. I now have two pretty new bottles of lovely-smelling hand soap to eventually use in my soon-to-be lovely remodeled bathroom. So there is that, anyway.

Speaking of my bathroom, I bought tile today! Lots of tile. So much tile that the helpful young man loading it into my car asked, "How far are you driving with this? I'm thinking maybe you should make two trips." It turns out it's not enough to know confidently that everything you're piling onto the wheeled flatbed cart will easily fit in your compact Saturn SL2. Apparently one needs to consider the total weight of what you're piling on the flatbed cart as well. And apparently a small bathroom's worth of wall and floor tile weighs significantly more than I anticipated, because as we loaded it up, my car was riding lower than if I'd had Gilbert Grape's mother and two clones of her riding in all my passenger seats. Live and learn. Load capacity matters. Who knew? (Well, most of you, I presume.)

Incidentally, can I just say, since I fear I mention companies by name only when I have an angry bone to pick with them (I'm looking at YOU, TCF Bank; you're still ON NOTICE, as our friend Stephen Colbert would say!!) that in my humble experience, the orange-aproned personnel at Home Depot have been a bit unfairly maligned? Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the Home Depot off Johnson in Minneapolis is a rare bastion of friendliness in an otherwise cold, cruel, orange-aproned world. Still. I have never gone there and not had at least two employees ask me, in a strangely sincere and earnest tone, if there was anything they could help me figure out or find. True, half the time it is a male employee who is hovering precariously on the delicate line between congenial customer service and creepy, inappropriate and awkward flirting. But today it was a 20-something woman who went above and beyond what I would ever expect an orange-aproned employee to do for me. She was the one who crawled into the cave of scaffolding to retrieve 13 packages of white ceramic subway tile for me, and she was the one to whom I first asked, "Do you think this is too much to try to haul in my car?" And instead of giving me a blank look that said, "Why are you asking me that? My job is to sell you the tile; how you get it home is your business," she replied, "What kind of car do you have? I could go Google the load capacity to find out..." Unfortunately, for once Google wasn't all-knowing, and the call she put out on her walkie-talkie ("Does anyone know the load capacity of a Saturn sedan?") didn't yield any solid answers either, and our seemingly sound math of "That's probably not more than 800 pounds of tile, and surely you could cart around four 200-pound humans without any worries" didn't exactly pan out, so I ended up leaving half my tile at the service counter and making a second trip to pick it up. But still! Helpful employees! At Home Depot! In this day and age! You may say it's a Christmas miracle, but I'm telling you, strangely it's somehow par for the course for me.

I would like to think that pleasant experiences like this bode well for the overall spirit of this project and serve as a sign that all will go fast and smooth, according to plan. I am sticking my fingers in my ears and saying "La-la-la, I can't hear you!" every time anyone tells me about their bathroom remodeling nightmares, because I am already dreading the period during which I'll be bathroom-less and I am possibly in denial, truly hoping that period will last for no longer than a week. The end result will be worth the inconvenience, and perhaps living like a resident of a third-world country will be a valuable, humbling experience for me. The baby Jesus didn't have a shower either, did he, but did that stop him from carrying out his duties as Son of Man? It's been a while since Catholic school, but I'm gonna say no.

Maybe I could just tile my whole shower in duct tape and save myself a lot of cash.

Last night was my company's holiday party, or, as I referred to it earlier today, "a total waste of a shower." I kid. (Mostly.) It was fine. But the aforementioned recession pay cuts and uncertainty of everyone's job security meant that our usual schmancy-ish dinner out was scaled back to a pretty uneventful potluck at the owners' condo. I arrived with my layer bars fashionably late, around 7:50, and we were all essentially herded out by 9:15, meaning I spent only slightly more time at the party than I did in my car driving to and from it. On the up side, I was back on my couch in my yoga pants by 10:30, settled in for some knitting and the requisite holiday viewing of Love Actually, which is a fine way to spend a chilly Saturday, if you ask me. If I can't leave my company's holiday party with a hot Brazilian bespectacled coworker, at least I can watch Laura Linney do so. (Although if I were Laura Linney, you can be damn sure I would have chucked my cell phone far from earshot once the hot bespectacled Brazilian took his shirt off. I'm sure I'm not the only one who wants to reach through the screen and do that for her every time I watch that scene.)

In truth, I don't know why I have such a predisposed aversion to forced socialization with my perfectly nice coworkers and their perfectly nice spouses. Idle small talk has never been my forte, I suppose, and lately it feels that conversationally, I've got nothing. My brain and my free time calendar have been extra busy recently, but not with anything that makes for particularly good stories or party talk. No one wants to hear about my continuing struggle to assemble timely hand-made gifts that aren't worthy of a featured spot on Regretsy. No one wants to hear me fret aloud about my only slightly irrational fear that my aging Saturn as well as every one of my appliances are about to give up the ghost at the exact same time, when I have absolutely no extra money squirreled away to replace these items. And I'm pretty sure no one (except possibly our company's accountant and human resources coordinator, who recently built a house and is still eyeball-deep in such decisions himself) wants to hear me go on about whether I should install a decorative chair rail or an ordinary bullnose as the top row of the new bathroom tile I'm about to have installed and whether the new granite countertop I've ordered for my vanity should have a matching backsplash or not.

This is riveting stuff, I realize, but unfortunately, it is what's consuming the bulk of the idle space in my brain these days. I am not at all looking forward to the week or more period when my home's only bathroom will be torn apart like a war zone, but I am so VERY much looking forward to finally having a bathroom that I'm not embarrassed to have guests use that I can barely contain my excitement about new tile and granite and the like. (This just in: I am old and boring. Is this what middle age feels like?)

Thanksgiving weekend marked the official onset of my long-postponed bathroom remodeling project, otherwise known as "Operation: No More Duct Tape in the Shower." You remember that, don't you? No? To sum up, my shower was, it seems, never meant to be a shower. By which I mean, it was never meant to get wet. Because if it were meant to get wet, the previous owners wouldn't have tiled it with adhesive METAL tiles, given metal's tendency to crack and rust when exposed to prolonged moisture. (You know--like the kind prone to occur in a SHOWER.) They also painted those tiles, which was another awesome and excellent idea, given paint's habit of chipping and peeling off of non-porous surfaces, again, where water is involved.

Those cracked, rusting tiles have been trying their damndest to fall off my walls for the past several years, and when the crack sealer I've continually gunked up in the faux grout lines wouldn't hold them any more, I decided duct tape would temporarily have to do. Which means that my shower has, for the past year and a half, looked something like this. Awesome.



Recession-era paycut or no, it is beyond time to finally remedy this eyesore, so the week after Christmas, one of my handiest and most useful friends will be helping me retile and remodel this monstrosity. Because sometimes things have to get worse before they can get better, however, my shower now currently looks like this:



Or rather, it looks like this... (The goal of the head start on demolition was to find out just what was behind those rusty metal plates and determine how much structural damage would have to be undone before work could proceed. As it turns out, there's not as much water damage beneath the tile as I feared, but leaving it all uncovered would obviously change that right quick.)



This means, of course, that once again, my attempts to eliminate the duct tape from my shower have instead resulted in MORE duct tape (temporarily, thankfully).

What's more unsettling than the duct tape, though, are the exposed wall beams. I may not have the basic structure of my house entirely squared away in my head, but I'm pretty sure that if you follow those wall beams down a few feet, you arrive in my somewhat unfinished basement laundry room. The laundry room, you may recall, is where the largest bug I have ever seen in real life lives, and though I haven't seen Gregor lately, I am convinced that now that the wall beams that go straight into the basement are exposed, I will see him waving his 100 or so legs at me in greeting one morning when I'm least expecting it. Or worse, I will finally see my first [starts with "m" and rhymes with "blouse"] in my home not in my basement or under my stove but peering out at me through that thin layer of plastic when I am wet and naked and ill equipped for rational thought. Because that is what [starts with "m" and rhymes with "twice"] do, obviously. They climb interior wall beams like Spider-Man and seek out areas to drown themselves and terrify me.

This is how my brain works, and this is what I've been obsessed with recently. Ailing appliances, temperamental car parts, bathroom tile, and rodents. Aren't you sorry I don't post more often? I thought so.

I'm well aware Tiny Tim had a tougher row to hoe and a better attitude. What of it?

OK, seriously. December already? Could someone tell me how exactly that happened? Pipe down, smartasses; you don't actually need to explain the intricacies of the Gregorian calendar to me. Rhetorical questions are still valid ones sometimes, I say.

So it's December, and I'm supposed to be all glowy with the warmth of the damn holiday spirit, but alas, December is stressing me out. Yes, on only the second day. The whole month stretches ahead of me, and yet, all I can think about are the hand-knit gifts that I was going to start IN JULY but that remain only half finished three weeks before Christmas. Or the salted chocolate truffles that I made recently, thinking that they'd be lovely little tokens for my friends and family, but that for some reason have already grown ugly, mottled light spots like year-old Halloween candy. (Not that anyone would know what that looks like, I assume.) So at the moment, my half-finished and failure-ridden home-made gift efforts seem most well suited to the Island of Misfit Toys (and, er, Candy and Scarves). Woe is me and my dashed hopes of from-the-heart thriftiness.

So I have Christmas shopping to do, and in an instance of excellent timing, I was recently told that my company is maybe not doing quite as well as we've been told all year (read: apparently nowhere NEAR as well as we've been told all year), and instead of getting a raise on what was, awesomely coincidentally, my 12-year employment anniversary, I got a 10% pay cut. Hurrah. Mind you, it was not just a "Happy anniversary" prize for me alone. Word is we all got pay cuts. Or, all of us who were lucky enough to keep our jobs (for now). An undisclosed number were actually laid off or had their hours cut instead. Happy holidays!

[Side note/Disclaimer of sorts:  I do realize that the previous paragraph falls squarely and solidly in the category of "Things I should not blog about" (i.e., "Things I could get fired for"). At the moment and for the record, I sort of feel it's a fair breech. This is my blog, about my life, which I write on my own time, and this is what's going on in my life right now. I will never, ever mention my company's name in this space, nor give any details identifying enough to reveal said name. So I'm sorry to anyone who someday finds this blog and shouldn't, but at the moment, with all due respect, I say kindly suck it.]

On top of that, I still cannot be trusted with a damn checkbook, and one measly little error has caused me TWO HUNDRED AND EIGHTY DOLLARS in NSF fees. Good grief. As some of you may have seen me complain on Facebook this evening, I am well aware that banks need to find ways to turn a profit, but I would much prefer that TCF Bank find a way to do so without coldly bleeding me dry. Yes, that's right, I said TCF. I have few qualms stating that particular company by name. Because seriously, if you are going to punish me EIGHT TIMES for what was quite obviously one single mistake, I am going to tell the Internet (or at least, my tiny corner of it) how disgruntled I am. I am not the sort of societal and financial delinquent you might see on the likes of the Judge Judy or Jerry Springer show. I am a smart, almost wearyingly responsible girl with her head screwed on nearly entirely straight. Would I keep using my check card if I knew there was actually no money in my account? Of course not. But if my unfortunately erroneous checkbook balance indicates all clear, all systems go, I'm going to carry on as usual, and penalizing me charge by charge while your old school paper notices make their way by Pony Express to my house really does me no good at all.Gah.

Sigh. It's time to stop this futile rant, I realize. Times are lean for all of us. Or, times are lean for most of us. I suspect the president of TCF is still doing just fine. In any case, moving on.

I should note that is it not all tears over banking injustices and tight purse strings around here. I did have a lovely Thanksgiving with some lovely friends. More than two people in attendance confidently proclaimed it the Best Thanksgiving Ever, and I dare say I must agree with them. I mean, no eleven hours on the road round-trip back home, no tense conversation with family members who I love but drive me batty, and no day-old KFC biscuits or year-old apple pie! It was a win-win-win, I say. Seriously, people. Look at this spread! Tell me you don't want to have Thanksgiving with my urban family next year.



Note: Those are prosciutto-wrapped sweet potatoes in the lower-left there, people. Essentially, sweet potatoes wrapped in bacon. I know how much the Internet likes bacon. If you're not sufficiently excited about this buffet line, it's only because I failed to photograph the desserts. Apple pie and pumpkin cheesecake (courtesy of me, and both delicious, if I do say so myself). Mmmm.

On a loosely related note, not that my Thanksgiving Day wardrobe should be of any interest to you, but since I am bragging about things I made, how about I return momentarily to those skirts I mentioned making a few posts back? Shana Who Lacks a Link requested pictures, and while I still have no photos of the skirts in action (or at least, in use), I do have some flat, static, "wowsa, are my hips really that wide?" pics for you...

This is the first skirt I made, which is a lovely albeit a bit cumbersome little wrap dealie-o...



And here is the one I made in the Intermediate/Advanced skirt class, which features both a lining and an invisible (or, nearly invisible) back zipper. In other words, I rock.



That second skirt I decided should be my Thanksgiving skirt, so I actually do have a picture of it in use, albeit a not very helpful and showcasey picture at that. Still. Are you up for a game of "Where's Waldo"? Minus the Waldo and plus a skirt? All right. Here you go then.



Do you see it? If so, good work.

By the way, also in that picture? The Ghost of Thanksgiving Past. Or possibly my pal Carrie's mom's arm, at low shutter speed. You decide.

So then. How was your Thanksgiving? I know it was nearly a full week ago at this point, but dwelling on the past is what I do, folks. Timeliness is not always how I roll. So do tell. Any high points or low points for me?

Elsewhere...

A couple weeks ago, I drew attention to my lazy blogging of late by saying I'd written only seven posts since July. You know what, though? That was actually a lie. You could say I've been cheating on you. Or rather, cheating on my blog. Or actually, not cheating at all; just spreading the love around. Or something like that. What I'm saying is I have actually written a wee bit more than you've seen here. On Thursday, for instance, I wrote about that PedalPub outing I took on Halloween. Last month, I wrote about how I removed the persistent (albeit unladylike) gym stank from my workout clothes. The month before that, I wrote about the Shampoo Slumber Party my friend Jamie hosted a while back. And in the midst of my South Dakota road trip, from a motel with free Wi-Fi in Wall, South Dakota, I gave the Internet a glimpse into what dinner looks like at this spinster's abode.

So you see? I'm actually about 50% more prolific than I appear initially! (It's a weak claim, but I'll make it anyway. I'll even go so far as to argue this short post--hey, it's a short week!--counts as four, four, FOUR posts in one!)

If you're not already doing so, pop on over to The Greenists every now and then. You never know what (or who!) else you might find there.

Tramampoline!

So it turns out the best way to make me not write a post for a fortnight is to say I'm going to write more than one post a fortnight. Blah blah fishcakes; whatever dudes; I've been busy. Or possibly I've been staring at Facebook and Craftster and who knows what else instead of Blogger and Bloglines. We all know I can handle only a finite number of Internet addictions at a time. But no! Seriously! I have had all sorts of stuff going on! I made a skirt. (Two of them, even!) I saved 50 starving kids. (Or so the dude at the place where I put in a measly two hours of time volunteering told us.) I helped my pal Carrie repaint her already freshly painted abode. I baked three times in a week. I finished watching the second season of Mad Men. I bought a toilet. Clearly lots of important stuff going on around here.

What I have not been doing is taking any more trampoline classes. My month of classes was up a couple weeks ago, and I decided not to pony up for another month just now. But since I am so good at waiting until something is so far gone that we've all nearly forgotten about it before I tell you about it, how's about I do that Q&A right now? Obviously I'm all about timeliness here. It's a special skill, folks. All right; no it's not. But it's how I roll, people. All things in due time. 

So then. You had questions! I have answers. Actually, you didn't even have all that many questions, so I have supplemented some of your fine questions with a few of my own. Feel free to decide amongst yourselves which are which.

Q: Trampoline class?!? I didn't even know that existed! Wherever did you hear about such a thing??
 A: Indirectly, through Facebook, of course. (Seriously, where else; am I right?) A seemingly superhuman acquaintance of mine posted an article about parkour (Note: This kind of parkour, not the kind Michael, Dwight, and Andy thought they mastered on The Office recently). That article linked to a video, which linked to an area gymnastics center that offers parkour and free-running classes, where I saw a link for "Adult Fitness" and decided to see where it led. And lo--trampoline classes! Who knew?? For the record, they also have adult circus skills classes, meaning I could finally learn how to twirl around in the air on long velvet sashes, just like Devotchka's burlesque girls. Maybe I'll try that next year.

Q: Is it one big trampoline, or does everyone have their own tiny trampoline? Is it one of those little round ones like my mom had in the 80s? (Do you even know what I’m talking about? A “mini-tramp,” if you will?) If it is one of those little round jobs from the 80s, please lie to us.
A: I DO remember the mini-tramps! I too am a child of the 80s, and my mom bought one of those as well. The mini-tramp did nothing to quell my trampoline fascination, though. Even as a kid, I knew that little, barely bouncy saucer was NOT A REAL TRAMPOLINE. It almost would have been better to have no trampoline at all than a lame, tiny useless excuse for one. The mini-tramp was a tease. (Which I suppose makes sense. Big, legitimate tramps rarely are, right?)

Q: So it's a big trampoline, then?
A: It is. And there are four of them. We take turns, which is fine, really, seeing as after several minutes, I generally need a break. Which brings me to...

Q: Is it good exercise?
A: Given that every part of my body was sore for several days after my first class, I'd say that yes, it is. A good portion of that soreness, however, likely came from the set of (spotter-assisted; I'm no She-Ra) pull-ups that a particularly drill sergeant-like woman (who was not even the instructor!) forces everyone to do before they leave the gym each night. I promise that the pull-up woman isn't the reason I decided not to sign on for more classes in November, but I can't say she helped my sticktoitiveness much.

Q: So, what sort of people take trampoline classes? What was the demographic in that joint?
A: It was actually a wider mix than I expected. Some were former gymnasts; some (like me) spent their childhoods wanting to be gymnasts and simply believe that trampolines always equal fun. Some stumbled across the class in a search for low-impact exercise options. And one guy was a strange, round-bellied, late 40-something in a royal blue sweatsuit and sport goggles. I really wanted him to be sort of awesome. Sadly, he was not.

Q: Have you learned new jumping moves? Do you do flips on it or just jog a little bit? Do you make up routines?
A: Yes, sort of, no, and maybe. There are five ways to jump on a trampoline, so we started by learning all of those. If you're curious about that (and I know you are), you can jump on your feet, seat, front, back, and knees. From there, we learned how to link various moves together, and by week two and three, I did a front flip and a back handspring with a spotter. The instructor flattered me by calling me a natural and a fast learner, but I never did master the easy combination they referred to as "The Kindergarten Routine," so the assisted handspring was a weak victory. 

Q: Can I come to your trampoline recital? 
A: Unfortunately, I don't think this gym hosts such a thing. If they did, I'm sure it would exclude quitters, so you still couldn't see me. Hence, no. 

Q: Do you still want a trampoline in your backyard?
A: Of course I do! Trampolines still aren't free, however, and I'm still a 35-year-old childless woman with neighbors, so I don't think I'll be doing anything about that any time soon.

Q: Are you angling for the Olympic Trampoline Team, because if so, I will see you at the Olympic trials, Missy.
A: No, but I may be hatching a not-so-elaborate plan to run away and join the circus. I have a feeling that in the circus, you're still allowed (and perhaps encouraged) to drink wine and stay up late. If Nadia was any indication, the Olympics require far more discipline than I'm willing to hone. That said, is there really an Olympic Trampoline Team? Because I would much rather watch that than that rhythmic gymnastics nonsense. 

Q: So that sounds awesome. Why on earth aren't you in class RIGHT NOW? 
A: Well, first of all, because it it not Wednesday. And also because trampoline classes are not free, unfortunately, and because this was one of those pay periods where I paid a few bills, had the crazy and reckless idea to buy groceries, and suddenly had no money left in my checking account at all. Also, since I am collecting reasons and excuses, going to trampoline class involves a bothersome commute down 35W, which is an always annoying stretch of interstate made even more problematic by the array of construction barrels and barricades and constantly shifting exit lanes featured right now. FYI, Minnesota Department of Transportation, I do NOT make a habit of texting, reading, or applying makeup while driving. You really don't need to keep testing me to make sure I'm paying attention, so how about you decide once and for all whether 62 East will be a right or a left exit and just leave it at that, OK? Ahem. I realize this is not L.A. or Atlanta (or for heaven's sake, Baghdad). I could be subjected to far greater trials than a weekly jaunt down 35W. I could also spend my Wednesday nights watching Glee from the comfort of my purple couch and my flannel pajama pants. This month, I choose that.

NaBloNoGo

Well, would you look at that? It's November 2 already, which means that after three years of perfect attendance, I have blown NaBloPoMo on the VERY FIRST DAY. I'm kidding, obviously. Did you honestly think I was going to do that to myself again this year? If so, you are hilarious. Or possibly, out of touch with reality. Have you not been paying attention to my lazy-ass blogging of late? Seriously: only seven posts since July. SEVEN. Obviously NaNoBloPoMo would be a much more likely calling for me this year.

Mind you, I have been keeping busy. I have been taking skirt-making classes and trampoline classes (whoopsie; I was supposed to write a Q&A about that, wasn't I?), and Saturday I hopped on the nation's only Pedal Pub and had an absurd amount of ridiculous (admittedly tipsy) fun. And here is where I prove what a lousy blogger I really am lately, because ordinarily this is the point where I would insert some pictures documenting the Halloween Pedal Pub excursion around St. Paul, but because I apparently forgot that I have a blog, I neglected to put those pictures on Flickr and instead housed them only in a not-easily-linkable-to-the-world album on Facebook. Hence, those of you who ARE linked to me there will just have to vouch for the hilarious-looking time I had. Everyone else, pretend the people in some of these videos are my friends (Note: They are not) for a general idea of what transpired.

Actually, it is just as well I have no pictures to link to, because I would rather tell you what I am about to tell you accompanied by no photographic evidence to help you speculate. And what I want to tell you is that my still semi-newish friend Melissa is not only kind and funny and an excellent yoga buddy and travel partner (scroll to the third-last paragraph if you're going to click that link); she is also a fine, well-matched wing woman for me. Why? Because Melissa indirectly orchestrated the inclusion of two new-to-us single males in this outing, and when I asked, "Are they cute?" she answered, "One of them is..." Fast-forward to Saturday, when, mid-Pedal Pub crawl I asked her, "So, which friend of [so-and-so]'s did you think was cute?" And she answered, "[Dude I personally thought was decidedly less cute]." And when I said, "That's funny. I thought [taller, nerdier dude] was the cute one," she replied, "I thought you might!" It's important to note that neither one of us actually made any progress with either of these strangers, but the fact that our tastes were actually fairly opposite I think bodes well for competition-free single-girl outings henceforth. Hurrah.

Following the Pedal Pub, I went to my pal Angela's house, for her now traditional Halloween chili. It was delicious as usual, as were the myriad varieties of cornbread on hand. I brought The Pioneer Woman's pumpkin spice muffins (with cream cheese frosting), which were, like all of her recipes, an undisputed hit. As usual, however, the muffins are gone but a half a bowl of frosting remains, and someone really ought to sneak into my house and remove that from my refrigerator before I spread the rest of it on chocolate chips or Triscuits or a flour tortilla, for lack of any more appropriate frosting vehicle on hand. Oof. Help me.

In all, it was a fine Halloween. I think I regained the last of the eight pounds I lost during my recent food poisoning bout (Crap; did I not write about that either? I'm not sure if that makes me a bad blogger or a good one...), and I also have a giant bruise on my left knee that I have little recollection of having acquired (Note: Not just a bruise, but a bruise with a fishnet-stocking patterned scrape atop it. I am not even kidding about that.). Each of those is a small price to pay, however, for a fun afternoon and evening with friends old and new.

So it's November already, and while this year that doesn't mean a post a day from me, I will try to do more than a post a fortnight at least. And I'll get to the trampoline post; I promise. Even not-so-burning questions require answers, I know.