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What should I do on Memorial Day? It’s been so long since I’ve had paid holidays (At Newbs we got X-mas and Thanksgiving Day), I don’t know what to do with myself!

Here are a couple of my ideas:

1. Take the ferry to Martha’s Vineyard or Nantucket and ride my bike around

2. Go to George’s Island

3. go see the new Indiana Jones movie (again) with Tanya

That reminds me– I saw Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull today, and it was way more awesome than I had expected! I mean, it wasn’t as good as the original movies, but that’s probably because I’m old and jaded now. I probably would love it to pieces if I were 12. Despite the sucky title, it was cool– I like Cate Blanchett in pretty much everything, and she was awesome as an evil Soviet Communist. There were ants– I hate ants. The first movie had snakes in large numbers which were kind of funny, the second had mass amounts of bugs, and the rats in the 3rd movie were cute. I love rats, as you know. However, I couldn’t really deal with the swarms of giant ants in this movie– I HATE ANTS. I know I’ve slept on termite mounds by accident and awoke spitting ants out of my mouth, I’ve eaten termites… somehow when I’m travelling, all dislikes and creeped-out-ness is totally suspended. In the present, I still hate ants, and I found a nest of them in a plant I was servicing the other day…

Anyway, The new Indiana Jones movie is pretty awesome– go see it.

In other news, I’m about to be a swingin’ single again– Saki got accepted to this program where he goes to Israel for a year to learn Arabic. He’ll probably get transferred out of Boston when he gets back, so I guess that’s that. Oh well, it’s not like I ever saw him anyway; his job pretty much eats up all his life now as it is. He was probably the only halfway-sane dude out there who could put up with me, so I guess it’s the crazy old cat lady life for me again! I knew there was a good reason to work on the Modern Spinster site again– I just found it the other day in some random folder on my hard drive– probably it was destiny throwing in some foreshadowing! It’s been fun, but all good things must come to an end, I guess.

There I go with the whining again. Saki seems really excited about his new deal, and I’m totally happy for him! That’s really cool! I’m just having crazy spells because I’m on a much reduced amount of drugs thanks to the lack of health insurance. Of course, I have to make everything about *me* under these brain-chemistry conditions. ME! ME! ME! I’ll be back to normal in 3 weeks or so hopefully (unless I get fired or something). Until then I’m going to try to not post anything unless it’s 100% positive and/or at least entertaining.

I bought a new desk for $39.99 at the Christmas Tree Shop or whatever that place is called. It’s odd– I had no idea they had furniture there. Anway, my new desk is awesome because it has shelves for everything on it, and even though nothing really fit together correctly and the instructions were vague and confusing, I like the result.

I also got to spend almost 24 hours with Saki. When has that happened last? Like months and months ago! I almost forgot what he looks like…

Oh yeah, we also had our dinner out at work, which we earned for being one of the best preforming stores of the year. It was tasty– we ate at this Italian restaurant in the North End. I had butternut squash filled ravioli with walnuts. it was AWESOME.

My weekend was pretty rad. Now, if the virus or whatever that is causing my left ear to send shooting pain into my head every time I swallow something and is also making the left side of my face be tingly and irritating would just chill out, life would be just dandy.

I’ve been having adventures! Saki and I went to see No Country For Old Men in Wooooobun last night, and it was really awesome. So awesome in fact, that my car was stunned by the awesomeness and refused to start afterwards! I called AAA and they came and jump started it (the mall police don’t do that sort of thing), but the battery was still dead the next morning, and something was making a weird clicking noise. It wasn’t the slow clicking that indicates your solonoid or something is dying, it was a rapid frenetic clicking the likes of which I’d never heard before. I thought maybe something more severe than the battery was dead… but it wasn’t. PHEW! Saki and I went to the auto parts store, bought a new battery, put it in, and I still got to work 1/2 hour early! Saki is awesome. He does manly stuff. I could have changed the battery myself, but he did it all with no help and minimal swearing. Since everything in my car is rusty and old, getting the old battery out was no small task, either!

So here I am, preparing for my journey westward tomorrow after work. I will be heading into the great land of 12% sales tax (it’s only 5% here), vegan Christmas dinners (now that Grandfather’s gone, uncle Justin and I are the only unabashed omnivores remaining), and militant Political Correctness run amok in a sea of NASCAR-enthusiast, Genny Cream Ale-swilling rednecks. Ah Ithaca. How I … DON’T miss it at all. I like Christmas, though, no matter how much I bitch about working retail during this Hap-Happiest Time Of the Year. I like all holidays. I like festivities and decorations and eating big meals. I guess I just like excuses to celebrate stuff.

Hopefully tomorrow will be dead at work so I can leave early and won’t have to be rolling into Hippieland at 1:00 a.m. That would rule!

I’ve done it. I own my very own set of multi-sided dice. What is more pathetic, having a huge collection of multi-sided dice left over from childhood, or buying your first set at age 34 1/2? Shut up. Saki bought the Serenity RPG book and we’re going to attempt to play it. The last time I played an RPG was in high school when I got roped into playing Car Wars with Dave 1, Dave 2, Todd, and his little brother. It was really lame, but I think that’s because a game where you roll around in a souped up car blowing up other peoples’ cars isn’t really my thing. I insisted that my car be a VW bug, which isn’t very burly in a post-apocalyptic setting where everyone’s survival somehow depends on the number of other cars one can vanquish. The appeal of this particular game seemed to be the number of spreadsheets you can put together detailing yours and the other players’ cars… Whooopee! Before the Car Wars episode, I think I attempted to play Dungeons & Dragons with Ben Pearlman in 4th grade, but I didn’t like the fact that all you did was sit around a table, because I would have much rather played a real “let’s pretend” type of game, preferebly one where Laura and/or Mary Ingalls were involved.

So… I just have to sew up a velvet pouch to keep my dice in now, so I can hang them from my belt and have them at easy access whenever I need to, say, slay dragons or something with panache.

Saki Puck and I spent the entire weekend together and survived! How about that? I think the trick is… we have a lot of fun hanging out and doing stuff, yet we’re perfectly fine each reading separate books or doing separate things for periods of time and don’t have to constantly be in each others’ faces. Rock on. Hooray for having a dude with my same brain! He really is the guy version of me, only with more Hawaiian shirts and Nelly CDs. We watched Serenity, the Firefly movie (he had already seen it, but I hadn’t) and I AM BUMMED! They killed off 2 awesome characters! How could they do that?!!?!? It’s going to take me a while to get over this, I can tell. Stupid TV shows. This is the real reason I don’t watch TV– I have too much personal emotional and psychological investment in characters so when they die or do something stupid, it really bums me out. Boo.

Saki’s toaster makes absolutely perfect toast on the first try; there’s no need to re-toast, check it every 10 seconds, or anything. I think this is a sign– I haven’t had good luck with toasters for my entire life. I have never owned a toaster that didn’t suck; and there’s that whole lack-of-toaster issue that seemingly plagued my childhood and stuff. I think it’s important to have a good working relationship with the appliance that delivers your breakfast, and luckily Saki’s toaster and I get along just fine. This could be the start of a beautiful breakfast habit. Or something.

I have never seen so many hyperventilating, screaming 15-year-old girls dressed in black in one place before; it was quite a sight! I had the honor of attending the Gerard Way (the dude from My Chemical Romance) in-store yesterday at the Newbury Street store. Mr. Way has written a comic book and was there to promote it… but I don’t think that it was comic book fans who came to see him. I think Gerard Way is the new Trent Reznor– black-clad troubled teenagers find a soulmate in Mr. Way when they hear lyrics like this:

A world that sends you reeling from decimated dreams
Your misery and hate will kill us all
So paint it black and take it back
Let’s shout it loud and clear
Defiant to the end we hear the call

From my perspective, though, the whole show was highly entertaining. A seemingly endless Black Parade (ha ha I’m so witty) of highly pierced, black hair-dyed, hyper eyelinered girls (and a few guys) excitedly filed past my register, some with their parents taking charge “ABBY, remember to stand on the LEFT side of the table so I can get a better picture. NO, YOU stand in line while I go buy another comic book.” All of them looked like nice suburban kids with indulgent parents who let them skip school to come into The City to breathe the same air that Gerard Way breathed for a moment. Girls were crying, hyperventilating (I kid you not), screaming, on the verge of fainting–it was like the Beatles had descended upon a funeral full of zombie-wannabes.

I got to meet Gerard Way himself, and he seemed like a super-duper nice guy. He was actually really sweet; Erin from Harvard and I got a picture:

He seemed pretty down-to-earth, even requesting some music be put on in the store and asking for… get ready… Oasis. For some reason, that made me like him even more–Oasis is probably the last thing that you would expect from the new King of Moping, I guess I had him figured for requesting The Misfits or maybe even ‘Carmina Burana.’ I also got a comic book signed for Lil Bitch, who idolizes Gerry to the point of wanting to *be* him… but he had already started writing my name (I was wearing the store name tag) before I could ask him to make it out to Robin. Oops!

And, to have started the day on an awesome note, I GOT MY CAR REGISTERED AGAIN!!! It was freaking awesome. I spent a grand total of 20 minutes in the RMV (what they call the DMV in these here parts). I had rationed 3 hours of the day for this event, and so had all this time to kill downtown. It was a gorgeous day, too.

After I got home from work, Saki came over and I DROVE us to get some dinner. I haven’t driven a car in… I don’t know, 3 months? It seems longer than that. I guess I’m a hick at heart. I really like the mobility of having a car. I like being able to leave town on a moment’s notice. I like being able to go to the grocery store and pick up a giant box of kitty litter AND 2 bottles of juice AND a sack of potatoes. Now to get that fucker inspected… I decided that I’m not going to try to put the light back on myself; it will just cause me more angst and agitation. I will pay someone with the proper tools to do it. It seems like giving in, selling out, “cutting and running” as our illustrious president would say, but I just want this stupid car inspected!

I’m off to Ithaca and Rochester for 5 days now–I’m going to help Moth clean out Grandfather’s house. I hope I don’t find anymore desiccated mouse skeletons. I think I might want to invest in a dust mask as 20 years of dust might be more than my little lungs want to take!

How big a hole would it make on the surface of the earth?

HOLY CRAP THE EDITORS WERE AMAZING!!! They were really, really good. They played just about all the songs from their new CD and at least half of the songs from their last one. I was impressed with the attention paid to the final consonants of lyrics by the lead singer (Tom Smith). If there’s one thing I hate, it’s sloppy diction and poor enunciation. Tom Smith totally nailed all the words like they were bullets. He is such a strange person on stage. He sings his heart out and plays the guitar and fake-piano thing with as much energy as possible, all the while flailing around randomly and occasionally making odd gestures with his hands, like he doesn’t know what to do with them. He kind of has the Michael Stipe syndrome in that way, which is nerdily endearing. He seemed kind of shy, yet he made a silly face for a fraction of a second at a dude in the audience who was taking a picture.

The other person whom I saw the most on stage was Russell Leetch, the bass player. He is a huge guy who plays a huge bass almost upright as if it were a bass viol. The big bass looks tiny in his hands, and he nonchalantly plays it as if it were the easiest thing in the world. I was kind of mesmerized watching his fingers effortlessly hitting the notes. I always watch bass players and how they play; I can’t help it. I always think maybe I can pick up a thing or two. However, I know that if I were to play Russell Leetch’s bass, my short, stubby fingers would barely be able to get any of the notes, and the huge bass would probably be way more than half my height! I didn’t really see the other two guys, being short and the show being super crowded.

The first opening band was Syracuse’s own Ra Ra Riot who were really really good. The second band on was Biffy Clyro from Scotland– they were a RAWK band playing rawkin’ metalesque proggy rock. They kind of reminded me of a slightly artsier System of a Down. There was too much rock and not enough roll in their music for me– shirtless guitar wankery is not really my thing. In contrast, Ra Ra Riot played “gayer” music and have a violinist and a cellist in the lineup. I can’t think of a better word to describe music that’s the opposite of manly guitar rock besides gay. Maybe there’s more New Order in it than Metallica? I don’t know. RRR is really good and I’m glad there’s someone to eclipse Benny Mardones as the only musical act to come out of Syracuse in my lifetime.

Basically, it was a totally awesome show. There was a good crowd (it was at the Paradise), and everybody seemed to be having a great time. Saki was the one who got the tickets, so we went together, which brings me to the next order of business: I have a Real Boyfriend now. It’s kind of strange; I’m the crazy one in this relationship. I’m not used to being crazier than my S.O., but in this case I am– Saki is totally balanced and clean-cut and has a career and all that stuff. It’s kind of nice for a change; I almost feel like I’m the one being babysat for once!

Saki and I saw Shoot ‘em Up today, which was really really awesome. I love movies that break down the formula by *being* the formula. This movie took every action movie cliche and turned it inside out; yet managed to be really funny at the same time. It wasn’t ha-ha Naked Gun funny, rather darkly humorous Brazil type funny. Plus, it was non-stop action from the very beginning to the end. it had unbelievable action sequences which kept getting more and more unreal, yet the more unreal they got, the more you believed they could happen since Clive Owen’s nameless character was an all-purpose grizzled hero. Awesome.

I’m supposed to be doing inventory in Saugus right now. Luckily I looked at the calendar as I was on my way out the door to work and discovered this. Saugus. 7:00 a.m. D’OH! I called Saugus and apologized my butt off. As it turns out, they don’t actually need me. I guess I have another (unpaid) day off. Yippeeee.

Athena sent me this picture: I guess I have to move to New Hampshire in order to get any of the boo-tay?

Today I had my employee review. I actually did really well, and am getting promoted! I start training next week! ROCK THE MOTHERFUCKING FUCK ON!!! Plus, I got a 10 cent per hour raise –that’s an extra $4.00 a week, which is an extra $16 a month– my Netflix bill each month with $6 leftover for ho’s and blow! PAR-TAYYYY!

I dread these freaking employee reviews– past experience at jobs has taught me that when you have to go into the boss’s office and shut the door, it’s never good. Luckily they didn’t tell me when my review was going to be, so I didn’t spend the entire time leading up to it feeling sick to my stomach with that inevitable sense of dread. However, it was all good; there was a minimum of the stuff that I’ve gotten on every review and report card since 1st grade. The biggies– finishing what I start and being neater. I can’t remember what my traditional bad work habits are that date back to my early primary school days, which is probably why they have consistently been a problem since I was 5… but apparently I’ve finally managed to overcome some of them! Go, me!

Also, I think I need this shirt:

It’s funny because you know, I’m the only chick in the band, right? Get it? Irony?

I’m determined to have the band have a gig this year. I’d like to have more than one, but I’m focusing on one. We need new songs, new everything. Every attempt we’ve made to practice so far has been thwarted by something… we need to get our butts in gear! I want to add something to the band, too. Either I’ll make myself learn how to play the guitar (I know like 6 chords already, double what you need for a Ramones song!), or try to convince the others that we need a keyboard or something melodic. Maybe, if I can get my organ working, I can rig that up for use. I’ll have to amplify it somehow; it’s pretty old skool– the sound is made by a fan blowing air through reeds– therefore it has no outputs (duh). I like it a lot, though, and it sounds wicked cool. OK, it sounds exactly like an accordion, but it’s very funkily early 60s looking. The fan isn’t strong enough, though–I have to figure out how to either put in a new one or get someone to fix it. Unfortunately, it wasn’t made to be repaired, so taking it apart will be an interesting exercise in patience. The Band Will Prevail! Eldrad MUST LIVE! (god I’m a dork)

However, what I really want is to rock out like Rene and/or Angela:

In lieu of a keytar (which looks like it weighs about 50 lbs there), I found these Theramin kits on eBay that look really nifty. All the electronics are put together; you just have to find a case for it and some way to mount it. I can’t decide if I want to make a Theramin out of my Darth Vader Mr. Potato head or the Yoda head Slurpee container. Whoa, I could mount it inside the TIE fighter model I have that Lola broke the wing off of! Or, I could put it in a nicely polished wooden box and make it look like I’m an adult musician whose art should be taken seriously.

HAHAHAHAHA FOOLED YOU, DIDN’T I!?!

These Theramins (Theramen?) look like you could actually play a melody on them–the one Jared had was cool, but you could only really make space noises with it. I want precision tuning. I want to play “Flight of the Bumblebee” Clara Rockmore style. Oooooh yeah, baby! I will get so laid. Or not.

And speaking of Space Noises, Athena left this 5-minute message on my voice mail:

Phone Message 04-05-07

I recorded it because it was so creepy-sounding. When I first got it, I didn’t realize it was Athena who’d left it (the voice mail announces the number of the person who left the message, but it didn’t occur to me to try to figure out to whom it actually belonged. Duh). I was kind of creeped out, because parts of it are very rhythmic and un-random sounding. It reminded me of this Discovery Channel special on aliens I watched a billion years ago when I was house sitting for Squeals’s dad–it was about people who (at least thought they) had been abducted by aliens. They interviewed this one girl who placed a tape recorder by her bed and taped sounds all night when the aliens would sneak into her room. She played the tape for the documentary crew, and all you could hear was this faint, mechanical “click-click-click……. click-click-click……. click-click-click…….” which she translated as the aliens saying “don’t wake up… don’t wake up… don’t wake up…” At the time, this scared the living bejeezus out of me for some reason, causing all sorts of nightmares and stuff. Krustee and Squeals would go around whispering “Don’t wake up! Don’t wake up!” just to freak me out. What was the point of all this? Oh yeah, that voice mail. Athena was probably in a crowded bar where cell phone reception wasn’t the greatest, and the rhythmic alien noises are the music that managed to intermittently get through… still. I think it’s kinda nifty.

On another front, I sent The Dude an email and he hasn’t responded, which obviously means he hates my guts and doesn’t want my cooties. Heh. Damn I hate this part of the whole male-female-thing thing– I always end up reading the worst into everything of course, being something of a natural pessimist when it comes to relationships. Oh well, I suppose I should count my blessings: he hasn’t brought up the erotic uses of car batteries (::shudder::), his intense bordering on psychotic hatred of pigeons or squirrels (I’ve dated both. That is, I’ve dated guys who hated pigeons and squirrles; I haven’t actually dated a squirrel. I think he’d drive me NUTS! har har har), or his undying love of Emerson Lake & Palmer. So far so good!