Peer Pressure List, Vol. 2

• Peppermint hot chocolate at Starbucks: Like Christmas in a cup. Don't skip the whip.


• How I Met Your Mother: Like Friends but funnier. The best thing about this show is Neil Patrick Harris, hands down. Every line that comes out of his mouth is endlessly quotable and repeatable (just ask CameraMan). It's legen…wait for it…dary.


• Clinique Superbalm Lip Gloss: This one's for the ladies. Long-lasting, not too sticky, the perfect amount of shine. I like it in Currant.


• Pumpkin gooey bars: I baked these for Thanksgiving dessert, and they were so good that some of my family members had middle of the night cravings for them. I originally got the recipe from Little Miss Hardcore, so if you make them, become addicted, and get really fat, blame her.


• Hotel Cafe presents Winter Songs: We're just getting to the time of year when I want to hear lots of Christmas music. I've got an extensive Santa Mix on the BossiPod, and this is my favorite new addition. It features my fave ladies Sara Bareilles, Ingrid Michaelson, and Brandi Carlile.

Are you feeling the pressure?

Back in black

Mama Bossy tells me that in order for me to fit in while I'm in New York, I will have to wear nothing but black. And while she does live almost as far from Manhattan as you can be while still living in the contiguous 48, I have learned from years of experience that she is generally correct in most things.

Today being Black Friday, it seemed like the perfect time to drag the Bossy Folks out for a little shopping. With what I bought today combined with a few new internet purchases, I'm amassing quite an array of better than basic black.

< girliness>

Like this coat...



















And this sweater...

And this dress...

Of course, despite the best motherly advice, I don't want to fit in too much. Which is why I just had to have these beauties.
< /girliness>

Trytophantastic

Last Thanksgiving I was far away in Vienna, trying on independence for size but missing the hell out of my family. There was no turkey to be found, nobody around with whom to feast, and yet I still found plenty to be thankful for.

This year, I have more.

I'm thankful for:
My crazy, wonderful family.
Food, glorious food.
Second chances and do-overs.
Strong, incredible friends.
Forward motion in my life and in my career.
Generous mentors.
Good luck.
Hopes and dreams and goals and ambitions.
Beautiful music.
Happiness defined and discovered.
Love.

And as always, I'm thankful for you. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Wii Wii Wii all the way home

We've got a major family reunion going on here. Not everyone has arrived yet, but the house is filling up slowly but surely. There was a rumor that 37 people were coming to dinner tomorrow, but that number is slowly dwindling to a more manageable amount of names for CameraMan to learn all at once. So far we've seen Grandma Bossy, a few Bossy Uncles and Aunts, and several Bossy Cousins, but we're just getting started.

Everyone knows that the family who plays together, stays together, so we broke the ice with a little after-dinner Wii playing with the Bossy Cousins, one of whom I haven't seen in too many years (she's been living in Venezuela and is just about to move to Paris—so fancy). That's right, now we're spreading the gospel of Raving Rabbids to people all over the world, and they are hearing our message loud and clear.

After a warm-up round, I dropped out and let CM play with my cousins. I got out my camera and snapped a few shots, which is how I discovered that there's a certain trait that runs in our family. Can you see what it is?




I used to get into trouble in ballet class for sticking my tongue out while I did pirouettes, and I occasionally still catch myself doing it at work when I'm concentrating extra-hard (not while pirouetting, though). Apparently it's a genetic thing.

And after only 24 hours of hanging out with my family, we've already made CM one of us.

Cali bound

I'm blogging from the airport (oh, the luxury), where we're waiting for a flight to LAX that will whisk us away into the bosom of the Bossy family. I'm so excited to see everyone, introduce CameraMan (they will all love him, no worries there), and eat ridiculous amounts of food. Also, Aunt and Uncle Bossy have a Wii Fit, so I'm definitely looking forward to stepping on it and having it call me fat.

It's a zoo here. All the people sitting around me are talking incredibly loudly on their cell phones, CNN's on every television, and CM is frantically searching for his boarding pass. I'm having trouble concentrating, so I'll sign off.

Assuming CM finds his boarding pass, my next post will be from the Left Coast!

The ruling out of backup careers

Last night, I decided to play bartender. We have a strange assortment of alcohol, including airplane bottles from opening night gifts, random fifths brought to parties we've hosted, and quite a bit left for us when singer friends left town. Unfortunately, very few of our ingredients on hand actually seem to go together, so I was forced to get creative. This site is great for drink recipes, because you just enter all the ingredients you have and it tells you what cocktails you could make. I ended up making an "Erin's Sweater" for CameraMan, consisting of blue curacao and white chocolate liqueur. I renamed it "Smurf's Blood" (make one and you'll see why) and added a maraschino cherry for good measure. I followed that up with a chocolate orange martini, and then CM decided he was in need of another round of Smurf's Blood. I didn't drink much (because the drinks were gross, obvs), but poor CM woke up this morning with a headache and has now forbidden me from mixing cocktails.

I will probably never be a bartender.

***

I've been in an ongoing battle with AT&T for the past 10 days, trying to get them to set up DSL internet, convincing them to let me use a modem I already have, wriggling out of the shipping costs when they sent their modem anyway, and then (when they finally located my account and discovered that absolutely nothing had been done to set up service) finally giving up and canceling the whole thing. I have spoken to at least 15 people at AT&T, not including the completely infuriating fake person who doesn't understand the simple request "I want to speak to a person." I have called at least 6 different phone numbers, all of which led me to the exact same Customer Support line. I have heard Indian accents, Texan accents, and one excruciating Boston accent. I have been on hold for more than an hour, all told, listening to an ironic recording telling me over and over that most of my questions can be answered online. The many people I have spoken with have all been very calm (especially the fake one). I have not.

I will probably never be a customer support specialist.

***

I like to come fashionably late to trends as well as parties, so it took me a while to break down and buy the workout DVD that every other blogger was gushing about. The workout is 20 minutes long, and you're supposed to do it 30 days in a row, gradually moving through the 3 levels. I figured I could do just about anything for 20 minutes. I figured wrong. I made it exactly 8 days before giving up entirely. It's not that it was too difficult. Oh, it's difficult, but by Day 6 I could do all the push-ups (girl-style, of course), and I had graduated from 2-lb weights to 5-pounders for most of the Level 1 exercises. I just couldn't get motivated to do it. It didn't help that I was canceling out any benefit of exercise by eating whatever I wanted. Honestly, I have no excuse, except that I didn't want to do it anymore so I stopped. As the trainer at my gym who gave me my fitness assessment told me, "You are casual. You will never see results if you are casual." I'm sure he was right. And I think I will go back to casually treadmilling while watching episodes of Gossip Girl.

I will probably never be a workout guru.

Peer Pressure List, Vol. 1

I'm starting a new weekly feature here at Little Ms. Bossy. I'm calling it the Peer Pressure List (The PPL). Each week I will share with you things I'm loving that you will love too.

• Quantum of Solace: See it for the incredible action sequences. See it for the hot ruggedness of Daniel Craig. Just see it.


• Dark chocolate peanut M&M's: Even better than the originals, if you can believe it. Get the festive red and green ones.


• Bringing Up Baby: Hilarious, brilliantly written, and an excellent opportunity to use the word "madcap." Also good fodder for drinking games (drink every time a woman says "David," or as an alternative that won't get you drunk quite as fast, every time someone says "leopard").


• Wii Raving Rabbids: One of the more ridiculous games I have played, impossible to explain well, but crazy amounts of fun. You haven't lived until you've shot at alien rabbits with toilet plungers.


• Tights: Gray, black, cream, patterned, striped... I'm pairing them with sweater minidresses and skirts, and using them to dress down party dresses and winterize summer dresses. And when I get to where the cold weather is, I'll be wearing them under my pants.

Go forth and enjoy! You know you want to.

Cat ate my homework

CameraMan finally comes home early tomorrow morning, and as in all things, I have waited until the very last minute to clean his apartment. A week ago when I moved in here I basically dropped everything on the floor of the living room and have been trying to ignore it ever since. Oh, I made a few half-hearted attempts to put away my stuff, but the whole place still looked like Hurricane Bossy hit it.

After an afternoon with CaliBoy and my old friend Hector at the movies, I came home for the big clean-up effort. The Bossy Cat knew immediately that something was different. Cleaning is apparently a rare occurrence for me. I don't like to give the impression that I'm a slob, so let's just say it's because I change apartments so often that the only times I thoroughly clean are right before I move.

Now I don't know that much about cat brains or cat memory. I don't know if the Bossy Cat associates my cleaning with long car rides, settling into new places, or some random time I stepped on her tail. All I know is that she was upset. I made a few trips to and from my car, and as I was coming back to the apartment the first couple times I thought I could hear her crying. When I opened the door, though, she was just sitting on the carpet watching the door, totally quiet. Until I snuck up on her and caught her standing by the door, screaming her head off. It took 10 minutes of intensive attention and petting to get her to calm down, and she wasn't totally comfortable until I gave up the project completely and settled in on the couch.

Sorry the place is such a mess, CameraMan. My cat wouldn't let me clean up.

Every cloud

Whenever possible, I like to pick the brains of directors who are having or have had careers I admire. Today I had lunch with a very wise woman who gave me incredibly helpful advice about the challenges of being female in our field, making the difficult transition from assisting to directing, the various personalities I'll encounter at my next gig, and the benefits of working for almost no money. I walked away from lunch feeling excited. Well, excited and scared.

Putting myself forward isn't second nature for me yet. I still have to push myself to ask for opportunities, to tell people that I'm qualified, to toot my own horn. It doesn't come naturally. And even though almost every opportunity I've had thus far has come as a result of me asking for exactly what I want and pushing to get it, I still keep hoping that the next step will just happen for me, just fall in my lap. It hasn't yet, and it won't, and I need to come to terms with that. Because for every story I hear about someone whose career seems to come easy, the reality is that they have worked hard for every "break" they've had.

These meetings always result in a flurry of résumé-sending and name-dropping, and today was no exception. I've got a two-pronged approach going: looking for assisting jobs at the top houses in the country, and looking for directing jobs...well...just about anywhere. It finally feels like the right time to make that transition, and I think the next couple of years are going to be important ones.

My lunch companion tells me that this is a good time to be starting a directing career. Why? Because the economy is in the toilet, companies have less money than usual, and they need directors they can hire on the cheap.

How's that for a silver lining?

In which I wax poetic about an inanimate object

Alternate title: Reasons why my computer can kick your computer's a**

1. It's soooo pretty. Smooth and sleek with curves in all the right places.


2. It's lightning fast, especially in comparison with my old computer. It's so fast that it's letting me indulge in bad habits, like having 15 windows open at once, just because I can.


3. It has a giant roomy hard drive, about 10 times the size of my old one. After lunch with PiGuy today he handed over an external hard drive with all his movies. After picking through them, I now have 66 movies on my computer. And all the seasons of West Wing. I officially have no excuse not to go to the gym (for some reason my treadmill endurance bumps up drastically when I can watch something on the BossiPod).


4. It's pretty. Silver and black and so fancy.


5. The trackpad has all these cool features, various shortcuts you can access just by tapping in different spots. I'm discovering most of the features by accident, generally not when I want them, but I can tell they're going to definitely come in handy once I've mastered them.


6. I've never dropped it, so there's nothing weird and broken on it. Plus, it has one of those nifty magnetic power supply cords, so that if when I trip over the cord the entire computer doesn't come crashing to the floor.


7. It picks up wi-fi signals much better than my old computer did, so I'm able to steal a neighbor's wireless until tomorrow when I get my own (a shout-out to ART4LIFE—thanks, buddy!).


8. My external hard drive, which was dead and gone forever, taking all my pictures and music with it and making me very very sad, actually works when plugged into my new computer. I have absolutely no idea why, but I don't care, because I have rescued all my precious data!


9. It has a built-in camera, so I can video chat to my heart's content. Oh, and take ridiculous Andy Warhol pictures of myself. Those are extremely popular as Facebook profile pics.


10. Did I mention how pretty it is?

Personal day

I'm taking the day, abdicating all duties and responsibilities (a grand total of blogging and working out) in favor of watching endless episodes of The West Wing and reading Evelyn Waugh novels while eating Christmas candy.

To tide you over, here's a bit of dorky opera silliness, courtesy of An Unamplified Voice:

Which opera is right for you?

Apparently, Don Giovanni is the one for me.

For you, life is a jilting combination of subtleties and rough hammer-blows. But you’re not one to shy away from these chiaroscuro extremes. With your combination of delicate intellect and animal passion, you can handle life’s endless surprises. Mozart and his librettist Da Ponte expected no less from their audience when they created their masterpiece about the world’s greatest lover, Don Giovanni. You will be one of the few who are equally comfortable with the refined poetry and the unbridled eroticism of this ultimate operatic achievement.

Indeed.

Comfort is comforting

I don't know if it's the colder (ish) weather, nostalgia for last year's European adventures (a year ago today I arrived in Vienna), or my loneliness without CameraMan or work, but I've been craving comfort food. Mac and cheese, tomato basil soup with tortellini, pizza, you name it I've probably eaten it this week, and in mass quantities. My body seems to just about breaking even, due to the intense daily workouts I've been doing (no, seriously).

It's hard for me to get motivated to cook just for myself. To be honest, it's hard for me to get motivated to cook, period. Most of what I do in the kitchen is more assembling than actual cooking. It's not that I can't, I just don't. Today, though, I couldn't keep my cravings for good German comfort food under control, so I took matters into my own hands and cooked up a yummy feast for myself.


Bratwurst with spicy mustard, brussels sprouts, boiled potatoes with gravy, and red cabbage... I'm such a good little German girl—Papa Bossy will be so proud.

I am still, unfortunately, clearly an American at heart, since I have apparently not learned the basics of portion control yet. I'm feeling quite comfortable indeed, almost too comfortable to leave the couch, and if I'm going to continue breaking even, I will eventually have to do just that. Tomorrow.

The kindness of strangers

Last week I read this post in which a friend of mine had her dinner paid for by an anonymous stranger. "Nothing like that ever happens to me," I thought (and said out loud to CameraMan, who rolled his eyes).

Then, last night, I got about as close as I will likely ever get. The internet isn't hooked up at CM's place yet, so the past couple days I've had to get creative and actually, you know, venture outside the apartment to blog, email, etc. Last night I stopped in at the Red Lion for free wi-fi, Blue Moon, and mini burgers. When I was about half done with my dinner (and my blog post), the waitress came over to let me know that my dinner had been paid for by (and here she pointed) that man at the bar. "But I don't know him!" I protested. However, knowing that you should never look a gift dinner in the mouth, I didn't protest for long. Since he showed no signs of coming over to talk to me or waiting to stalk me to my car (he left the restaurant soon after he was outed by the waitress), it seemed harmless, a random act of kindness by a stranger. Why not?

For a few brief moments I basked in the after-glow. "Louisa just had her dinner bought by a complete stranger!" my Facebook status crowed. It didn't last long. The waitress came back over to apologize that she hadn't been able to figure out how to transfer my dinner to the guy's tab, so he had not, in fact paid for my meal. So sorry about that, but would I like another beer?

I think this is the best I am going to get: the hypothetical kindness of a stranger. That's okay. I am completely capable of paying for my own meal, and in fact was planning to do so. But I have to say, for those few moments, I felt good. And hypothetically good can't be all bad, right?

Rallying

I am not a politically active person. I don't rally. I don't phone bank. I don't canvas. The closest I've ever come was for this past election, and the best I could muster was a $25 donation, a bumper sticker, and an Obama shirt. Oh, and voting—I make sure to always do that. None of which is to say that I'm not political. I have opinions, and I try to keep up-to-date on the issues of the day. I guess I would describe myself as "passively passionate."

All that being said, I went to a rally yesterday for a cause about which I feel quite strong. I joined over a million people rallying in 300 cities across the world in protest of the passing of Proposition 8 in California (and similar legislation in Arizona, Florida, and Arkansas), which amended the state constitution to ban gay marriage. If ever there was a reason to stand and cheer until my back was sore and my throat was raw, this is it, people. It is not a political issue; it is a civil rights issue. In this year of all years, when it seems that we have made such enormous strides forward, electing the first African-American president, and watching a woman make the first realistic bid for the presidency, I am shocked that we have taken such an enormous step backward (and in California, of all places) on this issue.

The rally was incredible. There was a sense of solidarity that I have rarely felt before (probably because I never go to rallies). So many people had made signs, and it was obviously an issue close to everyone's heart, including the cause's "straight allies" like me. There were lots of speakers, of varying degrees of public speaking skill, but all spoke with total conviction. My favorite was a mother from PFLAG, who stood on the podium with her entire family including her gay son's partner, and spoke about the journey she took from learning her son was gay to deciding to fight for the GLBT community. I teared up listening to her speak and watching her son, who was so obviously proud of her. But the most emotional moment for me was when the main speaker invited to the stage all same-sex couples who had been married in California during the brief time that it was legal there. About a dozen couples came to the stage, representing a large range of ages and ethnicities, all of whom who are uncertain about the status of their marriages (it is still unclear whether the ban will be retroactive or not).

I happened to notice a family of four standing near me: a gay couple and what were clearly the parents of one of the men, showing their support for their son and the community. I was struck by how much they were a family, and how fundamentally wrong it is to deny these families the recognition they deserve. Surreptitious portraits of strangers are certainly not my forté, but I couldn't help myself.


I'm not sure what's next, what step to take, but I'm ready. I will rally. I will phone bank. I will canvas. I'm ready.

What do we want?
EQUAL RIGHTS!
When do we want it?
NOW!

Behind the scenes

Beatrice & Benedict is officially over. I am officially on vacation, and I have officially moved out of my apartment (although I'm still here hanging out, taking advantage of the wi-fi).

The performance period of any show is always kind of a mixed bag for me. It's not the part I live for, or as an interviewer recently asked me, the part that "moves my soul." For me, my soul is most definitely moved by the rehearsal process. Once the performances start, my participation is greatly diminished, and I always feel somewhat superfluous. When things go wrong, of course, it's important for me to be there, but when things are going right it's easy to get bored. Those are really the only times that I miss being a singer, or even an assistant stage manager, since they get to be so active during the shows themselves.

Since I wasn't going to be taking any notes on the last performance (how obnoxious would that be?) and the set has good sightlines onto the stage from the wings (in case something needed my attention), I spent Act II hanging out backstage last night. If ever there was a cure for AD complacency, that was it. I could feel all that excitement and adrenaline radiating from the stage, and even though I wasn't doing anything useful, I felt much more a part of the show than I had for the past week.

All in all, I don't think this will ever be my favorite piece, but in the end it charmed me much more than I expected it to, in large part due to the lovely group of people involved in this production. People have been describing the show alternately as "soufflé" and "whipped cream." Whatever you call it, it's frothy for sure. But you can't eat steak for every meal, can you? There's a lot to be said for a little froth.

The Bossy bookshelf

I recently became a Barnes & Noble member, after deciding that it really wasn't appropriate to use my ex's number anymore, especially now that we don't even share a last name. The membership is a good deal: for only $20 a year, you get an extra 10% off everything (including Starbucks in the store) plus lots of coupons and special discounts. In other words, if you spend more than $200 in a year, it's totally worth it.

Buying books may seem like a strange pastime for someone whose entire life fits into a 5' x 5' storage unit. "Get a library card," you say. "Borrow books from friends," you tell me. I know, I know, but buying books is my very favorite kind of retail therapy (books always fit, if you know what I mean). I adore wandering through bookstores, even the corporate kind, and browsing through an online bookstore is pure heaven.

Since I'll be having quite a bit of free time in the next few weeks, I made a big B&N purchase to keep me busy. It was supposed to arrive today, but according to UPS it was "missorted at the hub," so now it won't arrive until Monday.

Here's what's coming:

The Abstinence Teacher by Tom Perrotta. I've been excited about this one since it came out last fall in hardcover. It's going to be made into a movie by the people behind Little Miss Sunshine, too.

World Without End by Ken Follett. I am not ashamed to say that I love Follett. It's not high literature, I know, but I find his books engrossing to read, especially the ones whose plots are not spy-related. This one is a sequel to my fave Follett novel, Pillars of the Earth, which is a completely fascinating story about a cathedral being built.

The Best American Travel Writing 2008. I've started buying these every year. Travel writing is a genre I would love to write, but for now I will live vicariously through these amazing compilations.

Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson. I know absolutely nothing about this book or this author, but it's top on my list of 100 novels to read (To-do list item #76). I've only read 4 so far, so I have to get cracking.

Passage to India by E.M. Forster. Also on the list. I don't how it's possible that I've never read this, but I haven't (or seen the movie). Forster is such a compelling storyteller that I'm excited for this one.

Scoop and A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh. Of the books I've read for the list so far, Brideshead Revisited is my favorite, so I'm looking forward to these two (which are the only other Waugh novels on the list). If I enjoy them as much, I might need to read all his others, too.

I'm so ready for quiet evenings in with a book, a snuggly cat, and a glass of wine. Pretty glamorous, no?

Mojitos!

One of the best outcomes of making a to-do list, posting it on the internet for anyone to read, and then talking about it incessantly, is that friends and family read it and occasionally I get emails that say, "I'd love to help you out with #17," or "I'm your girl for #30." Of course it's great when people are inspired to make lists of their own, but failing that, I can definitely use the help with mine. However, besides CameraMan (who has helped me cross of 3 goals), and the Bossy Folks (who contributed to 2), I haven't taken anyone up on their offers…until tonight.

My stage manager, PiGuy (the story behind this nickname is not long, but it's not all that interesting, either, so suffice it to say that it came out of a crazy night of Wii, and that there is a hand signal that goes with the name), invited the ASMs and I over for dinner tonight, and warned me that he was planning to help me cross one off.

He taught me how to make mojitos! (Sidebar: apparently I say the word "mojito" in a strange way that involves a shoulder shrug and pitch leap on the middle syllable, or so I was told tonight.) We made the first batch together, but after that I was a mojito-muddling machine! I made them for just about everyone there, and the consensus was that they were delicious (except the ones in which I forgot the simple syrup—amazing how much that will change the flavor of your drink).

And now that I know how to make them, there is absolutely nothing stopping me from drinking them all the time at home. Perhaps I should have waited to become a mojito-guzzling lush until I had conquered some of the more ambitious items on the list. Oh well.

60. Make a delicious mojito.

That's 7 down, people. Be impressed. Be very impressed.

Movin' out

These past few days have made me feel like I'm already off-contract. I haven't thought much about work, and I've been hitting the books pretty hard to learn my next opera. I've finally had some leisure time, and I've started planning what to do with the next few weeks. Unfortunately, I am in fact not finished with B&B yet. We have two performances this week—one tonight and one on Friday. I spent the afternoon today in my office doing end-of-show things, like making my score pretty (a losing battle) and cleaning out my desk so that the next AD can use it.

This is huge. I haven't had to move out of my desk since May 2007, and that was only to move across the hall. And although I know I'll be back in my office in March, it felt momentous to pack up all my office supplies (not stolen, I promise), tchotchkes (including an opening night gift from 3 years ago), and assorted cards and notes into a bag and bring them out to my car.

I have been working in Houston for over 3 years, during which time the company and the city have come to feel very much like home. And while I know this is the right time for me to start working other places, and I am incredibly excited to go to New York, I have mixed feelings about leaving. I know I will be sorry to miss the HGO winter shows, not to mention my friends, my kitten (more on that later), and my CameraMan.

The next couple days will be spent finishing the packing up of my apartment, about which I have no mixed feelings. I might miss the sheer size of the place, but I'm looking forward to shacking up temporarily with CM.

Here's a little moving humor, courtesy of McSweeney's:

Pickup Lines to Use While Moving (by Alison Rosen)

"Nice shoes. Wanna put them in that box over there?"

"Is that a mirror in your pocket? Because the movers are going to be here soon, so we should put it in bubble wrap."

"Your father must have been a thief, because I can't find the duct tape."

"The word of the day is 'tarp.' What do you say we go back to my place and spread the word?"

"Mind if I put my junk in your box?"

"If this bed's a-rockin' ... maybe it's not worth taking to the new place?"

Stored up

My contract ends this Friday, which means that Moving Day is upon us once again. I'll be staying with CameraMan for about 6 weeks, and then it's on to New York for 2 months, so the next time I'll have ready access to all my stuff is March. I've spent the past couple days purging: magazines I'll never read again, clothing I'll never wear again, and what seems like mountains of trash. Then comes the sorting game, deciding what goes into storage and what goes with me to CM's place. The process of packing up my apartment was so much simpler in the summer; it's easy to streamline when everything has to fit in your car. When I'm in Houston, I end up making all-too-frequent trips to my storage unit, unpacking more boxes, accumulating more stuff.

I spent a good hour in aforementioned storage unit this afternoon, digging through boxes to retrieve my KitchenAid mixer (for holiday baking), ornaments (for the Christmas tree that I'm wishing for), and a few pieces of my favorite cold-weather clothing that I thought were lost forever. Finding things in there and then rearranging the boxes is like a giant puzzle, except that the pieces are really really heavy and when you're finished you are never left with a pretty picture. Add to that the annoyance of a motion detector light that doesn't detect your motion if you're inside the unit, "climate control" that most closely resembles a sauna, and U-haul boxes that are just barely hanging on after making about 3 moves too many, and what do you get? That's right, a nervous breakdown.

I haven't been doing it long, this living out of boxes thing. Really, it's been only a little over a year, but I'm done. I'm over it. I hate that my permanent address is a UPS store. I hate that I have every kind of baking dish you can think of, but I can't use any of them. I hate that when people ask where I'm based, I have to give some lame answer like, "Well, Houston, sort of, but really nowhere." I hate that every corporate apartment I stay in feels so...corporate. I hate that every 2 months like clockwork I have to go through several days of hell packing up all my stuff, only to do it all over again for the next contract.

Usually I like to end a post like this with some kind of decision, a positive step, something to make this more than just a complaint/rant, but in this case there's really nothing to be done about it, not yet. I'm looking forward to the day I can put down roots and make a home for myself, but the earliest I can foresee that happening is Fall 2009.

And in the meantime, thanks for listening.

R.I.P. Mac

I learned today that Mac, the baby elephant at the Houston Zoo, died last night. I took this picture a little over a year ago, just a few days after Mac's 1st birthday. Ever since CameraMan became a member of the Zoo, we've been visiting every couple weeks or so, and we never fail to stop by the elephant habitat to see if Mac is there. There's something about seeing the baby animals at the zoo that makes me happy, so we always look for the baby giraffe, the baby elephant, and recently, the baby monkey. I am incredibly sad for everyone at the zoo, because I know elephants have big personalities, and Mac had won the hearts of everyone who worked there.

Lately I haven't been feeling too friendly toward elephants (more of my kind thoughts have been given to the donkey, if you know what I mean), but the outcome of the election has left me feeling particularly benevolent (we'll forget the smashing of the GOP elephant piñata at Obamapalooza, shall we?). As with anyone who dies young, the loss of this particular elephant is especially tragic. For more information, you can go here or here for all the details.

For some reason, my completely irrational response to Mac's death is too feel more protective and appreciative of my sweet, beautiful, healthy, photogenic cat. Isn't she lovely?



That's all for tonight; I have to go add Dumbo to my Netflix queue.