The Mister Softee cup! Aw, this pic was originally named "college.jpg" Meeemories! OH SHIT LOOK WHAT ELSE!

Thank you, Wal-Mart.

At left: behold the mating ritual of the common UPS truck.

Anyway, I'll be doing some fact-checking for not very much money in the Village next week. Would anyone like to go to dinner and/or let me sleep over for a few days? I will seriously pay you. (For sleeping over, not dinner.) I just don't want to have to get up at six in the morning for a full week. I also got a tiny check today from the Utne Reader, which reprinted something I had published last year in a magazine which shall remain nameless even though they are totally Commie pinko tree-hugging bastards. Which means that the Utne Reader was able to read it, republish it, and send me my check and my complimentary issue before the original publisher ever paid me for my work.

This is the first time I've listened to Make Believe straight through. It gets way modern toward the end, like John Shanks tripped and fell through a rip in the space-time continuum, and ended up producing this song when he was five years old.

So. Did you hear Mary McDonnell was at Brown?

I'm going to start at the end, then go back to the beginning, because the end is what I think is important.

After the panel, there was a reception in the lobby, and the reception basically went like this: Mary in the middle of a giant crowd. People just formed a circle four or five deep, and if she moved, they moved with her.

At one point, her sister snuck in around the edges and mouthed, "Are you okay?" and Mary said she was fine. She didn't want to leave until she'd given every person an autograph, or a picture, or just a chance to talk to her, face-to-face. And then furies and ana_khouri and I got all distracted talking to her sister, who overheard us wondering where Roslin got all her new clothes, and was like, "I know! I told Mary, 'I want to see the episode where they go shopping!'" Steph was like, no, they didn't go shopping, Tory's just been stealing clothes from random citizens. And then her sister basically wrote a livewireless post with us, wherein people are about to get airlocked, and Tory's like, "Wait! You look about the President's size..." and makes them strip down before they get tossed into space. Mary's sister = awesome!

So that's how I missed Mary organizing a group photo session. But suddenly she was like, "Okay, group one!" in her best kindergarten teacher voice, and marched out of the crowd. And group one obediently gathered around her and handed their cameras off to group two, and group two took a picture. And then they all switched places and cameras, and group two got their picture with Mary. It was a total Miss Roslin moment. Memo to Ron Moore: Please show more of Miss Roslin!

And then she had to go, back to the department building to get her stuff and go home, and because we were part of projectjulie's entourage, we got to go with her. And she was supposed to say goodbye, but it was another fifteen minutes of chatting and taking pictures, and she did her best impression of "Eddie," which basically involved making her voice deeper and not sounding anything at all like Edward James Olmos. And apparently, if given any opportunity at all, he will make a long-ass speech, and she has to go to panels with him because she is the only one who will tell him to shut up. So, basically, Adama and Roslin. And then we got Mary to take a picture with us while wearing Julie's girlslash goggles, and she was like, "I'm not even going to tell you not to put this on the Internet." And then Steph and I quietly freaked about how we got to touch Mary McDonnell!

I ended up talking to her sister some more, and her sister was like, yeah, Mary loves talking about the show, she will just go on talking to you all night if we don't drag her away. Which was actually what happened, because later Mary turned around and told Steph that the question she'd asked during the panel was brilliant, and then they started discussing it again, and Mary's other sister had to come over and wind a scarf around her neck and use it to pull her away.

And the thing is, when we got to the department building, her sisters were talking to each other about how exhausted Mary must be, and how she's been "on" for the past two days. Which made me sad for a minute, because of course she has to be on--people have such high expectations of her, they want her to be friendly, they want her to pay attention, and that must be so tiring. And Mary said something about the crowd of people at the reception, like, "I can't say, 'No, I won't take a picture with you.'" Which is like, sure you can, but you won't, and that is so sweet of you.

So, yeah, I've already said this somewhere else, but it bears repeating: I am so incredibly impressed with her. Of course she was going to be smart and funny, and of course she was going to be polite--but she was generous and open and even appreciative, so far beyond what we had a right to ask or expect of her.

( And now, back to the beginning. )

At right: They're filming something called My Sassy Girl down the street. I was really hoping it was a porn.

For the past few weeks, I've been working all 5 days, because we're busy and the Boss asked me to. Which, like, awesome, I got to do all my holiday shopping on the weekends with everyone else in the world! Fantastic! This certainly was not the one time of year when I actually needed to be home midweek! But whatever, money is money.

Then on Tuesday, the Boss comes strolling by, and she's all scarfed up because she's on her way out to lunch, so I can tell it's just an afterthought as she sidesteps into my office. Mad managerial skillz!

The Boss: "By the way, the Big Boss would like you to go back to 3 days a week. Sorry."
Me: "I already am, so...no problem?"
The Boss: (apologetic)
Me: "No, really, no problem. I only came in because you asked me to, so..."

And then I got another demonstration of her inability to remember two weeks ago, wherein she was like, "I asked you to?" and acted like coming in 5 days was all my illegal idea. Fine.

( And then comes Wednesday. )

The last time the Scarlet Knights won big, they lit the Empire State Building red.

We didn't have any major landmarks on our side this time, but we're still Insignificant Bowl Champions! It makes me a little sad that Rutgers students will no longer be able to finish the ubiquitous tale of Rutgers' victory in the first intercollegiate football match with, "And we haven't won a game since." But on the other hand: keep kicking ass, kids.

Pixie and I invented a new birthday tradition today (Peanut Butter & Co. followed by lazing in an as-yet-unexplored park), and now I need to go sleep for seven hundred hours. In the meantime, enjoy a sand sculpture from our trip to the beach:



(She had a head, too, but the beach police drove over it.)

Time for this year's Christmas pics!



( O tannenbaum! )

I always want to do one of those photo memes where I'll take a picture of anything you want to see, but I only have like four friends, and only two of those friends comment, and one of those two already knows what my entire life looks like. So, like, if you want to see a picture of anything, you can just ask.

And don't forget to donate to the kids at Progress High School in Brooklyn!

My dad found a bunch of old pictures out in the garage, so it's time for a baby picture meme!



( The story of my life. )