Warning: The entire first half of this story will feel like one long digression. Stay with me.
After a particularly awful Friday that came at the end of a week when the world seemed to be looking for more and more ways to beat me up, I came home today knowing that at some point in the evening, I was going to cry. Sometimes you have days when it's not so much a matter of if you're going to cry as when you're going to cry. In my job, I sometimes have to write about things that are just unbelievably sad. When I was at my first job, I would frequently break down crying at work over these stories, prompting my editor, a very kind man who, like many men, is totally freaked out by crying women, to say to me "Rice, there is no crying in JOURNALISM!" in imitation of Tom Hanks in A League of Their Own saying "Are you crying? Are you CRYING? There's no crying in baseball!" These days, I am able to keep myself from crying over sad stories most of the time while I am physically in my office. I'm not sure if I'm growing as a professional or if I'm just that hardened after three years of sad stories. But the thing that keeps me from despairing over my jaded soul is that I do still cry. I think if I ever reach the point when I am incapable of feeling pain for someone in pain I will know I have been doing this too long.
So on the Friday evening in question, I came home knowing that a crying jag was going to be a part of the evening. I told Dan that his options were to stay home and watch me cry or go out and do something less depressing. To be truthful, I was not in a frame of mind to be good company. Dan, knowing me like he does and understanding that sometimes the best thing he can do for me is just give me some space and some time, left the house. So it was that I spent a Friday evening with Steel Magnolias, a movie I never watch unless I am in the mood to bawl like a baby. And let me tell you, that is what I did. I am not ashamed to say that by the time Julia Roberts was lying in a coma with Sally Fields by her side, I was on my couch, with one hand in a bag of chocolate and another hand clutching wads of Kleenex, wearing a T-shirt that was drenched from the collar to half-way down the chest with tears. And these were not "Oh, isn't that sad," tears. These were huge, sobbing,snot-dripping-from-your-nose kinds of tears. I am not an attractive movie closeup kind of cryer. When I really get going, my face swells up and gets red and I look just exactly like a tomato for a good twelve hours. But I just didn't care. By the time Julia Roberts was dead and Sally Fields was standing by her grave screaming at her friends, I was just pouring tears. But then, that great Steel Magnolias moment happened, when Sally Fields screams "I just want to hit something! I want to hit someone until they feel as bad as I do!"
And Olympia Dukakis grabs Shirley McLaine and shoves her in front and says "Here! Hit Ouiser! Take a swing, M'lynn! Half the town would give their eye teeth to take a swing at Ouiser!" And everyone laughs, except Shirley McLaine, who looks at Olympia Dukakis and says "You are a pig from hell." And then I laughed and laughed and laughed. And I felt so much better.
So tonight, I thank the Lord for Steel Magnolias. Because sometimes, you just need to cry. But sometimes you need to laugh, too.
What movie can you always count on to make you cry or laugh?

Start rant:
Maybe I will pull a George Costanza and get a little sleeping nook built under my desk, with an alarm clock and everything. Because between this 45 minute one way commute lifestyle and the news I heard on NPR this morning, that apparently gasoline costs are going to go up again, it is going to cost me more money that I actually make to get to work every day. In fact, I will need the income of a small country to fill up my car, Molly the Malibu. (Yes, my car has a name, doesn't yours?) The only answer I can think of is that I will just start sleeping at the office during the week. That won�t cause any problems at all for the good old marriage, right?
End rant.

I think I probably live in one of the only major cities in the country where on any given day, it�s not that unusual to see a few hot air balloons floating around in the sky early in the morning while you drive to work. But although I see balloons all the time, I�m still slack-jawed at the sight of the sky filled with tens and hundreds of hot air balloons. It�s a very surreal feeling, and even though I know it�s just the International Hot Air Balloon Fiesta that Albuquerque hosts every fall, for a minute or two it feels like maybe it�s some kind of very colorful invasion. This year, Dan�s parents are coming out to visit while it�s going on. Dan�s dad is an ex-fighter pilot, so it�s hard to impress him when it comes to flying equipment, but I think anyone would be impressed with the sight of that many balloons. They start launching them every day at sunrise (yes, I will be getting my lazy self out of bed at 4:30 to get on a bus and ride to attend this glorious event.) and there are lots of special shapes and cartoon character balloons, so it�s a lot of fun. Also, you can get every kind of deep-fried food known to man there, including the infamous Fried Snickers and Fried Twinkie. As a disclaimer, I have never actually eaten either one, because I am afraid my arteries would instantly slam shut in response to that much grease, but people eat them by the truckload at the fiesta. We are all about our health food out here. So in the next couple of weeks, if I manage not to drive off the road looking at all the pretty balloons, I�ll try to take some good balloon pictures and post them here. In the meantime, here�s a picture taken of Dan and I at last year�s fiesta. The shapes in the background are the balloons getting blown up before they launch.

Dan is forever being entertained by the weird things I tell him about from my adventures as an active sleeper when we wake up in the morning. As my old college roomate, Robin, can attest, I do a lot of talking, gesturing, sitting up, and occasionally, walking around when I am asleep. But I never get to see that stuff, because I�m unconscious, and dreaming. I have always been a pretty vivid dreamer, but lately my dreams have gotten just plain weird. It�s worse when I am stressed out, and, lately, the stress is mounting by the second, so the dreams are getting more interesting. So here, for your entertainment, are the two latest dreams my anxiety-riddled mind has conjured up:
Dream One: I am at a graduation for Belhaven College, my alma mater. I�m not graduating, so apparently I�m there to see someone else graduate, but tons of people from my graduating class are there, too, including people I haven�t seen since the day we graduated. For some reason, we�re all wearing graduation robes, and my hair is really, really messy. And we�re all talking and they�re telling me things that have happened in their lives since 2001 that actually sound kind of plausible. (It�s weird to me that my brain takes the trouble to make up realistic-sounding things for people I haven�t seen in three years to be doing with their lives. Meanwhile, I can�t ever find my keys.) We�re all sitting on these risers that are almost completely vertical, straight up into the ceiling, and you have to lean back so you don�t fall off the front. I�m talking to one of the �01 grads, and then I lean forward too much and I fall and wake up. End of dream.
Dream Two: For some reason, my wedding rings start disentegrating. The platinum is actually falling apart into little flakes, and the diamond is crumbling, and I�m trying to gather up the pieces so I can take them to the jeweler and he can melt them all back together. (How would he do this? I have no idea. But I know what the guy who sat behind me in Biology at Belhaven is doing!) For some reason, in my dream, I am laughing about this, but I�m still really freaked out. When I wake up, I am genuinely surprised to see my rings, intact, on my finger. I am so relieved that I wake Dan up to tell him about it. He is also vastly relieved to learn, at 4:30 a.m., that my rings have not dissapeared into thin air.
If dreams really are the brain�s way of sorting through the puzzles of your life, I have big issues.

I had just drifted off to sleep last night when I woke up to see Dan standing in the light from the streetlight outside out window, looking through the blinds and laughing. I thought this was just another bizzarre dream until I heard the noise. The incredible noise. It was like hundreds of people were throwing rocks at all of our windows. It was hail. Really really big pieces of hail, and it was coming down like you would just not believe.
So Dan and I stood around in our pajamas looking out through the blinds until I had a terrible thought. My plant, the only plant I have ever managed to keep alive for more than ten minutes, the plant my old editor gave me when I lived in Clovis, the plant that has been with me longer than Dan has, was sitting on the porch. In the hail!! So I run out there, in the hail, which is basically flying in horizontally at 100 miles and hour, crunching around in my bare feet (Word to the wise: If you ever need to run around in the hail to save your houseplant, you should pause a moment to put your slippers on, because you will probably also want to walk somewhere the next
day.) and scoop up my plant, which is all broken and naked and leafless and extremely dejected looking. I took it inside and scooped all the ice out of its pot and cleaned off all the killed leaves and talked soothingly to it and gave it some warm water and put it on top of my dryer to warm up, but I�m afraid it�s totally going to die. And if it doesn�t I may still be screwed because my husband might have to leave me after seeing me talking to a plant at midnight in my pajamas. Anyway, here is a picture of my sad little plant, proof positive that I am not fit to have children, since I might leave them out in the hail.

Tomorrow, I am going to go to the New Mexico Motor Vehicles Department to make my SIXTH and, I might add, final, attempt to register Molly the Malibu car in the state of New Mexico. Yes, that's right. I have lived here for going on three years and I have never registered my car here. This is due to many things, among them, my own laziness. But for the last six months, I have been making every attempt to get the job done. However, thanks to a debacle involving MVD, my car title, and the bank that held the title to my car until I paid it off in April, this has not happened. At one point, I was actually on the phone with an MVD employee who informed me that my bank mailed my title to MVD in New Mexico TWICE this summer, when the whole time, it should have gone to me, because I PAID FOR THE CAR! I have thus far restrained myself from physically reaching across the counter and choking someone, but when I walk in there tomorrow with my title, and my marriage license, and my social security card, and my little piece of paper proving that my car does not cause too much pollution, and my drivers license and my blood type and a piece of paper entitling MVD to my as-yet non existent first born child, if they do not give me a tag for my car, someone is going to get HURT. I will keep y'all posted.

I went to the MVD today, and still no registration for my car. But, this is because they did an inspection on my car, and supposedly, once it is approved, in something like 48 hours, I have provided all the proper documentation to register my car, and so I should have a New Mexico license plate on my car in the next few days. So the employees of MVD live another day. Unless they don't give me a car tag on Wednesday.

Is it wrong that I love NBC's show Scrubs so much that I was insanely annoyed that the presidential debates pre-empted it last week and that I am ridiculously overjoyed that is is back on during its regular time this week? I need to know. Because, to quote the Scrubs theme song "I can't do this allll on my own, no, I know, I'm no superman. I'm no superman."

Behold the glory of the New Mexico license plate! This is just a picture of a generic license plate, but one just like this, with numbers and letters and everything, is now proudly displayed on Molly the Malibu. I think the MVD people thought I was crazy, the way I walked out of their office holding my shiny new license plate like it was the Holy Grail. But they probably never waded through six months of red tape in order to obtain a rectangle of metal. Also, they let me keep my Mississippi tag. I think I am going to clean it up and get it framed. It has served me well. But now, it is time for Molly to step up and become a New Mexican like me. It's actually kind of sad. I'm completely official now ... New Mexico driver's license, new social security card with my married name, and now, a car tag with a hot air balloon on it. As far as the government or any other official entity is concerned, I was never from Mississippi. I might have to have a special ceremony to retire my Mississippi tag. But then I will have a big old party to celebrate my victory over the dark power of MVD!

So far in the short life of this blog, I have discussed both the recent hail storm of Albuquerque, and my trials and tribulations as a person who has been trying to register Molly the 1998 Malibu in the Great State of New Mexico. (Official motto: What do you mean, you don't have time to come back tomorrow?) As fate would have it, it now seems that these two events are intertwined. Today, Dan took my car to have an appraisal done related to the extent of the hail damage that Molly sustained in the Great Hail Storm of 04. And, the preliminary verdict from the insurance people is that they are going to TOTAL MY CAR. Yes. My car, it seems, is such an incredible piece of crap that it is not worth paying the two grand or whatever it will cost to get a bunch of hail dents taken out of it.
Now I am not going to argue very much about this. My car is a wreck. When Dan and I got married, various groomsmen of ours thoughtfully smeared shoe polish all over it. They smeared about an inch of polish on the gas cap apparently working on the theory that the gas cap should really stand out. The next day, we ran the car through a drive through car wash, and most of the polish came off. But not the polish on the gas cap. It just kind of streaked downward, creating this very classy look, sort of like milk was frothing out of the gas tank. We left the car baking in the Dallas sun for a week while we were in Hawaii, and, as you can imagine, that pretty much means that I now have permanent shoe polish milk on my car. In the year since I have been doing the Commute from Hell, Molly's windshield has sustained more than one crack. OK, the truth is that if my car ever takes a rock in just the right spot, the entire windshield will shatter. This is also a good look. The inside of my car is perpetually stained with coffee and other beverages and littered with every reciept for gas and fast food and groceries that I have accumulated in the last six months or so.
But the crowning achievement, in terms of my car officially crossing the line between "I belong to a sort of cute girl with a professional job" and "I belong to a sloppy girl who probably wears fuzzy house slippers to work" came when the hubcaps started falling off. Once I lost two hubcaps, Dan decided it was time to make a big investment. So he went to Wal-mart and bought a set of hubcaps apparently manufactured by the Tupperware company for a grand total of ten bucks. These fell off within two days. So now my car is a certified ghetto-mobile. And now we're trying to decide if we should just pay the salvage value on Molly and drive this car into the ground or spring for a used car with lower mileage and a better chance of seeing 2006.
I'll keep you posted. In the meantime, has anyone reading this blog ever experienced a situation this grating? I just got this car legally up to speed. I just paid it off this year. I haven't been so good about the cosmetic stuff, but I have changed the oil religously, fixed every major mechanical issue that has arisen, and put a CD player into it last year. And even though I could be in the position to trade up for a much nicer car, I am totally annoyed that I might lose my hoopty car after all this. It just goes to show you. Never give your heart to a car.

Dave Barry, my own personal hero, has announced his plans to take a year off from writing his column. Not only that, but he isn't making any promises that he will pick it up again after a year. I know it is silly to feel this dejected about a humor column, but I don't care. I haven't been this upset since the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip retired.
Who will make me laugh now? (Sniff!)

On Sunday, I went to the mall to start my search for something appropriate to wear to my brother's wedding. As you can tell from the fact that this is the second post I have written about it, getting dressed for this wedding is becoming very stressful. This is because it's an evening wedding with a reception at a place where my college once held a formal dance. Since most of the weddings I have attended have been of the "wear church clothes" variety, this has created a bit of a wardrobe crisis in the Wachdorf household. Getting Dan up to speed in the suit department was bad, but, as you know if you know me well, I really hate to shop. If I don't find what I am looking for in half an hour, I am very likely to give up. It must be a genetic mutation, because my mom and my sisters could shop until the Kingdom comes and never get tired. So it is to my eternal credit that I kept going for six hours until I found exactly what I wanted.
But along the way, I had the following slightly scandalous, but really funny experience. I was trying on some clothes in The Limited, and while I was in the dressing room, I was listening to the lady in the dressing booth next to mine talking to her four year old son, in a language that sounded like Japanese. Apparently, he was requiring a LOT of instructing, because she was talking to him at a high rate of speed and volume. Then, all the sudden, the talking stopped. I thought "Well, at least it's quiet in here. Now I can focus on trying to figure out how this strappy top is supposed to fit. I think I'm wearing it backwards." So I turned away from the mirror to try to wriggle my way out of the thing. As soon as I got it over my head, I looked down towards the floor and saw that the reason it was very quiet was that the child was lying UNDER MY DRESSING ROOM DOOR, looking at me! I don't want to get too graphic here, but I was in a definite state of undress, and this child was just lying there, staring at me like this was completely normal. So I started trying to tell him to go away, but I couldn't tell if he spoke any English, because saying "Excuse me!" and looking very indignant was having no effect on him. So finally I started making these shoo-ing motions with my hands, and he kind of rolled back out into the dressing room and never came back.
I now think this is hilarious, but at the time, I just kind of got dressed and left. Now I am a big advocate of dressing room doors without spaces at the bottom!

This has been a busy weekend. We voted, bought a car (more on that when I have time to take a photo. Needless to say, I am ecstatic.) and made an executive decision to stop answering our phone unless the phone number of a close relative of friend popped up on the caller ID. I don't know what it's like for those of you not living in swing states, but out here in the Land of Enchantment (really, that's what they decided to call New Mexico) we are just getting pounded with campaign commercials, mail flyers, and worst of all, incessant phone calls advising us on how to cast our vote. It is outrageous. In the last two days, we have logged a total of 18 messages on our answering machine, ALL of them automated recordings of people like Laura Bush or the Secretary of Something telling us why the fate of the world rests on us voting for either George W. Bush or John Kerry depending on who is calling. If there were real people on the phone, that would be great, because then I could explain to them that SHUT UP, I HAVE VOTED! But you feel pretty funny yelling at a recording, not that this has stopped me much in the last few days.
This is all to say that I have many stories to tell, but they are all going to have to wait until after the election. I have to work election night, which means a long time spent hanging out in the county courthouse, waiting for returns. In the meantime, I think the blogging world is going to have to wait for my return. I'm sure I'll have plenty of funny stories to tell on the other side of the election. Stay tuned.

Inspired by my friend Rebecca Tredway, who asked her blog readers to comment if they had voted, I ask my readers, all four of you, to tell me about your voting experience. Was the line long? Did you write something or push buttons on a computer screen? Did you feel powerful when you left the voting booth or was it a let down? Did you get a sticker that said 'I voted today' ? I did not get a sticker, and I was kind of annoyed. It was like when you were little and you went to the bank drive through and you just knew they were going to give you a sucker. But they didn't. In any event, I took advantage of my constitutional rights this weekend, and sticker or no sticker, I have to say I am a little more aware today of how great it is to live in a country where I get to say 'This is what I want.'
So. How did your exersize of constitutional rights go?

I will be the first to acknowledge that I have at various times in my life mocked my mother for her adamant faith in herbal and homeopathic remedies. Usually, the mocking entails me referring to her collection of herbs as "grass pills" or suggesting that I might as well take a spoon full of sugar and then try to fly out the window like Mary Poppins for all the good her remedies will do me. But this weekend, I started feeling the first signs of my annual case of "a cold that turns into a secondary infection that turns into bronchitis that turns into borderline pneumonia." So, in a panic, I called (who else?) my mom. On her advice, I have spent this weekend alternately chugging massive quantities of water, vitamin C pills, echinnacea and zinc lozenges. And I have to say, it seems to be working. I'm not feeling fabulous, but I expected to be feeling much worse. I am not willing to come down off my high horse and become a full fledged herbal convert. But I may have to admit that there might be a little piece of truth in my mother's all natural philosphy. (I love you, mom! Sorry I said you were crazy!)
So readers, today's question is: What is the one thing your mother is more right about than you care to admit?

The Get Up Kids, Red Letter Day EP

This album makes me miss, in no particular order, my friend Cara, who first introduced me to the Get Up Kids, my friend Chuck, who put this EP on one of his awesome mix tapes for me in college, and, for that matter, it makes me miss college. I don't miss college very often, because I'm still close enough to the whole experience to remember how sick and tired I was of it by the time I graduated. But I do miss certain aspects of college, like the ready availability of close friends and time to spend with them and a schedule that allowed you to stay up until 2 a.m. if you saw fit. Once upon a time, when I was much, much cooler, I used to stay up until 2 a.m. all the time, to help put out the campus newspaper, or go to a concert. And it was fun. Funny how 24 feels so much older than 20 did.

Before I moved to New Mexico, I envisioned it as this eternal desert with sand and cactuses (cacti?) and no rain. That's sort of true in the southern part of the state and in the summer. But it's not truly reflective of the winters out here. As of Friday, it's like we're living in a deep freezer. And worse, the wind is blowing. The wind in New Mexico is a phenomena unlike the wind in other parts of the country. It blows your car around on the road and howls and screams around the corners of walls. But although I'm wearing my pea coat 24 hours a day and shivering, I do have to say that the snow still kind of fascinates me. I saw snow maybe twice in my whole life when I was growing up, and so getting to see it all the time out here kind of makes me a little more reconciled to the other oddities of life in the Land of Enchantment.

Greetings, gentle readers. I am writing this from Jackson, Mississippi, where Dan and I have traveled to attend the wedding of my younger brother, Aaron, and his wonderful fiancee Kelly. We are going to stay in Jackson through the weekend and then spend the week of Thanksgiving with my family in Hattiesburg. With a wedding being the kind of event that just makes for great stories and the state of Mississippi being that way too, I am sure I will have many tales to tell on the other side of the three day string of festivity we are getting ready for now. Hopefully I will post something next week. But if not, know that I am well and happy and I am eating good food to my heart's content. May you all be so fortunate.
In the meantime, here's a topic for you: What's the best and/or worst conversation you've ever had with someone who sat next to you on an airplane?

I love Thanksgiving. To me, it's the eating and the merry making without the stress of gift-buying that Christmas brings. And when you are at my parents' house, you will eat. I am currently sitting at the table in our house in my pajamas (at 11 a.m.! How great is that?) putting off eating anything until we eat at three in the afternoon. Then, the plan is for everyone to collapse in a coma on the couch and watch Arrested Development on DVD, which we have gotten my family hooked on during this trip. I do realize that this holiday is not entirely about eatinig, so here, for your enjoyment, is a list of the things I am thankful for on this, Thanksgiving Day 2004:

* Two years ago yesterday, Dan asked me to marry him. I am so thankful for him. He is my best friend and I am the luckiest woman in the whole wide world to have such a great husband.

* I am thankful for my family. We're not all together on this day, because my brother, Aaron and his new wife, Kelly Rice, are on their honeymoon in Jamaica. We will all be together in a few weeks for Christmas, and that makes me happy. This year is a little different, because after Christmas, my brother Aaron is leaving for a seven-month deployment to Iraq. So Christmas will be the last time we are all together in one place for quite some time. I'm glad to know that and be able to make the most of our time together.

* I am thankful for my new car.

* I am thankful for nasal spray, because I have caught my annual cold. I am also thankful that I did NOT catch the flu, which is what happened last year at Thanksgiving. That was awful.

* I am thankful that it has actually gotten kind of cold here in Mississippi. Now I am going to go sit on the swing on the pier overlooking the lake and look at big beautiful pine trees.

May God bless y'all and yours.

We got 90 percent of our Christmas shopping done last night, from our couch. Online shopping has got to be one of the top ten greatest ideas of the last century. I would rather chew on tin foil than go to the mall any more than I have to in the next month. It also helps when you mainly traffic in music and books for presents ... keeps Amazon.com in business. Anyway, just thought I would brag. How's the shopping going for everyone else?

1) How great is it that "The Princess Bride" is on VH1 tonight? Inconceivable!
2) Our (four-foot-tall fake) Christmas tree is up and glowing beautifully in our little living room. I love Christmas.
3) We are going to send out a Christmas letter this year. I'm not sure if you're supposed to wait until you have photos of your cherubic children to send with the letter, but we're still going to send the letter. If you want a copy, let me know. Dan is going to be in charge of printing up address labels, which is also going to help us by providing an address database of all those addresses I collected when we were sending out wedding invitations. Much more convenient than the "Maybe-that-one-is-written-on-this-paper-napkin system we currently have going.
4) The new U2 album totally rocks. Very God-laced, very thought-provoking, very good. Run out and buy it, folks.
5) We bought tickets today to see Sarah McLachlan in concert in April. I am so excited. I know I am a nerd, but I just don't care. I love living in a city that occasionally attracts concerts from people I would like to see perform.

What's making y'all happy?

I meant to put this picture up before now, but here is my new car. After Molly the Malibu suffered serious hail damage in October, I got a nice check from the insurance company and we put it towards a new car that starts on a more frequent basis. She's a 2003 Nissan Sentra, but I haven't settled on a name yet. So, please vote for either Sally or Sylvia as a name. Or, make your own nomination based on what she looks like:

Just now, during a commercial break for ESPN Sportscenter (who do y'all think was in charge of the remote?) a commercial for a hair removal product came on. I wasn't really listening until this sentence: "What a perfect way for a woman to keep the man in her life perfectly-groomed!" This, accompanied by a scene of a woman smiling while she uses this device to rip out the unibrow of a smiling handsome man. This raises many questions for me, the main one being "What makes the people making this product think that any man would sit still while the woman in his life did that to him?" I know for a fact that Dan would take up residence in his car if I even suggested such a thing. I think it's pretty apparent that women have the corner on the hair-removal product market, and probably the commercials for these items should still be directed to the women. Thank you.

At the paper, we ask for parents to send in their childrens' letters to Santa and we run them in the paper. Some of them are pretty funny. Today, we got the all-time winner from a kid who has obviously been reading some Harry Potter. I want to put it on the front page. Enjoy this excerpt:

"Dear Santa: This year, I would like a Time Machine, a pair of sneakers that can take me anywhere, a remote control that will control everything besides TV, a cap that would help me breathe underwater, a sweater that can make me read thoughts and understand other people's languages, a magic stone that can make me fly, and chopsticks that can give me magic powers so that I can turn into any size and other things when I touch them.

Plus, I want peace on earth and on the sun and on the moon and on the other planets. I also want a flame thrower.

P.S. When you get to my house, wake me up so I can have a friendly conversation with you and show you around. And tell Jesus Happy Birthday and bring him a gift, too."

How's that for covering all your bases?

I don't have my digital camera cables with me on this trip to Mississippi, so I can't show y'all a photo of this, but try to envision it. This year, our family went and got a Christmas tree on Monday, the 20th of December. That's right. Five days until Christmas. On Tuesday, I was alone at the house, because every body else had errands to run, so before Dan and my brother, Ryan had to leave the house, I got them to put up the tree so that I could decorate it. I had a good time doing it, except for the part where I got about 100 little scratches on my hands from the branches, and it looked good. But the next morning, we could all sort of tell that the tree was, ummm, leaning. So last night, Dan and my dad straightened it back up, and we thought that would be that. Unfortunately, today, on this hallowed Christmas Eve, the tree is once again pitching towards our kitchen. At this point, I think the general attitude is "Whatever. It's almost Christmas anyway." But if we're going to keep up our proud Rice Family tradition of leaving the tree up until late January, it's going to require a few chiropractic treatments. However, the lights and the ornaments are beautiful, and very well-spaced, if I do say so myself.
On that note, I wish you all a very merry Christmas. Goodnight.

I am having trouble making this into a pretty link, but if you copy and paste this address into your browser, it should take you to a hilarious column I read today.

http://www.herald-mail.com/?module=displaystory&story_id=101478&format=html

I think this makes me laugh so much because I could see it happening where I work.

Today, I had one of the more surreal experiences of my life. One of my jobs with the newspaper is to write about the school system where I work. This means that I spend a lot of time in schools, doing interviews, taking photos, and just generally hanging around until someone asks me to leave. One of the schools was kind enough to ask me to speak at their Career Day since the students see me a lot and might want to know what it is that I do. This is what the nice school counselor told me. I kind of wanted to ask if he was kidding, but I refrained. I also kind of agreed to be the "keynote speaker" (Their words, NOT mine!) which meant that I talked to the entire student body of about 300 students to kick off their day of hearing from a wide variety of professionals, all of whom would have been immenently more qualified to be the keynote speaker than I am. Nevertheless, this morning at 9 a.m., I drove up to the school after a car ride rehearsing my speech and drinking LOTS of coffee, to see this sign.

And I almost drove up onto the curb. On the one hand, the sign cracks me up, because it sounds like Haley Wachdorf and The Career Day Presenters are some kind of lounge act coming to perform big band hits for the student body. "We'll be here all week. Try the veal!" On the other hand, my 25th birthday is looming up in a couple of days, and for some reason, seeing my name on the sign as some kind of role model, i.e. Legitimate Adult, really freaked me out. Who am I to tell these kids anything? I still remember being in sixth grade. It was sobering. The surprising thing was that the students actually seemed interested in what I had to say, and it wasn't nearly the train wreck that I had envisioned, once I got over wanting to throw up from fear.
For your purposes, you should try to imagine me trying to inspire 300 students to greater heights of academic achievement. Don't you just wish there was a video? We could sell it in the comedy section of our local video stores. Alas. At least I can say I have had my 15 minutes of fame. And it was more than enough for me.

It is with great relief that I have realized that the fast food-industry is not stalking me. But here, in case you were wondering, is how I came to believe that I was being targeted: Last week, I went to Wendy's. I try not to do the fast food thing too much, but when you live the life of a 100-mile a day commuter, Wendy's is sometimes your healthiest option in that they will actually sell you a salad. So I end up there on days when I run out of time to pack a lunch or leave it sitting on my kitchen table, where it is so very useful. So I was at the Wendy's drive through window, picking up my salad. When the girl at the window gave it to me, she looked me right in the eye, and said "See you tomorrow." My car was already moving past the window, so I didn't have time to say "What?" But I spent the rest of my drive home wondering if I have come to be such a fixture at the Wendy's drive-through window that they truly believe they see me there every single day. Should I say something? Do they think I'm someone else? Am I going to Wendy's in my sleep and ordering huge quantities of French fries while unconscious? I was really quite disturbed about the whole thing.

But today, I worked up the nerve to go back to Wendy's. This time, I went inside to order because I needed to get cash out of the ATM, and while I was standing in line waiting to order, the cashier gave the man in front of me his food, smiled at him, and said "See you tomorrow." You could tell he was a little freaked out, but I was having the very reassuring epiphany that "See you tomorrow" must be Wendy's new little catch phrase. Kind of like "Have a nice day," but more intrusive. I still don't like it, but at least now I know they don't actually think I come in there every day.

See you tomorrow indeed.

My good college friend Chuck recently sent me one of his genius mix tapes. Actually, now they're mix CDs, but they're still awesome. On this tape is a song by a weird little band called "Mountain Goats." Based on the song on this compilation, they sound like two guys with guitars, but I could be wrong about that. Anyway, the song is absolutely hilarious, and I thought y'all might enjoy the words. Imagine these lyrics sung in the most wild-eyed, border-line insane, sarcastic way possible, backed by two frantically strummed guitars, and you have the basic idea. Also, since I was confused on this point, apparently, Heaven 17 was some kind of synthesizer-based funk band of the 1980s.

Cubs in Five
By Mountain Goats

They're gonna find intelligent life up there on the moon
And the Canterbury Tales will shoot right up to the top of the best-seller list
And stay there, for 27 weeks.

And the Chicago Cubs will beat every team in the league
And the Tampa Bay Bucks will make it all the way to January
And I will love you again.
I will love you like I used to.

The stars are gonna spell out the answers to tomorrow's crossword puzzle
And the Phillips Corporation will admit that they made an awful mistake
And Bill Gates will single-handedly spearhead the Heaven 17 Revival.

And the Chicago Cubs will beat every team in the league
And the Tampa Bay Bucks will take it all the way to the top
And I will love you again
I will love you like I used to.

Chuck tells me he put this song on the CD because of the part about the Canterbury Tales shooting to the top of the best seller list. I know it will never happen, but it really would make me happy.

Feel free to hate us now. We just got tickets to see U2 in Phoenix in April. We're going to make a trip of it and celebrate our second anniversary, which is only a few days later. If you want to hate us further, know that we got FLOOR SEATS, meaning that we actually don't have a seat per se, but instead we get to stand up in the area in front of/around the stage and dance with the other crazy people. Paying more money to be further away from the stage but have an actual seat would have been a total waste of money, because the idea that I would actually sit down during this show is laughable. Everyone knows you have to stand up when Bono enters the room. I can't wait for April.

My husband is currently sitting on our couch playing Halo 2. Actually, the more accurate statement would be that he's been sitting on our couch playing Halo 2 every spare waking moment for the last three days. I am agape at the endless capacity of men to do something so pointless for such a long stretch of time. Dan tells me that this activity is justified because a group of guys from our church are getting together this weekend to play each other in Halo 2 and "I need to defend my honor, because they threatened to snipe me."

There you have it, people. Our honor comes down to how much butt we can kick in Halo 2.

OK, folks. To make up for my total lack of posting this week due to the fact that I've been getting home after 9 p.m. for the last three nights, I pose a question with which you may entertain yourselves and one another until I am coherent enough to post some photos and stories from the last couple of weeks. Here goes:

What is the worst haircut you ever got?

For the record, the worst haircut I ever had happened during an ill-advised period during college when I decided it would be a good idea to grow my hair out, resulting in what I thought at the time was a semi-short, layered, flippy-in-the-back kind of Meg Ryan thing and what in retrospect I have realized looked very much like a free-range mullet you might see in any Wal-mart in the Deep South. A note to the people who knew me then: WHY didn't you just do me a favor and cut my hair off in my sleep?

Dan says that the worst hair-related decision he ever made was the time he shaved his head. In case I don't have it in writing anywhere else, let me say in this forum that he is officially forbidden from ever doing that again.

So ... what's the worst thing you ever paid someone to do to your hair?

I need some help, bloggers. I am completely out of ideas for things to take to lunch. I realized a long time ago that if I'm going to eat healthy things on my daily commute to the land of no restaurants but McDonald's I have to shop beforehand. But I have run out of good ideas. This week, I did a bad job of pre-shopping and ended up eating fast food three days in a row. Yuck. So, lunch packers, what do you take to work? I need things that are relatively easy to prepare. Any suggestions?

I am a big fan of the Super Bowl, for the simple reason that it means that football season is over, and I can have my husband back on weekends. Prior to being married, I never really understood having Super Bowl parties, because I had no emotion in any direction about football, but now it seems like a good idea to celebrate the end of the season. So, we went with great enthusiasm last Sunday to the home of our friends Sam and Shanelle with a bunch of people from our church. Shanelle, being the domestic goddess that she is, made a TON of really good food, and we pretty much sat around and ate ourselves into oblivion while halfway watching the game and commercials and spending more time watching Sam and Shannelle's daughter, Annabelle, and our friends Patrick and Jasmine's daughter, Kristen, playing with each other. Both of the girls are, I think, between two and three years old, and they are both very into Disney princesses and My Little Pony. Both girls had brought out their My Little Pony collections for the party, and as a result, the best line of the whole party was spoken by little Kristen, who apparently has recently learned to use her posessive pronouns.
When Kristen got to the party, Dan was helping her take off her pink jacket, and saw that she was holding a My Little Pony. Dan, being the type of person who makes a major effort to have conversations with little kids (I just get freaked out and stop trying) asked her:
"Kristen, is that a My Little Pony?"
To which Kristen responded by giving him the Look of Death and saying with as much acidity as a three-year-old can muster:
"No. It's MY Little Pony."

This is a photo of Annabelle, on the left, and Kristen, on the right, "helping" Shanelle clean up and cook in the kitchen. You can tell how helpful I was with all of that by the fact that I was standing around taking pictures. But notice that while Kristen is assisting with the chores, she is not putting down her pink purse with the tail of a My Little Pony hanging out.

Purse snatchers, beware.

This is a long-overdue posting of a photo I took of the Wachdorf family. This is not the whole family, since Dan's grandmother, who lives with his mom and dad, is not in the photo, but it's pretty complete. In the back we have Dan's dad, Arthur, Dan the Great, and Chris Gilbert, the boyfriend of Dan's sister Dinah, who is standing in front of him in the blue shirt. Then, there is Hannah, Dan's youngest sister, and Dan's mom, Lorrae. Last but CERTAINLY not least, we have Maggie, the family's dog. Maggie is probably the most revered member of the family, and is certainly the most highly entertaining, even though she doesn't like me very much. We think she has somehow made the connection that I have something to do with the fact that Dan isn't around the house much anymore, and this does not make her happy, because she LOVES Dan. But she has started to accept me more, so that's good. Aren't they a good-looking bunch?

Here, as a bonus, we have a photo of Dan reading airplane magazines with Sammy, one of three triplets in a family that the Wachdorfs know in San Antonio. When Dan and I were dating, the triplets were really little, but now they are three years old, and watching them is better than watching TV. When we last went to visit in San Antonio, Dan and Sammy enjoyed a little reading session so they would not be behind on the latest advances in the field of radio controlled airplanes. Photos like this make me know that Dan is going to be a good daddy one day. That is, if I can convince him to act like an adult instead of one of the kids.

I just learned on TV that Disney is releasing the two-disc special DVD of Bambi "from the vault." This is probably a silly question, but who is going to be buying two discs worth of Bambi, the world's most traumatic movie made for children? Was anyone else as upset by this movie as I was when I was little? I mean, Bambi's mom gets KILLED within the first 20 minutes! You would think that Disney would be doing its utmost to forget that anyone with their company ever thought this was a good premise for a children's movie. I'd keep that WELL within "the vault." But, I suppose this is why I am never going to be the head of a multi-billion dollar entertainment industry. Incedentally, this movie, as well as Old Yeller, which they played for us in my SECOND GRADE CLASSROOM are the reasons why I am highly suspicious of any movie involving a cute, lovable animal as one of the main characters. Because inevitably, the animal is going to get the raw end of the deal.

Sometimes you can see interesting things just driving home from work. First off, the other day, I saw Harrison Ford when I was sitting in traffic at a stop light. OK, it probably was not Harrison Ford. But it looked eerily like him. I was looking in my rear-view mirror, and behind me, idly playing with the air conditioner vents in his car, was this guy who looked EXACTLY like a Regarding Henry era Harrison Ford, but with glasses. It took me a minute to realize that the likelihood that Harrison Ford was sitting in a Ford Taurus in Albuquerque was extremely low, but even then, I kept looking just to make sure it wasn't him. In Albuquerque, that's as close to a celebrity encounter as you're going to get.
Then, I was driving past the golf course near our house, and I saw three high school girls each carrying one of those huge golf bags. I knew they were in high school because of the high level of glossed lips, flippy hair, hip hugger pants, and dangly earrings. Needless to say, the image was hihgly incongruous with the term "gold course." Then, I noticed that there were high school girls ALL OVER the golf course. There were probably 25 of them, in small groups, interspersed with the typical middle aged guys one normally associates with golf courses. Ever since then I've been wondering if it was Take Your Daughter to Golf Day, or if this is some kind of marketing ploy on the part of the golf course. "Look! Golf is, like, hip!" I can't think of any other explanations. Any ideas out there?

It's not really that late, only 10:30, but I'm aggravated that I am awake even though Dan is snoring blissfully in our bedroom. On a happy note, Dan has indeed come back from his many world travels, and I am so happy. But back to whining. I am desperately tired and I cannot go to sleep. I have a hard time winding down at the end of weeks like the one I've just had. It's been very full and very stressful and even though it's over now and no new deadlines are coming my way until Monday, I just can't let it go. I am re-running conversations I had this week in my mind, mentally reciting every word I have written for tomorrow's paper, and feeling my shoulders get more and more tense instead of relaxing into the sleep that I need so much right now. It's amazing that your mind is capable of keeping your body awake even when all you need physically is to sleep. I'm sure this serves many purposes, such as keeping us from falling asleep at dangerous times, but sometimes I wish there was an 'overide' button on the system. For now, it seems that David Letterman and I will be spending the evening together. I am optimistic that this will put me to sleep.

"In my younger and more vulnerable years, my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since. 'Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,' he told me, 'Just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.'"

F. Scott Fitzgerald
"The Great Gatsby"

I think I'm going to get that tatooed on my arm so I can do a better job of remembering it. On the other hand, that's an awful lot of words and I bet it would hurt. So maybe I'll just settle for "Shut Up" as a reminder to myself.

I think I had a semi-religious conversion experience last night when Dan and I went to see Alison Krauss and Union Station in concert. I have seen a great many concerts in my life. Live music performances just never cease to mesmerize me, and I frequently annoy Dan with my immediate willingness to fork over large chunks of money to see an artist perform live. I get the impression that a lot of people just figure if they have the CD, they can live without going to the concert. I am not one of those people. I love concerts for their loudness and the cheering and the opportunity to just sit and actually focus on the music, which isn’t usually how you listen to music if you think about it. I love concerts even more than I love chocolate, and that is saying something. So needless to say, I was thrilled when Dan got me tickets to see Alison Krauss and Union Station live in Albuquerque. I’ve heard they put on a great show, and I figured it would be a lot of fun.
However, prior to last night, I didn’t really count Alison Krauss among my “all-time, top five, desert island” favorite artists, to quote a line from an excellent movie which I will give you a nickel if you name. I liked her a lot, yes, but I kind of figured I could get by without her music if I had to.
Well.
About ten minutes into the concert, I repented of my wicked ways and I am now ready to declare that Alison Krauss and Union Station may just be the finest musical group of our time. I swear, people, it was like watching magicians levitate giant boulders with their minds or shoot lightning out of their hands, that’s how amazing it was seeing them perform. I have never seen anything like it. There is really no way to understand how complex the music is until you see it performed live. That realization alone is jaw-dropping. But they played these incredibly complicated songs like they were tying their shoes or brushing their teeth, or doing something else that normal people do all the time. Like it was nothing. You know how when you hear a recorded song, it’s almost too perfect, and you think “There’s no way that’s real. It’s got to be spliced and digitally vamped up somehow to sound like that.” I really thought that about Alison Krauss and Union Station. I just thought there was no way that that many people could possibly play that many notes and not mess one up somewhere along the way.
Again, I repent. They were flawless. And hilarious. Who knew that Alison Krauss was a funny woman? That just doesn’t really come across in the music, I suppose, but between songs she would tell these stories that made you spit out your Coke you were laughing so hard. And then they would take you right out of that laughing and make you want to cry with one of those heartbreakingly-sad songs they play so well. It was the single most entertaining show I have ever attended, and I was amazed when Dan told me they had played for two and a half hours, because it just went by so quickly.
I don’t even know what else to tell y’all except that if you EVER get the opportunity to see them live, you should run and not walk to get tickets. It’s well worth your money.
Hallelujah, world without end, amen.

It is sunny and warm in Albuquerque after what seems like MONTHS of rain and gloom and cold. I think we get spoiled in New Mexico, because most of the time, it's very sunny and mild here. So as soon as it rains for more than 10 minutes, people are immediately in a depressed funk. You can even see it in the way people drive ... like the rain makes them so angry at the world that they just have to act out. We've had an unusually wet winter, which is good for the whole drought situation, but bad for the state-wide psyche. So let's hear it for the sun! Spring is, indeed, on the way.

On Saturday, Dan and I had the pleasure of going to the zoo with the Lowrance family. It's a good thing that Sam and Shanelle invited us to come with them, because the nice weather we were having on Friday had gotten Dan on a kick. Specifically, a "Why don't we go to the zoo, Haley? Huh? Huh?" kick. When Dan gets on one of these kicks, he's hard to distract, so it was pretty much inevitable that I was going to end up taking my own child to the zoo. At least this way, we were able to pretend that we were two of the adults on the trip, and not two of the kids. Or, at least, that's what I pretended. Dan did a pretty fair impression of a small child, racing along ahead of the rest of us with Annabelle, calling all of us to hurry up. In fact, Dan and Annabelle even started to sound alike after a while. Annabelle would say "Mommy Mommy! Look at the giraffe!" and Dan would say "Haley! Haley! Look at the zebra!" I did learn something useful on this trip, which is that when Dan and I have kids, I am NEVER going to the zoo without him. By the end of the day, I was shuffling along with aching legs and a dazed, somewhat sunburned look on my face, and Dan was still saying "But we haven't been to the Africa exhibit yet! Come on!" I also realized that it is much more fun to go to a kid-geared place with kids. They just get so excited. Enjoy some photos from our excursion.

Shanelle and Annabelle enjoy the flamingos. Annabelle considered it her bound duty to inform us, repeatedly, that the flamingos were "Pink! Pink!"

If you look at it just right, Sam and Annabelle look like their own weird kind of giraffe.

A nice break by the goldfish pool.

The maniac toddlers. Yes, both of them.

Below, we present the three stages of Samuel "Little Man" Lowrance.

First stage: "Bring on the animals!"

Second stage: "Aww, mom, can I keep him?"

Third stage (late in the day): "Zzzzzzzz." I was sympathizing with his exhaustion by this point.

Remember two days ago, when I was exulting in the gloriously warm weather? Me too. It was nice. I even had a little bit of that sunburned pink cheeks look going. I was thinking about putting up my heavy sweaters for the season. Apparently, I had forgotten that we live in ALBUQUERQUE, the world's most schizophrenic weather town in the United States. Here, for your enjoyment, we at Missing Mississippi present "Saturday and Monday: A Photo Essay by Haley Wachdorf."

Saturday, around 2 p.m., at the zoo:

Monday, 4 p.m. outside our apartment:

This storm blew in out of nowhere late this morning. By 3 p.m., I was stuck on the interstate plowing through heavy snow at 30 miles per hour. Dan got sent home from work early too, so we've pretty much been in our apartment cooking dinner and staring in awe at the snow. It's still falling and supposed to do so all night. Also, it's worth noting that the broken-down truck in the photo from our dining room window appears to belong to some relocated good-ol' boys. At least, that's all I can think of, since I can't imagine anyone else parking a completely non-functional truck in a public parking lot and coming out to work on it on the weekends. I'm serious. It's these two guys who get out there with their beer and their tools and play their radio and work on the truck all day long. They're very friendly and they wave at everyone who goes by. It's very entertaining and I will be amazed if the truck isn't fitted out with a gun rack before it's completely finished.
Anyway, if you are somewhere where the weather is warm, or even reasonably mild, please enjoy it for us. We'll be busy dressing in layers.

I found this on a friend's blog and thought it was pretty funny. I'm not sure how I scored ten percent Yankee. A lot of people out here tell me that I don't sound very Southern to them. I'm convinced this is because they firmly believe everyone from the South talks like Dolly Parton and Julia Roberts in Steel Magnolias. That is a great movie, but the accents are way overdone and it and a lot of other movies have created bizarre expectations for what a Southern person is "supposed" to sound like. Since I moved away, I also have noticed that my accent tends to come and go. There really is no distinct accent in the Southwest, so anything different stands out, and occasionally someone will ask me where I'm from. When I tell them, they always ask me to say "y'all," and they ask me if it's hot there, and I say "Yes, and it's humid,too." And thus ends the accent conversation. But it always makes me wonder. I never really made a conscious effort to not have an accent and sometimes I worry that I just misplaced it, like you do your keys. But then I'll get really excited or angry about something, or I'll talk to my family on the phone, or I'll tell Dan that I am "fixing" to do something, and then I know that you can leave home, but you can never really "lose" it. That's oddly comforting.

I am back from the wedding I attended in Nebraska this weekend, and I am aware that I need to post an update here soon. I have every intention of doing that once I am able to sit still for ten whole minutes in somewhere other than the Omaha airport, where I spent about six hours yesterday. Please bear with me. Once I write about how Aaron is doing, I also plan to write about my weekend, including the fact that I have now been to Nebraska three whole times, which is exactly three times more than I ever thought I would go to Nebraska, and the beautiful wedding that I was privileged to attend there this weekend. So more words to come. But first, I have a few things to take care of such as work, eating, and sleeping. Especially sleeping. Wow, I need sleep.
Hang in there.

Here's a story about how air travel can change your life.
In the summer of 1995, which is ten years ago this summer for anyone who's counting, my friend Autumn Fredericks, long may she live and prosper, convinced my parents to let me get on a plane with her and go to Horn Creek, a summer camp in Colorado. I know for a fact that this caused a major schism in the Rice household since I had A) never flown anywhere before B) never been out of the Deep South. But in the end, I went, and I'm pretty sure my mom cried the entire time we were on the plane. In fact, when we arrived safely and were registering, the people in charge of the camp gave me my name tag and said "Oh, you're Haley Rice. Your mom has called here three times wanting to know if you made it yet." (I love you, Mom. And that wasn't at all embarrasing.) Truth be told, I was terrified too. As shocking as it sounds now, when I was 15, I wasn't a big fan of talking to strangers, and I was pretty sure the week was going to involve a lot of people I'd never met.
I turned out to be right.
Accounts differ as to whether or not it all started the first night of camp or the second day of camp, but ten years later, the undisputed facts are that very early into the week, Autumn and I met three girls named Rebecca, Charity and Bryonie, and although we're pretty sure the earth didn't actually move when that happened, it was a very important moment.
Autumn was assigned to stay in Cabin #2 with Charity and Rebecca and Bryonie for the week, and I was assigned to Cabin #7. I liked my cabin group alright, but because Autumn was the only person I really knew, I ended up hanging out with her cabin so much that I was declared an honorary resident of Cabin #2 for that year. And the next year, and the next year, and the next year all through high school.
We all went to college, some of us went overseas, we graduated from college, moved all over the place, four of us have gotten married and one of us is the mother to a beautiful one-year-old baby. But through it all, we've kept in touch. Several years ago we started to notice that, post-camp and post-college, it was getting more and more difficult to see each other aside from the occasional wedding. So we started what is affectionately known as the Horn Creek Cabin #2 Reunion Tour. The Reunion Tour is always on Labor Day weekend, and for the last three years, we have spent those three glorious days in Autumn's parents' lake cabin in Minnesota. None of us lives in Minnesota, but it's the closest thing we've been able to find to a middle point between Albuquerque, Nebraska, Washington D.C. and St Louis. This year, things have gotten even more complicated. Bryonie and her husband moved to England, and soon, Charity and her new husband, Andy, will be living in North Carolina. Change, it seems, is everywhere. But some things don't change.
All the Cabin #2 girls were able to attend Charity and Andy's wedding two weeks ago in Lincoln, Nebraska, and it was just such a fantastic weekend. Here we all are together. From left are Rebecca, Bryonie, Charity, Autumn and me. Trust me when I tell you that this is a much better-looking photo than some of the ones we took as teenagers.

Each time we get together, I realize again how important these ladies have been in my life, and I'm thankful all over again that I know them. The more time passes and the more things change, the more comforting it is to get together with friends who have known me for longer than I've been a newspaper reporter or a New Mexico resident or, for that matter, had my driver's license. Every time I'm with them, I just feel like things are simpler and I can be myself.
So here's to the first ten years of my friendship with these women. Here are a few more photos from the weekend of the wedding.

Rebecca with Livia, she and her husband Jeremy's baby girl:

Bryonie and I grin for the cameras at the reception:

And, finally, the happy couple, Charity and Andy, getting hitched on a beautiful spring morning in Nebraska. This photo is crooked because I was all choked up when I was trying to take it. Joy and love to the new couple.

Today, I am enjoying the new Coldplay album, "X and Y," to a degree that I am pretty sure qualifies me for the All-Time Geek Hall of Fame. Dan, who finds infinite amusement in my music nerd tendencies, went and bought it for me yesterday on his way home from work because I didn't have time to go to the store during my travels that day. And heaven forbid I should buy the new Coldplay album even one day later than it is available in the United States, because then I might slip down a notch on the Dork-O-Meter.
After one good listen on my way to work today, I'd say it's really good. I know that makes you all want to run out and buy it, and you should. What's the best CD you've bought lately?

For those of you who don't know, I commute about 45 miles to work each day. Sometimes it's a pain, but I've learned you can see a lot of interesting things on the road. If you're a habitual people-watcher, that's a pretty big perk. Today, for instance, I was at a stoplight and I started looking at the guy in the car next to me. Initially, I was looking because the guy had a full-on Napolean Dynamite-style hairdo, a six inch tall bushy, red, curly mass.

It was amusing. However, when we started moving out of the intersection, I noticed that the guy was apparently conducting an orchestra in his car. He was waving his arms around, giving cues to the percussion section and the strings, bobbing his head, meanwhile using NEITHER OF HIS HANDS to drive the car. He was swerving all over the place, but he had this look of beautific joy on his face. If I wasn't so afraid the guy was going to hit me, I would have laughed. Anyway, I just think it pays off to watch the people around you on the road. Because then you can get out of their way.