New Year's resolution: Continually broken.

I've broken my New Year's resolution so many times this year, I don't even know why I made it in the first place.

3 more hardcovers for the weekend.

I just put out three more hardcovers on the "free book" cart. The stack of books in the Danish Haven's entryway is slowly getting smaller.

A first-time pot-smoking story (II of II): So, so hungry.

Someone else I know first smoked pot in college at a friend's dorm room where she lived with her diabetic roommate who kept candy stashed all over the room in case she suddenly needed some to adjust her blood sugar levels in case they radically, drastically dropped, and he and his friend both got really hungry from the pot, so they went around the room like an Easter egg hunt and ate up all of the diabetic roommate's candy, and then kept giggling and giggling about it because they thought it was really funny.

A first-time pot-smoking story (I of II): Fridge-raiding.

A friend of mine first smoked pot one day after school with this one girl she knew who lived with her mom and didn't have much money. They got really hungry and went to the fridge, but the only thing in it was a loaf of white bread and a jar of salsa, so they ate salsa on white bread until they vomited.

Yet another 3 hardcovers...

...dropped off at 12:45pm, including an Anne Rice vampire novel compendium. The ones yesterday were slow to go but ended up going in the end.

Sugar Babies.

Yesterday I grabbed some coffee and some candy for a post-lunch pick-me-up and swung by a department office to make an appointment with a prof for her opening office hours of the year, and I started talking with the department coordinator and offered her some of my candy, these little chocolate-covered caramel things called "Sugar Babies", and she declined, but I was like, "Let me rephrase the question in a couple ways for you -- 'Hey sugar, you want some candy?', or, 'Hey baby, you want some candy?'" She just looked at me and gave me a look and was like, "Don't have you have enough to do?"

Pressure pressure pressure...

I was talking with this one (young black) guy who works library privileges because I had lost my ID card the other night and needed to get it replaced, and when I was saying how busy the library is getting because new students are arriving, he started telling me how much he likes dealing with the freshman and making them less nervous about being away from home although it stresses some of his coworkers out, and he was like, "Some people don't like the pressure, it makes them break, but the way pressure is, with some people," he was like, winking, "it makes diamonds."

12:30pm again...

...and I left out 3 hardcovers (a James Patterson, a David Baldacci, and I think a Sandra Brown, if I remember correctly).

P.S.

I just can't get over how Toni Tennille's got the music in her.

"don't go breaking my/ don't go breaking my..."

This is nothing if not a Toni Tenille and John Travolta duet! I love the comments (always the best part of YouTube):

Amauz123 (1 week ago)
He looks the same as he does now :P My mom has his albums and he's wearing dance pants and has a hairy chest- it's gross, but he's my baby!! I gotta show my mom this

thelawnmaster (3 days ago)
ill bet you dollars to donuts Toni wanted John sooo bad back then .. especially at that moment ,,i can tell oh yea

I need to start a YouTube account so I can join in the conversations.

Fall is coming...

The iced tea in my fridge looks out of place and I have to close my windows at night, but I'm psyched anyways. I've always looked good in earthtones, so it's fantastic to be able to pull out my fall wardrobe.

Saw "Hairspray" and "Valley of the Dolls" last night.

A friend of mine got "Hairspray" netflix, I found out last week -- she had seen the musical with her daughter, who's a huge fan of Zac Efron -- it was a smart decision to cast him in the remake; it's drawing in the pre-teen "High School Muscial" crowd, it seems -- and so I came over with a six-pack and some whiskey to watch it.

Overall, I was surprised at how much necking and ass-grabbing was in the original, as well as how many ugly kids you have who are trying to imitate the cool kids on the dance show (both of which were cleansed from the musical). It's camp at how cool the cool kids are and how the cute guy Link sprays his hair and closes his eyes and fantasy-tongues the air during the opening credits, and on top of that you get this sense of dingy parochialism since it's just Baltimore even for the cool kids, but beyond that there's this feeling that somehow it works and has life because of the spirit of the music and the dancing. I was mesmerized at all of the dance scenes.

It turns out that my friend's secret favorite movie is "Valley of the Dolls", so we watched that afterwards. I was shocked.

3 more books at 12:30pm...

...including a Belva Plain hardcover. I think Stephen King goes the fastest, followed by Belva Plain. We'll see what happens today.

As of 2:45pm...

...those books are gone!

So, back to karaoke: Eddie Foy the Third.

So, me and that one woman who turned to me from the next table during karaoke started talking about Iowa because of all the Iowa people in town for the football game, and she started telling me about how when she's visited Iowa before for the Donna Reed Arts Festival people she had just met told her to stay with them instead of at a hotel, and when she cancelled her hotel after the first night and went and did that, she did that for a few days and then they were leaving to go out of town for the weekend, so they left her their keys to the house and showed her around the liquor cabinet and the fridge in case she wanted anything while she was there. She says people from Iowa are all like that.

She also was namedropping about how she's friend's with Eddie Foy the Third's wife. She says I might know Eddie Foy the Third because of the Bob Hope movie "The Seven Little Foys", but otherwise he works a lot with Dick Clark Productions. She told me that her and his wife used to go to the country club during the Arts Festival and you would sit out on the deck with cocktails all dressed up and you could hear cows mooing in the distance.

At the end of this, she says you never know who the people you meet know, and she was like, "And we still haven't introduced ourselves, what's your name?", and held her hand out to me.

I think I used to remember more of this story, but it was a while ago and I was pretty hammered by that point in the night.

Left out 3 hardcovers...

2 James Pattersons and something romantic, at 12:15pm.

Black women think I'm cute (III of III): Mall parking garage.

Saturday afternoon I called some people to let them know that me and some other people were going to a concert downtown and they were welcome to come, and it happened that they were going downtown to the mall and asked me if I wanted a ride, since I mentioned that I was going to go downtown shortly, and since I actually had been thinking of going to a store to check out prices on a CD player and whey protein, they picked me up and I went along with them, though when we got there, it was too nice a day and I didn't feel like spending it inside so I just headed out to Greektown to go get a Greek coffee pot and some Greek coffee as a present for a friend. When we were heading up the elevator from the subterranean parking garage, though, my one friend as I was heading out the door asked me what happened to my legs, and I quickly told her that I had been working outdoors last weekend and got a shitload of mosquito bites on my legs and scratched a few of them when they flared up a few days later and then they scabbed up, which is why I had a couple scabs down by my ankles, and as soon as the elevator doors shut, this late-30s black woman who had gotten out of the elevator with me was like, "What is she talking about? I think you look just fine."

Black women think I'm cute (II of III): Church.

I forgot --

When I was going to the huge black church near my house with the Spaniards a few weekends ago, I was giving them a quick tour of the church before the service started, and when I was going down the hall towards the old sanctuary when like four black women in their 60s who were ushering and holding doors open in the hallway foyer welcomed us ("Praise the Lord!") as we passed and asked about us and if we had seen the old sanctuary, and I was like, "That's where we're heading now!, but where's that cafeteria we've been hearing about?", and while one started giving me directions, a second one turned to the others and without even trying to lower her voice was like, "Isn't he cute?"

Black women think I'm cute (I of III): Library.

My one friend who works the guard desk of the main library on campus also has a beautician's chair in her house and does cuts for friends and a small clientele off the books, and though she won't cut my hair -- I asked; she says I sure could get into her neighborhood, but I couldn't get out --she's always looking when I get a new haircut and asking me where I got it and how much it cost, and then to turn around so she can see how it looks. Like a few months ago when I was still trying out haircut places in the neighborhood and I came in from a new place and did this for her, she kind of mmm-hmmmed to herself, which I perceived as an ambiguous mmm-hmmm, so I was like, "So, what do you think?", and she was like, "You or the haircut?, 'cause you know, you could shave your head and still be cute."