A series of small, insignificant events.

News from the garden
I just bought something called a tree fern. It looks like a regular fern but it will grow to be TEN FEET TALL! So when I'm having a Liv Tyler in LOTR moment, I can go and stand under it and pretend I'm a tiny pixie.

News from the gym
I accidentally went into the men's changeroom again. It's the third time I've done it. The problem isn't that I'm turning into some kind of "Oops I did it again" voyeur/pervert. The issue is that the designer of the change rooms screwed up. The entrances to the two change rooms are reversed. Shouldn't the women's be on the right side? That's how it was at my old pool. The worst part is that every time I make the mistake, I giggle uncontrollably for about five minutes afterwards but I have no one to tell because people in changerooms are naked and they don't want strangers making small talk.

News from the bus stop
There was a most excellent guy sitting at the bus stop on Uplands near Rutherford today. He had at least 12 pieces of toilet paper stuck to the shaving cuts on his face. But he looked nice, you know. Like he was really making the effort.

News on the snack front
Last night, soon after I began watching Little Nicky on Superstation, I jumped in my car and drove at top speed to the local theatre. There I bought a large bag of margarine-drenched movie popcorn and raced home and ate as much of it as I could. To spread the negativity around a bit, I gave half the corn to James when he got home. When asked, I denied that there was "extra butter" on it. I felt this was an acceptable falsehood because it wasn't real butter. The molasses-quick girl behind the popcorn counter (her extravagant lack of speed made me miss over 15 minutes of Little Nicky!) informed me that they were out of real butter. When I told her that was okay, I didn't want extra butter, she nodded, smiled and added about 4 cups of margarine to the popcorn. And to think I could have eaten Anicka's marvelous spicy olive oil popcorn and saved myself almost $6.

Next week I may have something profound to say here. But it's doubtful.

The Kids are Alright

Found dumped in a small clearing of trampled grass between the lake shore and the highway: Four pens, one tub glittery white eyeshadow, one ring with heart-shaped stone and one belly button stud.

Seen in passenger seat of white cube van outside grocery store : One face completely obscured by black hair, rocking it out to ACDC.

3 Reasons To Read Lorrie Moore's Birds of America

"Men could be with whomever they pleased. But women had to date better, kinder, richer, and bright, bright, bright, or else people got embarrassed. "I'm a very average person," she said desperately, somehow detecting that Charlotte already knew that, knew the deep, dark, wildly obvious secret of that, and how it made Sidra slightly pathetic, unseemly -- inferior, when you got right down to it. Charlotte studied Sidra's face, headlights caught in the stare of a deer. Guns don't kill people, thought Sidra, fizzily. Deer kill people."
From "Willing" in Birds of America.

"She had already -- carefully, obediently -- stepped through all the stages of bereavement: anger, denial, bargaining, Haagen-Daz, rage."
From "Four Calling Birds, Three French Hens"

"Ray is dyslexic. When the roofing business slows in the winter months, instead of staying in with a book, or going to psychotherapy, he drives to cheap matinees of bad movies -- 'flicks' he calls them, or 'cliffs' when he's making fun of himself.
...
Ray must do his charade, which is Confucious.
'Okay. I'm ready,' he says, and begins to wander around the living room in a wild-eyed daze, looking as confused as possible, groping at the bookcases, placing his palm to his brow. And in that moment, Therese thinks how good-looking he is and how kind and how strong and how she loves nobody else in the world even half as much."
From "Charades"