Here you go, Al

My friend Alan, who comments on this blog occasionally, asked in the comments on my last blog why there weren't any college pictures in my last post. Well, I found a few that I would like to share. First let me tell you a little about my friend Alan. I dated him for a while in college. I met him through our mutual friend Laura. She and Alan had an art class together and she thought he was really cute but she had a boyfriend at the time. One day she decided that since she couldn't date him I should date him instead. Because she was my very best friend I told her I would, even though I knew he totally wouldn't be my type. She likes big muscly guys and I like men skinny and wiry. She likes big noses and, well...seriously. Who likes big noses? That's just weird. She likes hairy chests and I like no superfluous body hair. I liked really, really smart guys and...well, let's just say that her idea of smart and my idea of smart are completely different. For example...one of the guys I dated in college bought me a gift for no reason whatsoever once. It was a book called The Unbearable Lightness of Being. (That book was also made into a movie starring a young and very sexy Daniel Day-Lewis and a young and very sexy Lena Olin. There's tons of "meaningful and imperative to the story line" sex in the movie so I highly recommend it. Take a look at this picture:

I am pretty sure they get naked right after this. She keeps the hat on. It's hot. Plus, the movie itself is really about a lot more than just gorgeous people doing it. It is set in Czechoslovakia during the Soviet invasion in 1968. Besides just being gorgeous, the characters in this movie are very intelligent and they discuss political issues. It's just a really well done movie based on a fabulous book...and there's nudity. Who could ask for anything more?)

So, anyway, this boy gives me this book and tells me that it is the most beautiful love story ever written and it made him cry. Now, you have to understand that this is no "romance novel"; it is a wonderful book that really studies the characters of the three protagonists and the complicated way that love effects everything you do. I'm telling you, it was a very cool gift. This guy was well-read and bright and SMART. Laura's idea of a SMART guy was someone who went to classes on a regular basis and had maybe read a book at some point. Now, before I sound like a complete bitch, let me point something out: Laura's boyfriends were not dumb. We just valued different kinds of "smartie-ness". I married someone that I think is one of the smartest people I've ever met. Laura married someone that I don't think is particularly smart. I live in a little house that was built 40 years ago and is falling apart. She lives in a ginormous brand new house that sparkles. Hmmm... (As a brief aside, I wouldn't trade Tony for the biggest house Ty Pennington could build. At the end of the day, I have a spouse that I can really talk to and that's better than 5 bedrooms, 3 full baths, a three car garage and granite counter tops.)

So, I had very little hope for this meeting with Alan. All I knew for sure was that he was Jewish. Okay...at this point in my life I hadn't really dated anyone "ethnic" and I figured that Jewish counted as "ethnic" so I was willing to give it a shot. Plus, he was the president of his fraternity...so he couldn't be a total loser. Here is a photo of Alan in the front yard of my parents house:

Al was (and is) a very bright man, but he was totally high maintenance. Maybe it's a Jewish thing. He also had a greater appreciation for the finer things in life than I do. He could tell a real Rolex from a knock-off at 50 feet. The first thing he said when he drove through my parent's neighborhood was, "Do you have to own either a Cadillac or a Mustang to live here?"
On the other hand, he liked the funniest stuff. He totally had a thing for Barry Manilow. We went and saw him in concert once. It was hilarious. We were BY FAR the youngest people there. There were bus loads of polyester-clad middle aged women pulling into the parking lot with sheets hanging out the windows proclaiming "We Love You Barry!!" I guess they didn't get the memo saying Barry is GAY!!! He also had a theory about globes. You see, he owned a globe. I had never met anyone who wasn't a history teacher who actually owned a globe. Al told me that every Jewish boy gets a globe at his bar mitzvah. I don't know if that's a Jewish thing or an Al thing but I never forgot it. It also made me really, really, really want a globe. I got one right before they changed the names of whole bunch of little countries and the globe company sent me stickers to correct my globe.

Here is another picture. This one is of Al and me at his fraternity formal. Notice how my arm is bent at a funny angle? It looks like I am channeling Stephen Hawking. That's because Alan was squeezing me so tight that I couldn't move. He did that all the time. I think he did that just to prove that he was in charge. I'm surprised I didn't dislocate something during one of our photo ops. It never bothered me though; I thought it was funny. Still do. Later that same evening we looked like this: I loved that dress, but I was completely bummed about my shoes. Alan and I are about the same height, so I had to wear flat shoes. Seriously, it totally pissed me off. That's why I could have never married him. The shoes make the outfit, and to be limited for the rest of my life??? No fucking way. In any case, my hair looks so awful! I can't believe I ever wore my hair like this. On the other hand, Alan probably loves this picture because he actually HAS hair in it. Now, he has none.
In the end, he dumped me. I knew it was coming and I probably should have just broken up with him because we were both so over each other, but I could tell he was just so nervous about the actual dumping that I hung on for a few weeks to see what would happen. As it turns out, Alan took me to dinner and he was so nervous he couldn't even eat. I, on the other hand, was starving. So our entrees came, I ate mine, he dumped me and I asked, "Are you gonna eat that?" and then I proceeded to eat his dinner too.
As it turns out, we became friends and that was even better.
So--there you go, Alan. I DO have some pictures from college.

I can SCAN!!

I am totally envious of Jim's blog because he is forever putting old family photos on his blog and I have never been able to figure out how to do that....until today! Oh yes, I figured out how to use the scanner and now you will be amazed and thrilled by some of my old family photos.

Judging from this photo, my parents really knew how to party when I was a baby. Notice how the keg (and the beer my dad is holding up) is the focal point of the photo, not ME? Here is the only picture I have of my brother, sister and me all together. I am the little one in the front trying to pretend like my dress isn't entirely too short. My sister and brother both look like they would rather be anywhere but posing with their siblings and the family dog. I'm sure that Rob and Pam (my sibs) got in the Pinto hatchback right after this and went to the beach to smoke dope. I probably went in the house and played with my Lite Brite.Now, here's a big jump. Yep, it's the 80's. See how preppy I was? I would have added some pictures of me between the age of 5 and this one, but I don't think my parents took any. Being the third child there aren't a whole lot of pictures of me. Anyway...I was all about the preppy look in high school. I even had the preppy handbook and a watch with interchangeable grosgrain ribbon bands and enough fair isle sweaters to choke a horse. Look! Here's a picture of me in a fair isle sweater: That's me in the front with the white sweater on. I have no idea who all those other people are or what we were doing or where we were. I promptly forgot high school and everyone in it the minute I stepped out of the gym after graduating. Wait, I take that back. I remember Todd, my homecoming date junior year. He was so cute. Right? Isn't he cute? Look what I am wearing. I don't know if you can tell, but those are knickers. I loved that outfit. I've pretty much always hated dresses. I took a lot of grief for that ensemble. Apparently it wasn't cool to wear anything but a stupid Gunne Sax dress to homecoming. Do you remember Gunne Sax dresses? They were fucking UGLY. Take a look: There is no way I was going to wear one of those. No wonder I wasn't elected homecoming princess. This one is from a surprise 18th birthday party my friends threw me. I had on my favorite Frye cowboy boots. Look at those other people in the photo. I have no clue who the hell they are. They were my friends, though! I do remember that one girl left the party and promptly drove into someones mailbox and the cops came to the door after she told them she came from a party. As I recall, the cops questioned us all about drinking, which we weren't. We did after they left though!! Here's the last photo of me and my first serious boyfriend. I'm sure I liked him pretty well, but let me tell you something: I LOVED his car. I think his Mach 1 is in every single photo ever taken of the two of us. I dated him for two years. When he left for college, he sold that beautiful car and I totally dumped him. I tried to talk him out of selling it, but he claimed to need the money to pay for school. Right! Like he couldn't take out student loans like every body else.
I would post some recent photos, but I still don't know how to work my digital camera. No shit, I can't even take a stupid picture on it yet. I tried yesterday and I think I pushed too many buttons and I ended up with a short movie of my foot. I guess I'll have to read the stupid directions.

Welcome to the Digital Age, Young Whippersnapper!

Okay everyone...get ready for this. I finally got myself a digital camera. So, you know what that means...as soon as I actually take it out of the package and learn to use it I will be posting pictures on my blog all the time. (Translated: As soon as TONY takes it out of the package and BRENNA learns how to use it and then teaches me I will be posting pictures on my blog all the time.)


Here is what my digital camera looks like:

Isn't it pretty? Apparently you can take pictures with it too! However, I wouldn't know because it's in some hermetically sealed packaging from Costco and I may never get the stupid thing out. That's the downside of buying things from Costco; unfriendly packaging. We bought Bronte an IPod Nano there for Christmas and I think it took until dinner to get the thing out of the clamshell. (Yes, I know...Bronte was only 6 years old at Christmas and why in the world does a 6 year old need an IPod, blah, blah, blah. Shut up. I'll buy my 6 year old an IPod if I want to. Besides, if you know Bronte then you understand why buying her an IPod makes perfect sense. She is WAAAAYYY more savvy than your average 7 year old.)
Anyway, my new digital camera was a Mother's Day gift. Tony actually got me one from Target but when Brenna opened it and started to mess around with it so she could teach me how to use it, she discovered that it was USED! "How?" you may ask and I will tell you. It had some else's pictures in it! There were sexy photos of some ugly fat woman on a bed with a cat. And the cat was in the foreground. Yep. Pussy pictures. Then there was a couple of pictures of her tattooed boyfriend holding the cat. They must love their fucking cat, that's all I can say. So, I took the sullied camera back to Target because I wanted a BRAND NEW camera. (Now, if the people who had the camera before me were beautiful dog-people instead of ugly cat-people, I might have kept it. But, I couldn't keep it after I saw who had previously touched it. I have standards.) Needless to say, Target didn't have another one. So, I looked at all the digital cameras in the Target camera case and asked about another one that was similarly priced. Well, Alex, the pimply high school Target camera specialist, was sorry to tell me that they didn't have any of those particular cameras either. So, I thought, "Well, I'll get one that's a little more expensive because gas is $4 a gallon and I don't want to drive around to a bunch of other Targets looking for this dumb camera." So I asked Alex if they had the $159 Polaroid digital camera. Regrettably, no. Not in stock. How about the Fuji $159 camera? Sorry, out of stock. So, then I looked at Alex and asked, "Does the Target camera department actually SELL cameras or just display them?" The humor was lost on Alex and I wasn't amused either, so needless to say I left Target empty-handed and took my business to Costco. First of all, let me just tell you that I fucking LOVE Costco. I especially love Costco on the weekend because it's sample day. I could walk into Costco on a Sunday afternoon starving to death and leave 30 minutes later so full that I am nauseated. If you know one thing about me, it's that I have a terrible relationship with food and I feel guilty every time I eat something...unless it's FREE. I love FREE food. So, yesterday I tried sun-dried tomato sausages and beef taquitos and salmon patties and cheesecake. The only thing I didn't try was the Australian black licorice. It's not that I have anything against Australians, although I must admit that I didn't know they were specialists in black licorice, I just hate black licorice. However, because it was FREE food, I almost ate it. I did take a piece just because it was FREE, but I made my mother-in-law (with whom I was shopping) eat it, even though she has braces and said she wasn't supposed to have licorice. I told her she had to eat it because if she didn't then I would and then I would throw up in her lovely clean car on the way home because black licorice makes me sick and I wasn't going to pass up FREE food so she was obligated to eat it. I'm sure she didn't follow my logic, but she ate it anyway...probably just to get me to shut up.

Anyway, so after spending a good 30 minutes standing in front of the Costco camera display, my mother-in-law and I decided on a Casio camera with 10 mega-pixels and a rechargeable battery and some fancy movie thing...shit, I don't know. I don't even know what a mega-pixel is, although the camera guy at Costco tried to explain it to me 10 times. I just picked that one because it was the same price as the one at Target and my mother-in-law seemed to think it was the best deal. So, we take the slip of paper from the Costco camera guy so that we can pay for it up front and then, after we pay for it, they can go get it out of the lock up area. I think that's stupid. They lock up the digital cameras and the cigarettes at Costco. They have packages of meat that cost more than some of those digital cameras, but they don't lock up the pork chops. Whatever. In any case, needless to say, I wait in line for 20 minutes, pay for the camera, wait in line in front of the cage where they keep the cameras and smokes, then wait for the Costco employee to get my hermetically sealed camera only to have him come back empty handed and tell me that the only one they have is the display camera so he has to go get it. I said, "Why didn't they tell me that when I was looking at it?" He said, "Well, they don't know what we have in stock unless they call us and ask." I pointed out to him that this system SUCKED and that I didn't want some stupid display camera that other people, probably even ugly cat-people, had touched. So, guess what? I had to stand in line to get my money back for my imaginary camera. AAHHHH!!

Well, this morning I went to a different Costco. I was all ready to buy the same camera I had attempted to purchase the day before (which I knew they had in stock because I made the idiots at the other Costco check on it for me) when the helpful Costco camera person suggested that I might like the camera that was $10 more. I said, "But it has 8.1 mega pixels as opposed to the 10 mega pixels in the one I chose. So what's the advantage to the more expensive one?" You know what she said? She said (and I shit you not, my friends), "Well, this one comes in different colors. AND, it comes with a carrying case." That was a good enough reason for me!! So I got the green one. Turns out that, in addition to being $10 more expensive for no good reason, it also takes FEWER pictures on a single battery charge than the cheaper one does!! However, it is green, not silver. I could have gotten a blue one instead, but I decided on green. The cheaper, more pixeled and more pictures per battery charge camera only came in ONE stupid color. Silver. Blech.

I think I made the right choice.