Two Things That Made Me Laugh Today

For some reason I couldn't sleep last night. I went to bed around two and probably didn't actually fall asleep until around five. Not being able to sleep is strange for me, I can usually fall asleep within five to ten minutes of my head hitting the pillow. So, I was tired today, which makes me a weepy, moody little baby. However, two things made me laugh today and forget about my weepiness.

First off, Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion was playing on TBS, and I loooooved that movie when I was in high school (ten years ago). I forgot what a hilarious scene it is when Romy and Michelle are reunited with the nerd who had a crush on Michelle in high school, who has since become fabulously rich. Played by Alan Cumming, Sandy Frink tells Michelle that as successful as he is, he is empty without her. He asks her to dance, and she agrees as long as Romy can join them. This scene made me laugh out loud while I was sitting by myself on the couch.



Later in the day, a friend sent me this bit from Mindy Kaling, who plays my favorite character on The Office, Kelly Kapoor. Youtube won't let me embed the video, but you should go here to laugh.

Rain

It's raining right now. Really hard. And it's wonderful, because I don't have anywhere to be except right inside my house, in bed, watching TV on the internet and reading. A perfect end to an otherwise blah day that included laundry and work. However, while work was slow and boring, it gave me a chance to browse through the pastry chef's cookbooks and I found a recipe for these little miniature chocolate ganache pies with coconut crusts, which was exciting and made the boredom kind of worth it. Summer is ending and fall is coming. Summer is my favorite time of the year and I thought that I wouldn't want it to ever end. I'll miss the sunshine but I feel excited about the possibilities of fall. Living in a place where seasons actually happen means that the leaves will change and the air will get crisp and I'll make pumpkin bliss cupcakes and continue to teach myself how to layer my clothes. I think fall will be pretty nice. Color Club had an Ice Cream Social yesterday, which in my head officially signals the end of summer. My sunday was pink.

Oh baby baby it's a wild world...

Today I had a musical epiphany, in the kitchen at my restaurant job of all places. Every day when I come in to prepare for the night's work, the kitchen guys are listening to music as they set up. When I first started my job, all we ever listened to was Sublime and Tenacious D. The kitchen is a high stress, testosterone fueled place, and as crappy as I thought the music was, songs about sticking the barrel of your shotgun down some guy's throat kind of fit. Today though, someone put on a Cat Stevens CD. As "Wild World" played, I looked around and pretty much everyone was singing along, and without even a flicker of irony on their faces. That song is such a lovely, upbeat song about how hard the world can be. I went upstairs to our stockroom where the chef's wife, who is all perfume and gigantic diamond rings, was singing along to the strains of "Moonshadow" floating up through the kitchen ceiling. As I made my way back into the kitchen, I ran into one of the chefs from another of our owner's restaurants, who had stopped in to borrow some supplies. When I asked him how he was, he answered, "Eh... but this Cat Stephens is making it better." What I realized then, was that pretty much no one can resist the sweet lull of Cat Stephens. Even when he's singing to you that world is messed up, you still feel like things will be okay. As for me, I was waiting to hear "Morning Has Broken."

Turn that frown upside down!

Though watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer has taught me the dangers of making wishes offhandedly (a vengeance demon could just take you up on that wish!), I sort of wish I could just blot this week off the records. It was terrible. For the first half of the week, I had an extended meltdown at work, and for the second half, I was sick. I've determined that I might be allergic to Atlanta. I've been sick like six different times this year. My head feels like it's gonna break in half. But, it's Sunday, a new week...

Songs that make my heart beat faster.

I noticed semi-recently that when I hear a song that I absolutely love, I inevitably exclaim, "Oh my God, that's my FAVORITE song!" I've said it about a zillion different songs, which made me question whether the song was really my favorite. While I realize there are more important things in the world to spend time thinking about than whether or not a song is REALLY my favorite, I decided to ignore those things and make a list. After much thought, I know that the songs on this list are all my favorite song, and for different reasons. When I was a kid, my parents gave me two musical choices, Christian and oldies. Though I loved some Amy Grant, I think I also sensed on some level that the oldies were innately more cool than the Christian rock. A lot of these songs are from then, and remind me of the excitement of hearing one of my favorite oldies from the back seat of my parents' car. Some of the songs have just been with me through happy and sad times. Some I just think are the most perfect love/heartbreak songs. Most of the songs are embarrassingly poppy, but I don't care. Whenever I hear them, I'm a little bit happier. So, hear they are, if you care to know, my favorite songs ever!

1. The State I am In - Belle and Sebastian
2. Waterloo - ABBA
3. Raspberry Beret - Prince
4. Stay Awhile - Dusty Springfield
5. Wedding Bell Blues - The 5th Dimension
6. You are the Light (By Which I Travel Into This and That) - Jens Lekman
7. Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes
8. Twelve Thirty (Young Girls are Coming to the Canyon) - The Mamas and the Papas
9. Band of Gold - Freda Payne
10. Get Me Away From Here, I'm Dying - Belle and Sebastian
11. Don't Go Breaking My Heart - Elton John and Kiki Dee
12. Red Right Ankle - The Decemberists
13. Somebody's Baby - Jackson Browne
14. Late At Night - Buffalo Tom
15. Golden Slumbers - The Beatles

Hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

Sam's Faves

Hit or Miss

The concept of Color Club is somewhat difficult to explain, in light of the fact that one sounds really dorky while explaining it. Color Club is a group of people who get together to do fun things- bowling, laser show, karaoke, etc.- while all wearing the same color. It all started on Tornado night. JTrav, Lee, Berly, and I were going to dinner and a movie and we all decided to wear basically the same outfit. It was a light blue shirt, denim bottoms, and a navy blue jacket, in case you were wondering. Erica came along too, acting as our Color Club bodyguard. We sat together in a Chinese Restaurant laughing about how silly we looked all dressed alike. We talked about forming a club devoted to color and we listed off about a million fun things that we could do as a club, all the movies we could watch and all the events we could go to dressed in one unifying color. We hadn't really had so much fun in a group since high school. Then we went to the movie and when we came out we realized a tornado had torn through our city, knocking down trees and windows and tearing roofs off of houses. We walked around through the torn up neighborhoods and it was so eerie, everything ripped apart like that. I don't know if the tornado is what makes us remember the night, or if it was the silliness of the invention of a club when most of us are in our mid to late twenties. In any case we've continued doing things together, wearing a new color each time and bringing new people to each event.

Last night was Orange night and we did karaoke. I was having a crappy day, and kind of didn't feel like singing, which almost never happens in my day to day existence. I mean the not singing part, I'm kind of like a broken record. But then I got there, and there was so much orange and everybody just kept singing along to everyone else's songs. It was magical. I think my favorite performances of the night were when Mary Beth and Erica sang Cryin' by Aerosmith, because Aerosmith is one Mary Beth's all time favorite bands and you could absolutely tell. As well, I was amazed by Lee and Stephanie's rendition of New Found Glory's Hit or Miss, because it was incredibly enthusiastic and it made me feel like I was nineteen and driving around to shows all over South Florida. I think I might be three years old because bright colors and singing make me really happy.

Pie, Oh my!

This is what I was busy doing while I should have been job hunting today.



This was my inspiration.



Besides being a simply wonderful show, watching Pushing Daisies has put me in the pie-making mood. The main character is a pie maker and every episode has all these beautiful pies, in every imaginable flavor, like pear with gruyere baked into the crust. My pie is just plain old blueberry, but a girl's gotta start somewhere. And this was my first attempt at making a pie crust from scratch, so we'll see how that turns out. I managed to get the dough everywhere. I found it on my phone and my computer, and I found a little in my ear. The pie's still cooling, but I've been sticking my fingers in the blueberry part, and I must say, it's pretty delightful.

In other news, they're doing road work outside my house. So, what has always been a busy, fairly noisy street corner has turned into the sort of street corner where there's a policeman with a whistle that sounds every three seconds, and you can hear people yell the F-word from their cars. Oh well, I've got blueberry pie.

Ghosts

I just woke up from a dream in which both my parents were ghosts. I inadvertently discovered it when my dad popped up in a room out of nowhere and frightened me. He then flew to reach something above my head and I started freaking out and asking if he was a ghost. He denied it for a little while and then my mom came around, and somehow I discovered that they were both ghosts. It turns out that they both died about ten years ago when they were shot and killed on a family trip to Long Beach, CA to visit my aunt. I started sobbing uncontrollably because my parents were dead, but mostly because they stuck around for ten years to take care of my brother and me instead of going on to heaven. I woke up sad.