I Got SERVED.

In the last few weeks, I've felt exponentially more optimistic about life in general. Maybe it was finally getting enough sleep. Maybe it was the Girl Scout Cookies. Maybe it was the discovery of a K-Cup I can finally love. Maybe - maybe - it had something to do with the meds that balanced my brain chemistry so I didn't feel *quite* so much like lying on the couch until I starved to death. WHO CAN SAY?

The point is, I was flying way too close to the sun, so I did the only reasonable thing I could do. The only thing that would bring me back down to the level of abject misery on which the rest of the country lives 24/7. I did the thing...that could irretrievably destroy a good mood.

I called Customer Service.

I love Customer Service. I love everything about it. I love the dystopic sound of a robot on the verge of tears as it starts every sentence with "I'm sorry..."! I love the even more dystopic sound of the human being who finally picks up where the robot left off, terrified, knowing I'm already seething as she reads from a script that requires her to thank me for literally everything I do or say in the course of our conversation! But the thing I love most is that the end of a Customer Service call is never really "Goodbye", but merely, "I'll call you right back, even more pissed than I already am, since you've routed me to this dead-end and refuse to fix my problem". 

It all started when I decided to switch from AT&T to Comcast, because I wanted faster internet, and Comcast could give me that *plus* a more useful cable connection for less! Wonderful! I signed up online, which was super great, because who's gonna give me better customer service than ME? Nobody, that's who! And I can prove it! The process of finalizing my order with Comcast involved a quick little live chat with a New Account Specialist Or Whatever. He informed me that my number could be ported, but not yet, because AT&T needed to "release" it. I was assigned a temporary interim number, to be replaced with the old one once it was free. So I called AT&T!

Here's what you experience when you talk to the AT&T Robot:

ROBOT: Thank you for calling AT&T! I see you're calling from [your phone number, read out in a slow voice that takes only ten short minutes of your life]! Is that the number associated with the account you are calling about?

ME: YES

ROBOT: Great! Now can you tell me, in a few words, what it is you're calling about today?

ME: I NEED TO-

ROBOT: You can say "I want to sign up for U-Verse TV" or "I'd like to order another U-Verse box"

ME: (muttering to myself) Really? Can I also tell you where you can shove U-Verse?

ROBOT: It sounds like you're calling to set up U-Verse! Is that correct?

ME: NO!

ROBOT: (long pause) Now can you tell me, in a few words, what it is you're calling about today?

ME: I NEED TO GET-

ROBOT: You can say "I need technical support" or "I'd like more information on U-Verse"

ME: I NEED TO GET MY NUMBER RELEASED FOR PORTING

ROBOT: Hang on while I get more information... It looks like AT&T just received a payment from you! Would you like to hear the details of this payment?

ED NOTE: This is by far the dumbest part of the whole stupid spiel. Obviously they've done this because most people are calling about their bills(?) but if you're going to assume that's why I'm calling, WHY DID I HAVE TO TELL YOU WHY I'M CALLING? Also, I don't know what the rest of you people are doing, but when I make a payment, I already know the details of that payment. Because I made it. I don't need it read to me. I'd also like to point out that in two days, I called AT&T FIVE TIMES, and I got to hear the "recent payment" crap EVERY SINGLE TIME. 

So when the robot first passed me to a person, I told her what I needed and she gave me a different number to call. She conveyed the number with an air of authority and unshakeable confidence, so it never crossed my mind that this might not be the right number. I thanked her, hung up, and called the number. I'd provide a transcript here, but I can't. Because the robot at that number only spoke Spanish. I let it run through its options, waiting for the English equivalent of the standard "Para Español, marque el numero dos!" message. Nothin'. So I hung up and, figuring I had misdialed, tried again. Same result. I began to wonder if the friendly AT&T lady had somehow gotten the impression that I spoke Spanish, despite my accent-free English in our entirely English-language exchange. Finally I gave up and called the standard AT&T Robot back. We went through the same song-and-dance as before, in which he read me my phone number in the same amount of time it took to build the pyramids, asked what I wanted twice, didn't know what the hell I was talking about, offered to read my last payment aloud to me, and finally offered to hand me off to a human being. When the AT&T Robot picked up this call, it was 5:57pm. By the time he offered to hand me to a human, it was 6:01, and instead of hearing a human, I heard the Robot saying, "We're sorry, this office is closed for the day. Please try again tomorrow." 

So I did. I tried again the next day. I let him pat himself on the back for knowing my number, I yelled gibberish at him when he asked what I needed (makes no difference to him!), he told me I had recently paid an obscene amount of money for this crappy service as if this information might come as a surprise to me, then connected me to a person. I told this person that I needed my number liberated for porting. She said, "Please hold while I connect you". There was a click. Silence. Another click. Silence. Click. Hold music. Click. Silence. Click. 

ROBOT: Thank you for calling AT&T! I see you are calling from...

So we did it AGAIN, with me now screaming unintelligibly at the Robot, who moved unperturbed through his script, not registering my bloodboiling rage because why would he? He hasn't listened to a word I've said EVER! This time, when the human picked up, I was ready. "DON'T HANG UP!," I yelled before she could speak, like a kidnap victim who's finally gotten through to an ex-friend who is now her only hope of rescue. I explained my request once more, but this time I added, "I have talked to your robot four times, but he DOESN'T KNOW HOW TO HELP ME! And the last lady I talked to just gave me back to the robot. Please. Please. I don't want to talk to the robot again." (Yes, I literally said this. That is how crazy Customer Service makes me.)

Fortunately, this nice lady was able to help me, insofar as she could tell me that the number is free for porting, and Comcast has their info screwed up. In other words: Call Customer Service! And I will. As soon as I get approval to quadruple my psych meds. 

[REDACTED]: More Than a Book Review

As some of you may know, I recently took a week-long vacation. And it. Was. Awesome! I learned a little history, a little geography, a little about myself, and a lot about terrible horrible writing for which the author should be tried at The Hague.

You see, when I take a relaxing vacation, I like to bring along a book that's set in the city I'm visiting. It's fun to be able to see the actual settings of specific scenes and it helps bring the story to life...if the story has any life in it to begin with. This brings me to the book I read on my trip, [REDACTED]. I've decided not to actually name [REDACTED] here because, as a person who has attempted all kinds of different writing myself, I can appreciate the blood, sweat and tears that went into writing it, and I'd hate for the author to Google his or her "book" and find what I have to say about it.

I can't say it was the most awful thing I've ever read, because that honor will always, always belong to Pierre Drieu de la Rochelle's les Chiens de Paille, unless I someday decide to read something by Glenn Beck or Bill O'Reilly. Actually - no, scratch that, because if I ever find myself confronted with reading anything by one of those two, I really will literally kill myself. So yeah, it's always gonna be les Chiens de Paille. But this "book" is easily the second worst thing I've ever read. And I've read The Fountainhead too, so that's saying something!

The story was OK. It was a murder mystery, and I didn't know whodunit til the big reveal, which is something. Of course, that might be because I got so little actual information that I had no basis on which to hazard a guess. Or maybe it's because I did not care one iota about any of the characters, so I never bothered to wonder who did the murdering, though I did kinda wish the murderer would just randomly take everybody out with an M-16 so the last 100 pages or so could just be pictures of kittens. That would've been better.

You might be wondering why I bothered to finish the thing, and believe me, it's a question I often asked myself during that week. There were 2 reasons:
#1: I paid $2.99 for it and I couldn't get my money back.
#2: It was so badly written that it was hilarious.

I want to be very clear about the phrase "badly written", because this is important. I'm not talking about the plot, or the dialogue being unrealistic (even though a lot it TOTALLY WAS), or anything like that. I'm primarily talking about an author who couldn't be bothered to write any kind of transition whatsoever, so that everything in the book "seemed to happen suddenly". There were sentences like: "Suddenly she realized she no longer wanted to dust in the study, so she went to bed." Translation: "I AM BORED WITH THIS SCENE AND I ALREADY TOLD YOU WHAT I NEEDED YOU TO KNOW SO IT HAS SERVED ITS PURPOSE AND I'M GOING TO BED." My absolute favorite was the phrase: "Later she would wonder why she did what she did next, as there was no logic to her actions." SERIOUSLY? Translation: "I CAN'T BE BOTHERED TO THINK UP AN EXPLANATION FOR THIS EVEN THOUGH THAT IS THE VERY ESSENCE OF MY JOB AS A STORYTELLER AND BESIDES 'MURDER SHE WROTE' IS ON SO LET'S WRAP THIS UP!" When I read that sentence, I was thirty five thousand feet above Arkansas, and it was all I could do not to hit the Flight Attendant Call button and say, "Yeah, I need you to show me how to open the emergency exit door because I do not want to live in a world where I've paid $2.99 to read this sentence."

Thankfully I'd had the forethought to pay $11.99 (well spent!) on a Margaret Atwood novel before takeoff, so the second I finished [REDACTED], I could crack that one open and be reminded how English is supposed to work. And hopefully it will only take another week or two to heal all the welts on my head from banging it on cafe tables, park benches, walls, and passing seagulls in frustration as I plodded through that God-awful book. So please, people, learn from my experience: don't buy [REDACTED] ($2.99 on Kindle).

Let's Talk ABOUT the Bathroom

Ah, the ladies room. There are exactly 8 things you're allowed to do in there:
1. Use the potty
2. WASH YOUR HANDS
3. Do yo' hurrrrr
4. Dance
5. Sob uncontrollably
6. Transport yourself to the Ministry of Magic
7. Steal TP
8. Sleep it off

You'll note (OH YES YOU WILL) that "have a long, involved, whispered conversation in the corner" is not on that list. Furthermore, you'll note (OH YES YOU WILL) that the items on this list would make for some incredibly bad background noise for your precious conversation, if you were dumb enough to try and have a conversation in there. And yet. AND YET! There are women in this world who take their private pow-wows directly to the ladies room! WHY? Actually, you know what? I don't care why. "Why" is not the point. The point is that it's WRONG WRONG WRONG. When you insist on having your little chit-chat in the potty room, it means that everyone who comes in for one of 8 perfectly legitimate reasons has completely lost her anonymity from the moment she walks in the door. Because as she walks by, you and your interlocutor are gonna glare at her like she's interrupting, like she has no right to come and pee where you are TRYING to have a conversation. And then she gets to try to do whatever she needed do knowing you are judging her the whole time.

I don't tolerate that crap, and you shouldn't either. But the problem is that most offices still refuse to designate a Bathroom Enforcer, so when you try to evict the chattering class's potty party, you get slapped with the old "YOU HAVE NO AUTHORITY HERE!" nonsense. Don't waste your time. Here's what you do instead:
1. Make eye contact with your foes as you walk in; they need to know you are aware of them and their foul, foul nonsense.
2. Enter the stall even if you only came in to do numbers 2-4.
3. Close the door.
4. Lick your inner elbow
5. Stick your open mouth on your inner elbow and blow, thereby making the loudest, wettest, nastiest fart noise you can.
6. Wait for the Talkative Tinas to beat a revolted retreat.

YOU'RE WELCOME.

For the record: YES, I do this. And you should too. Making gross noises in the stall is not shameful; it is arguably THE WHOLE POINT OF THE BATHROOM. But standing in a restroom to have a conversation? That is shameful. And it needs to stop immediately. Stay strong, people.

CRUSHED: A Practical Guide

I have a confession to make: I'm a real person. I have feelings and relationships, I do Yoga...I know, it shatters your whole vision of me. I'll give you a minute. Ready to continue? OK.

As a person with feelings, I have, on occasion, burdened other people with my feelings and/or had the feelings of others foisted upon me. It happens to the best of us. So yeah, I DID click on the link to a spiritual self-help article about dealing with unrequited love. You wanna make it into a whole thing?

This is a serious subject, of course - nobody likes having their heart broken - so it should be treated with respect and dignity. I get that. On the other hand, though, sometimes the best advice isn't necessarily the most practical advice. I mean, people have been telling me to "love myself" for years. It's easier said than done, and when you're sitting on your couch in a pile of discarded Kleenex, you need something a little stronger. So while I certainly don't have anything against that kind of advice, and think it's a wonderful long-term plan, I'd like to offer you more immediate relief. Think of it as the difference between getting physical therapy for an injury (long-term), or taking a Vicodin (HELL YEAH!). And so, without further ado, here are 10 steps you can take to turn your heart-splitting anguish into a mind-numbing stupor from which you can safely emerge at such time as the danger has passed.

1. Go to Disney World. Trust me on this. You will see people a billion times uglier, meaner, ruder, more selfish, smellier, fatter, more acne-ridden, and just generally more revolting that you will ever, ever be. That in itself probably won't make you feel better, but what WILL make you feel better is the fact that all of these people are loved. Virtually all of them will be partnered up in some way, and many of them will also have children who love them dearly. No matter how crappy you feel about yourself in this moment, the message of the hordes of Disney World attendees is that you CAN find someone to love you. As my mother says, "There's a lid for every pot". As I like to say, "If you wait long enough, you'll eventually find someone as desperately lonely as you!"

2. Get really drunk and call the object of your affections to declare (or reiterate) your love. This is an excellent idea because when you sober up, you can know with ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY that nothing can EVER happen between the two of you because you will be far too busy trying to convince the federal government to let you into the Witness Protection Program. I speak from experience on this one. When they ask what murder you witnessed, you can't just say "The murder OF MY DIGNITY!!!!" No dice.

3. Write embarrassingly gut-wrenching poems about your situation and post them as your Facebook status. Here's an example to get you started:
How can you say you don't know me?
I gave you my heart
My soul
And you ripped them both out
And gnashed them between your incisors
You stupid jerk
I hope you get gangrene of the rectum
Yikes. You might think this serves no positive purpose, but once again, appearances prove to be deceiving! I myself have never taken the "horrifically wince-inducing Facebook poetry" approach, but I've seen other people do it ad infinitum and frankly, it's hilarious. If you're gonna sit around and mope, you could at least try to bring some joy to someone else's life; that's all I'm saying. Oh - and should you post that poem and have someone mistake it for song lyrics or an excerpt from a more famous poet, simply re-post it, adding your name and the date at the bottom. I mean, c'mon - who WOULDN'T want credit for that work of genius?

4. Attack the source. Your heart is killing you, right? I mean, the pain is so terrible - it physically hurts to be so unloved. Solution? Deep fry everything, eat salt by the spoonful, and adopt the motto: "It isn't dinner without a dozen Krispy Kremes!" This will definitely show your heart who's boss, and that you can stop it in its slimy little tracks whenever you so choose! See? Empowering.

5. Find someone new. This is the oldest trick in the book, I know, but you can't argue with results! The best way to get over someone is to find someone new to love! I mean, sure, your heart won't really be in it, and you'll spend all your time comparing the new person to your old flame. The new guy will be great on paper, but how could he hope to match the way your beloved used to smile? Or the nervous laughter you could elicit in the early days of your flirtation with no more than a knowing glance? But if you just give someone else a chance, you'll see that NO ONE ON EARTH CAN HOPE TO MEASURE UP TO THE LOVE YOU'VE LOST OH GOD WHY WON'T YOU LOVE ME I GAVE YOU EVERYTHIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNGGGGG!
Abort! Abort! This one's a bad idea! What's #6? QUICKLY QUICKLY!

6. Remember what I said earlier about Vicodin? There's nothing wrong with literal interpretations. I'm just sayin'.

7. Watch Wicked Attraction. It's on Netflix Watch Instantly right now. I've been watching this for weeks, and I can't recommend it highly enough. It's just your typical true-story-of-ghastly-crime series, but what makes it different is that it's always about two or more people working together to torture/rape/kill innocent victims. Usually these two or more people are involved romantically, and usually there's a point where the forensic psychiatrist says "There were no prior indications that Person A would end up being a violent killer - no previous convictions, no terrible childhood, no mental problems. It's just that s/he loved Person B SO MUCH and wanted to please them..." The takeaway here is that if you love someone, you might end up accidentally becoming a serial killer! I KNOW, RIGHT?!?! Being single has its perks, y'all. My bed might be cold. My back might be itchy. I might be a cold, lonely, bitter spinster. But I'm no murderer.

8. Participate in NaNoWriMo. I am! It's one of the reasons I've been so conspicuously absent lately, actually. The other reason being a hypothetical boy issue that may or may not have distracted me up until it inspired me to write this post. But that's as may be. My point is that NaNoWriMo is a wonderful outlet - like a journal, but more awesome. In my case, the second I felt an infatuation coming on, I wrote this alleged boy into my story as THE Good Guy of the tale. Once I realized he didn't care if I lived or died, I blew his character up in a massive explosion that left his limbs strewn around a cesspool! See? Empowering.

9. Answer calls from telemarketers. Ordinarily I would advise against this - who wants to talk to those losers? But let's face it: the broken-hearted need someone to talk to, and your friends are only going to listen to the same crap a few hundred times before they change their numbers, move away, and/or get a restraining order. If other people are going to call you, why not make good use of that?

10. Win the lottery, lose 40 pounds, and become a Victoria's Secret model. I haven't tried this one myself yet, but I'm pretty sure it'd work.

Alice in Run-derland

I hate exercise. There, I said it.

I don't mind long walks, tennis games, Wii Fit or Chinese Fire Drills. Those things are fun. What I hate is the capital-E "Exercise" - the kind where you have to run a certain distance or swim for a certain length of time or whatever, all while monitoring your various bodily functions and vital signs. I didn't always hate capital-E "Exercise" quite this much. Once upon a time I only mildly disliked it, and even made occasional efforts to learn to like it. But then I dated a triathlete for a year, and I'm here to tell you: if you ever want to get to a point where you hate health and can't wait to blow up like Jabba the Hut and die, date a serious triathlete. Good Lord.

The thing is, a guy says he's a triathlete and you immediately think "That's HOT!" And it is...kind of. On the one hand, he probably will have a good-looking body, and if you go to races with him, you'll get to travel a bit and meet lots of new people. So that's nice. On the other hand, you will end up sharing your bedroom with a bicycle that is far more important to him than you will ever be, you'll be surrounded by piles of nasty sweat-soaked clothes, and sooner or later you will find yourself shivering beside an unfamiliar river at 5 in the morning while a group of strangers nearby give each other a detailed report of exactly what happened when they went into those Port-a-Potties moments before. Apparently this is just typical breeze-shooting among athletes. All the more reason to aspire to a sedentary lifestyle, if you ask me.

Anyway, before The Triathlete taught me the beauty of sitting still in air conditioned rooms, I periodically took a stab at athleticism myself. One of my favorite things to do was Fail to Run Races at Disney World. I should note that running races at Disney World is probably fun too, but I wouldn't know, as I only ever failed to run them. For a few years, I failed to run the Food & Wine Festival 10k. I would go down to Florida, walk the course (taking full advantage of the free food so bizarrely offered at the water stops), jog across the finish line and call it a resounding success. But then, one summer, I got incredibly light-headed and/or drunk and/or had a mildly psychotic episode and registered myself for the to Fail to Run the Disney World Half Marathon the following January. My brother signed up too, except that he ultimately Failed to Fail at it, but I guess he just didn't understand the object of the game.

Believe it or not, I was on track to Fail to Fail myself, except that I ended up with a 2-month long health issue in November and December, meaning there was no way I could run 13.1 miles in January. I opted, once again, to walk.

The thing about Disney races is that they are designed to be beginner-friendly, with lots of distractions along the way - photo ops with characters, courses that take you "behind the scenes" so you get to see some cool stuff, and of course the scenery. It's good of them to provide these things, and if you've trained appropriately, it makes for a REALLY cool, REALLY memorable race. On the other hand, if you're me (and you're barely prepared to walk to your mailbox), it makes it increasingly difficult to discern reality from hallucination. I remember seeing human-sized mice wearing bridal veils. I remember meeting Winnie the Pooh in a remote corner of a parking lot. I remember a woman bearing handfuls of melted Ghirardelli chocolate squares, which she shoved into my fists as I passed. I remember Captain Hook taking hostages on a Disney Cruise Line boat, again in a parking lot. But I couldn't tell you how much of this was real, and how much was my brain's attempt to ignore the fact that I was walking myself toward the cold, comforting arms of death. I find it a little disconcerting that they're now actively marketing this as a plus.

From the site for Disney's Princess Half Marathon, February 2012

This picture is like a bad acid flashback for me. I remember only too well the nightmarish blaring of the alligator's trumpet in my ear, the bizarre and inappropriate propositioning of the frog as I ran screaming from the castle, in which I was convinced I had just seen Cinderella hurling glass slippers at me. The waters rose up out of nowhere, and slowly closed in around me until I was trapped.

From the site for the Disney Wine and Dine Half-Marathon

And here, again, we see a hapless runner staring fixedly ahead, telling herself "THEY'RE NOT REAL! THEY'RE NOT REAL!" Living champagne bottles douse her with alcohol as a talking candle menacingly brandishes his flames at her booze-soaked leg. A clock and some napkins laugh and dance mockingly as Jackie Joyner Joan of Arc approaches. The horror!

While these photos may look completely fake, they are all too real to those of us who have Failed to Prepare for a Disney World Race. *shudder* Still, it's healthier than doing acid. 

(Seriously, though, if you're wanting to do a long-distance race for the first time, you should check out the Disney races. They're much more fun than just running endlessly on empty roads, which has been my experience with most other races. Not that I personally will ever race again, except in cases where there's only one cupcake left.)

SWF Seeks SEWVUV

Ugh. The single life. Regular readers (both of them ) will recall my many previous posts about my online dating experiences, and will probably be relieved to hear that I deactivated my profile last month after an escalating series of messages from some random weirdo. But "random weirdo" is not a very nice term to use, so I'll let you read our paraphrased conversation and judge for yourselves:
HIM (mid-June): Hi! You're pretty. Where do you do improv?
HIM (2 days later): Just bored at work so I thought I'd drop you a line. Send me a message!
HIM (early July): What's up?
HIM (one week later): I heard a funny joke today I thought you'd like. Chat me and I'll tell you
HIM (one hour later): IT SAYS YOU'RE ONLINE NOW! ARE YOU ONLINE? CHAT ME!
HIM (late August): We should meet up sometime.
ME: (cancels subscription to service)

So I had given up on finding love, and I've only grown more hopeless in the past week as I've learned that two of my celebrity crushes are Libras* (UGH!) and one of them is quite possibly gay.

Let's just say I've been working on my fantasy Golden Girls roommate roster and checking out retirement communities in Miami. Acceptance is the first step.

But then CNN ran a story about 5 great train rides for viewing fall foliage. CURSE YOU, CNN!

C'mon Great Smoky Mountain Railroad! You're killing me here!

I know they say that in the springtime a young man's thoughts turn to bikinis and foot fetishes or whatever, but I tend to be much more relationship-oriented in the fall than any other season. And I know some people say Christmas is the time of year when single people pine for companionship, but those people have never spent 2 weeks deadlocked in a fight to the death over whose family gets Christmas day and whose family gets stuck with the day after. Hell, if I ever do end up in a relationship again, we're going to be on a break from December 1 to December 30 every year. I simply cannot spend yet another Yuletide screaming "All I want for Christmas is MY LIFE BACK!" But I digress.

Fall is nice because there aren't any designated days that make you a horrible child if you don't spend them with your family, the weather's cool enough to warrant snuggly behavior, and it's a low-cost/low-traffic time for weekend getaways. I have many a fond autumn memory of Chattanooga, Athens, Helen, and even the beach...bundling up, exploring the scenery, drinking apple cider, eating in nice restaurants, staying in fancy B&Bs...and not paying for any of it!

OK, hang on - before you start calling me a gold digger, hear me out. It's not just about freeloading fun fall activities. Believe it or not, there are guys I could con into buying me things this very second if I wanted to, but that's not my deal. Half the fun is the companionship, and I'm extremely picky about guys - ask any of my exes. I also tend to be on the defensive when I first meet prowling boys, just because I know they can't be trusted. So if some random guy walked up to me and said, "Hey, d'you wanna ride the Great Smoky Mountain Railroad though Nantahala Gorge?", I'd pepper spray first and ask questions later. But if you've already got someone whose company you enjoy, and you want to spend hours and hours staring out a train window with them...c'mon, it's the icing on the cake if it's free.

It's just that getting to that point in a relationship is so difficult! You have to do that whole PowerPoint presentation of who you are and where you came from and why you aren't allowed inside Hardee's anymore. Then you have to tolerate each other's friends. Then you have to decide if you can stand to watch him talk with his mouth full of pizza for as long as you both shall live. Then you have to guess exactly what his mother will hate about you and try to fix it (or at least cover it up) before you meet her. Then you have to pretend to enjoy Dune or Star Wars or baseball... It's a whole THING. All that just so you can get on a damn train and quietly drink some coffee while looking out a window together!

Screw it. Maybe they'll let me bring my cat.

*As my wise friend C once said, "Never date a Libra. Libras are criers. It's exhausting."

Sketch Challenge, 4th & 5th Sets: It Is Done.

WARNING: CONTAINS GRATUITOUS SELF-INDULGENT YAMMERING

Oh.

My.

God.

It's done. It's over. I'm finished. I literally cannot believe it.

When I first hatched this bright-ass idea, I thought it would be fun! Then I thought it would be educational! Then I thought it would be a great way to sharpen my writing skills!

...and then I thought, "If I drink enough tequila to drown a horse, I will feel better."

Luckily I managed to come back with a vengeance these last two weeks and I FINISHED. I don't know what suddenly motivated me to get off my ass (or rather, to get back on my ass in front of my computer), but I'm glad I did! The thing is, I usually start a challenging creative project, get about 80% done, and quit/give up/whatever you want to call it. When progress ground to a halt in the 4th set, I feared I had gone as far as I was gonna go. So now, even though the last two sets aren't my best work, they're done. And I'm pretty ridiculously pleased about that.

So did I achieve my goals? And while I'm thinking about it, what the hell were my goals? I'm WAY too lazy to reread the original posts, but I'm pretty sure I was trying to:
1. amuse myself
2. find out what it's like to be a comedy writer working to a deadline (which is why the deadlines were modeled on John Finnemore's for his sketch show)
3. become a better writer

We'll take them individually. Because it's MY blog. And I have achieved something for a change, so I will talk about it for as long as I damn well please.

1. Did I amuse myself? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. More often than not, I would walk away from a writing session saying something like "Mother of GOD I suck!" This was decidedly unamusing, and was also a large part of the reason my liver took such a massive hit in the middle few weeks. But there were also numerous times when I would reread something a few weeks after writing it and find myself actually laughing, pleasantly surprised at the quality of my work. So I was amused some of the time. I'll say this for the overall project: it was consistently 100% amusing to watch myself try to rationalize my failures and procrastinations. Hilarious. Five stars.

2. Do I now know what it's like to be a comedy writer working to a deadline? Again: yes and no. I definitely got a healthy dose of reality about it. I mean, I read a lot (like, A LOT) of interviews with/blogs maintained by people who write comedy (not just John Finnemore), and I had seen patterns emerge in their collective characterization of the process. But when people keep saying writing comedy is like pulling teeth...I guess I just couldn't grasp it. I mean, writing my master's thesis was like pulling teeth. Doing writing samples for job applications is like pulling teeth. But comedy? Something funny? How can that ever be work?

I AM HERE TO TELL YOU THAT IT CAN VERY EASILY BE WORK. AND VERY VERY DIFFICULT WORK, AT THAT.

Now when I read those interviews/blogs, I can genuinely relate to what those people are saying. I know exactly what they mean. So in that respect, I "know what's like" now.

On the other hand, I still have no idea "what it's like" in terms of deadlines. It's fantastic that I finished today, but I was supposed to be done on August 27th. And that was after I gave myself a 2-week mental health break in the middle. I'm willing to give myself a little bit of leeway here, in that it was never possible for me to truly replicate Being a Full-Time Comedy Writer, since I'm already a Full-Time Something Else and a Part-Time Improv Actress. And then my Full-Time Something Else Employer went and staged a MAJOR acquisition right in the middle of my Sketch Challenge (the nerve!), which meant I ended up spending even more time and energy in that sphere than usual. So maybe it wasn't realistic to expect myself to meet the same deadlines as John Finnemore. On the other hand, he was doing sketch show stuff while doing Cabin Pressure stuff and becoming The Definitive Summarizer of the NOTW Scandal on The Now Show, so it's not like he was able to spend 24 hours a day, 7 days a week on sketch writing either. That's why I'm not completely excused. Quit yer bitchin', Welsh! We all have other shit going on! (<-- 99% sure this is not how John Finnemore would talk.)

3. Did it make me a better writer? In all honesty, I think the quality went steadily downhill from the middle of the 3rd set onward. The dialogue got more stilted, the jokes (on the rare occasion when there were discernible jokes after the 3rd set) weren't any good and tended to be ill-timed...everything just felt clunkier. Maybe it was because I had run out of ideas. Or maybe it was because I had too much other stuff going on (see: Employer situation). Or maybe it was because I went on vacation and lost my mojo. Or maybe I got bored and stopped paying attention - I will readily admit that by the time I got to the last 3 pages, I would gladly have written my name over and over again just to fill the space and be DONE. I think I'll just postpone this assessment. If there's one thing blogging has taught me, it's that everything gets better when extensively edited. And right now I'm putting the sketches aside for 2 weeks so I can come back completely fresh and edit the living crap out of them in October. I'll tell you on 1 November whether I've learned anything as a writer.

For now, here are 10 things I have learned during the Sketch Challenge:
1. The more tired I am, the less likely I am to fall asleep.
2. I can't write with ambient music playing. I just need the same 10 songs (with lyrics) to play over and over and over while I work.
3. "Butter London" is a Seattle-based company. WTF?!?!?
4. I have a friend who can do TEN official Disney character autographs!
5. Yellow roses symbolize jealousy(?!?!)
6. This: "?!?!!" is called an "interrobang". You're welcome.
7. There is a statue of a man walking a gator on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina.

In case anyone was confused as to the meaning of the term "baller"

8. I don't like eating doughnuts as much as I like thinking about eating doughnuts.
9. 97% of guys named Ben are hot. FACT.
10. The Scrivener project target bar really does turn green...eventually.

This "V" Sign is for Venza!

It's been a while since I've done an in-depth advertising analysis, and I know y'all are just too shy to ask for one, so HERE I AM. The thing is, though...I don't honestly know if this one is a FAIL or a WIN. Let's take a look at the new series of commercials for the Toyota Venza. I've seen 4 of them so far:
- the one with the girl who moves across the country and "can't imagine what her parents are doing without her"
- the one with the girl who (HILARIOUSLY) judges everyone's quality of life by the number of Facebook friends they have. (HILARIOUS! Because Facebook "friends" aren't the same as real friends, and NO ONE HAS EVER MADE THAT OBSERVATION BEFORE! HAAAAA HA HA HA HA!)
- the one with the girl who worries that, when her parents don't answer her calls, it means they are injured/unable to get to the phone
- the one with the guy who moves back home "because he's worried about his parents" and comments on how sad, boring, and lonely their lives are

So it's the same basic formula every time:
Hipster 20-something kid finds parents' existence to be pathetically boring; parents are out having a blast, unbeknownst to hipster 20-something kid.

HOO BOY THOSE STUPID HIPSTERS SURE DO HAVE EGG ON THEIR FACE, NO?

Well, no, actually. And I'll tell you why, primarily using the example of the guy who moved back home. Here's the ad, for your reference:


Everybody put your parsin' pants on...

After college I moved back in with my parents. I was worried about 'em, you know?
The Toyota people want you to think, "Here's a self-important kid who thinks his parents can't live without him! What a little snot!" But if you're an American who graduated from college any time in the last ten years, as I did, you're more likely to think, "Aw. He couldn't get a job that paid a living wage either. Hang in there, man! I had to live with my parents for a long time too." NOT SO FUNNY NOW, IS IT?

I mean, for instance, my mom went to bed tonight before making my dinner [SHOT OF PARENTS CHEERFULLY SINGING ALONG WITH THE RADIO IN THEIR FANCY TOYOTA VENZA]. Which is fine, I mean, I know how to make dinner [SHOT OF MICROWAVE HEATING MEAL].
This is where the hilarity starts to kick in - see, he thinks his parents have gone to bed, but they have in fact gone to pick up their friends for an impromptu road trip! They didn't even bother to tell their son they left town! And really, why would they? He's such a LOSER! Look at him, eating Lean Cuisine for dinner because it was all the grocery store had for less than $4 and he didn't get home from his soul-crushing cubicle before all the restaurants closed. Oh man, this is great!

It just starts to make you wonder - is this what happens when you age? [PARENTS ARRIVE AT WHAT APPEARS TO BE BURNING MAN, HIPSTER IS NOW SITTING IN THE MOST BORING, EMPTY ROOM IN THE WORLD]
OK, now this is the high point of the whole thing. See, his parents have gone to a gigantic desert orgy to drop acid and have fun! They can afford to do that because they have faithfully voted Republican for decades, so that when the dad finally sold his company, he simultaneously dodged that federal embezzlement charge and got literally millions of dollars (at the expense of the taxpayers and his former employees) so he and his wife can live the Dionysian dream until they take so much coke their hearts stop! Meanwhile, their hapless hipster son's stuck at home, in a series of tiny beige rooms he can't even afford to decorate with posters! Ha ha ha! I bet he WISHES he was going to Burning Man, only he can't, because he has to be back at Widget Hell Incorporated at 7am, or Mr. Dithers will throw him out on the street and he won't have health insurance to pay for the anti-depressants he desperately needs to cope with the crippling heartbreak of watching literally every dream he ever had go up in an overworked, underpaid, heavily-taxed puff of smoke! God, this is a laugh!

My friends used to say I was the lucky one; I had the fun parents. Where's the fun now? [HIPSTER YELLS "GOODNIGHT" TO HIS PARENTS' CLOSED BEDROOM DOOR. THERE IS NO ANSWER.]
Oh God, I am laughing so hard I'm crying over here! "Where's the fun now?," indeed! He has to go straight to bed because it's already 1am and he has to get up in 4 hours because he has a 1.5 hour commute for that 7am start time. The only problem is that the commercial then cuts back to Burning Man, where the smug, rich, old, white people who ruined America for the rest of us are offloading bags of sex toys and syringes from the back of their fancy brand-new Toyota Venza. We never get to see the moment when the arson team they hired finally lights the house, with their son still inside, for the insurance money. And we also never see the flashback to the moment two days before, when they took out a $5 million life insurance policy on him. In a way they did him a favor; he would never have been worth more than $30k alive.

Venza-driving bastards.

So I guess I would have to conclude that if you are a law-breaking "objectivist" piece of crap who believes there is nothing more important than your own selfishness, this is a win. On the other hand, if you're an American under 40 who ever harbored dreams of owning your own home, getting adequate sleep, being able to afford medical care or having your employer treat you like anything more than a number, it's a FAIL. Perspective is really important.

Note to Self: How to Vacate the Premises, Part II

If you are a person who knows me personally and sees me in person from time to time, please punch me in the face the next time you see me. I deserve it, and it's the only way I'm ever going to learn.

Some of you may recall that I wrote a blog post LIKE, A MONTH AGO in which I outlined all the things that are absolutely imperative to guarantee a good vacation. You MUST get the hell out of town! There MUST be a housekeeping staff! You can NOT travel with your family! These aren't just suggestions; they are incontrovertible scientific truths, like the law of gravity and the fact that only guys I'm *not* attracted to will ever want me! Ignoring these facts is just ASKING to be tortured.

So what did I do?

Well, last Wednesday, I had this conversation with my boss:
BOSS: Man, you're gonna bust your butt this week and then not have anything to do til mid-September!
ME: Hey, you're right. (PAUSE) I'd like next week off, please.
...and then Bikinius, Roman Goddess of Summer Vacays, came down from the heavens and beat me senseless with an inflatable pool toy before stabbing me repeatedly with a decorative plastic cocktail garnish sword. Because I had done it a-flipping-gain.

My brilliant (<--SARCASM!) plan was that I would have Monday thru Wednesday to write, clean up, and relax. Then I'd go to the beach with my parents Wednesday evening and be back on Saturday night, in time to do more writing/cleaning/relaxing over the last half of Labor Day weekend. If you read that other blog post, you'll remember what I said about "staycations" - mainly that they do not exist. If you are at home, you are not on vacation. Period. I said that if you stay home, a hundred bizarre misfortunes will befall you and you will not enjoy one second of it.

So yesterday the new cat sitter was coming over. And rather than give her the impression that my entire home is one big experiment in composting, I decided to clean up. This meant 4 hours of frantic cleaning, scrubbing, folding, sweeping, dusting, etc. By the time she came over, the place was passable. Also, I had injured my back in the process. Badly. We'll call this FAIL #1.

So I spent the rest of the BEAUTIFUL afternoon laying on the couch atop a carefully constructed mountain of pillows and blankets designed for maximum padding of the hurtiest part of my back with an electric hand warmer shoved up the back of my bra for want of a hot water bottle. Livin' the dream. I had done such a good job of engineering my Back Bracing Blankets that I started to think I should just sleep on the couch! I decided I felt like watching something educational, which is how I ended up falling asleep watching a documentary about the Nürnberg Trials. Here's some advice you can have for free: Never, EVER, fall asleep watching ANYTHING holocaust-related. FAIL #2.  When I woke up screaming (and having fallen off my Back Bracing Blankets in the course of fighting the Nazis), I decided maybe I should go to bed after all. And with the aid of powerful narcotics, that's exactly what I did.

This morning I awoke to the news that I will be without a car for most of the next 48 hours, so I and my bad back needed to get the hell up and go shop for supplies. I'm not exactly what you would call a "morning person" anyway, and this news was not helping. Still, I was determined to make the best of it! The shopping itself was pretty uneventful, but on the 5-minute drive home, I had this experience, in this order:
1. A guy in an SUV made a U-turn the wrong way down a one-way street, which meant he was coming directly toward me. I stopped, he realized he was going the wrong way, and started to back up.
2. A guy on a motorcycle going WAY too fast came flying up behind the SUV and just managed to stop before hitting him.
3. When SUV guy reached the bottom of the hill ahead of me, he stopped and did a weird maneuver into another lane. As I approached the bottom of the hill myself, I realized why...
4. A woman in a minivan was slowly and determinedly attempting to make her way up the hill...going the wrong way up a one-way street. Right at me.
For those of you counting at home, that's two narrowly-missed head-on collisions and the near-witnessing of a dead motorcyclist...in a 5-minute drive. I MUST be on a staycation! FAIL #3.

I have to admit, things have been better since I got back home. I mean, I had 2 bowls of Frosted Flakes, so how bad can it be? But I did lose 2 hours searching things like "gothic tiny person creature" trying to get the internet to remind me of a word I had forgotten ("Homunculus"), so it's still kind of a mixed bag.

WHY AM I HITTING MYSELF? WHY AM I HITTING MYSELF?...

I thought that would be a funny title for a blog post on Wednesday, 8/whatever-last-Wednesday-was/2011. I had just come home from a self-defense workshop with my fellow improv actors (what's funnier than improv actors doing improv? Improv actors doing self-defense!), and I was struck by the fact that in 2 hours of punching, eyeball-poking, kicking, and pinching, I had done no damage whatsoever to anyone or anything else. I had, however, really given my own right knee what for! I had kneed SO many fake groins SO hard that I had a combination bruise/swelling/friction burn thing. I hobbled for most of Thursday, and the scabs still haven't healed up and fallen off. Basically, if that night was any indication, a violent attacker in a parking lot or dark alley will be met with me yelling "GIVE ME THAT!", taking his gun, and shooting myself in the face. It seems this is how I roll. You're welcome, hardened criminals.

But that blog post title was substantially less funny when it occurred to me again today. You see, I live in a condo complex with a parking garage. Among this parking garage's ultra-modern features:
- grossly undersized parking spaces, so you have to enter and exit them with surgical precision, even if you drive a little Barbie's Dreamcar Mazda Miata
- lanes too narrow to accommodate more than one car at a time, so you must be ready to dive into a space at any moment to avoid collision
- MASSIVE concrete columns every 10 feet on either side of the lane, which are convenient for testing the efficacy of your airbag, blocking available space you might otherwise use to avoid collision, and conveniently preventing you from seeing what's coming when backing out of a space. I like to think of them as Complacency Prevention Measures.
- a 7-year old whose asshole parents categorically REFUSE to prevent him from zipping through the parking garage on various non-automobile conveyances, no matter how many times the newsletter specifically states that no one should be electro-scootering, rollerblading, skateboarding, etc. in the crowded and dangerous parking garage. Dear That Kid's Parents: Be sure to take out a life insurance policy on him! Love, Darwin

I lost my passenger side mirror to a concrete column the first week I lived here, but in the subsequent four years have developed good parking garage survival instincts and avoided further trouble. Until Saturday...

On my way to the gate, I found myself at one of the many points where the lane is not wide enough for 2 cars to turn in opposing directions at the same time. Being a fundamentally polite person, I stopped and waited for the oncoming car to move past me. Then I waited for the next one. And the next. And the next. Around car #6, I couldn't help feeling that in all fairness, my turn had come, and since car #7 had fallen a little behind, I figured I could start my turn, he would see me/stop, and then I could move forward. Instead, I pulled forward, he saw me...and decided to play chicken with me.

I am nothing if not a huge chicken.

Unfortunately, he was such an aggressive sportsman that he had advanced too quickly for a simple stop to be sufficient to avoid head-on collision, so I also had to swerve...thereby slamming the back half of my car into the concrete column on my right.

I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but people are HUGE assholes. Seriously.

I heard the crunch zone of my rear passenger door surrendering to the concrete, and I immediately went into my Vehicular Emergency Coping Procedure:
Step 1: Close eyes. Think "That did not just happen. That did not just happen. That did not just happen."
Step 2: Open eyes. Faced with the unavoidable reality that something bad did just happen, find the nearest place to pull over. Convey your vehicle to that point for assessment.
Step 3: Unlock all doors, knowing you are having a breakdown and are INCREDIBLY likely to accidentally lock yourself out. Then go have a look.
Step 4: Crumble into a heap.

And just in case you think I'm kidding about Step 1, I once had an accident in which I rolled into the car ahead of me in bumper-to-bumper rain-induced traffic. After the initial BAM, I commenced Step 1. When the car behind me rolled into me and I felt the subsequent identical BAM, I became completely and utterly convinced that I had been swallowed up into a temporal loop, and was doomed to sit in that bucket seat, slamming into the car in front of me over and over and over, for the rest of eternity. I am not kidding. The only way I eventually realized I wasn't in Purgatory was when I saw the rain-soaked face of the driver from the car behind me, knocking on my window and asking if I was alright.

But I digress. The thing is, I was completely devastated by Saturday's turn of events. Not because I'm that materialistic and can't cope with cosmetic damage to my car, but because 1) I DO NOT have the funds to cover the repair of the damage caused when I essentially drove into a concrete column of my own accord ("WHY AM I HITTING MYSELF?") and 2) if you've stumbled upon my little "About Me" page, you'll know that I have a bad habit of naming/anthropomorphizing inanimate objects. This was not cosmetic damage to my car; this was me being wholly responsible for harming Arionrhod - a wonderful companion who has been nothing but good to me.

Rion in happier times, on the day I got her. MY POOR BABY! WHYYYYYYYYYY??????

I couldn't have felt worse if I had sucker-punched my best friend for no reason. And I would feel really badly about that. To make matters worse, these injuries to my current ride were eerily reminiscent of those sustained by my very first car, Rex, in my very first accident:

The Baby Jesus Dodging Incident

I was 17. I'd had Rex for about 6 months. Christmas was coming. I was going to go to Sunday School, mostly because all of my friends were there. I drove to the church I had attended from the age of 5. I turned down the parking lot aisle in which my family had parked since I was 5. But my way was blocked by the Christmas-y addition of a manger, in which lay the baby Jesus.

A dumpster prevented me from seeing traffic behind me, so I couldn't back into the main thoroughfare. But I also couldn't park in the middle of the lane, as I would be blocking the 4 cars that had gotten the only 4 available spaces. I assessed the situation.

This was the reality of the situation.

This was my perception of the situation.

As you can see from the illustration above, I was pretty sure my car was an aircraft carrier, and the son of God was, quite literally, all around me. Perhaps I should point out that the "baby Jesus" was not an actual baby, but a doll, as you probably expect. My paranoia was not about hitting him and/or caving his manger in on him. The problem was that I was 17 years old. If I had done anything that damaged the manger and/or the representation of the Christ child, I would spend the rest of high school being "The Girl Who Ran Over Jesus". NOBODY'S reputation can take that. NOBODY. So my focus was that I would not, under any circumstances, take out the manger. I took my foot off the brake and started to inch forward. Once Mary and Joseph were even with my side mirror, I figured I was in the clear.

That's when I heard the crunch of surrender on my passenger side and felt Rex come to a total standstill. In my concern to avoid hitting the manger, I had managed to get snagged on the rear corner of the church van. So I was embarrassed, devastated, and unable to free my car from the van's grip. Ultimately a kind soul sent his wife and daughters into the church while he stood in the cold and directed me through the steps to liberate Rex, at which point I engaged in Steps 3 and 4 for the first time in my life.

So I wasn't The Girl Who Ran Over Jesus. Instead, I was The Girl Who Destroyed Her Own Car and a Church Van in Order to Avoid Running Over Jesus. So I saved Jesus, who then saved everybody else, which basically means I am the savior of mankind. You're all welcome. I'm going to hell.

MY POINT IS: there are few things in this life that will make you feel dumber/more publicly humiliated than doing thousands of dollars of damage to your own car all by yourself. Arionrhod's journey back to wholeness will begin on Monday, but I have no idea when (or if) my ego will ever bounce back. I sure hope the asshat who spooked me into the column enjoyed his afternoon at the pool! I'm off to take some more sedatives to try and stop the flashbacks.

You Are Encouraged to Quote Me On That

For the last two Christmases, one of my best girlfriends has given me little quote-of-the-day calendars featuring quotes from famous/brilliant/funny/otherwise notable women. A lot of them are truly inspirational and/or entertaining, but every once in a while, there's one that's just kinda patronizing. Or too specific - having never had a single husband, it's hard for me to relate to the "none of my four husbands have had enough money to make me happy" genre. It's dangerous to let the quality of something like that slip, because this will inevitably lead to me thinking I could do it. And that's how I ended up wondering which great Kimberly Welsh truisms will someday be on just such a calendar. Here are the first ten; print 'em out before you have to pay $6.99 to buy them on tiny sheets of rippable paper!

Awesome/Helpful Sayings By Me, As Made Up Right This Very Second, With No Context Whatsoever

1. "Being a female writer is just like being a male writer, except you have to make a big show out of pretending to feel guilty if you eat a whole pizza."
2. "Purse dogs have it so easy. They don't even know."
3. "I just ate a TON of watermelon, and am not in any intestinal distress whatsoever. So I'm declaring that an urban myth and ordering everyone to keep their real or imagined intestinal distress to themselves in the future!"
4. "A person's laugh says a lot about them. For example, if you laugh like Snidely Whiplash, that says, 'I should stop laughing because it's disconcerting to those around me!'"
5. "There is no problem so great that it cannot be solved by a footlong mayo and provolone sandwich on french bread, washed down with a pint of NyQuil."
6. "Do you work in an inhumane cubicle environment? Why not try stabbing your eardrums with thumbtacks?"
7. "In the battle for the Most Adorable Version of the Twitter bird, Twitterrific has pecked out the eyeballs of its competition*!"
8. "I resent the implication that just because I am staggeringly gorgeous, I cannot also be funny."
9. "Sometimes people say things and I'm like, 'HUH?!?!?'"
10. "Soap is the worst breakup consolation gift. And yet two different people have presented me with soap on the occasion of two different breakups. What is that about? I mean, yeah, I was depressed, but I hadn't stopped bathing, for God's sake!"


*But Tweetcaster is a far superior application, just so we're clear.

The Kwerky Guide to... Car Service!

I’m writing this post in an actual car service center, so you know I’ve done my research this time. For once.

Until 2 years ago, the car I drove technically belonged to my parents. And since my parents are not complete morons, they also took responsibility for making sure it got all the necessary service in a timely manner. But then I bought a nearly-new car from them, and now I have to maintain it myself. I don’t mean I physically lie down on the ground and change oil - AS IF. I mean I do this:

Step 1: Realize you are roughly 1,000 miles overdue for whatever service you’re supposed to have. This step is crucial. If you don’t do this, you’ll never get to step 2. But don't worry - even if you miss it, you'll get helpful hints like your dad saying, "Hey - what's the mileage on your car now?" And then you'll say, "You're just asking because you think I don't KNOW because I'm not paying attention and it's overdue for service! I am an adult now, dad." (NOTE: you have no idea what the mileage is, but you're pretty sure it's waaaaaay overdue for service. It usually is.) Another helpful hint will be if your car explodes.

Step 2: Make an appointment for the appropriate service. You can do this one of 2 ways. The first is to call, which means you have to talk to a person, but it also means the appointment gets made pretty quickly. The second is to go online, which means you get to avoid talking to a person AND you get to yell at a computer AND the appointment may not even go through. Naturally, I opt for the latter option every time. Take this morning, for instance, when the booking software wasn’t working properly. The only way to get through the seven-step booking process was: complete step 1 --> go back to the home screen --> return to the booking screen --> complete steps 1 and 2 --> go back to the home screen --> return to the booking screen --> complete steps 1, 2, and 3 --> go back to the home screen... I booked an appointment 29 minutes from the time I started this process. By the time I confirmed it, I had 10 minutes to get to the service center. Web-based booking + my stubborn refusal to use telephones = Convenience!

Step 3: Argue with condescending jerks who aren’t listening to you. I might need to mention here that I’m a girl, though I realize some guys get similar treatment in these situations. And in addition to being a girl, I have the further disadvantage of having a decorative Georgia Tech plate on the front bumper of my car. It’s not mine; it’s a remnant from when the car belonged to my mom. But since I couldn’t care less one way or the other, it’s still there.

For those of you who don’t live in Georgia (or indeed in the US): Georgia Tech and the University of Georgia have a longstanding and very intense rivalry that I have never understood since it seems like UGA always wins the stupid football game which, as it happens, is another thing I don’t care about. But there is apparently a strictly enforced law stating that every mechanic or “Car Service Advisor” in the state has to be a UGA fan. Lucky me.

So when I pull into the service center bay, I’m greeted by my friendly Car Service Advisor, and the conversation goes a little something like this...

HIM: Good morning!

ME: Morning!

HIM: What can we do for you today?

ME: I have a 10:30 appointment for...

HIM: WHOA! Let me guess! You came in to have that nasty Tech plate taken off, right? Heh heh heh. We can take care of that for you.

ME: Yeah, ha ha. No, actually, I came in for an oil change. I have an appointment. 10:30? Under “Welsh”?

HIM: OK, yeah. We’ll do you an oil change...and we can replace that Tech plate with a UGA plate at no additional charge.

ME: No thanks.

HIM: If you leave the Tech plate on there, we might have to charge you extra! Ha ha!

ME: Actually, that’s my mom’s. I graduated from UGA.

HIM: Oh yeah? GO DAWGS!

ME: Right. I don’t care about football. I just need my oil changed, PLEASE. And I was also wondering if you could clean the air ducts? Terrifying demons sometimes come out of the vents and spit acid on my face*.

HIM: Oh yeah. Uh-huh, sure, we can do that. And we’ll put a UGA tag on the front free of charge!

*Obviously I’ve never had this exact problem - my car's maker is known for its commitment to demonic possession-resistance - but I usually have some additional request, ranging from a car wash to getting the front seats vacuumed to having them change the actual, state-issued, DMV license plate on the back bumper. My point here is that it doesn’t matter what I said, because he hasn’t heard a word of it.

At this point, it’s time to sigh loudly and follow him into the office part for the hard sell.

HIM: It says here you haven’t gotten your [insert any number here]-mile check yet!

ME: Indeed I have not.

HIM: Did you want to do that today? Here’s a list of the services included [hands me a volume roughly the length of Gone With the Wind, but mostly including things like “Test Bass Levels in Speakers” and “Polish Shift Nob”].

ME: Uh-huh. And how much is that?

HIM: $300.

ME: That’s OK.

HIM: [Makes Disappointed Paternal Face at me, even though he’s at least 2 years my junior.] Really? Because it’s pretty important. If you don’t get this service, there is a very real risk that your car will spontaneously disassemble itself in the middle of a busy intersection during rush hour. What if that happens on a day when you have an appointment to get your nails done? Or your roots touched up?

ME: I’m willing to take that chance.

I always say something relatively polite, but what I'd like to say is: “Really? This car that your company makes and sells is such a massive piece of crap that you are absolutely certain that even now it is developing a serious issue that will inconvenience and possibly kill me? It’s THAT bad? I mean, it’s not even 5 years old, it has well under 50,000 miles on it, your technicians are the ONLY people who have ever touched the engine, and even so, you have zero confidence in its ability to safely convey me from here to the street? Wow, what a horrible piece of unreliable junk! Don’t worry; I’ll notify the Better Business Bureau that your employer is knowingly selling lemons. Alternatively, you could just do what I asked you to do and stop trying to scaremonger your way into a commission.” But I digress [often and with great enthusiasm].

HIM: [Sighing with grave concern for my safety] Alright, if you’re sure. So just an oil change. That comes to...

ME: ...an oil change AND an exorcism, remember? The acid-spitting demons? I mentioned them outside not 3 minutes ago?

HIM: Oh right, and the exorcism. Oil change and an exorcism...$50. Should be about an hour.

ME: Great.

Step 4: The waiting room. I actually really like car service waiting rooms. They're generally pretty quiet, they almost all have wifi now, and there's free coffee! Sometimes doughnuts too! It's like Starbucks minus the obnoxious yuppies! I get a lot of writing done in car service waiting rooms.

Step 5: Coughing up. This is the part where the same guy you argued with before takes you back to his little stand-up desk. He could say any number of things - he might let you off scot-free, might try to convince you there's more work to be done, might try to sell you an entirely different car. Your job here is to firmly but politely extend your card and continue to hold it in his face until he swipes it through the damn reader and gives you the keys.

Step 6: Car Hunt! Your car will have been parked somewhere on the premises of this here car dealership, which is basically like a huge parking lot except that it has a much higher than average percentage of "cars that look exactly like yours". (Always wear comfortable shoes). Once you find your car, it's time to assess the work. You have to take their word for it that the oil was changed, but what about the demons? Are they gone? Get in, turn the key and find out! Ah, I can almost hear the acid burning through your face right now. But I bet you don't have a Tech plate on the front bumper anymore, do you? It's all about priorities.

(I would like to stress that my car is well looked-after, contrary to what you might think based on the above. It's just that all the real services they perform at various mileages are things I get done regularly at non-dealership locations. I do endorse regular maintenance and preventive care. I just don't take kindly to commissioned salesmen foisting unnecessary, overpriced car care at me.)

NVNQ: Is it not me, but you or not you, but me?

Breakups are always difficult, whether you're the dumper or the dumpee. You lose your free meal ticket, you have no one to watch TV with, and worst of all: no more built-in designated driver. But the dumpee does have one unique issue to grapple with: the question of whether it's his or her own fault they got dumped. We've all had the sleepless nights where we stare at the ceiling and wonder where, or indeed if, we went wrong. Fortunately I've devised this quick quiz, based on years and years of unsuccessful relationships, to help you sort it out.

1. How often did you tell your partner how you felt, in explicit, vivid language?

a) daily

b) weekly

c) every time I had gas

d) once when I was drunk

2. When watching TV with your partner, where did you sit?

a) in his lap

b) closely snuggled up on the couch with a glass of wine

c) in the next room, where I couldn't hear her breathing all the damn time

d) in the closet, where his wife wouldn't see me

3. How did you and your partner resolve conflicts?

a) by way of rational, feelings-based communication, sometimes with the help of a counselor

b) as calmly and quietly as possible, once the police left

c) cage match

d) I dunno. I just left immediately.

4. When your partner was out of town, how did you entertain yourself?

a) by writing poems and emails to my partner

b) reading, catching up with friends

c) 2 words: porn marathon

d) no idea; I was blackout drunk for the whole relationship

5. Did you get along with your partner's family?

a) absolutely! I shopped with mom, golfed with dad, scheduled regular spa days with sis...

b) for the most part.

c) hell yeah! I got along REALLY well with her sister, if you know what I mean! High five!

d) nah. They were in a different cell block, so I never met 'em.

6. Did you ever struggle with jealousy in your relationship?

a) all the time. Not trying to be unreasonable, but that checkout girl was SO after my man!

b) All of my exes died mysteriously shortly after we met, so it was never an issue.

c) nope. We just cheated on each other every time to even the score.

d) nope. She was locked in the basement. Jealousy problems resolved!

SCORING: The moment of truth! Is it you, or is it them?

Mostly A: It's you, you clingy psycho.

Mostly B: It's you. You aren't ready for this jelly. 

Mostly C: It's you, you insensitive jerk.
Mostly D: It's you, you thoughtless moron.

Take a Whack at the Paiñ-ata!

I have a two problems:
1. Like so many 21st century Americans, I suffer from periodic bouts of depression
2. I can't stand to drink hard liquor straight up

These may seem unrelated, but let me tell you they are not. And I inadvertently proved it during my most recent episode, when I got into a habit of trying to dull my sadness with an evening drink. My poison? Margaritas. Therein lies the conflict. I'll explain...

Let's say you're an angsty, artsy type, prone to bouts of horrific depression. Your friends probably know this about you and keep an eye out for the warning signs. As a result, when you get near rock bottom, you might have an exchange like this:
YOU: What's the point? I don't even care anymore. I've got a fifth of JD, and that's what I'm having for dinner.
YOUR FRIEND: A fifth of JD?!?! For dinner? That's it, I'm coming over!

But when I get near rock bottom, it looks more like this:
ME: What's the point? I don't even care anymore. I'm already on my third margarita.
MY FRIENDS: Rock on!! Three margaritas before 2pm? You're livin' it UP!
ME: I guess. If you call this living. I think I'll double the tequila in the next one.
MY FRIENDS: HELL YEAH!!

A margarita just doesn't work as a cry for help. If you're drinking something light brown that burns your throat on the way down, that's the universal sign for "I NEED SOMEONE TO TALK TO". If you're drinking something dayglo green that tastes like a lime Jolly Rancher, it's the universal sign for "I NEED TWO BACKUP DANCERS AND A KARAOKE MACHINE".

Not only that, but you can't cry into a margarita because the tiny umbrella deflects most of the tears. Even if you manage to get one or two in there, all you did was save yourself some money on salt. At the end of the day, it's the liquid equivalent of bringing up the rear of a conga line to "Hot Hot Hot" at a funeral - it looks ridiculous. I might as well get myself some crazy straws to complete the effect.

Lucky for me, my depressions never last more than a week or two, and if I have to be bad at something, "being an alcoholic" is one of the things I'd most like to suck at. So...win! The only downside is that I look utterly ridiculous for two weeks. But that's really not so different from my non-depressive state.

Serious Part Real Quick-Like, Though:
I've had these little bouts of depression off and on for twenty years now. I'm lucky that they aren't so bad that I require medication or have to put my life on hold - I manage to keep working, improvising, and blogging in spite of the temporary chemical imbalance in my brain/salt imbalance in my margaritas. But there are a lot of people who have it way worse than I do, and if you're one of them, please please please make sure you ask for help when you need it. Just do what I do when my friends mistake my Margarita Depress-tival for a Fiesta-val: pick someone whose last birthday cost you at least twenty bucks and send them an email that says "LITTLE HELP HERE?" in the subject line. Then tell them what it is that you need - a chat over dinner, a quick phone call, a sleepover party, five rides on the Dahlonega Mine Train at Six Flags, help finding a therapist...or even help figuring out what you need! That's what friends, family, some coworkers, and all suicide prevention hotline workers are for ;)

Oh, and I don't really endorse self-medication with alcohol. Just so we're clear.

Sketch Challenge, 2nd Set, Final Report: Who's That Girl?

I don't know why I always feel compelled to use song titles for these. Anyway.

It is noon on Saturday, 7/2/2011, and the second 60-page set of sketches is more-or-less finished (pending a printout, lunch, and a walk before coming back to it for final notes. You have to breathe sometime). I was obliged to wrap it up a little earlier than usual today, as I am expected at a family cookout this afternoon, followed immediately by a crew shift at the theatre that will keep me out until 1ish. So how do we feel about this set, as compared to the last one?

Overall, I think this set is much stronger. It flows a little more smoothly and features an improved joke-to-exposition ratio. I'm pretty pleased about that. The biggest area for improvement is consistency in work habits. I got a little busy with other things these past two weeks and didn't maintain the focus I had before. I think this set would've been even better if it had gotten the benefit of my attention more often. Lucky for me, I get to do this [at least] three more times, so I can take that lesson into the next few sets! Like I said at the end of the first set: the whole point of this exercise was to learn and (hopefully) improve, and I can honestly say that I've definitely learned a few things and I like to think I'm seeing improvement. Though I'm not sure I'm the best judge of that.

In a weird and unexpected twist, the Incredibly Mundane Sketch Challenge and Psychological Torture Chamber, Now With Less Coffee and More Xenophobia has also resulted in some surprising changes in my appearance (hence the title of this post). I've lost 6 pounds so far, and I'm far more tan than anyone who hasn't been on vacation has a right to be. And it's all traceable to 3 important aspects of the Psychosketchual Challenge for People Who Feel Compelled to Mentally Flog Themselves:
1. Anxiety-induced lack of appetite: Anxiety as in "HOLY CRAP WHAT IF I'M NOT FUNNY AT ALL AND EVERYTHING I'VE EVER WRITTEN SUCKS?!?!?"
2. Busy-ness-induced lack of time to eat: Have you ever tried to have a full-time job, apprentice at an improv theatre, publish at least 3 blog posts per week, submit items to Funny not Slutty, write an hourlong sketch show every fortnight AND bathe regularly? It's time-consuming.
3. Head-clearing walks: Remember when I said I felt like my brain was in a blender and/or beaten with a meat tenderizer? I wasn't kidding. I find it increasingly necessary to go walk continuously for at least an hour and half while thinking about nothing (THAT PART IS IMPERATIVE). And since I'm privileged to live in the bright, sunny South...I look like I've been sunning! And it's burning all the calories I didn't have time to eat. On Wednesday, someone actually asked me "if I'd been working on my guns". No, I have not been working on my guns. I've just been trying to walk off the crazy.

So however this whole thing ends, I'll at least be healthier for it. Well, if you don't count the skin cancer I'm probably giving myself. But speaking of "how this whole thing ends", I'm starting to think that if I was really being honest with myself, this is not the pure writing exercise I told myself it was. I'm not getting up at 6:30 on Saturday mornings "as an exercise". And if I am, that's ridiculous. My high school English teacher was always pointing out that plays are meant to be performed, not read, and Mrs. Lacy knew her stuff, so I'm starting to think the same is probably true of sketches. And when it's all over, I might make a sincere effort to do something with these. I just need to find someone who can handle *all* of the technical side for me. Because I will not be doing that part.

Anyway, that's the distant future. In the meantime, I need to focus on the 3rd Set. But I have a very busy day ahead of me (see first paragraph) and a day trip tomorrow, so I'll be taking some time off before getting back to work on America's birthday. And I'll also be out of town next Thursday-Sunday, which means I have to do A LOT more work in the first half of the two-week writing period. Wish me luck.

And now for the weekly expression of gratitude to someone who said something nice which helped keep me out of the state institution in Milledgeville:
John Emily of the Week! (not like that)
This week's John of the week is... Emily! Emily was a friend of mine when we were both knee-high to a grasshopper in elementary school. We also went to the same high school but didn't hang out that much since I was a band geek, and she...well, I guess she was probably having a life instead. Anyway! This week, she discovered my blog and said she was going to pour herself a drink and spend Thursday night reading it! Because it was "fun"! And thus did I live to tell you about another week. Thanks, Emily!

Please. Someone. Save Me From Myself.

I went out and had a lovely evening sharing a pitcher of margaritas with a friend tonight. Margaritas always make me feel happy, bubbly, and flirty, so I came home thinking "I know! Maybe I'll get back on one of the free dating sites and see if there are any good possibilities!"

Why did I think that? Sure, it was partly because of the margaritas. But mostly it was because I am a brain-dead idiot with the memory of a gnat. Because I JUST rescued myself from match.com! Why would I go and get back into the same stupidity again?!?! On the plus side, I've now had a hearty laugh and been gently reminded of why the margarita flirt-high should be allowed to pass unindulged in the future.

First, I get on the dating site and look around. I spend a good hour just laughing at the terrifying and/or sad profiles and congratulating myself on avoiding this mess. Then, just as I'm about to give up, I see someone halfway decent.

Next, I decide I might as well put up a picture and a 2-sentence summary of myself. Just in case he was interested. You never know.

So I post the picture and get started on the profile...

ME (thinking): Hmmm... what's the first thing people notice about me... lemme think...

SITE NOTIFICATION: Euthanizer666 is checking you out!

ME: Uh-oh! I wonder how I turn that off. I don't need a pop-up window every time...

SITE NOTIFICATION: Beelzebub72 is checking you out!

ME: Yeah, this is exactly what I DON'T want to...

INSTANT MESSENGER: MILFHunter said: So what are you doing up this late? Wanna chat?

ME: Mother of God, how do I make it stop?!?! MINIMIZE! MINIMIZE!

iPHONE (sitting on the desk by the computer): *new email sound*

ME: New email? From whom? OH GOD NO!

EMAIL: RightGuy4U has sent you a message! Message text - Good evening good lookin'...

ME: *vomits into the wastepaper basket* Where was I? Oh right. The profile blurb...

iPHONE: *new email sound*

ME: New email? From...crap.

EMAIL: 35RestrainingOrders has sent you an erotic poem in the original French by Pierre de Ronsard! His profile says he doesn't speak French, but he is attempting to pass this off as an original work!

ME: Dammit! Where are the email settings?

SITE NOTIFICATION: NiceGuy is checking you out!

iPHONE: *new email sound*

INSTANT MESSENGER: Rico_Suave said: Voulay voo cooshay avec moi? Ha ha! 

Pretty soon I begin to feel like I don't need a date; I need an exorcist who specializes in Apple products.

I want to stress that this has nothing whatsoever to do with how I look, and it is NOT (repeat: NOT) the ego boost you might think it is, if you've never been on a dating site before.The first time you set up a profile, this happens (and it happens to ALL of us), and you think you might have seriously underestimated your hotness. But soon you realize that there are about five hundred guys out there whose entire strategy consists of finding whoever is new to the site and bombarding her with seriously weak pickup lines. They don't care what she looks like and they definitely have not bothered to read her profile, because they don't care who she is or what she wants. The messages they send are evenly divided between something along the lines of "Your so beautiful" (note: this is the entire body of the message and they ALWAYS make that grammar error) or something more like "I see we have a lot in common..." (this is pretty much NEVER true).

It's the Fresh Meat approach, and I can't imagine that it has ever worked, but I guess its devotees know something I don't. Mostly it's just the most irritating thing ever, like a denial-of-service attack on my love life. From the wikipedia entry on DoS, emphasis mine:

One common method of attack involves saturating the target machine with external communication requests, such that it cannot respond to legitimate traffic, or responds so slowly as to be rendered effectively unavailable.

I suppose it's just as well. I have an awful lot of sketches to write/edit in the next two days. And any time I don't spend on sketches really ought to be spent making ginormous glossy posters of myself to be distributed to every Mexican restaurant in the metro area, featuring big black letters that say "DO NOT SERVE MARGARITAS TO THIS WOMAN".

DISCLAIMER: There are nice, decent, real guys on these sites who really do read women's profiles before blindly assuming that mutual desperation will be a sufficient basis for a relationship. It's just that you don't hear from them until the first week has passed, and this post is about the first horrifying seconds after posting a photo. So don't yell at me. I didn't make the rules.

Sometimes Pizza is the Better Choice

More often than not, I leave work on Improv Practice Day (more commonly known as “Wednesday”) and find myself faced with the daunting combination of nothing edible in my home and two measly hours before I have to leave for the theatre. Preferring to focus on the positive, I see this as “a perfect excuse to eat fast food for dinner” instead of “a sad commentary on a grown woman who can’t take care of herself properly”. But when it happened last week, I didn’t feel inclined to have pizza or Taco Hell or a mostly-cheese “vegetarian” sandwich. Instead, I had a brilliant idea. BRILLIANT, I tell you: frozen yogurt! It’s cheap, it’s low-fat but high-calcium, and apparently it contains “live and active cultures”, which are on the list of Trendy Things We’re All Supposed to Consume in Huge Quantities. So I stopped at Yogli Mogli (which, in case you were wondering, is exactly like Yoforia, Slimberry, Pinkberry, Menchie’s, Swirll, Cow Licks, Cloud 9, Yorika, Yogurtland, and The Yogurt Tap) (except Cloud 9 also has cupcakes), and as I drove home with the increasingly less-frozen yogurt in my cupholder, I thought, “I bet I could come up with at least…

10 Excellent Reasons Why I’m Never Allowed to Have Frozen Yogurt for Pre-Improv Practice Dinner Ever Again

1. No good comes of putting 7-year olds in charge. The 7-year old me, who makes most of my decisions, COULD NOT imagine a better dinner than this! But when you walk into a place called “Yogli Mogli” as an adult in business attire, you become acutely aware of just how not 7 you are. The only way you’re getting away with it is if you brought a 7-year old with you. And I’m pretty sure the daycare place doesn’t loan them out.

2. That 20 minute drive never takes 20 minutes. Sometimes I can get home from work in 20 minutes, but never on days when I need to. I should’ve known that putting anything frozen in the car would up the commute to at least 45 minutes. Lesson learned.

3. Panic attacks. 7-year old me may not care about the car upholstery, but 32-year old me cares very deeply about the car upholstery, so I spent most of the drive home glancing anxiously at the cupholder, waiting for it to spew forth melted yogurt at every stop, start, or turn. Of which there were plenty. I don’t need that kind of stress in my life.

4. It’s so, so sad. Sure, they have non-fat fruit-based options and sorbets and fresh fruit toppings, but I’m not in the target market for that. Chocolate yogurt + candy + more candy + hot fudge sauce = what I had. That is not dinner. It sounded like a good idea at first, but once you’re in line between two 12-year olds, spooning M&Ms onto your “dinner” in your work clothes, the word “sad” begins to suggest itself.

5. The Inevitable Sugar Crash. When you eat candy for dinner, you’re about 2 hours away from a nap. And if that’s right around the time you’re supposed to be rushing a stage every 5 minutes to vie for a spot in a scene…it doesn’t work.

6. The Internal Mom Voice. To whatever extent this could ever have been a fun experience, it was ruined by the responsible voice in my head that sounds suspiciously like my mother. An endless loop of “Young lady, you know very well that you are not allowed to have frozen yogurt for dinner!” will buzzkill the whole thing. Even 7-year old me was starting to feel guilty about it towards the end.

…but I was wrong; I could only come up with 6.  

The High Price of Success

As of last night, I have completed the first 60 pages of rough drafts for my Incredibly Mundane Sketchstravaganza Challenge Mostly About Ordering Coffee! It was not easy and a lot of the time it wasn't even all that fun. But it's done now! And I have a few days to edit and improve it before it's time to do the next set. Phew!

I was so happy about it that I went and ordered $70 in nail polish. That wasn't exactly part of my master plan - I think I was just so delirious that I wasn't fully in control of my faculties. Or my credit card. At these prices, who can afford to complete the Beyond Redonkulous Incredibly Mundane Sketchstravaganza? Not me. I might have to hide my credit card from myself when I hit the 40-page mark next time...

How I'll Spend My Summer Vacation

Just as an FYI, I’ve decided that the “trying really hard to be funny” thing, while entertaining (for me), is not a sufficient raison d’être for a whole entire blog. I will still be doing that going forward, but today’s post is the first in an occasional series of exciting glimpses inside my actual head! At long last! PROOF that something is happening in there!

As some of you may know, I’m on The Twitters (@kwerky_girl - follow at will!). I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how much useful information comes through that timeline, and one of the more wonderful items in the past few weeks was the announcement of fortnightly sketch shows penned and performed by one of my most revered writing role models, John Finnemore! They’re taking place in London, which might be a problem for some Atlantans, but not me! My first thought was: “HELL YEAH I will be dumping my savings account into a duffel bag, carrying it to the nearest Delta agent, and yelling ‘LONDON PLEASE’ at the top of my lungs.” But then I remembered that before I can do that, I have to dump $200 of my savings account into a much smaller bag along with a picture of myself to be delivered to the US State Department, then wait 4-6 weeks for them to get out their damn glue stick and slap the picture on a new passport, because the Delta agent will almost certainly notice that my current one expired earlier this year. There’s no way I can make it. [insert heartbreak here] I mean, they do can do a 24-48 hour renewal in extreme/emergency situations, but I bet they have a loophole that excludes “I will kill myself if you don’t give me a passport” from that. Otherwise everybody’d be doing it.

So I was despondent for a while there. I pulled the website up and just to see how nauseatingly affordable the tickets would be if I could just get there (answer: £6. ARGH!). Then I saw the text on the ticket-purchasing site, which reads as follows:

The triumphant return of the least imaginatively named show since 'Cats': John Finnemore, writer and star of Radio 4's Cabin Pressure; regular guest on The Now Show; and popper-up on things like Miranda and That Mitchell and Webb Look, presents an hour of brand new sketches every fortnight over the summer. Completely different material every show. Bloody hell. Now I see it written down, that's a lot of sketches. I should probably get on with them.

And as I read those last few sentences, I thought, “Christ! That really is a lot of sketches. Assuming one page=one minute, that’s 60 pages of original sketch material every two weeks. Jesus. Someone send that man a metric ton of coffee.” And then I thought, “Wow. That would be a really incredible challenge. Especially for someone who, say, needed to dust the cobwebs off her brain and get back in the habit of writing sketches regularly.

Like she used to.

Yep.

60 pages every two weeks.


Quite a challenge.”

And then a [really stupid] part of my brain said, “I ACCEPT!” And thus was born Kimberly Welsh’s Sketch Night. That happened a week ago today, and so far I have 15 pages. And based on their content, I had to modify the name to Kimberly Welsh’s Incredibly Mundane Sketch Night (Mostly About Ordering Coffee). Then I realized that there won’t be any public performances, so the “Night” part doesn’t really fit. So: Kimberly Welsh’s Incredibly Mundane Sketch Challenge (Mostly About Ordering Coffee). I’ve spent more time rewriting the name than finishing sketches. Not exactly epic progress, but give me a break! I had to work 40 hours and spend 2 evenings at the theatre. I have most of my weekend free, so hopefully I’ll be able to get on track now. Wait - not “hopefully”; DEFINITELY. And while I’m not going to get all obsessively serious about it, I will keep you posted. Why? Because you care.

The good news for everyone is that this will keep me off the streets this summer. And it has taught me a valuable lesson about why it’s important to keep your passport up-to-date at all times: Because you never know when John Finnemore will start a run of sketch shows. Apparently.