Misery. At one point tonight, I think I felt as physically bad as I’ve ever felt in my life. I was sitting on a bench late at night and miles from home, shivering in the cold and rain, having just thrown up in a garbage can, praying that I would just open my eyes and be home in my bed. My stomach has been hurting for a few days, but I thought I was well enough today to attend a friend’s barbecue. I was wrong. But don’t worry. The Snook is taking good care of me. He got me home, and I’m so relieved to be here I could weep. I’m gonna go sleep for a long time and hopefully I’ll be in better shape next time you hear from me.

Hooray! After nine long months in the 56K wilderness… We have ADSL again! No more crappy dialup connection. Surfing the web is a joy once more – which means you can probably expect a lot more posting. 🙂

“Take heed, my friends, of this tale so thorny. / Woe is the student of Law so horny!” Best. Poem. Ever. Seriously, Claire is brilliant.

You know that episode of Friends where Monica teaches Chandler how to appreciate a bath? Well, I’ve been doing that with the Snook. Our new house has this big, deep, old-fashioned claw-footed bathtub that’s so long I can stretch my legs out fully in it. It even came with this groovy little brass shelf/basket that sits across the middle to hold your Diet Coke and chocolate. (Well, really it’s for soap, but my way is more fun.) Anyway, as you might imagine we’ve both been taking way more baths than usual since we moved in. I’m personally a big fan of the LUSH bath ballistics, which make the water all fizzy and perfumed. Some of them even have rose petals and seaweed and glitter in them! Of course, the Snook being a manly fellow, he has – up until this point – refrained from polluting his bath water with all the crap I seem to find necessary. Today that all changed, though, when I brought home a “Blue Skies and Fluffy White Clouds” Bubble Bar. I demonstrated to him that you just break off a chunk and throw it in the running water, and voila! You have mounds of big fluffy bubbles to play in. He didn’t realize he’d come out smelling of patchouli, though, til after he’d been soaking in it for nearly an hour. Tee hee. 🙂

How do you like your bath? Or are you a shower person?

Looking for a unique gift for that special someone? How about a Leg Lamp? Yes, seriously. You can even customize the stocking, shoe, and lampshade to complement any decor. For an extra fifteen bucks, they’ll stamp “FRA-GI-LEE” on the side of the box and enclose a “Major Award” certificate. I know what my old man’s getting for Christmas this year! 🙂

Wow, this Baby Name-O-Meter is pretty cool. Enter your name and you can see its popularity graphed over the last century. Kristine seems to have appeared out of nowhere in the 1940s, peaked in the ’70s (when it landed on me), and it’s now in decline. Now I’m totally curious about its origins. Was there some famous World War II chick named Kristine that everybody copied? (Link courtesy of Gael.)

Go vote for your favorite Dum Dum flavor. I think the poll is pretty much academic, though, since everybody knows that Cream Soda is far and away the best. Sour Apple is pretty good too, though. (Link courtesy of fellow Cream Soda-lover Max.)

Shell shock.
Did I mention that I’m trying out all the classes at my gym? Well, I am. I got inspired last week and took in a session of Body Pump, which nearly killed me. It’s basically synchronized weight lifting to music, and even though I used the least amount of weight possible I still couldn’t walk for two days. I did it again later in the week and it went much better, though. I’m gonna keep doing that one. Then on the weekend I tried out Pilates, which I thought was BORING. Seriously. It wasn’t even as stretchy or breathey as I expected. It was like baby yoga. I have changed my mind about it slightly, since I woke up the next day with crazy soreness in unusual places, like the sides of my abs and my triceps. So obviously I got something out of it. But overall, I wasn’t impressed.

So tonight’s experiment? A beginner’s step/aerobics class. Okay, those of you who know me in person are probably laughing at this point. Why? Because I’m the clumsiest person ever. I can be walking on a perfectly flat street with nothing nearby and fall flat on my face. So I want you all therefore to picture me, big ol’ clumsy me, huffing and puffing and flailing away on the babiest step they had. It was comical. Our instructor and the rest of the class would be bouncing around in syncronized step perfection and I’d be going the wrong way with the wrong leg at the wrong time. Regardless, I toughed it out for half an hour until we switched it up to aerobics. Then I really made an ass out of myself. I haven’t done “the grapevine” since high school, and it seriously showed. I actually bumped into the girl next to me, like, three times because my body persisted in “step-touching” left when everyone else was going right. The extra loud music and yelling of the instructor was just so confusing. It was nearly as bad as spinning. Within ten minutes I gave up and hauled my bewildered ass to an exercise bike. I don’t think I’ll be doing any more that.