I've done my good deed for the day.

Here's how it all went down:

Elle: guess what guess what guess what
link to news about Britney's tour

W: so?

Elle: this isn't the most exciting thing that you've heard all day?

W: nope
I've had a really bad day

Elle: [frown] why?

W: work stuff

Elle: I'm sorry

W: thanks

Elle: really, you should take this opportunity to laugh at me for being a teeny-bopper, and use it to make yourself feel better

W: I do that all the time

I'm reminded that I love him, and also of how much I love playing the dumb girl to him. It's something I couldn't tolerate from Lui, or anyone who I'd need to occasionally take me seriously. But with W, I can tell by the way he makes fun of me that he really thinks I'm adorable. And I'll take my ego-boosts however I can get 'em.

I scream, you scream, we all scream for Britney

As if the rest wasn't enough to make this week glorious, it's also "31-cent scoop night" at Baskin Robbins on Wednesday. I strongly suggest you stop by your local 31-Flavors between 5 and 10 on Wednesday night, because - for those of you who aren't math whizzes like I am - that means you can get a triple scoop for under a dollar.

I hope they've got Baseball Nut again this year, because I really feel like you can't go wrong with vanilla with cashews and raspberry swirls.

National Teeny-Bopper Week

Ladies and gentlemen, it's official: this week is to be named National Teeny-Bopper Week in honor of me totally embracing my inner tweenager.

Amanda & I have had tickets to the Taylor Hicks concert (coming up on Sunday) for a few months now. I knew that I hadn't completely lost my friend to the Latter Day Saints when, after buying the pair of tickets and then realizing that the gig was on a Sunday night, I emailed Amanda explaining how watching Taylor sing is not making him work, that he enjoys singing, especially on Sundays, and that she had to come with me, no matter how against her religion it may be. Her response: "SCREW IT! I wouldn't miss Taylor Hicks for ANYTHING!!!" Thus we can conclude that Taylor trumps God.

As if that wasn't enough to look forward to, Amanda was totally on the ball after the info about Britney Spears's comeback mini-tour got leaked this morning, and now we have tickets to go see Britney perform at the House of Blues tomorrow night! My head is still spinning from the impulse buy - a pair of brides should not have the time or money to drop everything and $125 to go see a recently rehabilitated pop princess on a Tuesday night. But we're making it happen.

Then we'll go home and watch the American Idol episode we've Tivo-ed.

Just like D.A.R.E. taught me

An update on last Friday's work sequence. It's like it suddenly occurs to [boss] that she's the boss, at exactly 11:40 every Friday. Because even though on Monday, I contacted reps from two choral/arts organizations to get that announcement in their next publication, and emailed the Arts Editor of the U-T to find out about getting some print space there, today at precisely 11:40 a.m., she brought it up again.

"Okay, Elle, why don't you start making calls to set everything up for next month?"

...Calls? Next month? "Calls to whom?" I asked, thinking maybe she meant to set up auditions (something my calendar says I'm supposed to do next week).

"The people with the announcements. Make sure they got your emails - call the arts editor at the paper and see if he got your article..." (I had attached the article-length announcement I'd written for our own newsletter, to give a better idea of the information we wanted him to print, and, yeah okay, in the hopes that he'd love it and hire me for exhorbitant amounts of money.) Then she said, off my I-don't-really-wanna-do-that look, "What if he offers you a job as an investigative reporter?!"

"I'd hate it. I'm not investigative. I don't like making phone calls and annoying people who probably don't want to talk to me." Like right now, for example.

"Oh. Well, call him anyway."

"I can't. There's no number. Just an email address. That's why I emailed."

"Well, google it. I'm sure you can find the number; you're so good at finding things online!"

So I googled it, got onto the U-T's contact page, and then tried again. "There is no phone number. All the sections just have emails. The only ones that list phone numbers are News and Editorial."

"Yeah, call that one! Because he's an editor, right?"

"No, Editorial like Opinion."

"Oh. Well then call News. This is news."

"No, this is definitely Arts. News is like breaking news. Trust me - the news department doesn't care about the arts."

"Just call them anyway; maybe they can put you in touch with the right person..."

I looked her right in the face. "No."

I almost added the classic, "What are you gonna do, fire me?" I was ready to collect my things and go, knowing I could come back Monday no problem. But I held my tongue, just in case. She asked me for the phone number for the News Department, wrote it on a Post-It, which she then stuck in the void that is her purse, and didn't say another word about it.

I went out to get the mail, and when I came back, all she asked was whether we'd gotten any donations. So really, the newspaper thing? Must not have been all that important after all.

Seriously though.

About a billion Hail Mary's oughta do it

So the "weekend from hell" I referenced in my last post was actually a Catholic retreat (ironic, non?), called "Engaged Encounter", that Lui and I were being forced to attend as part of the marriage prep program that lets us get married in the Church. The premise, as we understood it, was that we would be spoken to, or have a group discussion, on a topic relevant to our future (sex, babies, finances, etc), then be separated and sent off to write about our feelings on the topic, and then discuss what we'd each written. This turned out to be true. The result of this, as we understood it, was to be a full 44 hours of arguing. This turned out not to be true.

We did argue a little, the first night, after he'd put that some good qualities he gets from his family were how close and affectionate they are and how they talk on the phone every day (a definite sore spot in our relationship, as I don't really see this excessive familial communication or lap-sitting as a good quality at all). But it was more about his method of arguing - the way he tends to get defensive and doesn't even realize that I'm making an effort to see his side of things, because he's too busy actively not seeing mine - than it was about the over-hashed subject at hand. After that, we spent the time actually discussing, or just getting a chance to read each other's feelings and then sit quietly together taking it all in. There were no big surprises (we'd heard stories about people going on this thing and then calling off the wedding, because they find out that one of them wants kids and the other doesn't - how can that subject just not come up if you're planning on getting married???), mostly little reminders about what we like/don't like about ourselves and our relationship, what we want, and what we value.

When I'd been researching the Engaged Encounter program online, trying to find all the horror stories to psych myself up for a weekend of misery, most of the feedback I was able to find was from the program's website, and therefore, it was all positive. There was a lot of, "I didn't think it was possible, but we're more in love after the weekend than we were when we got here on Friday." I wouldn't go so far as to say that Lui and I are more in love with each other now, but we did come out of it with a sense of... validity? We realized we need to give ourselves more credit: rather than shrugging and saying, "We do okay," we need to reaffirm ourselves. Because in the face of all this adversity - different countries, families, upbringings; inabilities to work leading to inabilities to support ourselves; our romantic pasts both being kinda shite; etc... We've done incredibly well for ourselves, staying together all this time without resorting to sex or violence to solve our problems.

Oh, and I went to Confession for the first time since high school, and erased all my sins for the past seven years or so. Which I figure makes me a virgin again.

Wishing I had two weeks to give

There's been a sort of phenomenon amongst my friends lately. I guess it's because we're a good few years out of school now, and the disenchantment has set in. Squeak's two weeks were up over two weeks ago, although he still seems to be working at the job he left, covering other people's shifts, which makes very little sense to me. Libertine put in her two weeks at the Congressman's office to go back to school. Monica's waiting on the final word from her prospective new job (at a museum, which probably isn't much closer to her ideal career path than her current gig answering phones at the events planning company, but at least will cut down her commute by, like, a lot) before she'll put in hers. And C-List is itching to give her notice at the newsweekly and move out of state because, from what I understand, her editor is Satan.

I, for one, am still in limbo. On the one hand, I've been encouraged to apply for a front desk position at my gym, which (as in Monica's case) has nothing to do with what I went to college for, and has a slightly lower hourly, but would be full-time and therefore give benefits, instead of this wishy-washy 35-hours-a-week-equals-no-benefits policy I'm currently getting from the non-profit bracket. And hey - maybe during slow hours, I could train to be a BodyPump instructor.

On the other hand, I promised my boss I'd stick with the Choir through June, when she plans on pushing me out of the nest to go find a "real" job that will let me use my talent and my degree. That's really the only argument I've got, though, because as of this moment, I have had it up to here with this place.

Example: I get here this morning to find that [boss] isn't here, and neither I, nor my one co-worker, [finance manager], has any idea where she is or what time she'll be in. She then calls at about 10, to explain that she has to go pick up the tickets from the Symphony, then she has to spend all morning "putting out fires" between the directors and the accompanists, and she really needs to go by the elementary school in south county where we hold rehearsals this afternoon, so it wouldn't be worth it for her to drive all the way up here and all the way back. Which totally makes sense. But, ever the martyr, she makes a point of telling me that she'll be working from home today. Then she asks to speak to [finance manager], and apparantly tells her to "find something for Elle to do."

Lucky for me, [finance manager] is my ally, so instead of giving me a pointless task to fill the day, tells me all this, and we laugh about it, and decide that I'm going to leave at 2 instead of 4 today. (Technically, the office closes at 2 on Fridays, but technically, I'm meant to stay until 4 anyway.)

[Boss] then calls back at 11:40 and asks what I'm working on, which is her way of warning me that she's finally thought of something for me to do, and is about to give me one of the stupidest, most tedious tasks imaginable. I should have been honest with her: "I'm working on mentally preparing myself for my weekend from hell. I'm also working on finding out that my best friend's dumb teenage sister is pregnant. And lastly, I'm working on getting ready to eat my lunch."

But instead, I told her I wasn't working on anything, so she laid this great one on me: she needs me to work on "the PR stuff" - getting formal announcements out in all the choral journals that we have a new music director. This is something she had me start on over six weeks ago: I'd emailed the contacts at the choral journals, and asked said new music director for a headshot of himself, and that was the last I'd heard of it. "And you need to call the Union-Tribune and ask to speak to the arts editor and find out how to make an announcement in the paper, like how many words, and when the deadline would be..." By this point, I'd totally tuned her out.

Excusez-moi?! This is the sort of project that one begins on a Monday and spends the week working on, not the sort of project that one begins on Friday afternoon just for the sake of "having something to do." So I'll get to it Monday morning, or Tuesday morning, if I decide that Monday is going to become a mental health day to recover from my & Lui's 44 hours of forced arguing. But not today.

And to be honest, I'm still pretty upset about [boss] spreading rumors that my friend killed himself, when she obviously hadn't spoken to anyone with any real knowledge on the subject if she couldn't even get the country-of-death right. And the fact that when I told her it wasn't a suicide, she reacted in a sort of patronizing, "if that's what you want to believe to make yourself feel better," way.

Yeah... Not to quote Katharine McPhee or anything (because I hate her), but... Over it.

Thumbs back up.

He didn't kill himself.

I didn't think that sounded right, so I did a little investigative research (myspace: it's not just for stalking anymore) and got in touch with one of his good friends. I just got off the phone with this guy and got the real scoop: it wasn't the Bahamas, it was Puerto Rico; it wasn't a suicide, it was an accident - he was at a party, sitting on the railing of a balcony, lost his balance, and fell. It doesn't make it any less tragic, but at least now it's more understandable.

And this friend said he'd heard mention of the choir alum reunion, that our friend had been looking forward to it. So at least there's that.

Thumbs up for Russians; thumbs down for suicide.

Ordinarily, I consider getting the scoop on my fellow choir graduates to be a perk of working here. I get to be a wealth of knowledge on which former choirgirls are now married and popping out babies, and anyone who knows me knows how much I love to gossip. So on Friday, when my boss & I were sticker-labeling a bunch of solicitation letters for our next mass mailing, and she brought up one of my old friends, I was eager to get the scoop.

That is, until she said, "You need to take him off the mailing list... He passed away last week."

She then made me swear not to tell anyone, because the family isn't ready yet. I took a guess at two taboo and not-completely-unlikely causes of death: AIDS and drugs.

"Actually, he committed suicide... In the Bahamas."

That was pretty much where the conversation ended, with her making me swear again not to mention it to anyone, at least not until a formal announcement can be made at one of the alumni gatherings we're having next month. ("To give them a chance to let it sink in, answer their questions, give them a few days to grieve..." But what about me?!) We went on stickering, and I've been left with a bunch of questions, the most pressing of which seems to be, "Why the Bahamas?"

Seriously, this was not someone I would've expected to kill himself. He always seemed happy, outgoing, excited. Also, I wanted to believe that, having survived those rocky formative years, we've gotten over being suicidal - which isn't to say it's unheard of for adults to kill themselves (I actually have two friends who lost their dads that way), but still.

Mostly, I'm angry. Angry at him for committing the ultimate act of selfishness, especially when I was looking forward to reconnecting with him in just a few weeks. More angry at my boss for laying this on me, basically telling me I'm not allowed to seek answers or support, and then going on like nothing happened.

Seriously. I've lain awake the past three nights, and here she is this morning, talking about flyering and auditions and weddings. For fuck's sake.

Another night, another dream, but always you

This time, my dream involved not one, but two ex-friends, which made it all the more poignant and disturbing. Lui and I were talking to Sarah, the girl who we're pretty sure sent Lui that email and effectively tried to break us up last December, and she mentioned that she'd seen Piano Man recently. I casually asked how he was doing, which is something I do kind of a lot in real life too, and she said she hadn't really talked to him, just seen him in passing.

Then Lui left the room to go to the bathroom or make a phone call or something, and I just knew.

"So how is Piano Man?" I repeated eagerly.

"He says hi," she said, leaning forward to excitedly devour the moment along with me.

"Awwwww, tell him I said hi back. And that I miss him."

I then spent the next few minutes agonizing over what I would write in a note to have her deliver to him - it had to be concise, but meaningful and enticing, and I had to finish it and get it safely hidden away in her purse before Lui came back.

I had just settled on,

Hi to you too.
I really miss you.
...Coffee?
[my phone number],

and scrawled it onto a business-card-sized scrap of paper, when my alarm went off.

It was another tough, coming-back-to-reality, accepting-Lui-next-to-me-without-feeling-guilty, getting-out-of-bed sort of morning. I really do miss Piano Man, sometimes every bit as much as I want to punch him, which, needless to say, is always more than I should.

Fool's Gold Loaf

This is a story about Elvis.

One night, probably sometime in the 60s, Elvis had a craving for a sandwich that he could only get at a certain restaurant in Colorado. The craving was so profound, that he and some friends decided to charter a jet from Memphis to Denver, because you can afford to do that when you're the King.

The sandwich, called Fool's Gold Loaf, is a bargain at just $50, considering that it could feed 6-8 average people (or, presumably, one King). In layman's terms, the recipe is as follows:

*Take one entire loaf of Italian bread, butter the outside, and toast in the oven.
*Cut the bread in half longways. Spread one side generously with peanut butter; the other, jelly.
*Fry a pound of bacon.
*Put the bacon in between the peanut-butter- and jelly-coated bread.

----------
Last week, my brothers made this sandwich and shared the love. It's oddly good, in the way that chocolate-covered pretzels and french fries dipped in milkshake are good. I mean, I can see why it might justify chartering a jet.

I'm such a stud-ette.

Because I like to brag about how awesome I am, here's an excerpt from an email I just sent to my old Body Pump instructor back in Wales:

Apparently they did hire that horrid instructor I was telling you about - she was there again last Friday, and sadly has not improved an iota over the last month or so. I thought she just wasn't counting out the beats for us (instead of saying "singles" or "two-twos", she just sort of says "up, down" a few times and then leaves it to us to remember when the tempo changes!), but then another regular pointed out to me later that she actually didn't know the routine at all - I thought the shoulder track seemed easier than usual, and it was because this woman had us just doing 2's the whole time! So after class, the girl who had been standing behind me came up and told me I looked really good (I think she meant my form, but I'm going to take it as that my body looks really good too), and she asked how long it took me to get used to the class, because this was only like her second time doing it and she'd been totally lost thanks to the bonehead instructor. This poor woman didn't even know how to change the weights, so had been using a bar with 5K on either side for everything up until we got to triceps and she physically couldn't! Anyway, she said she was glad she'd been standing behind me because watching me helped her know what she was supposed to be doing. That was the highlight of my day. And then the next day, the other regular and I reported the instructor's incompetence to the gym's owner - I felt bad, because I've never complained about an instructor before, even though there are some I've liked better than others, but in a case like that, it's really unsafe - and the owner thanked us, because I guess this girl isn't even supposed to be teaching on her own, and someone else had let her because they needed a sub. Crazy.

And since we're playing the "look how much I can lift" game (yes, you still win), I'm up to 7.5 for squats, 4.5 for chest, 6 for back, 3.5 for triceps and (almost) biceps, 6 for lunges, and the usual 2.5 for shoulders (if I don't just cheat and keep using the little handweights). Biceps have been the hardest for me lately, and I don't know why I'm so stuck there - I start out at 3.5 but sometimes I have to take off the donut midway through and just use 2.5, which ends up being too light. The only excuse I can come up with is that the weights set we use is the actual BodyPump equipment, and the bar itself is a lot heavier than what we had in Evolution. But I can usually get through the first couple pushups on my feet, and I can do the plank with one foot off the ground now, so I know I'm improving all the time, and when I do come back to Wales and take a class, Gemma and all them will be well impressed with me ;)

It did occur to me that no one but Tina (the actual recipient of this email) probably really cares how much I can lift or the compliments I get at the gym, but then, what's a captive, blog-reading audience for if not this shameless display of self-admiration?

Flashbacks

The other night, I was cleaning off my bookshelf and came across binders of old schoolwork, printed IM conversations circa 2000, old journals, notebooks, sketchbooks, etc. It kind of amazes me what an ornery, indignant teenager I was - the type mentioned in C-List's blog who would write a whole essay on why she wasn't going to write her essay. I found a 7th-grade math assignment (a story problem write-up) that said, "I got the answer from Jordy, so if you want to see the work, you can check Jordy's paper"; a 12th-grade English assignment on which I had responded to the prompt, "Why I admire Johnson," by saying, "Actually, I don't really admire Johnson. Just because he was smart doesn't make him a good person worthy of my respect"; and another assignment from what I assume was the same class, on which the teacher had written, "I'm really proud of you for getting this in!", with a little smiley face, of course.

Another highlight was an instant message conversation, dated 1-31-00 (apparently it was a rough year for me), between me and Suzy High School, wherein we're cussing each other out and screaming at each other because she thinks I'm a freak now that my hair is black, and she doesn't want to be seen in public with me and my "sophomoric entourage" of other freaks. And wherein she says I'm just as bad as she is because I can't just accept the fact that she's image-obsessed and shallow. Incidentally, I'm still pretty sure I was in the right here, but reading over it, I can see how I handled it all wrong (should've been less accusatory and used more "I" statements, maybe not told her to go fuck herself so much, etc). It's funny because you can still see a bit of that superficial person in her, and a bit of that freak in me, and it's still not quite balanced when we hang out in public, but we're both so much more well-adjusted now.

And then I found this sketchbook journal I used to carry around my sophomore year in college, where I'd doodle, or draw little self-portraits, or illustrate my poetry, or write down funny/interesting things people said in class and then decorate them... And then there are all these drawings, even actual imprints, of my self-injuries in it. It's pretty disturbing, but no more so than the high school papers I found where I talk about how wonderful and fulfilling my friendships are with people I now haven't spoken to in years, or describe my "innocent crush" on Neko (and we all know where that went) - in fact, I would call those poured-out-but-still-half-hidden feelings more embarrassing than a little dried blood, and I don't think I'm ever going to let anyone, especially Lui, see any of this stuff.

But of course, I'm not going to throw it away either. You know, for posterity's sake, so that when I die, premature, famous, and fabulous, biographers will have all these wonderful insights into the events and emotions that shaped their tragically departed idol... Or in case I ever need an alibi.

[Postscript, to my fellow writers: Do you occasionally unearth similar treasures? Is it always this mortifying? Am I right to keep it all, or should I have a bonfire and never look back?]