Blue Ray, I Love You But You Are Sort of Ruining the End Kissing Scenes

I woke up Thursday morning.

And I smiled, because my parents pay their heating bill.

So I was warm, even without 10 blankets draped over my shivering body.

Also, it was Thanksgiving.

Turns out, I am thankful for mashed potatoes and baby-size pies.

I am thankful for crystal glasses and frozen grape juice mixed with sprite.

I am thankful for toasts to Thanksgiving and a chair for me at the table.

I am thankful for three pounds of spilt salt and for traditional weebles in the flour.

I am thankful for the people who work at Blockbuster even though it's a holiday.

I am thankful for warm winters.

I am thankful for salsa dancing with seniors and for shave ice at Bahama Bucks.

I am thankful for laughing. And for leftovers. And for clean dishes five minutes after dinner.

I am thankful for sitting around a table and talking about summer camp and swim videos and big screen TVs and Disneyland and smoked turkey and mumps and carrot pudding and this year and last year and right now and right here.

And I am thankful for family.

Because I really got stuck with a good one.

I think it helps that they like blue ray as much as I do.

Even though, sometimes, when the characters kiss at the end, I can see pieces of slobber coming out of their mouths.

And that kind of ruins the moment for me.

But that doesn't ruin my family for me.

Because they kind of rock.

And, sometimes they watch sexual harassment videos while we are eating omelets at the dinner table.

While stuffing your face with waffles, if you turn your ear to the left, you might catch the end of this:

"While on a business trip it is appropriate to sexually assault you co-worker because you are away from the office:

True OR

False?"

And between bites of hash-browns, you might hear something like this:

"If you're co-worker is an easy target for jokes you should:

a. Make fun of her every chance you get OR

b. Only joke with her sometimes."

So, also, I'm thankful for sexual harassment lessons.

Because I don't know how we'd get by without them.

There Are Some People in this World Who Should Not Be Allowed to Operate New Technology

Most of them are 82.

But before I get any deeper into the content of this post, first, you should know, said content was funnier 5 days ago when I started writing about it.

I still thought it was funny when I was sitting in Peter Piper waiting for my pizza and contemplating writing the whole blog via text message.

But then it dawned on me, the 15 minutes it takes to brown the dough and melt the cheese of a 4 inch in diameter pizza, was not going to be sufficient for me to type each word on the keyboard of my (not quite) 4 inch in length phone.

So I gave up on the idea and decided to stare at the Peter Piper Pizza party-goers and contemplate what sort of psycho mentality convinced me in my freshman year that I should apply to work at that joint.

Thank goodness for the apple juice, or water, or some form of liquid, which happened to spill on that application. Without that spill, I might still be burning pizzas and counting coins at a Peter Piper near you.

Now, moving on.

I, although, not 82, am one of the people in this world who should, generally, not be allowed to operate new technology.

And I will tell you why.

In 6th grade, with my cell phone strictly for emergencies, I did alright. I only made phone calls when it was time for my mom to pick me up from the mall.

I didn't have voicemail, a phonebook or any fancy card games.

And really, that suited me.

Then, in 8th grade, my mom heard about texting.

"Apparently we can send short messages to each other without talking," she said.

"Oh, so like I can talk to you during school."

I can't tell you how many hours I spent trying to turn those numbers into the right letters to spell "hello," and "how are you," just to text fail.

Every time I tried to send that stupid text box, my phone would think for a second, and then go back to the original screen.

"Did you get it that time?" I would ask, on the phone.

"Nope," my mom would reply.

Apparently, you actually had to have texting service for that texting thing to work.

Then came the flip phone with regular, letter for letter, texting.

By now, all my friends had texting, so I got the concept quickly. I even got to the point where I could text without looking and without thinking. Clearly a giant leap forward from my 7th grade struggle to say hello.

But then I learned about T9 texting.

I sent approximately 1,000 texts that said something like, "I1m going good this weekend and taking rowx, isn.t that book.

Eventually, people just started loling everything I said--the smile and nod of text messaging.

But even though I couldn't handle T9, I thought it would be a good idea for me to have a phone with internet access.

You know, so I could have 24/7 access to my email account and google maps.

This is the result:

Facebook Status 11/13/09.

Alec is just going to handle one thong at a time.

That's right.

I'm just taking everyday one thong at a time.

Not going to move on to the next thong until this one is done.

I'm going to take deep breaths and deal with all the thongs.

Someone, PLEASE, cancel my service before I do anymore damage.

(And then buy me medication for my email separation anxiety.)

And then sign me up for an Amish community.

Or a retirement home.

Girl v. Nature

So I am reading this book about creating characters.

It's a class assignment, and my most recent obsession.

And in this book I am reading, it is to the part about creating conflict. Apparently, without conflict there's no story. Just words.

And that my friends, is why they script the Hills.

But anyway, according to Dr. Ballon, the author, and also Ms. Madill, my third grade teacher, there are 3 types of conflict.

Tonight the book is telling me to write about a specific external conflict: man v. nature.

(Usually I save these exercises for the hard drive on my computer, but since I aspire to one day tell serious man v. nature stories that reflect Michael Crichton quality, I figure I better start somewhere.)

((Dang. This book has me whipped. I'm even doing it's exercises.))

And now... the story that sounds like it came from a second grade writing prompt:

Spaghetti Os in the Woods

The floor of my family's tent trailer was soft.

Not because it was padded with carpet or blow up air mattresses, but because underneath the yellow and brown linoleum the floor was rotting out.

When I was younger, my family used to camp in the middle of the woods. I remember driving in the forest, pitching a tent, and peeing by trees.

I loved the woods. They were fantastically far away from everything.

That though, was before I knew about mountain lions, killer bees, and spilt Spaghetti O's.

In the trailer, I sat at a table with an empty pink bowl and a matching pink cup in front of me. The small room smelt like propane gas and artificial flavoring. My fingertips were cold, and I thought about crawling into my blue and red, mini sleeping bag to get warm.

Then Mom poured warm Spaghetti O's into my pink bowl and I thought for a minute life couldn't get any better.

Not even if I was peeing by a tree in the middle of the woods.

And that's when my sister turned to me and poured her whole bowl of Spaghetti O's on my head.

The red goop sunk into my hair. And I thought, "WHY ME?"

And I said, "Hey! Meanie. Why'd you pour Spaghetti O's on my head? Now I get to pour my bowl on your head." *

And then I had to take a journey on a long dark path, and fight the cold, and swat the mosquitos that wanted to suck my blood and the tomato sauce, and face my fears of the dark.**

Then I found a campground shower, washed the O's out of my hair, and came out victorious.

The End.

* I don't actually remember what I said. Nor do I remember why my sister dumped her dinner on my head. In fact, actually, said sister remembers the experience very differently. She says we weren't camping, and that she dumped a few O's on my head, not an entire bowl.

Despite numerous attempts, we have not been able to get my mom to take a side.

So, like how many licks it takes to the center of a lolipop, the world may never know.

** In case for some reason you are confused about how this is a man/girl v. nature conflict, please read that section in bold again.

I considered writing about the time when my family helped scare a bear out of our campground with a frying pan and some hate speech.

But that was a much less traumatizing experience.

Dear Borders, Can I Move In There? Love, Alec

I went to the bookstore last night to find a book about writing so I can read it for a class assignment.

Before I got there I was grumpy and tired and hungry and pessimistic.

By the time I left I was excited and happy and excited and excited.

And now I am reading the book that I found after two hours of sitting on the floor of the bookstore.

And it is making me want to drop out of school and write. All day and all night.

And when I'm not writing, I'll read. Because that's what I learned after sitting on the floor of the bookstore for two hours.

That there is so much to read.

Do you think that's a viable excuse?

Professor, I couldn't finish my book lest I drop out of school halfway through.

I feel like I'm falling in love after a bad breakup.

My heart is beating fast.

My stomach has butterflies.

Can't eat. Can't sleep.

Can't focus on anything else long enough to even give my dog a bath.

All I want to do is spend time with my new book and my unfinished novels.

I blame the bookstore for this unfocused state of happiness.

Fonts and Flan Bread

I am watching Scrubs and trying to give my blog a makeover.

See, the other day, I saw an advertisement on ABC that said, Extreme Makeover, blog addition. And I thought, hey, will someone makeover my blog? And then I thought, that's probably not what they mean.

So I figured I would have to do it myself.

Which, actually, is not going over that well. Apparently, I am not very--how do you say--good at blog makeovers.

Someday, when I have important things to procrastinate, I will probably finish my blog makeover.

But for now, on to more important things.

This weeks version of Alec with a side of vegetables is about how to make single serving chocolate chip cookies without using frozen dough.

Unfortunately, when I tried making single serving chocolate chip cookies without using frozen dough, they turned into chocolate chip flan bread.

This, I imagine, is because I have not yet figured out how to cut a raw egg in half, and there was a triple portion of eggs in my single serving chocolate chip cookies.

Needless to say, the texture was all wrong, the taste was lacking, and I ended up pouring milk over my single serving chocolate chip flan bread to add some moisture. And I--she who puts scrambled eggs in her chicken salad--regretted eating it.

Not to mention, I don't remember the recipe because I was in such a hurry to make a cookie that I could eat ASAP, that I just dumped in some flour, poured in a little sugar, sprinkled some salt, and didn't take a single note on measurement.

Which, as we've already talked about, is fine, because who wants a recipe for chocolate chip flan bread anyway?

No one. That's who.

So, I need some help.

What should I make on With a Side of Vegetables next?

Would you like to watch me epically fail on pork chops? Or how about creme brulee, which I will burn--I mean brown--with 37 regular matches?

I'm going grocery shopping Saturday afternoon.

So, as the boys in elementary school said right before they hurled a ball at the closest unsuspecting girl, think fast.

If you don't, I'm going to have to eat chocolate chip flan bread while I sit in front of my boring blog that's in need of a makeover.

Is it too late to talk about Halloween?

I don't really like Halloween all that much. So I decided I didn't want to do Halloween this year.

It was a good plan.

The Wednesday before Halloween I changed my mind. And then I yelled at my roommate because she couldn't think of a costume that involved me wearing jeans, a black shirt, and dark makeup.

I couldn't think of one either.

So the Friday before Halloween I ran frantically all over Tucson looking for a costume.

I ended up with a white dress, that I thought could maybe could work as a Marilyn Monroe dress.

Like, maybe if you really use your imagination and squint just right it could look like a Marilyn Monroe dress.

It didn't look like a Marilyn Monroe dress. It did sort of look like a Marilyn Monroe nightgown.

So I decided to be a 40s girl.

But then somehow my hair ended up in a short bob. And I looked like I walked out of a 1920s time machine.

And so I put on some beads and called myself a flapper.

But I didn't have a feather.

So, I was Daisy, from Great Gatsby.

Which, actually, is what I wanted to be in the first place--an understated character from a classic novel.

Unfortunately, no one asked me what I was.

Because I went to the casino for halloween.

And the people there probably thought I just like to wear 1920s dresses and pin my hair up.

Which, actually, I do like to do.

So I changed my mind.

I suppose I like Halloween after all.

As long as I get to dress up as an understated character from a classic novel and pin my hair up.

Dear Arizona

I know that a lot of people are complaining about the simple fact that it is well over 90 degrees in November.

I, however, am grateful.

I just think this sunshine is wonderful.

Love always,

Alec