Great Day
I got a Gies-letter today--hooray!--in which I was chastized for not updating very frequently. I guess that's been true lately. There are two main reasons; one is that things have been "same old same old," and even though I was really excited that the new Chinese restaurant has an all-vegetable stir fry, that's not necessarily worth an LJ post. The second is my strange reluctance to talk about the things that matter most to me. It's part superstition and part psychosis, but I like to keep my work to myself and then show up one day with the final results. Tiny successes and failures don't seem to be worth mentioning--and if I start mentioning things I'm working on, people start asking about them, then I have to talk about them, and it's just all awkward because it's so infinitely more important to me than anyone else--and if I'm going to fail, I'd just like to do it quietly.
That said, I'm extremely pleased with the way my life is going. I'm actively making myself into the woman I always hoped I'd be. But I don't want to go around saying that I'm awesome (knock on wood) and nobody wants to hear me say it, so that limits the updating too.
If it's daily tidbits you want, though, I can certainly provide. Today I did a mess o' chores, got some sun, grilled a steak, and went to the Symphony's outdoor concert. Yesterday I went to the radio station to read a magazine called "Grit," only to find that I had been reassigned--to the department-store circulars. Rock. Twenty-four minutes of Kaufmann's, Macy's, and K-Mart. It was more challenging than you would think, and...fun. So now I've done all three of the most ludicrous jobs: the newspaper (including weather, horoscopes and letters to the editor), tv-listings (which one fellow volunteer calls "Brain Dead Monkey Work"), and the Buyer's Guide. Filling in for an actual publication will be a relief.
Also--by special request!--this is the story of the Great Barbecue Sauce Adventure of '00.
My friends in college tended to be...offbeat. Often this manifested in the fact that when they like something--say, a certain trumpet player or book series or cartoon or kind of shampoo or what-have-you--they really like it. What my sophomore-year roommate, Laure, really liked was Sweet Baby Ray's Barbecue Sauce, which she got in Iowa and brought in to Pennsylvania so she could eat it with her chicken fingers in the cafeteria.
Being a gracious sort, Laure thought that Sweet Baby Ray and his colleagues ought to know how much she liked his barbecue sauce, so she sent him a nice letter.
Several months later she got a package in the mail hall.
It contained:
Twelve (12) bottles of barbecue sauce (in 3 flavors!)
Two (2) Sweet Baby Ray T-shirts
Two (2) Sweet Baby Ray ball caps
A buttload (infinity) of coupons for more free bottles of barbecue sauce.
So from then on, every time the cafeteria served chicken fingers--or for that matter, anything remotely sauceable--out would come one of the bottles crowding the refrigerator and we would all partake. It was an amusing communal activity, and really good barbecue sauce to boot. So my junior-year roommate, Julia, who is never to be outdone, thought she would write a nice note to the Sweet Baby Ray's people thanking them for their generosity and letting them know that their product was a hit on the college campus.
The loot?
Six (6) bottles of sauce
One (1) T-shirt
One (1) ball cap
Another buttload (infinity TWICE) of coupons
At this point we were giving the stuff to anyone who would take it. There must have been a bottle in every third room on the hall. Of course, we had to see how far this would go, so I wrote a third letter telling them that we were pretty much drowning in Sweet Baby Ray's and loving every delicious minute of it. I got about half a buttload of coupons in the mail, and we decided that this adventure was pretty well exhausted. But I still have one of the T-shirts in my pajama drawer, and there's half a bottle of Sweet Baby Ray's Hickory-Smoked Barbecue Sauce in my fridge right now. I think they got their money back in loyal customers.
The moral of the story is, of course, if you are a starving college student, spend your money on stamps and write to the makers of your favorite food, and you will starve no more.
And, lest you think me a fibber....
Remember folks, the sauce is boss.
That said, I'm extremely pleased with the way my life is going. I'm actively making myself into the woman I always hoped I'd be. But I don't want to go around saying that I'm awesome (knock on wood) and nobody wants to hear me say it, so that limits the updating too.
If it's daily tidbits you want, though, I can certainly provide. Today I did a mess o' chores, got some sun, grilled a steak, and went to the Symphony's outdoor concert. Yesterday I went to the radio station to read a magazine called "Grit," only to find that I had been reassigned--to the department-store circulars. Rock. Twenty-four minutes of Kaufmann's, Macy's, and K-Mart. It was more challenging than you would think, and...fun. So now I've done all three of the most ludicrous jobs: the newspaper (including weather, horoscopes and letters to the editor), tv-listings (which one fellow volunteer calls "Brain Dead Monkey Work"), and the Buyer's Guide. Filling in for an actual publication will be a relief.
Also--by special request!--this is the story of the Great Barbecue Sauce Adventure of '00.
My friends in college tended to be...offbeat. Often this manifested in the fact that when they like something--say, a certain trumpet player or book series or cartoon or kind of shampoo or what-have-you--they really like it. What my sophomore-year roommate, Laure, really liked was Sweet Baby Ray's Barbecue Sauce, which she got in Iowa and brought in to Pennsylvania so she could eat it with her chicken fingers in the cafeteria.
Being a gracious sort, Laure thought that Sweet Baby Ray and his colleagues ought to know how much she liked his barbecue sauce, so she sent him a nice letter.
Several months later she got a package in the mail hall.
It contained:
Twelve (12) bottles of barbecue sauce (in 3 flavors!)
Two (2) Sweet Baby Ray T-shirts
Two (2) Sweet Baby Ray ball caps
A buttload (infinity) of coupons for more free bottles of barbecue sauce.
So from then on, every time the cafeteria served chicken fingers--or for that matter, anything remotely sauceable--out would come one of the bottles crowding the refrigerator and we would all partake. It was an amusing communal activity, and really good barbecue sauce to boot. So my junior-year roommate, Julia, who is never to be outdone, thought she would write a nice note to the Sweet Baby Ray's people thanking them for their generosity and letting them know that their product was a hit on the college campus.
The loot?
Six (6) bottles of sauce
One (1) T-shirt
One (1) ball cap
Another buttload (infinity TWICE) of coupons
At this point we were giving the stuff to anyone who would take it. There must have been a bottle in every third room on the hall. Of course, we had to see how far this would go, so I wrote a third letter telling them that we were pretty much drowning in Sweet Baby Ray's and loving every delicious minute of it. I got about half a buttload of coupons in the mail, and we decided that this adventure was pretty well exhausted. But I still have one of the T-shirts in my pajama drawer, and there's half a bottle of Sweet Baby Ray's Hickory-Smoked Barbecue Sauce in my fridge right now. I think they got their money back in loyal customers.
The moral of the story is, of course, if you are a starving college student, spend your money on stamps and write to the makers of your favorite food, and you will starve no more.
And, lest you think me a fibber....
Remember folks, the sauce is boss.