procrastination and gratitude

did i already thank whatever hotel is connected to the bangor airport for their free internet yesterday? if not, thank you, whatever hotel is connected to the bangor airport.

while i'm dishing out gratitude, let me also thank expedia for setting up the three hour layover in detroit yesterday which, by the time we made it to detroit, wound up being only an hour and a half.

i'd also like to thank my seatmate on the bangor flight for not pointing out the horrible stench in our row. had he done it, i would have said something about hw rude it is for people to eat broccoli and cheese sauce the night before flying. however, since he was too classy and restrained to point it out, i merely have to make a mental note to never, ever, do that again. i mean, on a standard flight, with the cloth seats, these things are easily stifled, however, my northwest flight (operated by pinnacle) featured vinyl seats, which do a terrible job of stifling flatulence.

not that i know from experience, mind you. but really, whomever may have been guilty of befouling the air on that flight should have realized that broccoli and vinyl seats are a bad combination.

who else to thank? ah yes, aeropostale for making jeans that fit me, although i think i should have stuck with the smaller pair today. there's room in these jeans for me, SO, and possibly the inhabitants of a small village.

oh, and i should thank vickie's for having a sale on foundation undergarments last week. it almost takes the sting out of the realization that i've lost enough weight to land in a smaller cup. i haven't been a vowel since late in my middle school career.

while i was in maine, i managed to finish reading 3 books, in addition to the two i wiped out on the way back to south carolina yesterday:

lolita - needed to work on my goal of reading 3 banned books before i hit 30, and this one has been on every list i've come across. (could be because of that whole pedophilia thing....)

the taste of a man - i borrowed this from mama for our drive down to freeport and back up the maine coast. it's a classic "boy meets girl, girl falls in love with boy, girl decides to kill boy and eat him" tale. i finished it as we were pulling into a restaurant in ellsworth for dinner. is it any wonder i wasn't hungry for any sort of red meat?

the foreskin's lament - this was a recommendation from david sedaris when i saw him in charleston back in october. excellent book.

love in the time of cholera - the movie was out when i left columbia, so i figured i'd read the book and then catch the movie when i got back home. guess what's no longer in theatres? it's a pity, because the book was really good.

gods behaving badly - i saw this reviewed in a people magazine the last time i went to the dentist. (i'm still pondering how less than five minutes of work cost me $120, but i suppose that sort of thing is explained in those advanced math classes i avoided in high school and college.) since i used to be quite the greek mythology geek, i was thrilled to find it at the borders in bangor. i'm hoping the author's working on a sequel. another excellent book.

and speaking of books, i should probably abandon this and get to scribbling on the backs of the avon brochures that i've been avoiding since before the holidays. my current motivation? finish them, and then i can kick back and work on reading memoirs of a geisha, which is shaping up to be another good one.....

waiting on a jet plane.....

okay- so that's not really how the song goes, but i'm taking a little creative license here, and since i've already been up for two hours now, humor me, okay?

this post is being brought to you this morning by the sheraton at the bangor airport, which is kind enough to provide free internet access to guests, and those of us willing to freeze our butts off sitting by the doorway so we can catch a signal. since it's a whopping 29 degrees outside (and snowing!), i hope you can appreciate the sacrifice i'm making here.

i thought about publishing my holiday letter on here a couple of weeks ago, just because, in my ever-so-humble opinion, it's the funniest thing i've written in awhile. however, i started contemplating how impersonal we've become- the handwritten letter has given way to the generic letter (i'm guilty of that one, though i always scribble in the card, too), and this year, i even witnessed folks not only printing out generic photo cards, but printing the envelopes, too. i don't think pen actually touched paper anywhere in the process. i even received a couple of generic letters via email. i'm all for saving time and money and all that, but that warm fuzzy feeling one gets while putting cards up on the wall (tell me i'm not the only one who still does this) is diminished just a little when you have to raid your email to print them out first.

then again, maybe it's just me.

so, my holiday masterpiece, though it would've been a fairly easy post, isn't going to show up here anytime soon. if you want to know what you missed, scroll down and check out the ireland posts (i know, i know- i still need to pound out the last few posts in the series), the grand canyon post, and add a "happy/merry whatever holiday is closest to the time you receive this" at either end.

wow- that was a little ranty. perhaps not the best way to end a year. so, instead, let me share with you a really bad photo of me, enjoying something i haven't had in south carolina in years:

is it over yet?

50 cards down, a hundred something to go.

mama and i have already had our annual "discussion" regarding the ridiculous number of people i send cards to. can i help it if i figure other people like getting mail of the non-bill variety as much as i do? i think not.

look for a meaningful post after the holidays. right now, i'm too busy trying to get my hands on enough breast cancer stamps to finish mailing these puppies out.

i want a doctor to take a picture.....

this'll be short- i'm a couple weeks late sitting down to compose my annual holiday letter, and if i have any hope of mailing the last one before, oh, valentine's day, i need to get the thing written this weekend.

however, i can now honestly say that you haven't lived until you've been in a car with two ten year old who were pondering the meaning behind "turning japanese" by the vapors. they finally decided that the only way to turn japanese would be to marry someone japanese at a very young age, because after a while, you'd start to look like them. (sort of like dogs and owners who start to look alike after a while, i guess.)



i had a hard time staying on the road, since i was laughing so hard.

interestingly enough, when i explained this to both the father of one of the 10 year olds and SO, i had to explain the meaning behind the title. am i that much of a music nerd, or is it not common knowledge that the song is about the same subject mater as "dancing with myself" and "she bop"?

ok- enough of that smut. i have a letter to write.