I don’t feel good.  I’m cold, I’m achey, and I’m very, very tired.  This is all the posting I’m doing tonight.

I keep a running list of potential post topics.  This sounds like a good idea, but it’s not.  For a couple of reasons, in fact.

The first is that I’m rarely inspired by those potential topics later on.  This is mostly because they’re just lists of random things.  (See yesterday’s post.)

The second is that something that seems like a fascinating and hilarious post topic at 4 a.m. Saturday morning when you’re knee deep in the drink does not seem quite so engaging in more sober(ing) times.  For instance, take a gander at this little gem I found on my list:

“If I were a character on A Different World, I would want to be Maggie (Marisa Tomei’s character) because Denise was too self-absorbed, Jaleesa was opposed to having anything resembling fun, and Maggie seemed whimsical.

Also, they all had awesome clothes.”

I’m really not sure how I thought I was going to get a whole post out of that nugget of brilliance.

• Citizen Kane
• Cool Hand Luke
• Footloose
• Flashdance
  
• Gone With the Wind
• The Sixth Sense
• Sleepless in Seattle
• When Harry Met Sally

I have zero desire to see any of these movies.  (Except maybe Footloose.  It seems more culturally relevant than the rest.)  So what do I need to see, and what can I forever and always cross off my movies-to-rent-when-I-can-no-longer-afford-cable-and-must-resort-to-Netflix list?

Here’s what I can tell you about Friday’s clown party without needing pictures to illustrate*:

• There was so much good food.  Pickled asparagus was a revelation to my taste buds.
• I tied for third place in the costume contest, despite the fact that I dyed my hair.  My aunt Shelley won.  Since she survived cancer earlier this year, I conceded defeat (almost) graciously.  (Second place went to a one-year-old boy.  No way I was beating that.)
• No leg wrestling this year (Bummer!), but there were plenty of rounds of arm wrestling.  I won one of them!  Unfortunately, Aunt Doodie kicked my biceps when I wrestled her.  She is deceptively strong for an old lady.
• I might have sung Bad, Bad Leroy Brown one too many times during karaoke.
• We played Pin the Tail on the Donkey.  Nobody got my multiple references to donkey shows and Tijuana.  This either means that my family is very sheltered or that I am too worldly.

*Pictures will come later, though.  I have to stretch this post out for NaBloPoMo posts.

As requested, photos for your perusal and commentary:

I’ve been wanting to dye my hair a dark, dark, dark color for a long, long, long time.  But usually when I’d mention it, I’d get either stares of horror or well-meaning insistence that it Just. Wouldn’t. Work.

I had a theory, though.  First, my father’s family has quite a bit of Native American heritage, and it’s very, very obvious when you look at them: dark skin, dark or black hair, dark eyes.  This is true of one of my sisters, too.

But me?  Not so much.  Pale skin, blue eyes, and hair color that can only be described as, um, non-descript.  Honestly, I’ve been coloring my hair for so long that I have no idea what color it really is now.

The key here is that I have another sister.  And for better or worse, we look alike.  A lot alike.  In fact, I sometimes have this weird experience where I walk by a mirror, catch a glance of myself peripherally, and think for a couple of seconds that it’s my sister.  At first I always think, “How the hell did she get in here?  I’m sure I locked the front door.  Maybe I should check the garage.”  And then I think, “Wow.  We look a lot alike.  Except for the part where she’s several inches taller.  And has black hair.”

So I figured I could pull it off, you know?  Because, hello: identical.  (Except for the height thing.  She’s almost normal sized!)

And, as you know, I did it last night.  I didn’t have a particularly good reason, except that I was dressing up as a zebra and zebras don’t have red hair.  (FYI:  If your costume involves coloring your hair with permanent dye and wearing a banana clip in 2008, you might want to step back, take a minute, and reconsider.)

But it turned out okay!  There were a few touch-and-go moments, though.  When I tried to blow dry my unruly, curly hair out straight for the first time in what seemed like hundreds of years, there was a bit of a crisis.  Turns out I didn’t really remember how to use a round brush and it got completely entangled.  As a result, I stood in the bathroom with the brush ensnared in my hair and my hands on my hips while I debated whether or not to call Aunt Doodie and ask her to cut the thing out.  Once I finally muddled through that mess and realized that the round brush was a seriously bad idea, there was another problem — namely, that my hair was all crinkly and wiry from the bad blow job.  (Heh.)  So there I stood, looking exactly like Gene Simmons.  I debated forgoing the black and white zebra face make-up for something more appropriate — like this — but realized that I didn’t have a tongue prosthesis on stand by.

By today, however, things were looking up.  Some of the — well, whatever the equivalent of “brassiness” is with black hair dye — had given way to a color a tad lighter and less Simmonsesque.  And the ladies who came over for the post-belly dancing get-together were very complimentary.  I might keep this color for awhile.

Or I might go blue next week.  Who knows?

Note: I totally had this post finished before midnight, but I got all distracted by Justin Timberlake’s all-too-brief appearance on SNL that I had recorded earlier.  Oh, Justin!

Okay, just two parties.  But I wrote it twice, so that seems fair.

Tonight is my family’s used-to-be-annual clown party.  I will be a zebra clown.  I did, in point of fact, dye my hair black, because I go all-out for costumes.  Mistake?  Possibly.  Caring?  Not any.

Tomorrow I’m hosting a little get-together for a few people from my yoga studio after the belly dancing class.  I will not, in point of fact, be attending the belly dancing class; you will remember that I am the whitest white girl that was ever white and therefore have zero rhythm.

Cindy tagged me for this.  I am absolutely going to do it because now I don’t have to come up with some bullshit post.  I’m supposed to tell you six book-related things about myself and then tag six others to do the same.

1. The first book I ever read — like, for real read and not pretend read because I’d memorized it — was called Who Cried For Cherry Pie? I swear it exists, but I can’t find any reference to it online.
2. If I were forced to name a favorite book, it would probably be Timequake by Kurt Vonnegut.  I used to have two copies of it, but now I can’t find either of them.  This depresses me.  Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions is probably my second-favorite book.  Oddly enough, I’ve never read Slaughterhouse-Five because I’m afraid I’ll be disappointed.
3. I realized last year that I stopped reading books for pleasure about the time I started seminary.  I initially attributed this to having so much boring required reading that my brain couldn’t take any more.  But then I realized that was also about the same time I stopped watching movies and started watching even more television.  Maybe I stopped reading books and watching movies because of attention span issues.  However, I think the most likely reason is that I started reading tons of online fanfic.  Spuffy fanfic.  Lots and lots and lots of it, in fact — most of which was novel length or longer.  I can make recommendations if you’d like.
4. I don’t care for most of the classics, which is probably weird for a former English teacher.  There were two novels in the last literature textbook I taught from: Nicholas Nickleby and Dragonsong.  OF COURSE I picked the McCaffrey novel.  Why?  Because it wasn’t boring, that’s why.
5. My favorite books to escape in are Robert Ludlum and Clive Cussler books, which are chock full of intrigue and action.  (See, LA people?  I come by that whole international jewel thief thing honestly.)
6. People often ask me when I’m going to write a novel.  The answer to that is never.  I believe you should write what you know, and I don’t know much.

I’m tagging Cassy, Helen/Callie, (My Cousin) Rachel, Cindyshine, and Laurie.  Um, and also Oslowe/Will, even though he doesn’t read here; Annika will have to tell him.  (I’m interested to see what he says as a writer of books rather than just a reader.)

Do you know what seems to make everything in life better?  Fried ham steak and canned new potatoes with loads of butter and salt.  Take that, Life!  (Except not literally, because I don’t want to die of a high cholesterol-induced coronary at 34.)

I know this makes some of you shake your head in horror and bewilderment, but I don’t drink coffee.  Mostly, anyway.  A couple of times a year I’ll get a caramel macchiato from Starbucks or have a cup full of equal parts creamer and sugar and hot chocolate and coffee at Aunt Doodie’s, but for the most part I avoid it.  There are two reasons for this.  Number one:  It has an aftertaste worse than that of Diet Coke that will stick with me all day no matter how many times I brush my teeth.  Number two:  Well, that’s because of Number Two.  I usually just say coffee hurts my stomach, but the truth is it makes me shit my guts out.

Nevertheless, I do own a coffee pot and always have coffee in my house.  Sometimes I need it for cooking other stuff (The best chocolate cake I’ve ever had is chock full of coffee and mayonnaise.), but mostly I have those items available for guests because I know I’m in the coffee-free minority.  But lately I’ve discovered that I really, really, really like the iced hazelnut coffee thingie at McDonald’s, and it doesn’t cause me any intestinal issues if I nurse one all day long.  But at over $3 a pop, I can’t very well be buying them very often, so I decided to start making my own.  Today I picked up the hazelnut syrup and got ready to tingle my taste buds.

Coffee pot?  Kaput.

I know that for some of you this would be a tragedy of apocalyptic proportions, but I was just peeved that a fourth thing broke within two weeks.  What’s next?  A broken bone, maybe?  I’ve never had one of those and I don’t have health insurance, so that seems likely.