It's cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey

Dub tee eff?

I live in Florida, folks.

It's funny 'cause it's true

Hi-larious.

Make somebody happy and you will be happy too

My Grandpa passed away last Sunday.

It's tough to say and even tougher to see in writing.

He was sick for a while -- his kidneys were failing, he was on dialysis, he suffered from multiple strokes and before he died, the doctors told him that they'd have to amputate both of his legs.

It's unfair to put a man through so much during his last days. Especially a man as fiercely proud and independent as my grandfather.

The funeral was last Thursday.

Everyone said he looked so peaceful and he did, but I don't want to remember a peaceful man.

I want to remember the man he really was -- the way his eyes lit up when any of his grandkids came home. His great appetite for life. I want to remember him for his sense of humor and the way he held both your hands during a handshake. Hell, I want to remember him for how stubborn he was -- a trait passed onto most of his progeny and further still.

I'm still a little messed up but I'm trying to get through it.

Stuff like this made me really appreciate the people in my life. Not just my mom and dad, Sparky and Dan, The Best Friend and the Crew, but everyone -- the guy at Blockbuster who quotes Talledega Nights and makes you laugh when you didn't think it was possible (thanks guy). The cashier at Publix who genuinely smiles at you and tells you to enjoy your day. The guy who lets you in at a particularly crowded intersection. The waitress who refills your sweet tea without you saying a word.

You can write it off by saying, "They're just doing their job," but it's more than that. These people don't owe you anything. They don't have to be nice nor friendly, but they are.

These are all tiny kindnesses that we, for the most part, ignore. I don't want to do that anymore.

Leave an extra buck. Smile back. Tell them that they're doing a great job and that you appreciate it. It takes all of five seconds and honestly -- you can't tell people enough.

A shot of The Best Friend I took for photography class

I used the incandescent light setting outdoors and think it actually looks pretty interesting.

You gave me the best mixtape I have...

I spent the better part of tonight working on this:



Silly really, but doing stuff like this makes the long-distance thing easier.

Ditto making mix CDs. Since we've been together, he's made me about twelve mixes (eleven of which I got for Christmas and still haven't gotten all the way through) and I've made him thirteen.

I put a lot of effort into my mix CDs and fully adhere to Hornby's axiom:

To me, making a tape is like writing a letter — there's a lot of erasing and rethinking and starting again. A good compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do. You've got to kick off with a corker, to hold the attention (I started with "Got to Get You Off My Mind," but then realized that she might not get any further than track one, side one if I delivered what she wanted straightaway, so I buried it in the middle of side two), and then you've got to up it a notch, or cool it a notch, and you can't have white music and black music together, unless the white music sounds like black music, and you can't have two tracks by the same artist side by side, unless you've done the whole thing in pairs and...oh, there are loads of rules.

There's got to be balance, there's got to be some semblance of eclecticism (even if you're making a mix dedicated to a single artist, you can mix it up a little by including a couple of live tracks and some really tasty covers) and every good mix should inspire at least one, "Oh my God! I love this song!" moment -- either from a forgotten gem or from a breath of fresh air.

I'm really proud of the mix I'm working on right now. It's a Valentine's mix -- lots of honeyed acoustic guitars (Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jack Johnson), twinkle-toed pianos (Something Corporate, Butch Walker) and the requisite sonic surprises (Queen, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy).

One of my favorite quotes about writing comes from German novelist Thomas Mann. He said, "A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people."

As a writer, I could pen a thousand pages, telling Dan how I feel. How he makes me feel. I could wrack my brain and come up with anapestic analogies and indelible imagery.

But you know what? None of it would ever sound as good or make as much sense as, "Wild horses couldn't drag me away."

Six little words would completely K.O. anything I could ever write.

And God, do I love that.

That's the beauty of the mixtape. Mixtapes, like love, make poets of us all.

Valentine's Day Gift

I was planning on getting Dan the screenplays for Before Sunrise and Before Sunset for Valentine's Day. It was supposed to be a sweet, personal and most importantly, a romantic gift.

Unfortunately, the boy went and picked the book up for himself.

So now -- I have no idea what to get him for Valentine's Day.

I'm thinking book (He owns pretty much every DVD in existence, his music collection is more digital than tangible and he's been talking about reading more. Besides, books make excellent gifts). I'm thinking romantic. I'm thinking personal. (I have a bit of an idea, but it's one of those things I think I want more than he'd want).

So, I reach out to you -- anonymous flotsam and jetsam of the blogosphere to help me out.

What does a long-distance-music-junkie girlfriend get her long-distance-movie-junkie boyfriend for Valentine's Day?

Any ideas? Past presents you've gotten for people? Books you'd like to recommend? Other suggestions? (If it helps any, we're celebrating Valentine's Day on March 14 as opposed to February 14 because I'd really like to see him open his gift).

Thanks guys!

P.S.: And lastly, for no reason at all -- how cute is this? Damn you, Fox. Why must you take away everything I love?

Nice guys finish last. Nice girls don't even get a hackneyed cliche.

There's this cliche about nice guys finishing last. Well, what about nice girls? We don't even get a lousy cliche. And, what is a "nice" girl anyway?

Someone bland and boring and vanilla? How did vanilla get such a bad rap, anyway? I mean, isn't it from Madagascar or some other place wildly exotic? It's not like it grows all over Putney or some place equally dull.

I heard this idea that men want to marry nice girls, but date naughty ones because you can do things with naughty girls that you wouldn't dream of doing with the prospective mother of your children. Is this true or is this another one of those things I should take with a boulder of salt?

I get teased endlessly and unmercifully at my naivete. Marla Sokoloff played white-washed bad girl Gia on Full House. Sidenote -- Gia is a bad girl's name. You'd never meet a bad girl named Susan.

Anyway, Jerry and I were talking about the show and somewhere along the line, I said, "Gia was so bad! She smoked cigarettes!" This caused Jerry to erupt into a fit of incredulous laughter and left me puzzled because Gia was a bad girl and did smoke cigarettes.

Now, when you consider the reprehensible gutter-trash on shows like Sally-Jessy Raphael, Maury Povitch and Ricki Lake, Gia's actually a pretty tame bad-girl composite.

I've never been a 'bad girl' or anything even remotely close. I've always been 'that nice girl in your English class.' It's not necessarily a bad thing, but fairly anonymous.

Sometimes, I wonder if anyone from high school even remembers me.

If I bumped into anyone I went to high school with, would they even recognize me? I'd like to think so, although according to Paul and Jerry, I've gotten a lot better looking since high school. "No, seriously...like a lot better looking. Yeah, you were kinda not hot at all in high school." Yeah -- thanks boys. That's a nice backhanded compliment there. Oh well, at least I'm not the Dora the Dogface girl anymore, right?

I like to believe that I've changed for the better since high school, but I don't know if I'm qualified to make that assessment.

I'm still nice, I think. I've definitely gotten mouthier and I like to think I'm less naive than I was then...but that could be wishful thinking on my part.

Life is all about growth and without the faintest trace of self-deprecation or irony [alright, maybe a little], have I grown?

Here I was in my own little world, talking to myself, dreaming about candy bracelets.

This morning, I awoke with a rather inexplicable and immense crush on this man:


He's funny, a great writer, good looking in that boy-next-door kind of way, he's got great taste in music and he blogs.

Zach Braff is just like me.....only, y'know -- richer, talented, successful and able to pee while standing up.

In other news:

I'm going to Philadelphia for thirteen days in March! I could not be more excited. I get to see the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Geno's Steaks and most importantly -- the boyfriend! I can't wait. I need recommendations for the plane -- great music to download and good books to read. Any suggestions?

Eat this and rejoice: two cups penne pasta, one tomato, olive oil, basil and balsamic vinaigrette. Cook pasta. Mix with other ingredients. Cool in fridge. Eat three hours later. Experience gastronomic ecstasy.

As of yesterday, my life has become consumed by this:



















Nintendo, you glorious bastard -- you've done it again. Highly recommended to anyone who digs the Mario Bros. franchise or cute video games. As I've said numerous times before -- Mario > Master Chief.