beta blues.

My company is on a yearly release cycle. So from May to December, we work on features for the year. In January, we tie up the loose ends and release a beta version of the new version of our product to certain users. They use it and give us feedback. We fix things and release another beta a few weeks later. They use that one and give us more feedback. Finally, we release the final product in the spring sometime, and the whole thing starts all over again.

The nice thing about this sort of schedule is that you can sort of predict what work is going to be like at any given time of the year. In November and December, it's very busy and tense and stressed as people try to finish up features in time. Some of that leaks into January, though not for everybody. During the summer, when you've just been assigned your features and you got like six whole months to finish them, it's very relaxed.

If you've been paying attention and are good with calendars, you'll realize that right now we are in beta. This can be a stressful period as well, but in a different way.

First of all, the software has bugs. All software has bugs. Some of them are incredibly obscure and may never get found. At my old job, we found a bug where if you were using the program, then just happened to change your screensaver and then just happened to try to close the application after that, it crashed and burned. A crash is something to avoid, but seriously, how many people are likely to change their screensaver at the moment they're using the program?

We do test our software here. But we could never come up with every single possible usage of the application, just because it's a pretty complex one. So we rely on the beta period to shake out some of the common things our users will run into. We also take suggestions for improvement, for instance in the way something looks or behaves. We get feedback mostly from our user forum. Users who are using the beta log on and create a topic for a bug or suggestion. We respond, asking for clarification or telling them that we were able to reproduce the bug ourselves and will fix it.

Of course, the first day we release the beta, there is a floodgate effect. We release, we have a couple of hours of peace, and then all of a sudden users are adding bugs left and right. This user has a problem with this feature on UNIX, and this one thinks this tool is hard to use, and another one thinks we should add an option for something or other. What is stressful, for me at least, is the way I get pulled in several different directions. I only have to really respond to reports that deal with something that I worked on in the first place, but I might have half a dozen of those come in within a couple of hours. I read a bug report, I see if I can reproduce it, I respond to the user, I enter a ticket in our bug tracking system, and finally I get down to fixing the problem. By then, several more might have come in. I just need to focus, is all.

The nice thing about beta is that it sort of allows you to polish your features. After a couple of weeks, the reports from users starts to slow down a little, and you can catch up. You might even finish with all the stuff those nagging users asked for and have time to add a little polish of your own. There are always things that were required to be finished before the feature could be called "done." And then there are the other things you might have thought of along the way that fell into the "nice to have" category. I suppose it's sort of closure.

So that's your day in the life of a programmer. At least this particular programmer in January.

egg-battered toast.

Remember when we were "boycotting France" by calling cut up and fried potatoes "freedom fries" instead of "french fries"? Man, that was stupid*. I think we could hear the French rolling their eyes from here. Anyway, at the restaurant where I worked at the time, we happened to be reworking our breakfast menu at the time. My boss wanted to be patriotic and rename the french toast. His idea was "egg-battered toast." I managed to talk him down from this idea, mostly from the fact that no one would know what the heck it was. Then the servers would all have to tell the people that it was just french toast, which would completely defeat the purpose.

Sunday morning, my mother came to visit. Instead of going out, I made french toast, because I'm trying to save money. I was telling a coworker about our nice little brunch, and she asked me a question that totally threw me off.

"Did you make it from scratch?"

I'm sure that face reflected my confusion. "I, uh, what, uh, from, uh, I'm just not sure how else you could make french toast."

"Well, there are those freezer things."

I tried to conceal my horror at the idea of serving my dear, sweet mother microwave french toast. I mean, I could have really splurged and taken her to Burger King to have the french toast sticks there. Instead, I just replied, "French toast is so easy to make."

"Those freezer ones are really convenient."

"Bread, eggs, and milk are convenient."

I will not go into a rant about convenience foods. Because then if I ever am caught using one, which will happen, I will be forced to microwave a frozen crow dinner and eat it. But in general, I am not a fan. When given the option to spend a little extra time to create something that is better for me and tastes a million times better, I'm going to pick that one. I wonder if people just don't know how easy it is to make stuff from scratch.

So today I'm going to do my part to put the frozen french toast makers out of business. It's criminally easy to make the real stuff, and it won't taste like public school food. Make some for your mother.

Take a couple eggs. Beat 'em up. Pour some milk into the eggs and whisk that all together. Throw in some cinnamon or vanilla or nutmeg or whatever you want. Dip a slice of bread in, making sure to coat both sides with the mixture. Put the piece of bread in a frying pan over medium heat and let it grill. Flip it over to get the other side.

There. French toast without a freezer or a microwave or a toaster. Now I'm going to tell you how to make the best french toast ever.

There is a restaurant in Brooklyn which serves french toast that does not need syrup. Think about that for a second. Can you even imagine something that delicious? I think they had secret ingredients in their batter, some magic spice mix. According to the menu, they also used Challah.

So when I came home, I decided to make Challah. This is not a required step in making french toast from scratch. The Amish would say that store-bought bread is a convenience food, but that's something I'm willing to deal with. Baking bread isn't particularly difficult, especially if you have a mixer of some kind, but it's time-consuming. The wee yeasty beasties do all the work, but you have to give them time to do it. You can make it in the bread machine, too, but then it won't be pretty and braided.

Once I had made Challah, I made french toast with it. And I think that New York restaurant is on to something, because using Challah is a big step in french toast improvement. I found Challah to be very absorbent (a feature which makes it great for dipping in soups as well). Maybe it's the same with any fresh homemade bread. Perhaps I should conduct a great french toast experiment, in which I make lots of different kinds of homemade bread and see which yields the best french toast. That sounds like delicious science.

Now that you have your french toast, do not put Mrs. Butterworth's on it. Don't even put real maple syrup on it. Get some fruit syrup. Not fruit-flavored syrup, but stuff that tastes like fruit jam, but is much runnier. You might could even just use jam. Then, pour some cream on top. Whipping cream, half and half, whatever. My British friend taught me that trick, and I'll never go back to syrup.

And that is how I make french toast. Even if you can't get a hold of some Challah, try the fruit and cream trick. And if you can't do that, please just make french toast "from scratch." Don't buy the frozen things. Bread, eggs, and milk are very convenient.

*Stupid, but not unprecedented. There was a lot of renaming going around during the World Wars. One particularly silly one was the renaming of German measles to liberty measles. We're so angry at the Germans that we will refuse to name our diseases after them.

nice things.

It was after 11pm and everyone else had gone to sleep. With his parents gone, Josh and I felt free to snuggle a little closer on the couch and watch TV shows with mild adult language. I'm TV-starved, as I don't have any channels on my set at home. And while that never bothers me when I'm there, I always find myself fascinated with the tube whenever I find myself near one. But then I get sick of the commercials after a half hour.

During the first commercial break (Have they always been so loud? And idiotic? And frequent?), I decided to go raid the fridge, full of Thanksgiving leftovers. I started poking around, opening various containers and sniffing the contents. I settled on some pecan pie and started hunting for the silverware drawer. I hate having to find eating utensils in a strange house, checking every drawer and wondering what sort of backwards organization system is in use. It's a very minor, yet very irritating form of impotence.

After only two tries, I pulled open a drawer to see sets of gold gleaming knives, forks, and spoons. They glittered like the lost treasure of a pirate who had an Oneida penchant. This might tell you something about both my upbringing and my current household, but I was shocked to see that they all matched.

I have matching silverware, eight of each utensil. When I was in college, I noticed that my roommates and I kept running out of forks. So I bought a bunch more at the thrift store for a dime apiece. Then we kept running out of spoons, and I added to that collection. And finally the knives had to keep up with all the forks and spoons. I'm not sure if the people who manage to live with a matching set of silverware have bigger sets or if they do their dishes more frequently.

The sight of the shining spoons reminded me of the previous weekend, when we had helped Josh's dad move. While the guys had been out doing something manly, I helped Josh's stepmom unwrap her crystal. It was all beautiful, and the collection was extensive. It seemed like there was a shape of glass for every kind of alcohol ever invented. I gingerly unwrapped each glass and handed them to her, feeling a lot like a bull inside a china shop, one who is trying not to make a fool of himself in front of people who might be in-laws later. I felt very out of my depth, thinking about the two sets of champagne flutes that made up my mother's crystal collection. At Thanksgiving, we would pour our $4 sparkling wine into those flutes, which were still dripping wet from having the dust of the basement just washed off of them. I drink my $4 sparkling wine in white wine glasses from a set of eight, which are actually pretty nice and from which I've already broken two.

Admiring the silverware and remembering the crystal, I thought about how it would feel to own nice things. I thought about how I could buy matching silverware and I could even start collecting crystal a bit at a time. I began envisioning lovely shelves of differently shaped and sized crystalware, sparkling with cleanliness in neat rows like soldiers in dress uniform. Maybe below them would be a drawer, in a very logical and convenient location, full of the finest silverware, all matching and always enough.

And then I came to my senses and realized that even if I obtained all those nice things, they would not last. The silverware would get tarnished and lost, and new, non-matching members would somehow work their way into the ranks. The crystal would be broken, piece by piece. If something didn't get broken, it was because it was collecting dust, unused and forgotten because of the rarity of my partaking in sherry or cognac or whatever beverage that shape of glass is designed to accentuate.

And I wouldn't even care about the broken crystal or the mismatched silverware, because deep in my heart, I am not a nice things person. Might I become one someday? Sure. It seems sort of unlikely, though. I'd rather have something durable than delicate, functional than flashy. If these things are temporary anyway, they might as well be inexpensive and useful. I don't have anything against people who have nice things, they're just not for me. I just can't summon the will to care about nice things.

And then I realized (I'm still standing over the silverware drawer, are you keeping up?) that just as I had not grown up in a house full of nice things, Josh had. I wondered about the expectations of his future household. Sure, slumming it with a girl with mismatched silverware was fine now, but when he is older, will he wish that the design on his fork matched the design on his knife or that his Scotch was not served out of a juice glass?

I returned to the living room with my pecan pie and golden fork. The commercials were still on.

"Your mom has gold silverware."

"Yeah."

"It all matches."

"Mm-hm."

"You know, honey, if you marry me, our silverware is probably not going to match. And we're not going to have a bunch of nice crystal like Susan has."

"That's okay."

"I'm just letting you know, that a life with me is probably not going to be a life full of nice things. I mean, I don't know if that matters to you, because you seemed to grow up with lots of nice things."

He looked at me like I was absolutely crazy then. Then he pulled me closer to him and told me he didn't care about that kind of thing either. I believed him and offered him a bite of pie. Then I thought about how there were too many commercials on TV nowadays.

the kickiest.

Buying used is an act of patience in a lot of ways. For one thing, you have to sort through the crap. Say that you just bought a kicky* wool skirt with little red berries on it. Now you need a kicky** red sweater. When you go to JC Penney's, the sweaters are in one section. Each rack has a different style of sweater, possibly in several different colors. There are several sweaters of the same style and color in each size, and these sizes are organized.

When you go to Goodwill, the sweaters are in one section. They are organized by color. There is only one sweater in each style. It's probably too small for you. If you go to a different thrift store, the sweaters might not be organized by anything at all. They might not even get their own rack in the women's section. They might be in a pile somewhere, possibly even on the floor or in a box. Either way, you need patience to sort through all the sweaters to find the red sweater that is your size and might look okay on you.

Even after all that, there is no guarantee that you will find a red sweater that will match your kicky*** wool skirt. You might have to go to several thrift stores to find the perfect sweater.

What's worse, you might not even find the sweater that day. You spent all day rooting through very unkicky sweaters, and you didn't even find what you wanted. You have two options here. One is to give in and go to JC Penney's. The other is to wait a week and hit the thrift stores again. And that's where the true test of patience is here.

Some people are amazed that I find so much good stuff used. They went to a thrift store once and didn't find a darn thing, just a bunch of crap that people were right to get rid of. So they think I am magical. I have to explain to them that I spend a lot of time on this hobby.

For example, at my old job, we were about to switch to a business casual dress code. I didn't have any appropriate clothes, so I started checking out the thrift stores. There are four Goodwills in Winston-Salem, and I hit a different one after work every Monday thru Thursday for three weeks. I ended up with a great wardrobe, but most days I didn't buy a thing.

Usually, I don't really need anything specific. However, most of the time, I will have a running list of things that I'd kinda-sorta-like to have. Items might be on the list for a year before I find what I want. But most things pop up eventually, and until I find the thing, I just keep on doing whatever I was doing before I decided I needed it. Sometimes other people ask me to look for things for them. They know that I might not ever find those things, but at least I am keeping an eye out.

Another example - I broke my blender. It was a crappy hand-me-down blender anyway. But it still sorta worked, the pitcher just wouldn't latch properly, so I had to pick up the blender and give it a firm shake if I wanted to make sure the stuff at the top got down to the blades. It was not an ideal situation, but it worked.

I had in my mind the idea of a blender with a lot of buttons and a nice thick glass pitcher. Every time I went to a thrift store or a yard sale, I looked for blenders. I saw one just like my old one (but presumably not broken) for $2, but I resisted. I saw ads for $15 jobbies at Wal-Mart, but I resisted still. And then one day, maybe two months after I broke my old one, I saw the exact kind I wanted at a yard sale, and the woman gave it to me for free. Patience wins.

I think all that waiting is probably good for you. It makes you think about what you want and what you need. It's just stuff, and you can wait to have it. Wear a kicky green sweater that you already have. Pick up the blender and shake it; it's sorta fun, really.

*You know, I heard the word "kicky" used once to describe a scarf, and I've liked it ever since. I have no idea what it means.

** I looked it up: "So unusual or unconventional in character or nature as to provide a thrill."

***I've been thinking, and this word describes everything I've ever truly loved: my kicky zipper earrings, my exceedingly kicky penguin hat, and my boyfriend, who is the kickiest.

snow day.

I am at home, in fleece pants and a long sleeve t-shirt from one of my high school clubs. I am home on a Tuesday, because it snowed three inches in Raleigh, North Carolina last night. Snow days never lose their appeal. Even though I can log into my office remotely, writing code documentation in fleece pants has its benefits.

My laptop is in my lap, and I am streaming CNN because I don't have cable. Josh is sitting behind me with his chin on my shoulder. We watching the inauguration, and we are happy. I was one of the people who a year ago would have said that this country was not ready to elect a black president. Now I'm one of the people filled with hope - totally naive and unassailable hope.

Sometimes the video freezes as my connection tries to catch up with all the history that is being sent through the air in my apartment. But the audio keeps going, and I'm glad that I won't have to watch it on YouTube later. I'm trying to pick up which line will be the sound bite that will be played over and over, both tonight and tomorrow and fifty years from now.

I'm trying to take a mental snapshot of this moment, so that when my kids ask about it, I'll be able to tell them the story. The story about the snow and the fleece pants and the laptop and the hope.

three-legged tenant.

While we had the van at our disposal, I decided to get rid of a three-legged tenant of my apartment that had been ordered to leave months ago. I'm not sure when the leg of my sofa broke. I may have bought it that way. And it wasn't so much broken as loosely attached. If you picked the sofa up and carried it around, the leg was very liable to fall off. But if you put the leg back carefully and left the sofa on the ground, then you couldn't tell a difference.

The sofa was a two-seater with upholstery that was trying really hard to be leather but was clearly made by a man and not a cow. It was a dark vomit green and looked like the kind of thing you'd find in the basement of an old man who was trying to convince himself that he was very learned. It was going to be his reading sofa, except that he ended up falling asleep in the recliner in front of the TV most nights.

This is the fun of buying used furniture. You can invent past lives for them.

I bought the sofa for $15 at a yard sale during my last year of college. I loved it, because I empathized with its struggle to be a learned old man's study couch. It was the main piece of living room furniture for me in Boone, in Winston-Salem, and here in Raleigh up until about four months ago. At that point, I came to grips with the fact that for all its charm, it just wasn't a very comfortable place to sit. The sofa got moved into the dining room, where it waited for me to find proper transportation for it to go to Goodwill. A futon was put in the living room, and I hope that the sofa was not too jealous of the fact that we stopped sitting on the floor so much and actually used the futon.

Transportation finally happened Sunday night. Yes, I lived with a sofa in my dining room for four months, what of it? That's the kind of wild and crazy single life I lead. We carried it down the stairs, stopping and picking up the fallen leg on the way. We loaded it up and drove down to Goodwill. As we were unloading it, I cautioned Josh not to let the Goodwill employees see the gimpy leg, because I was afraid that they would not take it.

Is that dishonest? Am I required to give full disclosure on the known limitations of an item if I am giving it to someone for free? We weren't really trying to pull anything. Yes, the leg fell out, but if you left the couch on the floor, you could reattach it very nicely and use it without incident. But even if Goodwill did take it, they would likely discover the defect later, at which point they might just dump it. I wished that I had taken the time to get some wood glue and repair the leg before I battled this ethical debate.

Well, none of that matters, because in route to the donation door, the leg did its thing and gave me away. The Goodwill lady said she could not accept my donation of a sad old man's basement study sofa and I had to put it back in the van. We asked where we might take it, and she recommended the dump. I wished that I could have covered the sofa's ears before she said that so its feelings wouldn't be hurt.

We wouldn't have to take it to the dump. There was a dumpster at my apartment where you could put large items. Many people put stuff there, only to have someone else see it and adopt it. I had saved multiple items myself this way. Every time I did, I griped and shook my fist at the unknown person who threw away a perfectly good item. Even though I was rescuing it, they had no way of knowing that someone would take it, and they'd be much better off taking it to a thrift store where it was sure to get new life.

It was starting to get late, and there were rain clouds overhead. I pictured my three-legged sofa sitting next to the dumpster, maybe with an old Christmas tree to keep it company, in the rain. I knew I couldn't do it, and I waited a few moments before daring to ask Josh how he felt about carrying the sofa back up the stairs to my apartment.

He agreed without even a sigh, because he knows me pretty well. He was probably waiting for me to ask. If I left a functional item out there to sit in the rain and wait for some sympathetic stranger, then I have no right to shake my fist at anyone else who does it. I don't want to be a hypocrite, and I don't want to be wasteful.

We bought the wood glue, we made the repair. We will borrow the van again, carry the couch down the stairs again, and try to give it to a different thrift store. For now, the couch is still in my apartment, probably sniggering to itself because it's managed to mooch off me for another week. Or it's grateful that I care enough to give it new life. Or maybe it's just a sofa and doesn't have feelings at all.

negative nelly.

"Do you know how much it weighs?"

"No."

"Well, how big is it?"

"Standard freezer size. Like the size of my fridge."

"How old is it?"

"Kinda old."

"That's going to make it even heavier. You don't know exactly how old?"

"No."

A pause.

"Well, where are they keeping it now? In the basement or something?"

"Well, they live in a trailer, so probably not in a basement."

"This is getting better and better. Do you know the name of these people?"

"The lady's name is Stephanie. She said she tried to sell it before, but the people who wanted it wanted to put deer heads in it and the shelves aren't removable, so the deer heads wouldn't fit."

He does not even bother to respond to that one. The giant former church van bumped along the road as we traveled deeper into the redneck underbelly of Cary.

"You think I'm being too impulsive?"

"Yes. But you haven't committed to buying it. You can still say you don't want it and I'll be mean for you."

I don't think that's ever happened before. My role in the relationship is to be the stable voice of reason, whereas he likes to fly by the seat of his pants. I've never figured out how to sew wings to my pants, but maybe I'm looking at the pants-to-wing-attachment problem the wrong way.

I saw an ad for a freezer for $50, and I wanted it. I was sick of only buying a couple of pounds of sale-priced ground beef and then running out a month later and having to buy it when it wasn't on sale. The lady on the phone sounded very nice, and that was pretty much enough for me. I made sure I could get use of the band's van, and I signed up for a time to pick up my new toy. And now Josh was being all negative about it. I've never bought anything off Craig's List before, but I figured that this was how it worked. You see an ad, you call or email, and then you go check it out. Maybe having a Negative Nelly along is part of it, too.

We drove slowly down a poorly-maintained road, taking in the sights of the mobile homes on either side of us. Some had fences that enclosed various barking mutts and rusting appliances. We pulled up to the one with a freezer on the front porch and a rebel flag in one of the windows. I sighed and held tight in my mind to the sound of the lady's voice on the phone. She did not sound like trailer trash. I am no stranger to trailers, and I've known lots of people who lived in them. Some of them fit the stereotype, and just as many of them don't. Some of them are racist but otherwise very nice. People are complicated.

Stephanie came out on the front porch, and I felt relieved when I saw her. She didn't have the hollow, apathetic look that I associate with trailer trash, people who are ignorant by choice. She looked like a perfectly normal, likable person who just happened to live in a trailer. And her freezer looked like a perfectly acceptable one that just happened to be a little older, not suitable for holding deer heads, but perfectly capable of containing ground beef packed into half pound patties. I gave it a quick inspection, saw that it was clean with minor dents, but in very good condition for its age. I happily forked over $50.

Her husband and two teenage sons (I wondered which one had the room with the rebel flag) carried the freezer to the van and hoisted it in, while I talked to Stephanie about how her driveway flooded when it rained and her dad's upcoming retirement. We thanked them and wished them well, the intersection of our lives likely over forever.

The ride back was very different.

"So they were nice," I said.

"Yeah. I liked them. The guy looked like he knew what he was doing, too. He might have even checked out the freezer, too, to make sure it worked. I could tell that he was handling it really carefully, too." His change in attitude was startling.

I guess I can fly by the seat of my pants sometimes, too.

my ungrateful heart.

I was holding a gallon-sized ziplock bag of frozen chicken soup, standing in front of my open freezer, looking at a gallon-sized ziplock bag of frozen stroganoff and a gallon-sized bag of frozen vegetable beef stew. On the counter sat a gallon-sized ziplock bag of chili. I was struggling to have a grateful heart and it was not working.

Over Christmas break, we went up to Snowshoe Mountain, where Josh's dad rented a condo for the family. I'm no stranger to tagging along with a boyfriend on holidays. Some of them are uncomfortable, some of them are tense. This one is just pretty awesome. We go out in the morning and ski, and then come in for lunch, where Josh's step-mom has prepared us something delicious and hot and homemade. Then we go out and ski again or maybe just take a mid-afternoon nap. At night, we watch movies and play games and eat more home cooking.

Josh's step-mom, Susan, always cooks too much food. I'm not talking about the way that your Grandmother makes three biscuits for every person at Thanksgiving. I'm talking about making enough food that each person could have five meals a day and still take home a doggie bag. It's Too Much Food. Luckily, she has a strategy for getting rid of all the food that doesn't get eaten. That strategy is to give it to her step-sons.

And that's why I suddenly found myself in possession of multiple ziplock bags of frozen food. Don't get me wrong, I love free food. Don't ever offer me free food if you're only being polite, because I will take you up on it. But there just wasn't enough room for all this genuinely-offered food. I only have the small freezer that comes on top of my fridge, and I use every available inch of that. Opening the freezer is an adventure at my apartment, because not only do you not know what you're going to have to move to find the corn you're looking for, you don't know what's going to fall out the second you open the door. If you're lucky, it's the corn you're looking for. If you are unlucky, it's a whole chicken.

As I was standing, looking at the freezer with all the gallon-sized ziplock bags full of frozen food around me (and a bag of frozen corn on the floor), my grateful heart disappeared. I became angry and resentful that Susan lovingly made all this yummy food and then gave it to me. I was being inconvenienced by her poor planning. I suppose in actuality, she planned very well. She planned to give all the food to us. I began to wonder what the deal was with all the extra food and started to psychoanalyze her need to make Too Much Food. I even complained to Josh, who was not sympathetic and told me that I did not have a grateful heart. I started to resent him, too, even though he had done a good job lobbying to get the mustard (which we were actually almost out of anyway) and making his brother take the light mayonnaise (which I would never, ever use).

So I thawed those bags of food one at a time and then repackaged their contents into quart-sized bags. They fit better in the freezer and would be easy to take out and heat up for one meal for two people. I still did not have a grateful heart, but I stopped complaining and started dealing with it. Actually, I kept complaining, but I did it while I dealt with the food. Once repackaged, it all fit into the freezer, provided I close the door very quickly. I came up with some theories about why someone would feel the need to cook so much food, and I prepared myself to eat a lot of chicken soup in the next couple of months. Then I prepared myself to have to deal with this problem every time I saw Susan.

I did that by looking at freezers on craigslist. And you know, just thinking about getting a freezer made my heart feel much more grateful.

the long and short of it.

I am hoping that I will know when it's time to cut my hair. I was hoping that there would be a gong when I fell in love, so that I would know for sure about that, too. There wasn't. But maybe hair is unimportant enough that the universe will feel it's okay to give me a sure sign. I'm a slow learner.

See, my hair is tremendously long. Sooooo long. I have a love/hate relationship with it. It gets a lot of attention, which I like sometimes and others not. Also, I have learned that in terms of hair, quantity can overcome poor quality. I don't have especially pretty or striking hair, but there is a lot of it, which seems to count for something.

But long hair also requires a lot of maintenance, and to be honest, I don't even maintain the very short hairs on my legs anymore. Get this: with long hair, you have to brush it at least two times a day. Frankly, that's just too much for me. It takes forever and a day to dry and gets in the way all the time, and the only thing that I ever do with it is put it up. I have vivid dreams of cutting it off.

The weirdest thing about all this hair is that I don't believe it's mine. People who have seen it several times still act surprised to see it all coming from my head. I roll my eyes at them, but to be honest, I'm sort of surprised whenever I see it, too. I had short hair for ten years. Sometimes it was short enough that I would get mistaken for a boy with big hips. And I still think of myself that way, as I guess all the people who knew me then think of me. In my heart, I have short hair. There are people who have only known me with long hair, and they have no idea about the short hair in my heart.

Someday, I will cut it off, all of it in one fell swoop. I will send it to a little kid with cancer, and they will be much more grateful than I was about it. They will not complain about how it's the mousiest brown ever. But...not yet. Even as I hate it and battle with it and whine every time I have to tame it into brushability, I am not ready to go back to being a boy with big hips. It took so darn long to get to this point. I didn't do anything but not cut it off, but I did that for four years. And I think that once I do take the plunge, I'll never bother to grow it all back.

Having long hair has really been the only time I've had interesting hair, and that's where my reluctance lies. I know that interesting hair is only a phone call to my stylist away, but I shy away from that because it would make me feel even less like me. I would want to shout out "I have straight, mousy brown hair!" to anyone I met, lest they think I was trying to fool them with that lovely head of burnt auburn #17. I'm not against chemical hair alterations in general, but it's not for me. That might be a stupid way to feel, but there you go.

I am hoping it will be a haircut dream that will tell me when I'm ready to make the big hack. So far, I've always been sad that I cut my hair in the dream. And then I wake up, surrounded by a tangled mass that I was supposed to brush before I went to bed, and I am relieved. But one night, I won't be sad. I'll be glad that what's on my head again matches what's in my heart.

who are the caniacs?

To be fair, my hand was over my heart. It had to be, because it was holding a red-checkered paper tray with a barbeque sandwich in it to my chest. Two girls were singing the anthem in lovely harmony. I could see them way on the other side of the room, but I could see them much better on the jumbotron. It took me a minute to locate the flag, which I was supposed to be looking at reverently while I held my hand on my barbeque sandwich.

The girls sang on. "And the rockets'-"

"RED!" screamed everyone around me suddenly, making me jump.

"-glare, the bombs bursting in air," continued the girls, again unaided by the crowd. Then they finished and everyone cheered for America, God bless it, while I put down my barbeque sandwich. It sat next to a bobblehead of a Nordic-looking fellow with his fist in the air, a free gift to me upon entry into the arena.

Alex Trebek appeared on the jumbotron, which was as unexpected to me as the sudden importance of a single adjective within a song full of words. He gave a Jeopardy-style answer about the name of the craziest fans in the entire NHL. I wasn't sure about his fact-checking, but I was pretty sure I knew where he was going with this one.

Who are the Caniacs?

Everyone around me cheered again, as if Alex had just said their favorite color. Mine happens to be blue, but I'd be darned if I brought that up here, surrounded by all these rabid Caniacs, rumored to be the craziest fans in the entire NHL. I couldn't tell you for sure, because this was my first hockey game. They seemed pretty crazy, though.

I don't know anything about hockey. I said this was my first hockey game, but I meant that this was the first time I'd ever even watched a whole one. I know how they score goals, and I know a couple of jokes about fighting. As it turns out, that's really all you need to enjoy a hockey game. It also helps to know where the jumbotron is. There is useful information there, such as what to yell next. Also, you can watch the people in the stands as they sit staring dully into space for a second before realizing that they're on the jumbotron and start smiling and waving.

Hockey is exciting. It's non-stop fast-paced action, so it's got both baseball and football beat. It's still hard to score, though, so while it seems like everything is happening at once, somehow nothing is advancing. It's like an action movie with no plot. Maybe you have to understand the rules to get the plot.

A lot of the enjoyment is in the mob mentality. Every time the red team (that's us) took a shot and missed, we all went "awwwww." And then when the other team took a shot and we blocked it, we went "yeah!" I was genuinely excited when these things happened, even though I have no association with this team other than a shared base city and a newly acquired bobblehead. But I was enthralled. Why? I have no idea. I think it has something to do with testosterone, because I felt the same sort of excitement when there were fights.

About the fighting - it really is as bad as the jokes say. There were probably three tussles that night, and each one caused the fans to stand up and lean over to peer down at the action. It was the drama in the action movie.

I can't help but wonder if the fighting is...embellished. Not fake, but not exactly genuine, either. It's like everyone on the ice is looking for a fight, as if they'd gone to a bar after midnight and started yelling yo mama jokes at strangers. There's not really much punishment for it. You have to sit out for a while, but then so does the other guy, so your team isn't down a player. The referees will stop it before anyone gets too hurt. And the fans love it. They pound on the walls of your penalty box, which looks like the thing that the Pope stands in when he visits. There's even a montage of movie clips that shows on the jumbotron during the fight. Fighting is just a part of hockey.

Two of the fights were stopped pretty much immediately. But then there was that first one, where suddenly a player stopped skating, faced another player, tore off his gloves and held up his fists, street-fighting style. The other guy did the same. The refs stood back, watching, like kids on the playground who are more interested in seeing what happens than preventing anything. And then they went at it for a little while, swinging at each other until one guy was down and the refs stepped in. Apparently, if you take off your gloves, you're allowed to fight in a hockey game. It's like honor or being a gentleman or whatever else is at the intersection of testosterone and pride. It was oddly inspiring, as if this particular bout of fisticuffs were about something noble and not a guy on skates pushing another guy on skates into the wall.

I don't really advocate violence, but it seems to me that hockey is providing an outlet. Maybe without hockey, all these players and all these Caniacs would be at bars yelling yo mama jokes to strangers. It's not exactly constructive, but it's not hurting anything either. Perhaps hockey is where men can still be men, whatever that means.

I am not a man, but I have to say that our game was a great one, where we won by a goal scored in the last minute of sudden death overtime. I jumped up and cheered at that last goal. My favorite color is still blue, but at that moment, I probably could have passed for a Caniac.

bunny lips.

My brother didn't have to email me about it this time, but I've gone and used another offensive word without meaning to. A commenter mistook me on Monday, thinking that I pictured my ex-boyfriend's new girlfriend with a hairy lip. I actually said that I imagined her with a harelip, which is far worse. In fact, having a little bit of hair on the upper lip is a common affliction of otherwise nearly-perfect dark-haired ladies. But the comment caused me to doubt my own understanding of the word, and so I looked it up. And then I learned that the word "harelip" is offensive.

Huh?

Of course, I immediately started thinking of my defense. I've been using that term, albeit very rarely, for years. And I think once that I called Josh "bunny lips," so does that count, too? Since I didn't know that the word was offensive, was it still offensive when I used it? Well, yes, but I do have some plausible deniability. And I bet I'm not the only one. I bet you've been throwing "harelip" around left and right and had no idea how many cleft lip victims you were offending. You are so insensitive.

I had a hard time finding out why it was offensive. Lots of web sites said that it was without any further explanation. The only explanation I could find was honestly a bit sketchy. Apparently, the term comes from the fact that hares, like all rodents, cuddly or not, have split lips. But then that got all mixed up with a connection between hares and witchcraft. In fact, if a child was born with a cleft lip, then it indicated that the mother had been knocked up by the devil. I suppose that's legit. If I implied that a person was the inspiration for "Rosemary's Baby", I would understand how they might be upset. But this explanation didn't ring true to me, maybe because it seemed like it referred to a limited time period. The writer then sort of lamely says that no one likes to be compared to a rodent.

But in my not-at-all extensive research (I skimmed through forty Google hits), that was the only explanation I could find. Usually internet research yields much more information. So if no one knows that a word is offensive, and no one can remember why, is it still offensive?

I wonder if maybe it became offensive the same way that "retarded" has. It started out as a totally legitimate medical term. But then people took it and started applying it as a general insult to people who were not actually mentally retarded, but just displaying some level of stupidity, either in general or by buying a really ugly hat. But then that makes other people mad, because you're being insensitive to people who are actually mentally retarded and would not be caught dead in that hat. And so the word that was formally just a regular term is now offensive to use at all, even when it's appropriate. Then we have a to come up with a new words for "retarded," but I bet it's only a matter of time before "mentally challenged" goes the same way. It's possible, maybe even likely, that eventually "retarded" will become non-offensive as more people grow up associating it with general stupidity only and not mental disabilities.

I suspect, and I have absolutely no evidence whatsoever to support this, that that scenario happened to "harelip", perhaps when it was a more common and less fixable condition. How long before "cleft lip" starts being used as a derogatory term? C'mon, you can call someone a Clefty*. That's offensive and catchy.

In any case, I feel bad about using the term at all now, because looking up info about it only leads me to pictures of cute babies with cleft lips and palates. How am I supposed to feel superior to my ex-boyfriend's new girlfriend if I start thinking of her as a sweet innocent baby whose face didn't develop properly in the womb? Maybe I should have accused her of having a hairy lip. Even better, a full beard. Yeah, we'll go with that. She's a total bearded lady, and he picked her up at the circus. She probably uses the term "harelip," too, which, as we all know, is very offensive. She's so insensitive.

*Okay, that was offensive, and I knew it. I have no excuse.

baseball girlfriends.

I'm fascinated by social groups formed by the significant others of people who hang out together. I can't say that I've ever been in a group like that. My friend Amy was in the group of baseball players' girlfriends in high school. They would all sit together and chat during games, because there was nothing else to do. Some of these girls were people that I knew she did not like. And yet she spent several hours a week talking to them. The really weird thing was that once the connection was severed, so was the relationship. Once baseball season was over, she didn't hang out with those girls anymore. And if one of the players broke up with his girl, then she was no longer part of the group. I suppose I should be in some sort of band girlfriend group. I should be hanging out with the drummer's girlfriend at shows, but I hang out by myself instead. As a result, I don't even know the girl's last name, despite us having boyfriends in the same band for over a year. I guess that's just what it's like to be me.

It's not that I don't understand about temporary relationships. I have had many. Someone I sat next to in a class one semester, an old roommate that I never bonded with, an coworker who left for another job. We had exactly one thing in common, and when that thing was done, so was our relationship, even if I talked to them often or liked them. That person is gone from my life, probably forever, and it doesn't bother me at all. Sometimes I might hang on to a relationship if I felt there was a connection with the person which went beyond whatever caused us to meet in the first place. But the ratio of people I kept to the people who have basically fallen off the face of the earth is very small.

And this baseball girlfriend thing, it's like that, except the thing you have in common is even more removed. The relationship is even more tenuous than hanging out with your boyfriend's friends. It's like letting someone else pick your friends. Two people who have a class together might have at least one interest in common. Having boyfriends that play the same sport seems even less likely to yield a connection.

Seeing my sisters-in-law over Thanksgiving made me realize that I might someday be part of a group like theirs - the members of a family who were not born into it. Then Josh and I went to a party with his step-brother and his girlfriend. I started looking at the girlfriend in a new light, realizing that if the stars aligned properly, I could be hanging out with her for the next fifty years. I could be invited to the birthday parties of her children. We might comfort each other at the death of an extended family member. It would be like we were sisters, but always with the possibility of having that tie severed. If either of our relationships ended, I would probably never see her again. We are baseball girlfriends in a neverending season.

I like the girl. I admit I am trying harder than I normally do to talk to her, because I know we might be bumping into each other at family gatherings for years. Of course, my normal social anxiety is not helped by this analysis of the situation, but that's what it's like to be me. Seriously, does anyone else in the world ever think about this stuff?

As I talk to her, I try to figure out how our relationship will develop. Will we be close, or will we just be extended family? Will we be limited to small talk at Christmas, or will we call each other up for parenting advice? How likely are two men who grew up in the same house to pick spouses that will bond with each other?

Of course, I have no answers and no foresight. I doubt you expected any, and frankly, you're surprised to find that anyone really thinks about this stuff. That's just what it's like to be me.

reckless gene.

My sisters-in-law have a support group. They get together to ask each other if their husband is weird or if their husband's whole family is weird. Usually they come away feeling better from the meeting, knowing that it's all their in-law's fault. This better prepares them to deal with the fact that their children are starting to act kinda weird, too.

I caught them in a meeting on Thanksgiving. Their item of discussion was the "reckless gene." I think everyone blames my dad for this one, though my mother is hardly Princess Grace. But Daddy has that combination of the reckless gene and testosterone. He's rolled a lawnmower over on himself and been gored by countless goats. He'll come in from outside with blood all over his face and not even know it. He once made my nephew cry by poking him in the side with a fork. The kid's mother, who has been in this family a long, long time, resolved the situation by looking at her son and calmly saying, "Honey, Grandpa is dangerous."

I never saw myself as a clumsy person until Josh told me that I was. I knew that I tripped or ran into things sometimes, but everybody does that. I don't think I do it more than anyone else, and frankly, I would like a second opinion. He is afraid of me, thinking that severe bodily harm becomes increasingly more likely the more time he spends with me. He keeps his distance every time I'm wielding something sharp. I told him the story about my dad poking my nephew with a fork, and suddenly he's hiding all the forks in the house. Sure I step on his toe every once in a while and I did stick a muddy finger in his eye once, but I resent being treated like a walking time bomb. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

One of my sisters-in-law called it "obliviousness." I think this is more accurate, and in my case, I think it's more like "lack of awareness." It's like when you're going through puberty, and your body is growing so quickly that you haven't had time to get used to its new size. So you're bumping into things and knocking into others because you haven't figured out that your arms and legs extend that far. The reckless gene is nothing more than a very extended awkward stage.

So maybe I'm clumsy, but I come by it honestly. It came with the nose. And now I have someone to blame every time I step on Josh's poor little whiny toe. It wasn't me.

It was Reckless Gene.

everything's alright.

I haven't had any contact with my ex-boyfriend since we broke up three years ago. Considering we were together about eight and a half years, a lot of people find our complete and total separation bizarre. Everyone says that they want to be friends after a break-up, but I have to tell you that total silence is a great way to encourage moving on. This person used to be the most important one in my life, now he's gone completely, so adapt NOW.

I have always figured that running into him at some point is inevitable. I imagined these confrontations being at different locations and in different situations, but the format is generally the same. Usually he had a new girl with him, usually one displaying genes which should have been ruled out by natural selection generations ago. I would be very cool and collected, wearing something modest but highlighting my natural beauty. Sometimes he would start an argument over some thing in our past relationship, whereupon I would show superior rhetoric skills and logic and prove him to be wrong, all wrong about everything that ever happened between us. If I was daydreaming in a good mood, he would start the conversation by just apologizing immediately. Then he would give me that dress mannequin that I paid $2 for a yard sale but that ended up in his apartment. The world would be right again.

So yeah, that hasn't happened. Thankfully, as time passed, my desire for such a confrontation lessened. I let go of a little bitterness, I conceded to myself that I was not so innocent with regard to the disintegration of our relationship. My imagined scenes became less confrontational, though his new girl still had a harelip and noticeable body odor. I didn't want retribution and groveling apologies so much as a sort of friendly "Hey, I'm okay, and as far as I'm concerned, everything's cool between us."

The internet makes it easier to be silent. You don't actually have to contact someone to find out what they are doing now. There are blogs and social networking sites and all that to fill the void. If he wanted to see what I was up to, all he had to do was come right here. And I go to his blog and web site periodically, just to see what's new in his world. For some reason, I am always surprised at how much he seems to be the same person. I guess I expected him to change in some really obvious way. After all, I've changed a lot. I have really long hair now and I've learned to like both South Park and beer; I'm like a completely different person.

It's actually comforting to know that he is still him and not the sort of person that would actually start a fight with me in public about five-year-old wrongs. His apparent stasis makes our relationship feel like it happened in a dream a long time ago, maybe even to someone other than me. I'm a different person, but he appears to be the same, so obviously, it must have been someone else. I'm sure if we met again, I'd be surprised at all the little things that are different about him. Perhaps he eats mayonnaise now. I can't even describe how that would blow my mind.

I don't know if we'll ever be friends again, and I'm not worried about it either way. As far as I'm concerned, everything's cool between us. He can even keep the dress mannequin.*

* I mean, if he wanted to get rid of the dress mannequin, because, like, it was taking up space and stuff, I would probably be willing to take it off his hands. You know, if he was sick of having it. That's all. It's not a big deal, and I am totally over the dress mannequin issue.

bailey park.

I'm on a yard saling expedition with Josh and Sarah, my twelve-year-old niece. It hasn't been a terrible morning as far as yard sales go, though this is Memorial Day weekend, and so there aren't a lot of sales. Still, we're driving around, following the homemade signs to whatever house has a bunch of junk piled out front. I turn into a neighborhood that has two such signs posted at the entrance and stop at a modest house. Out front were a couple of tables. As we pull up, a Hispanic woman in her thirties comes outside, leaving an unknown number of children talking inside. "They want to keep everything," she explains to us. I am curious, because though I have seen many folks from south of the border at yard sales, this one is my first where a Hispanic was hosting it.

We looked around a bit, didn't see anything we desperately needed, said a nice thank you, and left. As we drove further into the neighborhood, I noticed that all the houses were of a similar type: cookie-cutter affairs with vinyl siding, clean and new, though small. These were clearly starter homes. We followed the signs to the other yard sale in the area, and as we stopped, we saw that once again, a Hispanic woman was in charge. This time I did make a small purchase. As we got into the car, I remarked to Josh, "I think we're in Bailey Park." And because Josh is Josh, he knew what I meant.

For those of you who are not Josh, Bailey Park is the name of the neighborhood of homes built by the Bailey Building and Loan in It's a Wonderful Life. Bailey Park was where people who didn't have a lot of money could still buy their own nice, clean homes in safe neighborhoods. It was where people who immigrated here in the pursuit of the American Dream could actually find a piece of it instead of having to live under leaky roofs in high-crime areas.

Sarah asked me why I liked this neighborhood so much. To her, the houses looked fine, but not necessarily something that anyone would ever fantasize about. Josh and I tried to explain it to her, using phrases like "American Dream" and "middle-class aspirations," but I don't think we were able to communicate our feelings very well. That's okay. She's only twelve, and she'll get it someday. One day, she'll look at a neighborhood like this and be glad that places like it still exist.

the new old thing.

I sit on the floor with a roll of paper towels, a squirt bottle of off-brand window cleaner, and a paperclip. It is a Saturday afternoon, and I have come home from a morning of yard sales. I am sweaty and dirty because I just spent a few hours pawing through unwanted items in the heat. I am wearing yesterday's clothes, pulled off of my bedroom floor at 8 AM. My attention is focused on something I acquired that very morning. I am performing the ritualistic cleaning of The New Old Thing.

I apply a few generous squirts of window cleaner to The New Old Thing and begin wiping off the traces of the previous owner. Some of the stains won't come off, but the improvement is noticeable. I use the paperclip for detail work as I poke into tight spaces to get out accumulated grossness. I find that using a curved edge works better than an extended pointy end and doesn't leave scratch marks. I unscrew parts to examine them for completeness and clean them individually. I turn The New Thing upside down so as to get to some of the harder angles. Looking at this thing right-side up, you'd never even notice those dirty spots, but I am determined to be thorough.

I am welcoming The New Old Thing to my life. It used to live somewhere else, and it gave many great years of service to another. The previous owner never gave it such a scrubbing as it was receiving today. And then it was discarded, maybe reluctantly, but discarded nonetheless. It sat in the hot Saturday sunshine on a table next to other discarded things. Then I saw it, wanted it, haggled over it, bought it, and brought it home to start anew.

I know that I am never again going to clean it like this ever again. If it happened to be on the receiving end of a nasty spill, I might give it a quick wipe-down, but nothing involving disassembly or a paperclip. I bought The New Old Thing so that it could be useful to me, and it doesn't require spotlessness to do that. I already know it well enough to know that it doesn't mind being dirty, so long as it can still get the job done.

This is part of the resurrection of The New Old Thing. The first part was my buying it out of someone's trash pile. Now I'm cleaning it up to give it a fresh start. I'm getting to know it, figure out how the parts go together, what works flawlessly, what squeaks while working flawlessly. I have sat on the floor with many New Old Things, cleaning and restoring them to welcome them into my collection of New Old Things. Sometimes I tighten screws or touch up paint with colored markers.

It's the same feeling as taking a New New Thing out of its box and reading the instructions, popping the bubble wrap, reveling in the ownership of a New Thing. But in this case, we are giving an Old Thing a second chance to be New. And couldn't we all use a second chance once in a while?

2 AM.

He was kinda tipsy and her feet hurt. The bar was closing, but there was a party at someone's house and everyone was invited. He wanted to go, and her feet hurt.

He didn't know where the party was but he could definitely get a ride. He didn't know the guy who was throwing the party, but he knew the band, the members of which were friends of the guy who was throwing the party and who had been assured him that it was totally cool if he came along. He didn't get out as much as he used to in college.

It was 2 AM and her feet hurt. She'd dressed nice for the evening and was wearing high heels. They looked great but felt awful after four hours standing on a hard floor, even with the wine. The wine had worn off a while ago. She'd come to see the band with him, even though she didn't know them very well. She was happy to go, because she loved him, and she had liked the band. It had been a fun evening, but it was now 2 AM and her feet were seriously killing her.

"There's a party at someone's house," he said.

"Yeah. Is that what you want to do?" she said. She knew he wanted to go.

"Maybe," he said. He knew that her feet hurt.

There was a long silence, as they watched the other happy bar patrons exiting and going off to their parties or their homes, depending on whether their feet hurt. They both hoped for distraction from this issue, though they knew it would have to be addressed.

"You can go if you want," she said. She didn't want to be a mean girlfriend.

"No, it's okay. We can go home," he said. He didn't want to be in the doghouse.

"Are you sure?" she asked. She knew he was afraid of the doghouse, and wanted to make it clear that it really was okay if he went. Really.

"Yeah, no, it's late," he said. He didn't believe her.

He explained to his friends that he was just going to head on out, and they understood because they saw her standing next to him. She resented being seen as a ball and chain or a leash, but in the end, her feet hurt and she was secretly relieved to get her way. They walked off with his arm over her shoulder.

As they left, Josh and I turned to look at each other, both of us shaken by the surreal event of having something from your past acted out in front of you. We had stood by them, unable to tear our eyes away from the drama unfolding before us. We watched it happen exactly as it has happened between the two of us when it's 2 AM. He's gone home before he was ready, and I'd stayed out when my feet hurt. I hoped that by watching the scene between another couple, I might be able to figure out the answer. What should happen? What is the proper ending to the play?

I came up with nothing. I sympathized with him, because he was having a good time and he wanted to keep doing that. And I sympathized with her, because she'd been hanging out with his friends all evening and was trying to be understanding. Maybe the answer is that sometimes you have to do things you don't want to do because other times the other person has to do things they don't want to do. It doesn't seem like much of an answer, and it won't help me the next time it's 2 AM and my feet hurt, but it's all I've got.

it's all gravy.

We were having a gravy race.

I love homemade gravy. It's delicious science, is what it is. You have some liquid, you add some thickening agent and flavor, stir awhile and there's your gravy. Why does it thicken? I don't know, that's the science part. You don't need a silly little store-bought packet. You do need patience.

I am not patient with gravy. The recipes always make it sound like a quick step. "Add the broth and then stir until thickened." I mean, that doesn't sound like very long, does it? And because I apparently have no accumulated memory, I don't remember the last time I thought making gravy wouldn't take very long and so I wonder why this time is taking so for-EV-er. I think about adding more flour or cornstarch, but I apparently do have some accumulated memory, because I remember doing that before, and it didn't turn out well. So I just keep stirring. And complaining.

We were making meatballs for Thanksgiving, 95 of them to be exact. We had rolled them out and placed them into neat little rows, like tiny rotund Swedish soldiers, ready for a battle with hunger. But my pans would only hold about thirty meatballs at a time, and so we had to cook them and their gravy in shifts. After the meatballs had been browned, it was time to make gravy. Each of us had added all the ingredients and were deep in the stirring stage. It was just a matter of whose gravy would thicken first.

You've probably never had a gravy race before. I'm not sure if ours was typical (or perhaps it was the first ever?), but there seemed to be a lot of trash talk.

"You call that gravy? That runny stuff wouldn't even clog an artery."

"It's thicker than that brown dish water you've got going over there."

"Your mama."

There was also a lot of kissing, which might seem like it didn't go with the trash talk, but we made it work.

I thought of an interpersonal psychology class I had taken a couple of years ago at a community college. We were talking about examples of quality time, ways to spend time with someone else that would allow you to bond. I suggested making dinner together. One woman thought I was crazy, as if I had just suggested a nice romantic walk across hot coals. I should look her up and suggest that she and her husband have a gravy race.

the only pretty pen-pal in Montana.

I briefly mentioned my pen pal before, and I thought that I would take the time to mention her less briefly today. A couple of years ago, I started feeling that I wasn't doing enough to help the world, and so I started looking into volunteer programs. I looked mostly at tutoring math, but most of the programs were more after school than after day job hours. Then I started thinking about those prison pen pal programs that are always the basis for wacky situations on half hour network comedies.

I'm going to pause here to let my mother freak out for a little bit while she thinks about me writing letters to felons. In fact, I'm going to depart completely from my topic, knowing she'll read whatever is next out of motherly obligation. She'll read it as fast as she can, sure, but she'll read it, trying to get to the part where I reassure her about the felons.

I once had a pen pal in third grade or so, arranged through the school. My classmates and I were all paired up with the classmates in some other school in Montana. My girl sent me a picture of her with her pet bunny, and all the boys in my class thought she was really pretty. Or maybe they just liked a girl who could handle a rabbit. In any case, I enjoyed a very weird sort of popularity for having the only pretty pen pal in Montana. Later, the pen pal (what was her name?) wrote and asked for that particular picture back, because her bunny had died and that was the only photo she had of him. Because of the really bizarre popularity that picture provided me, I was very reluctant to send it back. How did young Sandra respond to this early test of her willingness to help out her fellow man? I'll just say that I found a picture of a very cute little girl holding a rabbit in my stuff a couple of years ago.

Alright, my mom is getting pretty antsy now, so I'll just let you know that you have to have a P.O. box to write to a felon, and I don't. I was secretly relieved. No matter how funny it is when Steve Urkel's convicted pen pal gets out of jail and comes to see him, I can imagine other scenarios that would end up on the 10 PM crime drama. And of course, that's very unfair to judge the incarcerated that way, but there you go.

But I did find a nursing home in California which had a pen pal program for its residents. And this sounded like a great idea for me, because I could feel helpful to the world without actually having to leave the house. It also gave me an excuse to buy stationery.

I'd always really liked pen pals. On that old PBS show, Ghostwriter, there was a cute Hispanic kid named Alex who had about fifty pen pals all over the world. He had a map up on his wall with push-pins representing each long-distance friend.

Alex is the cute one on the very left. He's totally working those early 90s clothes.

I thought Alex was really cool.

Aside from the prettiest pen pal in Montana, I had another pen pal for about five years who lived in New York. We wrote each other from about third grade to eighth grade, a time period that seems really long in retrospect. I found some of her letters recently, and I was shocked at the things I had told her, including highly-sensitive information about a crush on a boy that I never told anyone else in the world about. I guess that's the good thing about pen pals, the level of trust that comes with distance. Of course it is possible that the entire town of Victor, New York knows about how I almost "went with" that boy. I found a letter where she told me about her first kiss, and it was terribly sweet, like the stuff of a sappy coming of age movie. Of course, I cringe to think of all the letters of mine that might exist somewhere and how I probably sounded idiotic and naive. But she, she was sweet.

I actually sent a letter to this girl's old address a couple of years ago, but either she moved or she wasn't interested in putting a push pin on Raleigh, NC. I would have liked to inform her that I, too, have since been kissed by a boy (but not by that other one). I like to assume that she moved. Lots of people deride denial, but I personally find it very useful in day-to-day ego maintenance.

I wonder if pen pals have fallen out of fashion now that there is email. Of course, you can just have an email pal. But I'll go ahead and give the usual argument in favor of the old-fashioned and say that it's not the same. It's less personal. Maybe something is lost when you can't hold something in your hands and think that it came from someplace far away. Or maybe it's better because it's instant and easier to maintain. Or maybe it's worse because a friendship which is more difficult to keep inherently means more. Or maybe nothing is ever good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

I can't decide. I wish I knew how Alex felt about it.

a complicated karaoke machine.

Call me unsupportive, but I do not enjoy all of Josh's shows. This has nothing to do with the music, but is usually more to do with the setting. There are lots of factors involved, any of which could sweeten or sour my mood. Josh told me this week that he had a frat party to play on Friday. In a barn. Then he told me that he had another one Thursday, but it was indoors. I think he told me about the outdoor one first so that the indoor one wouldn't seem so bad in comparison. I've been to an fall outdoor frat party before. It was not a good time.

Last year (or was it two years ago?), the band played in a field out near Turkey, NC. I am not even making that up. It was someone's dad's farm, and people had tents set up for camping. It was dusk when we got there and started setting up the equipment on the back of a flatbed truck. They had rented huge lights and a bonfire was already going strong. Once all the carrying is done, I don't have much involvement in setting up. I don't know how the drums go together and I can't tune anything. So during the setting up stage, I start looking around and gauging just what sort of night I'm about to have. I check out the people, the location of the restrooms and beer sources, any possibilities for food.

There are a couple advantages to playing at frat parties. One is that they have their ducks in a row with regards to payment. You play in a bar, you sometimes have to hassle a couple of people to get paid, and even then the band might get screwed over. But frat boys pay in advance at an agreed rate. They pay with checks. You can make your own joke about whose bank account it comes from.

But the big advantage as far as I'm concerned about frat parties is that they are always catered. You probably already know this about me, but it bears repeating: Getting free food makes me way happier than it should. After a big helping of NC barbeque with lots of fixins, I was starting to think that going to frat parties in fields wasn't so bad.

It started getting cold fast. I wasn't really prepared to spend all night out in the cold, but luckily, we were dealing with some particularly resourceful frat boys. Seeing the fire die down, they threw a couch on it. Whose couch was it? I don't know. Did the owner of the couch approve its being burned at the stake? I don't know that either. It sure did burn, though.

But I find that there is one major disadvantage of frat parties: sorority girls.

Give me a chance here. We all know that I can be very catty and judgmental, but I'm not going to complain about girls in tiny outfits in the middle of winter. I'm not going to complain about pretty girls talking to my boyfriend. I'm not even going to make any math-is-hard-let's-go-shopping jokes. I feel like I have a legitimate complaint here with regard to sorority girls, and it's all about how they treat the band.

Here is the progression. First, they start dancing. And that's fine. Some of it is kinda dirty and maybe I'd rather not see it, but whatever, that's fine. They dance some with the guys, but even after a few beers, most guys aren't really into dancing. So they dance with each other. It gets pretty silly. I start to wonder why these girls are so popular.

After a while, they decide they really want to dance to a particular song. I'm sure this is generational, but for the girls at the parties I go to, they want to hear stuff from the 80s. They want to hear "Billie Jean." Really, they'll settle for anything they know. If you started playing something from the mid-90s, they will only pout for a second before they start dancing with their girlfriends again. But note that at the end of the song, they will ask for the 80s again. I feel that I should note that most of the girls have no memory of the Reagan administration. I, uh, remember it a little bit.

I should pause and explain that it's really frustrating for people to request a band to play covers. Some bands only play covers. They are called, appropriately enough, "cover bands." They are incredibly popular and probably make enough money touring college towns that they can give up their day jobs if they are careful with their money. They fill the bars with happy people having nostalgia with their margaritas and so the bars like them. But they never get famous. And if you are a non-cover band, people will get frustrated by the fact that they don't know any of the songs that you're playing. And they will ask you to play songs that they do know. They will get mad that you don't happen to know a particular song out of millions of songs that they favor. You will get mad that you worked hard to write a song and they're not even listening because it's not "Billie Jean."

Okay, back to the sorority girls who want to hear 80s songs. The requesting of covers is annoying, but it's common and not particular to the girls at these parties. At some point, the band gives in and plays something the girls will know. They play Tom Petty or Weezer or even "Billie Jean." This is when the girls start to get really irritating.

They get on stage. It's like a rule, or maybe some sort of law of nature that they are attracted to the spot where they will garner the most attention. They've been dancing the whole time, and it was fun, but now it's time for them to seriously start being noticed. The stage calls to them. "Come dance upon me!" it cries. And they, feeling the call of the stage, must oblige it.

I do not understand this at all. Granted, I'm kind of a wallflower, but even so, jumping up on a stage uninvited during a performance seems beyond the pale. When you go to a play, do you jump up on the stage and sit on the set? You don't go to an art gallery and start touching the paintings. I suspect these girls, being young and pretty and popular, are used to getting their way, particularly from males. So if they decide that they want to be on stage, they do it.

Maybe you don't think that's annoying. You think I'm just irritated that these drunk girls are up there next to my boyfriend. What kind of a prude doesn't like dancing girls on stage? But just wait, it gets worse.

So you've got half a dozen girls on stage now, dancing, shaking what their Mamas gave them. It's not usually a huge stage, so it's a bit cramped. And then, I kid you not, they start taking over the instruments. Obviously, the microphone goes first. They start screaming into the mike or calling out to their friends or singing. They have totally forgotten that someone has been paid to sing into that mike, and it wasn't them. Then one of them starts hitting the cymbals with a finger. A couple of them play air guitar before trying to strum the actual guitars with their manicured fingernails. This is while the band is playing.

Are you shocked? You should be shocked. Think about that some more until you are thoroughly shocked. This is completely unacceptable behavior. The band is here to perform for your enjoyment. They are not a complicated karaoke machine. They are not here to give you music lessons.

And yet it is allowed. Because the band is here to live up to the agreement of playing a show. And the people that hired them want the girls to be happy. They want them to have fun and drink more. And if having fun means playing with the expensive musical equipment, then by golly, that's what they shall have.

But I am ever the optimist, and there is a glittery silver lining to this drunk and screaming cloud. When the girls start taking over the instruments, it becomes pointless for the band to play. So they stop. The girls might try to play with the instruments for a while, but they soon get bored with it once they remember that they don't actually have any sort of ability. Once the music is gone, someone turns on a stereo, and the band is pretty much done for the night. And having been paid in advance, we are free to leave.

That was the way it went last year (or was it two years ago?) in Turkey, NC. And that was the way it went last night. I am not particularly looking forward to tonight, but at least I know what to expect.