Anna Karenina is Stalking Me

When I was a senior, Raquel (who was my girlfriend at the time) talked me into taking a Tolstoy class with her. She was a Russian major and I was a Psychology major so this made perfect sense...for her. She thought it would be fun for us to take a class together and imagined that I might then fall in love with Russian literature. I'm going to spare you the drawn out tale and tell you that it was not fun for me and I did not develop a lasting love of Tolstoy. All I got out of the class was the ability to tell people that I have read War and Peace. I may have also enjoyed going to class with my girlfriend though I have no specific memories of that. Mostly, I remember Anna Karenina. During the semester of my Tolstoy class, I tore my ACL playing rugby. I wasn't really playing rugby but merely practicing. Whatever. The point is that I messed up my knee and had to have reconstructive surgery so I took an incomplete in Tolstoy so that I could finish my paper on Anna Karenina over winter break. It turns out that open knee surgery is rather painful and I spent my winter break writhing in pain and trying to figure out how to go to the bathroom without peeing on myself. As you might imagine, I wasn't really in the mood to read Anna Karenina and write a 15 to 20 page paper on it. I had bigger things to worry about...like errant streams of urine. Winter break flew by proving that time also flies when you aren't having any fun at all and, before I knew it, I had only a few days left to read the book and write the paper or fail the class. I don't know if you know this but Tolstoy was rather wordy so I was not going to be able to read it quickly. So, I skimmed the Cliff notes and wrote an 18 page paper in a pain-induced haze. I am not proud of this and, to this day, I feel guilty whenever I'm faced with Anna Karenina.

I recently won a Literati e-reader from my BlogHer friend, Sarah at Technology for Moms. I was excited to see that it came pre-loaded with some books because I wanted to try it out right away. I quickly turned it on and the library loaded and there she was - Anna Karenina. Anna Karenina is my tell tale heart. I'm going to have to take out a restraining order or, you know, actually read the book to rid her of my life forever. I'm leaning toward the restraining order because - look at her - she's got some shifty eyes.

Whiskey's too rough

I am usually in bed around 10 each night but on Friday I went out at 10. I went to Soul Friday with Lori (Butchima), Davis (butchmama), Ethan (ethanethan) and Jen (jenojob)- a great group of people I met on Twitter. Once there, I also finally met Ann. Ann and I met through Twitter about a year ago but had never met in the real world until Friday. There was great music and everyone was dancing. I'm not much of a dancer but I had a great time standing in a corner, drinking and chatting with my friends. Then, we decided that it was a good night to learn to drink whiskey. I went up to the bar and explained to the bartender that my friends and I wanted to try whiskey but didn't know anything about how to drink it and asked him to guide me. He suggested that we drink straight shots of Jameson so that's what I ordered. It turns out that a single shot of whiskey makes me dance. Two shots of whiskey makes me dance wildly. Thank goodness we didn't find out what three shots of whiskey makes me do. Lori brought me home around 2:30 a.m. and I stumbled to bed. I awoke yesterday morning thinking that I had lost my cell phone and disappointed to find that the sweater I had been wearing the night before was covered in peanut butter. Fortunately, Lori had my phone. I'm not sure what to do about the sweater. I am a trouper though. I got up and forged ahead. I picked up a rental car. I retrieved my cell phone. I took Zeca to buy a birthday gift and then to buy tennis shoes. At no point did I fall into an exhausted and dehydrated heal. By the time the evening came around, all I could manage to do was to cuddle on the couch with Luisa and watch a movie. We then headed to bed where I quickly fell asleep. Then, I woke up this morning and realized that I hadn't blogged. A blemish on my record! So, I apologize for my absence yesterday. I hope I can make it up to you somehow. It's safe to say that I won't buy  you a whiskey shot. p.s. The title of this post is a line from a song. Can you name it?

Gastrointestinal Karma

Luisa is a delicate flower. I don't talk about it much because she is a proud woman but it's true. That's why I'm always shoveling snow and doing the laundry and mowing the lawn and lugging things in and out of the house and wait - she actually does all that. Truth be told she is a very strong person with a very weak wittle tummy. I won't go into the long list of food, beverage and weather conditions that, when combined, lead her to upchuck. I'll just stick to the one combo that always ends with her in the bathroom heaving - coffee and popcorn. Any time she drinks coffee and eats popcorn soon after or eats popcorn and drinks coffee soon after she throws up. A lot. For reasons that are unclear, I like to share this information with people...friends, family, co-workers, strangers in elevators and now you. Every time I tell someone about it, they ask the same thing, "How often could that combination possibly occur?" I haven't kept precise data but it has happened often for us to notice the pattern. Recently, Luisa was working with a delegation from Ethiopia and took the kids to a traditional Ethiopian coffee ceremony at Open Arms. She and the kids had a great time and, when she returned home she told me about it. She said, "They roast the beans and then grind them and then make the coffee and then serve everyone and...they serve the coffee with popcorn." Oh how I laughed! She then said, "And you have to eat it or it's considered rude." I laughed some more. On that particular night, she managed to skip the popcorn because she was in a large group. I'm not sure her luck will hold though...she is now in Ethiopia. She's been there since Friday and won't return to the United States until 12/22/10 which means there will be plenty of opportunities for her to drink coffee and eat popcorn. So now, when I talk about Luisa's coffee/popcorn issue and people ask, "How often could that combination possibly occur?" I'll have an answer, "Many, many times when you're in Ethiopia." 

For those of you who have kept up with the discussion of Grey's Anatomy here, I'd like to point out that Luisa did in fact go to Africa and I did not go with her. The popcorn and coffee shall exact my revenge.

*Please note: Luisa actually suggested this post which means that it bears the Luisa stamp of approval. She is currently in Addis Ababa where the high temperature is around 80 while I am stuck here where the temperature is currently 5 and we are surrounded by enormous mounds of snow. Despite this, I will not shut the door in her face when she comes back but she damn well better tell me that I look pretty even if I am in sweat pants and a ripped t-shirt with bedhead and a clear need for deoderant.