I will be gone for 10 days, during which time there is a possibility that I won’t have a chance to find me some internets. Normally I post about three times a week and it probably takes you no more than five minutes to read and comment per post. (And if you read but don’t comment then you should be ashamed. Tsk, tsk.) Estimating that I would have posted about four times in a 10-day period, it would seem that I have saved you about 20 minutes of time. People, you are getting a whole extra 20 minutes to spend any which way you like. There’s a lot you can fit in 20 minutes so get creative, have fun, and be safe.

And tell me what you did with this gift of time that I have bestowed upon you.

For dinner I ordered an assortment of sushi pieces and an eel/cucumber roll. D ordered shrimp and lobster with spicy lemon sauce. We were both excited to get the Nobu experience as we waited for our dishes. When the food arrived it looked, well, normal. My sushi tasted just like what I eat in Wasabi. In fact, the salmon was not as good as Wasabi salmon. D said his dinner started off really good but ended too peppery. Perhaps my taste buds are not as finely tuned as those of food critics but I couldn’t figure out what the big deal was. The only other explanation is that it was the Wasabi curse, karma getting us back for cheating.

Since the portions were fairly small, D and I had room for dessert and we each ordered the chocolate souffle cake with green tea ice-cream. It came in a small wooden box and looked absolutely delicious. One bite and I was in heaven; I wanted to dive inside the cake and swim in its chocolaty goodness. I tried to eat slowly, savoring every bite, but it was over too soon. D discretely pointed out to me that I had a bit of a mess around my lips. I wiped with the white cloth napkin and left brown stains. “Wow, I didn’t realize it was so bad,” I said. “Yeah”, D replied. “You looked like you gave Willy Wonka a blow job.”

The chance of D saying anything else equally or more funny was slim to none so we asked for the check and hightailed it home. If we ever do go back to Nobu it will be for drinks and dessert, after we’ve had dinner elsewhere.

And you know what else alcohol makes great? Everything. Everything is great. The music is great, the singing is great, your friends are great, standing in a little stinky bar with a sound system older than you is great. But most importantly, you’re great. You’re soooo great that you can do anything. You’re smart and capable and have ten functioning fingers. And if your friend’s band happens to be missing a bassist, well, you’re so great that you could probably learn to play bass. After all, how hard can four strings be? You’re so great that it won’t make a difference if you’re tone deaf and have no musical talent whatsoever because your greatness will overcome all those obstacles.

So the next day Your Greatness and a friend go to the music store. And because your friend actually is a musician and knows his Gibsons from his Ibanezes (what?) you come home with the most beautiful five-string bass and rockin’ amp you could ever want:

And your friend makes the most beautiful sounds come out of that gorgeous instrument; sounds you never thought a bass could make.  And you’re all excited and start goofing around on it but your fingers feel so clumsy and slow, and the bass is making sounds that are the absolute opposite of melodic.  After a while your wrist starts to ache and your fingers are sore but you keep plugging along.  You print out some bass tabs and eventually manage to play five seconds of a song.  So you practice those five seconds over and over and you learn five seconds of another song and another song.  And eventually you stop lying to yourself and just admit that you are the worst bass player to ever roam this planet.

I hope I didn’t jinx anything by wishing for something exciting to happen because this is not what I had in mind. Normally not too much happens around here, and especially not in our house. Not even when our neighbor across the hall was an ex-junkie with very suspicious friends who still sold weed on the side to make the rent. Well there was that one incident about two years ago when the FBI raided the house looking for some members of an Eastern European gang. It turned out that the nice young guy who lived on the fourth floor, the one who was always cheery and never seemed to be at work, was one of dozens of gang members being observed. As luck would have it I wasn’t at home that day when the FBI banged on the door, waking D at 5:00 a.m., and charging through the rest of the house. The guy on the fourth floor jumped onto the fire escape and made his way into the yard where he continued to jump fences, apparently leaving a trail of blood behind because he hurt his leg along the way. The story goes that he was eventually caught and deported.

The funny part is that D had noticed that garbage bags would disappear on occasion from the front of the house and he thought maybe the Feds were coming after him for something or other. But since he is not just paranoid but also chivalrous he decided not to tell me anything so that when the shit went down I would be completely innocent and not accountable for his heinous crimes. Aaaw, my hero.

We met at Union Square, though I had no idea who to look for.  The longer I stood there the more nervous I was and I felt like I was going on a blind date and it was a weird feeling like getting cold feet and I don’t think I ever would want to go on an actual blind date because what if the other person is a serial killer or a Republican.  I was really hoping that Dingo was neither of these.  From the few clues I had from her blog, I was scanning for a woman with short curly hair and miniscule ears.  So who approaches me but a woman with long curly hair (the kind of curly hair that I’d wanted my whole life) and the ears covered up completely.  Dingo is tricky like that.

After the first surreal moment of absorbing the fact that here we were, in person, unmasked, we realized we had to get food and drinks (drinks!) so we headed over to Heartland Brewery.  And as soon as that was decided we took off chatting at dangerous speeds, firing out questions and answers, starting stories, interrupting stories with questions, shooting one-liners (you can only imagine what happens when two very funny people get together).  It was like we had to get it all out of our systems, like we’d known each other for ages but were finally able to speak to one another.

From what D tells me, this is a female thing, along with asking a total stranger where they got those great pants or telling them that their bag is open.  Apparently men find this behavior absolutely bizarre and unthinkable.  D just shook his head in disbelief when I told him that over dinner and drinks Dingo and I learned just about every aspect of each other’s life stories.  We talked about our backgrounds, our families, our men, our man troubles (god, there always have to be man troubles), our jobs, and everything in between.  I even confessed that when I read her blog I think of Elaine going “maybe the dingo ate your baby” in a fake Australian accent on that Seinfeld episode, something that D warned me not to admit until at least the third date lest I scare her off.  But Dingo is fearless and just laughed.

By the end of dinner I was dizzy from the intensity of it all.  Or perhaps from the margaritas I drank.  (I’m starting to suspect that tequila is not my friend.)  I am such a lightweight that I need my own category.  Featherwieght doesn’t cut it.  Perhaps lintweight.  But I digress.  After dinner (and after an embarrasing episode in which I didn’t tip the waitress because my tequila-soaked brain thought that she got her tip already, though luckily Dingo was quick-witted and put two and two together when she saw the waitresses’ crestfallen face, and called her over to explain my mistake - oops) we went to Max Brenner and shared a fondue.  It was so delicious and so sweet that my teeth ached, in a good way.  If there was ever a good way to get cavities, this is it.  Then again I don’t have any cavities so what do I know.

Finally it was time to go our separate ways and we headed for the subway.  Hopefully this was the first in a long list of get-togethers.  I really like this whole meeting-other-bloggers-in-real-life deal.  First Dooce (you know I had to mention that again), now Dingo - who will be next?  I read a lot of west coast bloggers but there are a few on the east coast too.  (NPW - I’m talking to you girl.  Boston is not that far away and I’d only been once, ages ago, though I was staying with a bipolar mysoginist asshole who slept with a loaded gun under his pillow.  Needless to say, this ruined the trip for me.)  So, yeah, maybe there will be more blogger meetings in the future.  Woot!

     Yeah, no problem, but you do realize that all I do is push some buttons on the microwave.

     Yeah, I know, but that’s one of those things that one says to get the other person to do something.

     OK, I just didn’t want you to have the false impression that I have some fancypants way of making shumai.  Because I am sooo not a fancypants.  I mean, aren’t I seriously the least fancypants girl you know?

     Well…I know some lesbians that are less fancypants.

     Fine.  Am I not the least fancypants straight girl you know?

     Yes you are.

There you have it - officially not a fancypants.  But, damn, those shumai were da bomb after I microwaved them.  After the first batch, I had to make heat up round two.  Maybe there is more to nuking than just pushing buttons.

So, less than two weeks till the last day of school.  About two weeks until D and I have our 9-year wedding anniversary.  And three weeks from now I will be in Peru.  What?  Did I not mention this before?  Yeah, your favorite blogger will be heading for Machu Picchu, roughing it on the Inca Trail, pooping in a hole she dug herself, cuddling with the llamas at night, and chewing coca leaves to keep from falling over after hiking 15 or 16 kilometers with her possessions on her back at a ridiculously high altitude.

I’ve been hibernating all winter long.  Actually?  Who am I kidding?  Other than volleyball, I haven’t done any other exercise since the Bush Sr. administration.  But for the last two weeks I’ve hit the gym like a madwoman, using the elliptical machine about five times a week.  I’ve gone from barely being able to do a 12-minute mile to finishing that mile in just over nine minutes.  (I’m sure Little Sister finds this all very amusing since she can run circles around me, but I’m proud of myself.)  Three more weeks and I might be able to get it down to eight minutes.  Because I refuse to be that person, the one that slows the rest of the group down, the one who whines and needs water breaks every five minutes.

I will be the Queen of the Inca Trail.

Afterwards there was lunch for the faculty in the cafeteria.  (Jealous?)  While eating lunch, I saw a man who looked so familiar but I couldn’t quite place him, until I was told that it was a former teacher who had taught me senior year.  I literally jumped out of my chair mid-bite and ran over to say hello.  We had a nice talk and caught up a bit.  It was so good to see him and I thought, Why didn’t I bring a camera today? (I have a bad habit of not taking a camera and then regretting it.)

When I left school, I got trapped in a nasty snarl trying to get on the BQE.  It was a sea of red lights, beeping, and no exits.  I finally understood how someone might just get out of their car and leave it.  As I was stuck there unable to do anything, I heard what sounded like a gunshot or small blast.  Then there was the wailing of sirens as a fire truck passed under the overpass that I was stuck on.  Then another shotgun-like sound.  Traffic had not budged one inch and people around me started getting out of their cars and looking down from the overpass to the street.  I saw black smoke in my mirror and decided to check it out also.  There was a car on fire below us - bright orange flaming and heavy black smoke rising.  Again I asked, Why didn’t I bring a camera today?

Finally, after another twenty minutes and crazy maneuvering on my part (including being perpendicular to other vehicles) I managed to get away from the chaos and decided to take local streets home.  As I was driving I saw a man walking with two young children.  They stopped at the corner to wait for the light and I saw his face shimmering on one side.  At first I couldn’t figure out what it was but as I got closer I realized - his face was covered in Samoan or Maori-like tattoos and the shiny stuff was piercings.  His right cheek was covered in rows of tiny silver hoops - maybe six or seven rows with six or seven piercings per row - which created a chain mail effect.

I’m sure you can figure out what I asked myself for the third time that day.

Our yard is tiny and we have only about ten chairs so we have to rotate who we invite throughout the summer. I kinda like it this way because there is always an interesting mix of people, many of whom have never met each other before. This could lead to potential disaster but the trick is to have that one crazy big-mouth person who has an arsenal of wacky tales. We had our friend Josh on hand and he entertained us with hospital stories that you don’t see on ER: “We’re like Scrubs on crack.” I knew I was in for a treat when he broke down the different types of janitors: “You got your crackhead janitor, your crazy janitor, your whore janitor…” And this was even before he started in on the rest of the hospital staff. (Note to self: Never ever get sick.)

The hospital stories couldn’t deter anyone from eating, drinking, and making merry. And when it got too cold to stay outside, everyone squeezed into our narrow living room to watch UFC 84 from the previous night. The only thing that kept the evening from being perfect was an annoying latecomer who snickered like a ten-year-old boy every single time BJ Penn’s name was mentioned (which was about every five seconds since Penn was defending his Lightweight Title). Yeah, I can see how BJ might be funny the first or second time around but a grown man should really get over it already.

All in all though the evening was a success. Also, I am now the owner of Scream Baby Scream on VHS. (Thanks Broc…I think.)