Apparently, the uglyweddingdress.net girl lost her domain. I should probably delete the link so as not to confuse my readers, but I'm sure you'll both figure it out. I also tried uglyweddingdress.com, just to see if she had switched over to that, but she hadn't. From that site, though, there are all sorts of links to wedding planning info. Which is just bizarre. "The picture of that hideous dress you wanted is no longer here? Try OUR site--we've got hundreds of satin monstrosities, and we accept PayPal!"

Whose house? Run's house!

Time to revisit my semi-abandoned posts. In the time I've been gone, I've learned the following things:

1. Education classes are stupid. Very, very stupid. Having little to do with the realities of teaching, they exist mainly to provide jobs for Wisconsin's Department of Public Instruction, and, apparently, to waste my time and money. I have enough subject credits to teach high school social studies, I just need to learn how to jump through hoops. It's rather aggravating.

2. Roller derby has the potential to be very very cool, and it probably is very very cool for the girls who play on teams, and thus have their time occupied by things other than idiotic arguments over costuming and inane power struggles. However, my experience has been that if you get a group of girls together, you're bound to have at least one nutjob/drama queen with a total lack of self-awareness. I'm not so interested in voluntarily subjecting myself to that, and thus, this weekend's bout will be the first and last that I participate in. It's too bad, but I don't have the energy to coexist with sucky people when I don't really have to.

3. "My Name Is Earl" and "The Office" make a great hour of television viewing. Also, "The Machinist" is an incredible movie that did not get the attention it deserved.

4. My future brother- and sister-in-law are having a baby boy in April. I'm of course happy for them, but I'm also unbelievably happy that we will not be having the first grandchild on that side of the family.

5. Joaquin Phoenix is an excellent (and easy on the eyes) Johnny Cash.

6. If I give myself too much time between thinking of an idea for a story and starting to write it, I will inevitably tear the idea to shreds until I am thoroughly convinced that it's dumber than anything that has ever been written in the history of time, ever, plus I have no talent as a writer anyway, that not a single word will be written.

7. My desire to have a baby is directly correlated with the approach of my thirtieth birthday. Fortunately, I've managed to score a twenty-five-year-old who is not only sweet, funny, and cute as hell, but just as interested in knocking me up. It will likely happen within a year (despite my enthusiasm, I'm still slightly weirded out by the thought).

8. I need to write more often, in conjunction with my goal to spend more time being productive and less time on the couch watching crappy TV and mocking David Caruso's horrible acting, fun as that activity may be.

9. Tight budgets still blow.

10. I don't know what is wrong with those women who can talk about nothing other than their upcoming wedding. Once in a while, sure. But jesus, on my list of conversation topics, it ranks somewhere between the price of gas and my desire for a digital camera. Fixating on it will not make it "magical".

Kitten Skates Again

I got on roller skates today for the first time since I was 12. I love it. Yes, I looked like an asshole lurching around the rink while all the derby girls, who are, of course, quite good on skates, sped by me. Yes, I fell flat on my ass (but only once!). And yes, my 29-year-old, out-of-shape thighs are not particularly pleased with me at the moment. But I'm now totally addicted. I wish I had enough time to invest in being on a team and playing, but I have to console myself with cheerleading--though as a cheerleader, I get to wear a wig and saucy little outfits, so I guess it's not all bad. I don't remember the last time I was this excited about a new activity. Oh wait, yes I do. heh heh heh.

I can't say a whole lot about New Orleans without getting all flowery and emo, but I love that city and it breaks my heart to see the footage on TV. The loss of one of the oldest, most unique places in the country is a tragedy, but what has happened to the people of New Orleans is unimaginable. Prayers, good thoughts, sympathy--whatever you call it, it's all focused on the survivors in Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.

We have ARRIVED! Actually, we arrived about two weeks ago, but I've been busy. Kind of.

Renting an apartment sight-unseen worked out quite a bit better in Madison than it did in DC. It's fairly little, but old and cute with plaster walls and hardwood floors and big windows and a location two blocks from one of Madison's three lakes. It may or may not be haunted, but as long as non-perishables don't fly out of the cabinets and nothing's oozing out of the walls, I have no problem with that.

My classes start tomorrow evening, and will cause little to no stress, partly because I'm only taking two due to loan limitations. The low-stress factor is also influenced by the fact that one class is on "adolescent development", the purpose of which is to presumably prepare you to control a classroom full of the developing little fuckers, while the other class is "Young Adult Literature". If Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret is on the syllabus, I may have to interrupt the instructor to perform a Happy Dance. I'm guessing it's a little outdated, though, what with all the discussion of attaching sanitary napkins to belts. Menstruation in the Dark Ages...

Work starts Thursday afternoon with a couple of half-days to ease the kids into a new routine, then I start for real next Tuesday. I'm really looking forward to it, and not just for the pay check. It will surprise no one to hear that we are once again desperately poor, waiting for Kevin to find a drywall/laborer job and for me to receive my student loan check that should really be put into savings but will probably have to be used to pay the car insurance. Will the poverty ever end? I want to start swimming, but the $38 a month for a Y membership seems like an outrageously extravagant luxury.

On the other hand, I do have roller derby activities to provide a bright spot on the horizon. As I believe I mentioned before, Em has recruited me for a spot on the Anarchettes, cheerleading squad for the Mad Rollin' Dolls, the sexiest bunch of hellcats on wheels. Em's the captain of the Anarchettes and has lofty plans to take the group beyond last year's duties of ticket-taking and merch-selling. We have already rhapsodized about the cheers we will write, the half-time shows we will develop, and the saucy little outfits we will design with the other girls on the squad. I can't fucking wait.

So things are good. The stress of moving has been worth all the quality time with Em, the cozy little apartment, and the smell of clean lake that comes in the kitchen window when the wind is right.

Oil of Olay can kiss my ass

I'm 29 tomorrow. I'm not the kind of girl who's going to freak out about turning 30--actually, I'm looking forward to my thirties. However, I just have to ask, where the fuck did my twenties go? They went by so fast. The early years were lame, the middle section was miserable, and it's just finally gotten decent. Which is great and there's no force on earth that could convince me to start at 21 again, but that doesn't help that nagging feeling that I'm going to start looking ridiculous in many of my favorite clothes very soon.

Security blanket of smog

This upcoming move is scaring the crap out of me. I hate living in DC. Hate. It. But I know where things are. I know people here, and even like some of them. Kevin proposed to me in this (tiny and overpriced) apartment. We (usually) get our mail without a problem. We have a bank, and magazine subscriptions, and a semi-traditional outing to the Sunday flea market, and now everything has to be changed. It's a lot of upheaval, and for some reason, this is seeming much scarier than any of the other cross-country moves I've made. Maybe it's because we have such high hopes for Madison (not without good reason--Em's there, I already have a job, Kevin will probably be doing drywall which is a hell of a lot more dependable and stable than working for tips), or maybe it's because I'm getting older and change is becoming less and less appealing to me. Still, I need to keep reminding myself that the stability we'll get in Madison is a million times better than any superficial stability we have here.

Plus I get to be on the roller derby cheerleading squad--The Anarchettes--in Madison. Such an opportunity has not presented itself in DC. So, yes, the move is, by any standard, a good thing, but that doesn't mean I won't be an emotional train wreck for the next week and a half.

fighting the man one step at a time

This afternoon we had to go to the bank, which is in Georgetown. Georgetown, if you don't know, is the la-di-da-est part of the city, where the women contain more botulism toxin than a 34-year-old can of Dinty Moore beef stew and the luxury SUVs clog the streets. It's a horrible place, full of horrible people, but they have some good Indian restaurants. I had to stop at Paper Source to get a card for Becca because she got a fabulous new job (yay Becca), so we drove around for a bit looking for a parking space.

As we were driving down a side street, a shiny blue BMW SUV pulled out of its space about a foot in front of us. Evidently owning an overpriced piece of crap exempts you from using a turn signal, because we had no idea there was even anyone IN the vehicle, let alone that they were about to pull out and damn near crush my poor beleaguered car. I, being of a feisty nature, have a propensity for throwing down the finger in traffic--it's almost automatic at this point (driving in DC has given me plenty of practice)--and I did so. The driver, an orange-tinted mass with terrifying fingernails, then flipped us off. I love it when people do that, like "How dare you get upset with my flagrant violations of traffic laws and common decency?"

While we were walking to the bank, we passed a woman who looked like Jessica Simpson's coke-dealing aunt. She was waving her Kate Spade bag around while berating a group of three people who had been standing on the corner, forcing her to take an extra step to get around them. This was evidently unacceptable to her.

So we walked into Paper Source, shaking our heads at the loathesome creatures that infest Georgetown, and while I picked out a card, Kevin wandered over to the display of fancy pants bottles of ink for people who want to pretend they're Lord Byron. While I paid for the card, he could barely contain himself, smirking and generally looking amused with himself. Once we got outside, he told me that next to the ink was a book for people to write in to try out the fountain pens. In inch-high capital letters, he had written "Kill Whitey".

Sure, it's childish, sure, it's petty, sure, we're white. But I laughed all the way to the end of the street. I love my smart-ass boy.

Oddities

I wanted to start a new blog. I've had a livejournal account, also under the "jenta" username, for close to three years now, but there's too much history behind it. And not the good kind. Plus it's a pain in the ass to post pictures there, not that I have a digital camera or any way of putting pictures of myself or any of my jaw-droppingly gorgeous comrades on the site, but there is this guy:



See, that alone is worth finding a new host site.

I think I'd like to go in a new direction, less bitching and moaning and more entertainment. Maybe even some thoughtful socio-political commentary.

And seriously, wait til I get some pics. I'm okay, but for some reason I'm surrounded by hotties. You'll thank me.