PFDD (Post-Florida Depressed Disorder)

Back from two weeks in Key West. Right now I'm thinking that a negative-60-degree shift in one's environmental temperature should automatically qualify one for disability payouts. Right now I'm also thinking about moving down to Key West.

More this weekend.

Friday's affairs

I am utterly incapable of doing work past 4 pm on Friday if I have nothing specific due. So instead, I've decided to make a list of all the stupid things I did this past week:

Shoved my credit card into the wrong slot in my wallet, then couldn't get it out all day. Had to charge everything on my debit card, then rush home, get online and transfer money from savings to checking to cover it.

Lost my car in a parking lot for 25 minutes.

Spent all morning intoning to Dan that it was going to rain, going to rain, going to rain, then failed to bring an umbrella to work and wore my wool sponge of a winter coat - on the one day I had to walk home from the T.

Carried one of my sister's beagles down the stairs because she was showing a limp, then realized when I got to the bottom that I'd forgotten the other beagle.

Walked a half-mile to my car to move it, then realized I'd forgotten my car keys once I got there.


Hmm, pretty low tally, actually. Good show!

Why can't Wii be friends, why can't Wii be friends...

Sunday was a glorious day. It's been more than two months since I've had a weekend day that wasn't bogged down by either wedding activities or freelance work, and as such, I've been a frenzied, stress-out, somewhat unpleasant blob lo these past eight weeks.

But Sunday I woke up and had exactly zero commitments on my schedule, my last assignment wrapped up the night before. So I luxuriated in bed for a while, then slothfully read the Sunday paper on the couch for an hour or two. I may or may not have squeezed in a SoapNet "Beverly Hills 90210" rerun before taking the dog to the new neighborhood dog park, where the lazybutt even trotted around a bit.

And then, in the penultimate event of my day, I beat the living crap out of my husband.

Transcript of a phone call between my sister and I Sunday morning:

Her: Okay, you guys HAVE to come over today. Guess what we bought?

Me (distracted while watching Val almost lose the Peach Pit after Dark to a bondsman because Colin fled jail): What?

Her: Wii!!! It's a-MAZ-ing. You have to come over tonight!!

And so we did. And as I expected, I sucked at almost everything: table tennis, Dance Dance Revolution, Zelda (though I only served as an unhelpful advisor with that one), Pop the Balloons, baseball etc.

But boxing? Goddamn. I kicked ass. Specifically my husband's ass, which had no chance against my endless left-handed jabs. Two months' worth of pent-up stress was released in one three-round bout, during which I knocked him out three times. I loved it! And no spousal abuse charges to boot. If they reconfigure Dance Dance Revolution as a contact sport, I may be in business....

"Prepare our standard rich and famous contract for Mr. Frog!"

Third time's the charm with Netflix and me.

First time, the hubby and I joined and queued up two movies: Hitch and Hotel Rwanda. But they fell too far on the respective ends of the comedy-to-tragedy spectrum, and so we never much felt like watching either one. (Well, I never much felt like watching either one. I was in the middle of a nine-month fallow period during which, come Friday night, I wanted nothing more than a couple of glasses of wine and a long doze on the couch.) Then we lost both DVDs in the house somewhere and never found them, but were too embarrassed to own up to Netflix. So we kept paying our monthly fees for three more months before finally copping to our idiocy and paying for the lost DVDs. (Which, incidentally, were never found. I hope they're partying it up in the lost-sock netherworld somewhere with our digital camera and the belt to my favorite wrap sweater.)

After waiting a few months to ride out our shame, we rejoined again, this time under my name only, and ordered a single movie: Walk the Line. Which was already airing on HBO on a bihourly basis, but no matter. When we got the red envelope in the mail, I tore it open in elation, overjoyed that we had finally mastered Netflix. Of course, you're not supposed to rip the envelopes, as the hubby pointed out about a nanosecond after my trumphant tear. Ashamed, I refused to mail back the DVD for many weeks, then finally double wrapped it in scotch tape and cancelled our membership again. (Also, we never watched the movie.)

After many more months and much soul-searching, we finally joined up again a few weeks ago, under a new email and a new password. And I think we have finally hit upon the magic formula: Netflix like the marginalized high school losers we both once were. To wit, portions of our latest Netflix queue:

Bananas
Zelig
Love and Death
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Broadway Danny Rose
Take the Money and Run
Monty Python's Life of Brian*
Superbad(to reflect on our former nerdom)

Although I just took a look at the queue and noticed the hubby is attempting to get all hoity-toity** again with picks like The Piano, The Corporation, and Winged Migration. Bah. He seems to understand our limits though: The Muppet Movie still sits firmly atop the queue.



*Meaning of Life was already Tivoed.

**I wrote too soon. Dan has managed to queue up an animated movie called Flushed Away, about a "high-society mouse" named Roddy who get flushed down the toilet by "Syd, a common sewer rat." Animation, toilets, and high-society comeuppance? It's the Dan Tobin hat trick!

The contest is over

...and Dan has won: he got first mention on Defamer:

Former Writer's Assistant Calls Bullshit on Ellen Degeneres's Crocodile Tears

Bastard. AWESOME bastard, that is!

Do you even understand your own cinematic reference?

The hubby loves to mock my private school education. Despite the fact that I was on financial aid for the 12-year entirety of my schooling; despite the fact that I bear few superficial vestiges of a prep schooler (boat shoes will never, ever grace these paws of mine); despite the fact that many of Dan's closest college friends also hail from private schools; despite all this, he takes profound glee in trilling the r in my admittedly goofily named alma mater and taking me to task when I make the occasional pompous slip, like pronouncing "frontage" to rhyme with "fromage" every time we pass the Frontage Road exit near our home.

To be fair, I probably dug my own grave the second I made mention of "Quiche Day" in our high school cafeteria. Still, I get a little tired of defending a privilege that my parents worked very hard to give me.

And then I run across the website of entities like Dog Day Afternoons Country Day Prep and vow to send every future child, niece and cousin of mine to trade school. Boston's "first and largest prep school exclusively for dogs," run by a prep school graduate, Country Day Prep explains that "while you are a good mummy or daddy" who "of course bring[s] your dog with you to the Vineyard when you're summering," "most dogs are preppies in the making, social animals who actively seek to party" and therefore need access to round-the-clock daytime care complete with spa treatments, birthday parties and aqua therapy (to and from limo service optional).

Although I actually look forward to the day when dog schooling becomes an issue in presidential elections. I wonder how much money Mitt Romney would have to pay to get Seamus admitted?

Question of the day

Those salad bar eggs -- are they real? The ones at my neighborhood salad bar are looking increasingly battered. The one I ate today was a trapezoid. Can you fake a whole egg?