BREAKING: Jessica Alba is pregnant!

And that makes me really happy, because now Jessica Alba will get fat (typed the intrepid blogger as she munched on a proscuitto, mozzarella and basil sandwich).

A retroactive plea for sympathy

Over the course of my young life, I have lost my entire music collection not once, not twice, not three times, but FOUR times. First time, freshman dorm robbery. Second time, entire CD shipment failed to arrive. Third time, computer with all music digital files stolen. Fourth time, year-old hard drive of replacement computer crashed.

Okay, first time it was only like 25 CDs, since CDs were a relatively new-fangled thing and I had just started buying them (yup, I'm old). So it wasn't that traumatizing. And third and fourth times, it was/is more about doing to work of re-stealing and reuploading the files than anything else. And that's what husbands are for.

Second time though.... oh, that second time. I had just taken off a semester to run an environmental campaign office in Santa Barbara. I had no idea what I was doing; for a few different reasons, I just knew that I needed a severe change of pace. So off I went, with an impulsive friend in tow.

A few weeks into my time there, I was sure I'd made a collossal mistake. My weekly work hours hovered around the triple digits, it rained all the time, and there was a giant tree growing in the middle of my office. Also, everyone used the term "stoked" way too often for my liking.

So I desperately awaited the comforts of my music collection, which my dad had promised to send to me ASAP. And one day, UPS finally dropped off a big media package -- a big, ripped, empty media package that one of my idiot employees still signed for.

I can't even begin to explain the feelings of rage and loss that surged through me when I saw that box, mostly because I knew, I just KNEW my dad hadn't thought to insure the package. And so it was. UPS gave me a hundred bucks for my troubles, my dad guiltily promised to take me on a used-CD shopping spree when I returned home (six months later), and I was stuck listening to the Philadelphia soundtrack -- the only CD the previous director had left behind in the office -- on endless, Sisyphian loop. Sometimes, in my dreams at night, I can still hear the grating sounds of the Spin Doctors covering "Have You Ever Seen the Rain?" Thank god for Neil Young's "Philadelphia."

Nostalgia makes me blue

Everyone always makes fun of me for hanging onto my Hotmail account. For most, it seems to be the email equivalent of toting around a Filofax organizer instead of a Blackberry. (Which I certainly don't do, nosireebob. I've lost my Filofax in the house somewhere.)

To which I always say, screw all y'all. First of all, I'm a notorious Luddite. I'm an iPod iDiot, I only recently started texting, and I routinely lie and pretend to understand things like Skype and Drupal. Second of all, I like having all of my ancient emails in one place. Many encyclopedic email exchanges with friends and family have been lost when I've changed jobs, cities and computers, and so I cling to this particular slice of personal written history like it's the day before the day after tomorrow.

And third of all, it took 10 years, but Hotmail recently redesigned its whole site, making my account comparable to a Yahoo email account circa 2002. Antiquated, yes, but hardly unusable.

Except today my account has developed a bizarre quirk: when I delete emails from page 3 of my inbox, I'm taken to the last page of my account. So of course I've taken the opportunity to reread old emails about such pressing topics as the perils of turning 30 and the Patriots' chances against the heavily favored Rams in the Super Bowl. (Me: "Ah, the Pats. Wasn't it a great game last week? I'm sure Kordell is seeking solace in the arms of many male prostitutes right now. I have this great feeling that we're going to win on Sunday.")

But it's all made me a little sad somehow. Sure, it's heartening that of the 13 friends listed on that last page, I'm still in close contact with 11 and have only purposefully lost touch with one. Still, life seemed simpler back then. We gossiped about boyfriends and girlfriends, not spouses and kids. Chelsea Clinton's greatest offense was her stuffy post-makeover bob. New England sports teams were beloved, not villified. R. Kelly had yet to pee on anyone. Good times, now long gone.

Although I'm not getting shit done at work today because I drank a little too much during MNF and am now exhausted. So I guess some things never change.