I like this

I'm having a busy day: work, grocery shopping, giving in to the weird (for me) need to scrub everything in sight. Took a break to read this and watch the video. I don't know quite what of think of men my age like this, the adventurers. I do for sure think people should stay off Everest if only because they fill it with litter, litter that includes the bodies of the dead.

Men like Ralston are on some level stupid, on another egotistical. But aren't we all? I suppose it's another permutation of the celebrity culture. Maybe what I want when I see something like this is some sort of acknowledgment that yes, I chose, am choosing, to be in the public eye and share my life story and profit off my stupidity. But as I type that I realize that I myself hope to profit off my stupidity, in the form of a book. So perhaps it's more that a confluence of events we can't really understand thrusts certain people into the public eye where we all get to judge them and think about our own lives. It can be quite the sacrifice.

Hello fancy feet

Yesterday Walnut accompanied me to the faaaaaaaaancy mall at Copley where we looked at thousand-dollar shoes and such. I'd borrowed the latest Elle and Vogue magazines from the gym, the nice big fat spring ones, and I actually quite enjoyed being able to see and touch the stuff that I saw in the magazines. I miss fashion. While working from home is fantastic in many ways, it's taken a long time to earn enough to support myself, never mind buy clothes. Despite the economy, things keep improving for me, and I know one day soon I'll be comfortable again financially.

Of course the stuff at Barneys and Neiman Marcus is probably going to be out of my price range for this entire incarnation of my sweet little soul. But there's something to be said for clothes as art, and where else can you get that up close and personal with it?

FOB update

I'm hoping new episodes will be up online in maybe a month or so. Also, my co-host is moving to LA in June; this means FOB as I know it will end. However I am considering keeping the space and doing a new show, still a talk show call-in with a male co-host, and holding on-air auditions for a new co-host in the "big" studio.

All this was suggested to me by my pal who gives me a hug every time I show up and who brought me outside last night and showed me the camera Homeland Security installed on top of the building. He gives it the finger every morning. He and I gave it the finger together. Apparently there is another one of these cameras near where I live. The one at the studio was installed, according to my pal, because the road the studio is on is a major evacuation route out of Boston.

Rigggggggggghhht.

Grandma in car

As the wheel of life seems to turn ever faster I find that not only am I sprouting new man-hairs (and sometimes dream that one man-hair has grown to like three feet long before I realize it; I'm stroking my chin and all of a sudden EEK!) but I douse myself in too much perfume. When the Babcia used to do this (with such quality colognes as Jean Nate and Jontue)and then go for a drive with me and Dr. Moo--refusing to let us put the windows down for fear of wrecking her fluffy white hair--we called it "grandma in car".

Little did I know the syndrome had such an early onset.

Bright Smiles

Well next Thursday I'll be earning 250 bucks and my job will be to let two marketing people buy me lunch and then follow me around for four hours and take pictures. It's for a teeth whitener of some sort. I haven't asked that many questions since I think it's more fun to just see what it's all about when they show up. I did, however, begin a frenzy of cleaning as I have a wee bit of fear that they'll end up reporting I'm a crazy cat lady weirdo freak who lives in a dump and has yellow teeth.

So far...

...no one but me seems to find Extras hilarious. I took the season 2 DVD out of the library; one of the DVD extras is a verrrrrry odd look at what Ricky Gervais (star of the series and star/creator of the original Office) does to this guy named Nigel who's an editor for the series. He draws filthy pictures of him, covers him in tape and paper, sits on him, and occasionally trusses him up, all while laughing so much he can barely breathe. And it is funny, but also wicked uncomfortable to watch. I guess it's like a more real version of his fake-reality comedies. The thing is, I wonder if it's really real.

Anyhoo, here's a taste of what I'm talking about. This is from Season One. Not nearly as long, or as funny. But definitely as uncomfortable! (Also possibly NSFW.)

Holy Experiment

While sorting my way through the hundreds of posts on this blog I realized my trial run at going back to church, which began last year on Ash Wednesday, is trial no more. It's become part of my life. I'm happy to say that I do see God in the Catholic church, and that, if you ignore a lot of the stuff the big-C church throws at you, the basic message behind Catholicism is a good one: Try not to be a jerk. And try to help poor people. During Lent, try harder. Everything is going to be okay.

I see this come up over and over and over again and it makes me think the Catholic church needs a better PR team because they just aren't doing that good a job selling themselves.

Now the not being a jerk part can be surprisingly hard to pull off at times. Especially since you are supposed to not be a jerk to anyone, which includes other jerks. But it's a stretch goal, and aren't those the best kind?

The only downside of this whole thing has been my reluctance to talk about it with my nonbeliever friends. Well not so much reluctance as inability-on a base level it's just a thing we don't have in common but in other ways it's much, much deeper than that. (And by nonbeliever I don't mean Catholic; I suppose I mean atheist. Or maybe not so much atheist as devoid of any spirituality whatsoever, of any guiding star. And I do firmly believe everyone has to find their own way in life, their own specific way.)

But that's a conversation for another day. All in all, the holy experiment was a great success.

Tea

I have become, in the last year or so, a lady who goes to tea, at fancy places, with some regularity. This weekend I'm attending one at the Park Plaza hotel. I've had tea at the Ritz, Upstairs On The Square, and the Four Seasons, too. The Ritz was my favorite but alas it is no more. The tea at Upstairs On The Square was terrible but they had, by far, the hottest waiter. Of course he was probably gay.

I do like to drink tea but at around 3 or 4 in the afternoon what I really want is strong coffee. So I order a double cappuccino. You'd think it would be like ordering beef tartare in India but when you're in a fancy hotel they'll get you pretty much anything you want.

Top-o-the-begorrah-blarney-stone-kissing-leprechaun-pot-o-me-gold!

aka Happy Saint Patrick's Day. I am a real fan of the saints. Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland. Michael, the archangel, was a slayer of demons, and the namesake of my very very very Irish Catholic college. St. Paddy's Day was a fine holiday in the Green Mountains. It began with drinking at 6 o'clock in the morning at the Blarney Stone, the school's unofficial piss-and-vomit-stained bar. By noon folks were drunk enough to start a massive food fight in the cafeteria.

Ah, memories.

This year I celebrated by watching my FOB co-host perform standup comedy at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education. He and four other students very bravely did 12-minute sets in front of about 50 people. And they all got genuine laughs.

And now I'm home cooking dinner. No corned beef and cabbage for me and no green beer either but I feel like I did St. Patrick proud.

Breather

Having a very full day today and not much time to post. I will share this: Got up in time to go to a 7:15 hot yoga class Sunday morning. And by hot I mean 90+ degrees. I felt a little high for a few hours afterwards, and then I felt sick. I don't know how much I agree with the whole pouring sweat=detoxification idea. I'm not a fan of heat; my body just isn't made for it. I don't think it's because I'm full of toxins. It's because I'm half-full of Polish.

Bye-bye Bono

Well I didn't get video of the U2 motorcade driving up my street headed to go drinking in Harvard Square, as it turns out. But I do have this little lovely:



What was most interesting of the whole shebang was how quiet it was. The motorcade had to back out onto my street as opposed to going down the one-way street they were parked on to head to Mass Ave. So everyone was on that street.

JoyceFrances befriended a motorcycle cop parked at the corner. At some point several loud, irritating, trashy people showed up. One of them had a kid named Gustav. Gustav it up your ass is what I was thinking. They kept following us. Annoying!

Anyhoo officer friendly let us know where the band was headed, and that the boh-noh would be in the last SUV. While I was filming-but-apparently-not-filming-at-all, I noticed someone inside one of the SUVs filming me.

Weirdness.

Bono is very short

And here is part of his motorcade, pulled up right in front of my house. I took this pic on my front steps.

And this is him coming to Somerville


And tomorrow, video of him leaving Somerville and driving right by my house.

U2

So at around 1:30 this afternoon I heard a bunch of loud helicopters buzzing around my neighborhood. I went to my favorite neighborhood site and discovered the rumors were true: U2 is doing some sort of promotional Q&A concert thingy.

Looky-loo that I am, I decided today was the day to break out the Starbucks card and headed up the street. Most of the public parking was blocked off and already occupied. There was lots of equipment being unloaded. Also there was a handsome man in a suit looking at it all, and an old dude in an SUV with tinted windows.

On my way home, the pace had picked up: One camera guy next to the Davis Square sign, one reporter on the corner, and the handsome man in the suit was interviewing someone on my street. Plus a FOX News satellite truck was pulling in.

I only hope they don't block traffic because JoyceFrances is arriving tonight to stay with me until Saturday, and we need to go grocery shopping.

Buns

Well the operas were delightful. As Dr. Moo, who took a class about opera, noted, many operas are trashy. Yet many of the people who go to the opera do just that -- they go. And look down their noses at everybody else.

Walnut, her mom and I didn't look down our noses at anybody but we did get in trouble, for putting our feet up on the carpeted rail in front of us, and for sharing one of the buns I made the day before:

They're cloverleaf rolls. I used the milk bread recipe from Joy. Didn't have bread flour but they still came out tasty.

And this is my fuzzy bunny kitty, nesting.

Fleeing to the Awe-per-ah

I have had a royally shitty day.

Poor Walnut happened to call just as I was spiraling down. We chatted. It turns out she has extra tickets to a double-bill on Sunday afternoon.

When we were in high school, we imagined going to the opera together one day. And now we are!

I am very grateful for her.

Yin/Yang

I was in front of the computer for 9 hours straight today; despite hitting the gym in the morning I needed to move.

So I did yoga for about an hour, a couple of videos from the Yoga Journal website and a series of poses from the magazine itself, plus a bunch of sun salutations. I tried Scorpion again, did a forearm stand, and tried kicking up into a handstand but didn't quite make it. I walk a fine line between being chickenshit and genuinely concerned I'm going to hurt myself. In class last week we were offered the opportunity to practice getting into the push-up part of a sun salutation by doing a backwards somersault and landing there. The teacher said she'd spot us.

Oh! I'll do it! But then it looked like the teacher wasn't going to spot me so I rolled over on my side instead. In front of the whole class. But, hey, no biggie.

In other McPolack news I like the Terminator movies almost as much as I like yoga. The first two were awesome; the third sucked. I love the trailer for the next one; I'm hopeful the movie will be even better.

Lord help us

I don't know about you, but I'm thinking this isn't WJWD.

Effluvia

Well Jim is just delightful. He doesn't bark at all, but that doesn't mean he isn't naughty; he took a special interest in Harry the Wonder Chinchilla and got a nice hard bite on his nose for it. No one tried to hump anyone else, which was good...but Chauncey the Wonder Corgi made many, many, mannnnny snarly faces.

It was a critter-filled weekend. When I got there, Dr. Moo and I sat on the sofa with Chauncey and Jim; later I hung out in the loo with Harry, who has gotten very bold. He hopped on my back and was rooting around in my hair and nibbling on my sweater. He also showed off his mighty powers for me, leaping from the sink and bashing into the bathroom door and wall. He likes to do bank shots.

That night, Ethel the barn kitty shared the spare bedroom with me and took great care to mark her territory. She alternated rubbing her cheeks (not her buttcheeks!) up and down my side with kneading and drooling and rolling over while I patted her. She decided she wanted to go back to the barn at 4 in the morning and when I brought her downstairs, Chauncey and Jim tried to escape. Chauncey wanted to chase Ethel; Jim wanted to be her friend.

Before church the next morning I was telling Polackpappy about Ethel. He told me if I wanted to see drool I should look at him in five years and then insinuated I would be in charge of mopping it up. I told him not to worry, I had a nice nursemaid named Helga in mind for that job.