Going back to work after having a week off blows. Hard.
After reading The Gum Thief I have convinced myself that I have spleen problems.
I am not sure where a spleen is located but I have decided mine is about five inches under my left breast.
Al, the cutest girl on earth™, is going to have a [...]

“I need a new check card.”
“Was your card lost or stolen?” The friendly US Bank customer service rep said.
“No.”
“. . . ”
“See I got a new one because the old one expires next month.”
“The new one was sent to your house?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said. “I, uh, accidentally cut it up and threw it away.”
Much [...]

Remember how excited I was about reading Douglas Coupland’s The Gum Thief? Yeah, that dried up and blew away leaving a vague sense of disappointment behind.
What we have here is an epistolary (god I love using that word) novel featuring the correspondence between 40-something alcoholic Roger, 20something goth-girl Bethany (both of whom work at [...]

I was helping The Tibbles put on their pajamas before going downstairs to watch “the ghost movie” with the lights off and eat Nutter Butters (the ghost movie they were demanding? Casper Meets Wendy).
“Why don’t you have a penis?” Nolan asked.
“Because I am a girl,” I said.
“You need a penis,” he said.
“No I don’t,” I [...]

In the past four weeks or so I’ve seen Andrew Bird and Neko Case live for the first time ever. I saw Paul Westerberg sing and talk about his music.
However, nothing has filled my stomach with electricity or made my hands shake with excitement like the arrival of Jim Walsh’s All Over But the [...]

If you had a signature Bath & Body Works flavor, you have to go read the plumeria incident of the late ’90s.

I just counted and I’ve read (or attempted to read, some of the books I chose were so bad I stopped [Fifth Business and that awful, horrible fucking Freebird book]) forty-one books so far this year. I can say with absolute conviction that thus far my favorite novel of the year is Brock Clarke’s An [...]

Dear People of Earth,
If you can say or hear the term love making or making love with a straight face, you are a stronger person than I.
Making love out of nothing at all,
Jodi

Because I have a short story due tomorrow and a New Pornographers’ concert tonight I decided that I couldn’t do much of anything until after “Little House on the Prairie” was over. This girl’s got priorities.
It just so happens that this is the episode where Laura falls in love with Alamanzo Wilder and Nellie falls [...]

I made some soup today. It was a kind of a minestrone filled with most all the vegetables I enjoy or at least the TTHM would have called it minestrone.
Back when we were in the thick of our totally not romantic relationship the TTHM and I would talk on the phone every night for [...]

Number of times I’ve seen the Mitch dies episode of Dawson’s Creek: 4
Number of times I’ve heaved big, slobbering sobs while watching the Mitch dies episode of Dawson’s Creek: 49,281

I saw the ruins of Dan Patch Lanes for the first time this weekend. It was not easy. Even harder still is having to dive back into the bowling alley stories so soon after viewing the wreckage. Reading though a rather crappy story I wrote called “Rocket Science” gives me that tight chest, I kind [...]

I had a lot of these last night. Plus some Captain and Diet Cokes. Plus there were some shots of Patron with the Groomsmen I had never met before last night.
Ouch.

Sister #2 relates a dinnertime conversation where Max decides that I am the most famous person they know.

This is why I never feel rested after a full night of sleep.
I was at work on the phone to my Canuckian bossboss who kept asking me if I had gotten the Justice Department files yet (because corporate whore copywriters often deal with that kind of thing). The conversation took forever because Jan Levenson [...]