emoticon and 7 Things Meme

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Above is a linearized, black-and-white version of the tree from Doug'lass blog.

I also like the overheard quote he te'xted me just now:

"I wish people would shop for me like I do for them."

MMM...that's some Christmas spirit if I ever heard any.

I don't have anything to say right now. I'm listening to audition lab and letting the 1.5 glasses of wine settle and decompose a bit before I head home....ya...cuz I actually drove to work today. Why? cuz ivano and I woke up at 8 AM today. oops. I blame the velvety blanket my mom gave us for Christmas last year. It keeps the edge off, which enabled us to keep our sleep on.

And this leads into the 7 things meme that Kelly tagged me with ages ago!!!

It is supposed to be 7 things about me...so here goes:

1. The first time I got drunk, it was on Smirnoff vodka and coke (as in Coca Cola) in high school. It was such a liberating experience. I was hanging out with a girl that I was "supposed" to like and once I had a couple of drinks, I forgot that I was "supposed" to be tyring to hook up with her and just had a great time talking to her.

2.The first time I went to the beach with high school friends, I french kissed a girl I totally didn't like in a lifeguard chair at the beach at like midnight. It was totally depressing. There were other couples in all the other lifeguard chairs. I hope to hell they were having more fun than I was having.

3. The day that I kissed the girl in the lifeguard chair at Bethany Beach...that was the summer that the song with the catchy phrase "You Gotta Keep 'Em Separated" was all over the radio. I wished to hell I'd taken that advice when it came to me and the opposite sex: you gotta keep'em separated.

4. The Monday after my senior year homecoming, I was much more popular than usual. Why? People were excited that I'd taken a "hot" girl to the dance. One dude even said she looked like she should have been on the cover of Vogue. She was a girl I worked with at the now defunct Kimball's Farm Market in Ashton, MD. I'd handed her my cucumbers. Helped her sort melons. We shucked. Corn that is. We even dressed the same. Teal work shirts and ill-fitting jeans shorts. If I'd said, "i love your peaches, want to shake your tree," I would have totally meant it. Literally.

5. In physics class on that Monday after Homecoming, a guy sitting behind me asked if i "hooked up" with said date on Saturday night. My face turned red. I said, "yeah, we hooked up a little, but I didn't get on her." I still cringe when I imagine myself using that phrase..."get on her." But that's what everybody said. That's what I said. If you were not "getting on someone" every weekend, you were worthless. In truth, when I dropped her off at her dad's house, I got out of the car and in her front yard, I asked her if I could kiss her. She said yes. And we kissed. It felt like a science experiment. No. It felt like I was doing something I wasn't supposed to be doing, like licking the hand railing of the metro or the floor of a bus. No offence to my date of course. It was all in my head.

6. I didn't have any better luck at the Visitation (catholic girl's school) Prom or Homecoming. I went with a girl I'd only met one other time. Things were going fine. She had an accent, which was a good start. Wrong gender. Right vowel system. But at some point during the dance, I tried to connect with her on an emotion level. We were sitting in the corner watching a bunch of girls in way-way-short sequin dresses dancing like strippers with drunk dudes with erections pushing out of their wrinkled Nordstrom pants. I was like "You don't have that many friends here, do you?" I meant it as a compliment. But one of the other girls at the table, a girl who seemed to do everything in her power NOT to fit in, took extreme offense to my comment. I was kicked out out of the little click and was not offered a ride home...which was fine really...because I went home with the girl who had actually done the setting up and her boyfriend, who was one of the actual nice guys from my high school.

7. When I didn't get invited to the dinner party that one of my actual friends was going to for my senior prom, I burst out in tears at the kitchen table in front of my parents. In the end, the whole prom thing worked out. I managed to invite myself into the rented limo group of some other guys from my class. Nice guys. but guys I never really hung out with. They needed another body and I needed some way to fool myself into thinking that I wasn't a total loser.

PS: i just realized I was tagged for the ABC meme, not the 7 things meme...whatever...at least I got the meme part...Thanks Kelly...when I see bloggers thanking other bloggers for tagging them it always sounds fake to me...but maybe they all really feel how I feel right now: thanks kelly!