Bob and I selected a supernana Kenmore Elite stainless steel gas range with convection capabilities, the ability to self-clean, and a host of nubby buttons that you push to tell it what to do. It is sort of tall (like me) and fancy-looking, even though it was mid-priced and on sale for $300 less than what it goes for. It epitomizes all that is grown-up in my current life: the kitchen remodel that I commandeered, the dinners I look forward to cooking again, the shiny ring on my finger and the big writer's residency I am about to embark upon.

Except something happened yesterday that made me sad when it got delivered.

Nobody died, but someone might be disappearing for a while.

Are you enjoying Palingate? I sure am. I like to be reminded that the Repugs want to make sure that they believe in rewarding women of low accomplishment with big jobs they aren't prepared for so they can fail gloriously and send the message that the big jobs should go to the men while the girls stay home and glower at their abstinence-practicing spawn. What do you want to bet that Chelsea was on the Pill throughout her teen years regardless of whether she was schtupping anyone? If Chelsea had turned up preggers, she would have been whisked off to Europe for an abortion and we wouldn't know the first thing about it. What do you want to bet this teen pregnancy thing was a total gambit to send a message to the evangelical far-right, showing a woman frog-marching her own child into marriage to some dumb 18-year-old boy and raising a child as an example of "doing the right thing," even though that "right thing" is going to give her daughter a profoundly unhappy start to adulthood.

I have to wonder if my mother's take on this was equally conservative, for had I turned up pregs in high school, I would have been summarily forced onto the clinic table. Funny. She forced me into becoming a person who she doesn't like very much. She'd probably like beleaguered mother-of-a-teen Mo a lot more than the version she got. And designed.

Seven days until Noho; 24 until Vermont.

Bob and I were discussing sandwich options today, and I mentioned local sandwich leader WhichWich, a smallish chain dotting the southern U.S. with special focus on university towns. Bob had never eaten there, and I only go there if I have business at UT, as there is a location on The Drag. I liked their crunchy bread/melty cheese flavor and suggested it as today's lunch spot, and so we went to one in our nearby overbloated upscalish residential/retail center.

Whilst there, I observed that, in stark contrast to the teriyaki shops in Seattle that D-Moe and I patronized a few weeks ago, one must be highly literate to successfully order at WW. They throw a lot of reading comprehension at their customers from the get-to and do not use semiotics to instruct those who are either unable to read or have English as a second or third language. At the teriyaki shops, every dish has a corresponding photograph of varying appeal and a number, so anyone, regardless of their language of choice, can just barrel up to the register and point to the sign as long as they're not blind.

Bob is one of tiny number of Americans who cannot design his own sandwich and must be told what the sandwich engineering team has deemed a good flavor combo, so the WW business model, despite its market successes, confounded and frustrated him. Thousands of literate Americans and perhaps some illiterate ones as well have successfully navigated the verbose WW gauntlet and have come out on the opposite end of the counter with a tasty sandwich, so what's the problem, brah? I hope that Bob can trust his own sandwich flavor alchemy skills and give in to the allure of the brown bag checklist method. Sometimes we are called upon to subvert our preferred cognitive paradigms. WW demands much more from us.

WW also assumes knowledge of general American sandwich conventions, as well as some pop cultural conventions. You have to know that Elvis was famous for his love of peanut butter and banana sandwiches; ergo, the Elvis Wich. A brief ingredient list follows, but I couldn't help but think that if I happened into Barcelona's equivalent of WW, I'd be thoroughly confused. Of course, in Barcelona, they have like three types of sandwiches, including cold omelet. No one here wants a cold omelet sandwich. I think this lack of variety is wise because all of this variety and control is the type of American excess that makes me wonder if I shouldn't expatriate to France. France would have me because of my name and my pledged commitment to speaking French and living in the French manner. My expatriation would bring full circle 400 years of my patrilineal ancestors escape from Bretagne to find their fortunes in New France. There would be some poetic justice, weight loss, free health care and six weeks paid vacation.

So, in a nutshell, WhichWich has made me consider the feasibility of its ordering method based on my own assumptions about the language comprehension of its customer base, the idea that a sandwich maker knows best, and that expatriation to France would be a cultural and economic improvement on my life.

Sometimes even I am shocked by just how Lisa Simpsonish I can be.

With this in mind, I couldn't help but notice that none other than our future First Lady Michelle Obama was NOT wearing stockings at the conventions. She was bare-legging it the whole way, as were her daughters.

Much like how Kennedy's killed the men's hat, Michelle Obama has killed the lady's stocking.

I'm an even bigger dork now.

Anyway, today in class we compared definitions in the New Oxford American vs. American Heritage smackdown style. The prof is an AH alumna, and I gotta say, I thought their defs were crap compared to Ms. McKean's tome. (Oh, Ms. McK...you are so much cooler than Mr. Sheidlower...) To define an object, do you describe its function or its appearance? Oh, quandary. One point for NOA, in my opinion. I brought up front matter and more importantly, the fact that no one reads the front matter. (The front matter is the 10-12 pages in the front of your dictionary that explain to you how to use your dictionary and why the editors have decided to do things the way they did them) Then she assigned the homework of reading the front matter in the dictionary of your choice.

I like to think that my mention of the unimportant front matter prompted that little homework assignment. Hee hee hee...you have to read the front matter. I've already read the front matter, so I'm good. Thanks.

As the class is an undergrad course, I overheard two women chatting about their post-graduation plans, which include law school for one and a SWEET finance job down in San Antonio. "I just turned twenty-three," the one wearing a strapless top confided. "I feel so old." I turned to her and said "you're really not." She smiled at me but I don't think she has any idea what she's saying. Hell, I used to think I was old at 23, but what I meant by that was "I am a very old soul and unlike most people my age because I am inherently this very old person, no matter what my age is." "Old" implies doors closing, skin wrinkling, knees giving out, and doctor-prescribed low-salt diets. Old people do not wear strapless shirts and if they do, they are heartily admonished for their trespasses.

I have pics but I left my camera at home so they'll have to wait.

I have to miss Obama's speech tonight but am looking forward to listening to it tomorrow.

If anyone needs help finding a term paper topic, I can help with that. I might even write a paper myself, even though I don't have to. I'm not getting a grade or anything, so I can do as much or as little as I want. I am also thinking about new words and terms that could be defined as a class exercise:

hook up (vt)
social networking

Anyway, sitting in a room with a group of 21-year-olds with varying levels of interest in the subject matter made me feel old! And it had been years since I sat in a coed undergrad classroom (12 to be exact). Boys go to college? What?

My laptop works again. Yay. I suffered a data loss but I don't want to talk about it.

And hello, BtB! Maria Bamford was fucking amazing last night. Captivating, unorthodox stand-up comedy. Someone please make her obscenely rich and famous right now. Great shows all night, though I can't get the mental image of Matt Bearden's friend who jumped into an empty pool out of my mind. Eyeballs. Yuck.

Please come see Bob's troupe Improv for Evil do their '70s cop show Cochise this Wednesday at 10pm at SVT so that this horrific facial hair configuration will not be in vain. Thank you.

And hi, Andrea! I got two hits from Tucson, so it must be you. See you this weekend, lady!

Shit.

Poopers.

I think I steered some customers away from the Mad Crab, or at least pissed off the management (eat me, management, the way I ate your crappy food!) as someone from the Whidbey area Googled their way in through "crabby crab restaurant coupeville." Neener neener.

I never realized how dependent on my laptop I am. If my car had to go to the shop, I'd shrug, be inconvenienced, but ultimately be fine. I can get to 90% of the places I need to be by walking or taking the bus, so no big loss there. But my laptop...I don't know what I'm going to do with myself today. I have a desktop at home but I don't like writing my novel at home. The atmosphere doesn't work for me. I like having people milling around me even if I don't talk to them.

I have a date at the Apple Genius Bar tomorrow at noon. Until then, I'll be biting my nails or something. Crap.

1) BEYOND THE BORDERS 7. Wow, it's already time for the BtB fest again! Shit! Time flies. I used to be on the staff of this venerable fest but close readers will recall that between September '07-May '08 all I did in my spare time was plan LAFF and my Ladycollege Reunion. Adding BtB to my schedule would have been the proverbial straw, so I quit and I have no regrets. I can only do so much volunteer event planning. AND, this is the first festival that I will simply be a patron of and I am very excited about that. Just watching shows and such. Whee!

The Geegsters are in a headlining slot this year. We are honored and delighted that the BtB sees us fit to fit the bill in this big way. We have worked hard and are tickled even pinker than usual.

2) LEXICOGRAPHY CLASS. Starts next Wednesday. Can't wait to nerd it up with the local Dictionarians!

3) NOHO REDUX. I'm spending the second weekend of September in the Motherland for my second tour of volunteer training on the 'mater's dime. I'm hopefully meeting up with Father Dictionary (one of my Dictionary colleagues quit to become a Catholic priest) for some Catholic consulting for Novel #2, which will hopefully be mostly done by the end of...

4) VERMONT!!!! Only a month away! WTF!!?!? What am I going to do in the woods for four weeks without BOB? Other than write my little bum off and huff New England foliage like it's gas? Work in the kitchen, connect with the 40 or so other artists that will be in residency too. Stare at the stars. Coin-op laundry. Self-doubt. Revolution. Art. Love. Vermont. Vermont!

and then...yes...

5) CHOP SOCKY: THE RETURN. Currently fighting with insurance over this right now. I'm really going to do it this time. I've been having too many health issues of late to let this go any longer.

And finally:

6) JOBBY-JOB. I don't plan to quit writing, but I do need to go back to work and earn me some $ and have somewhere to go every day.

That's my horizon.
Now, onto rehearsal!

Warning to travelers: don't go to Baby Acapulco. It's not where the locals eat. Okay, if you're a UT undergrad entranced with the idea of getting tanked with all your new friends, sure, Baby A's will get you good and drunk with their grain-alcohol margaritas. If you're in town for a UT sporting event, church get-together, or some other gathering that finds you staying at one of the low-end hotels that dot this stretch of I-35, Baby A's isn't a bad choice. But if you want Mexican cuisine that actually tastes good and arrives at your table in good time without a lot of hassle, Austin has hundreds of superior choices. Baby A's is a drunk tank for people whose perception of Mexican cuisine comes from repeat business at Taco Bell. I assume that over half of Baby A's revenue intake comes from bar drinks, because without courting the drunks, this place would have shut down years ago.

I ate there for the first time in seven years today. The restaurant smelled like a combination of cleaning chemicals and feet. I couldn't help but observe a member of the waitstaff set down a plate full of entrees and then disappear for at least 10 minutes while the entrees just sat undelivered. Had someone quit mid-shift? Wouldn't surprise me a bit. We then noticed a table of unhappy-looking patrons pointing at the abandoned tray, wondering if that was their food that was in plain view but just not at their table. Pretty much their entire waitstaff walked past the abandoned tray before we pointed it out and the plates were whisked back to the kitchen without comment.

The food was okay, but I spilled my taco on my shirt and had to go home to change because the spill started to smell like vomit.

I hadn't been back in seven years because the last time I went there, I ordered a margarita before I found out what in the margarita led to speedy inebriation (answer from a friend who worked there once: Everclear). I've been drinking all over Austin nearly decade now and never before have I become so drunk so fast on ONE MARGARITA. I was with a friend who is a heavy, experienced drinker and even he was uncomfortably intoxicated. It wasn't even a fun, happy drunk. It was "what is my name and am I going to die tonight?" drunk. Awful.

Anyway, Baby A's is tacky, serves mediocre food and dangerous margaritas, and caters to travelers who don't know any better. If you want good Mexican with a similar atmosphere, go to Chuy's.

As a service, here are 2008 equivalents corresponding to the episode "The Benefactor:"

Ken Cosgrove's $300/week salary=$2185.07, or $104,883.36 per year before taxes

Harry Crane's measly $200/week salary=$1456.72, or $75,749 per year before taxes

When Peggy got moved up to Junior Copywriter, she was given a whole $80/week. $80=$582.69, or $30,299 per year before taxes. Sorry about your vagina, Peggy, but you're not worth as much as the boys!

My compulsion for facts is maddening. And I call myself creative??!?