You may find this hard to believe, but sometimes I have TOO MUCH tact

Sometimes I just want to look at people and go, "You're being stupid. Do what I say."

Sometimes. Or all the time. One of the two.

Anyway, it was kind of a lame weekend, in that I spent 75% of it moving and the other 25% sleeping. In any case, I've decided that Mary's high school English teacher was right; we are all developing T-rex arms from typing too much. My forearms were screaming after hefting just a couple of boxes. Unfortunately, I'm not really sure what I can do in normal life to strengthen those muscles. Scooping ice cream seems somewhat self-defeating, and Lord knows I don't want to move any boxes (or any thing, really) that I don't have to. So I guess I'll just go through life with weak arms. The tragedy.

The highlight of the weekend: I was packing boxes in the kitchen, when all of a sudden I hear a giant sploosh! from the bathroom. Regs, my 10-pound, negative-IQ cat, comes streaking out into the living room, tail thrice its normal diameter and a peeved expression on her pointy kitty face. Her chin, front paws, and stomach were dripping, and I discovered a large puddle around the toilet. I looked at her and said, "Well, that's what you get for being a pottymouth." And then I laughed for an hour. You can't buy that kind of entertainment.

Finally, the Olympics are over and I didn't really write about them, although I of course watched as much of them as I possibly could. Bob Costas was annoying, Michael Phelps was hot, and Svetlana Khorkina was a bitch. On a side note, the name "Svetlana" cracks me up, because that's the fake name Mary and I always intended to use when we wanted to sit in on one another's classes or meetings in college. "This is my cousin Svetlana. She's visiting from Russia." We never actually did it, but it was amusing to think about, since neither one of us looks particularly Russian.

Yes, I act like I'm 800 years old. What of it?

I'm looking for playmates to play the following games, which my real friends won't play with me:

Pit
Cribbage
Scrabble
Rack-O
Canasta (If you know how to play this, are under 80, and aren't related to me...it's a miracle.)
Spades
52-card Pick Up (I'll deal)
Uno
Five Crowns
Scattergories ("No adjectives" rule strictly enforced)

Admittedly, I don't have some of these games, which could be impeding our ability to play them. But in general, my friends are much more resistant to board games and cards than I'd like. (Isn't everybody?)

Games my friends will play with me, if reluctantly:
Trivial Pursuit
Hearts
Blackjack
Taboo

And finally, just to weed out the losers...

Games I won't play, except maybe on pain of death, and even then it's not a guarantee:
Charades
Guesswords
Pictionary (Not even on pain of a really horrible death, or Bob Costas)
Checkers
Chess (More because I don't know how than anything)

Screw you, Houston

So my car needs to go into the shop.

That sentence sounds so simple until you break it down. Why does it need to go into the shop? It makes a growling noise when it hits speeds above 30 m.p.h. That's as specific as I can get. I don't know why it makes that noise (Tex suggested bad bearings, SB thinks it might be the exhaust system or something that starts with T that I can't remember [not transmission]), so I don't really know what kind of shop I need to take it into.

Second, I'm really resistant to taking it in during normal working hours, because I don't have any way to get to and from work. Or at least not any convenient way.

So if you have any advice for me and my Tracker, please fork it over.

Thanks.

The overzealous dentist strikes again

I'm always amazed how much of my face is controlled by the nerves in my gums. I've had three shots of novocaine today; my left eyebrow is numb. Basically, I look like a stroke patient.

Anyway, I went in today to get a cavity on my upper left molar filled, and this time Dr. T. felt no need to deviate from the plan of attack. She shot me up with novocaine, let it soak in for AH second, and then started drilling. I don't know if it was my contorted facial expression or my scream that clued her in to the fact that, yes, I could feel that. She's lucky I didn't bite her fingers off.

So she gave me another shot of novocaine, waited approximately two seconds for it to kick in, and went back to her joyful drilling. I could still feel it, and evidently she was paying more attention this time, because she asked, "Can you still feel that, Erin? I'm going to have to knock you out with a two-by-four," and then she made a "psh" noise to indicate the piece of wood hitting me upside the head. I stopped grimacing. She went back to drilling.

Eventually the novocaine actually started working, and I stopped bowing my back in the chair every time she put the drill in my mouth. The rest of the filling went smoothly, although I wasn't pleased when she put the metal shaping brace in my mouth and tried to sever my gum with it. And I don't know why, but she always uses enough filling substance that I'm spitting out silver chunks two days later.

She managed to drill and fill in about 25 minutes, meaning she had 35 minutes left before her next appointment. We were sitting there, waiting for the silver to set, when she looks at me and goes, "You have a small cavity on the upper right side. I think we'll just go ahead and take care of that one today. Let me give you some more anesthetic."

So she shoots me up again and starts drilling. Before you ask, yes, I could feel it, yes, I was grimacing, and no, I didn't ask for another shot. The novocaine eventually kicked in, about halfway through the drilling. And she was using the big drill, too, the one that makes your head bounce on the chair. I was sort of skeptcal about her claim that it was a "small" cavity. She managed to fill that one in less than 10 minutes, at which point I was getting nervous that she was going to start looking around for something else to be wrong.

Thankfully, though, she just tested the height of the fillings and then booted me out of her chair. However, she didn't escort me to the door before she asked this exact question: "I may have asked you this before, but has anyone ever told you you look like Monica Lewinsky?"

Me: "Uh, no."
She: "Really? Hunh."

I didn't respond because I was spitting silver chunks into a tiny, tiny sink, but seriously, can you think of anything more horrible to hear while your mouth is full of metal and your face is numb?

Me neither.

Intentions, road to hell, you get the idea.

So the book I'm in charge of at work? Sucks. It's error-ridden, complicated, and quickly falling behind schedule. It's supposed to go out Friday, but I'm having my doubts about whether it's going to make it.

Just so you know why I don't really ever want to look at print again.

$50,000 because it's so shiny!

Normally I flip right past PBS when I'm searching for mindless entertainment on T.V., although occasionally I get sucked in for five mintues by something like Sunday's documentary on Ayer's Rock. (I like the weird intensity of the photography in PBS documentaries. Everything is sharply focused and brightly colored in a way that normal television is not, and I don't know why.) But for the most part, I find that PBS lives up to its reputation as the most boring channel on television.

Last night, however, I was baking chocolate-chip cookies and looking for a little background noise, and I made a very important PBS discovery: Antiques Roadshow is, as far as I can tell, the television equivalent of pot.

Seriously. First of all, everybody on this show acts like they're drugged. There's lots of inappropriate laughter, and they keep mentioning the bright colors and patterns. Anything that's shiny gets particularly close attention. Swirls and curliques seem to blow people's minds. Most convincingly, everybody speaks in that weird, floaty voice you only hear from people who are spaced out of their minds. And psychics. Hm, I guess that's the same thing. People begin making wild plans with absurdly slow diction. "Iiii can get fiiiifty thooooouuusand dollars for thiiiis soooooup tureeeen? Amaaaazing. Iiii'm going to goooo hooome and put sooooup in it!"

You watch this for long enough and you start to get a contact high. You feel very mellow, sort of blissed out on the slow voices and the bizzare pattern of the $8,000 rug some woman's had in her attic for the last 25 years. Your head lolls back on the couch and your eyes slide half closed. The abrupt scene changes seem normal because you immediately forget whatever it is you were looking at before. Eventually you get to the point that you just want to have a cookie and go to bed.

So Antiques Roadshow will be my new drug. Actually, it will probably serve to keep me from ever trying pot, because I know the first thing I'd want to do after I got high is watch Antiques Roadshow just to see what that would be like, and if that ever happened, I'm afraid my brain would explode.

I don't think this is a logical idea, Captain

Somebody gave William Shatner another T.V. show. Playing A LAWYER. I mean, lawyers are already hams, but to add WILLIAM SHATNER? Does anybody else think this is just going to end badly?

"I'm...sorry, your honor. Iiii...just couldn't file the brief in time. But the peeeeople need...to have this information about...my client." And then he shoots the jury with a phaser.