Since it is pretty close to being over, despite the lovely weather we've been having.

In the weeks leading up to Halloween, I planned and made the most awesome costume ever, and then I got the flu and spent the entire weekend fevered and in bed. I am still very bitter about this. My costume was SO AWESOME. Maria, her husband Beef (or Jason, if you're normal), our friend Kristen and HER husband were all going to be adorable bears. We made hoods (with ears!) and bear-paw mitts. I am tempted to wear my costume to other social functions so that it doesn't go to waste, but I worry about what people might think.

The weekend before last, I went down to Chicago to visit a plethora of friends down there. First I stayed in the city with my friend Dave (the one who found the roof) and walked all over the city with him and my friend (and former roommate) Chad and Chad's lovely boyfriend Brendan. I did some shopping, and the three of us went to Ba Ba Reeba for dinner on Saturday night, which was fun.

Then I went out to Geneva to stay with thought_fox (a.k.a. Restless Violet), her charming husband Jeff, and their two delightful cats. We mostly bummed around their house doing crafts (notably this partial gingerbread farm, which Jeff captured in time lapse video -- I am the beer-drinking brunette), but we made it back into the city on Monday to haunt the Art Institute (where Jeff took these kick-ass photos of the Thorne miniature rooms) for a few hours and meet up with Dave for dinner.

It was the most fun, relaxing trip I've taken in a long time, and I loved every minute of it.

ETA: ( A note re: less happy things. )

Dear Amazon.com Customer,
As someone who has shown an interest in kitchen knives

Is it just me or does Amazon make that sound mildly creepy?

If we started doing a shot every time some asshole publicly worried that "condoning" homosexuality will lead to legalized bestiality/necrophilia/pedophilia, how drunk would we, collectively, be?

Poll #1467966
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 22

Well?

Seriously, how hard is it for these people to differentiate between consenting, LIVE, adult humans and children, animals, and the deceased?

Do I need to make a flowchart?

Yesterday morning I was getting ready for work when I found a minor windfall in my jacket pocket -- I reached in to get my keys and pulled out a wholly unexpected twenty.

I was all excited about it at first, but as I was brushing my teeth I started to feel a bit uneasy. I'd put that twenty in my pocket intending to use it to pay for my groceries the night before. I'd used the self-checkout, and I distinctly remembered scanning and bagging my groceries (a process I find delightfully reminiscent of playing grocery store as a child), but not putting any cash in the little slot.

I must have paid using my card, I reasoned, but it troubled me that I couldn't remember doing that. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more glaring the absence of any remembered expenditure on my part began to seem.

So I went through my wallet and then, when that didn't turn anything up, my recycling, in search of a receipt.

I found nothing, so I called the grocery store.

A very nice young lady named Amy answered my call and confirmed that I had, in fact, stolen a frozen pizza, a package of Milano wafers, and a bag of tortilla chips from Cub Foods. She was very nice about it, though, and assured me that it happens all the time and that I could come in and pay for my items that night and no one would yell at me.

Moral of the story:  The self-checkout lane is to be avoided.

Poll #1465227
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 18

Have you ever done this?

If you have, did you go back and pay?

If you haven't, would you go back and pay?

Do you like flan?

     "Jocelyn," Izya says, carefully placing a sample container filled with shampoo on the counter, "the shampoo is here. The tank is cooling."
     "I know," I say, briefly looking up from the paperwork I'm filling out.
     "It's cooling very fast."
     "I know."
     "It's at forty-two degrees," he says, pushing the container a few inches in my direction.
     "I know," I say, irritably. He wants me to start testing it so that it can be released and pumped out of the mixing tank into a holding vessel, and I want to finish what I'm doing first.
     "Jocelyn," he exclaims, in his heavy Russian accent, "you know too much! Time to shoot you."
     I laugh for the next five minutes. Sometimes my job isn't so bad.

It still doesn't seem quite real.

I don't know how to explain that not-real feeling exactly. I have been thinking a lot about the logistics of it all, and I'll go from thinking about what I'm going to pack, or where I'm going to stay, or how I'm going to get to Bismarck, to thinking about the reason I'm going there and I will feel incredulous all over again, just like I did when I first heard the news.

At some point it will have to sink in fully. I'm sort of dreading that, to be honest. All weekend I have been sad and miserable and heartbroken about the idea of her being gone, but it's been leavened with disbelief, and that's made it a little easier to bear.

I'm going up to Bismarck on Wednesday for the memorial and I will not, thank God, be driving alone. I don't think I could handle that. Dave is coming up from Chicago and he's going to leave his car here and ride up with me. I think it will help to spend some time with him and the other people who knew her. Spending time with my friends here has been wonderful and very comforting, but I think being around other people who feel like I do will help me deal with the reality of her death.

Crystal died yesterday morning.

I started to write about it yesterday and couldn't. It didn't seem real.

It still doesn't seem real. I keep half-forgetting and then remembering and every single time the realization comes back it hits me like a physical blow. I think that's part of why it doesn't seem real -- I keep trying to dodge the full impact of it, as impossible as that is.

Writing about it just makes me feel hollow. I was trying to write down some of the moments from last weekend that are stuck in my head as significant, but I ended up erasing two full paragraphs of them just now. I'm not quite ready to look at those sweet, wonderful, hilarious moments as memories of someone who is gone.

I had an absolute blast up in Bismarck.

I was able to get Friday off without any trouble, and the groomsman (who shall henceforth be referred to as "Rob" seeing as how that's his name) was too, so we were able to hit the road at a very reasonable hour. We got along famously and ended up talking nonstop the whole way up there. I didn't see much of him for the rest of the weekend (though we did end up being paired together in the wedding itself) because we were both busy with wedding-related activities. (His, from what I gathered, mostly involved picking up his tuxedo and drinking; mine were more along the lines of helping run errands and going to the salon.)

The wedding itself was beautiful. Crystal and Rod (not to be confused with Rob) chose to get married on the steps of the Capitol Building, and everything was gorgeous, especially Crystal, who was glowing despite being in what I imagine was pretty excruciating pain from her badly sprained ankle.

They had the reception in the Mysteria Theater, and it, too, was extremely pleasant. Being a sucker for pretty chandeliers and accessible rooftops*, I liked the theater immensely. The food was good, and the music, provided by a live swing band, was excellent. I had firmly resolved not to drink much, but I found myself breaking that resolution the moment that someone suggested doing a shot.

It's kind of a miracle that I wasn't sick, honestly -- it's not that I drank that much, but I was freely mixing champagne, mixed drinks, beer, and shots in no particular order, and I was smoking. Usually that kind of behavior is guaranteed to make me ill, but thankfully it didn't. I credit the patron deities of North Dakota (which I am sure approve of excessive drinking) and also my friend Dave, who drove me back to the hotel and made me drink a ton of water and Gatorade.

The drive home went swimmingly until we hit the horrendous traffic caused by the gas tanker truck that overturned just south of 25. Because of the gas spill and the need for cleanup, 94 was closed, and traffic was backed up halfway to Canada.

We were stuck in traffic from just after six until nearly nine. I am so glad Rob was along for the ride, because I am pretty sure I would have lost my mind and started ramming other cars out of sheer boredom and frustration otherwise. We were caravaning it with Dave, who was on his way to Chicago, and I don't know how he held it together without a passenger in the car. I tried waving to him periodically, but I'm not sure that helped any. I guess he is just more sane.

Anyway, despite the drawn-out end, the weekend was a rousing success, and I enjoyed literally every minute of it save for the two and a half hours I spent on 94.


* By "accessible" I mean "not behind a locked door." Doors that say "DO NOT ENTER" are not inaccessible if they are not locked.

Aw, the Star Tribune printed my letter!

Dr. George Tiller was murdered today.

My heart goes out to those who will be affected by this tragedy -- Dr. Tiller's family and friends, and also his patients.