I'm empty. (Not of emotion, but of energy. Oh, work. Curse you!)

I was thinking about wishes and how mine used to be so specific.

When younger I'd rub my eyes in the bath and an eyelash would come loose and I'd place it carefully on the edge of my pointer finger and think for a moment "I wish so-and-so would pass me a note during such-and-such class this Friday" "I wish I would lose 16.7 pounds" "I wish we would move to a small town in Maine near a lighthouse" and blow whoosh off it went.

Now all my wishes are general and sweeping and eyelashless. I wish for war to end. I wish for equality. I wish for the happiness and good health of my friends and family.

Guess the second set is a better bet, but when did I lose my belief in particulars? Hmm.

I wish for a Neapolitan ice cream sandwich as big as my head.

Hey, never mind, I've still got it!

And the Most Pointless Blog of the Day award goes to: (see above).

vlog

So far, blob has been the most difficult on-the-spot word I've been asked to define by a student. Seriously! Think about it. The property of a blob is very specific. Tell me how you would define it and I'll tell you what I said -- a blob swap, if you will. By the way, you have a little something on your shirt.

eureka!

For YEARS I've been searching for the perfect accompaniment to macaroni and cheese.

In theory, good ol' mac 'n cheese should be perfectly fine on its own -- how can you go wrong with pasta that has the ability to depict a smile or frown smothered in artificial, neon-orange cheese?

But there was always something off when eating the most complicated meal I know how to cook. Its consistency was just so dang mushy I felt like I was either eating baby food or was in the position to be able to give my dentures the day off. It needed another flavor, some crunch, some thing to make it a full, substantial meal.

I tried, it felt like, everything.

The standard hot dog slices proved not to add enough difference in texture. Bread crumbs weren't a drastic enough addition. Trying a sprinkle of salt and pepper was insulting to both the dish and my creativity. And the can of corn a friend suggested be added just ruined the whole pot.

For awhile I moved outside the bowl, thinking a side dish could be the missing link. Salad (too healthy), bread (too many carbs), pretzels and Fritos (too stand-alone-snacky to be included as part of a meal) were all utter failures too. I needed to dive back in.

But after so many failures, I finally resigned myself into accepting that every time I ate the so-nearly-ok cheese and macaroni lunch or dinner, my palate would feel just a smidge unsatisfied.

I pondered this today as I heated the water for my midday meal, so suggested by Carl instead of a bagel with hummus (see? never have to wonder what accompanies bagels) since it was cold out.

Waiting for the water to boil, my eyes wandered to the giant carton of baked Goldfish I'd picked up a couple weekends back. I'd scarcely eaten any because they were a little flavorless and didn't really go with any of the dinners I'd been eating recently. But then I wondered, oh, I wondered...after the draining and the cheese-powder-pack emptying and the margarine and the milk mixing...how would a handful of those Goldfish do?

Perfectly, it would seem.

Or, in other words:



The search is over.

whoa

Work was long and tiring today so when I sat down on the train I immediately plugged into my iPod and prepared for a good twelve minutes of zoning. Too lazy to consciously choose what to listen to, I hit shuffle and the train departed. First my ears went to Clear the Area by Imogen Heap and when it was finished I was a third of the way home. Girl by Danzig was next and I was two thirds there. Zoning, zoning, all the while, and then and then and then.

And then Around the World by Daft Punk came, and my innocent zonified train ride turned into a full-fledged extended daydream of all those around me suddenly jumping up and doing all the choreography in the video, except using the train aisles and seats and conductor's boxes as a stage -- the salarymen, the office ladies, the school kids, the J-boys, and the old people -- all up, their ties and briefcases flying, in perfectly matched movements on on and off beats, dancing, dancing, moving, moving, me sitting and staring at their rotating hips and shoulders, until we pulled into Kashii Station and the song ended. They all sat down, I snapped back into reality, and I took my ear buds out. ...the heck?

A few mornings ago I burnt my waffles and when I opened the toaster oven door a bit of smoke came out and a lot of burnt waffle smell followed. I tossed the evidence of my failure and began anew.

After successfully toasting and consuming two other waffles, I took a shower.

I'd turned up my water heater level recently because it's getting colder and I like my showers hot -- like searing, pinking skin hot. And so it was.

But I wasn't quite used to how hot my new water level could go, and turned it up a touch too high. As I shuffled around a bit so the water wasn't scalding one particular patch of skin, I smelled a burning smell and thought "oh God I'm COOKING myself!"

But then I realized it was just from the waffles.

save the whales, hold the bikkle

Good GOD I need to do laundry. I'm practically scaling a mountain of dirty socks (and unmentionables! oh my) just to get to the main room of the japartment (my goal this week was to keep the main room clean, which has thus far meant just chucking any and all things into the hallway.) Here are problems with doing laundry, though:

1. It requires effort.
2. Every time I do laundry and hang it up outside, it rains the next day and ruins the laundry, so I'm wasting water which hurts the whales, and I don't want to hurt the whales.
3. And even if it doesn't rain and I'm not hurting the whales, I still don't take the laundry off the balcony until the next night, and so when I come into the japartment from work, I always think there's someone on my balcony and it freaks me out for a second, and I don't like being freaked out.
4. And back to that effort thing. Man, the effort. Phew. I mean, geez. Wow. Wowzaaaa. I mean really. It's like CRAZY efforOK FINE I'LL DO MY LAUNDRY.

On an unrelated note, I would like to introduce to you the most unappealingly named beverage of all time:

I present to you: BIKKLE. *shudder* Just say it. Say it out loud. "I could go for a Bikkle right about now." Guh.

To make matters worse, Bikkle is apparently a yogurt drink, gluargggle (that's the sound I think of when I think of Bikkle as a yogurt drink). I haven't tried Bikkle but I'm pretty sure nobody else has either. I fear that if I pay my Y120 and hit that Bikkle button, the world will just implode because it's way too ridiculous that someone would want to drink Bikkle, and if the world implodes then the whales have nowhere to live, and that hurts the whales, too.

Huh. I guess laundry and Bikkle ARE related.