Paging Dr. House...

My cable is out right now.

I don't think you understand. My cable is out. On the weekend. During a "House" marathon. What the hell am I supposed to do now?

I've read a book. I've gone grocery shopping. I'm on the computer.

But how am I supposed to get instant information from the E! News ticker about Jennifer Hudson's tragedy or the fact that Jen Aniston's movie made more money than her loser ex's did this holiday weekend? How am I supposed to piece together Cameron's backstory or figure out why Wilson and House are friends in the first place? "Gremlins" was on, man! Corey Feldman, back when he was cute! What the hell am I supposed to do now?!

When I was in grad school, I lived in a town with no cable, for all intents and purposes. We had fifteen channels, most of which were duplicate network channels. I think the only real cable channels we had were ESPN and Headline News. And, in college, I didn't have a television for two years. I still have big blanks in my pop culture memory from 1990 through 1992. I watch "I Love the 90s" and find new information all the time.

But school was a long time ago. And I had other things going on then. Parties down the hall, libraries within walking distance. Now it is just me and the cat, waiting for someone to fix the connection. Waiting for Dr. House to make another diagnosis.

If you can't count on a weekend filled with procedural marathons after the holidays, what the hell can you count on?

Christmas Rappin'

I'm not a party-thrower. I hate cleaning for parties. I hate cleaning up after parties. I like the general idea of putting together a party but I always see the down side in entertaining in my home. Not enough chairs. Not enough places to sit. Kitchen too small. Nowhere to park.

I threw a good party one, though. A Christmas party.

It was after my first semester in graduate school. The school is located in, literally, the middle of nowhere in New England, which, despite its location near Boston and New York, is kind of in the middle of nowhere itself. We had a pizza place and a mom-and-pop store where you could take dogs inside. We had three bars, one of which was strictly reserved for town folk. We had a town square with a civil war statue and a monument to a woman killed by Indians sometime before 1750 or so.

Going to school there had its good points. #1: There was nothing to do but study. #2: It generated instant camraderie. #3: I never had to buy gas. #4: No Taco Bell. I lost a ton of weight that first year.

We'd studied hard that first semester. I studied harder than I ever had before. I mean, I actually was forced to learn how to study, since I'd managed to get through pretty much my entire life without having to do much more than reading over notes the night before a test to really figure something out. It had been a long series of months.

So we decided to throw a party. About eight of us. I provided the venue: a large, open apartment that I shared with two people about whom I knew nothing and likely cared less. The others? Provided booze.

And did we have booze. We had a garbage can full of red punch that we stirred with someone's arm. We had a keg or two. We had marachino cherries that we had soaked in Everclear for approximately 2 weeks. We had, I think, jello shots.

Everyone came. People I'd never seen before showed up. We had a grown man in a red union suit, a Santa hat and cowboy boots. We had a dog dressed up in pajamas. We had people making out in stairways. The television fell over. Someone punched a hole in the ceiling.

In short, it was awesome.

I ended up mopping the floor about five times after everyone left, with some horrible environmentally friendly solution that worked for crap. We found cherry stems in the most random of places for months. My roommates didn't speak to me for weeks after we got back. Our carpet was permanently stained with red punch.

People missed flights home because of that party. They fell asleep in the lounge at Logan Airport, waiting for their flight to get called, and got stuck in town for Christmas eve. I drove home to Jersey after having slept approximately one hour, my back aching from mopping so viciously.

I haven't thrown a raging party since then. I don't know if I could top it.

And when I eat a marachino cherry? Or see someone with their cheeks painted with a circle of red? I think of that party and the guy in the union suit. The dog in the pjs. The hole in the ceiling.

Good times.

The City on the Lake. No, Not the One With the River That Burns

I'm sitting in the lobby of a Hampton Inn in Chicago right now, waiting for it to get a little later and become an hour when decent people might be awake. That is not the hour right now. It doesn't help that I'm operating on East Coast time, while Chicago is more civilized and gets to sleep in an hour more. So I'm sitting here, watching television with a bunch of Chicago police, who are taking a break from the weather.

I didn't come to Chicago for the first time until I was in college. It may have even been after college. I can't really recall the very first time I was downtown. I'm sure it was with people I went to school with, since everyone from the Chicagoland area spreads out into the surrounding Big Ten area to seed the schools. I knew people from just about every Chicago suburb. And downtown was their Mecca.

I remember coming down for 4th of July fireworks for several years, finding a place on the grass and camping out early in order to hold the spot for the big show. I remember long, very long, walks back to wherever we managed to find a place to park the car that day. And I remember stopping in hotel lobbies to find nice women's bathrooms that still had toilet paper.

I can remember going Christmas shopping at Marshall Field's, back when it was still Field's. It probably wasn't the way it was in the old days, a place where you could find things you couldn't find anywhere else. Every big town had those big old family department stores. Jacobsen's, Higbee's...that place down in southern Ohio, the name of which I cannot remember. And the place in DC that keeps popping up on my credit card report that was taken over by Macy's years ago. But Field's in downtown Chicago was a beautiful monument to consumerism and old-style service. It didn't get any better than shopping there at Christmas. I'm sad that it is gone.

And then there were New Year's Eves. The one when I took the train into town, we got kicked out of the bar at 11:55 p.m., someone had to pay off a cab driver to keep him from calling the cops, someone ended up in the hospital, someone did something illegal and I'm not telling any more. Suffice to say that I got home a day later than was planned. That? Was a rough one. And a story for another day.

Chicago makes me think of my parents, too. The time they took me to the Whitehall after I'd broken up with a boyfriend. We went to the Drake for drinks and I met my old friend, Shun, there. We went out to wonderful dinners and laughed and had the one of our last actual family vacations.

Chicago makes me think of being young and just finished with school and having the whole world rolled out at your feet. Chicago is the whole world laid at your feet. It is the best of everything--a really big city with all that entails but peopled with folks who are, well, nice. Everyone here is happy right now. Be that a result of the season, the election of a favorite son, or just the way they always are, there it is.

Being here makes me remember how I used to want to be here all the time.

Yeah, No.

No. Not speaking to you.

Not speaking to the building managers for my office, who failed to have our parking lot plowed at all, thereby causing my car to overheat and making me leave it, stranded in the lot, while I...

Drove downtown with my boss. Who then proceeded to have me...dig out his wife's car, point out major traffic accidents for him to avoid, get his car out of a snow pile and basically miss doing all of the chores/tasks/wrapping/cleaing that could have taken place this afternoon.

Not speaking to you, managers of my condominium association. The ones who apparently instructed our plow guys to plow our street last. So I managed to almost get stuck after the aforementioned boss fiasco. Then I had to park a quarter mile away. Then I had to dig my driveway out. Again. And then I had to wait until 9 pm. To get my car in my garage. Thanks.

Not you, either, Blago, who embarrasses everyone in the midwest and all the Democrats therein.

Or you, Rick Warren, who is reaping the rewards of the press spotlight.

Basically, I'm all kinds of pissed of and not happy to be speaking to much of anyone right now. Particularly as I was supposed to be out with friends right now, eating vegetables and, perhaps, protein. Instead, I'm at home, alone, eating crackers and getting more and more pissed off at poor television scheduling, inconsiderate scheduling and, basically, the human race.

More Deep Thoughts

Being an adult apparently means not sleeping.

Waking up in the middle of the night, worrying about any or all of the following:

Have I purchased everything I need for Christmas?

Do I have time to buy everything I need for Christmas?

How much money is in my bank account?

Did I pay the cable bill?

Did I get a cable bill this month?

Should I upgrade to the next level of minutes for my cell?

When am I going to get a day off where I don't have anything to do?

When am I going to get a half hour to clean my bathroom?

Maybe I should get up and clean my bathroom now.

What should I wear to work?

What do I have to do at work?

Did I forget to call that guy?

Did I forget to call that other guy?

Do I have clean underwear?

Is it okay to go without underwear when it is below freezing outside?

Is that safe?

What could happen?

Would that be covered by my insurance plan?

Do I have money left in my FLEX account?

Did I send in my receipts for a reimbursement?

Did I send in my receipts for my expense account?

Think they'll notice if I expense sushi?

Is the snow ever going to end?

Isn't anyone else up?

Why isn't anyone responding to texts at 4:13 a.m.?

Don't they like me anymore?

Don't I have any friends?

Am I going to die alone?

What is the meaning of life?

What is that? That, at the bottom of the bed?

Cat? Is that you?

BANG!

So I'm not quite as consumed by work as I was a week ago but the aftereffects of stress are lingering. I'm doing my best to get over it but I feel like I'm operating with post traumatic stress disorder. Not to make light of PTSD or anything. But bursting into tears over a lost earring is not the reaction of a sane woman. Particularly an earring that was purchased at Kohl's by a man who left the price tag on the gift box.

I'm thinking the cure will be a few days off. But I'm getting to the point where days off cause me more stress than going to work. Like, "what will be waiting for me when I get back? What bomb will be on my desk, waiting to explode?"

Can't we all agree to take a week off and not send each other anything to work on during that time? Of course not. Because "I'm one up on you" is the mantra of the competitive nature of the human race.

Radio Silence

Sorry I haven't been posting. I'm running on empty right now with no River Phoenix to lean on and it looks like I won't be coming up for air until at least the week of Christmas.

Happy Holidays to everyone.