apropos of anything

That is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. I love the park at night and Heather and Casablanca and citronella candles and garlic-stuffed olives and bands who can’t cover U2 and balloons and running into random Augusta people and EVERYTHING. But not ants, especially if they’re going to eat my brownies.

I was going to write this post a week ago, but I’ve been going through a kind of writer’s block which, mixed with my work and family schedule of late, has resulted in me writing a dozen posts in my head and none on my computer.

But anyway. Baseball owners approved Liberty Media’s purchase of the Braves this month. The official word is that the sale won’t affect the fans at all, but it will. Liberty’s buying the team as a tax write-off. They have no incentive to put money into the team, so our already dwindling payroll might soon rival the Marlins for puniness. And still, baseball is baseball, and the Braves are the Braves, and I have no plans to stop cheering for them. I’m just a little sad that they’re finally parting ways with Turner the company, given their past history with Turner the man.

The CW cancelled Gilmore Girls this month. I didn’t watch this show from the pilot, but the one-two combo of “Rory’s Dance” and “Forgiveness and Stuff” grabbed me, hook, line, sinker. Pamie’s recaps didn’t hurt either. I was obsessively in love with this show at the beginning. I loved the dialogue, the characters, the relationships — the Girls with the townies, the Girls with the Chiltonites, the townies with each other, and especially the Girls with the elder Gilmores. Gilmore Girls did complex familial relationships better than anyone. Season seven wasn’t as glorious as season one, but I’m going to miss my weekly dose of the Lorelais.

The CW also cancelled Veronica Mars this month. This one I did watch from the beginning, and it was awesome. So awesome that when the first season came out on DVD, I sent copies to anyone who had a birthday, anniversary, or holiday within a three month range of the release date. Like GG, VM at the end was not quite up to the standards of VM at the beginning, but it always had so much potential. Veronica Mars, she’s a marshmallow, you know.

And finally, Ken resigned this month. Our visits to the Summit Cafetaria or to get our MARTA passes will now always feel just a little bit incomplete, and the 3:00 p.m. hour will never be the same again. I also won’t have any more Ken and Ivan stories for the blog, which just makes me want to weep with sadness for all of y’all. He has good reasons for leaving, but we miss him in the office, accidentally going to http://www.man.com (instead of www.msn.com) and taking ketchup packets for the team.

I have another post in my head. It’s late, which matters as it’s somewhat timely, but I’m going to get over that and to the 3BT today because it’s Thursday and because I haven’t in a while and because thirty years ago this weekend, a movie changed the course of cinematic history.

If you think I don’t love Star Wars… you don’t really know me that well. So, today, three random things, possibly not even my three favorite things, about the original Star Wars movies.

1. The uneven dialogue plus the uneven acting. “Many Bothans… died to bring us this information.” Right, lady. It’s not a great line to work with, but you didn’t even try to sell it. And yet, despite all that, people (myself included) love these movies. They’re so incredibly flawed — the first three, at least; the second three are hopelessly beyond repair — but there’s still something magical about them that sucks you in, gets you to snicker when Leia calls Chewbacca a walking carpet, and keeps you glued to the screen for viewing after viewing.

2. “I know.” Legend has it that Harrison Ford, notorious for flying by the seat of his pants, ad-libbed this Empire Strikes Back line during one of the takes, and it worked so well they incorporated it into the final cut. It’s perfectly in keeping with the Han Solo the smuggler, Han Solo the pirate, who wouldn’t be likely to announce (especially in front of the enemy) that he loved Princess Leia even if it was pretty obvious that he did.

3. The pop culture impact. Han Solo shot first. The odds of successfully navigating an asteroid field are approximately 3,720 to 1. Princess Leia is not, nor will she ever be, a committee. And of course, Darth Vader is your father (which means we’ll forget about the time that you kissed your sister).
May the Force be with y’all.

Dan called me around three o’clock on the afternoon of the day AM was induced into labor. I don’t remember why I missed the call, but when I saw it was from him, I forgot all about email and deadlines and new mockups in my rush to call him back; after all, she’d been in labor since around nine, and that meant maybe there was a baby!

There was no baby. In fact, he explained, if I’d listened to the message he left me, he was just calling to tell me there was no baby yet.

“Um, well, you see,” I said, “I have a lot of voicemail messages.”

“And?”

“And now I’m kind of scared of them, so I can’t listen to them, so they’re growing. Like tribbles.”
And then he made his I’m-being-patient-with-this-nut face. He was at Piedmont Hospital, I was at work, but I know he made that face.

Tonight I dug around for some courage and finally listened to my voicemail. Twenty three messages. As in Michael Jordan’s jersey number. As in the number of times Caesar was stabbed. As in DAVID BECKHAM’S jersey number.

Now, lest you judge me too quickly, I’ve already returned almost all of these calls. Just because I didn’t listen to the message doesn’t mean I didn’t see the missed call on my phone. It only means I suck.

And suddenly it’s exactly two weeks later with nary an update from me. So much has happened. Somebody had a baby. Somebody graduated from law school. Somebody else did too, and now I’m going to have a new sister-in-law. (Welcome to the family, Shar!)

As for me, that thing I had to do but couldn’t talk plainly about happened, and I can talk about it now. I’m moving to a new position at work, which is awesome and exciting and daunting all at once. I’m sad to leave what I do now because I love it, and I will miss the people I work with, but I think it’s time to try something new.

There are dozens of things I could talk about, like how I missed the fastest Cubs game in the history of ever on Wednesday, or how I’ve decided there really is such a thing as Southern hospitality, but instead, advice I learned at work today:

If you’re planning on dining at Strip in Atlantic Station (which… I wouldn’t, ’cause the food is overpriced and… mediocre, to put it kindly), don’t wear a white t-shirt because they won’t let you in. It’s against their no white t-shirt policy. Frayed denim short shorts, however? Perfectly acceptable.

Must. Stop. Shopping.

Please, someone, take the Internet away.

I don’t like change.

There, I said it. I prefer things to be the way I know them. It’s not like I’m going to eat mac and cheese for dinner every night for six weeks, or never change up my hairstyle, or always listen to the same album as I drive to work; that gets old and tired, and I’m all for a little variety in my life. When it comes to the big things, though, I like some consistency. Some reliability.

But sometimes it’s good to mix things up a bit.

A few weeks ago I began a blog entry (that I never actually posted) about whether I could give up something I loved, something I could accurately credit as having once saved me, if that same something was now turning me into a shrill, bitter, shrieking harridan. It turns out I can, at least partly, with a little help from my friends.

I’m slightly sad when I think about it, but things were changing without me anyway, so I’d be sad regardless. I will miss people. I will miss them very much, miss confusing Exlax with Maalox, miss feigning outrage over a slight to my plum crisp, miss laughing myself silly that anyone could not know his own pant size, or that an American might need subtitles for a British film. And I’m excited too, because things could be changing way for the better (or not, but I’d rather be a glass half-full kind of gal), and the people that I will miss, they will still be around.

In a minute there is time for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse, and that’s where I’ve been for the past few weeks, trapped in that minute, deciding and revising, treading back and forth upon the stairs, finally realizing that no matter how much it’s going to hurt, I can do this, and I should do this.

I was always going to. It just took me a while to realize that.

So that’s why the radio silence for so long. I had stuff to figure out. I hope to be posting more regularly, and less cryptically, soon.