My Own Planet

The feel-bad movie of the year
Last night I attended a free sneak preview (this time on purpose) of Cold Mountain, a movie of which the tag line is not "The most depressing Civil War epic since Legends of the Fall," but should be. Actually, on the official scale of depressing war epics, I would rate it somewhere between The English Patient (depressing, but also renews your faith in destined, passionate love) and Legends of the Fall (so freaking depressing that I had to turn it off). Last night's viewing of Cold Mountain marked the first time in recent memory that I have openly sobbed in the theater. (I usually don't do that unless I'm at home, preferring a reserved sniffle for public outings.)

There was at least some comic relief in this movie, provided by the ever-fabulous Renee Zellweger. (Mark my words, this will be the year she gets her Oscar.) There's also a cameo by Jack White, which serves to finally shed some light on the question of "Renee Zellweger and Jack White: Whaa?" (Sadly, the question of "Nicole Kidman and Lenny Kravitz: How?" remains unanswered by this film.)

It's an amazing movie. But not amazing in that way like you want to watch it over and over again. More like amazing in that way that you may never watch it again, but you know you're a better person for having seen it once.

Yes, Virginia, there is an efficient postal worker
And today I had the privilege of meeting him. Just when I was convinced that the post office was quite possibly the most inefficiently run organization in the history of the world (based on their theory of making sure the least possible windows are open at the busiest times of the day) and that all of its employees were the slowest-moving people on the face of God's green earth (does it really take 10 minutes to get a package mailed?), Super-Efficient Postal Worker came to save the day. I saw him move nearly 10 people through his line in the time it took his colleague, Completely Incompetent Postal Worker, to serve one customer. In fact, Super-Efficient Postal Worker probably could have moved more people through his line if he didn't have to keep stopping to help Completely Incompetent Postal Worker figure out how to do everything. (It was the one and only time I actually found myself wishing there were fewer windows open at the post office.)

Yes, Super-Efficient Postal Worker was truly a marvel. Until, of course, he came to me. Because apparently I am Postal Worker Kryptonite. The fact that I kept pulling packages out of an enormous Target bag seemed to flummox him a bit, but still Super-Efficient Postal Worker pressed on, shipping my packages and getting me my stamps faster than a speeding bullet. It wasn't until we got to the final package that Super-Efficient Postal Worker lost his super powers.

Apparently in my haste to get all of my presents addressed, I had accidentally transposed a couple of the numbers in Holly's zip code, and the computer refused to calculate the postage. So Super-Efficient Postal Worker had to look up her zip code by typing her address into the computer. At last, I discovered Super-Efficient Postal Worker's Achilles heel: typing.

I swear to God, it took the man a good five minutes to get Holly's address entered into the computer. Of course, it didn't help that he made about 100 typos along the way, including typing "Blue Sprihgs" as Holly's city of residence. Although he had obviously lost some of his strength, Super-Efficient Postal Worker was finally able to pull through and get Holly's package off to the correct zip code. For the sake of the 10 million people in line behind me, I hope he regained full use of his super powers after I left the post office.

Justice is served
Finally, Michael Stipe is back from the shop and better than ever! I didn't realize how much I had missed him. (Although it was a little sad to have to relenquish the power locks and cruise control on my rental car.) The best part is, I didn't have to pay a dime. Here's hoping the little chippie that hit me doesn't try to take me to court or something and that my car-accident nightmare is finally over.

Also, I got my "final" gas bill in the mail yesterday. It came in this huge envelope because it was accompanied by three large pages of braille. I can only assume the message here is, anyone who has their gas service transferred to a new apartment and then willingly has it disconnected a month later in the dead of winter when it's obvious that she needs it to run her heat and stove must be blind. Touché, gas company.

You lost me at the sand sculpture
Even I, a self-professed reality-TV junkie, could not make it through the god-awful wedding of Trista and Ryan. But believe me, it was not for lack of trying.

I wanted to turn the TV off the very first time Chris Harrison referred to it as the "wedding of the decade" (which, in my opinion, was a pretty presumptuous statement, considering that we've still got the better part of the decade left to go). I wanted to turn it off when I heard Chris say, for the 4,000th time, "It's the moment we've all been waiting for." (After all, saying sarcastically to the TV, "Is it, Chris? Is it?" starts to get old after a while.) I wanted to turn the TV off when they introduced Charlie as a special correspondent and he started covering the "pre-game activities" as if this were the Super Bowl. I wanted to turn off the TV every time Mindy Weiss, the worst name-dropper this side of Dean Logan, was allowed any screen time whatsoever. I wanted to turn it off when the minister ran Trista and Ryan through the quickie reality-TV version of pre-marital counseling. ("You like each other? You want kids? Perfect! This marriage will last forever! Now let's get this show on the road!") I wanted to turn it off every time Bob and Estella pretended they weren't broken up for the sake of the cameras. And most of all, I wanted to turn it off any time anyone made mention of the color pink.

But I didn't! I stayed put through all of Trista's baby talk, through the poetry reading (could they have picked a more cliche poem?), through the Chris Harrison play-by-play of various family members walking down the aisle. But even I had to draw the line somewhere.

And "somewhere" was the sand sculpture.

I've never been big on any of the "symbolic blending of two lives" gestures, but whatever. Some people like them, and that's fine. But light a unity candle, for God's sake! Sand sculptures are what little kids make at carnivals. Not having watched the rest of the wedding, I can only imagine this was followed by Trista and Ryan dipping their intertwined hands into warm wax to make a candle. And of course, the wax would be pink.

Throw a "cheesy" before that "wedding of the decade," and you just might be right, Chris.

It's sad that...
-The only thing that gets me out of bed in the morning is knowing I'll get to go back to bed at the end of the day.

-I have now spent more days without my new car than I have with it.

-It's not even 9:00 yet, and already I feel the need to eat jelly beans.

I can't lose this time!
OK. I know I have been wrong in the past when I've tried to predict reality-TV winners, and have since decided this is a practice better left to Doug. But I'm going to do it this one last time, because there's no way I can be wrong on this one. Actually, I guess I can technically be wrong, but if I am, it will disrupt my entire belief system in a most catastrophic way.

The show of which I speak is, of course, Average Joe. And my prediction is that Melena is going to pick the "average" one. (Despite having watched nearly every episode of this show, I still don't know what the guys' names are. I think maybe the "average" guy is named Adam. What is the "cute" guy's name? Jason? Branson? Something like that. I don't know.)

Anyway. As I have said many a time (and I don't remember exactly where, so sorry, no link), no girl, even if she is shallow enough to judge a guy based solely on looks, is stupid enough to willingly make herself look like a bitch on national TV. (Well, OK, maybe Paris Hilton is the exception to that rule.) Seriously, there's no way she's going to pick the "cute" guy. Who would pick a model who lives with his parents and can't hold up his end of a conversation over a relatively good-looking (or at least not bad-looking), witty self-made millionaire? Not I, that's for sure. Especially not if in doing so, I would walk into a trap not-so-carefully set by the producers of the show.

Which brings me to my next point. How "average" is the guy, really, if he's a millionaire? I mean, I don't know about you, but most of the guys I meet on a regular basis are not millionaires (that I know of). It's also a little suspect that, in the end, this reality show also comes down to the great money vs. abs debate, supposedly without any intervention from the producers. But it all seems a little to good to be true to me. Like, did the producers rig it so Melena (seriously, who named this chick?) would pick Adam (or whatever the hell his non-average name is) because they knew he had the money? Or is it as Kristen suggested -- did all of the "Average Joes" really have loads of money hiding in the background? Either way, it's kind of skeevy. And to think, I thought this was going to be the one show where it didn't come down to abs vs. money! I thought this was the one where personality would actually be a factor. Guess I was wrong.

"This life is a test. If it were an actual life, you would have received instructions on where to go and what to do."*
So just when I thought nothing else could possibly go wrong (which is, of course, just asking for trouble), I get home last night to find that I have no heat, and my stove is not working. After a couple of frantic calls to my dad (who, of course, I called before I called the landlord), I finally realized what the problem was. My landlord (or rather, my landlord's mom, whose house he runs his business out of) had told me that my stove was electric when I called to inquire about getting my pilot light lit. I figured that since I had an electric stove and a heater that ran on a thermostat, I could call and cancel my gas service. Not a smart move, since apparently both the heater and stove require gas to run, a fact that my landlord was more than happy to point out to me after I had the gas turned off. I called the gas company this morning, and thankfully, they said they can turn it back on tomorrow and won't charge me an exorbitant amount since, after all, I just had it turned off the other day. Until then, I am once again indebted to the kindness of my friends, who are letting me crash on their couches and floors so I don't make my cold even worse than it already is by sleeping in a freezing cold apartment. Last night I slept very soundly on Sallie's couch, waking up only for the occasional coughing fit. However, I suspect the quality of my sleep had less to do with the comfiness of her couch and more to do with the glass of red wine and two NyQuils I had before going to bed.

*In case you're wondering, the title is another quote from "My So-Called Life." I'm just telling you guys this time instead of making you guess, since I still haven't paid Kate the dollar I promised her for guessing correctly last time. Although...when Kate was in Birmingham a few weeks ago, she gave me $5 for gas, and I ended up only putting $4 worth of gas in the car and gave the extra dollar back to Kate. That counts, right?

My work materials have expanded to taking over three desks instead of just the usual two. But I figure if I'm doing the jobs of three people, I deserve three desks, right?

I'm too sick and tired to make this coherent

-You'd think that if a freelance writer had been writing for a certain magazine for several months, said freelance writer might notice that said magazine's style is to use "says" instead of "said" (as is the conventionally accepted format for magazine writing) and maybe, just maybe, start using "says" in her articles instead of "said." But no.

-Last night I gave myself a cold by refusing to sleep with the heat on even though it was technically freezing outside. The reasons for this were twofold: 1) to save electricity and therefore money, and 2) because of the excessive rattling noise the vent in my bedroom makes when the heat is on. Consequently, I spent most of the night either freezing or, when I could no longer stand it and got up to turn the heat on, unable to fall asleep due to the excessive rattling noise. Which explains both my current sickness and tiredness.

-My health was not improved by my lunch of potato chips and Twinkies, which I was forced to eat after having walked out of the house without my lunch money and/or lunch.

-You know that scene in Sweet Home Alabama where Reese Witherspoon says to one of her former classmates, "You have a baby! In a bar!" Yeah, at my high school reunion on Saturday night (at which I was one of about five girls who still had the same last name I did in high school), I actually saw someone with a baby in the bar. I don't think it was one of my former classmates, but it very well could have been, as their collective goal seems to be to help populate the Earth as fast as humanly possible. Seriously, one girl I graduated with already has three kids. Three! Come on, people! This is only our five-year reunion! Save some fun for the ten-year!

-Some employers give their employees holiday bonuses. Mine forces its employees to take five days off without pay during the holidays. Also, it routinely takes them a little under a month to get reimburse me for expenses every time I go on a business trip. Sometimes it's like they want me to have to subsist solely on ramen noodles. I love my job, but I hate my company. Which is why I'm halfheartedly looking for another job.

-Michael Stipe is still in the shop after his unforunate accident, but his rehabilition is being paid for by the girl who so carelessly crashed into him, as it should be. Meanwhile, I'm enjoying the power locks and cruise control on the pimped-out Corolla they gave me as a loaner. But I miss my car. Even more, I miss the Coldplay and Beth Orton CDs I left in it.

-Believe it or not, I am actually thankful for some things. Like my new (old) end table, mixer and antique stained glass windows (all courtesy of my parents, who seemed to want to get rid of a lot of the stuff cluttering up their house and storage area by foisting it off on me, for which I am grateful), and my a new (old) monitor, courtesy of Jeff, to replace the one I dropped when I was moving. And my new (new) couch, which was delivered right before I left to go home for Thanksgiving. And the fact that my friends are coming over tonight to eat chili, drink hot chocolate and help me put up my Christmas tree. Mmm. Real, non-vending-machine food. I can hardly wait.