Random thoughts:

• If I'm going to work successfully from home, I either need a more comfortable desk chair or a less comfortable couch.
  
• I am officially a big journalism geek. I just got the brand-spanking-new, spiral-bound, 2002 edition of the AP stylebook, and it rocks. I'm all aflutter.
  
• How sad am I to get excited about a reference book?
  
• There is a point when the cat gets too much attention. She was just as surprised as I was. ("You're still here? Good lord, woman, leave me alone!")
  
• Thank god for smoothies. I'd never get anywhere near my daily fruit requirement without them.
  
• When making said smoothies, the ice should go in first, not last. Doh.
  
• I am apparently not a very girly girl, because I'm perfectly happy to not shower or put on makeup for days on end when I don't have to.
  
• Being able to work at whatever point of the day you are most productive pretty much kicks ass.
  
• It's amazing how much better your diet gets when you aren't working near convenience stores/magazine stands/whatever that ply you with chocolate.
  
• There's a lot of crappy TV out there.
  
• The crap level does not stop me from watching it.
  
• The Chicago Park District rocks.

In other news, Tripp mentioned that someone who went to my high school just started at his seminary. He's not someone I knew -- he graduated four years ahead of me -- but it was a really small school, so everyone at least knew of everyone else. Tripp asked if I might have access to his yearbook picture, and strangely, I do.

Being such a small and wealthy private school, we had certain perks that now seem like less than a good idea. In the yearbook, for example, every senior got a full page on which to put whatever pictures, quotes, song snippets, drawings... anything (within reason) they wanted. At the time, that rocked -- "I can finally express myself! I can let everyone know how sensitive or educated or funny or glamorous or fabulous I am, with my pictures or pithy quotes!" The thing is, just about every 18-year-old on the planet -- especially a privileged 18-year-old with liberal teachers and the sense of superiority a private school gives you -- is pretentious as fuck. Quoting "The Bard"? Pictures of your girlfriend leaning on your sportscar? A picture of your sportscar alone, in all its glory? You in your sports uniform, all sweaty and reveling in your glory days? Using secret code words that you probably no longer remember the meaning of? Posing on skis, on the beach, in the mountains, in a tasteful wooded setting? Oy. Oy, oy, oy.

For the record, here are the quotes on my page, with my current commentary:

Go in peace! I will not say, "Do not weep," for not all tears are evil -- Gandalf

OK, a couple of things were going on here: I was a serious geek. I really, really, was. I quoted Gandalf, ferchrissake -- not even Tolkien, but Gandalf. So that puts the whole seeing-LOTR-four-times-in-two-months thing in context.

But wait, there's more! There's a hidden subtext! Growing up, I was a serious emotional basket case. I cried at the drop of a hat. It didn't even have to be a real hat -- someone could mention a hypothetical hat falling somewhere in Nepal, say, and I'd be fricking hysterically weeping. It was very annoying. But look, look! Gandalf said it's ok! So there.

They put you in a box, so you can't get heard
let your spirit be unbroken, may you not be deterred.
Hold on.
You have gambled with your life, and you face the night alone
while the builders of the cages speak with bullets, bars and stones
They do not see your road to freedom that you build with flesh and bone.
Though you may disappear, keep you thoughts, forgotten, here
And I will say to you: I will do what I can do.
I will do what I can do.
-- Peter Gabriel

When I first heard this song (Wallflower), I -- wait for it! -- cried. Because it was so about me -- here I was all oppressed and forgotten and misunderstood and no one loved me and yadda yadda yadda -- because I was unpopular, you see. And that's obviously what Peter Gabriel was talking about -- an unpopular teenager. (Imagine my surprise when I finally saw Birdy.)

Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility -- James Thurber

I distinctly remember looking in Bartlett's for a quote about humor and pain, because I was funny, but I didn't want anyone to forget I was sensitive. I suffered for my humor. Feel my pain!

"We've got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark out, and we're wearing sunglasses." "Hit it" -- Jake and Elwood.

I just liked The Blues Brothers. I was cutting edge that way.

And remember: A fool and his money were lucky to get together in the first place. -- Harry Anderson

Did I mention that I thought I was funny? And cynical. That wasn't a pose at all. Nope.

Lord, what fools these mortals be. -- Shakespeare

See? See? Shakespeare! I'm all educated and shit. And making fun of myself, as I put it under my own photo. But I pretty much meant it for everyone else.

For all our mutual experience, our separate conclusions are the same. -- Billy Joel

I think I was trying to say something about how sheltered and protected we were at Friends, how we had no idea what the world was really like. But I might have just liked the song.

In addition to all those words, I also had three pictures -- one leaning out a window, one sitting by the creek near my house and one at the creek with my friend Sara Burns. It was 1988, and I had a hell of a lot of hair. It was feathered. The cuffs of my jeans were rolled up and pegged in, and I was wearing black socks with sneakers. What the hell was I thinking?

I was thinking I was 18 and immortal and I knew everything and I was about to go out to college where I would finally be appreciated as a fabulous, beautiful, smart, funny person, and not a tragically geeky social malcontent. And that's what I immortalized in this book, for everyone to see.