"Hi. I'm Meg. I didn't go to high school with you."

So:

I used to have this other online diary - an online diary filled with things about booyyyzzzz and whinnnniiinng and Mandy Moore.

And, for a moment, Dear Reader, we need to go back to that earlier iteration of online journaling. Because, let's be serious about this right now: I really love Mandy Moore. A lot a lot. This has got to be the 40 billionth (in real speak: 6th or so) time I've watched Chasing Liberty and I still ADORE it. A.D.O.R.E. Mandy Moore - you GO rebel! You GET out your aggression! You MAKE OUT with that hot British Dude! NO ONE CAN KEEP YOUR SPUNKY ATTITUDE DOWN!

You know what would make this Mandy Moore experience better? If it were followed by that one where she dates the dude who looks like Every Man I've Ever Loved, Ever. I think it's called Get Real or Really Real or Real, A Lot, For Always. Regardless - it's the one where her BFF gets preggers and then her BFF's BF dies suddenly and people learn about true love, with and without matramony.

It's hardcore. I think we'd be friends in real life - we'd girl talk and participate in capers and she'd tell me how she gets her hair to look so cute all the damn time. Seriously, Dear Reader, seriously.

So - winter break's been, for many days, even more hectic than regular workin' days, but I'm digging it.

Waking up in Jared's house, surrounded by people who are similarly trying to make sure they weren't too awkward last night, puts me in a weird mood. Dear Changing Relationships With People I Grew Up With: you confuse me.

True story.

Dear Story of my life:

So, story of my life, you're pretty hilarious sometimes. I wound up at a bar with my pre-school best friend where EVERYONE I EVER WENT TO HIGH SCHOOL WITH THAT I HAVEN'T KEPT IN TOUCH WITH WAS ALSO DRINKING. Story of my life (aka: AWKWARDNESS) why do you do this to me?

Couldn't you at least have told me to wear heels, SOML?

Oh well, I came home and Gchatted Charles Harrison because I desperately, DESPERATELY needed to talk to someone who knew and loved college Me.

Story of my life - I am not positive you're a comedy.

Lurve,
Meg.

Meg who got her mommy to DD her. Meg who is a mess and a half and probably shouldn't be allowed to live in her home town anymore. Meg who will, probs, delete this in the morning.

Lurve, indeed.

Pass me the denture watch and fig newtons, please.

The newest installment of "Things That Are Cute In My Life:"

- The joy my father gets from my newfound crush on Total Hottie Robert Redford. Dear audience: though he often sports an ill-advised mustache and often plays characters with more-than-questionable gender politics (and has kind of small teeth) - I get it. The cute part, though, is how every time I go over to my Dad's, he's netflixed either a Paul Newman or a Robert Redford. Oh Electric Cowboy, you're such a rascal!

I feel I've reached a new point in my life - the point in my life at which I begin to understand how Totally Old Dudes are also Totally Cute. Newman and Redford were just the tip of the iceberg. Shatner as Kirk as Sex Symbol has always been high on the list of "Things I just don't get." Until today, folks! I flipped on the television, saw some tight-fitting yellow, and was sold. I get it, folks.

It's official: I eat dinner at four, I go to bed at 9, and my heart flutters for Paul Newman, Robert Redford, and William Shatner - I am a very, very old lady.

I can't figure out if I'm using "forebearer" correctly, so I removed it from the body of the post. Darn you - ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

Gentle reader,

I come to you today with a picture. I say no more about this picture than that it is a sign of great and powerful things to come.

Also, it's a menorah hat. HAT.

(And that's my Bannister. Note the white lights - proof of my co-habitation with a one, Miss Mary Ryan.)

This post isn't very funny so I tried to fake it with a youtube video

Oh Arlington - the land of Couch Crashing and Life Lessons. Lessons from this installment of Weekends in the DC-Metro Area include:

- I want to live at Kate's house always. The land of KateJennyAndrewDavid is a land where, according to what I see when I visit, I can always watch Nine to Five and color felt posters while eating delectable baked goods. What's that you say? I could probably do those in my own home, now that I'm "an adult" anyway? True - but it's not the same without Kate, et al.

- I am weak, weak when it comes to Ms. Katz and her sweet-talking, make-up finding wiles. Also the West Coast needs to be closer to this one. Stat.

- I CAN DRIVE IN GEORGETOWN NEAR CHRISTMAS TIME AND NOT DIE. Dear Cities: I hate driving in you. Fix that, por favor. (Side note: I can parallel park in Georgetown near Christmas and not die - take that, mon amie!) (Side, SIDE note: it is annoying that I do not know how to make accent marks in this little bloggymadoodle, so I can not ACTUALLY use any of the 4-5 French words I know! SACREBLEU!)

- Kelly is the hottest thing on two legs. Now, for those of you who know my friend Kelly, you were well aware of this fact before I told you. For those of you who don't - let me just reiterate: Kelly is the hottest thing on two legs. This is impressive, coming from me, because I have a lot of attractive friends, guys. You don't even know. My friend circle is, without a doubt, Hot Chick Central - and the ladies I was out with Saturday night were, if I do say so myself, easily the cutest, classiest, most awesome women to walk into any room we deemed worthy of our presence. But...I mean...you should see what happens to a room when Kelly walks into it. I'll give you a hint: men melt into piles of simpering mush whose eyes glimmer with hope and adoration. It's AWESOME. It also equates Free Drinks In An Attempt To Distract Meg So All Men, Ever, Can Attempt To Romance Kelly (in a proper-noun sort of way). I would like, again, to reiterate: it's AWESOME.

Finally, even though my Youth Group kids are, for all intents and purposes, being butts I am going to post this video about the true meaning of Hanukkah. The true meaning of Hanukkah is humorous raps - that's right, humorous raps. And a solstice-esque festival of lights, just like every other world relgion.

Oh, and Macabees and the miracle of the oil and family and getting presents at the same time as all the other kids. It's about that, too.

But mostly raps.

The stammering really gets me

Dear Woody Allen:

I do not think you are very funny or entertaining. I'm sorry, but it's true. I wrote a paper once on what you symbolized about the Jewish-American experience's necessity to be self-referential in a sort of paranoid and self-deprecating way. You make me uncomfortable, and I am annoyed that this pegs me as Not Appropriately Quirky OMG2XTREME.

I am a Jewish feminist who doesn't particularly like Woody Allen and has a conflicted relationship with the music and works of Ani DiFranco - oh why can I not get my pop-culture references to match my societal labels?

My life is so seriously difficult, guys. You don't even know. Don't even.

In other news: I didn't know how much I liked Richmond until I spent an evening going to hip coffee shops and cool vegan dives and fun apartment parties featuring hilarious snore-stories. I drove home listening to NPR and basking in the bright, crisp light of a morning of a day that was only going to go down hill in terms of "things that stress Meg out."

In thirdly other news: I am not very good youth group leader and would not like to do it anymore, if that's a-okay with everyone. Oh? It's not? You'd rather be kind of passive aggressive and consistently ask me to organize things the kids don't seem to want to partake in? Cool. I...I guess that's almost the same.

Watchful like a Kung Fu master (preferably of the panda variety)

Dear Aliens-Who-Are-Currently-Inhabiting-My-Body:

For starters, I'm onto you. As a follow up - you are doing a poor job of being subtle. What? Did you think just because you were making healthy choices for me, all of a sudden, I was going to turn a blind eye? Did you think I wouldn't notice? Aliens - you are new to this body, obviously, otherwise you would understand that changes this broad and rapid are not par for the course. Aliens - I am beginning to believe you didn't do your research too well.

I don't know what you are plotting, nefarious or otherwise, but if it involves going to the gym four times this week (two of those times involved waking up and going before work - Aliens, the real Meg would never do these things), taking my vitamins regularly, and flossing I am suspicious.

Know this, Aliens, for now I'm putting up with these changes and seeing where they take us, but the moment I find myself thinking "you know, I always did like lettuce more than chocolate cake, anyway" you will be out faster than you can say "low-budget Sci-Fi channel exorcism."

Yours,
Host Body.

In other news: Mary and I made a Wal-Mart run tonight which involved two key purchases. Key purchase one: The Last Holiday with Queen Latifah. Let's just say: we love Queen Latifah for a reason - and that reason now involves how hot LL Cool J is.

Key purchase two: a pair of fun reindeer antlers for Mary, which she wore on the way to the car. Why didn't she wear them all the way home? Because a guy in the parking lot said, I kid you not, "Hey baby - you can pull my sleigh...heh heh heh."

Ooooooh creepy dudes - do these approach tactics ever work for you?

I can't think of William S. Burroughs without thinking of that Moxy Fruvous song

So here's a story about one of my kids and why I have mixed feelings about the gonzo journalists of the 1960s:

Once upon a time I had this totally sweet kid in my office and he told me to speak to his friend who had OD-ed at school the past year about planning for college. So, I called in the other kid and found myself with this this totally cool and erudite and hip-seemin' kid in my office and we were all talking about his hopes and dreams for the future (of which he has many) and then he was all, "hey, yeah, also last year I got really into reading Timothy Leary."

Well, let me tell you, being a product of the DARE generation, my drug-dar was already up so when he Timothy-Leary name dropped, I was ontop of that. Because, here's the thing: I kind of get it. I more than kind of get it, I feel it. I understand what's sexy about Leary it's the same thing that's painfully sexy about Burroughs and Ginsburg - I understand that pull towards a shattering of the self, fully expressed only throught the further shattering of the conciousness. I also undersatnd that, kidding aside, I am a product of the DARE generation - my ideas about drugs are culturally influenced in the extreme.

But I also understand that this kid is sixfuckingteen and he's already ODed and LSD is not something you play around with when you could be dedicating the rest of your life to bad flashbacks. Yeah, I'm supremely uncool, I get that. Go forth and talk about how I'm a huge Square or whatever the appropriate terminology is but I just get in a panic every time I think about this beautiful mind getting into bad, drug-related trouble. I knew the kids who were druggies in high school and I knew a fair number who were druggies in college. Most of the high schoolers probably didn't know I knew (I did, SoRo crowd. I knew you more than I knew my fellow theater kids, if you'd believe it) and no, none of them died horrible fiery deaths. Really, I have no anecdotal proof that DugzRBad, but I know substance-related coping mechanisms in general are bad, and I know ODing is bad, and I know LSD scares the shit out of me at the end of the day.

And that's my life. I am not very cool. But, you know, who was pretending on that one, really?

The best part is the part about the blue shell. Wait for it, you'll see.

So, I know this "blog" is just code for, "Meg posts youtube videos. Lots of them." But take a few things into consideration.

1. I'm still really excited that I know how to use this technology. You don't even know, dudes, you don't even know.
2. My life isn't really THAT interesting.
3. Sure, I never talk about the semi-important stuff in my life, like my LSD using, Hitler-essay-writing, bawling-in-my-office kids or Thanksgiving, or how cyber boys are totally lame, okay. But that's just...because I'm saving it up for when I feel more like a good writer, okay? Okay? Also, I feel nervous about this blog being So Public, OMG, and I don't want to go...you know...spreadin' other people's buis-nass on the interwebz.
4. THIS VIDEO IS SO ADORABLE AND AWESOME OMG. Truth: it is not as cute as the sleepy monkey. Other truth: it is WAY more awesome than any of the Beyonce/Brittney/HDuff videos posted in the last youtube splurge.

(He's feels so deeply! And so mustacheo-edly!)