Wicked thoughts

I think that as I get older, I get more and more frustrated with the people around me. It could just be that I'm in a bigger city and just spend more time every day being jostled around, but I'm now pretty intolerant, on the whole. Things like people swerving around on the sidewalk during the morning commute (especially if they're wearing headphones, which reduces the ability to sense someone trying to pass them) drive me up the wall. It's not a good way to go through life.

For Christmas, Adam got us great tickets to see Wicked. I was sitting next to two women with looooooooong French-tip manicures. Obviously, you all know the sort. And, despite the fact that they were in their 50s, one of them was toting a Bebe bag. I hope she had been shopping for her daughter, but her manicure indicates otherwise.

Their pre-show conversation mostly consisted of discussing where the odd-numbered seats were, since both of theirs were even. They also talked about turning off their phones--although they settled instead on just setting them to volume level 1. But the real kicker was when they started going through the Playbill. There was an ad for the movie release of The Lovely Bones, and one woman asked the other what it was about. She replied that it's about a girl who's murdered and tries to come back to help her family solve the crime. My neighbor asked her if it was a true story.

"I think they're telling us to call for help..."

I know it's been a long while since I've written anything, but when I received THIS over the New Year's weekend, I knew we were back in the game.

Many thanks to Abby Bridges, without whose decision to move to Brooklyn we may never have seen another set of Ikea instructions, and also to Liz "The Prototype" Peterson, whose diligence in chair assembly reminds us all to always, ALWAYS wear shoes when engaged in any sort of project that requires an Allen wrench.