Fear of Flying
Current mood: cantankerous

FEAR OF FLYING
An exhaustive 18-hour travelogue

I.

Oakland: December 23, 6:30 PM PST.

Once I am certain I have put my bags in places I won't forget them, I settle into my left aisle seat with a book. Then a slim, handsome boy greets me, naming his assigned seat number. He holds his ticket stub up as proof. I stand to usher him in, and then snap myself into my chair. He notices that I've taken the wrong half of seatbelt. We exchange.

I am trying to read an anthology of short fiction a coworker gave me, when a giant ass suddenly obscures its text. On my right, a man in the aisle is crouching, attempting to wrest a large duffel beneath the seat in front of his. The only part of him I can see with any clarity is his ass. I cannot see my book. I am embarrassed by his ass, so I turn my head away from it. This leaves me staring at my seatmate on my left. I am embarrassed again. This plane is very small, I tell him, attempting some small talk. My seatmate laughs. I return to my book.

My seatmate is staring with intent at the safety instructions located in the fabric pocket of the seat in front of him. He wonders aloud what sort of plane a CJN900 is, and I realize my earlier remark about the jet's smallness has had some effect on our fledgling acquaintanceship. I look at my own instruction pamphlet, and loudly observe that the illustrations are just terrible.

The flight attendant reiterates the safety instructions, but she's tweaked the usual script to be funny. It's roaringly funny. My seatmate laughs heartily at this a whole bunch. He's dutifully following along with the safety instruction pamphlet in his lap. I hate flying, I warn him. He taps his safety brochure in my direction. Canadian Jet! he says. I realize that he is addressing the mystery of the CJN900 acronym. This airplane is Canadian? The new information briefly puts me at ease: those Canadians never fuck up.

I return to my book for awhile, then turn white-knuckled during takeoff. When the drink service cart rolls by, I am already prepared with a five-dollar bill. A second five-spot is already in the front right pocket of my hoodie, just in case. I order a Bud Light, then reach for the SkyMall catalogue. It's always a laugh. At least I will laugh as we plummet toward the ground, I think to myself.

I somehow manage to engage my seatmate in reading SkyMall with me, and we cattily flip through and mock it. We are hilarious. We tear ourselves away from our rapport every once in awhile to exchange small histories. He's beginning grad school near my office. He used to race bikes competitively. He tells me an anecdote about being a bartender in Colorado and writing "86 Yourself" on airplane barf bags and giving them to drunk bar patrons he didn't like. Now this would be a funny story except that I manage to mishear every detail and, momentarily, erroneously believe that he had been giving these barf bags to airline passengers. I mishear because the plane's engines are loud, and because I am paranoid about drinking Bud Lights in front of people. Is he calling me drunk? He tells me an anecdote about his ex-girlfriend. I realize I'd assumed he was totally homosexual. I worry that he could tell, and that this is why he's mentioned his ex-girlfriend. I fret.

He thanks me for the entertaining flight, as we are walking in the swaying tunnel out of the plane, before I manage to thank him. I do thank him, though, and he acknowledges that he'd noticed my fear of flying. I sigh that I can't find my business cards. He recoils, balks, and tells me he doesn't have any either. I start to mention that I work near him, and this little fact is enough to make him flee. Oh, seatmate, I wasn't trying to date you. Farewell, farewell.

As I exit my gate, I walk a short distance and stop. I am already at my next flight's departure gate. The flight from Oakland to Phoenix lasted two hours and XXX minutes.


II.

Phoenix: December 23, XXX PM Mountain.

I arrive at my aisle seat on the plane's right side, but there's a man already in it. I tell him my assigned seat number? Only I pose it as a question, kind of? I hold my ticket stub up as proof.

He is embarrassed. He indicates his wife and baby daughter, both in the window seat, and explains that our seat is special because it has three oxygen masks instead of only two. He hopes I don't mind? Of course I don't mind, I tell him, as I only require just the one oxygen mask. He looks confused for a moment, but then he grins.

I am standing in the aisle though, in the way, and I look at the flight attendant helplessly. This is exactly when the girl in the left aisle seat realizes that she's meant to be in the front of the plane, and that she has misinterpreted the gate number on the ticket stub as her seat number. She excuses herself. The flight attendant commands me into this girl's seat.

The flight attendant then rearranges everyone in the back part of the cabin. After a few switches the endeavor starts to seem like a really big mistake, but the flight attendant is already in too deep.

When she begins to announce the flight safety instructions, I realize that these are exactly the same jokes as before -- the safety guidelines humor is, in fact, scripted. But the flight attendant has tossed in a few of her own jokes and asides, I guess to make the recommended script her "own," and boy, she's terrible. She also refers to the CJN900 as a "new, budget airline!" This makes me queasy. Suddenly I do not trust those Canadians.

Once we've ascended to our cruising altitude, the flight attendant drops by to find out what my seatmate and I would like to drink. I already have that five dollar bill in my hoodie pocket, and I let the flight attendant know I'll be drinking a Bud Light. The girl in the window seat orders red wine. I interpret this to mean that we are essentially sitting at the counter of an airborne bar, so I introduce myself to my classy, wine-drinking seatmate. I tell her about the seatmate on my last flight and how wonderful he was, just to give her an idea of what she has to live up to. I then, very casually, mention my fear of flying.

Do you mind if I ask you when it started? she says to me with evident interest. I answer with a deliberate vagueness.

I ask, she tells me, because I was a psychology major in school, so I have a vested interest. When did your fear begin? I answer with slightly less vagueness. So your fear began after 9/11. I see. I see.

I protest helplessly, but there's no refuting that my fear began after 9/11 -- maybe not emotionally, but certainly in terms of the calendar date.

She says: My last flight was really scary. It was really scary, the turbulence. She says this in a way that is supposed to be reassuring. When she says this, though, we hit turbulence. The icons above our heads flicker on. I seize at both armrests and squirm in a way like death throes. I am so glad to have made a new friend before I die.

She's handling the conversation, staring straight ahead at her tray table so that she can't watch me squirm, and she's telling me about her own fear; specifically, it is the fear that anyone born in January is fated to die before his time, before old age.

I know it isn't true, she is saying to me as I writhe, but I know all these people who died who were all born in January. And so it gets to this point where, when that many people have died... Some of them died of illness, though, and some of them died in wrecks, so it isn't like, uh. They didn't all die young.

They just didn't die old, I say helpfully. Do you mind closing your window shade for me?

Oh, no, I don't mind, she says. She tugs at the vellum so that it clacks shut.

She tells me she is from Seattle. She is flying to Houston to meet her boyfriend's family. She's nervous because they're black and she's Indian; she worries because she's never been to Texas, but rumor has it Texans are racist. She is deeply concerned.

They wouldn't invite you to their home for Christmas if they cared one way or the other, I tell her, writhing. The airplane jerks up, as if it is riding a gust. The airplane dunks again. Up, down, up, down. My teeth are chattering.

The flight attendant walks down the aisle toward us at a brisk clip, but reeling from side to side. She stops at our aisle, leans across me, and puts another tiny bottle of red wine in front of my seatmate. She puts a new can of beer in front of me. Here you girls are! she says brightly. It's on us! My seatmate and I are surprised and silent as the flight attendant totters away. I swig away at the last of my old can and excitedly open the new one. It makes a crisp, hissing sound. My seatmate puts the brand new bottle of wine into her bag and pours a dixie cup's-worth of the first bottle into her clear plastic glass.

Wow! she says to me. I know! I say to her.


III.

Houston: December 24, 2:XX AM CST.

Dear Reader:
This travelogue has not been completed, not even in the month since I began typing it, because the details of my layover are so exhaustive that even thinking about typing them, natch, exhausts me.

In summary, however, I forged a temporary friendship with a drugged man looking for his skis; he told me, a little sardonically, that I could get home faster if I'd just rent a car. He explained that he was headed to his parents' in Houston, but that after that he was taking his skis to Brooklyn, where he planned to stay for a few months, possibly go skiing. In Brooklyn? Don't you have a job? I asked him. Yes, he said, and looked at me as if I were stupid.

The ticket kiosk did not open until something like 4am, so I decided to kill some time by standing in line. It was bustling, but still eerily silent, and a lot of people were slumped everywhere, asleep. I surreptitiously photographed them. I eventually landed at the front of the line and asked the woman whether my next flight were Budget or Continental. And she told me, Continental, but good luck finding your gate, 'cause I have no idea which terminal you're supposed to be in. And I asked her whether she could assure me my baggage had gone ahead to Corpus, and she said of course it had, but then she stared at my ticket envelope.

And she said, Is this the ticket envelope they gave you? And I told her it was, and she said, Oh no! And she pointed to the baggage claim sticker on the back, which indicated that my name was Jebediah and my luggage had gone to Vegas without me.

A problem for later! I decided, and instead turned my attention to waiting for the security check to open. During my wait, I made conversation with a seated TSA employee. He eventually confessed that he was dying, and that thanks to TSA's medical benefits, he can continue receiving treatment at MD Anderson at no cost to his family. He also wished he were a better father, and he told me to quit smoking.

I got onto a train and chanced my way into the correct terminal. There, I begged Schlotzky's to open, since it has been over ten years since I have tasted delicious deli-thin turkey meat on a perfect sourdough bun, with shredded lettuce and perfectness, but they told me that they were closed until 11. Fuck those guys.

I had a breakfast taco instead, but I couldn't finish it, so I put the rest into my TSA ziplock bag. I moved my lipstick out of my TSA ziplock bag before that.


IV.

Houston: December 24, 7:40 AM CST.

I am considering turning to the man to my right to let him know that it is taxiing, and also takeoff, but most of all the subsequent fifteen or twenty minutes during which our airplane will ascend to 18,000 feet in the air, that are the most dangerous parts of any plane trip. I am considering telling him this because his PSP is on, and it is undoubtedly futzing with the pilot's radio communications with the traffic control tower. The kid on my left is also listening to an iPod. Just great. I put my head between my knees, so that if we suddenly drop out of the sky I can be the sole survivor. Then I reach for my phone. This way, if we start to fall and die, I can already be on my cell phone, telling someone that I, a video game reviewer, was fortuitously murdered by a PSP. The man leaves his PSP on during descent, too. Presently, the flight attendant points at it. He flips it into sleep mode and flashes it toward her, as if to say, What? It's off. She passes him, and he flicks the PSP back on.

This flight lasts exactly thirty-six minutes.


V.

Corpus Christi: December 24, 8:45 AM CST.

Oh, I do not believe this. The guy with the PSP is greeting his small daughter at baggage claim. Now that he's upright and not directly bothering me, I can see that he is way too old to be irresponsible with matters of safety and air traffic control. I attempt to sling mental arrows into his brain tissue with my fervent stink eye. Where is my luggage?


VI.

Not here.


VII.

Dear Reader:

I am so sorry I didn't finish this story, but it's hilarious, and it ends with a woman going, "Oh, well, we've been kicked out of NICER," which is fucking fantastic. Thanks for reading this far, and if you check back soon, I might tell you how my journey ended.

Currently reading : Then We Came to the End: A Novel By Joshua Ferris Release date: 01 March, 2007

3:01 AM - 89 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

Bacon Redux
Category: Food and Restaurants

I think the mystery of my weight gain these past two years has been solved, because I can't seem to stop reading about BACON.

Last time I used my dumb Myspace blog to talk about bacon, it was about bacon ice cream. This time, the Onion A.V. Club is reviewing a chocolate bar filled with bacon, as part of their new continuing series, "Taste Tests." Their verdict: Not as bad as you might think.

I don't know what it is about bacon, but any time it appears in food it seemingly oughtn't, it inexplicably grips the imagination and WILL NOT LET GO

P.S. At least this isn't a quiz.

edit! Soon after I came here to talk about bacon, Seana informed me of some Mission bar's weekly Bacon Nite. It's on Mondays. I hear there's bacon there.

4:32 AM - 89 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Quiz with No Answers

Here's a quiz I was writing last week. I decided to write the questions all down first before answering them, and then I didn't completely feel like answering them. Maybe you will? Read along.

What's the last kind of alcohol you ingested?




And what did you eat today? Where did you eat it?




If you are what you eat, what are you? Generally.




If you are what you drink, what are you?




Are your arms hairier than they used to be?




If you had to schedule an appointment with a doctor right now, here and now, but you don't get to schedule it with a general practitioner, what kind of specialist would you go to see?




What is the last movie you watched on television?




What song(s) have you had on repeat lately? Are your friends about to murder you?




How does that song (or songs) reflect on you as a person? Seriously, now.




Did you acquire this music legally?




Do you love yourself?




Are you haunted?




What is your most prized coffee table accoutrement?




When you walk or drive past a home where people you used to know used to live, what are you used to doing?




Do you wave to it as you pass it?




Are you haunted?




You are supposed to phone people, and you haven't. Who are you supposed to phone?




Who have you forgotten?




Where is the site of your latest bruise or scrape? How did it happen?




Wow! How did you get that scar? (You may describe up to three.)




In your workplace, what do your coworkers do to drive you nuts?




At home, what do your neighbors do to drive you nuts?




Who did you dream about?




Are you haunted?




One of your articles of clothing needs to be washed more than any other. Which is it?




One of your articles of clothing doesn't fit anymore, or has gone missing. Which is it?




A stranger was recently kind to you. How did it happen?




Who is the stranger with whom you most recently spoke?




You have borrowed something (or things) that need to be returned. What is it?




Someone has borrowed something (or things) from you that need to be returned (or not). What is it?




Chaotic, harmonious, benevolent, indifferent: What does the Universe mean to you?

5:32 PM - 89 Comments - 6 Kudos - Add Comment

Bacon Caramel Ice Cream
Current mood: indifferent

Seana
btw soooo going to LA this weekend for this
http://www.supersizedmeals.com/food/.../Bacon_Caramel_Ice_Cream

Jenn
HORF!
what IS that?

Seana
BACON
and
ICE CREAM
together at last

Jenn
HALP HALP HALP

Seana
teehee

Currently listening : In the Aeroplane Over the Sea By Neutral Milk Hotel Release date: 10 February, 1998

3:36 PM - 89 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Group Quiz!
Category: Quiz/Survey

I want to blog again on myspace, but I want the blog to be good-and-stupid, also, so I've been googling for a nice, stupid LJ quiz to ease my nerves. Specifically, I am googling the seemingly adequate search term, "quiz questions." All of google's results, though, are "pub" quizzes. Like, for someone to read aloud in a bar. And... ESL quizzes? What are those? But there are lots of them, anyway. This is weird.

So I'm going to write my own questions, and then answer them. But I'm sitting here with my friends Sharkey and Emily, so they're going to help me write them. And also answer them. This is sure to be zenlike and cathartic. Feel free to reprint, redistribute, and re-answer. In fact, I dare you to!

Sharkey, Emily, and Jenn's Awesome Quiz

How many boards would the Mongols hoard, if the Mongol hordes got bored?
Thanks, Sharkey. Did you write this one?

No! It's from a Calvin and Hobbes comic.
Oh.

What's the last sort of alcohol you drank?
That would be a lo-cal, lo-carb Guinness. Leave it to me to author a truly great quiz question.

What did they do to my Condemned 2 preview?
Emily, when I say, "ask me a question, any question," I don't mean that one.

Can we look at the Content Management System? Please? Can we look at it now?
Gosh darn it, Emily, OK, OK, OK! Hang on, I'm opening a new tab now.

Wasn't that incredibly interesting?
Hells yeah! I love reading my own preview! Again and again. Thanks, Jenn.

So your preview goes up in two days?
I think so. That sounds right.

You know what I'm tired of?
What.

I am tired of "Sorry! An unexpected error has occurred!" Why doesn't Myspace start calling it an expected error? A totally predictable, well-foreshadowed error?
Be sure to ask them that.

With whom was your first kiss?
Mark, third grade. Dude doesn't even remember! Thank God. I probably traumatized the crap out of him. Emily?

What advice can you give somebody who has to survive SimCity DS?
Never build roads--just trains. If it's anything like the old one, I mean. I think Wil Wright had an unconscious bias toward public transit.

Thanks, Sharkey. I never could have answered that one. What a commie. It's 'Wil,' with one L, Wright?
Yup. W-I-L, W-R-I-G-H-T.

Wright. Right. Got it. Who's got the next question?
Where's the Shut The Fuck Up Button?

What?
That wasn't for you. I was talking to this Mega Man game. Fuck!

Why does everyone have the fucking speed-lines behind them? They're not even moving. They're just fucking standing there. Hey, don't type that! Christ! I'm scared to say anything that ends with a question now.
Ha ha ha ha! Say that again.

Hey. Uh, why does Wikipedia say that 'Will Wright' actually has two Ls in it?
Fuck if I know. Wikipedia's the authority...

...But why don't you just google 'Wil Wright' and see what comes up?
That's what I'm doing. That's what I just did.

Doesn't anybody have any more questions?
No.

This was stupid.
That's a question?

I need an image for the end. For the quiz results. You know, like in a real quiz. What should I look for? I'm thinking... a squash?
Google-image-search "Cyber Peacock." I can't fucking believe I'm losing to something called Cyber Peacock. It's cute, though. You can do a quiz result like, "Cyber Peacock: You have a tiny dick and spend way too much time on the internet! Also, your pattern sucks."

Why aren't you laughing at that?
...

Jenn? Didn't you hear me?
...

Stop that! Stop that! Fuck you in the eye!
Hee hee hee hee hee hee. OK, I think I remember how to make tables. Here we go:

You are Cyber Peacock! You are a Robot Peacock who lives on the Internet, according to Mega Man canon. Actually, the great author Flannery O'Connor famously kept and raised peacocks and peahens as pets. She had very witty things to say about her own pastime, in fact, if only you'll examine her one-and-only book of collected essays. Flannery O'Connor was famous for her grotesque, subversively Christian short stories, written in what some call the Southern Gothic style; among them, "The Life You Save May Be Your Own," "A Good Man is Hard to Find," and "Everything That Rises Must Converge." Mary Flannery O'Connor died in 1964, at the rather young age of 39.

2:04 AM - 89 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Here is a quiz I just answered, as part of my new
Category: Quiz/Survey

(edit)...oh. It cut me off. The complete title should continue, "as part of my new 'openness' initiative." I like the word "initiative." It suggests agency and lots of can-do.

11:13 PM - 89 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

This is the worst blog in the world.
Category: MySpace

This blog is awful. I'm not blaming you, or myspace, and I'm certainly not blaming me. I'm just saying that this blog is terrible. I think it has to do with GUI and broadcasting rss so you don't have to type everything twice. Or whatever.

Speaking of doing things twice, I got sick for a month. At the end of the second week, when a cold exploded into some kind of respiratory infection, I went to the doctor's office. He put me on a rigorous course of amoxicillin, which one might think could nuke the bacteria or fungus or fauna or whatever. But three days after the course ended and my doctor pronounced me cured, I got sick again. I came back to the clinic, this time actually angry about still being sick, and he blinked awhile, and prescribed azithromycin, which is a different antibiotic.

And I was relieved but super duper annoyed now, because it's going to take more than two weeks of the Dannon Activia Challenge to get my innards back in fighting form, but also because the doctor's explanation was batshit insane, AND because I have already personally sought advice using myriad hypochondria sites on the internet, and the doctor still hasn't been able to guess the diagnosis I have in mind. Regardless, I've decided to spring for an ENT. We're meeting tomorrow.

Newburg phoned me in the middle of the night, while I was bundled on the couch half-asleep trying to watch Freaky Friday or the Parent Trap or whatever. I began enumerating the reasons I didn't want to be sick--friends and parents visiting, principally--and then I mentioned that my pal Nik purchased us Arcade Fire tickets, but that I was too sick to go. Newburg recommended that I start downing those fluids! that I need some inspiration in my life! that a live Arcade Fire show would hold the answer! that I need to see Will at his last stop in the US!

I did down my fluids, and Newburg phoned the next afternoon to say Will put two guest passes aside at Will Call, and to get my butt off the sofa. Nik and I took a cab all the way to Berkeley, which is a pretty town that smells like pot and dissent. Nik and I discovered that guest passes could get you seated in the roped area behind the sound guys, so we sat there.

It was soooo good to see Will! The audience cheered as he climbed all the way up the scaffolding to pump his fist and god I had to cover my eyes. I'd shied from seeing a live show for a few years now, because it seemed so strange and foreign, the idea of Edwin in front, and Will--who had brought a toy piano to band practice circa 2002--flailing and jumping across the stage with force and power. Watching it, though, it made sense.

There was a door to the afterparty. Kate, who I knew from WNUR, was standing near the back, by the door to the afterparty. "Jenn!" she shouted at me. I turned and frowned. "I changed my hair," she said. "Oh!" I said. Will popped out, and we hugged him like crazypeople, and he was doe-eyed as ever, only his hair was long. He motioned us in.

I saw Tai, and I was excited and surprised. I was also embarrassed, because I knew she'd moved close to me. She shrugged and sighed. "I heard you don't get out much anymore," she said, really congenial. "Who told you that?" I said. "Anyway, it's true."

We had all--Tai, me, Kate, Will--worked at WNUR together, which is strange, that that would be the lasting bond. Tai was at google, and I told her my friend Adam worked there, with a tent around his desk. "That's actually really common," she said, "building a tent around your desk." We all asked about the food. We'd all heard the food at Google was good. Kate explained that she landed her job fundraising for a Jewish elementary school by adding "WNUR Phone-a-thon" to her resume. Tai and Kate heard about Will's recent engagement the same way--in the New York Post, in an article that was really about Jenny's sister Liza.

Will couldn't find Christine. I phoned her. "Are you here?" she asked me. "Where are you? I'm walking toward the grey WILL!" The call dropped, and up ahead, I saw the back of Will stoop to envelop something small in front of him. Then he and Christine made their way to our collective. We waved! We all said hello! Then we stood there quietly.

Christine's hair was short, shorter than it was before, and defying physics. "Uh," I said, looking at the ground, "everyone's hair looks so good!"

Tai's eyes narrowed. "I'm wearing a hat." That was true.

It was all frustratingly brief. We all had somewhere else to get to, and it was strange. We felt guilty, finding Will (he'd really only disappeared a short time) to hug him again and bid farewell. He apologized, too, needing to host and being distracted, and we'd all have a good, serious, focused time later. I liked that.

"I wish there were a way for you to see your own show live," I said to him. "It didn't happen enough, but when the red lights came up and your shadows were dancing on the columns of the amphitheater, way out on the sides, projected onto the architecture...!"

"I saw it!" Will said. "I looked out, and I saw us dancing on the columns. It made me really happy."

"It made me really happy too!"

Will said something really funny, then: "I got you tickets for this a couple months ago, but I forgot to tell you." That also made me really happy.

I know it doesn't sound like I'm rounding a point, and I don't want to say it: I'm really, really sorry about not being more available or communicative. I guess that's why I'm typing so much. I want to make an excuse, like my lymph nodes are the main reason, or... actually, work is the main reason. But the other main reason is because I'm so nervous to see you again, because you'd be let down. I'm glad we all shared this one wonderful friend to make us come together and be amazed by one another again.

10:10 PM - 89 Comments - 0 Kudos

Rise and Shine!
Current mood: awake

Holy shit. Holy shit. Josh told me they were shooting this, and I don't know, I thought it was like a twisted joke?

But nope, no joke, here's the trailer! Holy god! And even just the trailer is like eighth grade through graduation, set to music.

"Good luck in finals. Cover your zits." "Is that nail polish black?" Yup.

I will buy thirty copies of this DVD and give it to friends for their birthdays.

Currently watching : Freaks and Geeks - The Complete Series Release date: 06 April, 2004

1:24 PM - 89 Comments - 11 Kudos - Add Comment

drunk messaging
Current mood: foul

We're all familiar with the "drunk-dial", yes? And its progeny, the drunk blog, the drunk IM, the drunk google and wikipedia web searches.  Great! Myspace must be the most insidious beast ever, because it allows for drunk messaging and commenting.  Worst! Ever!

Social networking websites ought to have some sort of spelling and touch-your-nose field sobriety tests prior to login, because this auto-login thing is totally not working out.

Oh, don't you judge me.  I'm drinking orange soda right now, so there.

Currently playing : PS2 Suikoden Tactics Release date: 15 November, 2005

2:45 AM - 89 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

Help! I can't stop looking up people I went to high school with!!

Oh, great. Thanks a lot, to everyone who claimed GP as their high school on their myspace profiles, because you've killed my productivity like 300%.  I have completely searched and sifted through Portland's back-catalog, and I am now feeling super-creepy for looking at people's myspace profiles.

Do you know what else is creepy? This: my university's mascot was a wildcat. But not just any wildcat--Willie the Wildcat. That's right. EIGHT YEARS OF WILLIE THE WILDCAT. More, if you count up from sixth grade. What is that? Eleven years of Wildcat Pride? Twelve, if I'd gone the "five-year plan." Whoa.  Maybe even longer than that, potentially, if Andrews Elementary's mascot hadn't been a fricking dolphin.

Let's see.  If I'd been a Wildcat since first grade, and then went to grad school at Northwestern, I could have successfully been a Wildcat for, like, literally, twenty years.

Well, whatever. I am so happy and excited to see everyone on the internet and all "wired into the future" and stuff. I can't believe how five years changes everyone--a ten-year reunion is going to be totally insane. I guess this is why former classmates have to wear nametags.

Well, now you're all caught up on what I've been doing for four out of five years.  I've been a Wildcat.  Yep.

Thanks to the Wildcats who dropped me a line! Sorry I'm so slow!

Gocatsyou'renumberooooone!!,
Jenny

Currently playing : PS2 Psychonauts Release date: 21 June, 2005

2:31 PM - 89 Comments - 6 Kudos - Add Comment