———

Your turn!

Anyone currently reviewing something awesome? Feel free to hijack my comments and tell everyone what it is!

At this point to say I cannot contain my already typically excessive exclaiming is to understate. HOW am I going to refrain from blurting out, “Hawaii! I’m going there!” from now until I leave at the beginning of September? Better yet, Maui! + getting to see my sister in TWO WEEKS = how am I going to sleep tonight? And the next night? And the night after that? HOW?

But I suppose this post is coming completely out of nowhere if you don’t follow me on Twitter, or don’t even use Twitter, and/or didn’t get a text or an email or a DM from me (IN ALL CAPS) saying something like “MAUI!” or “I’M GOING TO HAWAII!” or “THIS IS PERFECT BECAUSE I JUST WATCHED INTO THE BLUE LAST WEEKEND AND…what? No, no I did not watch Into the Blue. I mean, I did, but you can’t prove it and anyway, BACK TO SEA TURTLES!”

The oh so random “Kerri is going to Hawaii over Labor Day weekend” story goes a little something like this:

1. Kerri checks her email nonchalantly Tuesday morning, half-asleep.
2. Kerri notices Alaska Airlines trying to trick her into going to Hawaii by offering her a Crazy Ridiculous Low One-Way Fare. Kerri was in Hawaii ten (!) years ago and paid more like $600 for her ticket. So Kerri automatically think it’s a) a scam b) bound by a bunch of lame guidelines that will ultimately render her (at this point very imaginary) trip to Hawaii typical amounts of expensive, and therefore typical amounts of not happening.
3. After a bit of research Kerri realizes it’s a) not a scam and b) she can fly over Labor Day weekend for less than $300 round-trip. She also realizes Hawaiian Airlines beats Alaska with an Even Crazier Low One-Way Fare.
4. Kerri tweets about wanting to go to Hawaii, and says someone should come with her, because, hi, Hawaii, you look pretty today.
5. Kerri’s pretty sure everyone will think she’s nuts, and/or no one will be able to come, because who plans a last-minute trip to Hawaii after an already crazy August?
6. Kerri briefly considers going to Hawaii by herself, because why not? That is, until Terrell says she’s IN.
7. Kerri thinks about how much fun! it would be to go to Hawaii with Terrell, who is awesome and hilarious and likes sea turtles.
8. Kerri asks Terrell if she’s joking, because Kerri isn’t really joking, and Terrell, says nope, she’s totally IN.
9. Kerri finds a hotel on the beach for $72/night, which split between two people is Not Very Much At All/night.
10. Terrell and Kerri buy tickets (the air kind!) before they each leave work on Tuesday.
11. Kerri knows why she can’t stop smiling, but not why she is telling this story in a third-person numbered list.

I think I am seriously just in shock right now. I mean, I love! to travel, but this has to be the most spontaneous trip I have ever booked and (not) planned, and it’s just…exhilarating! Those prices were just way too good to ignore, and it will be nice to have a super relaxing (long) weekend getaway. I honestly can’t remember the last time a vacation was even remotely relaxing. Or tropical! It might have been the last time I was in Hawaii, ten years ago.

Ten years and I can still remember how perfectly floral the entire island of Oahu smelled when we walked off the plane.

I have a feeling Maui is going to smell even better.

*Post title from Forgetting Sarah Marshall which is a movie (that makes me laugh quite a lot and) set in…wait for it…HAWAII.

After contemplating sprinting through the large marble arch separating the U.S. and Canadian sides of the border crossing station, or just doing cartwheels on the grass, we decided instead to blast the Glee soundtrack and sing to pass the time. I had my window down, because it finally decided to be gorgeous outside and the fresh air felt amazing, when over Lea Michele’s stellar pipes I heard “Can you turn that up? I like it!” from a woman occupying the passenger side of a large maroon Ford Expedition in the lane next to us. “Oh, sure!” Cue to thirty seconds later and Jen giggling as we noted the woman was totally singing along and happily bopping her head to the beat. (I may have been dancing in my seat the entire time.)

The rest of the waiting passed similarly, with more (bad) singing by yours truly, and more giggling, and a very agile group self-take that Cayly (Hans!) managed to snap from the backseat.

When we finally arrived at the guard booth, we were met by two steely-faced blond men wearing sunglasses, one of whom tapped on my windshield and asked me to remove my sunglasses (“You just got told!” Jen says from the passenger seat, laughing), while the other asked for our passports. Alas, it was time to turn down “Don’t Stop Believin’.”

“What were you doing in Canada?”

“Visiting friends.”

“How do you know your Canadian friends?”

Me, thinking: Pretty presumptuous, Mr. Border Patrolman, that we even have Canadian friends, though of course in this case we do, but is this some rule I wasn’t aware of? That to come to Vancouver you have to be invited by Canadian friends?

Realizing I haven’t actually answered the question, and Mr. Border Patrolman is still waiting for an answer.

“Through…blogging?” I more ask than tell. Jen and Cayly start laughing.

“What do you do for work in the U.S.?”

“Ummm…” I say, again wondering why this question is relevant and how specific does he want us to be, and how would he be able to verify that we work in the U.S. at all; is that why this line is so long?

Cayly decides to go first.

“I’m a student.”

“Is that why you have so much time to blog?” quips Mr. Border Patrolman, without hesitation.

“Oh, BURN!” I can’t help myself. It just comes out, with a slew of giggles from Jen and Cayly, and finally a smirk from Mr. Border Patrolman.

After Jen and I answer the question, he seems less than interested in our respective professions, and we are apparently not deemed enemies of the state, we go on our merry way.

Miles later we are still laughing, and Cayly is thinking of retorts she wishes she could have uttered to Mr. Border Patrolman’s snarky assumption that she spends all of her free time online, no doubt writing about what she ate for lunch.**

“I’ll blog your face” was definitely my favorite of her potential retorts, and is also my new favorite go-to phrase.

————–

*Twenty bonus points and a high-five to anyone who knows which movie (and movie quote) I’m referencing here.

**The best part of this assumption is how utterly wrong it would be, seeing as how Cayly spends less time online, and even less time blogging, than anyone I know. Anyway, Cayly would never blog about her lunch. She only blogs about really important global issues. Like Mariah Carey.

“Sure she was watering a street tree during a statewide drought. But the gate was made of recycled street signs. Carbon footprint: neutral.”

[Photo: Randi Berez; Dwell, Dec/Jan 2006 via UnhappyHipsters.com]

The prompt: Please create your own personal security question in case you forget your password.

Question: My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard, and they’re like what’s your favorite color?

Answer: Shark Week.

On second thought, you better forget the milk and cookies.

In fact, you might want to stop (thinking about or actually) eating anything for the remainder of this post.

Ready now? OK, then. Back to the story.

It was a dark and stormy night the end of a very long work day, not my favorite work day to be honest, and while there were definitely some high notes, it was mostly stressful and filled with a lot of hurry up and wait! moments, which are not my favorite sort of moments. I was also feeling easily annoyed on this particular work day, and admitted to wishing some of my co-workers would just stop, you know, existing so close to me.

So vexed was I by the time 5:45pm rolled around that after opening my car door and tossing my bags into the front seat beside me, I took a very deep breath before loudly exclaiming, “I AM SO ANNOYED WITH MY LIFE RIGHT NOW.”

Not my finest moment, to be sure. But hey, venting helps right? And venting to no one in particular is harmless right?

RIGHT. Or maybe not so much.

Right after taking another deep, post-exclamatory breath, I put my key in the ignition of my car, turned, and…wait for it…no, keep waiting…yep, still waiting…oh, right; nothing is going to happen. N-O-T-H-I-N-G, except me starting to laugh, a really crazy “Oh you’re so funny, Today! Such a jokester, Universe! No really, Car, you are going to start right! now” sort of laugh, wherein I almost started crying, because really? REALLY, this is happening to me right now, on this day, at the top of a desolate parking garage in the pitch dark when I know I don’t have jumper cables in my trunk? Of course! it is.

Never one to miss out on the opportunity to laugh at myself, I laughed some more, and then called my dad. Because that’s what I do whenever my car decides to play Ridiculous.

After some discussing of car-related symptoms, my dad decides it’s probably the battery.

“Those can just die? Without warning?”

“Yep, pretty much.”

“Awesome. I’m having the best day ever.”

“I’m sorry, kiddo. You should probably pop the hood and make sure something-something-auto-talk-I-can’t-remember-something-something.”

“Oh, OK! I can do that.” I’m pretty sure I can totally do that. So I pop the hood, walk around the front of the car and open it. And here’s where the story gets AWESOME. And by “awesome” I mean “pretty gross, and I’m telling you, you better not be eating your milk and cookies right now.”

I’m using both hands to get the hood open, cradling the phone in between my right ear and right shoulder and after I manage to do that I look instantly at the battery, on the far right of the hooded innards of my car, completely neglecting to look at anything else under the hood, until I see something out of the corner of my left eye, is that? Wait, did something just BLINK at me?

Lo and behold, on top of the engine, in a cozy bed of leaves, sat a very alive rat, the size of a basketball.*

Now, this rat did not look like Splinter, because that might have been (equally startling, but still) awesome. This rat did not look like Remy, either.

This rat was (ALIVE, meaning not fictional; did I mention? and) huge and grey and just looking up at me like “Oh hey, is this your car? I like it here. In fact I’ve probably been here for days, because see my cozy bed of leaves underneath me? It’s VERY VERY COZY.”

In fact, he looked a bit like this, but bigger, and dirtier, and BIGGER:

That’s when I (surprisingly kept my cool, and) told my dad, “Oh, there’s a huge rat in the car.”

“What, there’s A RAT, you say? In the car?”

“Yep, on the engine,” at which point said Huge Rat (let’s call him…Bernard!) decided he’d had enough of my crazy laughing because he scurried down down down into the depths of my car, but nope, I never saw him dash out from either side of the car, or out the front or back, and in fact, I’m 90% sure Bernard is still cozily sleeping on his bed of leaves atop my apparently very hospitable engine.

Apparently at some point during this fiasco my boss (who was the very last one in the office) had come out to the parking garage and by a small miracle he was also parked on the roof-top level of the garage. He also apparently noticed I was crazy-laughing next to a popped hood and so wandered over to see if I was OK. I was pretty OK. Except for the whole “My car won’t start, and oh yeah, there was a living rat the size of Hungary underneath the hood.”**

“RAT? There was A RAT? Oh, I do not like rats.”

“Well this one actually seems quite nice. I named him Bernard.”

Which of course I didn’t really say, because the moral of this story is that appearing mentally competent in front of the president of the company you work for is somewhat essential, especially when you are about to be offered a ride home.

The secondary moral of this story is that big rats named Bernard, they will pop up in cozy leaf beds whenever you are too cranky.

*I might be exaggerating a little. But I REALLY DON’T THINK SO.

**Definitely exaggerating. MAYBE.

***Updated to add this response via Twitter:

A NEST IN THE ENGINE WITH BABIES? I am so not sleeping tonight.

My friend Sizzle is inspiring for many reasons, not the least of which being her affinity for side-stepping the b.s. and heading straight for the heart of the matter, whatever that matter might be. Some of her recent posts, and her exceedingly brave honesty, were a big part of what inspired this post (along with my friend Angella’s recent Rant, The Second), which is why it’s fitting that a recent tweet of hers also inspired the first vex-worthy point I want to make today.

It was her tweet about obnoxious concert-goers–this one, as it were

–that reminded me that people who attend concerts to a) noisily make-out; b) talk talk talk talk while the person is sing sing sing SINGING; c) get drunk and thus, very loud and slurry; d) any or all of the above, are the worst sort of concert-goers, and in my opinion should be banned from ever walking through the door. Now if only someone would invent the technology to detect douchebag levels. Professor?

Other things that make me angsty/annoyed/other unhappy adjectives that begin with “a”:

• Crab. I can’t even tell you how long I’ve tried to like crab (without you making fun of me), but you know what? I just don’t, at all. In fact, I hate crab. The same applies to lobster, which I think tastes remarkably like crab.

• While we’re on the subject of things that once swam/crawled/floated ashore that I don’t want to put in my mouth, I also cannot stomach crawfish (or crayfish). Just the sight of them makes my skin crawl.

• Delusional people. Especially when their love of fallacy affects me negatively.

• Mini-vans. And before you’re all “Hmph! I DRIVE a mini-van,” I figured some of you might. I don’t hate you, just your preferred mode of transportation, and I promise it’s nothing personal. My own parents owned a mini-van for a large portion of my adolescent life, and while I get the concept, and the need, I just think there are plenty of other options nowadays for Vehicles That Tote without having to revert to the van’s ugly second cousin, the one with the voluptuous back-end.

• People who are all “Hi! We’re friends! I like you!” via DMs, emails, etc. etc. and then when you meet them in person they’re totally too cool for (school, and) you.* I take comfort in the fact that 99.9% of the time these people are the same people who have no idea what’s going on in your life, and really don’t care. I take comfort in that fact because it always throws into stark relief the reality that I (and you too, I’m sure!) have some of the best and most hilarious/supportive/crazy/sexy/cool friends a girl could ever ask for.

• The way problems, especially big ones, don’t fix themselves.

• (Fake) self-deprecating posts that all but beg you to compliment the post author on one skill or another that you’re 99% sure they don’t actually possess.

• My inability to keep my inbox under control on a consistent basis. I try to respond to every email I receive in a timely fashion–whether it’s someone just saying hello, a comment from a post, or a “How are you doing?”–and sometimes I fail miserably. If you’re still waiting for an email from me, weeks and weeks (and omg, months) later, I promise I haven’t forgotten. Unless I did. In which case, please feel free to stone me with some strong-smelling spam. (Just not the email kind; see above.)

• Retweeting a tweet wherein someone compliments you, i.e. MaryMPoppins: RT @FunkyFresh @MarryMPoppins is THE BEST, OMG. (If someone else wants to tweet or retweet about how awesome you are, that’s super flattering. You doing it looks a bit…desperate? Silly? Like you really need everyone to know how OMG, GREAT you are?)

• The way new running shoes cause blisters.

• Requesting I be a fan of you or your blog on Facebook a bazillion and one times. I know you can’t imagine that I a) really don’t care and b) have been hitting “Ignore, ignore, IGNORE” the last zillion times you’ve sent the request, but really? You’re sending it again? REALLY? I’m waiting (im)patiently for Facebook to create an auto-electric shock application for people just like you.

• Property management companies that seem to be comprised solely of snotty hosers who don’t like to read emails, speak in coherent sentences, or actually, you know, DO THEIR JOBS.

• The way you’re be driving along, driving along** and then bam! Your car decides it needs to eat a large chunk of your savings in order to maintain its will to live.

• We’ve been over this, but it bears repeating, and anyway, I liked the idea of starting and ending this post with Twitter screen grabs. (Go go gadget symmetry!)

*They’re not actually too cool for (school, and) you, of course, but they will maintain they are, no matter how uncool/a fool they end up looking.

**Quasi-obscure reference to my second favorite scene in Tommy Boy.

To vent is to release (Aren’t I feeling all philosophical today?)

Well, what do you know? A little bit o’ ranting goes a long way in helping me not want to punch the universe in the ovaries.

Now, for a daily dose of Zen to balance my bulleted rant: Columbia River Gorge(ous)

Have anything you’d like to get off your proverbial chest?

Framed Poodle Wall Art

OK, first of all, I’m pretty sure this is a Paint-By-Number. Secondly, I don’t like poodles. Thirdly, you probably don’t like poodles either. Fourthly, even if I did like poodles, would I want a paint-by-number framed poodle pic adorning a wall in my apartment? Maybe if I were crazy. Or drunk. Or crazy drunk.

Framed Polar Bear Portraits

I actually really do like polar bears. You know, in theory. Which is better than, say, on an icecap, where they could potentially be eating me for supper. Polar bears in suits with pink ties, however? Seem like something my grandmother would buy, if my grandmother were crazy, or drunk. (You can probably see where this is going.)

Deer Ashtray

So, you smoke. I’m not going to judge you for being stoked about putting tar in your lungs on a daily basis, because hi, I come from a long line of smokers. I am, however, going to judge you for buying an ashtray with a ceramic deer sleeping on the side of it, an ashtray with a shape so female-nether-region-related that it looks like it belongs in a Georgia O’Keefe painting. That is, unless you can convince me that the sleeping ceramic doe is a reiminder that, hey! cigarettes kill (deers, too!), and it’s helping you quit. Maybe.

Hawaiian Corset Tube

Never mind that a “Hawaiian Corset Tube” sounds like a piece of pipe for construction purposes; LOOK at that top teeny tiny piece of gaudy fabric, and someone, anyone, please tell me this is a joke? Hidden cameras somewhere? Tim Gunn waiting in the wings to stage an intervention? No? And those pants? I must have missed the fashion memo that showcasing your belly-button is the hot new trend for Fall.

Button Placket Dye Tee

I’m not quite sure what a “placket” even is, but in this case I think they mean “butt-flap, for your chest.” I also think they meant to use “die” instead of “dye,” as in “You will surely die before you ever wear this shirt.” The only potential redeeming quality about the purple placket o’ fug is that placket really opening, thus allowing the man wearing it to show a square of chest hair. If that’s the case, I bet Chuck Norris already has five of these.

Horse Ceramic Planter

This is another one of those items that is (ceramic, ick! and) maybe supposed to be ironic in some way, though I’m clearly missing the joke. I like horses as much as the next gal (I actually used to collect them when I was younger, statues and equestrian-themed things, not actually horses), but a ceramic horse-head planter is more “creepy” and less “I just really love horses!” The moral of the story? PLEASE, just say naayyy* to animal-themed ceramic planters.

* Neigh, the sound a horse makees! Get it? OK, I’m done now, I promise.

“Wait, so you have a BBQ; when did you get a BBQ?”

“Um, I didn’t. Why?”

“You didn’t make spare ribs on the 4th of July?”

Laughing, a lot. “Nope. I ate fish with Cayly and Eric, remember?”

“Well, yeah, I thought that’s what you said, but then I went to your site to check in and see if you posted anything new and you were talking about getting stung four times by a bee, and I was all, ‘Why didn’t she tell me THAT?’ And then I saw the thing about BBQ-ing spare ribs and I was really confused.”

“Hmmm, you went to kerrianne.COM, didn’t you?”

“Well, I don’t know! I just typed in ‘kerrianne’ and it usually just takes me straight there.”

“Yep, you were totally on the dot com site. I see her BBQ post.”

“I saw that and I was totally impressed with you. Look at Kerri, BBQ-ing spare ribs!”

More laughing. “So wait, the picture of Not Me in the header didn’t tip you off that maybe it wasn’t my site?”

“Well, I thought that was a little strange, yes. But, there isn’t anyone else who spells their name like you!”

“Actually, there totally is. She’s one of the other K-E-R-R-I Annes, and then there’s an Australian talk show host, too.”

“Well, don’t give me her site, because clearly I’m already way too internet confused.”

20 minutes later. “I’m so glad you weren’t stung by a bee four times.”

“I love you Mom.”

One of my favorite sections of the guide was the “Cheers and Jeers” section, wherein some highfalutin critics of One Thing Or Another would give the proverbial thumbs up! or thumbs down to various television programming and miscellaneous t.v.-related et cetera.

All of that to (take a quick walk down T.V. Guide memory lane, and) say this post is sort of like that, only not written by any highfalutin critics but instead by (you guessed it!) me.

Cheers:

• Acupuncture kicking my headaches’ asses like nothing else has ever threatened to. I’ve had two! (fantastic) sessions in the past two weeks and I have one slated for next Friday. (More on the actual experience and what I think of it soon and very soon, after I brush up on my Eastern Medicine vocab so that I don’t sound like a total idiot.)

• Eating super healthy four days in a row, after which I swear I am craving more! good! food! yes, please!

• On a related aside: I could eat probably eat some semblance of seafood every day for the rest of my life and be a very happy camper while doing it. Perhaps I need to move closer to the ocean, so that one day some young lad can write a book about how I almost caught the biggest fish of my life, but by the time I got it back to the shore there was basically nothing left of my big beautiful fish, because I had trekked too far and was too greedy and prideful for my own good, you see, and isn’t that (situationally) ironic? The young lad could call it The Old Kerri And The Sea.

• My new(ish) assistant who is smart, artistic, loves The Office,  and cracks jokes as much as I do. I hit the coworker jackpot and I’m loving it. (Not the way McDonald’s is “loving it,” because hi, that jingle annoys the Big Macs out of me.)

Jeers:

• Elevators. I know, right? But if you hate elevators as much as I do, you totally know what I’m talking about. I cannot stand them. I hate being in them, hate how smelly and cramped and typically too warm they are, and I hate how every time I get in one me and my elevator companions are seemingly destined to ride down every single floor until finally, two decades and my abandoned sanity later, we arrive at the bottom. Or the top, as it were. (Oh, and hi! hyperbole, but I couldn’t think of a more accurate way to describe my hatred of the large box that shuttles germy people from one floor to another while encouraging them to touch everything and cough on other people.)  And taking the elevator ONE floor? Unless you are physically handicapped, I’m sorry, but I probably just gave you the stink eye.

• Elevator conversation. See above. See also: If there’s one thing I hate more than elevators it’s meaningless small talk. Being genuinely friendly to strangers? Totally awesome, and I love that sort of thing. Talking because you can’t stand to stand in silence for x number of floors, or because you feel like you have to tell me you aren’t feeling well (great!) while you’re standing there coughing, cradling a box of Kleenex in your arms? I would totally vote you off the island. You know, if Survivor rules were a standing premise of daily life.

• The one co-worker I have who I swear is Debbie Downer reincarnated. I’m still waiting for the day I say “Good morning! How are you?” and she doesn’t say something completely negative back to me. I’m not holding my breath. I am trying not to laugh every single time her response wah-wahs me. (If you have never seen that SNL skit you probably can’t picture that “wah-wah” noise, but suffice it to say (you should youtube it because) it’s mostly hilarious.)

• The creepy mannequins who appear to be Old Navy’s go-to advertising gimmick for the Spring season. Memo to Old Navy: they scare EVERYONE. And not in an “Ooh, yikes! I’m so scared I want to run out and buy a hoodie or twelve!” sort of way. More in an, “Um. Did the mannequin’s fingers just break off mid-mannequin-wedding proposal; that’s really creepy!” sort of way.

*Randomly, I called my grandmother over my lunch break to say hello and make sure she was wearing her green, and at some point in the conversation while we were joking about vacations and her inability to take them she said, “You know me, Kerri. I can’t read a book. I mean, the second I would go to sit down with one I would think of twenty things that needed dusting.” And that, in one sentence, is my grandmother. I miss her like a crazy.

** Post title is from one of my favorite movies, and yours, too: 10 Things I Hate About You.

Care to share your Cheers & Jeers?