DCA-JFK-SNN-BOS-DFW-IAD-EVE

Well hello there, strangers! So, I have some good news and I have some bad news. And then I have some more good news! But then I have some more bad news. And then I keep going back and forth between even more good and bad news for a while, but I'm pretty sure I end on good news, so I'm going to chalk this up to a win for both of us.

Good news: I'm back!

Bad news: But I'm not pregnant and I'm still painfully STD-free. LAAAAAAAAME.

Good news: But I did fall in love. Twice.

Bad news: The first time was with a 40-year-old tour boat captain and the other was with a Trinity student who told time by looking at the sun. Seems about right.

Good news: What are you doing this Thursday night? Trying to hang out with me and Tulane Chris? Awesome. Because we're both panelists at ihatemy9to5.com's "Behind the Blog" event at Affinity Lab on U Street, 7 - 9pm. If you're in the area, you should totally swing by and watch us drink ourselves into being socially outgoing enough to participate in a "candid conversation" about what it's like to live your life online. That's right guys. SHIT'S GONNA GET RULL CANDID, RULL FAST. Be there.

Bad news: Chris keeps asking me if we're supposed to have anything prepared for the panel and I keep telling him no, but between you and me—shit if I know. So if for nothing else, you should come watch us hand a microphone back and forth between us as we awkwardly shift our eyes around the room and play a few live rounds of Trapped in a Box for 29 Hours. And then we can all get drunk(er) together. K SEE YOU THEN!

Good news: My parents are staying in Ireland for the rest of the month, so I'll be house/catsitting (or "taking care of my little sister," as they call it) for them, which should provide plenty of Evie-based hinjinx.

Bad news: STAYING HERE ALONE AT NIGHT IS TERRIFYING. Absolutely terrifying. I'm more than aware that this is the house that I grew up in and I slept here every night for roughly 18 years, but it is a ghost of a different color when you're here alone. Because its big and there's windows and mirrors everywhere and I keep expecting to look up and see someone's face and things creak and OH, YOU KNOW, the guest room across from mine contains the ashes of 1 human being, 3 cats and a poodle. Plus I'm going to have to put an entire symphony's worth of sleigh bells on that damn cat because she keeps creeping around the house like a silent little spooker, jumping up on me when I least expect it. Christ.

Example: One of my (many) little quirks is that I can't sleep in a bed that faces a door. Why? Because if I do, I stare at it all night expecting someone to dramatically bust in and kill me at any second. It makes no sense, it's kind of crazy, Go see a therapist, I already am, Well it's clearly not working, blah blah blah, whatever. A few months ago, my parents turned my room into another guest room and guess where they relocated my bed? Directly across from the door. Ah Jeez...I could always sleep next door in Becca's old room but there are two twin beds in there and there's no way in hell I'm closing my eyes only to open them and see a ghost laying in the bed next to mine. I could sleep in my parent's room but not only is their bed located across from the door; it's a glass door at the top of a staircase. And FUCK. THAT. WHITE. NOISE. I would stay up all night, scared to close my eyes because if I opened them I would obviously see someone creeping up the stairs with a knife ready to kill me. (I'm completely aware of how insane and paranoid I sound right now, by the way. Just go with it.) I could sleep in the basement. If I had a death wish. Or there's always the guest room. You know, GHOST OF GRANDPA PAST AND POODLES, guest room. So, clearly, the Ikea-ed shell of my old room is going to have to do.

I legitimately had to psych myself up to go to sleep last night. I kept the hall light on and my door opened a crack because that way if someone were to creep down the hall to kill me, I'd be able to hear them coming more than if the door were shut. (And don't even suggest I close and lock my door. Because if there's someone hiding in my closet, trying to unlock that thing to run out of my room would take precious seconds that I may or may not have.) (Bat shit crazy; I'm aware.)

As I laid on my stomach in bed with my head turned towards the wall, I reassured myself that everything was OK, that I was being ridiculous and I should just go to sleep. Now, what I didn't know at the time was that all .4 micropounds of Yevette McBlogger had just crept in, jumped up on the side of the bed that I wasn't facing and was patiently waiting for me to lift up the blankets so she could climb under and hunker down for the night, as she likes to do in my parents bed. I didn't hear her jump up because my fan was on and I didn't feel her because she weighs as much as a moderately sized ear of corn and thus doesn't even make a dent in the mattress. So imagine my surprise when Evie, tired of waiting for me to notice her, decided to firmly place a paw on the small of my back to get my attention.

...I'm not saying that I wet my childhood bed last night at the age of 25-years-old, but I'm also not not saying that I wet my childhood bed last night at the age of 25-years-old.

Good news: FREE LAUNDRY UP IN THIS PIECE!

Bad news: Now I'm going to make you look at my vacation photos from Ireland.

Worse news: And they're not the good ones I took on my digital camera either; they're the random shitty ones I took with my iphone. YOU'RE WELCOME!

The McBlogger Family Vacation in Ireland: Sheepies, Bunnies, Ebony & Ivory.

I saw this shirt at Urban Outfitters the day before we left, took a picture, texted it to Becca, Alex and Geoff and threatened to wear it everyday in Ireland, only to find that they were oddly supportive. Damn them for calling my bluff.

Alex and I had a later flight to JFK than everyone else, so Geoff sent me a text at 11am bragging about how they were already drinking at the airport with this attached:

So, I reminded him it was 11am, perhaps accused him of having a drinking problem and attached a photo of what I was drinking at the time:

Then when Alex and I got to the airport, we sent this, thinking we'd won the war:

But then our flight to JFK was delayed two hours and Geoff sent this picture of everyone already there, drinking and having a good time:

Damn him. Remember when I wrote that Queer Abby answer about not trying to break up your sibling's relationship...?

During our delay I read in US Weekly that Ian Ziering got remarried. Sucks for Helena.

Then I accidentally took a screenshot of my phone.

That's Jafari, who's pretty much the best flight attendant in the history of flight attendants. When we were stuck on the runway for 900 years, he got on the mic and was like, "WELP, IT'S FIVE O'CLOCK SOMEWHERE!" and threw booze and granola bars at us.

Alex was Ghost Train Excited at being able to drink during take-off.

I realize that this is the most country thing to get excited about, but Becca and Geoff's rental car had like, an obscenely large sunroof. So I took a picture of it. WHATEVER, Alex has his ghost trains and take-off drinks, I have my novelty-sized sunroofs. We get our kicks where we can.

A pub in Kenmare.

Back at our house, view of the water.

Hangin' out on the dock. We saw otters and swans and fish and crabs and NATUUUUURE, Goulet.

Low tide. Which I asked my dad to explain and everyone scoffed all, "OH MEG, she's so simple," but nobody could explain beyond, "it has something to do with the moon." Well, thank you. Thank you for your abstract answer.

An ice cream shop called "Bia Bia." Which was endlessly funny to me and my sister. Why? It has something to do with the moon. And Lil Jon.

CAPTAIN ROSS' SEAFARI!!!!!1 The main attraction was supposed to be the seals but it ended up being Captain Ross.

That's a picture of Captain Ross from 10 years ago when he was on top of his Seafari game. Now he mostly just chain smokes, zones out and sings "On the Good Ship Lollipop." I, obviously, fell in love.

Alex taking a rum-coffee break on the Seafari. Note the courtesy poncho that he grew oddly attached to.

In a pub watching The World Cup. That guy was absurdly attractive.

Motion blur is such a cockblock...

IT GETS DARKER LATER THERE BECAUSE WE'RE SO FAR NORTH! WEIRD! Quote my sister, "9:30 at night and it's broad-ass daylight." That and big 'ole sunroofs. EUROPE SHO IS WACKY!!!!

Earlier that day, I had read Tulane Chris' post about his middle school experience a

nd how he ate a lot of chicken hamburgers, and later when we were out a-pub-crawlin', I became obsessed with eating an old-school chicken hamburger. Like, I wouldn't shut up about it. Then at the last pub of the night, I was like, "OH MY GAWD, I WANT TO MAKE LOVE TO AN OLD-SCHOOL CHICKEN HAMBURGER! LIFE IS UNFAIR!" and Geoff was like, "Well it's on the menu, get it," and I lost my shit. Ordered it. Took a picture. And date raped it. (This is the most asinine story I've ever told. I apologize.)

Becca, Geoff, Alex and I spent a mini-cation in Dublin and that, my friends, is James, our student tour guide at Trinity.

By the end of the tour, we were all swooning over James. Geoff included, frankly. I mean, look at him. How could you not fall in love? What with his little Ray Ban Wayfarers and Harry Potter robe. Plus before the tour started, he sensibly put on a sun screen and when someone asked him how long it would be before the tour started, he looked up in the sky and said, "ummm, about six minutes." Which we all interpreted as him telling shockingly accurate time by the position of the sun until we realized he was looking at a clock on the building behind us. I'd like to think that he still tells time via sun position though. God bless him. God bless his charismatic heart.

View from the Gravity Bar at the Guinness factory.

Nom nom nom.

Alex wants you to mug him.

I caught my sister taking a picture of this sign and was like, "what's up?" "It's just too good," she said, "Balls. Beaver. Nutgrove." Touché, madam.

Proving that I took pictures of things besides dat dem der funny signs.

Facade of the church where Bram Stoker got married.

Victorian wing of former jail, Kilmainham Gaol.

Peeking inside at the mural in Grace Gifford Plunkett's cell.

Front balcony where a lot of public hangings took place. Maybe if I weren't such a morbid fuck I wouldn't stay up at night worried about murderers? Yes? No? Hangings? Yes.

In St. Stephen's Green.

This woman was 50. 50-years-old. And she likes to kick, stretch and wear absurdly short, red mini-skirts around the quaint village of Kenmare.

The boat that took us to Skelling Michael; a remote island an hour off of the coast of Kerry that's covered in puffins and has a monastery at the very top. This boat is my best friend because it didn't make me puke.

It was unseasonably dry, sunny and 65-degrees during our entire vacation. One might say it was the luck of the Irish. (SEE?! SEE WHAT I DID THERE?!?!?!)

Truckin' out to Skelling Michael.

Skelling Michael. Which my debilitating fear of heights cockblocked me from climbing to the top of. I opted to befriend the puffins and a landscaper named Patrick (who I understood 34% of what he was said and didn't smell "awesome") instead.

Yeah. No.

Puffins and other sea birds kickin' it on the ledges. Vomit.

PUFFIN!!!!

PUFFINS!!!!

I cropped myself out, but I took this picture of me holding Evie to email to my parents all, "Home from Dallas, gave Evie a hug for you," and I appreciate how after a week of only occasional visits from the neighbors she's like, "REGULAR HUMAN INTERACTION (even if it is with Meg...) YES AND PLEASE."

I miss traveling, but I'm glad to be back! Hope all is well with you guys!

Drinking Game Friday Needs a Drink. Or Five.

Last spring, I went to visit a friend in San Francisco, and we took a day to go tour the wine country. We stayed with a friend-of-a-friend, who dropped us in town around noon and picked us up after she was done with work. “Hey, guys, did you get in a couple of wineries?” “Buh, tuh. EIGHT.” We then asked for a ride to the store to get beer. When we sobered up, we realized that we’d made her uncomfortable. She thought we had Gone Too Far, and that we were on the verge of Having A Problem. Bah. We’re just from the South. Drinking is like sex and ice-skating. Done well, you have an awe-inspiring result; done poorly, you’re sore and an object of scorn. So in the spirit of Ladies and gentlemen, Self-Referential Entertainment Presents: The Problem Drinking Drinking Game! Drink when/if: - You’ve made a conversion chart that shows, for each hour of the day, a world city in which it is already five o’clock. - If someone has ever confronted you about drinking in the day, and you’ve mumbled something about daylight savings time. - Your trash bags clank as you put them by the curb. - You’ve started tailgating for sports with a very limited local following, such as jai alai or women’s darts. - “I’m not drinking. This is just beer.” - At your house, every dessert has brandy poured over it. They are never lit. - “You call this a Seven and Seven? This is an eleven and three at best.” - You get drunk to make everyday tasks easier. I once paid my bills drunk, and when I got the canceled check back I found that on the memo line of my check to the gas company, I had written, “for Grace and Beauty.” - You’ve ever gotten drunk while sick with the reasoning “alcohol kills germs.” - Wine savers mystify you, because who doesn’t finish their wine? - You have a bottle in the trunk of your car “for emergencies” that is significantly more accessible than the spare tire. - “We could divide this into actual Jell-O shots, or we could just refrigerate the whole bowl and eat it with a spoon.” - “Pshh. He’s 21 in dog years.” - “No, it’s more efficient to put the Kool-Aid mix directly in the vodka. Then you can just stir it up.” - You beef up softer drinks, like mimosas, with a shot of vodka. (Ex Co-Blogger Eddie does this and it’s delicious and effective.) - Mosquitos bite you, take a few uncertain steps, and fall to the ground. - “I find that if I swallow the mouthwash I lay down a good base buzz for the morning." - This happens: Meg returns Monday! Have a great weekend everyone!

Thoughts I Couldn't Flesh Out Into Full Entries, With Only One Mention of Retardation (Two If You Count This One In The Title)

“Retarded”: So apparently “retarded” is the new word that absolutely must not be said. Never let it be said that blogging doesn’t teach you new things. I want to offer this little tale as a partial explanation for my wildly unpopular remarks: My parents were very big on that grey zone between kindness and abuse called “Christian charity.” This often took the form of making me play with the weirdest kids they could find, since these kids usually didn’t have any friends and it was “a kind thing to do.” Now, I got in trouble in pre-school, not once but several times, for claiming to have been abducted by aliens, so the kids that out-weirded me were generally straight-up moon units. And since most of my friendships were parent-mandated ones with weird kids, no one else wanted to be my friend, so it was all a big vicious cycle of having to hang out with the kid who stripped naked and put a surgical mask over his genitals and referred to himself as “Dr. Dick.” Anyway. This pattern reached its most dramatic moment when I was about eight. A very peripheral acquaintance of my mother’s was dying, and her husband asked us to watch “the kids” while he made funeral arrangements. Well, it turned out that the “kids” were twenty-year-old, severely retarded developmentally disabled dwarves. (And before you start with “little people,” these people had a condition called “dwarfism.”) So of course Mom takes us all to Long John Silver’s, where the “kids” proceed to get up, run around, and scream. I was such a shy child that I would literally rather have been struck than involved in a scene, and there I was with a fat lady chasing dwarves around a seafood restaurant. (Tulane Chris: A Life. Written by Groucho Marx, directed by Salvador Dali.) Somehow we got them home, where I was treated to one of the most ringing sentences ever crafted in English: “Chris, I need to you watch him and be sure he doesn’t run into the street while I change her menstrual pad.” “Watch” quickly devolved into “restrain.” Child vs. dwarf: watch for it on ESPN. So before you call me an “ableist” and cry, as one man did, know that as a mere child I sacrificed most of my sanity, all of my dignity, and a good deal of my physical comfort to keep someone with special needs from running out into the street.

King of Vegetables: A restaurant down the street has announced its annual tribute to “the King of Vegetables – White Asparagus.” I’m curious if white asparagus is always king, or if every year the crown is passed to a new vegetable. If for any reason White Asparagus is unable to perform its duties, will a runner-up vegetable – say, squash – be called upon? Also – annual tribute? If we don’t appease white asparagus with a menu featuring it each year, will its rage be unleashed?

Wine talk: I bought a bottle of wine for six dollars, including Pennsylvania sin-tax mark-up. This is what it says on the back: “When a fisherman has an especially good catch, it is said that they have the Fish Eye. They seem to have a sixth sense about where the fish are and what will attract their attention. Hopefully our Shiraz will attract yours. This hearty red makes a huge splash displaying aromas and flavors of ripe berries, spice and a lush finish. Watch out! This wine jumps out of your glass!” Nothing says quality wine like the fish eye, and any wine jumps out of the glass if you drink enough of it. What’s on the cheaper wine labels? “Garbage disposals are a convenient and modern addition to the American kitchen. Dispose-All Pinot Noir grinds up flavors of cherry, tannins, and coffee grounds to create a wine that goes right down the hatch!”

Superpowers: Can you imagine raising children, one of whom has superpowers?

“Bridget, take out the trash.”

“Can’t Jean do it? She’s omnipotent.”

“MOOOOOOM! Sue went invisible during hide and seek again!”

Scat Porn Movie Titles:

Void Where Prohibited Reporting for Doody
Doody Calls

Poops: I Did It Again

Shit Happens

Misty Water-Colored Memories: I could only remember one of the classes I took my last semester of college when Dad asked me last week, but I know the name of every actor on “Gilligan’s Island.” I decided, on some primal level, that a topic I spent months actually studying is less likely to come in handy than knowing that the actress who played the Millionaire’s Wife was named Natalie Schaeffer, and that she once guest-starred on “I Love Lucy” as a charm-school instructress.

No Offense: So, a while ago, someone commented on the blog something to the effect of “I like Tulane Chris now that he’s a regular writer, but – no offense – I hated his guest-writing stints and complained about them to my friends.” Fair enough. I hadn’t written regularly for a year or two when I started doing guest posts, and I was rusty. Also, sometimes posts just don’t come out right, like the time I tried to make Christmas cookies and left out cream of tartar with the reasoning that if I didn’t know what it was, it didn’t matter. (As it turns out, cream of tartar forms on the inside of barrels in which white wine is being aged, and it does something to eggs that makes them bind the cookies, so that – let’s just say for example – they don’t run together and form an inedible quarter-inch-thick sheet cake.) So you know, whatever. I’ve apparently won her over in the interim, which is nice. But… “no offense?” I wouldn’t have been offended if she hadn’t said “no offense,” but that phrase itself offends me. It’s supposed to be a talisman that keeps people from being mad at you, no matter what you do – ‘cause hey, no offense! “No offense, honey, but I slept with your brother.” Gun a man down in the street, provided that with every round, you shout “No offense, but die, motherfucker!” Paint “no offense” on bombs and drop them out of a plane named Sorr About The Bang. It’s cool! No offense.

Meggles: If you have time, please put up one of those maps of Nazi Germany’s expansion – the kind with all the arrows coming out of the swastika – with NO OFFENSE! written across the bottom.

Tulane Chris: I've been googling every combination of "map," "Nazi," "World War II," and "arrows" possible for the past 15 minutes and I have no idea what you're talking about. So here's a picture of Rolf from The Sound of Music instead:


NO OFFFENSE!!!!!!!1

Yang out the Ying-Yang: Every night, I look at the sky and I think about how Kevin Yang is under the same moon.