Two things

First thing: not a lot is going on here. I've moved "permanently" (ahahahahaha, yeah, like that will ever be true) back to college town, which is thankfully only an hour away from grad school town. Yes, that's right -- ALB is again pursuing higher education at the expense of The Man. Stay tuned this August to see how bad I can eff up classes and my promised job as a graduate assistant.

But til then, it's pretty much reading, hanging out, and scouring Craigslist for job postings. Fortunately I've been able to see some friends who have either stayed here or are passing through. While I do love catching up with recent news in my friends' lives, I have to admit my favorite part of almost any reunion is remembering old times. Particularly terrible times. As someone once said, "Comedy is tragedy plus time," and at no time is this more apparent than when I find myself sipping overpriced tea in a hipster coffeehouse while reminiscing how I once lived on peanut butter for three months.

This experience made me realize a few important things. One, that no matter what terrible things happen to me, if I can make it into a story that makes people laugh/cry/recoil in horror (or see the potential for such a story), it never seems as bad. And two, that I have a huge backlog of these occurrences that have never made it into blogs, letters, or even conversation. In other words...

I have a lot of horrible stories that I've never told you.

...

That suddenly strikes me as a terrible phrase to drop on someone. For example, please imagine this in the context of my wedding night.  I'm standing on a moonlit balcony overlooking the ocean when my new husband (you may know him as Mark Knopfler) emerges from our suite and embraces me passionately under the stars. "Oh, darling," he whispers, "I can't wait to start our new life together. Loving one another, sharing everything..."

I lift my face from the embroidered placket of his cowboy shirt to gaze deeply into his eyes.

"Speaking of sharing... I have a lot of horrible stories that I've never told you."

...

Yes, even in my secret dreams of rock star matrimony, I can't picture myself not creeping someone out.

Regardless, I'm planning on digging deep into the convoluted, poorly ventilated archives of my mind to dredge out stories that will further illustrate why this blog is named what it is. Maybe a series: Awesomely Bad Story of the Week. Or Day. I really don't have a lot going on here. We'll see.

Anyway, on to thing two. In the process of moving, I came to the realization that I have a lot of books, probably way more than other people with the exception of Talmudic scholars and professors.  And in the process of packing, something else hit me: this stuff weighs a ton. I suddenly  needed to justify to myself (and others) the time and headache incurred by dragging these things cross-country.

How did anyone think I could get along without my books? Didn't they know writers need tons of books? In short, no. No one thinks I'm a writer, and after .5 seconds of introspection I had to come to that conclusion as well. If I were a published writer, people would know I'd rather lose a limb than my books. Or, as is more likely, I'd never be faced with this dilemma because I'd be a wealthy and respected member of the literati, amirite? Not even a little.

I also had to justify the contents of my book collection: I'm not hoarding the works of Shakespeare here. To be honest, at least ten pounds of my book collection is Babysitters Club, which they can have when they pry the regular series, Mysteries, and Super Specials from my cold, dead fingers. A LOT of it is '90s era young adult books (Beverly Cleary, Jerry Spinelli, etc.). And a substantial portion is books that I keep because I know they're terrible and dated -- '80s kids' books with lots of rad slang and bitchin' fashion, as well as old textbooks with no sense of shame or being P.C.

To sum up, I need to justify owning tons of books with little literary merit ("Trust me, I'm a writer!"), and I need to do it through writing ("No, really, look at this thing I wrote!"). You know what that means, right?

New blog.