Real Genius

Apparently, when you cut wheat out of your diet, you have to think about it all the time. Because as soon as you stop thinking about it, YOU WILL EAT WHEAT. It's in everything, including the soy sauce at the sushi restaurant I went to in order to not eat wheat. It's also in beer, which would seem self-explanatory but I let's just say I can be a little slow on the uptake when it involves not drinking a pint of pale ale. Wheat is also in Newman-O's: Snack of the Gods, which I already knew, except that the other day when I got to work around 8:30 a.m. I was technically still asleep and not thinking coherently, so when I noticed that someone had left a half-eaten bag of Newman-O's on my desk I started shoveling them into my mouth as quickly as possible before they were taken away from me. That's what I do in the morning. I shovel wheat. While sleepwalking. At work. And it took not eating wheat for me to realize that I had a problem.

Suffice it to say that my wheat-free experiment has been aborted due to lack of information and self-control, and will not be revisited until further research is conducted. And by conducting research I mean bathing in walnut sourdough bread with two sticks of butter and a Guinness.

Belly laughs or chuckles, depending on your sense of humor

Because you're my friend and I care about you, I think this is something you might enjoy.

Or this.

Enjoy the full collection here.

You're quite welcome.

(oops, their bandwidth is tapped, but the videos are also up on YouTube).

Definitely not a policewoman, think of those scratchy polyester uniforms

I remember the last time I uttered the phrase "I want to do x when I grow up" (where x=something amazing). I was in my 20s and out of college, working in a job that fit within my broadcasting degree options. By most accounts, I was already successful. As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I felt ridiculous.

Except that I've never really felt like a grownup. Maybe that's because the older we get, the more we feel we have to achieve in order to not be stagnant. In terms of success, the sky's the limit, so I'll always have a long way to go.

I'm also a very different person than I was at 18, when choosing a major had more to do with a creative, engaging course load and less to do with how I might spend the rest of my life. I was on financial aid in college, so money was this exotic thing I didn't have and didn't really obsess over. I also never considered that the rather limiting television market would made it hard for me to just live anywhere, especially since I was graduating into a top market already (at the time, San Francisco ranked #5, behind New York, LA, Chicago, and Philadelphia. Dallas/Ft. Worth has since pushed us to #6). Did I want to move to one of the top 4 markets once I exhausted my options in San Francisco? I had no idea. I was just happy to be out of Sebastopol. Of course, now that the video landscape is changing so rapidly, I have a whole new set of rules to consider.

I think lots of people go through a similar "what does it all mean" period around the time they hit 30, which is right about when you have to stop claiming that you aren't a grownup yet. It's not that I don't like my career or that I feel unfulfilled, it's more of a "wow, I could have been a veterinarian" type of wistfulness. Sure, I could still do that, but I probably won't. Mentally I've missed my window.

But then I think about my dad, who, as a result of never getting a college degreee, suffered through a string of crappy jobs throughout my childhood. Eventually he couldn't take it anymore, so at age 45 he went back to school. And graduated with honors. And then became an elementary school teacher and really really loved his job. I'm sure he wished that he had taken the plunge 20 years earlier, but at least he was finally happy. In that sense, it's never too late.

Personally, I don't fantasize about teaching fractions to fourth graders, but there are a few careers I wouldn't mind pursuing somewhere down the road, such as:

1. Geographical Linguist
2. Travel Photographer
3. Tea Shop Owner
4. Acupuncturist
5. Cat Whisperer

What about you? Kind of a fun exercise.

No Seriously, Message Boards Are Fun and Useful Places On Which To Share Knowledge and Information

Thanks, dooce. (Probably NSFW, unless of course you work at an internet startup)
 

Keywords Are Like a Box of Chocolate...

Sometimes when I've run out of other things to do, I comb through my Google Analytics stats. Which are consistently both eye-opening and confounding. 

For example, anyone who types in "sarah lane", "sara lane", "shara lane", and various forms of "xp hacks" will eventually reach this blog. But in the past 30 days, a modest number of surfers also found me using the following specific search terms:

• "sarah lane fired" - 61
• "ooooooh" - 38
• "scotch" - 37
• "catfight haven" - 33
• "jennifer schwalbach smith playboy" - 33
• "tunok tunok" - 22
• "the word hi" - 21
• "phun girls" - 20
• "download geico caveman commercial" - 18

I'd attempt to make sense of it all, but where's the fun in that? Oh, and in case you were wondering, Jennifer Schwalbach Smith is director Kevin Smith's wife. Which explains so much.