Listen up, I have like a ton of work. For a while there I thought they were tapering off my workload and that they wanted to fire me. Unfortunately, or I guess you could say fortunately, like many things, it was all in my head. They have now loaded me up like a baked potato at Outback.

Anyway, this means that I need a lot of good tunes to help me pump out my jammin’ words. Now I’ve known about Pandora for quite some time, but never really taken advantage of its goodness til now. I DON’T KNOW WHAT I WAS WAITING FOR.

If for some odd reason you’re not hip with Pandora Radio, it’s basically a website where you can go and create “radio stations” based on either an artist or a song you like. You can give songs thumbs up or a thumbs down, and then based on what you SAY you like, they give you more songs with similar qualities. Oh yes, and it’s all free.

Sometimes it’s creepy how well they pick out songs for me. Like they’ve been spying on me my whole life and know that I have a special bond with all Motown classics. And that when I was 9 I got a box set of Motown’s greatest hits CD’s and that listening to Rick James, “Give it to me baby” reminds me of my fifth grade President self dancing around my sunflower room eating Dunkaroo’s I had stolen from the fridge even though I was supposed to be on my Jenny Craig diet. Sometimes I actually say to the screen, “Pandora! How do you do it!?”

Right now my FAVORITES are my “Prince” radio station, oh I love it so much. And my “September” station, September as in Earth, Wind & Fire. I cannot sit still at my desk. I would say half of my time is spent dancing/trying to work and the other half with actual work once I have suffciently gotten my groove out. But sometimes Pandora uses her powers for evil. I have a “Mountain Goats” radio station that I love, but with it Pandora beams over just the right songs to send me into a depressed self-indulgent slump where I sit staring at my computer forlornly questioning my existence. It’s rough.

Anyway, please share you Pandora Radio favorites so I can make it through this week. This WEEK OF LOVE!!! LOVE SWEET LOVE!

I love you all. Almost as much as I love Rick James.

xoxo

Alison

For all my talk of love, acceptance, and blah blah blah, I’m really pretty snotty about a few things. As my friend Tara LOUDLY pointed out last night, I’m snotty about people not trying to learn names, THANKS TARA! I’m also pretty snotty about people who can’t keep up with my pace of conversation (meaning non-linear thought and incomplete sentences, DUH! Like who can’t follow that!?) I mean, I’m not snotty intentionally. I just have a hard time being patient. So maybe I’m a bit of a princess. In fact, three different ex-boyfriends at one point in our relationships gave me “Princess” paraphernalia. THREE OF THEM. This is when it occurred to me that they might have a point. One of them went as far as to drive through Burger King so he could put a paper crown on my head when he came to pick me up for a date. (It was well deserved.)

In the past I have also been very snotty about another thing. A thing which I still believe deserves a great deal of snotty flung all over it, but I have decided it is time to come clean. And no it’s not Facebook, I’m still snotty about that.

It’s, deep breath, AMERICAN IDOL.

Ok listen. I hate American Idol. I think it’s ridiculous how it is on two nights in a row. TWO NIGHTS? Seriously. And it’s only because enough media buyers will shove millions and millions of advertising dollars at the show. I really hate how they exploit crappy singers for the sake of ratings. Because I don’t like to watch crappy singers, it makes me uncomfortable and stressed out, I just want them to accomplish their dreams! That’s all I want, not for them to get ripped a new one by Simon. Even though I don’t hate Simon for being honest.

Anyway. I successfully avoided American Idol’s siren call for years. I can’t even name an American Idol except Kelly Clarkson. (SINCE YOU’VE BEEN GONE!!!) When I stooped to watching the show I would just get too annoyed at how they hashed, and rehashed every little detail over and over and over. Snotty little Princess Alison just didn’t have the patience for it. Plus it’s TV. TV is for mushy heads right? (Or at least that’s what you think before you get married…)

But last year all of this changed. Eric and I were at my parent’s house for, well it must have been our wedding, ha! And my parents, my little brother, my big brother, they were all SO INTO AMERICAN IDOL! They made us watch it with them. I didn’t really want to but, I was in love, skinny, blonde, and soon to be having sex, so I guess I was in a pretty good mood, and I relinquished. I don’t know if it was the little love bug in my tummy or what, but I started getting really into the different contestants, and I became actually interested in whether they failed or succeeded.

Eric and I finished watching the rest of the season, and I, well, I even voted a couple of times. I KNOW! THE SHAME. But I wanted to put in my two cents! COOK! COOK!

This year as the new season began, well I couldn’t help it. I started watching. I didn’t want to, the snotty Alison tried to stop me, but the corporate I need to rest my brain after a day of slaving for the man and reading design blogs Alison, was just too powerful. This week I hit an all time low by watching both the Tuesday and the Wednesday night episodes. But that doesn’t mean I don’t plan on doing it again!

Anyway, it still really bothers me that they focus on the drama too much and not enough on people actually singing, and I’m not totally sold on the new judge, but those American Idol bastards did their damnedest to reel this girl in, and they’ve done it hook, line and sinker. But I do feel a lot better for getting this off my chest.

I hope you have a wonderful weekend and remember, the next time someone offers you a tempting puff of reality television, JUST SAY NO.

Valentine’s Day is my FAVORITE holiday! DUH! It’s all about LOVE LOVE LOVE. Even when I didn’t have a sweetheart I loved V-day for a good chance to eat a lot of crap, whine, and tell my girlfriends how pretty they are. There is always love to be shared people!

So if you’re a Valentine’s Day naysayer, buck up and grab yourself some See’s. We’re gonna have some fun.

To start the festivities off let’s look at some pictures of young love. My little brother and his totally adorable girlfriend (they broke up for a bit, and I’m really glad they are back together!) just went to Winter Ball. I think that’s what it was. Blake, the brother, who is 17 and the cutest brother the he world, was so excited because he got this, “sweet vintage suit!”

I just love high school dance pictures, and I thought you might too. So here is Blake and Taylor looking sooo good. Be sure to notice Blake’s hot orange cast. Oh high school!

And now for something even better. And what could be better than my little brother making that bunghole face? The fact that when my mom sent my Aunt Diane (her sister) these pictures, clucking hens that they are, my aunt sent back this picture of her and her date from 1978.

Isn’t that too good to be true!!! The tux is almost dead on! And please, please look at that wood paneling and the painting. God bless 1978.

If you weren’t excited for Valentine’s day before, I can only imagine you’re chomping at the bit now.

Why are dance pictures SO GOOD!? I think it’s because no matter how comfortable you were with your date (and I was never comfortable with my date) there is still this unbelievably thick layer of awkward around everything you are doing.

Ok. I hope you can put that in your Valentine’s day bong and toke it. And if for some reason you have access to some of your old dance pictures, please, please send them my way. I’m serious. I LOVE YOUNG LOVE, you know, before you realize the pain and horror that is to come.

And on that note, I love you all!

xoxo,

Alison

My husband

Does all the dishes after I leave for work because he knows when I come home for lunch it will make me happy if the dishes are done. (We don’t have a dishwasher.)

My husband

Let’s me tell him that I feel like a hippopotamus and cry, and say that I’m never eating again, and then doesn’t scold me when I eat a Twinkie…or two.

My husband

Calls the insurance company after my Jetta gets its side mirror taken off by a Smith’s semi doing a jack knife in front of our apartment complex, and then takes care of all the “shop talk” because he knows that if I have to do it I’ll get frustrated.

My husband

Answers my phone for me when I don’t feel like talking or declare that I will not speak to “Unknown numbers.”

My husband

Sends me text messages telling me that I’m pretty.

My husband

Speaks “pinch.” Meaning he knows exactly what my varying degree of discrete pinches mean when we are in public.

My husband

Knows the difference between my crying because I’m truly upset, and my crying because I’m getting my period, but never let’s on that he knows.

My husband

Makes me less insane.

I’ve been thinking about marriage a lot. I have a lot of really, really, beautiful girlfriends who would like to be married, but for this reason or that, are not. Why do I have this amazing man, and they don’t? I know I didn’t do anything right except choose wisely. And as I thought about these women, who have yet to find love, I thought about how fabulous and stable they are. How centered and well-balanced they are. And then I thought, maybe, just maybe, the Universe, or God, or whoever you like, realizes that they are OK for now without a partner. There’s not as much of a rush for these women because the Universe knows it will not be thrown off kilter if they stay single a while longer. Whereas there are certain people…who these people are I’ll leave up to you…who needed the balancing of a partner very badly. The Universe fears these people when they are single because they are totally throwing everything off. Now I’m not saying you should get married before you know who you are, or worse yet to find out who you are. But marriage has a way of keeping you centered. You are held accountable to another person at all times. And for someone like me, who loves nothing more to surrender to depression, oblivion, and overall craziness, that’s a good thing.

I paired that thought, with how wonderful my husband is for two reasons. 1. To prove how I am one of those people that the universe decided it needed to put a cap on, and 2. To say to anyone who would like to be married but isn’t–take it as a compliment that you’re not crazy and the universe trusts you on your own for now. And when the day comes to pick the someone who makes your universe even better, I hope with all my heart that he’s as great as Eric.

Recently I had a dream, that in retrospect, seems almost too scripted to be genuine. But I had it nonetheless.

I was in my AP English Classroom from my senior year of high school. My old teacher, Mr. Wymbs, a very Dead Poet’s Society type, was in the center of the class. I was sitting cross legged on the floor with many of my previous classmates and people I knew in high school. We were in a duck-duck-goose-like circle around Mr. Wymbs and he was asking something of us. He asked each person to get up in the center of the circle and say three things they had learned about life since being in his class. I remember my brain started reeling, I think I had to have them skip my turns a couple of times. And then, suddenly, with total and complete clarity I knew the three things that I wanted to share.

Had this dream been a reality I would have said the exact same things. I felt compelled on this Friday morning to share them with you. Though if you know me, I’m sure you’ve heard them before. Two quotes and a trite idiom. But really what more would you expect?

1. It’s nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice.

2. “Some look at things that are and ask, ‘Why?’ I dream of things that never were and ask, ‘Why not?’” George Bernard Shaw

3. “There are places in the heart that do not yet exist, suffering has to enter in so that they may come to be.” Leon Bloy

I hope that the culmination of my life experience can in someway enrich your weekend.

I love you, I mean it.

(No I’m not listening to Elliott Smith and feeling moody…)

xoxo,

Alison