Pointless rambling and a half-assed ending.

This is very much like when I used to title high school essays "I Hate Titles" when I couldn't come up with anything witty.

I just fucking saw fucking snow.

Fuck.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck!

I'm cold.

And cranky.

And cold.

I finally got back to NH yesterday after staying an extra day in RI because the downside of chemo finally kicked in (though all is well now as far as I know). When I made it just north of Boston around 2pm, I called Dan with an idea.

"Now just think about it for a minute before you say no, but what if you left work early and met me for a 3 o'clock movie?"

"Okay," he said.

"Okay?"

"Okay."

He never gives in that easy. Word. In the five days I had been gone, Dan worked late nearly every evening so an early departure was easy enough to swing. (Plus, he's staying late tonight. He stays late a lot. It's to the point where I've said to him, "Fuck, is this a red flag and I'm missing it? Am I supposed to be checking your cell phone bills or something?") So we got our Milk Duds and popcorn (the popcorn was only a buck because of the Regal Rewards points we've racked up! Some couples earn airline miles...) and headed in to see Shutter Island on a rainy Tuesday afternoon. Normally Shutter Island would be on my Don't See Unless You Want to Be Scared To Go To The Bathroom Alone At Night list but there were very few options and screw Avatar. For all the wusses like me: You can handle this movie. It's more thriller than horror; more slight hypertension than days off your life. In the end, I gave it thumbs mostly up, Dan gave it thumbs mostly down and we both agreed that in every role, Leonardo DiCaprio always seems like a boy trying to play a man. Still, a movie on a Tuesday? Beat that.

Afterwards we got burritos and headed home for Idol 2010, a season in which the mediocrity (if not terribleness) of the talent cannot be overstated. The game this season seems to be less about how American will weed out the gifted singers as much as it is how American can separate the lame from the truly dreadful. While some people participate in college basketball brackets, I do a similar thing come American Idol season. Dan runs a company-wide contest through his work where correct weekly picks of the bottom three contestants, including a guess on who will go home, earns players points as the season goes on. The person with the most points wins (as with every game ever played). My overall pick is poor man's Daughtry, Lee Dewyze (whose name Dan sings to the tune of Edelweiss). This vote is based on who I think may win versus who I want to win...Bobblesox (as Dan calls her)...maybe Siobhan. If Lee does become our next American Idol, I get 50 bonus points at the end of the season (very much like catching the golden snitch). (How 'bout how I write our American Idol as if some twenty-something singer is a national treasure akin to my Oprah?) Since I don't work for Dan's company, he always sneaks me into the competition under some male co-worker's name without his knowing. Last year I won and undoubtedly enhanced the reputation of the guy who got the credit for my AI contest championship. This year Dan put me in under his name so a victory is crucial.

I spent my first full day back writing. I worked for a couple of hours from a Starbucks in Portsmouth (if this was 1998, I'm pretty sure writing from a Starbucks would make me a real writer a la Pinocchio) before heading home for an afternoon of from-the-couch writing which I save for days of shitty weather or general fatigue. I actually fell asleep sitting up for a bit today, hands still on the keys of my laptop and everything. I was apparently typing in my dream and woke myself up by hitting the shift key.

See what I mean about pointless rambling?

None of this really matters or is of any consequence. What really matters is that there's a strange sound coming from my basement and I don't know what it is. It sounds sort of like the roar of the ocean or a fire hose or like a toilet is running (Dan---I checked). It happens every few seconds, lasts for a bit, and then stops. I have no idea what it is. At first I thought it was static-y electrical feedback and that my apartment was bugged. Except for a top-of-the-lungs Barbra Streisand singalong, I don't they got any info. I swear to God, just as I started writing this it started changing its rhythm and going faster. (It knows I'm talking about it!) Now it sounds like a monster panting after a jog around the block. The question is, should I be checking to see what it is? I'm really not the go-see-what-the-noise-in-the-basement-is type. I'm much more of the kill-me-while-I'm-defenseless-in-my-bed variety. Or, more accurately, the maybe-if-I-close-my-eyes-the-ghost-will-think-I'm-sleeping-and-go-inhabit-someone-else's-body type.

Either way, I'm not going down there...I'd like to go to the bathroom unaccompanied tonight.

(You were warned.)