Wait for the Light

I spend a lot of time waiting for the little white walk sign to blink these days. I left sketch rehearsal Thursday with pals, and beelined for the cross walk even though the bar was directly across the street. "Wait, really?" the guys asked. "I have this weird thing about me," I said. "I don't want to get hit by a car." Jay-walking is the way here. We have necks, we can see when vehicles are coming, when they're not, when technology has impeded our freedom and given us a red hand despite ghost roads. I really just prefer to wait. I make a lot of decisions each day, and mostly I don't care for it. It's nice a tall box makes this one for me. Sometimes it's weird, sure, when nothing's coming and someone jay-walks right at me like, "You dummy, we're safe." But if you always wait for the light, you're really safe. You did all right. No tickets, no mistakes. It's not that I don't want to think, it's that I'd rather keep thinking about other things than the minute to minute gamble of something unimportant.

Anti-Sloth!

My sister sort of harps on this idea of sloth from time to time that I'll paraphrase here:
We all think sloth means being lazy like not working or sleeping a lot, but it means a lot more. There's mental sloth. There's knowing you don't like your job and not trying to change it. Or not telling the friend the thing they should know. Or not finishing that thought you had about why or why not you thought the film was good. Even in your own head.

Perhaps because I am moving and have a forced sense of freedom, or perhaps because I'm out of school for the first time in two decades or just because this season of Breaking Bad has been very good and Dunkin has an iced coffee for 99 cents deal on, but lately I have been doing things I want to do. Case in point--the waterpark on Friday. But there has been so much more. I get bored with sorting papers, so I read. Or I mention wanting to experience The Rainforest Cafe as an adult half-jokingly and Bisque takes me on a date there for volcano cake. At summer camp I love playing Mafia with kiddos, so why not get a bunch of friends together on a Thursday and play, offering up the last beers in the fridge and the Thin Mints I have been saving in my freezer since January of last year. Any day can be a rainy day. In the good way I mean.

He tricked me into seeing Edge of Tomorrow after, but that's okay.

Mafia night in my living room.

It could be easier said than done, but oh well, just try.

Live Life to the Fullest

Dis Iz Mai Lyfe Now

"Fall, then figure out what to do on the way down."--Del Close

Become the Future

Our past might be what influences us, but our future is what makes us. It is far more logical to act with the purpose of becoming who you want to be instead of in accordance with who you were yesterday.

5 AM in Carefree, AZ.


I'm livin' in the future, so the present is my past.

Work, Dudes

Taken in St. Louis. June 2011.

Run. Read. Write. Eat. Work. Teach. Eat. Comedy. Write. Read. Comedy. Eat. Write. Sleep.

Live Life

"Live as if you were living for the second time and had acted as wrongly the first time as you are about to act now."--Viktor Frankl

An End to End Wishing

I will stop wishing for an end to the vegan month, an end to the running recovery, an end to the paper grading, an end to the wet spring, an end to the stop-n-go rehearsals, an end to commutes. I do hope for an end in all aforementioned points, but the daydreams should be fewer, the moments today grander.


We had an hour to kill. We found this. Japan 2008.

We should try our very best never to put ourselves in situations that leave us longing for time to speed up, because life is quite short, and not being able to revel in every moment of it is quite sad.

Iron Basin America

Something terrible just happened. I am moaning with embarrassment. I put my laundry in earlier this afternoon and then went off to my afternoon appointments. Just returned home, plunked down to the laundry room, and saw my sopping wet clothes crammed in my basket on a side table.

"Whhhhhhhy?" I whined to my housemate down there. (Incidentally, the cashier from last week's story about being heckled at the pub.)
He smiled a bit confused.
"Whhhhhhhy would someone take my clothes out all wet?" I sniffled dramatically.
"To put mine in?" he said, confused. I was taken aback. I had assumed the perpetrator was an inconsiderate punk--someone I didn't know.
"What? Why?"
"Uh--I--"
I began to mock scold, but I ended up just scolding: "You don't take someone's wet clothes out of the machine!"
"Why?"
"They get all gross and potentially moldy."
(I'm right on this, right? They leave the machine and smell rank if not inserted directly to the dryer.)
He shrugged, a bit offended, a bit nervous--("Why is Alice freaking out?")--and left quickly.
I slopped all my stuff in a dryer, hung my sports bras, and padded away questioning my annoyance. If I wasn't there to get the clothes, did he have the right to usurp that machine? We all know how annoying it is when someone occupies the space way over his or her acceptable time. Or, since my clothes were in the machine did they have dibs on their cleanliness?

Iron Basin America: Whose washing machine need reigns supreme?