Perhaps the greatest book ever published. Perhaps not.

I wish I had a certain fondness for cleaning. But I do not. The only time I feel any inclination toward tidying up is when I am incredibly frustrated. So, therefore a well-kept living space is a sign of an unhappy Roni.

However, this Saturday morning necessity dictated I pick up my crap, as some strangers were coming to tromp through our home. I scrubbed the toilet, hung up the clothes I'd draped over my desk chair, and even ventured to cover-up some of the mess in my sister's room. And that is where I found the long-lost gem Snappy Put-Downs & Funny Insults. Possibly the greatest and worst collection of words ever published.

The text came to my family in a box filled with old children's books that had belonged to my uncle and father, and this book had clearly been my uncle's, and he had even decorated the pages with slightly disturbing stickers of the Garbage Pail Kids. Since the day it arrived in my hands, probably more than ten years ago, it has provided me with my favorite mean or sarcastic remarks. Notably, "Why don't you reach down into your heart and grab me a piece of ice?" (page 90) and "They used to say your brother looked like you, but then they turned him right side up." (page 60)

It is the pinnacle of crackpot juvenile writing. I would never say the things contained in these pages to anyone except in a very clear jest. I mean it would be hurtful to say "Don't go to a mind reader, go to a palmist. At least I know you've got a palm," (page 38) or "The closest you'll ever get to being the toast of the town is a sunburn" (page8). Although, I do like, "You should be on the parole board, you never let anyone finish a sentence." (page 69).

i made some resolutions

You may not be able to readily read what those resolutions are as I used my webcam to photograph the list of my objectives for 2011. (Many a schoolteacher has told me unwritten goals are just wishes.) However, mark my words (that you can only decipher by holding your computer screen up to a mirror), I shall accomplish all of these goals. I applied to the NYC Marathon not less than an hour ago. Look for me on November 6, 2011. I'm thinking of purchasing some purple spandex for the occasion. Would a violet spandex bodysuit be too much?

Futher, as soon as I am done with this post I shall zip down to the grocery store and by myself a hearty supply of floss. After that, I'll break out the accordion and rehash "Mary Had a Little Lamb."

And don't worry the brain is stewing up plans for how to accomplish "WRITE A BOOK" and "VISIT BRITAIN" before the year is up.

expatriat-ing

Instead of taking small, reasonable steps to get my life out of a rut, I jump to crazy solutions.

I am moving to Britain. Preferably London, as that is notoriously the most thriving city of the UK.

The dilemma I face (besides the student debt that haunts my present and my future) is that nobody wants any foreigners in their country. Well, the UK is fairly liberal towards allowing members of their commonwealth (i.e. Canada) to enter into their country and become candidates for employment. You get screwed over if your rebellious ancestors were too haughty to pay a little tax and decided to start a big fight over it. (I mean, the British did send their troops to protect their citizens and territory from the French and Indians. If I say I would have been a Tory rather than a Patriot, can I come to London?)

However, I have a potential plan. I'll move to Italy first, with my grandmother. Since my grandma's grandma was native-born Italian, she qualifies for Italian citizenship, or at the least, an Italian passport. Once she has a passport, I can use her as my gateway to Italian citizenship. Once I have that, I'll be a citizen of the EU and maybe the Brits won't be so lithe to treat me with disdain.

But I do love Italy, I could just stay there.

But I want to meet a certain Irishman I have developed a little crush on from watching the British sitcom The IT Crowd. So, I've got to spend some time on the island. And as much as I love Italian, there is something to be said for sweet release of conversing in your mother tongue.

2010: an inventory

In no particular order:

• went skydiving
• earned a Master of Arts in Italian Studies: Literature and Civilization
• learned the very basics of knitting
• learned to crochet little hats
• visited New York City
• bought and promptly crashed a moped
• visited Kentucky
• spent the first five months of the year as a resident of Florence, Italy
• turned 22
• saw my little sister graduate high school

I spent the eve of 2011 in front of the fireplace eating almond joys and watching romantic British period pieces, until I fell asleep prior to midnight. Fortunately, my dad ran down the stairs and woke me by shouting the customary, "Happy New Year." I have this wonderful gut instinct that this is going to be a fantastic twelve months. I'm ready to make 2010 look mundane.

i loathe professionalism...and networking.

Okay, maybe I don't entirely disdain professional behavior. However, interviewing for jobs can be so draining.

So, I had an in-person interview at Delta Headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia on this fine December day. This was not a simply thirty-to-forty-five-minute "tell me about yourself and qualifications" pow wow, but a five hour process, in which 55 applicants and about thirty flight attendants were forced to smile, mingle and prove they could be the face of Delta Airlines. By golly, upon entering the lounge we had to shake and greet every flight attendant involved in the interviews. It felt like the world's longest Mormon-style wedding reception. We were broken into groups and completed different tasks (the actual interview, a fit test, and a "day in the life of a flight attendant" seminar), and between rotations would chill in the lounge. But it felt as though every aspect of our behavior was being scrutinized. The flight attendants would regale us with tales of their adventures, and we were asking each other, "Now, where are you from?" All day long, as this was a five-hour affair.

There was so much mingling and forced friendliness (Although, I did make two real friends, Nicole from New Hampshire and some girl from Logan, Utah whose name escaped my mind after she removed her nametag. We had a nice dinner at the airport TGIFridays, and while waiting for our plane to Salt Lake Logan, Utah and I shared a bowl of fried okra.) I think I am a friendly person, but ugh, when so much of your gregariousness is geared toward being ostentatious, you tire quickly. And there were plenty of really genuine people, but there were some whose outgoing bubbliness felt contrived.

Several applicants got a job offer tonight (at least that's why we think they weren't excused with the rest of us), but I was not among them. Not that I am too downtrodden. I told myself I didn't even want this job. I didn't need an upgrade from ground waitress to "waitress in the sky." However, it is a bummer not to be begged to take a job that you feel more than qualified for. However, I could still be offered a position, and then I would be facing the more gut-wrenching realization that I would have to decide whether I wanted to live the jet-setting life of a flight attendant.

I want to conclude with some powerful confession about how I have no idea what I want, or that sometimes I am very content to be complacent. But I feel like everything I write ends up on that tangent, so it is getting a bit trite on this blog.

My father's long-lost brother, Zack Galifianakis

Beardism is rampant in our society. Any sturdy man with a dark beard is told that he is Billy Mays', Al Borland's, or Jack Black's doppleganger. However, I have a feeling that Zack Galifianakis and my father share more than just the ability to grow a mane of hair on the lower part of the face.

They share the same face.

Other pictures probably do the similarity more justice, but if my dad didn't have 6 inches on Zack, I would worry about being unable to distinguish the two.

Choose Your Own Adventure

Recently, I've been ever-so-slightly lamenting the course of study I've pursued in my collegiate education. It seems it would have been a lot more practical if I had just chosen some sort of professional track that led to a specific career. This dawned on me with particular umph as I realized I was jealous of those friends and relatives of mine who are in the first years of teaching. They are somewhere. Their education has yielded certain fruits. Specifically, a classroom over which they have dominion.

I guess I sort of had that professional-track thing going on when I was an aspiring journalist tearing up the editorial scene at BYU (by tearing it up I mean writing mediocre pieces and getting people's names wrong, that's a GFE, my friends, a gross factual error). But I didn't like that, I truly didn't. And I don't really look back on withdrawing from all my journalism classes part way through the semester with regret. In fact, I am kind of proud of those W's marring my transcript. Because for me, it took new insight and courage to realize that a piece of paper didn't matter as much as doing what really felt right for me. Blah, blah, blah. It was really profound stuff.

But now, I find myself with diploma in hand, thinking it will give me direction and realizing that it is not actually a map. Career counselors like to tell you that there is a wide berth of opportunities for enterprising young humanities majors to seize. But I remember the only employer advertising on the "Opportunities in Humanities" bulletin board the one time I looked at it was Enterprise Rent-a-Car, which is a nice company, my uncle works for them, but he was a business major. It was sort of a taunting flier; it seemed to be saying "So you looked at your paintings and read your stories, now come to the real world."

I'm sure a number of people who got their elementary education degree feel a bit like I do, like they don't know where they're going (despite their degree did provide some sort of linear progression, with a clear objective). I feel like I am in a choose your own adventure book. I read a couple of those back in the day, or maybe I just read one a couple of times. It's hard to be sure. I remember being a Japanese schoolgirl caught in the middle of some kind of samurai feud or something. But I remember dying prematurely, probably on a machete blade. I wasn't a good decision-maker. Or I just made dangerous decisions. But I don't regret them, it was just a book.

I guess this is just life. It's not quite as dramatic as samurai vendettas. So making the more adventurous decision, the one that strikes my fancy the most, won't be my death. And I mean, if I really want to see what life would be like being the supreme ruler of 30' by 30' space in some high school, I could go back and see how that storyline would progress. But for now, I'll continue to trudge through this because, despite that I have no idea where it is going to take me, I'm still thinking it will yield a better story.