Thanksgiving in Asheville

First of all, this is my "bedroom"—the alcove in the hallway. Like I always say, "There's no reason to make your bed if you're sleeping in the hallway."


The view from the deck at the rental house.


The sisters "accidentally" dressed alike on Thanksgiving.


New shirt from Cheri and Amy. Flag from Cancun/Miss Bobbie.


Thanksgiving dinner. My mom ruined this picture with her Popeye impression. And people wonder why I'm weird.


Cut to: Black Mountain. Here I am in my future bedroom at Creston, the development where the new house is. Over there is where my bed will go. That wall over there will be the velcro wall. And that corner over there is where the dumbwaiter will go, so my mom can send me hoagies and malts from the hoagie and malt shoppe upstairs.




My mom and I demonstrating the layout of the new bathroom.


Robert's "secret view" from down the hill. To the tune of "Secret Love" from Calamity Jane: "And my secret view's no secret anymore."


On the carport.


Miss Bobbie, Robert, mom, stepbrother Dave


This cabin on Creston's property was built by the groundskeeper and his friends when they were teenagers so they could have a place to drink moonshine.




Robert drove us up this road that had holes and bumps and made the car smell like burning rubber, just so we could see the local swimmin' hole. Later we found out it's supposed to be a walking trail.


View from Creston.


The Creston community center at the top of the mountain.




Dancing to the Eagles.


I don't know, I think they were disco-ing.


Amy in the middle of her laughing fit.


We went for a short hike at the Pisguh National Forest. I think. I don't know where I was.




Then we played tackle football at the high school and Cheri let/made me wear her Asheville Police Department sweats. We had some good plays, like Amy's brilliant plan: "Okay, run right up to Cheri and pants her, then go to the right" (it didn't work; Cheri was on to us). I kept blaming my exhaustion on my bad heart, because I had been told before my trip that I might have an old woman's heart. So I was like, "Oh, guys, I better play quarterback again this time. You know, my heart..." But I had a stress test yesterday and it turns out I'm fine.


Cheri and I enjoying our beer and bacon 'n' cheese fries (haha) at Gusmo's Mojo Cafe. (Cheri didn't give me permission to post this, but Cheri, I love this picture. Even more than the one of me fake-pooping over a hole in the ground.)


These two goofballs surprised me with these T-shirts. I was touched. I think they wear them every day under their clothes.




Fog over the Blueridge Parkway.




We tried to go to the Linn Cove Viaduct, which is the most complicated concrete bridge ever built, according to the builders of the Linn Cove Viaduct, but the road to the visitors' center was closed. So we turned around and went to Linville Falls. Of course I fell and bruised my back in the first five minutes, but luckily no one saw.

Thanksgiving

I leave for Asheville this afternoon. I can't wait to have Thanksgiving in the south, even though my mom refuses to make a chicken-fried turkey. It'll be a mixed group this year: Miss Bobbie, of course, is coming from South Carolina. My stepbrother Dave is coming from Norway (and he's Canadian). My dear Asheville friends Amy and Cheri are coming and, they don't know this yet, but I'm putting them in charge of grace. Saying grace, I mean, not having grace.

I feel a little unprepared for this trip because I haven't been drinking as much as I should to raise my tolerance to Hendry House Level. I should've trained harder.

Brendan is taking care of Peewee, since my neighbor Beth moved a couple months ago. When I asked him, we both immediately thought of Angela from The Office. Dwight took care of her cat and she came home to find it in the freezer.

Howl At the Moon

Last night I went to a piano bar downtown called Howl At the Moon with Colleen, her friends, and Brendan. I love piano bars. We had a lot of fun dancing and singing "hold me closer, Tony Danza" and drinking and...drinking. I drank too much. Today is not a good day. But Brendan kept offering to buy us drinks, and a lady never turns down a free drink. Life lesson number one. After half of the group left, Colleen, her friend's friend Russelle, Brendan, and I walked to Michigan Avenue to see the lighted tree outside the Hancock Building. There Colleen and I decided to reenact our yearbook pose from senior year when we were voted Kimball's best friends (or, when we told people to vote us Kimball's best friends). That's my claim to fame. I was like, "I don't want to put my feet on your butt!" And Colleen was all, "JUST DO IT." You can imagine how great the pose is. Speaking of Kimball, the bouncer at the piano bar looked at my ID and said, "What high school did you go to? Kimball?" Small world in a big city, yet again!

Caught Ya

Quill has a new program called "Caught Ya... Doing It Fast and Simple," which is SO FUNNY. It's like a recognition program where you can nominate someone for doing something...fast and simple, and then there's a drawing and you win, like, a Sears gift card. But how in the world anyone can take it seriously is beyond me. So now whenever someone on my team does anything, like puts a project in someone's inbox, we'll say, "Caught ya! Doing it fast and simple!" Or gets something from the printer: "Caught ya! Doing it fast and simple!" Or turns a corner: "Caught ya! Doing it fast and simple!" It helps.

Pen Pal

I volunteered to write the article about what women are doing on Super Bowl Sunday (I know, right?) for February's issue of the Pen Pal. Of course I won't be able to use any of this.

What the hell are women doing on Super Bowl Sunday?

A lot of women watch football. I know that because I’ve seen the commercials for the new NFL women’s apparel. But for those of us who just don’t care, what can we do on Super Bowl Sunday that’s equally as fun and yelly?

1. Go out to dinner
Round up all the gals and go to a restaurant that doesn’t have a TV. Take this precious time to dish about how much your husband or boyfriend or imaginary boyfriend is getting on your nerves. If he’s not, keep it to yourself. No one wants to hear it.

2. Have a movie night
Pick the friend who has the biggest liquor selection (or rack) and wheedle your way into her house. Make her pour you a tall one and pop in Waiting to Exhale, the classic story about friendship and the problems and struggles modern women face in today's world. According to IMDB. I don’t know, I’ve never seen it/cared.

3. Go shopping!
Now’s your chance to get away on your own without the old ball and chain calling every five minutes to ask where something is or where you put his glasses. He’s too busy dropping chips all over the floor right now to care. Oh God, the chips... On second thought, maybe you should stick around the party this year. You know, just in case you like it all of a sudden. You never know. And while you’re there, you might as well keep the Dirt Devil handy. I mean, it couldn’t hurt. You can use it during the commercials. OKAY, SORRY, NOT DURING THE BEER COMMERCIALS.

Dear Aunt Chris

I was talking to my friend Kate on the phone and she said, "Did you know someone created a blog in response to your blog?" I said, "What? What are you talking about?" Kate had googled my blog (why it's not in her favorites, I'll never know) and got three results. The third result was a blog called "Back At You Erin" and the posts were comments on MY posts. I was like, "WHAT? GET OUT." Kate read me this passage: "Since we can't (aren't allowed, boo hoo) to leave messages and, being of commentative natures, we feel we need to reply to Erin Moves to Evanston. If it makes you feel better, you could consider us fans and not stalkers or anything like that." I said:

Me: Ahhhh! Is this a man or a woman?
Kate: A woman.
Me: Where does she live?
Kate: Illinois!
Me: Oh my God! What if she's outside my window right now? What's her name?
Kate: Aunt Chris!
Me: [hysterical laughing but also fearing for my life]

So while we were on the phone, I found "Back At You Erin" and started reading the posts and the blog description, which is "You found me! Now that you've found me, leave me your contact info so I can return the favor..." Yikes, I thought. I read the About Me—"I like pastry and cats"—and laughed even MORE, then thought, "Hm, she doesn't sound half bad." Then somewhere in the middle of freaking out and laughing, something clicked in my head and I said, "WAIT A MINUTE. I KNOW HER. She's my mom's friends' sister!" I laughed and laughed. Kate was like, "I'm so relieved you know her." Me too. It was looking a little hairy there for a minute.

What I want to know is why Aunt Chris was so sure that I'd find Back At You Erin. Like I sit here searching for blogs about my blog? Oh, Aunt Chris. Just leave a comment already.

Travel Expo

I have good news and I have bad news. The good news is I found my passport, after I gave up looking for it. The bad news is I fainted. I don't think the two are related. The fainting episode happened early yesterday morning. Andrea and I had gone to dinner in Evanston at a place called Davis Street Fish Market. Then we came back here and had some wine. Luckily Andrea stayed for a few hours to sleep off the wine, because I don't know what would've happened if I had fainted alone. I'd still be on the floor and Peewee would be eating my face off. I think it was food poisoning from the whitefish. I got up to use the bathroom and suddenly felt really sick, then couldn't see anything and had to lie down on the floor. Apparently I fainted three times and denied that anything was wrong the whole time. And while I was still a little delirious, I said, "Oh my God, I'm like Marie Osmond." Never too indisposed for a Dancing With the Stars joke. My mom thinks, after thirty years of soap-watching experience, that I'm either pregnant or have an inoperable brain tumor and will die soon, then probably show up as someone else on a different network.

I was able to pull myself together so Kate and I could go to the travel expo at Navy Pier to meet Stanley from The Office. Don't judge us. We were the most normal people there. The guy in front of us in line was holding a boom box with the antenna all the way out and headphones plugged in. Not ten minutes after we got in line, a crazy woman with some sort of stuffed animal lemur on her shoulder came up to us and asked what the line was for. We told her it was to meet Stanley from The Office and she said, "Oh. I don't watch much primetime" and then walked off. She said it like she was judging US, like WE were the weirdos. The whole time I was thinking, "Is anyone going to acknowledge the pet lemur?" and no one did. A while later, another woman came up to us and asked what the line was for. After we told her, she was like, "Oh, I don't understand. I'm foreign." Even though she had no accent. So I think that's become my fail-safe excuse from now on. "Oh, I don't understand, I'm foreign." Like later when Kate was trying to get me to ride the mechanical surfboard, I was like, "I can't, I'm foreign," and she had no choice but to back off.

We waited in line for over an hour, which gave us plenty of time to figure out what to say to Stanley (whose real name is Leslie, but Kate was uncomfortable calling a man Leslie). Like "We really love your work" and "We watch your show together every Thursday and it's the one thing we look forward to" and "Stanley, this is something I would only admit to my best friend: I farted in line." We thought maybe we could invite him to go bowling later with us and Kate's friends, and OF COURSE he wouldn't be able to say no. But when we got up there, all we said to him was, "Hi, nice to meet you." Then, not only that, but there were also a couple NBC Chicago newscasters and the host of the game show Crosswords at the same table, and we spent WAY more time talking to them than with Stanley. He probably thought we were just there to meet the newscasters.

I'm not really sure what a travel expo is, but I think it's about people dressing in weird costumes. So we tried to get pictures with all of them. Kate asked the Chicago Bear if she could get a picture with her head in his mouth.

Later we went to dinner in Lincoln Square with Kate's doctor friends. I had asked a couple days ago if they're all doctors, and she said, no, her friend's boyfriend is a producer for Oprah. I was like, "WHAT!" I need to start hanging out with high school kids. Then I can say, "I went to college! What did you ever do?" And they'll be all, "Ma'am, I'm sixteen." I was dying, DYING, to ask him about the Oprah show, but I thought maybe that was inappropriate. Having manners is so hard.

Weekend

Saturday I saw Melissa Ferrick again with Andrea at a place called Schubas in the city. On the way we had to stop by her friend's surprise 30th birthday party. And by that I mean drive in the complete opposite direction to the south suburbs/country and get lost in the dark for half an hour. Most of her friends at the party were financial advisors, so I thought I should come up with an equally impressive career for myself. I said, "I think I'll be a plastic surgeon." Andrea said, "You can't, you're too young." I was like, "I'm a plastic surgeon! I could be forty." Her friend is Mexican (like actually Mexican, not like I'm Mexican), and the mom had made a wonderful spread of Mexican food, including tamales, which are my favorite, until I see pinto beans, then those are my favorite, until I see tamales again. It's exhausting.

The show was fun. I'm not really into her music, but I think she's interesting to watch because she's a great guitar player and also sort of crazy. At one point she said suddenly, "Oh yeah, I forgot this place has a ghost. I just felt him go behind me. If he has to run across the stage, I wish he'd go in front of me."

Friday I went to Kate's to watch The Office and was going to carve my pumpkin, but it seemed like too much work at the time. I realize it's past Halloween, but I didn't have a carving knife and couldn't find one anywhere...at Jewel the two times I looked. Then Kate found a carving kit in the street after she drove over it. It was a sign.