There are days when I feel like nothing can cheer me up. But it’s never true.

This site never fails to get a smile. There’s just something about kittens with bad grammar that I’m powerless to resist.

Side note: It’s a proven scientific fact that kittens make people happy. How else can you explain the episode of Scrubs where JD saves a man dying of a broken heart by emptying a box of kittens on his face?

I read this wonderful little book called How to Avoid Making Art (or Anything Else You Enjoy) by Julia Cameron. It’s well over 100 pages long, but I read it in about ten minutes, which is because I’m a genius.

Actually, the book is more like a picture book, with each page containing a drawing accompanied by a sentence or two of text.

But I’m still a genius.

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Today the date was set for the court appearance to formally dissolve my marriage. It will be at 9am on December 7th. I’m glad that it will finally be all resolved, finished, all that, but it also forces me to think about things.

Everyone knows that life changes in all kinds of ways when you get a divorce, but I’m still surprised by some of the things that come up.

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When I was a little girl, about three or four years old, I was the perfect picture of girliness. My blonde hair was wispy and hung in delicate curls; I wore pink and ruffles; I loved to curtsey and pretend I was a ballet dancer. But my favorite toy was not a doll or a tea set or a teddy bear (although I did have all of those, and I loved them dearly).

My favorite toy was a big, yellow, metal Tonka dump truck.

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Wasn’t it Groucho Marx who said that he wouldn’t join a club that would have him as a member? I’m starting to view my job search with the same mentality.

First off, you must know that Company X has a thoroughly entertaining website. Every time you click on an internal link or load a new page, you get this awesome bit of music that I swear came from a scene transition on Miami Vice. A smattering of cool drums and laser noises, followed by a near-silent reverb. Classy.

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Having been blessed with a somewhat uncommon name, and a definitely uncommon spelling of it, I think about names sometimes. Especially when I’m desperate for blog fodder. I’m very aware of how other people’s names are spelled, and I make it a point to spell everyone’s names correctly. Actually, I make it a point to spell everything correctly. I’m not sure if that’s related to the weird name thing, or just a symptom of my OCD. Maybe a little of both.

So I have an affinity for people whose parents have sent them out into the world with an oddly spelled name. It’s like we’re all part of a little club. The knowing glances, the sympathetic nods, the secret handshake.

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There were long stretches of nothingness at Coffee Fest this weekend. Very long stretches. So Mckenzie and I filled the time will all kinds of childish diversions. We took personality tests to determine everything from our dominant chakras to our Native American power animals. We did enneagrams and horoscopes and discovered our inner goddesses. (Turns out Mckenzie is a bossy whore and I’m a verbose stalker.)

When that book ran out of entertainment value, we started reading some of the 1001 Dumbest Things Ever Said. And I even read aloud some anecdotes from a book I was inexplicably reading about coming up with ideas for advertising.

But all that was Day One. And there was a whole lot more boredom stretching out before us. Despite the abundance or rude and/or stupid people to make fun of (behind their backs, of course — we are in the customer service industry, you know), and despite the fun rubber yoyo toy that looked like a jellyfish, we needed more distraction.

Yesterday, our desperation reached junior high levels, and we made cootie catchers and played MASH.

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Today, in a desperate attempt to post something, anything, that requires very little effort, I will reveal the glorious effects when I Google myself. I recommend you trying this on yourself, but it might not work so well if your name isn’t as weird (or at least as weirdly spelled) as mine.

When I type in my first and last name, I discover things I didn’t realize or remember, and I’m a little surprised that I have more than one page of goodies. Evidently I have a ScrapBlog and a ScrapBio, probably created back when I actually made scrapbook pages and labored under the cruel delusion that someday the world might want to share in the awesomeness that is my craftiness.

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If you ever decide to be an exhibitor in a trade show, conference, or expo, I have a few rules for you. These rules will keep your experience more pleasant and ensure that you won’t be slaughtered in a brutal way by an innocent-looking desk worker.

1. Read the information that’s sent to you prior to the show. All of it. And actually do what it says. People don’t write and send out this stuff just for the fun of it.

2. Don’t assume you’re different and special and that you don’t have to follow the rules. You’re the same decaying crap as everyone else, and you’ll be treated as such.

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