i hope this post doesn't get me arrested.

i'm from the town with the most high strung airport security system in north america. to be fair, i haven't ever been outside north america and some countries might be more hyper about it...but given the choice of dulles, l.a.x., s.f.o., boston logan, chicago o'hare and lewiston regional, lewiston regional takes the cake in totally out of control security practices.

once, pre-911, i kept setting off the buzzy thingy. i went through. it buzzed. i took out my earrings. it buzzed. i held my breath. it buzzed.

wanna know what was making it buzz? a luggage key in my jeans pocket with a piece of metal the size of one quarter of a very old dime.

c'mon people.

today, it is even more off the scale. i was there today and not only did i have to pay a total of $80 to check my bags round trip (neither here nor there but a pretty slutty charge. i was offended on the ads-on-the-front-page-of-the-newspaper level...it is wrong. have some respect!), but they had one guy working the security line.

he was a slow talker.

the lady in front of me was approximately 90 years old and couldn't take a step without a cane. so what did they do? just took her in the corner and felt her up for a good 5 minutes when she made the buzzy thing go off. probably eventually figured out it was all her titanium joints, sweet lady.

c'mon people.

i was trying to buy a diet coke in the "sterile area" (don't even get me STARTED on that nomenclature. seriously, if the boarding area of an airport is sterile then it would make perfect sense for me to drink out of my dog's water dish.) when the dude made me board instead. it was about 30 minutes before the plane even took off. the plane holds about 18 people and getting to it is about a 4 second travel time walking on the tarmac or jet way or whatever it's called.

c'mon, people.

it was a lot to handle on an empty stomach with no caffeine. having inherited some anxiety from one side of the family and a touch of neurosis from the other, the only prayer in the world i've got is an even blood sugar level. when they announced that there were no peanut butter crackers (only those sick delta airline cookies or peanuts), i about took my quart sized bag of liquids, gels and aerosols and threw it at the flight attendant's head.

but i fell asleep instead.

shovel that berm.

well, it's the holidays. so of course, that all-too-familiar phrase hangs in the air as sure as the pine and cinnamon itself:

"will you go shovel that berm?"

am i the only one who has no idea what a berm is?

there is apparently a berm (pile of snow, i later learned) in front of my parents' mailbox which prohibits the mail carrier from delivering their pre-approved credit card offers and doctor appointment reminder cards.

me: i've never heard of a berm.
dad: but you've heard of the burmese. right?
me: (pause)

this i guess is just one more snow vocab word i don't know because i grew up in lewiston idaho where it rarely snows, and since then i have lived in a series condos that each have a moderately effective hoa. i haven't had to deal with berms or...any of that other stuff. i live a sheltered life. i had no idea of the damage a berm can inflict on your daily life or how important it is to shovel it asap.

i sure have learned a lot this christmas.

for j in cali

i'm on vacay.

i'll post soon, so be sure to keep checking in. or not. whatever.

merry christmas!

i know.

i know that expending hours and hours and dollars and dollars trying with your might to make your apartment look like a pottery barn ad is fundamentally sick.

but i want it so. every day pottery barn emails me their sales and i stare lovingly at the glossy, fabulous, preppy/rustic décor and i don’t buy any of it. and then i think about how i can do it on the cheap by making things/buying stuff at target.

i would absolutely adore an old trunk to sit my living room tv on. adore. but alas, i have a $19.99 bachelor-pad-of-the-90s build-it-yourself stand that i inherited from an old roommate. hideously ugly but does the job.

if i were really skinny i would sit with my perrier on my khaki couch in front of my hurricanes and tower candles sitting on the distressed red coffee table, thinking about my monogrammed towels and antique hardware in the bathroom 20 feet away and basking in the glow of my favorite j.crew cardigan and my perfect red lipstick.

the room would probably smell like green tea or lemongrass or (who are we kidding) the fresh peonies on the side table.

doesn’t that sound nice?

experiment.

i decided to make a playlist of christmas songs that don't annoy me. i will listen to it from time to time over the next several days and let you know how this affects my positive mental attitude.

as you'll recall, i am generally annoyed by christmas music as a whole.

i will however, take songs on a case by case basis. i've gotten some recommendations and i'm going to see what happens.

also, i have not sent out my cards yet.

have you?

hollylynn says

in a futile hope to take my yearning mind off of how dismally horrible the hills has been this season and make the time pass faster between now and the time i get new episodes gossip girl and one tree hill, i have decided to do something wild. i call it:

hollylynn says: expanded edition

it’s a lot like it sounds.

i’m going to answer ALL your questions in 3...2...1...

super angie asks:

Gift suggestions for staff gift exchange please.

Stats:
middle aged male
married
two children
likes hunting and carving
drinks coffee
uh, that's it

Gift must be able to be bought at the Shishmaref Native Store or online.

angie, i love you hun but i'm not sure why you haven't thought of this before! what every shismaref, alaska hunter needs is camo. now, i know this is a woman, but these are quite unisex and they come in a variety of sizes! find these babies at disposable-garments.com.

jmadd asks:

I have a small crush on Michael Phelps. Should I tell him?

well jmadd, that's a tough one! i have to defer to ross and rachel on this because while telling michael phelps that you have a small crush on him might be hard, it doesn't mean you're powerless. remember when ross and rachel had a list of five celebrities they were allowed to "have" and the other one couldn't be jealous? season 2. i'll loan you the dvd. (no i won't.)

anyway, ross has isabella rossallini on his list originally, but he removed her for wynona ryder when chandler convinced him he needed local celebs only on his list (you know, to up his chances). joke was on ross when isabella rossallini walked in to central perk and ross couldn't do anything because she wasn't on his (laminated) list.

point is, make a list and follow your heart. make sure michael is on that darn list before you laminate it.

nathan asks:

How can I do more than just survive the winter. Is there anything I can do to make the season a little more fun?

no.

anonymous asks:

does it make me a bad person if i only want to go on dates with my gf, but not do the whole casual hangout at the apt? what does this mean? should i never get married and just become a serial dater? thx

anonymous, do you live in bizarro world! i have never met a guy who would rather go on a date than "hang." so...

anyone have a gem of wisdom for anonymous?

anyone?

bueller?

are you ‘that girl?’

you know, the last donut girl? doesn’t have to be a donut. the last piece of cake from the office birthday party, the last bagel from the planning meeting, the last bite from the tres leches you’re sharing with someone at café rio…you know. that girl.

i’ve found that there are two types of people in this world: the kind of people who will take the last donut and the kind of people who won’t. i never thought about which one i was. i like to think i’m pretty assertive and i can get in there and take whatever i want, but i’m more timid than i like to think, i think.

i once shared a dessert with my friend lauren who said to me bluntly when we were down to just a little bit left, “i want you to know that i’m not afraid to take the last bite.”

i let her.

lately in celebration of national “eat 600 more calories each day than you normally do” month, we had donuts at the office. in a mid-afternoon sugar flatline, i went back to see if there were any left in the break room.

there was one.

i stuck with my diet coke.

sorry.

i know i needed to do hollylynn says installment 2 on tuesday...but i just didn't want to. is that ok?

instead, why don't YOU all give ME some advice mmkay?

here it is: christmas cards. do i do them or not? i'm just one girl. i don't have a boy or a dog to share my life with (one single black lauren conrad tear...) but i'm kind of a grownup and i do know some people.

i found some cute ones at target with pink snowflakes and glittery deer on them.

do i send them out or is that weird?

did you know that...

today while i was paying for an icy diet coke at 7-11, jon the cashier volunteered his faith in his company, telling me that 7-11 was founded in the recession of the 70’s. “we can weather another depression; we were BORN in one!” he said.

as if that weren’t a rich enough 7-11 experience for one day, he decided to give me a quiz, which officially bumps this up to the second most memorable thing that has ever happened to me while buying an icy diet coke at 7-11 (sorry, mukesh’s x5).

now i’m going to quiz you. ready? too bad. i got the first one right on the first try. ba-zing!

1. were did 7-11 get its name?
these are the original hours of operation.
2. who founded 7-11?
lady bird Johnson. “it was a WOMAN!”

well, keep your shirt on, because i wiki’d it and lady bird had no part in the 7-11 dynasty. *sigh* also, it was started in 1927.

but here’s where it gets trippy. lady bird Johnson died on 7/11/07. i know right?!
and one time a body was found in lady bird lake which is right BY a 7-11.

let’s be honest – learning the truth really took the wind out of my sails.

BUT, he also told me he liked my necklace. even though he makes things up about lady bird johnson, he continually has phenomenal taste in jewelry and a soft spot for the statement necklace.

omfg.

discuss.

ps - sorry for the anticlimactic pic. i wanted the one with blair comforting a totally wasted chuck. *sigh*

photo courtesy of the cw.

i will not be a scrooge.

i'm trying, people. i really am. i'm trying to listen to christmas music and like it. i'm just kind of not in the mood. don't get me wrong, christmas is great. but who was the emperor of yore who decided that there will only be 5 christmas songs and that all pop stars will be required to create terrible renditions of them over and over and over?

why can't christmas be like love? there are about a brazillion songs about love and of those, a trillion are listenable.

there are (now we get into multiplication so please forgive the math errors i'm about to make) 5 christmas songs that have been covered a zillion times each, which i believe brings us to a grand total of a gajillion christmas songs. 7 of those are listenable and even they get tired when you hear them every day for a month, and that's just when thanksgiving comes late and no one cheats and makes you listen to christmas music before then!

please diagnose me. am i un-american? un-christian? un-good person?

with thanks.

dear writers of gossip girl,

thank you, thank you, a million times over for bringing that whole little j plot line back down to earth. don’t get me wrong, i loved seeing little caitlyn “agnes” cooper for a few episodes, and i wouldn’t mind terribly if you brought her back.

but seriously, jenny dropping out of school, mouthing off to eleanor waldorf, leaving home and threatening to divorce her parents was affecting my sleep.

she’s 15! i need her safe at home with rufus and dan, crushing on boys and playing catty games with blair waldorf’s groupies. now if her mullet would just even out a little bit, we’d be home free.
xoxo,
hollylynn

ps. did bart bass die? i’m on the edge of my seat.

can't hurt, right?

since lately i have been blessed to become what miranda priestly would call an "incubus of viral plague," i've been taking a lot of drugs and having a lot of doctor's appointments. since i get sick every 5 seconds, i want all this on the record. eventually someone's gotta piece it together and figure out what the heck's wrong with me.

anyway, sometimes i feel like i know more than the doctors. here is a nearly accurate transcript of what happened to me yesterday at the doctor's office. my regular doctor was not in, so i had this other guy, and he, well...see for yourself.

doctor: so how are you?
me (shout whispering with neck veins bulging): i've been better.
doctor: oh, you're losing your voice.
me: i haven't been able to talk for the past 6 days.
doctor: oh, ok. so it looks like the other doctor gave you a script for antibiotics. are you taking those?
me: no. he said this was a virus.
doctor: let me look at your throat.
me: i need some steroids. i'm a professional communicator and this no voice thing cannot go on. the other doc told me i could have steroids if i didn't get better.
doctor: (pause)
me: and my friend told me she gets this all the time and she doesn't get her voice back until she does a burst of prednisone.
doctor: um yeah, we can do that. ok. the only thing is, they weaken your immune system.
me (should have said, thanks becky): i actually don't have an immune system, so we should be good.
doctor: ok i'll be right back.

5 minutes later

doctor: the other doctors told me you can't have the roids.
me (still shout whispering with neck veins bulging): seriously?
doctor: yeah, i polled 6 people.
me: (pause)
doctor: do you need anything else?
me: codeine would be nice.
doctor: mmmkay.
me: thanks.
doctor: and if you want to take the antibiotics, it's your call. but this is a virus. but they can't hurt.
me (what i should have said, thanks marisa): ok sure. maybe i will take the antibiotics unnecessarily now so that someday when they can actually help me i'll be immune to them. thanks. can't hurt, right?

ch-ch-check me out!

check out my guest blogger post on project domestication today. becky, lovely blogkeeper of pd, is featuring a series of holiday wish lists, and if i were really skinny is kicking it off.

hollylynn says: installment 2

need help deciding which holiday sweater to wear to the office chrismas party?
need help deciding what to give your mom?
need clever ideas for de-icing your windshield?

i know the holidays can be hard, and that's why i've decided to bring back hollylynn says for a second go. go here if you need a refresher on the rules.

i'll be drawing a dilemma out of my cyber hat on Tuesday, Dec. 9, so let's get crack-a-lackin'.

yep, i just said crack-a-lackin'.

stock up on joy.

oh, coke propaganda! i never tire of thee!

if you've been to the movies lately and you're a nerd who likes to get there BEFORE the previews they way i do, you've seen this cute christmas ad from coke and walmart. i detest walmart but love coke, as you know, and this little video makes me feel really warm and cuddly inside.

merry christmas!

before i forget.

a couple other gems from my week home with the fam:

little brother, reporting on his choir performance: it was fine. the crowd looked really bored. we went on right after the ballet dancers.

dad: that kid needs new tires. they're half bald. they have a receding tread line.

that's all.

have you ever thought about

what a gift it is to be able to speak? i really never have. i take for granted my ability to thoughtlessly blab noise into the ether without caring who hears me. well, the past few days, i've had laryngitis and let me tell you - it's changed my life.

shh.

even as someone who isn't really long winded in the first place, being unable to talk has been totally displacing. i can only whisper, and it's tiring. so i choose my words even more carefully than normal.

people look at me condescendingly.

i used sign language with the receptionist at the doctor's office.

i left my phone at home all day. i mean, what was the point?

this just may be the cold medicine talking, but i'm really going to think twice about the noise i put out into the universe from now on. i'm kind of, you know, bitchy. i might need to curb that a little. i'm not saying i'm going to quit making fun of reality tv stars, but i am going to try to be nicer.

please hold me to this.