Monthly Archives: August 2008

August 19, 2008 · 11:46 am

I’m a lifesaver, too, you know.

Dear Best Friends Forever,

It’s been a while since my last post. That’s because I’ve been considering a career change and don’t have time to write. We’re having some layoffs here at the Free Press, so I’ve been honing my streetwalking skills in case I need them when I get my pink slip. I figure I’ll start small- just a few tricks here and there to pay the bills- and then I’ll branch out. I plan on being a high-powered madame by year’s end. And if we have a newspaper by then, my former colleagues can write all about my debauchery.

But until then, I’ve still got to mash the keyboard and come up with a story or two. Yesterday I wrote about Nazis gassing gays. Cheery. Today I’m writing about a dude who saved a kid from drowning in the lake. Well, I plan on writing that story if I don’t fall asleep at my desk.

I woke up extra early today to make this assignment scheduled for the ungodly hour of 8 a.m. Who gets to work that early! Ridiculous. Thankfully, that assignment was only just across the street from BFP HQ at the firehouse on S. Winooski. I ambled over to the station, still rubbing the sleep out of my eyes and then walked around the fire trucks aimlessly until I found where I needed to go.

The Burlington Fire Dept. was honoring a fellow named Andrew Richardson for saving a kid who was drowning in 20 feet of water in Lake Champlain. Blah, blah. Who hasn’t saved a kid from drowning? I mean, I’ve done it for god’s sake. Why, what a perfect segue for me to tell my own tale of heroinism at sea.

During my college years, I worked at a nerd camp on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. The kids were fifth and sixth grade geniuses who scored better on their SATs at age 10 than I did when I took them at age 17. And I’m nearly a genius. One of the classes at nerd camp was Bay Ecology where the kids learned how to not freak out when sand got in their water shoes. On one particularly gloomy day, I accompanied the Bay Ecology class on a field trip to a little cove. While they examined the turbidity of the water and seined for sea creatures, I sat on the rocks smoking doobies and staring at my navel. Only joking.

After the tiny humans finished their nerd work, they were allowed to frolic in the water for a bit before heading back on the bus. Within a nanosecond of them getting in the water to splash around, a storm rolled in, forcing them all to head for shore. One little anklebiter, who we’ll call Taudrey to protect her privacy, was too busy examining the seaweed (or smoking weed. Who knows?) to hear the instructors call her out of the water.

Before she knew it, Taudrey had been swept out to sea and she could no longer stand. Her pipsqueak frame was no match for the tide and she started to panic just a bit. But Taudrey was a pretty chill kid, so her panicking sounded like, “Um, guys I think I need a little help over here.” Never fear Taudrey, Lauren is here! Despite this ripping undertow that is practically pulling my bathing suit off, I will save you.

I swam out to where she was, which was so deep I couldn’t stand myself, and grabbed her the way I had seen David Hasselhoff as Mitch Buchanan do in Baywatch. Let me tell you, it was hard as H-E-double hockey sticks to pull that child to shore. I really did think I was going to have to let her go and save myself. But I managed, with Herculean effort, to haul her up onto the closest landmass, an outcropping of rocks that were as slimey as John Edwards cheating on his cancer-addled wife.

After being deposited on the rocks, Taudrey scampered over to the bus where her fellow nerdlings were waiting. I’m not sure she realized that she nearly drowned. Since I’m nearly a genius, I know that geniuses aren’t known for their common sense and logic.  As Taudrey dried off and organized herself on the bus, I was still clawing at the rocks, trying to pull my 450-lb.body out of the water. Not easy.

I lay there on the rocks for a while. I think I was in shock. In shock over the fact that no one seemed to see my amazing rescue. How could a busload of kids and their adult handlers have missed the fact that I just saved a human life from almost certain death? Where was the adulation? Where were the tears? Where was the plaque with my name engraved next to the word “HERO?” I vowed that day that I would never save another life unless I am recognized for my efforts.

Andrew Richardson gets a plaque and he gets an article written by me about him getting said plaque and what do I get? The satisfaction of knowing that Taudrey alive and well and is now a math major at Bowdoin who is on the sailing team and is spending the summer making copies and filing documents at a law firm on Long Island? Methinks that’s not enough.

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August 8, 2008 · 6:33 pm

Dude, dude, bro, dude

Dude, bro. Dude, check it out. Bro, after a crazy late night of rippin’ parties all over B-town, I hauled my sweet one over to Burton for the big snowboard sale. Dude, it was off the chain. There were, like, so many people there, bro. It was nuts. So flippin’ sweet, though. So many freakin’ awesome deals. Epic, bro. I got a sick ride for only $200 and a pair of bindings for $100. This winter, I’m going to be shreddin’ the gnar hardcore, no doubt. Can’t wait for the pow!

Ok, I’m about to be sick. Too much dude-ing and entirely too much bro-ing. That’s how I spent my morning today surrounded by dudes and bros and I don’t really need to replay it for the entire blog post. I’m sure you all (all meaning the residents of cellblock D at the Chittenden County Jail. Holla!) don’t want to be reading that nonsense either.

As you might know, today marked the start of the bedlam-fest known as the Burton Snowboards annual summer sale. The sale runs until Sunday and like a good reporter, I assigned myself to cover it. Also, I needed a new snowboard. And I was feeling a little bereft of bros in my life. Doors opened at 7 a.m. and by the time I dragged my weary bones down to Burton HQ, there were already about 87,000 people waiting in line. Many had been there overnight, sitting in lawn chairs, tossing back Natty Lites and chasing them with a drag or two of the old herb superb. Most of the folks arrived in the wee hours of the dawn to nab a spot in line. Not like it mattered much where people were in line because when the doors opened, the gates of hell broke loose and every teenage boy with matted hair and bad acne made his way to the front, knocking over all the over-20 oldsters in the process.

I rolled up at about 6:45 a.m., got a wicked parking space and zipped up to the front of the line because that’s what you get to do when you’re a “member of the media.” As soon as I pushed my way to the front, I realized what an incredibly ill-conceived idea that had been. My biggest fear in life, apart from spending the rest of it in jail or outer space, is being smothered/trampled to death. I’m just worried what I would look like when people found me. The last thing I want is to have the life stomped out of me by 1,000 teen boys with scraggly facial hair and a mouthful of braces. So to escape the teeming horde, I climbed up onto a Dumpster. I nearly split my pants in the process.

From that vantage point, I could see the whole frenzied crowd. There were at least 1,000 people waiting in a line that stretched practically to Shelburne. Or just to Red Rocks Park. Dude, it was nuts. From my Dumpster throne, I could survey my subjects as waved adoringly at me. Or were they giving me the finger? I couldn’t tell. At any rate, they were ready to go.

The Burton dude-bros did count down on the mega-phone as the assembled crowd gnashed its collective teeth and pawed at the ground. It was go time. And for me that meant nearly falling in the Dumpster. The kids (and some very unlucky parents) pushed their way through the doors and into the warehouse. You’d think the warehouse was full of naked girls or free tricked out Hummers at the rate they were going. Once inside the warehouse, I could see what all the hubbub was about. There was Burton gear as far as the eye could see. And for just a brief nanosecond, everything was neat and tidy. Then the crowd started ripping things to shreds.

Folks tried on jackets and then dumped them on the floor. Snowboard boots were left in heaps on the floor. Small mittens were thrown in the XL box. Ahhhhh! These situations make me immediately confused and my brain powers down. The sheer pandemonium of all that stuff makes me break out in hives. That’s why I can’t shop at Marshall’s, TJ Maxx or any second-hand store.

There’s nothing much to report after I got in the building. I did some expert reporting, bought a board in the process and nearly wet my pants when a girl from Shelburne told me her saga of losing not one, but both of her shoes on the way into the sale. Luckily for her, Burton had plenty of replacement shoes.

If you want to see what the whole mess looked like, check out my video from the day.

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August 7, 2008 · 11:36 am

Polo minus the horse poop

I’ve known about the clandestine bike polo league the meets at the Waterfront every Wednesday for a while now. Well, it’s probably not all that clandestine if I know about it. Anyway, I’ve wanted to write about said bike polo group for a while now, but they play on Wednesdays, which is completely inconvenient for me. My Wednesdays are devoted solely to the pursuit of reality television, specifically on the Bravo network. Who wants to get outside and enjoy the fresh air when you can be cooped up in your tiny apartment watching fashionistas duke it out on your 13-inch television set?

Thankfully for me and my strict television-watching schedule, bike polo met on Tuesday this week due to the fact that we now live in India and the monsoons were kind enough to let up for just one day. I got the e-mail from the organizers that bike polo was on at the roller hockey rink on the Waterfront, so after work the GF and I cruised down on our matching Surly Cross Checks (so dorky) to check it out. And by check it out I mean pedal right by the rink when we saw only two people fiddling around with homemade mallets. The last thing I want to do is stand out as a newbie, so we biked halfway up the bike path, practicing our bunny hops on skinny tires as we rode.

The fact that there were only two people there at the designated time- 6 p.m.- wasn’t really a shock to me. I assumed that the bike polo players were operating on HT- hipster time- and thus would really get going around 7:30 p.m. I understand the minorty group sense of time only too well. There’s CPT, which has long been documented and cited by cultural critics of color, and there’s the more recent, and quasi-coopted GPT, which stands for Gay People Time and does not have a nifty Wikipedia entry of its own. I know a number of people to subscribe to both of these ideas and are frequently tardy for important things l ike job interviews, weddings and parole hearings.

Understanding that the bike polo players were on HT, we rolled up to the rink around 6:30 p.m. As we slowed to watch the polo match in progress, a nice hipster named Aaron called out and asked if we wanted to play. Little did they know that was my whole reason for being there. That and I wanted to nab a couple of free afterwork PBRs. After a brief tutorial- don’t crash into anyone, don’t hit anyone with the mallet, ding the bell if you dab- the GF and I were out on the rink ready to score some flipping goals. But one thing set us apart from our bike polo contemporaries- our helmets. Yes, we looked like losers, but safety first. The last thing I need in my life is to sustain a traumatic brain injury during a friendly hipster bike polo match.

So off we went. The mallets, made of old ski poles and some PVC piping, were unwieldy. I had to hold onto my mallet with my right hand while I steered with my left. You’d think I had just take the training wheels off hours before. Trying to hit a ball on the ground with a mallet head the size of a soup can while you’re focusing on pedaling, braking and not tumbling to the ground is harder than it looks. I whiffed at least a dozen times before I actually made contact. The GF was much more proficient than I, which remains a source of great consternation for me.

I have to say that bike polo could be my new favorite non-Olympic cycling sport. I like the fact that your bike skills can be marginal (like mine) and your mallet skills can be less than spectacular (like mine) and you can still have a swell time. During our match, we vied against fixies and dirt jumpers and chunky downhill bikes and even a unicycle, so really any bike will do. When I scored for the first (and only) time, I nearly dropped to my knees and started crying (I’m getting ready for the Olympics). It was so exciting.

And the hipster factor wasn’t even really an issue. Yes, there were cool fixed gear bikes there and a couple of rad tattoos and of course the ironic 40 bottle in a paper bag, but it was a definitely a welcoming vibe. After about an hour of heated competition, the GF and I put down our mallets and said goodbye to our cool new friends. Who knows- bike polo might be enough to unseat me from my tapestry couch on Bravo television nights.

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· 4:07 am

Mosquitoes, my nemesiseses

I’m writing this post from my tiny apartment deep in the heart of the Amazon jungle. The mosquitoes here are as big as rat terriers and a thousand times more fierce. I’ll apologize in advance for any typos, but I can’t really see my computer so well on account of the bug net that shrouds my face. I would take a picture, but my camera is across the room and I’m afraid if I get up, I’ll be ambushed by a regiment of malaria-carrying skeeters.This might very well be my last post, which I realize is a cause for celebration for some of you. I’m afraid that I’m being driven to the brink of insanity by the incessant buzzing in my ears. Well, it’s either the mosquitoes that are doing the buzzing, or I have an earwhig lodged in my auditory canal. Either way I’m spazzing out.

Ok, so I’m not really in the jungle, although there are those who would have you believe that the Old North End is wild and woolly. I think it’s more crunchy myself, but that’s just the urbanite in me. Anyway, can someone please tell me what in the H-E-double hockey sticks is up with the mosquitoes in this town? Ok, I know it’s got something to do with the rain and probably global warming, and come to think of it, it’s probably my fault because I drove my car twice this week. Don’t tell Bill McKibben. But seriously, I’m getting attacked in my own apartment. As I write this, I’m watching a mosquito dance across my computer screen just asking for a slap. I’m about a minute away from lighting a citronella candle inside. If this continues, I’m pretty sure I’m going to come down with the first case of West Nile virus in the county. Actually, I wouldn’t mind getting West Nile, or bird flu for that matter. Then I’d have an awesome reason not to go to work or take my dog for a million or two walks a day. God, she’s so needy.

I’m pretty sure I know why the mosquitoes have pitched their tents in my apartment and it’s not because I’m some Buddha-loving peacenik in saffron robes who doesn’t believe in killing bugs. I have not created a safe haven in my apartment for skeeters. This is not a skeeter sanctuary. I’m nearly 100 percent certain I can blame the mosquito migration on my next-door neighbors, whom I will affectionately refer to henceforth as Judy and Chuck.

Judy and Chuck are, for lack of a better word, eccentric. They are building a geodesic dome in their backyard where they can store their lilies in the winter. I think they’re also planning on living in the dome upon its completion, since their ultimate goal is to live outside year-round. Their house will just be a place to store their reams of research on water gardens and astral projection. As a result of their years-long construction project, their backyard feels a bit like a the set of a Mad Max movie, albeit with really lovely flowers.

In addition to their backyard building bonanza, Judy and Chuck have taken over the expansive greenbelt in front of their house and turned it into some sort of feral garden. That’s a bit harsh. It’s like the garden equivalent of a hippie child who grew up on a commune with parents who smoked weed after dinner. It is without a doubt the highlight of the block. Every sort of plant has a home on this stretch of sidewalk from hydrangeas to my all-time favorite boxwood, which does not, in my opinion, smell like cat pee. Despite my love of formal display gardens, there’s something about Judy and Chuck’s anarchic landscaping that is intensely pleasing. The one major problem with their patchwork garden of many colors is that it is like a Monte Carlo for mosquitoes. In fact, I think at night I hear them calling out “Jackpot!” in their buzzy little mosquito voices.

For some reason, I’m particularly susceptible to bug bites. After a recent trip to the Adirondacks, I came back looking like I had a wicked case of shingles. I got so many bug bites, my lymph nodes swelled to the size of gumballs. I hate bugs. The fact that I once dated an entomologist remains a source of great amusement to many of my friends. I have no intention of sharing my living space with insects of any kind. And yet when I go out on my porch to read or eat my breakfast, I have to douse myself with bug spray that makes me smell like I bathed in Pledge. I got bitten three times today on my morning constitutional with the dog and twice in the house. I’m not sure what to do about the situation. The dog is completely ineffectual. If the problem was a mayfly infestation, she’d be all over it since those are a favorite snack of hers. But skeeters she could care less about.

So here I sit, covered in Calamine lotion, my body a connect-the-dots drawing of angry red welts, all thanks to the mosquito Diaspora in my neighborhood. Right about now, summer is looking pretty overrated and sub-freezing winter weather is looking pretty good.

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August 6, 2008 · 2:58 pm

No, I’m not on crank

Ok, so if you scroll down below this blog (why would you? It’s not like there are nude photos of the formerly up-the-pole Angelina Jolie down there), you’ll see that every entry is from Aug. 6, which is today. While it might look as though I am the world’s most prolific scribe, or alternatively, that I am on performance-enhancing drugs like crank, I am neither.

These posts came from my newspaper blog at the Free Press, where I work as a navel-gazer cum hair-twirler. Their blogging software/Web site construction does not allow for a simple Web address like http://www.laurenislikethehottestgirlintheworldandallyouotherhaterscansuckit.com for our blogs, so I’ve put all of my posts on this site. Nifty, eh? Cutting and pasting on the computer is sort of my jam.

So I’m neither prolific, nor smoking crank from a busted light bulb. I’m simply trying to get more than two pages views on my blog. Dig it?

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· 2:49 pm

Meteorology and Me

There are many things of which I am fond- doughnuts, baby dogs, antiquated speech patterns like “things of which I am fond.” There is also a whole host of things I don’t like, such as booty shorts, blueberries and dirty travelers who use their dogs to elicit money from passersby. Most things I’m indifferent towards. Like the weather. I’m from Pittsburgh so weather has never been a concern of mine. It’s always about 49 degrees and threatening rain there, so I never got spoiled by sunny skies. Weather’s not something I think a lot about. But here in Vermont, fretting over the weather is a state past-time.

To me, talking about the weather is about as exciting as sitting at the DMV waiting for your number to be called. Ugh, we’re only on B54? I’m D12. I’ll be here until next week! The weather is something that I, one single human, cannot control. I have heard that if I ride my bike to the grocery store instead of driving my stylish Pontiac, tsunamis will never happen in Southeast Asia again, but I can’t be certain that info is legit.

I can’t see the point in kvetching about the weather. I’m happy when it’s sunny and I’m grumpy when it rains. It’s pretty when it snows, but it stinks when I have to shovel. Beyond that, I don’t care, which is why it was particularly amusing to me when I was assigned the ubiquitous weather story last week.

If you recall last week, Jesus was angry at us or something and let loose a torrent of precipitation that made swimming at Bolton Potholes a particularly dicey affair. It seemed like the rain would never end. Of course if we lived in a place like India or Bangladesh where monsoons bring winds and rains that last for months, we’d really have something to complain about. Like never-ending rain. And mosquitos the size of rat terriers.

So it rained a ton last week, which is a drag for outdoor events, and for my dog, who refuses to pee in the rain. As I had nothing important to do, and because our resident weather reporter was on vaca, the metro editor asked me if I’d do a ripping expose on rain. Never one to turn down an awesome assignment, I jumped at the chance to go after rain on his own turf. I was going to track him down and make him answer for the havoc he had caused. This is what a shoeleather reporter like me was made to do.

I gathered up my trusty notebook and pencil and hit the streets. I didn’t get farther than the front door before I realized it was raining and there was no way in H.E. double hockey sticks that I was going out in that mess. Did I say I was an intrepid reporter? I meant I am happy sitting at my desk gazing at my navel. But it had to be done. The people were clamoring for a story about the weather and I wasn’t going to let them down.

Here’s what I learned: the jetstream is screwy. It’s confused, it’s going the wrong direction, it needs a new GPS unit. We’re in for more rain in August. People are P.O.-ed. They’re not going to take it. They’re going to move to Arizona or some similarly dessicated place. And I can dig it. You wait out the 10-month-long winter in hopes of a brief respite of sunshine and a sallow citizenry parading around the Waterfront in their swim suits. Then it rains. Curses!

Before I was a professional newspaperwoman, I was a housemistress at a boarding school in England. Over there, when people didn’t haven anything nice to say to you, which was nearly all the time in my experience, they talk about the weather. Ad nauseum. After my two years there, I could have been a meteorologist, minus the green screen and the pancake make-up. It always surprised me how weather played such a prominent role in their lives since there were only two different types of days there- overcast with drizzle and overcast without.

I guess weather’s just not my thing. I can roll with it, as long as it’s not flooding my basement or sweeping my dog out to sea. The fact that I’ve written this post means I’m almost certain to get struck by lightening on my walk home from work.

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· 2:47 pm

Making copies, yeah!

Besties,

It’s been a while since I last wrote. I know this. I’m only too aware of the fact that my public (read: that girl who keeps calling me) is clamoring for more Ober and Out. I hear you. Or rather, I can see you looking in the window of my apartment when I’m about to go to bed. Oh, and my dog sees you, too. And she’s not into you. Fair warning.

It’s tough being a newspaper reporter kum blogger. (Our blog software also doubles as a censoring machine, so I have to use the phonetic version. Snicker.) I can’t keep all the things straight that I want to write about, so I end up writing about nothing. Or I write nothing. It’s pretty much the same thing. But honestly, writing is hard work. You know what else is hard work? Photocopying. Anyone who has ever tried to make double-sided, collated, stapled copies from a book can feel me on this one.

What a perfect segue into what I planned to write about. Ok, there’s no real planning that goes into this. It’s free-form. But not in the annoying way that Jack Kerouac was free-form.This isn’t the eighth day of a two-week bender and I’m not penning one gigantic sentence sans punctuation or capital letters on one long continuous piece of paper. Anyway, back to photocopying.

So I’m planning a silent auction, which has flip all to do with work, but I think the organizational aspect is something most of you fair readers can relate to. Before we can auction the stuff and before I can pocket all the cash, I had to come up with some paper collateral in the form of auction guides and bid sheets. How hard could it be, I thought, as I strode down to FedEx/Kinko’s earlier today? Well, by the looks of things at my workstation, you’d think I was making prepping for the final exam in my advanced origami class.

There were scraps of paper everywhere and for some reason, I needed to use tape and scissors as well. I was supposed to just be making copies- doublesided, nothing too complicated. Instead, I felt like I was scrapbooking or making some sort of school project. All I needed was a glue stick, some sequins, a box of popsicle sticks and perhaps some rubber cement with which to make some glue boogies. I asked for help and received in return a blank stare from the fellow behind the counter. His eyes said “You are an idiot of the highest order. You do not deserve to walk amongst us.” Ok, Justin, I get the point. I’ll crawl back to the hole from whence I came.

I won’t bore you with the minutiae of my photocopying (I realize it feels like that’s what I’ve been doing), but I will say that 688 copies later, I left with the 150 sheets of paper intended to copy. And I have to say, that after all that cutting and taping and cursing and spitting, I’m quite pleased with the end product. There’s something thrilling about doing for yourself. I like the DIY aesthetic. I like that nobody in the service industry actually helps you anymore. I like that I no longer have to intereact with actual humans in order to get my stuff done. But now, if I find any spelling errors, who am I going to flip out at? Who am I going to threaten to get fired? Who am I going to unleash all my pent-up rage on?

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· 2:47 pm

Duo of snark, with a side of cute

Dear Best Friends,

If I ever find myself in the unenviable position of having a human grow in my belly, here is my guarantee to you: I will never name my child after a famous entertainer. I read recently in the newspaper of record in Vermont that a local couple named their child after their favorite singer, a piano-playing Brit (who apparently can do a handstand on his baby grand. What?!) with a taste for outlandish eyewear and extravagant suiting. Then they took the eponymously named child to this singer’s recent concert and used the child as a way to get an autograph from his namesake. While I have nothing against using children for things like hard labor and begging for spare change, I do find it slightly reprehensible to name your child after someone famous just to get an autograph.

If I had a girl, here’s what she wouldn’t be called: Angelina Jolie Ober. Or Meryl Streep Ober. Or even Hilary Duff Ober. Ok, that kind of has a nice ring to it. I might consider that. But my boy would never be called Tom Cruise Ober. Or Al Pacino Ober. But I might consider 50 Cent Ober. Nobody would mess with that kid. Or everybody would mess with him. It’s sort of a craps shoot.

I once worked at a summer program for supremely intelligent tiny humans and one of the little boys had the unfortunate birth name of Nimrod. I can’t for the life of me remember his surname, but it never mattered. It’s not like there was another Nimrod in the class that we needed to worry about. I could never figure out what his parents were thinking, or what drugs they were using for that matter. Nimrod in contemporary culture is synonomous with “dolt” or “idiot.” Granted, the name means “hunter” in Hebrew, but it’s unlikely that the fifth-graders pummeling wee Nimrod after school would be aware of that.

That dovetails not at all with my next issue, which is me almost getting hit by bicycles when I’m riding my bicycle. So that was an awesome sentence wasn’t it? Ok, let’s try that again. Hey kids, you know what I really hate? What Lauren? I really hate it when I’m riding my bike in the bike lane and I nearly get decked by another cyclist. Jinkies Lauren, that stinks! Why, yes it does, kids.

So I was riding my bike to work the other day because I’m going to singlehandedly save the environment with my bicycle commuting. Someone call Al Gore and give him the good news. I was pedaling down the bike lane on N. Winooski Avenue, the one-way bike lane, I might add, when a dude comes flying around the corner and into my bike lane riding in the opposite direction of traffic. He nearly decapitated me with all the swords he was swinging around as he rode. Ok, he wasn’t carrying swords, but I thought it would sound like I was truly in peril if there was antique weaponry involved.

Now, the bike lane, just like the road is ONE WAY. If there is any confusion, the two of you reading this blog post now can clear that up. Get the word out to your friends and let them know that riding in the bike lanes the wrong direction ain’t cool. You know what else ain’t cool? Carpal tunnel syndrome. I think I’m coming down with a case right now. So let’s speed this up.

I’ve told you something that makes me want to punch someone’s lights out and now I’ll tell you about something that fills me with a kind of joy that makes me want to run through City Hall Park with my arms wide open singing tunes from the “Sound of Music”: little kids wearing sunglasses. I can’t think of anything cuter. It’s so cute, it makes me want to puke. Whenever I’m sad, I just think of the last little kid I saw wearing sunglasses and instantly I’m cured of my blues.

Because I’ve worn glasses since I was five years-old, I never experienced the little kid sunglasses phenomenon. As soon as a little anklebiter dons a pair of shades, he/she instantly becomes cuter. I don’t care how many times Johnny was beaten with the ugly stick, once he puts those sunglasses on, he’s ready to be in a Gymboree ad.

I don’t know if the cuteness comes from the fact that the sunglasses are always eight times too big for their small faces, or that kids wearing sunglasses always look like they’re trying to be adults (and we know how cute that can be. Hello, kindergarten beauty queens). Whatever it is, I love it. It makes me laugh. It warms my black heart. It makes me wish I had one of those things. If I did, I would probably call her Queen Latifah Ober.

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· 2:46 pm

Home Sweet Kiosk

Dearest Reader(s),

I just wanted to let you all know that I will be moving. Not moving on from the Free Press, unless of course I get sacked, but moving from my apartment. Granted, I just moved in at the beginning of June, but I think it’s time to move on. Again. Who doesn’t love the upheaval of moving? The inventorying of the detritis of life, the purging of clothing not worn since George I was in office, the countless paper cuts from all the cardboard boxes. My favorite!

I used to live in the South End (this might be a little too personal for a newspaper blog. Trying to keep it professional, obviously.) in a little blue apartment building that, during the tenure of my residency, housed a trio of recent high school grads who claimed to be college students but were actually drug dealers, a ferret and a ball python and a verbally abusive father of three who left dog poop on my porch every day. Despite my neighbors, I loved the neighborhood. I was a stone’s throw from the lake and the bike path, three blocks from the video store, the post office and the ugly Subaru dealership, and a quick bike ride away from the best bagels in town.

But when the landlords refused to plow the snow from the driveway and I sweat out half my body weight shoveling the five-car-wide car park, I knew it was time to make a change. After fighting off the hoardes of apartment-seeking college students with my trusty “professional” business card (um, don’t even think you’re getting this apartment, you entitled pre-adult. I’ve got a business card, which means I have a job, which means I am responsible. Take your Bud Light and your tapestry wall hangings somewhere else.), I finally found a place in the Old North End. I lessened my commute and built up some street cred all in one move. YES!

My apartment is in a ramshackle “triplex” that is held together by chewing gum and duct tape. But it has hardwood floors, a prereq when you have a long-haired (long-furred?) dog who loses an entire coat in an afternoon. The street is quiet and quirky and is close to a park. My commute to work is about four minutes by bike, 10 minutes by foot and probably about as much time by car, once you find parking (ok, it rained today and I drove. Go call Bill McKibben and report me as an environmental assassin). Clearly, there are plusses to this move. Like living below drug dealers who think that Dark Star Orchestra is actually the second coming of Christ.

But after giving it much thought, I’ve decided I need to downsize further. I’m going to move into the kiosk at the corner of Church and College Sts. that was recently vacated by Klinger’s Bread Company.
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The way I see it, the square footage of the place will force me to cull my stuff like never before. It’s only 126 sq. feet, which means it’s about the size of my kitchen, or the fountain at City Hall Park. My commute will be reduced substantially. It’ll basically take me about 30 sec. to cross the street (provided I don’t have to wait for traffic) and maybe another 30 sec. to climb the stairs to my office. But the real benefit of living in a kiosk on Church St. is that I’ll be in the heart of the action. I’ll never miss out on anything going on downtown ever again. And there’s nothing I like more than being woken up at 3 a.m. by drunk revelers peeing on my house.

According to the folks at the Church St. Marketplace, which owns the kiosk, rent is $1,500 a month with a 3 percent increase each year for five years. That’s a little steep, but once I sell off my stuff that won’t fit in the kiosk, which is everything I own, I’ll be all set. Five years seems like a long time to live in a kiosk, but other people have lived in less desirable places for longer. Like Delaware.

Here’s the rub, though. The Church St. Marketplace requires that I sell something at the kiosk. If this was Amsterdam, I could just sell myself (no overhead there). But they want me to actually hawk a product. Therein lies the dilemma. I’m going to have a think about just what business would go well there. At the moment, I got nothin’, plus I have about as much business acumen as the inventors of the Internet-enabled toilet, so I’m foundering a bit. I’d ask if any of you readers had any ideas, but who am I kidding. The only person who reads this is my mom and it’s only because she accidentally pressed the RSS feed link. She’s been trying to unsubscribe for ages. But if you are a real human reader and you have some suggestions, let me know. ‘Til then, I’ll be planning my kiosk decor.

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· 2:45 pm

Yak poop- my dog’s new favorite snack food

I’m penning this little dispatch from my front porch, where the skeeters are going bonkers because of the yak poop on my foot and my dog is trying to climb into my lap. If you are especially perceptive, you will note that I am not actually penning anything, but rather typing on some sort of computing machine and thereby drastically increasing the likelihood that I will die of carpal tunnel syndrome at an early age. But hopefully not before I get this post out. This one is a doozy.

And by doozy, I mean snoozy. Unless you’re into cute, cuddly, semi-domesticated farm animals from the Tibetan Steppe, I’d suggest you read no further. But, if like me, you think yaks are the greatest thing to hit the countryside since mini donkeys, then by all means continue reading. And then write awesome comments about how much you love yaks (and me).

So today I journied to Waitsfield to meet with a guy about a yak. Or a herd of yaks (yax?). The guy was Rob Williams, one of six owners of Vermont Yak Company, a new enterprise in the valley. You can read all about it in the upcoming Business Monday section of the Freeps. Rob agreed to show me around the farm and tell me everything I ever wanted to know about yaks, which was basically, how can I get my landlord to let me to have one of these things in my Twister board-sized backyard. (Dog and skeeter update- the dog is still in my lap and I’ve murdered three skeeters).

First, we were going to visit one of their new yak babies, Natasha. Yes, the yak’s name was Natasha. Not very Tibetan. If it was me, I’d call her the Dalai Yaka. Or perhaps Yakma Rinpoche. Anyway, we hopped in the Gator and were chauffered up to the upper paddock by one of the other owner’s 11-year-old daughter, Emma. I had my doubts about whether an 11-year-old could safely transport me to our destination. For one, she’s 11. She doesn’t have a driver’s license. Heck, she’s not even out of elementary school (though her bone-crushing handshake suggested otherwise). Plus, I’m pretty sure I smelled alcohol on her breath.

Much to my surprise, Emma was quite a capable driver. She zipped Rob and me up the hill where we paused to meet her strapping 15-year-old brother, Nick. Nick, who was doing something with hay on some big piece of machinery, also didn’t have a driver’s license. He did however have a breathtakingly solid handshake much like his sister’s. Nick and I gabbed about his slave labor situation and decided that he should put in a request to get paid for his efforts. Rob said they could talk about it at the next company meeting.

We let Nick get back to his haying and we headed up to see Natasha, the baby yak. If I had been wearing a bigger shirt, I would have stuffed Natasha inside and made off with her. Next to mini donkeys and baby bison, baby yaks are THE cutest animals ever. They’re also quite good at posing for pictures. See below:
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The furry thing on the right is Natasha. The furry thing on the left who is very nearly flashing her skivvies is me.

Natasha and I are in love. I think we’re going to elope as soon as she comes of age. But then I might not want her because she’ll weigh more than 1,000 lbs. and we probably won’t be able to snuggle.

After yakking (Ha!) with Rob, and Emma and Nick’s mom, Susan, about what made five farming newbies want to raise yaks, Rob, Susan and I mosied down to the big paddock where the main herd was chillyaksing (Ha! Another yak-ism!).

Here’s the herd:
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They are pretty incredible animals. They love the cold and they are way more efficient grazers than cows. Their hair (not fur) is soft like cashmere and their meat is way more lean than beef. Plus, they grunt a lot.

They also poop a lot, which brings me to my next point (if only I had a point). While walking to see some of the newer members of the herd, Rob and I had to scale a fence, bushwack through some brambles and try to avoid the 800 rabbit holes in the fields. This was a particular challenge for me since I decided to wear a denim skirt and flip flops for our outing. Anyway, as we’re walking down the hill, I’m making a point to avoid all the yak pies lining our path. These things are as big as landmines and nearly as dangerous. They appeared to be hardened by the sun, but most of them were quite fresh as I discovered when I stepped on one and slid about 150 feet down the hill. It was like I stood on a Frisbee coated in Crisco.

Here is the result:

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That is my flip-flopp-ed foot with a yak poop smear. I didn’t notice it until I got home. I’m glad I walked around for most of the day with poop on my foot. My dog was glad I didn’t notice it. Every so often, she walks by me and drive-by licks my foot. Ick. That’s why dogs are gross. That’s why I want a yak. They’ll only lick the inside of their own noses, not the poop off of some idiot’s foot.

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