End-of-year wisdom,
or,
good stuff you can pick up driving 60 miles to a party given by some guy you've met once, on the supposition that surely professional brewers throw good house parties even if they have small children

"So do you guys know any jokes?" asked the dude who'd recently told me stories about getting all his weed confiscated in Mexico. "Or toasts?" Looks around. "There's at least two bartenders in this kitchen, who has a toast for me?"

"Here's one," said Joe, (who'd recognized me despite having served me all of once, months ago, because that's what bartenders do). "In this life, you've only got two things to worry about: are you healthy, or are you sick? If you're healthy, you've got nothing to worry about. If you're sick, you've only got two things to worry about: are you going to live, or are you going to die? If you're gonna live, you've got nothing to worry about. If you're gonna die, you've only got two things to worry about: are you going to go to heaven or are you going to go to hell? If you go to heaven, you've got nothing to worry about. If you go to hell..."

"You've got two things to worry about?" asked the other bartender.

"NO! If you go to hell, you'll be too busy shaking hands with all your goddamn friends to worry about anything! So let's drink and not worry!"

This was, I believe, shortly before the same dude broke a glass all over the kitchen floor, but after the host's two small daughters fell asleep on the living room couch in the middle of the madness.

(I've since found the toast online in multiple places, but always credited as "Irish Philosophy of Life" or similar. If anyone has a more exact citation, let me know.)

End-of-year highlights:
* Went to Vegas: checked into the diviest hotel/casino in town at 1am while completely drunk (no, I wasn't driving), played nickel slots and bemoaned the gentrification of downtown (Starbucks?!), went through hell finding a buffet in the off-season, ran away quickly after a day to enjoy Nevada parks instead.
* Ate 1.5 pounds of meat in the Fatburger Triple King Challenge, two more kinds of marinated/pickled fish (note to self: get funding for Church of Ceviche), various delicious food I actually cooked from scratch, and Mexican-spiced grasshoppers. Mmm...
* Read books not for school (please read "Fun Home" by Alison Bechdel immediately), slept 10+ hours/night, functioned without a to-do list, hiked multiple times, enjoyed my existence for once, etc.
* Xmas dinner at Denny's. Don't ask.

I bet you want to know where I've been and what I've been doing.

Truth be told, I've been resting on my laurels since being named Time Magazine's Person of the Year.

Jen's Year-End Delicious/Gross Extravaganza

12/5: Having night school on one's husband's birthday is gross, but the beer I brought to the final exam/potluck was delicous. I think I converted at least a few future teachers to Better Beer(tm).

12/8: Night school on Friday is gross, as is the traffic when one is let out early. This night -- my last night of fake-ass grad school for the quarter -- should have been delicious but I was too tired to care much.

12/9: Mead Chick, the hostess with the mostess, threw a five-course dinner party for 14 in her one-bedroom apartment. Worship the ground she cooks on. Ceviche, carrot soup, celery salad, meat 'n' veggies, bananas in rum sauce, and tasty beverages. Since the theme was South American this was delicioso.

12/10: Crispin Glover presents animal torture, egregious racist iconography, and cerebral palsy porn. Gross. (Rick can tell you more). (Side note: I am not crazy. I have been thinking all week that there was a punk (or something) song back in the day that referenced Crispin Glover. A quick Google tells me it's the Warlock Pinchers doing "Where the hell is Crispin Glover?" in 1989. Where, indeed?)

12/12: FUCKING GROSS, I finally get my eyes examined. To appreciate this, you must understand my lifelong phobia regarding all things optical. I could barely look Rick in the face during the time he was experimenting with contact lenses. It's totally pathological. Yet, I'm in my 30s now and my distance vision has started to suck. So I was a big girl and got my eyes checked, and though I was totally unable to keep my eyes open for the drops (turns out you can put the drops in the corner of a shut eye and then blink 'em around), I only had to lie down once. (To my credit, I was trying to tough it out, until the optometrist noted that my lips were white). I let the other optometrist pick me out some driving/back-of-the-class glasses at the student rate, and then practically crapped my pants when they sat me down and told me I have one of the early warning signs for glaucoma. I have a referral to an opthamologist now. I think my lips are turning white again just thinking about it. If I really have an eye disease, I am going to need heavy sedation for the rest of my life.

12/14: My homebrew club's annual Xmas party, which as always was delicious. So much good food and beer, one needs an eating/drinking strategy, but after enough good beer, one's strategy flies out the window. I think was alright until the door prize give-away started, and people started winning and pouring heavyweight Belgian beers (I won a delicious Scaldis Noel myself). If glaucoma doesn't blind me, parties like this might do it someday. Yummy yummy. I did, however, witness a hit-and-run on a parked car in the alley, which was gross (someone caught the license plate of the offender and we left a note).

12/15: One of my professors forgot to hand in his grades on time (true story) but the other two gave me A's for another quarter of half-assery. I don't know whether this outcome is delicious, gross, or both.

Because you know by now I love a good toilet story:

1) I was at Cal State Asshat on Thursday, specifically at the library. I enter the bathroom, and see a woman pulling up her pants. Huh? She's reflected in the mirror, because she is using the handicapped stall with the door WIDE OPEN. She does not appear handicapped, except perhaps in the realm of social propriety. You can get into college but you can't close a door?

2) I was at the half-ghetto/half-yuppie Starbucks near USC yesterday tutoring my indie-study kid (University of Southern California for you non-LA people or non-college-football-fans, since *I* certainly never gave much thought to this locally-worshipped institution previous to 2003). Anyway, I was waiting for the restroom, which was one of those single-toilet deals. A woman emerged -- blonde, young, and well-heeled, in looks and speech a perfect caricature of one of the Wayans Brothers in "White Chicks," almost definitely a USC student. Looking spooked, she gravely warned me, "You should know, there's, like, PAPER TOWELS all in the toilet, ugh, I don't KNOW..." I thanked her for the warning and entered the bathroom, prepared to find a giant, scary clog of paper towels and #2.

There were a few paper towels in the toilet, yes. I flushed once, and they went down easily. Then I laughed. You can get into a *competitive* college but you can't flush a john?