Wherein Bry does typically suburban things.

Today I went to the dog park with KT. We took her dog Duncan and Floyd. Floyd belongs to EP, KT's roommate. I don't know Floyd's breed, but he does remind me of my brother's old dog Fred, who is fondly remembered as a lunkhead. Nondescript, black, shaggy.

The dog park appears to be a necessary evil for suburban dog owners. It is also one of the reasons, among many, that I will probably never own a dog in the city.

The most appropriate outfit for a dog park is a combination of hip-waders, a rain jacket, and rubber gloves. I'm also pretty sure serial killers wear the same outfit to bury their prey. But they are well-chosen items, good for dealing with the mud and poop.

Aside from the obvious, who actually owns waders?, they are also the least attractive clothes a gal could wear to a place where hot guys are milling about ready to bond with you over chewed up tennis balls and clusters of wrestling mutts.

But the bonding can only occur if your dog does not spend the entire visit embarrassing you. By pooping every five seconds. By humping all the eligible lady dogs (and sometimes man dogs). By being much faster than a other dogs and always fetching the ball first (the ball that does not belong to your dog). And by being a little asshole and starting a secret fight club against the will of all the participants (the bully).

This is a lot to ask for from a dog. Now Duncan handles himself really well. He is very attractive for a dog and kind of a big baby. He always checks in to make sure he knows where to find KT. He doesn't start fights and is willing to play with even the ugliest of dogs. He keeps the pooping to a minimum and doesn't argue when it is time to leave.

Floyd, on the other hand, managed to poop five times in five minutes. He fetched every ball he could find, trying to stuff two tennis balls into his mouth at once. And then he rolled in a big mud puddle. KT spent much of the time chasing after him and cleaning up his messes.

It is sort of like going to the bar with your craziest friend. You think it is going to be a great time, but eventually you are hold her hair back while she pukes.

I pretended I did not know them. Instead, I drank my latte and scoped out the hot men. And their wedding rings.

Which is when I realized that every man there seemed way too attached to their dog.

A few years ago there was an MTV True Life I Love My Dog (or something like that). All of the profiled people were obsessed with their pets. There was a model who took her dog everywhere. And there was a total Jersey Shore guido type that bathed with his dog and kissed it on the mouth. He also made his girlfriend ride in the backseat while the dog rode shotgun.

Of all the MTV True Life episodes, this one stayed with me the most. Sometimes while checking out guys, I think "he looks like he bathes with his dog."

Dealbreakers: bathing with your dog, wedding rings, hip waders.

Wherein Bry calls AA a liar.

After some strange dreams last night, I decided to debunk the story AA told me about the python. I was so grossed out, but rationally I knew it wasn't possible.

My Internets research took two seconds. The very first thing I googled "snakes measure prey" brought up a snopes.com article. The first half of the article was the exact story I posted last night. And then it called it an urban myth and gave this explanation for why it wasn't true.

Origins:   Although stories like these about snake owners being dangerously unaware that their pets are calmly sizing them up as the main courses of their next meals are interesting, they should be classified with other fictional tales of snake scarelore on the following bases: • Pythons don't measure their prey before going after their meals: They grab, they squeeze, they eat. There's little fretting in their nature about relative sizes of intended edibles, nor does all that much go into their thinking process. To look at it another way, if pythons were in the habit of measuring before striking, they'd starve. Their prey wouldn't willingly wait for them to finish mimicking tape measures before consenting to be eaten; they would hop away to safety as soon as they noticed large snakes stretching out alongside them. • For a snake to slurp up a human, it would not only have to be at least as long as its prospective dinner, but also capable of ingesting the width of the person. While a really big snake could indeed swallow a person's arm, it's quite unlikely that the kinds of snakes typically kept in homes could get its jaws open wide enough to take in an adult human's head and shoulders. • Those who keep fairly large snakes as pets know that it's perfectly normal for their pets to go without food for fairly long periods of time and thus scoff at the notion that a snake's not eating would be cause to rush it to a vet. • No vet would reasonably counsel having a snake put down because it hadn't eaten of late and thus must be planning to make a meal of its owner. (There are other methods for dealing with non-eating snakes, including, in extreme circumstances, force-feeding.)

Wherein Bry scares the crap out of you.

AA told me this story tonight. I believe it is true, but even if it is malarky, the idea of it will scare the crap out of you.

This lady was a bit creepy and a total lover of amphibians, snakes in particular. She used to let her python out of the cage and let it sleep on her bed.

She began to worry about the snake because it stopped eating. Weeks went by and the snake would not eat.

One night she woke up and the snake was laying next to her completely stretched out.

The lady takes the snake to the vet and explains the odd behavior to which the vet responds, "When snakes try to eat a big meal, they fast to prepare. And then they measure their prey by stretching out lengthwise to make sure it will fit inside them."

Wherein Bry is Bry is Bry is Bry.

Every Tuesday morning, I get up at 4:00am and pull on some clean clothes, make some coffee, and head off into the night, arriving at work by 5:30am where I build book displays and set up new sales.
Then, somewhere between 1-3pm, I head home and somewhere between 2-4pm, I am passed out napping, waking between 10pm-12am.

Today I went to lunch with LM at 3pm so I was asleep by 4:30pm. In what I consider real growth, I managed to wake up all on my ownie at 8:30pm. Don't laugh. This is like a toddler taking those first steps.

And boy am I glad I woke up! Oh the sparkles, oh the ruffled princess shoulders, oh the spandex. It is men's skating at the Olympics! What a feast for the eyes. And what a bunch of drama queens. Very athletic queens, but drama, drama, drama.

Say what you want about Weir, and people have said plenty, you have to give him credit for being honest. And fancy. I don't care if he ever wins a medal. He is more entertaining than a technically proficient skater.

Part train wreck, part athletic, part little bitch. He is the true triple threat.

Wherein Bry

I would not be surprised to learn Paris Hilton is the fashion editor of Teen Prom magazine. The combination of prints and shiny jewel colors make for some totally tranny chic dresses.


I looked through the magazine on my lunch and I had a few questions.

1. Why do all these models look 30? Where are the stick thin, flat chested, wobbly-heeled girls? These girls look like they took the bus from Jersey City to Las Vegas just to get a better deal at Frederick's of Hollywood.

2. What's up with the animal print? You look like you are on the prowl. Nobody wants to get pregnant on prom night. It totally ruins graduation.

These dresses could never work for a spinster like me. None of them match my Snuggie. Plus there is that whole part about going to PROM.

Wherein Bry ponders the meaning of life.

There comes a time in every girl's life when she has to ask her self "How did I end up watching the Olympic opening ceremonies on a split screen with Britney Spears videos and 50 sweaty gay guys?" And then right after that she has to ask, "Am I ready for another drink?"

I should have known better than to traverse over to AA's in a sweater set and rain boots. How foolish of me to not prepare for $1 wells at Boxxes.

Excuse me, I have to go suck at pool now.

Wherein Bry runs for her life.

Just back from the gym. I was almost there for more than an hour. But then a really tall hot man saved me by showing up to lift some weights. So I immediately left.

As I was hoofing it on the stairmaster, I thought "This would go so much better if there was a seat on this thing." But a pedaling machine with a seat is called a bike. And unless Lance Armstrong is standing right next to me sweating on me, I don't believe in riding bikes indoors. So I sucked it up and pretended there was a hot man waiting thirty floors up in the stairwell of the burrito factory.

I'm currently sitting in a nest of dirty clothes on my floor watching 30 Rock for the 1000th time. I like to imagine I am a fancy bird sitting in my nest. In reality, I'm a borderline hoarder with delusions of grandeur.

I've moved on to the 30 Rock DVD extras. And they shared the interesting tid bit that when LL Cool J guested on the show he gave them all copies of his Fitness/Abs book. Last week this scruffy old man (probably 40) came in to buy a copy of the LL Cool J book and reserve a copy of the new one coming out next month. The whole time I kept thinking, Does this old man watch NCIS:LA (or whatever NCIS LL is on)? Or is he really just a fitness buff and does not realize LL is anything more than a pretty face with rockin' abdominals?

I guess when LL Cool J showed up with ab muscles, people assumed he took steroids to get them. So his books are supposed to be vindication for the "haters". How did I get off on this LL tangent? I know way too much about this topic.

I think working with books I have no interest in has ruined me for life.

Maybe LL Cool J can be the man in the burrito factory waiting thirty flights up.

Wherein Bry tries to stay awake.

If you needed anymore proof of my old lady status, you should have stopped by my apartment at around 6pm last night. At approximately that time, I was laying on the couch in all my Bry glory, asleep. I am happy to report I was not wearing my Snuggie. However, and this is true, at about 5:45pm, I Googled "fancy glasses chains." I was not satisfied with my options. Of which there were zero because only old people wear chains on their glasses and old people are not fancy. All that Google-ing took the spit right out of me and I fell asleep mid-30 Rock episode.

I slept until 1:30am when I woke because I was positive someone was trying to break into my apartment. Another sign of old age. I always think I hear burglars on the landing. And the burglars always turn out to be the wind, or a tree branch hitting the apartment building, or my imagination. Or maybe there really are burglars and they are scared off by my turning on the lights. Either way, I'm thinking I might be in the baseball bat buying business. There is nothing scarier than a crazy lady in a Snuggie carrying a baseball bat.

Because I slept for 7.5 hours, about twice as much sleep as I normally clock, I was wide awake. It also could have been latent burglar-induced adrenaline. I was scheduled to wake up at 4a.m but it seemed silly to lay in bed for 3 hours. So I got up and cleaned the house from top to bottom , baked a loaf of bread, and organized my papers.

Okay, that's a lie. I got up and drank a pot of coffee, read some dirty romance novels and stared at my face in the mirror for about an hour. No need to bust out the lie detector, that is the truth. I'm even more of a lazy bum in the middle of the night as I am in normal people hours.

The downside of these middle of the night activities is my current state of exhaustion. Right now I'm at the library. I figure I can't fall asleep in public, right? Oh wait, that is #5 in the top 10 things old peolple do daily.

My goal from here is to go to the grocery store. Because I am completely incapable of walking by Fred Meyer's without going in and buying something. Then I'm going home to drink one thousand gallons of coffee. Then I'm going to find a Bry sized diaper because after the gallons of coffee, I will surely fall asleep and be in a coma for the rest of the night.