I was in a creative mood, and I was trying to write an introduction for a novel I was working on for fun. Just because starting anything is usually a challenge, I decided to include my musings for that here. It should also be duly noted that one of my friends, L—-, was continually looking over my shoulder and commenting as I tried to start the novel.

“Now for the real story.” No. “A long, long time ago.” Beyond cliche. “Once upon a time…” What is this, Disney? Please. How about… “it was cold, dark, and lonely.” No, this isn’t a Gothic novel. Even though that would be fun. Oh, maybe… “It was a pretty normal day.” Just as lame as it sounds. Here L— jumps in with, “Your mom.” “Is a teacher,” I respond. T— decides to jump into this conversation, blindly, saying “Call me Ishmael.” Yeah, best opening for a novel that I’ve ever heard. Too bad the novel doesn’t have any Ishmaels.

Finally, I came up with something like a satisfactory beginning, but no, it didn’t include any Ishmaels or fairy-tale like openings. Thankfully. No one needs more of those.

We got a tip. (Let me say that again: we got a tip.)

Someone crashed a golf cart in a tree.

I reached for a camera and a black notebook. Pulled on my pea coat. Grabbed the car keys. Set off at a run. Picked up the managing editor and the news editor. And we sped away to find some breaking news.

So what was the tip? Well, good question. We got a mysterious message about a golf cart in a tree. I say it was mysterious because instead of actually telling us where it was, they told us that it was where _____ had crashed her car a year ago. Sounds specific, right? Well, only if you know which _____  it is and where she crashed her car. We didn’t.

But at least, the person who tipped us off did note that a golf cart in a tree would probably make for a good story, and as we all as know, anything that has lodged itself in a tree is likely to at best/worst, be funny and at worst/best, make for a recap of last year – when a golf cart was driven off the mountain and the police got involved and people got prosecuted and blahblahblah, let’s not go there again. I’m getting away from the point. There’s a crashed golf cart in a tree. Somewhere.

This mysterious tip led my two comrades and I to start listing off where so-and-so crashed their car. And hey, in this curve, ____ totalled their car. And oh yeah, ______ hit that guardrail. (We live at the top of a pretty curvy mountain.) Sound awful? Not really. People need to know! Forget the topographic map! We need a crash map. (With pushpins and everything. And instructions: don’t go more than 25mph in this curve, but you can actually go over 5mph over the speed limit in this one! It’ll be a GPS component! I’ll make millions!) Um, yeah. That was a tangent. I’m adept at them. There will probably be more.

So we got in my car and drove the most common route down the mountain, keeping our eyes peeled for golf carts in trees. You have to look carefully, because if we know anything about golf carts, it’s that they’re unpredictable, out of control. Far too many good stories that I know involved them. They’re wily. There was this one time with my cousins … oh, am I getting off subject again? Sorry.

We kept looking, and looking, and looking. I drove at least three different routes on the mountain before we started to think this was a prank. Or maybe, as the managing editor pointed out, we’re caught in a time warp. The person who tipped us off can actually predict the future and we’re going to be the crash! Nevermind the fact that we’re not in a golf cart. A golf cart is going to come flying from out of nowhere and smash into my beautiful car and us and WE’RE GOING TO BE HEADLINE NEWS. (You would never guess that the managing editor is writing a morbid, 1984-like, futuristic novel, would you?)

So, anyway. We searched. We kept believing that just around the next corner would be the best story we’d seen all year. And it didn’t happen. The news editor had some dumb class to get to, so we finally headed back with … you guessed it … no story.

We later found out that the incident had happened right behind the main building on campus. TRUE STORY!

For starters, I lost the Paris Hilton sunglasses. The super tacky, super big, and super white ones are gone. I didn’t even do it on purpose either! (Okay, that might not be the complete truth.) I had actually found a practical purpose for this pair – they were very useful for blocking the water stream while skiing, so I had started wearing them on all my ski runs. But just a few weeks ago, I had an unexpected crash, and cocky me hadn’t put any floaters on them, and they are now gone. Sunk. Adios. Good riddance.

But now it’s mid-summer, and I’m having the all-too-common mid-summer sunglasses crisis. I lost the black pair I purchsed during Spring Break, somewhere between road trips back home and trips to the lake and too many switches between purse, car, boat, lake bags, gloveboxes, and more. And of course, I lost them the day the sun came out. For two weeks of clouds and rain, they were tucked in the center console of my car, just waiting for the first streak of sun. And the very day the sun came out to stay, I can’t find them.

So now storms are back in the forecast, and I’ve spent the last week of sunshine squinting and swearing I don’t need sunglasses. I’m tempted to go buy a new pair, but I know that the minute I do it will be nothing but rain, rain, rain.

I’m starting to consider alternative strategies, like buying several pairs of sunglasses at once and keeping them in all the locations I typically need them. I can’t decide if this would simply be a waste of money, or a great cure to the chronic losing disease.

We’ll see what happens.

I wasn’t expecting to have an entire row of high-school age girls in front of me to mock, in addition to this already entertaining venture. But you know what? That’s exactly what happened.

So we’re only about two minutes into the movie, and Percy Jackson hasn’t shown his face yet. But when he does, the row in front of me audibly gasps with admiration, and then lapses into uncontrollable giggling at the realization of their mutual awe for his attractiveness. This is funny because a) Percy Jackson isn’t gorgeous and b) they actually gasped.

Then, just when I think it can’t get any better, two of the girls pull out their phones. I assume they’re going to text some boy in their harem. (Because, believe me, these girls have a harem.) But no, they instead attempt to take a picture of Mr. SexyFace Percy Jackson on the screen. (To stare and gasp at later, I presume.) Not only is this totally ridiculous, it takes them quite a few tries and lots of giggly exchanges to get a good one. One of the girls forgot that her camera had flash, and had a rather embarrasing moment of discovery.

And, my favorite part actually had nothing to do with these giggly girls. On my right were sitting a group of late elementary-school kids. I would guess fifth graders. At one point in the movie, a main character, Grover, says they’re headed to Nashville, “the home of my least favorite music.” And this little girl with a Southern lilt exclaims “Oh, no, he didn’t!” It was all I could do to keep from laughing hysterically.

It’s not so bad for accounts I use daily, like Gmail and Facebook and Twitter. But when it comes to say, store websites, I only use those sporadically. Some sites will let you stay logged in for extended sessions (as for example, Amazon does), but of course, when you’re smart like me, you reset your cookies and passkeys every few months, thinking you’re being a responsible web user. And then you go back to that random site that you’re usually logged into, only to find you have to reset your password.

Sigh. Technology. I love it, but it’s insane.

Scout is a red, German, hatchback coupe. Scout Akemi, actually. Scout, for the tomboy daughter in To Kill a Mockingbird and Akemi, Japanese for “happiness.”

I’ve never really decided whether Scout’s a girl or a boy. S/he’s technically named after a girl, but I’m no feminist, so I tend to think of Scout as a boy. Somedays Scout acts like a guy and somedays like a girl – that is, if you really believe in the stereotypes, and I don’t particularly think they’re accurate.

Mostly, all you need to know is that I love speed, and therefore, Scout.

Late last night, when I returned from – of all things – snow skiing, I discovered that our campus had been hit with probably the worst snow and ice storm this region has seen in over a decade. While we were gone to land of snow, nearly five inches of snow accumulated here on Friday, and then it froze. Which, while incredibly pretty, is also incredibly inhibitive.

But it’s been three days. The roads are clear. Campus parking lots should be too, right? Wrong. I merrily skipped down to Scout (my car) this morning, fully expecting to go work. There I am, in my business attire and pea coat, and Scout is loaded down with at least three inches of ice, and I can see from just one glance that my tires won’t be carrying me anywhere today.

Reasons why this entire situation is ridiculous: a) I have rear-wheel drive, and this would be one of the days I decide to back in to my parking space and therefore further complicate trying to get out of ice, b) I never park in this parking lot, which is a gravel lot – even further complicating my traction issues, and  c) this is the freaking South – and this should never happen.

"Chucking ice chunks." Yeah, really

Regardless of what my eyes are telling me, I decide to try my luck anyway. I march back up to room, lace up my tennis shoes, put on a real jacket, grab some hefty gloves, and head back down (or should I say, skate back down? The western side of our building was like an ice rink.) Armed with my beast of an ice scraper (it’s about a foot and a half long and is doubly equipped with both scraper and brush!), I set out to de-ice Scout. Not only do I knock off all the ice (which involved chucking two-foot long chunks of ice into the woods), I dig out the tires, for good measure. Still, there’s a lot of ice around the car.

Thus, I’m still skeptical. Why? Because Scout, despite being German, handles winter like a southerner, a.k.a. doesn’t handle winter. The rear-wheel drive kicks butt on the curvy mountain, but it’s not ideal for rain, snow, or any kind of slick. Who cares though? I’m stubborn. So I put the key in the ignition and rev the engine a little to warm it up, and, apprehensively, take off the e-brake, let out the clutch and slowly push the accelerator. At first, it seems like success – Scout is going to pull it out! – but then, two seconds later, I hear skidding and up the e-brake goes.

After pausing for a moment, I decide my pride isn’t worth the car or the cars around me, and resignedly, I notify work that I won’t be in today.

So begins my search for an all-wheel drive vehicle.

Flip flops might be written off as cheap, or too informal, or just an ill-conceived notion, but to me, they are as close as you can get to going barefoot everywhere without actually adopting that practice. Now granted, you could just lose the shoes altogether, but restaurants and public locations might kick you out. So I like flip flops, the footwear that lets you toe the line. (Bad pun? I don’t care.)

These days you can buy flip flops in every color imaginable. You can get them for $1 at Old Navy when they go on sale. And sure, you might feel every little bump in the road, but who cares? They’re flip flops, the pinnacle of awesome.

I used to believe that sunglasses were for the weak. I never wore them as a kid; I just squinted a lot. But when I started driving, I decided that the sun’s glare across the windshield could be blinding, a word that I don’t like to put in the same sentence with “driving.” Thus, I went to buy some sunglasses, and thus began the long line of fated eyewear.

First there were the purple-tinted ones with the flowery side details. Plastic, comfy, and stylish – I’ve always missed this pair. Then I thought I could rock the Paris Hilton white – I didn’t lose these on purpose, but I sure tried. Next I “borrowed” some plain jane black sunglasses from home. They went road tripping with me, and they were faithful to block UVA and UVB. But like their fellows before, they too disappeared. There were plenty more, but some of them barely lasted a month before they went to sunglass-heaven, and I forgot them.

The latest edition of sunglasses are silver and classy. They’re tinted a light blue, but they tinge the landscape with a light blush. I was driving down the mountain I live on a few days ago, in the dead of winter, but with these sunglasses on, you might have thought autumn had just slipped away. It was kind of nice to see that side of the forest again. But now it’s raining, like it usually does in the winter here, and there’s no sun to block. It’s back to bleak, but I don’t mind. Spring will burst forth before I know it, and when it does, well … it’ll probably be time to buy some more sunglasses.

Let me explain. I wasn’t really expecting much, because, well, I don’t like bagels. They are plain, ho-hum, bland. Everything that I don’t want from my breakfast. Give me eggs, bacon, protein, chocolate milk – that’s my breakfast motto. That is, at least, what it was until 6:35 a.m. on January 6, 2010. Now I wake up each morning with one thing on my mind: bagel.

Bagel jealousy at its finest.

And that’s how it started. Bagel jealousy. I was substituting a mostly disappointing everything bagel in an effort to dispel my New York bagel fantasy, but eating it with relish anyway, when one of my friends started to covet my bagel. He now thinks that I purposefully taunt him by feeding bagels to my boots (named Ferocious #1 and Ferocious #2 because they’re black and fur-lined).

So there you go. Bagels, currently, rule my life. And nourish my boots.