Holy Moly! My blog is exactly 150 pages long!!! That’s 150 pages of nonsense and non-importance written by yours truly since…let’s see…the first entry was made on March 15th, 2006 at 9:22am it says: “Testing...testing with this ridiculously slow hospital internet connection. Can I be a bed rest blogger?!” Wow. History in the making. Famous first words. And those first words set the tone. Some of the words that jump out there are on themes of the ridiculous, the slow, the self-doubting. Fascinating, indeed. Foreshadowing, perhaps? I’ll let my readers be the judge.

Well, I can report that I would’ve enjoyed more time spent in bed this last week. I had a wonderful week despite having a cold. Somehow, my social calendar exploded and I did more in the last seven days than I’ve done in—maybe the last seven months! On Friday night, my dear friend Larissa (she’s my designated Mormon friend – everyone should have one – they’re grrrreat!) picked me up for Karaoke to celebrate her birthday. She arrived at 8:15 – at 8:07, I was upstairs holding the puke bucket for Matthew while he filled it, meanwhile Mike was downstairs with our visiting little pal Joshua (2 ½ yrs. old) who was sobbing for his parents and wondering why his parents would abandon him in such a crazy place. By 8:12, I was looking like total Hotness and was ready to roll. Mike shooed me out the door with reassurances that he’d be fine holding down the pukey, sobby fort and I should go out and have fun. I did. I TOTALLY did.

I was a little concerned with how my cold-inflicted hoarse voice would hold up in Karaoke. I need not have worried: a.) I’m a Karaoke Queen regardless of any temporary vocal handicap and b.) I could have been completely hoarse and tone deaf and still would’ve sounded better than the drunken peoples who always seem to find themselves singing solo after solo at Karaoke bars. And why do they think they sound amazing? And then the more they drink the worse it gets because at least before they could read the words, now they’re just slurring nonsense in a cat-yowly way. It’s sad. But definitely an ego-booster. Hey! I didn’t even mind the sleazy middle-aged men hitting on us and asking our table to sing back-up for them on their next solo. And come on! Who wouldn’t want four mom/housewives: three Mormons and a Catholic, all choir girls standing up there with them?! We were so ready for a good time, we may have done just about anything (well, anything that three married Mormon women and a Catholic would do, and quite frankly, that’s a limited list).

The next fun evening was seeing a show in Seattle with Rachel – Rachel my friend from childhood who has been a part of my life since first grade; Rachel who still loves me despite knowing me in fifth grade when I had a mullet and serious chub-issues; Rachel who forgives me for all the times that I repeatedly chose Jenna Petrie over her; Rachel who introduced me to the Beatles, Dean Cain (of “Lois and Clark: the New Adventures of Superman”), and now…Josh Ritter. According to the Amazon.com reviewest (reviewee, hmm, I think it’s actually reviewer) Andrew Bartlett, “You're presently reading about what may be the best album of 2007 [The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter], hands down, by the most under-accorded American musical genius. Real murmurs, believable ones, came with Josh Ritter's 2006 album, Animal Year, suggesting that the Idahoan is today's Bruce Springsteen, today's Bob Dylan.” That’s exactly how I’d describe him: Bob Dylan meets Jon Mayer. (But way cuter). Josh’s voice (yes, Josh – yes, I do feel as though we’re on a first name basis) is ridiculously versatile and I feel like when I’m listening to his albums there are several different singers – but no, it’s just him; it’s Josh (with some back-up harmonies to boot).

The concert was SO fun. Rachel –has been a Josh fan for a while and was ECSTATIC to see him and was intrigued to see what his concert-attending crowd would be like. After some study, we determined that most Josh Ritter fans are Gruppies – Granola Yuppies. (For education purposes, I found this definition of Granola in the Urban Dictionary: A person who dresses like a hippy, eats natural foods (granola), and is usually a Liberal, but in all other ways is a typical middle class white person, and is likely to revert back to being straight when they finish college. And Yuppie is: Informal for (y)oung (U)rban (P)rofessional, or Yup. turned into yuppie in the 1980's. A term used to describe someone who is young, possibly just out of college, and who has a high-paying job and an affluent lifestyle. Can now be used to describe any rich person who is not modest about their financial status.) So, essentially we were surrounded by natural food eating, well-dressed Liberal folks. It was actually a really fun crowd – ranging from young single people to married couples (sometimes referred to ala Bridget Jones’ as the Smug Marrieds – I am not one of those. Or at least HOPE that I’m not)! Smug Marrieds get married and then they’re all bijiggity with their single friends who have yet to be wed. Anyway, back to the show – it was fantastic and so much fun. It was also Josh’s birthday and his mom surprised him on stage with a cupcake (that he proceeded to eat candle and all. Hmm….) and then cupcakes were passed through the crowd. I don’t think that I elbowed too many people to snag a chocolate one. It was, as Matthew would say, mighty perfection.

Tuesday night was book club night. We had fun – as always. I left hoarse – as always (no, more from my cold then from overextending my vocal chords. My vocal chords are, in gym muscle-meat-head terms, ripped and tight. My vocal chords get worked out so much they could bench press 250). The sad, tale of woe of our book club is that one of our girls, Kelly, is moving to New York for at least a year. Kelly and her husband Tim are major world travelers and have been all over the stinkin’ globe, so we weren’t too surprised with the news that they’d be abandoning us. I am surprised they’re going somewhere as tame and civilized as New York though. They have such an adventuring spirit; I thought they would’ve moved to somewhere like Zimbabwe. New York is a little closer, and we all like toying with the idea of Kelly’s turn to host book club. Girls weekend in NY, anyone?! We’ll miss her and we promised – at her request – not to replace her with an imitation Kelly – maybe another Asian girl named Kelsey or something. There is only one Kelly Chow-Sale after all and she is irreplaceable!

Thursday night was the night that all the other nights were in training for. Thursday was Celebrate My Gay Ex-Boyfriend’s 30th Birthday Night! Yes, Brian from high school – my good pal Brian – who is now also married to a man named Michael (didn’t see that one coming…) was having a big ‘ol shindig for his big 3-0 and I was going to go! I invited Rebecca to come with me to do a combo celebration and girls’ night out kind-of deal. When I forwarded the invite on to Rebecca, she left me the funniest voice message: “Oh my gosh, Jenny!! My gay ex-boyfriend is also invited to this party!” Turns out her gay ex-boyfriend (apparently a lot of us have them) just so happens to be Joe – the best friend of Brian and with whom I was quite good friends in high school! Crazy. So, squeezing into the jeans that are a little too tight (but are cute) and the shoes that hurt a little too bad (but are cute), we – two stay-at-home-hot-mamas – ventured out to a brewery on Capital Hill to party with our gay ex-boyfriends. It was a most entertaining evening indeed….to be continued. (Ha! What a tease)!