A Few Topics to Ponder

1) Being in various states of undress during fire alarms/drill is no fun at all. Especially when the alarm is piercingly loud, almost to the point of making your ears bleed, and you just can’t find your pants fast enough.
2) If I were a professional singer, I would want to be just like Jennifer Warnes
3) I might meet and fall in love with Neil Diamond tonight.

Explanations:

1) Last night, like every night I got home from work and began my usual homecoming process. I change, check my e-mail until Daphne just can’t put up with waiting any longer, then I head out to the dog park with her. Some days I go straight from the dog park to the gym, other days I come home and do other fun, less physically active things like e-mailing, blogging laundry etc… So last night I was past stage 1-A: I had taken off my work clothes and was checking my e-mail in my socks and underwear. Come to think of it, I guess this is pretty normal for me. I was mid-e-mail-check when out of nowhere, my apartment building’s central fire alarm system went off. Took me a while to figure out what the heck it was- it couldn’t have been my smoke detector- that is a loud, pulsing sound. And I wasn’t making pot-stickers. This was a super loud, ear-piercing, deafening, solid scream. Daphne and I were both looking at each other like, “What the heck did you DO??” Then because I have the opposable thumbs in the relationship, I realized that it was the fire alarm. Crap…. I need some pants! But all I want to do is get the hell away from that SOUND! And I can’t leave Daphne inside to burn, and I need to take her out now anyway, so I’ll just go to the park now. But that requires pants AND a shirt… So I threw on some sweats, a dirty t-shirt that was actually inside out (hey, I can say I was trying to bring that fashion back…) and shoved some shoes on my feet grabbed the leash and mouthed to Daphne, “Let’s Go!” She took off as soon as I opened the door. I was running after her and just as I was about to snap her leash on, I realized that somehow my t-shirt got tucked not only into my pants in the back, but also into my underwear, which were at that point, exposed for the rest of my apartment evacuees to view. Hot.

Lesson Learned: Don’t hang out in your underwear. You never know when you’ll need to flee.

2) I’ve been doing a lot of Karaoke research lately (Hey, even Tiger Woods has to practice chipping and putting...) and I’m trying to put together a book of lyrics to a handful of choice Karaoke favorites, so that rather than focus on the words, I can really focus on the musical flair and style of the song next time I’m up on stage at the Rickshaw Tavern off of Lake City Way. So on my play list are a few classic duets including, but not limited to, “Up Where We Belong” and “I’ve Had The Time Of My Life”. BOTH of these songs feature the vocal stylings of one Miss Jennifer Warnes. Who’s that? Yeah, I didn’t know either. But I know now, because I spent too much of my day today (about 15 minutes) researching her. I have determined that she has the best of both worlds: She is accomplished and respected in the music industry, has worked with an array of musicians and has a few (see above…) big hits to her name, and has had a long (and seemingly stable) career as a professional singer. But she’s not famous. At all really. She’s just a normal person, who has a great voice, and makes a living off it. Neat.

3) No explanation, other than I’m going to his concert tonight, and if things go right, he will catch my room key when I throw it on stage and we’ll make beautiful music together. Don’t worry, I’ve already told Jose about it. He fully supports this effort, saying that if he were me, he’d do the same. Which makes me only a little bit nervous.