And so it goes.

I lost all my favorites when we got wireless connection. Could those of you with interesting blogs/sites email me with those addresses again?

In an attempt to stop all these damn penis enlargement/Brooklyn baby born (what the fuck?) spam comments, I've turned on a function that makes you type in a word in order to comment. It's irritating, yes, but it'll save me from the tremendous disappointment of thinking I have ten spanking new comments - when in actuality all I have are comments advertising spanking.

Look at me! Look at me!

Excuse me whilst I gloat: I just figured out a really complicated two-step SUMIF fuction on my Excel homework! It took me 45 minutes (many a Kleenex lost its life - frustration makes me teary) but by God, I did it! This is a major accomplishment for someone who hasn't used the book-learnin' part of her brain since... uh... way back.

=SUMIF(G10:G16,"under",F10:F16)-SUMIF(G10:G16,"under",E10:E16)

Just look at that, will ya? (And for all those smarty-pants, "real job"-having folks who deal with this insanity daily, this is MY parade. RAIN-FREE!)

I am so very, very intelligent.

Are we STILL in Canada?! (eh?)

Day 3 (or is it 4? Who can tell anymore?)

It's fracking* freezing. People are huddled under Fun Ship blankets sipping hot tea, except for the few bikini clad die-hards who refuse to admit defeat. (They're on vacation, dammit!) Ignoring the temperature (and common sense) I stuffed myself into a one-piece, pulled on my goggles (I'm slightly OCD about getting water in my eyes), sucked in my gut and headed towards the waterslide. (There are some things a person should never pass up: free food, free booze, and a four-story waterslide.)

The thing was a monster! Four decks high and so fast, you'd think it was slicked with butter. I looked like a beached whale when I hit the pool (dad's going have to burn those pics) but I couldn't wait to do it again. Some mealy-mouthed 10 year old tried to cut in line but I bitch-slapped her with my eyes and she retreated.

I've consumed an obscene amount of bacon on this trip. Obscene. When I walk, my belly bounces with each step. That said, if you can get a cheap cruise, it's really not a bad deal. At roughly $400 per person for 5 days, all meals, non-alcoholic drinks, and entertainment included, it's less than the cost of most hotel rooms. Plus you get to go someplace. That place might be Canada, but still.

I live for the art auctions on these things. ("We've got names like PICASSO! REMBRANDT! DALI!... and THOMAS KINKADE!") The mix of high and low is comical/sad. They'd auction off a spectacular Chagall lithograph followed by a Norman Rockwell/Garfield print and - do I even need to say it? - the Garfield would incite a furious bidding war. (Jim Davis, the creater of Garfield, bought the rights to several of Norman Rockwell's most famous pieces and superimposed his that stupid lasagna-eating cat right in the middle. Which isn't horrifying at all.)

Painting of two nudes in an embrace: (Best auction quote)

(Auctioneer) "What's the hardest thing to paint? Hands and feet. And where does this artist place his hands?"
(Befuddled audience member) "On her ass?"

The cruise is over. It was great while it lasted. (In my luggage you might find 28 individual boxes of breakfast cereal, 9 protein shakes, and 5 bananas. I'm not saying you will. I'm just saying.)

It's good to be home.

*A shout-out to all the Battlestar Galactica nerds in the hizzouse!

"Hoiman! You a veiwy bad WOIM!" (eh?)

Day 3: Halifax

Once we realized that we could skip Carnival's exorbantly priced "excursions" and just hit the local tourism board, we made like a local and hopped a ferry to Fisherman's Cove. Fisherman's Cove is a tiny former fishing village that was abandoned and turned into a tourist trap. But it was less touristy than the other traps, so we oohed and aahed over the requisite lobster magnets and maple sugar ("Beaver tail!", "Puffin droppings!") candy. I asked a cute young craftsman where the locals ate and he recommended a dandy fish and chips place. We were seated at the exact same table where Christina Applegate and her under-famous hubby filmed some made-for-television weeper, which was kind of fun.

We also saw the Titanic exhibit at the Maritime Museum. The bulk of the recovery came from Halifax so there were some amazing artifacts - menu cards, a perfectly preserved wooden deck chair, descriptions used to identify the bodies (male, 40's, brown hair, wearing silk pajamas under a gray woolen suit. Even during a trauma people kept their dignity.) I was amazed at the ticket prices - First class cost $1,169! (In 1912! That would be like $20,000 today.) Surprisingly, 2nd class only cost $109 and third class was slightly less at $102 (of course, they were barred from the lifeboats...)

Who can forget Carnival Cruiseline's Guest Talent Show. Fan-freaking-tastic! First up, an enthusiastic 16 year old belting "Sweet Home Alabama", followed by a guy playing "Wind Beneath My Wings" on keyboard. Then there was an elderly Asian man warbling "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" (so sincere! so off-key!) and an adolescent hipster dreaming of rockstardom. (The love-struck yelps coming from the Camp Carnival 'tweens will keep his ego stroked for years.) There was also an old Irish guy singing "Danny Boy" (of course) and a bleach blond Bridge-and-Tunnel type doing her rendition of "Killing Me Softly", followed by a tiny Irishman trilling "Carolina In The Morning" ("Nothing could be finer than to be in Carolina in the mooooorning!") complete with bouncy hip thrusts. I'm pretty sure he was drunk. The hands-down winner was a 4 year old from Philly who brought the house down with his tale of Herman the Worm (or in his case "Hoiman de Woim") who ate "all de pizza in da woild, and all de cookies in da woild, and all de licorice in da woild"- and then proceeded to poop it all out.

Isn't it time to eat again, eh?

British art auctioneer to quiet crowd:
"People, this isn't Christie's. We're on the bloody Fun Ship in the middle of the Atlantic. When somebody wins, I want you to make some noise!"

Dad insists on racing me to our cabin. We're only allowed to power-walk, but room service trays and unsuspecting maids make great obstacles.

Day 2 - St. John, NB

By God Canadians are friendly! Want to cross in the middle of the street? Go ahead, they'll totally stop! Like Victorian homes? The deputy mayor will invite you to tour her house! (A true story, folks.) There's so much good will it makes you want to hit someone with your purse, just to see if they'd thank you.

There was a group of little kids (age 6, maybe) playing in the park with some camp counselors. For some odd reason they were all dressed in Halloween costumes. There was a tiny princess and a tiny witch and a tiny little Batman who would start screaming "YOU'RE STEALING MY SOOOOOUL!" whenever I took his picture.

I had my first lobster roll. It was roughly the size of a hot dog but still cost $15.

I can't stop eating. Tonight I had grouper followed by a smidgen of chicken stir-fry and half a turkey sandwich, and a salad (for balance). I'm chasing it with a banana split while watching BINGO in the lounge. I've also nicked 6 individual boxes of cereal and a protein shake.

I loved it, eh?

Am I the only person who didn't know that Dartmouth is in Canada?

People, I'm back. It was a wonderful, windy ride and I had a ball. Since I knew I'd have five days of make-up blogging to do, I kept a diary of my travels. Welcome to my trip to New Brunswick and Nova Scotia! (Am I the only one who thought that Canada and Nova Scotia were two separate places?)

Day 1 - Highlights

It's 6:30 am and I'm going to a step class.

Let me repeat that - I'm on a boat in the middle of the Atlantic taking a step class - something you couldn't pay me to do on land. It's filled with ladies of a certain age, overly enthusiastic step class "professionals", and an inappropriately dressed Asian woman. One poor old guy didn't know any of the steps, so he just hopped for half an hour.

There's plenty of neon on this boat, thank God. Don't know what I'd do without it. This scene is much more sedate than my cruise to Mexico (as sedate as a 10 tons of floating booze and neon gets, that is). It's a classier crowd than the last one, which makes sense. Lots of families and older, intellectual types discussing Proust and the state of the economy and such, vs. frat boys belly flopping into the hot tub. The cruise director, a portly young Brit, attempted to get the crowd pumped by shouting "Are youuuu ready for your trip tooooo... CANADA!!!" (The applause was feeble at best. How excited can you get about the North?)

Some kids from the Bahamas swear they saw a shark by the Statue of Liberty.

I can't stop eating.

Actual stupid questions, as told by the cruise director:

"What do you do with the ice sculptures after they melt?"
"How do you get electricity? Is there a really long cord?"
"What time's the midnight buffet start?"

There's something disarming about the complete lack of self-consciousness on a ship. Now a cynic might say it's less 'lack of self-consciousness' and more 'lack of self-awareness' but compared to the non-stop pretentiousness of New York, it starts to feel refreshing. Cellulite is on full display, flabby bellies flaunted, all sorts of wiggly-jiggly abounds, usually accompanied by an ice cream cone. Excessive? Sure. Wasteful? You bet! (Hand me another pina colada, would you?)

I need a nap, simply so I'll stop eating so damn much.

A three hour tour...

I'll be abandoning my post for a few days (5) to go cruising with my dad. We're going to Canada and Nova Scotia, where the men are seafaring and the fish are scared. I plan on enjoying all the pina coladas and smoked salmon money can buy! (Canadian's use dollars, right?) Bring on the midnight buffets!

I feel like a success already!

So my dear friend (I'll name her "Franny" after my favorite book) invited me to an "Idea Party" the other night. It's sort of like a brainstorming session, but with strangers. I'll admit, it sounded a little Landmark Forum. (For those of you who were dragged there, I'm very, very sorry.) I immediately pictured a group of slightly depressed middle-management types sitting around muttering about "life choices" and eating Oreos. But writerly curiousity (and the promise of a pet hedgehog with a missing foot and a hysterectomy) peaked my interest.

First off, hedgehogs? REALLY FUCKING CUTE. Imagine the cutest thing you've ever seen, multiply it by a thousand and you have some idea how cute this thing is. It's covered in spiky fur which makes it slightly less adorable (in my fantasy it was covered in rabbit fur and never left my lap) but it has a little white belly and tiny little eyes and a tiny little nose and when it's scared it curls up into a ball (remember the croquet scene in Alice in Wonderland?) and oh man I just wanted to eat it up! It started licking my palm which... Do I even need to say it? (cute.) But then the owner mentioned that licking meant that it was about to bite (which apparently hurts like hell) or it might have been about to pee. I decided to hand it back before finding out which.

The group wasn't nearly as nerdy as I expected. An attorney, an editor, an assistant to a supermodel, a publicist, a second-year resident in internal medicine... It was sort of comforting that all these people with "ideal" jobs still wonder what the hell they're doing with their lives. Each person took a turn stating their goal, then the group had ten minutes to throw out ideas about how to reach it. It's surprising how many ideas a group can come up with in that short an amount of time. My goal was a little fuzzy: I want to get out of catering as quickly as possible and have a fulfilling, creative professional life. I want that life to involve writing, travel, and shopping, however I don't have much interest in adopting someone else's style in my writing. (Which rules out most travel writing.) In the long-term, I would like to showcase things/artisans I've discovered in a hip, funny catalog, eventually "branding" myself and becoming a trusted/sought after voice in the world of shopping/travel writing.

Might as well aim high, right?

The ideas were interesting:

- Contact catalogs whose style I want to emulate (J. Peterman, Lush, Vermont Country Store)
- Write to Bill Bryron (sp?) , author of "In A Sunburned Country" for advice.
- Link my blog to other sites to grow my readership/ get advertising.
- Contact hip travel books (Lonely Planet) and see about freelancing.
- Take a travel writing class.
- Find people who have fun stores on Ebay and emulate them.
- Write for hip, in-flight magazines (JetBlue, Song, Virgin)
- Go to small towns and collect stories of interesting people.
- Do my own version of the "Shopaholic" books.
- Write for the Weekly World News or Ripley's Believe It Or Not.
- Publish my blog hand out copies to friends/boutiques.

Nothing life-altering here but more than I'd started with. If anyone has any other ideas for my life (other than "get one"), I'd love to read 'em. (Anyone know where I can get a hedgehog?)

At least she'll visit.

I saw this posted downstairs on the bulletin board today:

Please take care of my cat for 4 months!!!
I'll bring him food & get him washed
(his meds are up to date) & I'll visit him

followed by her phone number.

This peaked my interest. I mean, how the hell does she plan on bathing a cat? And why can't she take care of him for four months if she'll be around to bring food and visit?

Clearly this calls for an investigation. I'll keep you posted.

"I'll have a martini and a box of LEGO, please."

9-year-old New Yorkers lead very different lives.

I spent a lovely day with "Billy" and his best friend "Ivan" yesterday. Ivan is great - really artistic and smart and slightly shaggy-headed. He, like most New York children, leads a very cosmopolitan life:

(Ivan, in the elevator) "We see almost all our movies at that big film festival."

(Me) "Tribeca?"

(Ivan) "No, the one in France."

(Me) "Cannes?!"

(Ivan, mumbling) "I guess..."

He's been raised really well and isn't the least bit snobby or pretentious, which keeps my head from exploding. He also has the habit of making each sentence sound like a question? Which is really funny? But I can't help thinking that I would have never had any of these conversations at age 9.

(Ivan, out of the blue) "My brother? When he lost two of his teeth? The Tooth Fairy was really, really nice to him? She knew he wanted this video that wasn't out yet? So the Tooth Fairy got him a bootleg copy?..."

After a brief definition of the term "bootleg", it was determined that the Tooth Fairy was, indeed, a wonderous, wonderous creature.

A few hours later, Billy came charging out of his bedroom with this winner:

(Billy) "Alisha! You'll never guess what we're building with LEGO!"

(Me) "What?"

(Billy) "THE MEMORIAL TO LORD NELSON IN TRAFALGAR SQUARE!"

You know, he's right. I never would have guess that.

Advice for the ladies

This message is for all you ladies out there. Fellas (especially dad) or those who get squeamish hearing about "women things", move along. There's nothing for you here.

Okay, now that we're alone, a word of advice: Just because your husband has a beard trimmer, doesn't mean it's for use on your dirty, dirty down-there. If you attempt to use it "just this once" without one of those snap-on length guide thingies - the plastic pieces that let you choose the length you want - be warned: the thing has a mind of its own. And that mind wants you to bald. Bald as a ping-pong ball. B-A-L-D, bald. Like a hairless cat.

I'm not saying that I now resemble a plucked chicken, I'm just saying.

I had baked chicken marsalla, vegetable and rice pilaf, and sweet cherries covered in a dark chocolatey sauce...

I had an audition for Lean Cuisine the other day. They're all pretty much the same - three normal women lamenting their miserable dinner choices and the "I had blah-blah and blah-blah and it was all LEAN CUISINE" lady you just want to slap. I was feeling pretty good - I can do "I love to overeat" with the best of them - until I got to the audition. I'd been babysitting all morning so I was a little on the sweaty/disheveled side but figured hey, Lean Cuisine ladies probably have kids, right? They could be a little sweatastic. So I'm scanning over the lines ("I entered my own, personal, pie eating contest", "I cleaned out my cookie jar") when a group of us were called in. I wasn't too worried because nobody has more than one line, except the poor Lean Cuisine Woman. THANK GOD I'M NOT GOING IN FOR THAT ROLE.* So the casting director lines us up. Tall, skinny woman # 1 gets "I had a salad and a carton of vanilla fudge swirl". Tall, skinny woman #2 gets the pie eating line. (Dammit!) Tall, skinny woman #3 gets the cookie jar line. (Double dammit!) And I - the short, frizzy-headed overeater - get stuck with the Lean Cuisine monologue. The monologue I hadn't even bothered to look at because it was clear to anyone with eyes that I AM NOT LEAN CUISINE MATERIAL! Not that I'm fat or anything but the Lean Cuisine woman is just so... adult. So clean and neat and not at all funny! Any one of the other women would have been perfect but nooooo. Fuck all.

So I stumbled along. Sweatastically. It will probably shock you to learn that I did not get a callback.





(*Note the foreshadowing.)

I hear Starbucks is hiring.

I spent a few weeks back home in the Heartland and had a good time. Watched a lot of TV. A lot of TV. A lot. I also discovered my dream job: Hosting the Travel Channel's "Great Hotels". The host travels around the world staying in GREAT HOTELS. She admires the lobby, explores her suite (she's always staying in a suite), gets a massage or facial, eats free hotel food, and looks really cute doing it. In other words, all the things I really, really like to do. Now the host, Samantha Brown, is great. I totally enjoy her and wish her nothing but success, but I will cut her like a guppy if it means I get a cabana boy. Seriously, how great a job is this?!

Not as great as Samantha Brown's other job, hosting "European Passport". On this show, Samantha travels to Europe, explores the city, buys stuff, eats pastry, and (of course) stays in GREAT HOTELS! All of which I'm incredibly good at! It seems to me that there aren't enough good jobs to go around and she shouldn't get to hog them all. I thought about pitching a younger, hipper version of this show but then I realized that I'm not actually that young or hip and they'd probably hire some Carmen Electra-ish, "Wanna do shots?" boobette and I'd be screwed.

Where's the justice?

Nice.

This was sent out in a mass mailing by my agent today.

Wake up call to actors:

Check you (sic) fucking cellphones about auditions and call back in a timely manner. Don't call and say you have to work the time of the audition or that you couldn't call back cause you were working.

Decide if you are a waiter or an actor.

Love, David

If I wanted to commit career suicide, I might respond something like this:

Wake up call to agents:

Bite my ass.

Love, Alisha

Billy likes to rest his head on my boob.

I realize that I have been lacking in postation. (I fear we may have lost Ted.) Getting up at 6:30 am for 4 days straight is not blog-friendly. Spent the first two days shilling children's wear at the Javits Center. It's fun convincing Barney's that mustard colored genie tops and turquoise harem pants are what all kindergarteners will be wearing next season. (Plus free breakfast, lunch, and snack!)

The past two days were all about the kid. "Billy", my (newly) 9-year-old charge, has run me ragged. I'm slowly starting to understand that my job is not to keep him safe or teach him new things or even entertain him. My job is to wear him out. Which would be okay if it wasn't so damn exhausting. I could never be a stay-at-home mom, by 3:00 I'm DONE. I know, I know, television bad, but I only have so much entertainment in me. I can only pretend to enjoy Pokemon characters for so long before "Okay, you're bugging me" starts getting tossed around. I just don't have it in me to last all day. Pity our future child.

Billy still thinks that fairies live in certain trees. He found some wings while he was climbing a tree yesterday and got all excited, telling me about the fairy houses they build - "I see one right there!"- and how they make the knots in the bark look like faces and on and on. I didn't have the heart to tell him that they ciccada wings, he'll lose the magic vision soon enough.

Heeeeere's Ali!

Don't get too excited - I have to cater in, like, minutes - but I wanted to make my re-presence known and to wish my dear friend Suzannah the happiest birthday ever!


HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SUZANNAH!

That's right, I just discovered the color icon. Expect many puce and/or celery days. (I wonder what people get paid to name colors. Because I could totally do that.)