How often do you floss.

Usually when you’re talking to a stranger you’re not allowed to ask them many personal questions. 

You can ask a stranger what time it is, you can ask them for directions or how soon the bus is coming. That's about it.

But everything changes when a stranger asks you a question - then you get to ask it back to them. It’s a free pass and I love it. I love when people ask how many siblings I have, because then I get to find out how many siblings they have. I love when strangers ask where I’m going, how I cut my hand, or what I’m ordering at a restaurant. The best thing a stranger can ask me is how much I pay for rent.

But the worst thing is when there’s a reason that stranger is asking you the question, so you can’t ask them back, even though you feel like you should be able to. Like when a nurse asks if the veins in my arm are close to the skin. Suddenly I want to ask her the same thing, so badly. It only seems fair. 

Or when my hairstylist asks how long it usually takes for my hair to air dry, I can feel my mouth wanting to say “What about your hair, how long does your hair take to dry?” and I have to bite my tongue to keep my mouth from asking. Biting my tongue reminds me that I never got to ask my dentist how often he flosses.

Bouncers at concerts ask my age, police officers ask where I’m headed, my credit card company asks me my salary, and none of these questions are questions I can ask back. I’ll probably never know what kind of veins my nurse has, where my pharmacist stores her medications, or if my doctor has had any unexpected weight loss recently. 

If my landlord is reading this: Ever since you asked if I own an aquarium or a keyboard I have been dying to know if you own either. And if you own a keyboard, how many keys does it have, and do you use headphones with it or not? Also, this weekend I noticed a new closet in the apartment that I have never seen before. It sounds crazy but it's probably some sort of portal or maybe the previous tenants held a seance. Did the previous tenants own an aquarium? Please respond ASAP.

While I wait I'll be watching this.

Name any place in the world

My sister has the same initials as me but is better at running than me, better at making scrambled eggs than me, and probably smells better than me, and she’s getting an envelope in the mail any Wednesday now that says where she will live for the next year and half while she’s on a mission. 

For some reason the envelope will definitely arrive on a Wednesday. We know that, but we don't know where she'll be going.

She could go anywhere in the world! Except North Korea. And a few other places. But other than that, anywhere in the world. It makes me so excited I can’t eat, but then every few hours it makes me so excited I eat lots, so it evens out.

Can you imagine my sister being gone for a year and a half? I guess first you have to imagine me having a sister. If you already know my sister, you have a head start on imagining this. My sister’s name is Bryn.

A year and a half is a long time. Sometimes I think of a good joke and am about to say it to my sister, but then I think, I’ll save that joke and tell it to her when she’s gone. That way the joke can cheer her up after a hard day in Botswana or Iowa or Iceland or the Maldives, or anywhere, anywhere in the world. Except North Korea. And a few other places. 

Here are ten of the thousands of places Bryn could possibly go:

Neft Dashlari a city built on some boats floating off the coast of Russia or something.

Somewhere with tapeworms I want to hear more about them.

A 21-Jump-Street-style mission where she goes to high schools every day and pretends to be a student.

Florence, Italy This is my grandmother’s vote. My grandmother has it on good authority that girls usually go where their dads go, and my dad went to Italy. This sounds about as reasonable as the theory that men only go bald if their mom’s dad went bald, but I think some scientists proved that recently, so this one might actually be pretty accurate. 

One of those states no one can remember when they’re trying to name all 50 states.

Tokyo, Japan If my sister goes to Japan I will be as excited as that dog in the YouTube video that sees his owner for the first time in 2 years and gets so excited he passes out. I’m not posting a link because the video itself was pretty underwhelming.

Marseille, France

Just the rainforest Is that a thing? I hope so.

Canada Everyone in my family has dual Canadian-American citizenship and we all talk a big game about being Canadian but if my sister spent a year and a half there she would honestly know infinitely more about Canada than the rest of us combined.

Portland, Oregon I would get to see her every day.

I miss you already Bryn. Mostly because you already live in another time zone but also because I love you a ton.

Why are you reading in the bathroom.

It's 2014 and a lot of mysteries have been solved: the sun's general whereabouts, how worms pee, ice cubes, but there's one thing no one has any idea about and I think it's because we're all too nervous to ask.

Why is everybody keeping so many books next to the toilet?

Books are great, and I like reading as much as the next person. My family has a friend who stores books in her dishwasher because she washes dishes by hand anyway and needs the extra book storage space. Books in the dishwasher is pretty weird, but it makes more sense to me than books in the bathroom. And I see books in bathrooms all the time.

I have three theories:

THEORY 1: EPIC JOURNEY 

I've always assumed that people must be taking so incredibly long to use the bathroom that they need to prepare for it the way they would for a long commute or a journey west or a trip to outer space. 

They're bringing reading material because they're going in not knowing when they're coming back out.

Why they're in there so long I have no idea. Lack of fiber? Too much fiber? Very long digestive tracts? Those have question marks but they're not questions, I don't really want to know the answers.

astronaut suicides by Sara and Neil

THEORY 2: OVERACHIEVERS

I was talking to my mom on the phone a few months ago about people who have it all together, who are going to school while working and keeping plants alive and wearing mascara and she's not into those people. My mom says some people need to learn to take it easy.

"I went to someone's house the other day," she said, "and there was a book in the bathroom. A book in the bathroom how sad is that, even the two minutes it takes you to sit there and go to the bathroom needs to be useful multitasking time you can spend getting a page ahead in your book. Why can't people just take two minutes off from it all and go to the bathroom."

I have a few additional suggestions for people who read in the bathroom because they like multitasking.

• Do squats instead of sitting so that you strengthen your leg muscles
• Check your arms and any other visible skin for unusual moles
• Recite the Greek alphabet twice while you wash your hands
• Also use that hand-washing time to check your teeth in the mirror in case there's salad in them.

THEORY 3: SECRET HIDEOUT

I think sometimes people want to play Candy Crush and Words with Friends and their real-life friends are tired of them being on their phone so they stay in the bathroom forever. Like the guy in This is 40. Maybe that wasn't This is 40. Whatever movie that was.

Actually it was This is 40, here is proof.

He's playing Words with Friends. See that tea light on the back of the toilet? I have so many questions about bathrooms.

Anyway, maybe some people are the same with magazines and finance books? Maybe they're just looking for a quiet place they can read with their pants down because people won't leave them alone.

We'll never know.

Name something that weighs ten pounds

Guys should I adopt this dog? Here I three reasons I probably should.

1. My landlord said he prefers if I don't have pets BUT he said it so gently that I think he would love this one.

2. Last week I saw a free fish tank WITH FISH on Craigslist and before I had time to decide good idea or bad idea it was gone. So maybe from now on I should assume everything is a good idea.

3. He looks like Paddington. The dog does, not my landlord.

Welcome to California

I thought I lived in California for a year but I was wrong.

California is actually located in Temecula, California; a place so California it's measured in dog years. Live there three weeks and that counts as almost five months spent in California.

Temecula is an hour from Los Angeles, an hour from San Diego, and an hour from the beach. That can either sound like the best thing or the worst, depending on what inflection you use. It really depends on how you pronounce the word "hour." Is that a fast hour, a quick fifty-five-minutes-and-you're-in-the-ocean trip? Or is that an hour of desolate unbearable wasteland separating you from anything fun? I can't tell you. You'll have to find out for yourself.

What I will tell you is that Temecula, California has streets so wide there are sometimes three left turn lanes. Three left turn lanes!

To me, all undeveloped nature looks straight out of either Jurassic Park or Land Before Time, and Temecula is the Land Before Time sort of nature, which is cool because most of Portland is the Jurassic Park sort.

It's the desolate unbearable wasteland kind.

My sister Bryn made me this mug to commemorate our weekend in Temecula so now everything I drink tastes like California. If you live near me you're welcome to try it. I live in Jurassic Park.