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.

Why are these wet

The other day a cab driver and I were talking about Metallica.

I'm not sure how we started talking about Metallica. I had a super early flight and a cab so early I honestly think I called it in my sleep, and I woke up halfway to the airport halfway through a conversation about Metallica. So there we were. This cab driver loved heavy metal.

"Yeah I've been into heavy metal since I was a kid" he said as I rubbed my eyes and swallowed a yawn. "Even in fifth grade I was always wearing ripped jeans and heavy metal t-shirts, I was a real freak. All the other kids were like WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU and I was like hey, I'm just really into Metallica."

I was a real freak in fifth grade too.

Once in fifth grade our Sunday school teacher gave us each a handful of Skittles, and then asked me to come up and write some things on the chalkboard. So I set my Skittles down on top of my notebook. 

"Don't eat my Skittles, you guys." I announced to the class. "I licked them all."

I wasn't even halfway to the chalkboard when one of the girls screamed. "These are wet! Why are your Skittles wet?!" She was holding one of my Skittles (probably a red one, those are the best) and looking horrified.

"I told you," I said, real calmly, cool as anything. "I licked them."

For some reason that explanation freaked out the whole class. All the other kids were like WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU and I wish I could have responded with hey, I'm just really into Metallica.

I know this picture is too recent but I love their faces in it. They look like their photographer is speaking another language.

You can ask this fifth-grader if she likes Metallica but she's too busy brushing her teeth with a Sonicare to answer so don't bother.

I am really into jazz music though.

I'm partially ears

Last week I got my ears pierced - here's a picture.

One thing about having ten pounds of hair is that ear piercings for me are like stomach piercings or inside-of-the-spleen piercings for other people - they're nobody's business because no one can see them but me. 

It's hard for things to stay nobody's business when you write about them on the internet but something very important happened that I need to tell you about.

You can save $15 if you get a hoop earring instead of a little post earring.

I'm all about saving $15 and I figured I could spend a few weeks secretly looking like a gypsy and then switch it out for a post when my ear healed from having a hole punched through it. Right? 

WRONG. Putting a metal hoop in a piece of skin as fragile and rip-able as wet tissue paper is the worst idea I have ever had. The hoop earring catches on everything. It somehow gets caught on light breezes, and on music and smells. It keeps me awake at night wondering my ear's intact or if my pillow's ripped it to pieces, and when I finally fall asleep I wake up from nightmares about combing my hair.

Here is a useful chart of things I'm worried about my ear catching on.

I have more to say but my ear is making me too tired to write.

Mazel Tov, whatever that means

The thing about Hebrew is everyone says it’s so easy because it’s completely phonetic.

There aren’t weird things in Hebrew like there are in English where tough and though don't rhyme, and you can read a red book but last week you read a book about reeds. English is a mess obviously but everyone’s like, oh, Hebrew’s so easy.

So you memorize all these little geometric swooshes and the sounds they make and there aren’t too many of them and then congratulations - you’ve just turned a lot of geometric swooshes into a foreign language because you still have no idea what these sounds mean. The fact that Hebrew is phonetic makes it as easy to read as a Icelandic electrician’s manual. Sure, I can sound it out fine but this Icelandic waffle maker is still broken.

I know Icelandic pancakes are a thing but I don't know about waffles. Bubble waffles are a thing in China, have you seen them?

Anyway, if you give me enough time I can read the words הָעוֹלָם and חטיף out loud but one means snack and one means universe and I don’t know which is which. My favorite Israeli snack in the universe is Bamba and it’s also the only Israeli snack I’ve ever had.

A lot of Hebrew, besides the word Bamba and the phrase “Mazel tov” just sounds like very friendly coughing to me, and I don’t know how to say “Help I’m coughing” but if you wrote it I would be able to sound it out, because it’s phonetic, it’s so easy to sound out.

Here's this blog post Google-Translated into Hebrew, good luck.

הדבר על עברית הוא שכולם אומר שזה כל כך קל, כי זה פונטית לחלוטין.

אין דברים מוזרים בעברית כמו שיש באנגלית שבו קשה ואף מבוטאות שונים לחלוטין, ואתה יכול לקרוא ספר אדום, אבל בשבוע שעבר שאתה קורא ספר על קנים. אנגלית היא בלגן ברור אבל כולם כמו, אה, של עברית כל כך קל.

אז לך לשנן את כל הקשקושים קטנים האלה ואת הצלילים שהם עושים ושאין יותר מדי מהם ואז מזל טוב, אתה פשוט הפך הרבה קשקושים לשפה זרה, כי עדיין אין לך מושג מה הקולות האלה אומר. העובדה שעברית היא הפונטי עושה את זה כקל לקריאה כמו במדריך של חשמלאי איסלנדי.

אני יכול לקרוא את המילים x ו-X בקול רם, אבל אחד אמצעי חטיף ואחד אומר שקרבה ואני לא יודע מי הוא מי. החטיף הישראלי האהוב עליי הוא במבה וזה גם החטיף הישראלי היחיד שאי פעם היה לי.

הרבה עברית, מלבד המילה במבה ואת הביטוי "מזל טוב" פשוט נשמע כמו שיעול נחמד אליי, ואני לא יודע איך להגיד "עזרה אני משתעל" אבל אם אתה כתב את זה אני יוכל נשמע את זה, כי זה הפונטי, זה כל כך קל נשמע בחוץ.

It looks like I'm feeding bamba to giraffes but it's just a giraffe חטיף.