a room with a view

In the vice-presidential debate, Joe Biden told a sad story about a man who didn't know how much it cost to fill up his gas tank because he never had enough money to do it. But do you know what's even sadder? Not being able to fill up your gas taken because there's not enough gas. And that's been the situation in the southeast for awhile now. We have no gas, no gas at all.

But my company has turned a negative into a positive by allowing me to work from home for three days a week for two weeks. Last week was the first week and I can tell you that working from home is awesome. If you stay out too late at the Jenny Lewis concert, like I did, you can sleep in, because you don't have to drive to work! You can sit near a window instead of inside a sunlight-free cubicle! You can wear whatever! And I happen to get loads more work done because I can pace around and think, or stretch out on the floor while I research and write. I love working from home.

If I had to work from home all the time, I think I'd get sad because I'd be lonely. But last week I met a few coworkers for lunch and I had the extra special benefit of having my editor Katie come over to my apartment to use my internet. Now Katie has been in two blog entries in a row! And she is inspiring content, because after living in my world for three days, here are the things she thought I should blog about:

1. Halloween costumes.
Katie has a real problem with my past Halloween costumes. Like one year, I wore a black dress and sunglasses and pinned a piece of paper reading "June 14" to the dress. I was a blind date. Get it? So hilarious…to me. No one else that night really liked it and neither did Katie. Katie also didn't like the idea of my costume in which I wore a pink sweatsuit and tied a shoe to my clothes. That costume was gum under a shoe. I never actually did this next one, but I want to sometime: I would wear a black sweatsuit and attach cars to it. I would put a yellow piece down the center of myself and be the highway. Katie thinks that idea sucks also. She looked at me with pity in her eyes, so I tried to redeem myself by saying, "Well, what about a sexy highway?" Cause if you're a girl, just make your Halloween costume sexy and you're totally fine. I think that was my mistake with gum under the shoe. Not sexy enough.

2. Grocery lists
Katie happened to look inside my refrigerator, as well as see a few grocery lists on my fridge---
Grocery list #1 read: pretzels, butter, 3 boxes of waffles.
Grocery list #2 read: pretzels, bread, soda, frozen food, waffles (lots)

Katie wants to submit these lists to that artist who creates characters based on shopping lists that she finds. She wants to find out what the artist would make of someone who eats so many waffles. I just love toaster waffles, okay? I wish my fridge was bigger just so I could fit more boxes of waffles in there! I eat waffles almost every meal!

Now my secret is out. I eat too many waffles. And the only other thing in my fridge is beer.

3. More mundane blogs; treat my blog like more of a friend.
Those were Katie's tips on how I should be writing this blog. For example, we went to lunch and I had this chocolate cupcake with raspberry icing. I was just raving about this cupcake and here's how Katie said the blog should go:

"Dear Diary. Today I had a cupcake with raspberry icing. It was delicious. Talk to you tomorrow, Diary."

Here was another entry she thought I should write:
"Dear Diary. Today I wore a hooded sweatshirt. It was comfy. Well, see you around, Diary."

I don't know if this helps, but you have to imagine the entries read in a really high-pitched voice. A high-pitched voice reading extremely mundane details, in combination with both a greeting and a farewell to the diary. Katie believes this would be more enjoyable as well as increase the number of posts that I make. And she is a professional editor. But sometimes I don't take all her edits. Ha ha! Editors love it when you make jokes like that!