2000-12-18 - 3:48pm

On the internal soundtrack: Some song from my mom's childhood, back in the days of 78 rpm records:

My heart goes

Piddly patter patter

Piddly patter patter

Everytime I look at you

I don't know

What's the matter matter

What's the matter matter

Guess it's 'cause I

Love you

Whoooo! Yes! We're going to the Sharks-Capitals game tonight. slightly-off-center ice, row E. Yippee. I just hope the seats don't go AA through ZZ before they start on A, B, C, D, E. We'll find out.

The Sharks are Poindexter's Team, but nobody else around here cares about them, so we were able to get decent seats the day of the game, at face value.

Very, very dull weekend. I had fun, nevertheless. Mostly I worked, to catch up on some things and make up for my laziness last week, and we watched a couple of movies: "Magnolia" and "Six Degrees of Separation". Both were mostly actor's vehicles but we enjoyed them well enough. We are both big on characterization in movies so "Magnolia" was a lot of fun. "Six Degrees" was a little obtuse, I thought. The characters were not as well-drawn as I would have liked.

SKIP THE NEXT PARAGRAPH IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN "MAGNOLIA"

I love watching movies with Poindexter. He laughed so hard and so long at the climactic point in the movie that he had to pause it because he couldn't see straight. It was pretty funny, simply in its complete unexpectedness and ludicrousness. I liked what the kid said, though: "This is something that happens."

Weird thought of the day:

I have a fish in the aquarium on my desk. I got it about 6 years ago, would be my guess, and it's still alive. That's old for a red-eye tetra, isn't it? In the wild he probably would have been eaten by now.

I wonder about him a lot. Is he lonely in there? Would he be happier with another fish to play with? People tell me that fish can't be lonely because they don't have the brain power to do so. Is that true? Is my fish okay just sitting in there all day, doing nothing aside from eating, pooping, and sleeping and occasionally tearing around the tank for no apparent reason?

You know what makes me crazy? People whose lips get chapped, and they do nothing about it. Their lips get so dry they start peeling and I can feel my own lips cracking and bleeding just from looking at theirs. It's painful for me to look at. Never mind their own personal discomfort; what about the people who have to kiss them? I couldn't bring myself to kiss Poindexter if his lips were like that.

I'm truly mystified at this. It happens to some people I know and like, and I find myself unable to say anything. I can't very well offer them my own Chapstick, Blistex, or Vaseline (I have them all), or "lip goop" as I usually call it, because it's got my cooties all over it. Yet giving them their own, brand-new stick, even anonymously, seems horribly condescending.

One thought I had was that the person is opposed to petroleum products in some way. For environmental reasons, perhaps. A friend of mine in high school told me Vaseline causes cancer, and her solution was to use some fancy expensive fruit-flavored stuff that came in a cute little tiny jar. But the ingredients of Vaseline, Chapstick, and the fancy expensive goop are all the same: some derivative of petroleum.

However, most people with superchapped lips are usually spotted at some point with some goop on them, healing. So if it's not an objection to petroleum, why do their lips get so horribly chapped? Is it a case of never being able to remember to bring the Chapstick along? Never mind your American Express card -- don't leave home without your Chapstick.

I suppose it could be some sort of health problem I'm not aware of, and I'm being grossly ignorant here. Oh well.

I have a possible solution. I'll leave Chapstick visible at all times -- on my desk, on the table at home, or in my hand while I apply it, whatever. Then if the person feels that they need some, they can ask for it. We'll see if it works.

By the way, if you see me with my lips like that, it means I left all my lip goop at home and I am just DYING for some.

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