Come to Debbie Country

Yesterday J and I took off in his Saturn with no agenda but to do something fun and maybe a little adventurous. Perhaps visit some places we hadn't before. We ended up driving down roads off Franklin St., ogling the huge houses and gorgeous, immaculately-kept gardens. We drove down 15-501 to Fearrington Village where I showed J the barn swallows I'd spotted while covering an event the week before. We took country roads down to U.S. 64, crossed Jordan Lake and drove all the way to Raleigh where we visited the Museum of Natural Sciences briefly, before I started feeling very tired and headachey (nothing more than seasonal allergies) and we headed home after a busy day. Once there, and I wasn't feeling all that much better, I decided that a night lying on the couch wouldn't kill me and, while J took a nap in the bedroom, I settled into one of my favorite recent activities: watching movies I've seen about 100 times. It's not that I don't want to watch new movies, or that I'm not thrilled with our digital cable (that is absolutely mind-numbing) just that the comfort of movies I've seen over and over is too tempting not to give into lately. I don't know if I'm stuck in a rut, or there just aren't any good movies coming out. I think it's mainly just knowing what's going to happen next in these, my favorite stories, that makes it such an enjoyable experience. And since J won't let me watch "The Office" (British version) over and over anymore, it's come down to movies, like "Best in Show," and "Old School." Sometimes "Ghostbusters."

But last night I picked what might just be the ultimate in this category of movies, "Singles", a movie I watched in high school, after it came out, and shortly after plotted a move to Seattle with friends. We'd rock, we'd dance in the rain, we'd drink a lot of coffee. Of course, that potential Seattle venture was merely a nod to the times. The 1990s were all about that. I mean, I didn't wear leggings and a long flannel shirt just for kicks. I wanted to be an integral part of that whole movement.

"Singles," however, for me, went beyond the whole Seattle thing and into realms much more meaningful. Like the part where Janet Livermore, who loved leggings and flannel by the way, played by Bridget Fonda, decides she'll break up with the commitment-phobe Cliff, and in the next shot we see her sitting atop the roof, happy and carefree - but with the phone within reach. Too true Cameron Crowe! The scene I like best, the one that still moves me after all these years, is when Steve, played by Campbell Scott, sits in the telephone booth at the club after having "many beers" and tells Linda's answering machine that he loves her. That he shouldn't have been Mr. Casual, and wants to be Mr. New to her, and all the while other club-goers are knocking like crazy on the booth's door, because they think it's the bathroom.

I like this movie so much that the actors who were in it can do whatever the hell they want as far as I'm concerned and they're always going to rock. I stumbled upon the award-winning "Lake Placid" the other day on one of our hundreds of channels. Fonda is in that, too, but criticize her for that career move? Hell no. She was in "Singles."

A post which brings to mind the question: Should the razor people be paying me, maybe just a little stipend or something?

I don't want this to become some ultra-girl-tampon blog or anything, but I recently bought a Schick Intuition razor, which has a blade surrounded on both sides by a soothing skin-conditioning solid, and I must say, shaving with it has been rather enjoyable. Not like shaving one's legs is a remarkable challenge or anything. Would I rather not do it? Sure. I mean, only if my legs would somehow remain smooth going without, but it's more of an annoyance than an actual problem. And one of the major annoyances regarding shaving, in my opinion, is that sometimes when you prop your leg up and get the shaving cream on, sufficient to protect you from nicks and burn, you might change your position ever so slightly, and the showerhead, which someone-who-is-extremely-tall places so that water shoots out and covers the entire length of the bathtub so that he has the most fulfilling lengthy shower experience, is then spraying water directly on your shaving cream-covered leg, and it all washes off. While we're on the topic, another thing that sometimes, accidentally, happens when you're showering is that, because the showerhead is positioned as such, and is shooting water across the whole of the bathtub, so that it rains against the back wall, instead of pointing an a more acute angle, which causes the water to flow directly into the bottom of the tub and into the drain, well, if the shower curtain is not "sealed," as someone who loves showering more than life itself likes to put it, against that back tub wall, the water can sometimes end up trickling down that wall, and then down the outside edge of the tub and onto the bathroom floor. Which I don't care about so much about as a general principle, as some people do, except for the fact that the floor, by the way, is sometimes covered with little pieces of balled up toilet paper that some people like to use to blow their noses and then throw into the trash basket, but sometimes, the person misses and they end up on the floor, where they get wet, which, I don't know about you - but I think is quite possibly the most disgusting thing ever. Ever.

Anyway, the great thing about this Schick Intuition razor is that you don't have to worry about the shaving cream washing off, because the shaving cream is built into the razor itself. And I may not be up to date on the latest in technology, per se, but I think that's pretty revolutionary.