I'm talky so it's probably good that I get a bit shy and cloaked among strangers in urban environments or I might be one of those folks who drive you crazy on the plane.

Any thread people are talking about The Sing-Off on? Catching up on Ep 2 tonight. More peeves about this season than last season.

Tried to make myself continue to be productive - managed to fold two loads of laundry that have been sitting around for a while. Good to have that out of the way. Tomorrow my mom wants me to help her photograph and write ad copy for some of the small stuff from my grandma's estate. Which I'm happy to do - I just wish I could get some family help dealing with some of my own moving stuff. Unfortunately, I can't do it all by myself anymore.

Sing-off is being discussed in Nonfiction, which is my next thread to read.

I like chatting on planes, but I'm pretty good on picking up my next-seat-neighbor's receptivity to the idea. I've met some very nice people on planes and trains (back in college, I took Amtrak home for holidays).

The most fun I've had chatting with the person sitting next to me was when my sis, mom, and sis's friend and I were in NYC at Christmastime. We got half-off rooms at the Waldorf-Astoria and took cabs out for dinner. After our dinner in Chelsea one night, we loaded up into the cab and I ended up in the front seat. This cabbie was the stereotype of the old-school NY cabbie, lifelong older guy with the New Yawk accent who was a stitch to talk to. After we got out at the hotel (we had told the guy to drop us off at the tree at Rockefeller Plaza, but he told us it was too much of a pain for him to get there so we would have to walk the few blocks!), my sister told me she couldn't believe I conducted a 15 minute long conversation with the guy, but I thought he was fascinating.

My best plane conversation was on my flight back from England. She was pretty, petite, early thirties. She'd gone to Brown and studied semiotics in the 70s, then after graduation worked as a stripper/dancer for several years making good money and getting in incredible shape. She made her living in Manhattan as a combination voiceover artist/hand model.

I had a five hour layover in New Jersey before my flight back to San Francisco. She gave me a $20 so I could take the bus into NYC and bum around for a few hours instead of sit in the airport the whole time.

She was cool and interesting.

I bussed into the city and wandered around Port Authority and that was the only time I was actively solicited by a hooker on the street.

Rocks are even less judgmental than cats. ( and we all know how much cats care about what we are saying)

?? I agree on the not caring about what we say but they (or at least mine) are as judgemental as season 1 Cordelia. One of them, Shadow, always has this pinched expression and I can totally hear him thinking, "Oh, I do NOT approve." He's the Simon Cowell of judging.

I've never heard a ghost story where the pets didn't go absolutely bonkers. Not even one.

I'm only bringing this up because Liese is most likely asleep by now - but didn't she say the dog was outside? Maybe the dog was far enough away that his hackles weren't raised by the ghost or his ghost radar has low signal.

Just got back from Noah's xmas program which was an EPIC fail. During rehearsals he was a super loud enthusiastic singer, so they put him front and center. He proceeded to meltdown, screaming NO at the top of his lungs, growling and stomping his feet. Through the ENTIRE performance.

Oh no, poor Noah! That had to be hard to watch for you, so poor parents, too! And it's almost like your current tag is the summarized version of the evening.

I'm not usually chatty, especially with strangers, but I have my few and far between moments.

So, I woke up a couple of hours after I fell asleep, for absolutely no good reason, that I can tell. Hopefully I'll be able to get more rest tonight because 2 hours just isn't going to cut it.

I sometimes really enjoy talking to seatmates on flights, especially if the flight is particularly long. Normally, however, I just end up being too shy to initiate conversation.

The only time I desperately wanted to talk to someone on a plane was the first time I flew to China, and I was terrified, but the guy next to me only spoke Korean and so conversation was sort of out of the question.

Next stranger who asks me if I'm Saved is going to get a long yet polite explanation as to why that is none of her business, and a presumption upon knowing the will of God. Why loud protestations of faith can't be trusted, debate works versus faith as proof of devotion, and so on.

If they don't start edging away from me within ten minutes I'd be really surprised.

I used to get that all the time at school (I found myself spending my time at university in not one but two very conservative, very religious cities) and I always had such trouble answering them. I found that telling them the truth that I don't believe in God had one of two reaction: they'd try even harder to "save" me, which... never really went well, as I found I had often read more of whatever religious text they were trying to push than they had, or they just got very, very frightened and could barely carry on speaking with me. And I don't like to go around scaring people to death.

I don't like to go around scaring people to death.

Aww, that's entirely fun.

My favourite random place to talk to strangers is the Urth Caffe on Melrose. For some reason, even though I've never been there before, striking up conversations with strangers is the norm. Sometimes I do it, sometimes it's done to me, but it's always random and fun, and the people seem to be characters. The memory of the last Jamaican guy I started talking to there still amuses me. But I'll never forgive Colin for talking me out of starting up a convo there. He's a pretty crappy wingman.

I am up way too early. Pain meds, please kick in. Thankfully I'd already asked to work from home today. They're at the painting stage of the construction, and the lobbies are just toxic triggers for me right now.

I've had to have the "I have some headache triggers" conversation with my boss, who acknowledged his nosiness was, well, nosy. I'm not entirely sure what to tell my peers.

Hmm... outside of Mormon missionaries and the occasional Jehovah's Witness, no one asks if I'm saved. I'm not super approachable though. It reminds me of msbelle who gives good Leave-Me-Alone face.

Last night one of the moms at Noah's school program stopped me and said, "I've seen you around UCLA." Now that in and of itself wouldn't be odd, except UCLA is about 30+ miles from Noah's school. I thought she meant the writing project or the work I've done with kids.

No.

She meant the medical center. She clarified and said, "the procedures unit." Within the pediatric clinic there is a special unit for infusions, especially for kids who get chemo. Grace get the occasional blood draw there. We've only gone once to the procedures unit but they do share a lobby with the rest of the clinic.

So while I'm not really open to convos about god, I do get them about broken kids.

In other news, HI! It's really early.

My leave-me-alone face is apparently also a come-on-smile! face which is truly annoying. I get approached. But even the Mormon who came to fly with me didn't really try and proselytise. In fact, I think I kept him talking about Mormon longer than he was expecting, what with Orson Scott Card and Shawn Bradley.

I'm so well educated, it burns.