When I moved up to Baltimore four months ago, I turned into a bit of a couch potato. (The only exercise I was getting was a six block walk to the grocery store.) I gained about fifteen pounds. So I started exercising in earnest. Forty five minutes every other day on an exercise bike. Crunches on the days in between. I try to get it done before the contractors get here in the morning. They're usually late, so it's easy to exercise and get the dishes done before they knock on the door.

I would be much more successful in my attempts if my boyfriend didn't come home and make huge portions for dinner and then insist on serving me my food. It's sort of a ridiculous conundrum. He's made it clear he doesn't like that I've gained weight, but then he insists on feeding me enormous portions.

I like that he makes dinner. (It's sweet of him to cook and the food is delicious.) But I wish he would let me make my own plate of food (mostly because I was always taught that you have to finish everything on your plate).

I've talked to him about it and he just says, "You don't have to eat it all." But it's ingrained in my brain that I do, just like I absolutely have to say, "please" and "thank you" and hold the door for other people.

When my oldest brother was five or so he asked why we didn't go to church. So my parents started going to different churches with him to try to find a religion we could all agree on becoming. My mom liked the Quakers. My dad and brother liked the Catholics (because they had donuts after their service). They compromised by becoming Unitarians.

My dad was a strange combination of a grumpus and a sweetie pie. He was very hard on my brothers, but thought his girls were perfect. Every Valentine's Day he'd give me and my sisters little heart shaped boxes of chocolate (and my mom a larger box of chocolates).

When I went away to college he wrote me letters and covered them in rubber stamped animals. He warned us to watch out for "sniffers" (his term for boys). He used to get up at five in the morning and on the weekends he'd make huge breakfasts (scrambled eggs, bacon, cheese toast, chipped beef gravy, biscuits, scattered potatoes, coffee, orange juice, etc.)

My dad looked like a cross between Colonel Sanders and Santa Claus. I definitely wouldn't want to date anyone who looked anything like him, but I think a lot of girls want a boy (either consciously or subconsciously) to treat them the way their dad did.

(I'm a princess! Why don't you realize it?)

I worked on the literary journal in high school and we had this yard sale at my English teacher's house as a fundraiser. She gave me a ride home afterward. When she dropped me off, she said hello to my parents and for some reason my dad started talking to her about chicken gizzards and how delicious they were. She was from up north and thought he was kidding, so she told him, "Oh, I love chicken gizzards."

The next day he made me bring some chicken gizzards to school for her. I gave her the bag and she asked, "What are these?"

"Chicken gizzards," I told her, mortified that I was handing my teacher a bag of them, "You told my dad you liked them."

She was incredulous. She looked in the bag. "Oh my goodness," she said, "I thought he was JOKING."

"Nope," I said.

"Huh," she said and paused; then shrugged, "I guess I can feed them to my cats."

(Chicken gizzards though, are probably not the weirdest thing a teacher's ever gotten.)

I was watching this program about American fast food in other countries. Like American-style Chinese food in China. (The Chinese don't like it. They prefer KFC).

Taco Bell apparently opened a restaurant in Mexico, but had to import their ingrediants to make sure they met FDA requirements. When Mexicans tried it, they said, "What is this? These are not tacos," and didn't come back. So Taco Bell added ice cream and french fries to their menu and Taco Bell was successful in Mexico.

I've been thinking a lot about college lately. I put my old boyfriend's dorm shirt on this morning. It's long sleeved and comfortable.

I went to a small liberal arts school. Took some classes. Met a lot of people. Got in some fights. Didn't really connect. Graduated a semester early just to get out of there.

My school was seventy percent female. It was a little like being in prison. Girls were going gay all over the place. The girls who could get a boyfriend tried to hold onto him for all four years.

A lot of the guys who decided to go to a school with such a skew in the lady direction were pretty socially inept. I do well with nerdy, awkward boys though.

I had two boyfriends in college. One was the president of the Anime, Roleplaying and Gaming Organization. The other wanted to be an Episcopalian priest after he graduated. When we broke up he accused me of making him lose his faith in God. At the time I thought it was a ridiculous accusation.

In retrospect I'm starting to think I might have been sort of a jerk in college.

If whatever I'm looking for in the city is less than a mile and a half from my house (and it's daylight out), I don't bother driving. Yesterday I got a few blisters walking to the post office after I took a wrong turn and ended up going several blocks out of my way. Since it turned out the post office was down a block that looked like it was totally residential until you were almost on top of it, I didn't feel so bad about getting lost looking for it.

In the neighborhoods near the post office I saw people sitting on their porches. No one sits on their porches in my neighborhood. My next door neighbors, I think, have either died or are on vacation. (Or maybe they moved away.) Their mail is piling up. When the postwoman delivers it she climbs over the barrier between our porches instead of walking down to the sidewalk and coming back up the stairs on the other side. It makes sense from an energy conservation standpoint, but is still sort of funny to watch.

I just returned some videos to the store and as I was walking out this guy who was about to go in said, "hello" in just about the friendliest fashion I've heard since I moved to Baltimore. So I said, "hello," back and smiled at him. But as I walked away he started going, "sexy, sexy, sexy," and talking about my ass loudly enough for me to hear, which turned the encounter from, "friendly," to, "should I cross the street now or wait another half a block?"

Every single time we're in Lowe's or Home Depot my boyfriend manages to steer us over to the bathroom fixtures section and insists I admire the American Standard Champion 4 toilet with him. He loves it. He wants it. It's taller than the average toilet. (He's 6'2.) It can flush a bucket of golf balls. ("An entire BUCKET of golf balls!" he tells me, excitedly.)

Last night he looked up its reviews on consumer reports.

"They're all positive," he says, "They LOVE this toilet."

"Not as much as you do," I told him.

Then he made me watch a video he found of it flushing golf balls, followed by forty feet of toilet paper and, inexplicably, twenty packets of miso soup. There are all sorts of odd videos on youtube of people flushing stuff down toilets: five pounds of tomatoes, three dozen golf balls, a bowl of popcorn... even a couple of barbie doll heads.

"This toilet can handle ANYTHING," my boyfriend says.

He can't wait to get one.

I bought five two liter bottles of soda on my last grocery trip. The guy at the checkout was like, "That's a lot of Diet Coke." I told him, "I know. My boyfriend can't get enough of the stuff. He drinks four liters a day."

I'm on the opposite end of the soda spectrum.

I like root beer. All the sugar. None of the caffeine.

I've been smelling hot tar all morning. Roofers have been working on the house next door for the last few days. It's a little scary walking out of the bathroom and seeing a dude outside the window on the attached roof with a flamethrower saying something unintelligable. My mom called and I mentioned the roofers and how I couldn't understand anything they were saying even though I was pretty sure they were speaking English. She told me all the roofers she'd ever met had speech impediments.

A few weeks before I moved from a sleepy college town in Virginia to Maryland I cleared everything out of my car because I had heard windows get smashed in Baltimore if there's even a bic pen on the seat. The car was so clean it was sparkling. A few days later I came out to find my windshield had a crack in it. I assumed someone was driving by too fast, a piece of debris ricocheted off the street and hit my car, so I got it fixed and went on with my life.

Somebody else on my street had their driver's side window smashed a week later. Another week went by and I came out to find my driver's side window had been broken. It looked like some kids, instead of hitting mailboxes, were leaning out as they came up the hill outside my house and smashing car windows. Not even stealing anything. Just doing it for the fun of it.

I filed a police report, but the police never called me back and so I just warned the neighbors and parked behind the house the last few days I lived there. The day before I left I noticed someone further up the street's back windshield had been smashed. I could even pinpoint the days (Tuesdays and Sundays) and times (between 9 and 10 at night) it usually happened, but the police didn't seem to be too interested in stopping it. I know they probably have more important things to do, but at a couple hundred dollars a pop to fix a smashed window, I wish they'd do more to stop it from happening again.

I went to the park the other day with a boy I've been dating. He identified different birds by their calls while we watched a kid trying to get up the guts to ride a tricycle. He explained his mother's views on raising children. "She thinks that children are like farts; you tolerate your own." (Which is an awesome statement and makes me want to meet his mom.)

I purchased two large shopping bags full of Valentine's candy at CVS today for seven dollars and forty cents. Valentine's merchandise was ninety percent off. Totally amazing.

Yesterday a customer asked me if I was in school.

I told him I'd already graduated.

He asked if I knew what I wanted to do when I graduated.

I told him I didn't (and that I still don't).

I mean, I've always said, I wouldn't mind being paid to write, but have never thought it was actually a possiblility. So my default answer is, "I don't know."

At my internship this afternoon, though, they offered to pay me to write copy for them.

I agreed to feed someone's cats while they are in Costa Rica. I'd been drinking and then he and I were kissing and then he was asking me to feed his cats and yeah... I don't know what happened.

My family had several dogs and cats when I was a kid (and a few vietnamese potbellied pigs). They were all outdoor animals though, which are very different from indoor animals. None of them could have been classified as members of the family.

I like animals, sort of in the same way I like babies. Other people's kids and cats and dogs are great. I'll make funny faces at them and maybe even hold them, but I want to give them back if they're cranky or crying.

I gave a boy in the kitchen at work chocolate covered cherries and another one finger band-aids covered in tissue paper and construction paper hearts (because he's always cutting himself) and a cupcake for Valentine's Day. I also brought in a bunch of Valentines to give to the customers. (I bought six or seven packages, but ran out by eleven o'clock.)

One guy refused my Valentine. He handed it back to me and said, "No thank you" like it was a flyer or something. I was flustered. How can you refuse an Optimus Prime Valentine, man in a business suit?

I gave a box of chocolates to my mom and left this ridiculously huge fake ruby ring outside my sister's door and a bunch of Hershey kisses and a frog that makes a kissing noise when you press its middle. I also sent Valentines to a couple of ex-boyfriends. One of the in-town ones got rice krispy treats because my brother-in-law loves them too, so I made enough for both of them.

My mom gave me chocolates. And my sister made me Valentine's jello shots before going out to dinner with her boyfriend. The boys at work gave me chocolate. (And I totally hijacked back one of the cherries.)

Around nine I went out drinking with a friend. He asked me out, but then complained the whole time about how much he hates Valentine's Day. We found a bar downtown that wasn't doing anything Valentine's themed and didn't have a bunch of couples in it and I proceeded to get smashed. I gave the bartender a Valentine. And some guy that was standing behind me when we left a Valentine. Danced a little bit. Might have smushed my friend into the coke machine. And walked in zig zags down the street.

All in all, a pretty good Valentine's Day.

The other day this woman came into the bagel shop where I work and started talking really loudly. At first glance it looked like she could have been talking to a kid who was just below the height of the counter, like in those commercials about talking to your child, where the person looks totally crazy until you realize they've got a kid with them. So I peeked over the counter looking for the kid.

No tyke in sight.

Instead of ordering, she went over to the edge of the eating area and looked around like she was playing hide and seek with someone. Then said very loudly, "Guess where I am? Can you smell it?" That's when I realized she was talking on a hands free phone. (But it still doesn't explain why she thought whoever was on the other end of the line could smell bagels through a telephone.)

My nephew came home the other night and told us they'd gone to the burning sidewalk for dinner and the food was really good. They cooked it right at the table. His sister interrupted him. "You mean the Flaming Wok, Lindon. We went to the Flaming Wok."

I got this unpaid internship at a publishing company, since, the last time I tried to get a copy editing job, it didn't seem to go over too well when I said, "Yup. I've been working in a bagel shop for four or five years now. Nope. I don't have any writing or editing experience."

I was planning on leaving at the end of December, when a normal internship would be over, but the other day the publicity director came by my desk and asked if I would stay.

I told her I was exhausted, getting up at five thirty in the morning five days a week, working a full eight hour shift and then heading over after work for a couple more hours at the publishing company.

She told me what a good writer I was. She said I could come in one day a week instead of four as long as I'd continue writing her press releases. She also offered me the chance to start writing some of the copy on the back of the book jackets.

Ideally I'd like to get paid, but the opportunity to have hard copies of things I've written that have actually appeared on published material is more valuable than a check for the six to eight hours a week I work there.