I feel like we've got to the point where a person can't write a post about the things she likes without someone wondering if it's a sponsored product review, so I just want to say before I begin that this is not sponsored, or a product review, or a sponsored product review. I'm not trying to sell you anything here, I just miss the days when you could read about something you liked on a blog and think "ooh, I think I'd like that thing too!" and maybe go out and buy it, and neither party would feel a little weird about it.

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Are you going to BlogHer? I think we should have a drink together. That's if you want to have a drink with me, of course. Me, I'd love to have a drink with you: I think we could have some pretty good conversations about Tim Riggins if left in a room together with a bottle of wine, although if you switched the topic to nuclear engineering or sixteenth century Renaissance poetry halfway through, I guess I'd probably try and keep up. Don't expect too much, though; I'm much better talking about fictional television characters.

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I went down to see my parents in San Diego last weekend, where I did what I always do when I'm down there: shop with my mother, watch HGTV with my father, and eat as much food as is humanly possible. For some people, a week in Maui is what it takes to push the re-set button. For me, it's a weekend at home.

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“All the bells and whistles” as “all the Belgian whistles.” Someone said this on a phone call I was on once. I had to put myself on mute to snort.

“Providence” as “Pro-VYE-dence.” That was my friend Victoria when she was visiting me in Connecticut from England a million years ago and we saw a sign on the freeway. I still can’t read about Pro-VYE-dence, Rhode Island without pronouncing it like that in my head. It sounds kind of nice I think.

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I have decided that I cannot possibly go to the cinema anymore. When you go to the cinema, you see, you are entirely too dependent on the people around you to be reasonable and sane. Most people in the cinema are reasonable and sane, of course, but every now and then you get one bird-brained knucklehead who breaks the social contract---the social contract of, you know public sanity and reasonableness---and ends up ruining it for the rest of us.

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Well, mother of pearl and sweet cracker sandwich: who'd have thought that there'd be over a thousand entries for last week's Clarisonic giveaway: 1,113 to be precise, which is a number so stupendously large to me that I can hardly believe it. If only there were a way to give away 1,113 Clarisonics, you know? But I guess that would make me Oprah. 

(Look under your seats, everyone! Do it right now! Just in case!)

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I have some pretty crazy news. A couple of weeks ago, when I wrote about my Clarisonic brush as a Best Thing Ever---and just to reiterate, no-one told me to do this, and you'd better believe I paid for that sucker myself---I was overwhelmed with the number of people who said they wanted one too. I mean, obviously you'd want one: they're awesome.

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A year ago today, Sean asked me to marry him, which I guess makes today an anniversary of sorts, although, I don't know, do people actually celebrate their engagement anniversaries, or is that sort of thing just reserved for wedding anniversaries?

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It seems so long ago that I used to have to multi-task while watching TV in the evenings: sticking doilies here, trimming paper there, stuffing envelopes until I wanted to tell the envelopes to go stuff themselves, if you know what I mean.

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