Brave new world

Somewhere in the last few days, I found the holy grail sought by every self-absorbed respecting blogger in the universe: 200,000 visitors! Or 200,000 hits from 500 visitors. Or maybe just 200,000 hits from me obsessively checking to see how many comments and hits I’ve gotten. I honestly never found out what actually makes the hit counts go up—unique hits or repeat visits or some esoteric blend of the two—but I’m now officially in the 200,000 club.

So yay, me. Woo-hoo. Party on. Have some dip.

Whew. Now that that’s out of my system, I can finally tell you why my pee stinks so bad today.

I did my weekly Wednesday night run with my new running buddy last night, see, only this time we left from his house in Boystown and he took me on a seven-mile (I was planning on running only five, and today it feels like seven might even be a conservative estimate) loop through cool old rich-people parts of Chicago I’d never explored. So not only was it new and exciting and different, but it was beautiful as well. (Fact: Rich people have nicer houses than you.)

And since we left from his house, it was his turn to make dinner afterward. And since I’m still very much a novice in the kitchen, I watched and learned as he cooked.

The things I learned:
• You can crush garlic with the blade of a knife. (I’ve always been hand-peeling it.)
• You can sautée chicken before you bake it. (This had never really occurred to me; I’ve always just baked it.)
• Roux is fun to say. And impossible to research on google until you know the proper spelling, which I got from alert reader Mike after I made this post with the wrong spelling. The culinary arts will now roux the day I learned this word.
• Asparagus isn’t as gross as I remember. In fact, the asparagus he made last night was delicious. I’ve never really loved asparagus, so I can’t honestly remember when I last ate it—though I’d guess it’s been a good five years.

After dinner, we retired to his couch so he could show me his favorite movie: Girls will be Girls, which features all-drag females, candy-colored sets and costumes, the occasional shirtless slab of manbeef, and wholesome, family-friendly lines like “I’ve had more children pulled out of me than a burning orphanage.”

And when I woke up this morning, my dehydrated-runner-who-ate-asparagus pee smelled so bad it actually made me gag a little. Not to the point of throwing up in the back of my throat—which is the imagery all the bloggers were using a few seasons ago—but it smelled bad enough to knock a buzzard off a shit wagon, and I definitely made gagging sounds as I watched its caustic effluvium float out of my toilet and send paint peeling off my walls, underpants gnomes scampering for safety and Pat Robertson racing to his camera crew to publicly blame the gays for the ensuing carnage.

And that, my friends, is the kind of classy, high-minded, appropriate-for-every-audience writing that has kept you coming back for 200,000 hits.

All seven of you.