Get Your Registry On at Knackregistry.com

When my friend suggested that I use his startup wedding registry company, Knack, as inspiration for my next blog post, he probably had no idea that I a) called-off my own wedding and b) was against registering for wedding gifts.

Now you know, Fred.

About item a) above: I will cut-to-the-chase by saying that I ended-up marrying the man. Bryan. Our called-off wedding was a thorn in our sides for awhile and I dare say painful for everyone involved because people get invested in things like weddings. Especially when they have invested two out of the three days they signed-up for. Three days really puts the extra in extravaganza. Rest assured, a few people had a really great time. I know this because they sent thank you notes saying so.

We eloped a couple years later with another couple, friends of ours as witnesses, also named Brian and Mckenzie. Yes, we have the same names but different spelling. Somehow the different spellings are comforting to everyone, like that is precisely how we manage our own identities and still have the same names. Bryan and I wanted to marry but we did not know what end was up when it came to doing a wedding again. So when Brian and Mckenzie invited us on a cruise we were like, Cha-yea! We'll take your vacation and raise you an elopement!

About item b) above: I was wrong, wrong. Registries make total sense. My wedding gift experience without a registry sucked. I know this for a fact because I have been to the homes of many-a-former wedding registerers and they have awesome stuff. Because they registered for the awesome stuff.

Here was part of my gift experience, without knackregistry.com:

1) A series of glass sculpture fish. If this had come with its own display shelf we would have been set.

2) A wood challis with two rings around the stem, allegedly carved from one piece of wood (felt like balsa to me), found in some distant corner of the earth, no doubt, because these people were always traveling. Good for them.

3) A set of chopsticks made of gold that were so slim and slippery, I dropped every other bite. I probably said shit 10 times although we used the chopsticks not more than twice. Shit is an atypical word for me to use because it feels shitty on my tongue. And shitty on my tongue is the last thing I want to feel when I am eating.

Fred, you can breathe now.

Knack is a wedding registry that allows you to register for just about any kind of excellent gift, decide how and when to receive it, and makes returns a snap. If Knack were a person, I would have definitely invited it to my elopement. Booyea!

Get your FREE product plugs at The Spectacle. I need the practice plugging and, well, your product could probably use a little more attention. Emphasis on the little.

Winter Playlist

If you are as tired of Baby It's Cold Outside as I am, then consider working one or all of these songs into your winter playlist. With dark-in-a-bright-way lyrics, these songs kick caddy to the curb. Warning: A spring in your step may occur, despite Winter.

1. Sunlight - The One AM Radio
2. All The Places - ::M∆DE::IN::HEIGHTS::
3. Skip the Charades - Cold War Kids
4. That's Some Dream - Good Old War
5. War Love - St. Paul de Vence
6. Maybe This Time - Glee Cast
7. Where I'm Going - Cut Copy
8. Nine Sixteen - Bruno Merz
9. By The Time It Gets Dark - Yo La Tengo
10. Last Words - Travis

The Curious Case of the Fan

Happy New Year. Do you dread going back to work after the holiday break? I do. I mean, I used to. Before I quit work, I dreaded going back to work every day I had off. And now I have a phantom dread when a holiday break ends or a Sunday night rolls around. It is a well-worn path in my psyche. For a long time I could not watch The Office without feeling a little sick to my stomach because it was too real. But I have been working on letting it go, one story at a time.

The Curious Case of the Fan

All stories have an agitator (antagonist?). As luck would have it, the agitator at work was my cube-mate, Joe. We sort of shared a desk. I had my own corner desk and he had his own corner desk but the crack of my desk met his and it was agitation at first sight. To sum-up Joe, he was explosively passionate, about anything really. It seemed he had endless causes: a.) The Master Cleanse, b.) Pescetarianism, c.) Burning Man, and he expected everyone to care. This day it was his desktop fan.

I was hard at work (obviously) and paying him no special attention until he burst out, "hey!". I was startled but quickly found my place on the computer again and ignored him. How anyone manages to right themselves from the continual torrent of Cubeland distractions without wanting to jump out a window is beyond me. A few minutes later, he said more poignantly "hey, stop moving my fan!" This is when I turned toward him to discern his cause de jour and how it might affect me. Joe seemed genuinely agitated as he turned his fan away from me, arranging it to blow into his face just so, as he had done, no doubt, several times before. He ignored my inquiring eye and settled his hot face back into whatever was on his computer. I was curious but remembered that curiosity killed the cat and so I too put my nose to the computer and said nothing.

Several minutes passed and I had mostly forgotten Joe was my cube-mate until he exploded, "hey, stop moving my fan!" It was precisely at this moment that I felt the full weight of how tired I had become of being interrupted by his outbursts, which propelled me to wheel around and match furrow to furrow, hiss to hiss. The ruckus drew attention and like gophers, people popped-up from their burrows all across Cubeland to watch, wide-eyed.

With everyone watching, Joe continued accosting me for moving his fan. I did not give a damn about his fan orientation and I was totally perplexed about how to tell him this. He was like, "you are moving my fan!" And I was like, "I disagree with the premise." Talk about a breakdown in communication. All of a sudden, it dawned on me--oh sweet, sweet, ahha moment--Joe's fan was moving itself.

When I tried to explain the curious case of the tiny vibration drawing the fan to turn, Joe's hot face turned incredulous, as if I was suggesting that inanimate objects could move themselves, which was exactly what I was suggesting, and so I piped-down and let the gopher people help him sort it out.

Joe went back to work, in his corner of the desk, and never mentioned the fan or anything relating to the incident again. And I let him.

__________

Weeks passed before I recounted the curious case of the fan to a few friends over dinner. I started laughing so hard, tears streamed down my face. What a surprising relief. I cannot tell you what my friends were doing, for all the tears, I could not see them.

In the moment, in Cubeland or anywhere, it can be so stressful and insane. People interact in Cubeland in a way they would not interact elsewhere. It is like a petri dish, where just about anything can grow and fester. As it turns out, when you are elsewhere, you gain perspective and realize that Cubeland is not your entire world after all, just a small dish-size of it. And you know you have a cabinet full of other dishes to keep you sane.