An unholy army of Cambrias sweeping the land.

I'm fairly certain that the guy at Jiffy Lube on Anderson Lane will be naming his next born child Cambria. He wanted to know the etymology, why I was named it, and how to pronounce it. As the Goodwill Ambassador of Cambrias, I was happy to supply this information.

All in service, of course, to the mighty army of like-named girls cropping up across the land. There are four Cambrias at my sister's school; there are at least four others that have been born to my fellow college alumni in the last five years. You do the math. We shall be a mighty force to be reckoned with. But will also fear confrontation, so I'm not sure how this will all work.

I'll always love you though, New York.

Ryan Adams is sold out. I can't win for losing.

Carefully planned seredipity.

There's a certain blogger, who lives in Austin, whose writing I love. It's the kind of writing I would aspire to if I even remotely thought I had a modicum of his talent: funny, sincere, intelligent, literate. He is seriously talented, and I admire the hell out of him.

Good writing makes me excited. And I believe in applauding people when they do a good job--especially when there's so much crap writing muddling the internet, because I know I would want the same if I made my living by writing. So it started innocently enough: I wrote him an email about a year ago to tell him that I appreciate his writing, and he responded back. I thrilled a little, I'll admit. Over the next year, I read something of his whenever I could, and sometimes I laughed out loud, sometimes I teared up unexpectedly, and sometimes I would copy parts of it into this journal of quotes I've been keeping since high school. His writing is that good.

And so, inevitably--and because I am stricken with a malady similar to drunk dialing, except I send emails when I am completely sober--I sent another email. Which he responded to. And another. Which he responded to, with a question. It took me an hour to craft my 50-word response.

Keep in mind that the writing is the reason for all of this. I realize how this all sounds, but it's really just me getting caught up in the writing. In the way that I liked to be around people who read and wrote in grad school; same thing here.

I happen to read in his blog that he was planning to be at a certain Austin establishment this morning. And so I decided I would happen to be there as well. I would happen to be reading a book by his favorite author--not the one that everyone reads in high school, but his first one, to show that I know my way around modernist writers. And somehow, we would meet. Completely spontaneously.

I have a record of carefully planned spontaneity when it comes to writers I admire. And that record is: I act a straight-up fool around them. My carefully rehearsed speech to Dave Eggers made me look crazy, and my would-be memorable aside to Jonathon Safran Foer ended with me blurting out my full name and then nearly tripping down the stairs when my heel caught in the cuff of my pants. Because of this, I have put myself on restriction from talking to anyone whose work I admire.

So I decided I had one of two options here: do it but never tell anyone; or, don't do it and write about it instead. Sanity has clearly won the day. Relatively speaking. And it's for the best, really. Because I am 30.

On claiming furniture for a future date.

My mom is down in the O.C. (don't call it that) this weekend for my grandma's 83rd birthday. And also to meet her new dad: my grandma's tying the knot this fall with husband #3. It's like having Liz Taylor as your grandma. Or J. Lo.

Also in town for this occasion are my mom's three sisters. Altogether, this is one big bunch of crazy, in the way that only your own genetics can be. I imagine it's a lot of talking around certain topics; spending time with the blushing bride-to-be while slowly realizing that there are no such things as 83-year-old brides, only older 18-year-old brides; and secretly taping your name onto the back of furniture you'd like to see become yours when the time comes (my mom's been doing this for years, but sometimes she just quietly palms little things here and there; it's a victimless crime). A fight breaks out whenever one of these taped names is discovered, and I'd be willing to bet that more than one piece of furniture has serepitiously had the name on back changed.

My mom was not exactly looking forward to this weekend. What is it about sisters that incites such a mixture of dread and potential hilarity? I have two of my own, of course, so I have my suspicions. These are the people I used to have to sleep in between in the king-size bed at my San Diego grandparents' house, and they would literally fight over me--waking the whole house--and then roll over and take the pillows with them. I was left in the middle without a pillow (my brother, being the only boy, was always stuck on the couch in the living room).

The problem with and blessing of sisters is that they know you too well. They know the soft parts that hurt, they know how to pinch those spots just so, they know how to protect them from other people. There's a lot of power there. And not always used for good and not evil. It's a dynamic that never goes away, I think. In fact, I'm fairly positive there is furniture at my parents' house that already has a name taped to the back.

Think advertising doesn't work? It just did.

I think what I like best about this campaign poster (or perhaps it's an apolitical statement of fact, I don't know), which I saw on N. Lamar, is that someone felt strongly enough about freedom/Ron Paul to make this sign and go outside with a hammer and nails and post it. Long live representational government!

Nothing exciting ever happens in this town.

Thus, I have just set the following in motion: the discovery of a dead body; the uncovering of a conspiracy; a chase sequence; coming home to find my house has been ransacked; falling in love with the detective assigned to the case, even though he is totally not my type; the decoding of various clues overlooked by everyone else; discovering this thing goes all the way to the President; telling the police chief: "No, we will not stay out of this!"; learning a valuable life lesson, probably about patriotism; the salvation of the town, America, possibly the world; reflecting upon how saying "nothing ever happens in this town" virtually assures you will have to run for your life within days, just like talking about how long it's been since your last speeding ticket will guarantee one on the way home.

Cewl, as the Irish say.

I just saw the most ridiculously charming movie: Once. Go see it, go see it, go see it: if you're in Austin, it's at the Arbor. It has all the ingredients I need to love a movie: Ireland and/or Irish people; not-the-right-time love; music; music being the reason for living; montages set to music; and good writing. It's not a musical in the traditional sense, but the song lyrics do advance the plot. Which sounds like it could be a long narrative music video, but it's not. It works, is all I can tell you. Bloody fantastic. While my cold, cold heart hates rom-coms, it does enjoy a (musical) drama with a love subplot and a beautiful ending. Check and mate. I immediately came home and iTuned the soundtrack. Perfect for a rainy Independence Day.

The lead is Glen Hansard of The Frames, which I think is going to be my new favorite band. Oh, Irish bands, will you never cease to make me love you?

"But there was always a shortfall, wasn't there? Between the match that the Holy One, blessed be He, envisioned and the reality of the situation under the chuppah. Between commandment and observance, heaven and earth, husband and wife, Zion and Jew. They called that shortfall 'the world.' Only when Messiah came would the breach be closed, all separations, distinctions, and distances collasped. Until then, thanks be unto His Name, sparks, bright sparks, might leap across the gap, as between electric poles. And we must be grateful for their momentary light."

--Michael Chabon, The Yiddish Policemen's Union

Oh, gosh.

I should probably learn how ratios work (I had to fix the title of my last post because I got it backwards and it made no sense). This might explain why George Michael (cat, not pop star) could probably score higher on the GRE than I did.

Another thing: when will people realize that The Kite Runner is one of the most wildly overrated books of all time? Having a topical setting does not equal extraordinary literary merit.

And also: I spilled coffee all over my skirt this morning. It's like I picked up the mug and just dumped it. Sometimes I wonder how I manage to make it out of the house alive every morning.

The ratio of losers to winners is like 100:1.

This weekend, while I wore my hair in ill-considered braids and Tom-Sawyered myself into repainting my bathroom a lovely color called Kitchen Twine, I did some thinking. When you're on your hands and knees trying to reach around the back of the toilet to paint that one tricky spot, your mind wanders to, what else: dating (it's somehow an apt metaphor). Specifically, online dating. Specifically, that I have been matched on eHarmony with 571 (!) men in the Austin area over the last 18 or so months. Though it would probably be more accurate to say that I've been Punk'd about 571 times.

571. The whole thing is rather exhausting.

Listen, this is all I want out of a date: either be spectacularly good or spectacularly bad. Because if it's good, there will be more dates; and if it's bad, there will be more stories. I can't see how anyone loses here.

And yet.

Here's a random sampling of what I've gotten (this is not a complete list; there are several that I can't mention here):

• a guy whose only question to me was "Is there a late-night Arby's open around here?"
• the local FOX weatherman, with whom I got into a wacky misunderstanding that really showed his lack of humor
• a guy who collects Garbage Pail Kids trading cards (please note the present tense)
• a guy whose full-time "job" was selling his DVDs and pawn-shop purchases on eBay
• a Dungeons and Dragons player
• a guy who lived in his parents' basement
• a guy who spent an hour explaining to me why he would be buying my drink because he is a man, and he invited me out and zzzzzzzzz....
• a blind saxophonist
• a guy who stole my profile and posted it as his own (my first plagiarism!)
• a guy whose third language was English and who still managed to beat me in Scrabble almost every time we played
• a disappointingly large number of guys who name Dan Brown's Angels and Demons or The Da Vinci Code as the most recent book they've read

If this has taught me anything, it's that you need to have way more filters than you think you do. Because I didn't think I needed to weed for D&D players anymore; I thought it was like polio: eradicated, a thing of the past. Not so much, it turns out.

So why do I keep re-upping my subscription? While I stood precariously with one foot on the soap holder in my shower and the other on the ledge as I reached to paint the wall, I came up with a two-part answer: A) there have been a couple fellas on there that were pretty cool and with whom I did have a lot in common, and B) it seems like there's really nothing to lose. In other words, it feels silly not to keep doing it. A good friend of mine once said: you're going to meet a-holes no matter where you go--bars, bookstores, churches--it just seems like you meet a lot more a lot faster online. True, of course. People know how to hide the crazy until you've gone out with them a couple times: you're not going to be able to necessarily see it right away whether you're emailing or chatting in the fiction aisle of Half Price Books. It doesn't really matter where or how you meet them; you're bound to be as lucky with one as the other.

I've heard of enough Match.com or eHarmony weddings to believe that these sites do work. And I think we're far enough into the 00s to no longer turn up our noses or lower our voices about online dating. It's the natural progression from The Dating Game. And I contend, a much better alternative than auditioning for the next season of Flavor of Love.

So, I beat on like a boat against the current, borne back ceaslessly, just like Fitzgerald taught me. In the end, we're all just looking for that green dock light.

At least my bathroom looks good.