WanderingAmylessly 2.0

Hey baby, what's your sign? Read that line and think polyester leisure suit, gold chains in chest hair, and Three's Company reruns. I've never been one to buy into that whole astrology bit, believing that how you act and think and feel is based on what time of the year you were born. However, I've been analyzing my behaviors in the past few months and have discovered a very scary thing. Hi, my name is Amy, and I'm a sagittarian. I found this basic description of sags and, I must grudgingly admit, that it's like a window into my serotonin-soaked soul. When I'm not on my meds, I'm a depressed, whiny sort. When popping pills does its thing, voila, the archer in me draws back her bow... If you were born under the sign of Sagittarius you are enthusiastic, just, straightforward, freedom-loving, philosophical, of a warm and friendly aura, generous, and broadminded. You may also be pushy, self-indulgent and pleasure-seeking, blunt, exaggerative, impatient, restl...

Oh bother. Last weekend, Winnie-the-Pooh lost two of his dear pals. Or their voices, anyway. Paul Winchell, veteran actor who lent his voice to Tigger in Disney's Pooh movies based on the AA Milne books, passed away last Friday. One day later, John Fiedler—the voice behind Piglet—also died. We're familiar with the "T-I-double grrrr-R," as well as the slight lisp and laugh that endeared several generations to Pooh's lovable tiger friend. But I found out a few other bits of trivia (ever the promoter of useless information) about Winchell that I thought I'd share. He was also the voice of Gargamel on The Smurfs. And, according to CBS.com, "Winchell had many talents besides show business: acupuncture, hypnosis, and numerous inventions, including an artificial heart, a disposable razor, a flameless cigarette lighter and an invisible garter belt." Fiedler, a stage and screen actor, appeared in Broadway productions of "A Raisin in the Sun" with Si...

When Wichita's chief of police proclaimed earlier this year that "BTK is arrested" I warned that he'd someday regret it. I thought the bind-torture-kill serial killer suspect Dennis Rader would have his defense team all over that statement. Turns out Chief Williams was right on target. Rader really is BTK. He admitted it in court today, pleading guilty to all 10 counts of murder and describing, in sickening detail, each one of the crimes. He stalked. He murdered. He practiced bondage on his victims and received sexual pleasure from it. And from what I've read about today's proceedings, he savored every minute of the killings as well as every bit of time in the limelight this morning. The guy is beyond twisted. He even looks like Diablo, with the freaky eyebrows and goatee. Check out cnn.com (click on this post's headline). SHIVVVVVVVVVER.

I'm performing my first real duty for my new employer today. After signing fifteen gajillion papers about how I'm not going to divulge company secrets, not going to sue my employer, agree to attend a full-day orientation for new employees on my start date, and so on, I get to do this one very important task this afternoon. I get to give of myself in a most personal way. I get to pee in a cup. I'm quite accustomed to this after having a child. I perfected the art of collecting in mid stream, after donating several gallons for various testings during my pregnancy. Before any sort of discussions with the doc, before any examinations, before I even got weighed (thanks for that...the whale that Amy had become needed all the help she could get on the scales), at every single appointment, the first thing they did was hand me the specimen collection container and direct me to the bathroom. Then upon completion, I'd have to wander back in the hallway and find a nurse to hand the...

Ever wanted to take an IQ test? Find out who's your inner rock star? Discover whether you're as great a date as you think you are? Do you need a makeover? Wanna find out which one of The Golden Girls do you most resemble? Or how you can simplify your life? Check out Tickle.com. It calls itself the number-one destination for self discovery. It has a premium test section where, for a fee, you can take "PhD certified" tests. Whatever that means. But for free, there are all sorts of tests to take that, while they aren't much more than Cosmo-caliber quizzes, aren't a bad way to waste a few minutes and get an occasional laugh. OK. I acknowledge that if you really want to simplify your life, you could stop reading silly blogs. But then you wouldn't know that the Golden Girl I'm most like is (ugh) Dorothy (ughughBea Arthur), that my bar personality is "friendly regular" (insert Cheers theme song here), and that my inner rock star is Sade (who?).

Lists are addictive. Letterman made them a cult-culture phenomenon with his top 10 list. VH1 took the countdown shows to new heghts (or a new low, perhaps) with such shows as "The top 20 hair bands of the '80s." And a few years ago, AFI had everyone debating at watercoolers over whether "Citizen Kane" really was the best movie ever. (Pause here while readers shout out their nuh-uhs and alternative preferences...) Last night, I got sucked into the latest countdown show by AFI (the American Film Institute). It was the 100 Greatest Movie Lines of All Time. I tried to guess which ones might make the top 10. Apparently there haven't been any well written movies in the past couple decades, because I think the most recent movie of the top 10 was from the early '80s. And it's amazing how I can quote nearly every line of every John Hughes movie, but nothing from those films even made the ballot (which included 400 great lines). The best line of all time, acco...

Adventure isn't hanging on a rope off the side of a mountain. Adventure is an attitude that we must apply to the day-to-day obstacles of life—facing new challenges, seizing new opportunities, testing our resources against the unknown and in the process, discovering our own unique potential. - John Amatt organizer and participant in Canada's first successful expedition to the summit of Mt Everest. ••••• I'm not atop the world's highest mountain, but I feel like I'm a few thousand feet in the air. It's amazing what two job offers, a job acceptance, and a resignation can do for a person's mood and future outlook. I accepted an offer from an international company this morning to be a senior communications specialist for their internal corporate communications. I got a huge pay boost, and a huge ego boost to boot. It's nice to feel appreciated and wanted. I'm sure as the next few weeks pass, I'll start worrying about all the details involved with swit...

Am I a complete sucker for angst-ridden girl singer-songwriters, or what? I conned my husband into buying me a CD this a.m. (unconvincingly explaining that it could be considered his early Father's Day present because he really likes her, right? sure...) Alanis Morissette's acoustic version of Jagged Little Pill, the album that made her an international phenomenon and became a collection of anthems for angry, done-wrong women everywhere. Available for a limited time only at Starbucks. Something about combining her fierce lyrics with caffeine sits a bit uneasy with me...seems like a volatile mix (don't give that crazy lady any sharp objects, please!). But the acoustic arrangement seems to have sanded off the rough edges of her messages. We're left with a more contemplative, soulful Alanis, better suited to my aging ears and lifestyle. I just realized that this is the 10th anniversary of the first JLP release. Where'd the decade go? Ten years ago, Tom Cruise was filmi...

The top story today on the web site advocate.com: Salt Lake City: Gayer than you think According to this story, this year's Pride Week culminated with a parade that, organizers say, is the second largest in Salt Lake City behind the annual parade commemorating the Mormon settlement of the Salt Lake Valley. It goes on to say that: Urban Institute demographer Gary Gates and researcher Jason Ost, authors of The Gay and Lesbian Atlas, estimate Salt Lake City to be in the top 6% of cities where gay and lesbian couples were likely to live. "Clearly, Salt Lake City has a high concentration," Gates told the Associated Press. Many gays and lesbians in Utah are former Mormons who grew up in the area and don't want to leave--despite a political system that just passed one of the country's most restrictive amendments banning same-sex marriage. Others migrated from equally conservative nearby states such as Idaho and Wyoming, which have no high-concentration gay areas of their...

Family. My husband explained to our 19-month-old at the beginning of our trip to my family get-together, "H...just remember, you can pick your friends, you can pick your nose. You can't pick your relatives." We laughed. We were only joking. Sort of. I love them. They have the same ancestral blood coursing through their insides, the same genes squaredancing in their chromosomal makeup. But gosh, I have nearly nothing in common with them other than that. We see each other maybe once every year or two. Some cousins I haven't seen for nearly a decade. I spent much of the weekend doing the thing that I despised others doing to me not too many years ago: "Wow, so-and-so, last time I saw you, you were only this (pronouced theeeeiiisssss) big!" I think that's one reason why people get married. So they can inherit a whole new bunch of relatives who didn't know them when they were only theeeeiiisss big and with whom it's OK to not share anything in common....

That's how big it is. Texas. It's like a whole other country. We're only going to a tiny portion of it this weekend, to visit my aunt and uncle who are celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary in the Dallas area. Although it might feel like we're traveling to another planet. We may take the kid to the grassy knoll. Depending on how he handles his first plane trip later this afternoon, we might leave him there. Deposit him next to the school book depository and make a quick getaway. I'm kidding. Sort of. Preparing for this trip has left me exhausted—physically, mentally, emotionally. My red blood cells ache. My platelets want to cry. I'm all used up. And we haven't even headed for the airport. What do we do with a 19-month-old who has to sit on our laps for two hours while his ears painfully snap, crackle, pop like Rice Krispies? We will be the plague of the plane. Forget about box-cutter-wielding terrorists. We're the family that strikes fear into the ...

Seeing as how I had so much fun with frenulum yesterday, I thought I'd continue dispensing knowledge. The following is a list titled "Weird Trivia" on the IFAQ web site (Infrequently Asked Questions). Enjoy. ••••• Bank robber John Dillinger played professional baseball. The glue on Israeli postage stamps is certified kosher. The housefly hums in the middle octave, key of F. A pig's orgasm lasts for 30 minutes. The longest word in the English language, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. The only other word with the same amount of letters is its plural, pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconioses. Los Angeles's full name is "El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciuncula." Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or older. An ostrich's eye is bigger than it's brain. Mel Blanc (the voice of Bugs Bunny) was allergic to carrots. Cleo and Caesar were the early st...

Thought I'd share more than you'd ever want to know about the dysfunction of my tongue. This from kidshealth.com: Frenulum Say: fren-yuh-lum You've got a friend in your frenulum, the piece of skin that attaches your tongue to the bottom of your mouth. But if your frenulum is too short, that's called tongue-tied, and it can cause problems with your speech. Doctors sometimes do an operation to free up the tongue by snipping the frenulum. My son had a little snip-snip on his frenulum soon after his birth because he couldn't stick out his tongue correctly to nurse. Now he won't be speech impaired, and he won't suffer the shame I face every time I visit a new dentist or see a new dental hygienist and become the freak of the week. Something I didn't know, however, is that there also exists a bit of exclusively male anatomy that shares the name of the thingey under everyone's tongue. Tongue-tied or not, that piece of information might render anyone speechle...

I could tell you what and when and how she'll say it. She could be Ginger in Clearwater, Kan., or Kelli in Ogden, Utah, or Lauri in Iowa City, Iowa. But her eyes will shoot me a menacing stare, peering over her little white mask past her bitter latex-covered fingers, and she'll start the succession of phrases meant to guilt and embarrass my mouth into submission. • We're going to have to work for awhile on these front ones. (scrapescrapescrape) Quite a bit of build up right here (scratchscratchscratch). • Most of the buildup seems to be in between. You could get that if you flossed more often. • Hmmm. We've got a little blood here. Definitely more flossing (she says as she jams a thread of floss into my gum and saws like a steak knife through gristle). • Do you drink coffee or tea? We have some stubborn stains here. Coffee? That explains it. • You drink a lot of coffee? • Oooh. Seems a little sensitive. Does it hurt when I do this? (F**k yes it hurts, are you an idiot?!...

She didn't win. But she also did not spin wildly out of control or take 10 other cars out with her as she careened into the potted plants. Danica Patrick, in her post-race interviews, shrugged off the interviewer's yammering on about her place in history as the first woman to lead a lap of the Indy 500. One broadcaster spewed about her immortality and breaking Mt. Everest-sized barriers, and he compared her to Sally Ride and Amelia Earhart. I wouldn't go that far. Still, she impressed me. Perhaps her best move of the day came when she scoffed at all the verbal backslapping and high-fiving she was getting from the commentators. When they asked her a leading question about how proud she must have felt about her racing, how she thought she compared with racing legends and how she kicked motorsport butt on Sunday, she shook her head. ''I can't believe my car didn't completely demolish because I got hit, like, twice," she said. "I drove like a rookie....