Biscuit: Tasty Doesn't Get You A Date To The Prom

My blog is a house.

An old house where the shutters creak in the wind. The paint has peeled off in great swathes, revealing the dry, dusty boards beneath. Vines of ivy have curled up over the whole thing, the lawn grows high above the porch, and on the weekends you can hear kids in bad horror flicks, daring each other to spend the night inside.

That's all going to change. Well, not right NOW, of course; I don't have time to mow my blog's metaphorical lawn right NOW. I'm about to get on a plane and go to Jamaica, yo. This place, if you recall. I'll be back in a week. And then, serious reclamation of this forgotten space will be going down. In the meanwhile, I have it on good authority that someone -- perhaps several someones? -- will try to make a few inroads into the mess. If you see people puttering around while I'm gone, it's okay -- don't call the cops on them or anything. I'm reeeeeally looking forward to seeing what they get up to.

On that note, I'm off. I have a car to the airport to call AIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE YAAAAAAA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA WAAAA HWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGLLLLLLLALALAAA!!!

p.s. Muah! I LOVE YOU.

Is what Biscuit would be saying to the comment spam that recently just littered his lovely metaphorical "see ya bitches, i'm off to jamaica" post. Luckily he has me, the small but fiesty one, to warrior in his place.

Take THAT, spam bitches!

Now, let's see... what can we do around here? Who wants to hear stories about Biscuit? Pictures? Embarassing lines of dialogue from three years' worth of IM conversations? I've got it ALL.

This is going to be a list of my favourite things about Biscuit, mainly because I know you will all have something to add to this but also because I know it will cheer him up immensely to read it and when you get back from having a cadre of servants, you need to be immensely cheered up, I feel.

Also, because I just did a list on MY blog and I'm in a list-y mood, OKAY? BACK OFF.

*ahem*

Things I Really Love About Biscuit (and You Should Too):

1. He will start singing musicals with you at the merest impulse. I remember one time when we sang almost the entire "Lusty Month of May" from Camelot just because someone had said "tra la". We were, if you're wondering, in public.

2. When he gets angry, he roars. I'm so not even kidding. He doesn't get angry very often, and when I say it's awesome, I don't mean "oh, you just broke my leg" angry, I mean, "stupid telemarketers!" angry. Breaking legs is never really funny. But when he gets funny-angry, he seriously roars and makes claw-like shapes with his hands.

3. The very first night I met him, back in December of 2001 (holy SHIT), we stood in his bedroom and talked about England and squealed at each other about how much we loved England and then he said to Conrad, "I totally love her! Bring her around a lot!" and we've been friends since then. This, I hear, is how MOST friendships with Biscuit started - with squealing and instant adoration.

4. He loves drinking until five AM and doing crossword puzzles WITH EXACTLY THE SAME LEVELS OF ADORATION.

5. Whilst being a complete and utter snob, he's rarely pretentious about anything. This is an almost-confusing yet accurately-described character trait.

6. He bursts out laughing when I burst out crying at stupid things - like my wedding pictures being blurry or when he came into my little corner in the ER - and while that seems like an insensitive reaction, it's not, it's just Biscuit letting you know that whatever's wrong isn't as bad as all that. It always makes me laugh too.

7. My mother totally adores him.

8. He introduced me to Connie Willis which bears mention because I always swore I didn't like sci-fi or fantasy but he noticed the chink in my armor (since I adore the Narnia books and Harry Potter and His Dark Materials) and without being pushy about it, started introducing me to exactly the kind of sci-fi and fantasy that he knew all along I'd like. He's patient like that.

9. Have you ever TRIED his vermouth-roasted-garlic and marscapone yukon gold mashed potatoes?!

10. His slightly-evil, deep-from-the-heart belly laugh, which he will break out absolutely whenever he damn well pleases.

I think it's important to note, in this whole "krissa taking over biscuit's blog for a week" thing, that the best thing about the guy isn't his cakes, or his style, or even his belly laugh. It's his astounding ability to make something that's hard or complicated or emotionally taxing into something you're laughing about.

I've got about two thousand pages in Microsoft Word that is the IM Log between Bicscuit and myself from the summer of 2003 until now. That's a lot of pages. Somewhere around page 880, I fell in love with Stuart. And the first day back at work after meeting him, when I was already terrified about what would happen when he left to return home to England, Biscuit and I had a conversation about ducks, fish out of water, island biddies, and really - about love.

Wanna see?

I know he's technically back in the country (hi!) but I just wanted to show you guys this picture because he's 1. drunk, 2. mysterious and 3. wearing gold DKNY.

That's the guy I love. Welcome home, biscuitfacehuggylove. Hope you like the paint job.

xoxo,
Krissa

As my small but fiesty usurper said on her own blog a little while back, "When you fly in to [JFK], and it almost seems like the pilot is doing a sight tour of the East River just for you, or you coast through the airspace above Manhattan at night and the city lights look like gold filligree laid on black velvet and the bridges look like diamond tennis bracelets and you just want to cry because no matter how perfect Bra[z]il or the Caribbean or Paris or even Cinncinati may have been to you, you realize it's nothing, nothing's ever, quite like home."

It really is remarkable. No matter where I go, and no matter how happy I am to be there, there's something truly special about my first breath of New York air, my first look at the New York skyline. And yes, I still mean it even when the air is sticky and humid and full of taxi exhaust, and the skyline is limited to a handful of smokers silhouetted against the sun setting behind the AirTrain.

Still and all, none of this is to say that this vacation wasn't the most supremely relaxing week of my life. Now, none of these have been fixed up or cropped or de-red-eyed yet, but I offer up the fruits of my photographic efforts here. When I've had time to sort them all out, I'll do a little slideshow. And you'll sit through it, and you'll like it. But for now, go ahead and rummage around.

I did absolutely nothing except read lots of books, swim, and eat. And once I went horseback riding, on my valiant steed, Silver. (I didn't make that up, he came with the name! Honest!) Apparently my skin was much busier than my brain -- it worked quite hard to darken up for summer, and I appreciate the diligence. So much so, that I offer you a before and after! I look all, like, healthy or something, my sickly winter pallor in full retreat. And that, the Leo in me assures you, is a very very good thing indeed.

Part of me is still very much in Jamaica, thanking Lawrence for bringing me a mid-morning piña colada as I work my way through another book and listen to the sea. The rest of me -- most of me, even! -- is glad to be home again, among my friends who are totally awesome and totally rock my face off, even more than sunshine, salt spray and sand between my toes.

Just fucking whevs.

On Sunday, I take another step in the long-belated completion of my bachelor's degree. I'll be moving back to Colorado for a month to take a summer school class at my old college - apparently I can't just transfer my two remaining classes back, presumably because that would be too easy. I have to actually take a class on campus.

For those of you following along at home, I have no car. In order to ensure I get to class every day, and because I told my mom that living with her, in her house that is an easy hour and a half away from Boulder, would be completely mental, I'll be living in a dorm.

A dorm.

Probably the oldest person to ever live in a dorm in the history of the world, so if you ever see a category for that in Guinness, it'll probably be me. At least I managed to get a room with a bathroom, and its own kitchen, so I can make my own food. I'm definitely too old and have too jaded a palate (ha!) to cope with the residence dining halls. I'll probably be in trouble without them, actually, because in Colorado you can pretty much just order in pizza or Chinese. I don't know what I'm going to do without the ability to ring up Jack's and order a hangar steak with mushrooms and mashed potatoes, or Mango Thai for my golden curry puff and sweet black noodle with chicken. I remember my freshman year ordering from Pizza Time over and over, because although their pizza was total crap, if you saved up ten box tops you got a free cheese pizza (which was also crap, but free crap). I wonder if I still have their number.

My mom is also a total loony, because I say that I have to buy a set of extra-long twin sheets, right, for my dorm-room bed. She says to me, "Why can't you just use a set of my sheets?" "Because, mom. You have a king-sized bed." "It's just for a MONTH. Can't you just ROUGH IT and have sheets that don't fit for a MONTH?"

No.

No, I can't. I'm already going to be IN A DORM and in a TWIN SIZED BED. I have not slept in a twin-sized bed for seven years. I have been too big for a twin-sized bed for twelve years. I will, at MINIMUM, have SHEETS that FIT, instead of sheets that have been wrapped around my mattress and dangle loosely on the floor. And you know what? They don't even MAKE 600-thread count sheets in extra-long twin. I'll be lucky to get 250. AND THAT IS ROUGHING IT ENOUGH FOR ME.