but i digress

You would think with the holidays approaching, there would be ever so many things for me to babble on endlessly about, ultimately saying nothing substantive about any of them. You would be right. And also wrong. I have so much to say about the holidays and holiday events and holiday gift-wrapping extravaganzas and holiday this and that and the other that I have been rendered speechless. I don't even know where to start, so my solution has been to avoid the blog all together.

It seems to be working so far.

I have lately found many other ways with which to spend my time, such as writing endless critiques of the writings of other writing students, laboring for days and days over my own stories so that I can receive towering stacks of critiques in return, searching the internet for Christmas gift inspiration, making long lists of Christmas cookies from which I will cull eight or twenty of the tastiest for parties, and watching helplessly each night snippets of Stephen King’s 1994 made-for-television miniseries “The Stand” which remains (as I vaguely remembered and despite the inexplicable allure of its oddly violet-lit rat-filled faux cornfields) a horrendous, horrendous example of why I don’t watch tv anymore.

Also, for reasons unclear to me, I have been lying in bed at night trying to come up with cool ringtones for cell phones.

My boss has a phone that makes cozy little cricket-y noises when it rings, which I particularly enjoy. And the old-fashioned me likes my ex-co-worker Heather's ringtone - the brrrri-i-i-ing of the old-timey telephones we had when I was a kid, in the days before appliances such as microwaves became ubiquitious in the American Household.

Was I really alive during the time before microwaves? I believe it to be so, though I rely so heavily on the microwave now that ours has begun to make a strange grinding sound when it microwaves and I fear for its longevity. The Guatemalan has threatened not to renew the presence of a microwave in our kitchen if ours kicks the bucket or begins to irradiate the house or whatever microwaves do as they give up the ghost. But I say, until they make it so that I can zap things into cookedness with my iPod, a new microwave is not not happening around here.

But I digress.

Here are some of my cell phone ringtone ideas:

The sound of a microwave whirring, complete with a beep. The roar of a lion. A bunch of panicked voices shouting “Fire!” Or how about an alarm clock going off? I also like the idea of a creepy stalker voice saying creepy things like, “Why hello there. I’ve been watching you all day long. Those jeans make your thighs look like giant, luscious root-vegetables – mmm, how I love root vegetables. Well, bye now. I’ll see you tonight – through your bedroom window.” Things like that, so that when your phone rings in the supermarket, it thoroughly freaks out the woman who’s standing in front of you in line. Hee hee.

OR...what about personalized tones? My dog making growly Wookie-noises, for example. Or my nephew making his adorably high-pitched staccato “hi!” over and over again. Can you already do these things? I bet on some website somewheres you can totally turn your child's first words into a ringtone. I wouldn't know since my phone works only intermittently at best.

But I digress.

In conclusion, that's what I've been up to during my blogging hiatus. Thinking up ringtones, watching "The Stand", planning for Christmas, and wishing I could cook food with my iPod. That's it. I'm sorry.