IF IT'S TOO LOUD, YOU MIGHT BE APPROACHING MIDDLE AGE, BUT MAYBE NOT BECAUSE 50 IS THE NEW 40

OK, so I promise to stop referring to 38 as "middle-aged." Sheesh. Understand that this week is developmental theory week in my intro class, and most developmental theories categorize 38 as middle age. Of course, most of those theories were created back in the day when people smoked unfiltered Lucky Strikes, so 38 was quite literally middle age. There are some constrast effects going on as well because I'm married to a guy who's apparently following the Sting anti-aging program. I am so sick of hearing about how young he looks. Seriously. And I spend most of my time with 18- to 21-year-olds, so, you know.

I NEED SOME SWEET CUSTOM RIMS FOR MY LIFE WHEEL

I recently had a number of e-mail interactions with a life coach. Not on purpose. In these messages, she referred to "The Confident Woman" and "The Life Wheel," and "The Welcomer." I wonder if she knows about the Sweet Spot. I should send her that link. Admittedly, my own discipline has some pretty ridiculous terms--BIRGing (Basking in the Reflected Glory of a close other), self-handicapping, The Big Fish in a Little Pond Effect (a topic of one of my scholarly publications), and so on, yet I am quite elitist about the life coaching thing. At least in my field we have some empirical support for our constructs? And when working with clients there are actual licensing procedures? However, in a steel cage death match featuring Life Coach vs. Psy.D., Mr. Banality and I agree that Life Coach wins. FATALITY. Mr. Banality actually convinced me to change my initial prediction about this match-up. His reasoning? "At least life coaches are only taking advantage of rich people and aren't flooding the market and devaluing my work." Touché.

KICKING SOME MUSHROOM ASS

Yes, I did just make an old school reference to Mortal Kombat because 1993 is the about the last time I was familiar with video games. My young cousins received a Wii for Christmas, so I did get to play a little Super Mario Galaxy over the holidays, and I did not get it. How do I kill you? Oh. We're collaborating. What's that thing chasing us? Is that a tumor? It's a mushroom? How do I punch it? I don't punch it. I jump? What? I jumped on it--now how do I kick it to death? It just killed us? What kind of lame ass game is this? I spent the rest of the game making Mario jump through pipes until I got too motion sick to play anymore.

INTERNET: BOON OR BANE?

So, I Googled "Theremin Hero" and found out that I am not the first person to come up with that idea. The internet is really raising the bar for creative thought. In related news, too many people know about YouTube. And by "too many people," I mean the people who own the copyright to the things I want to show in class. Come on! It's for educational purposes! At least there is still an abundance of "cat using toilet" videos available. That'll keep my teaching evaluations up.

LET'S COME UP WITH A BRAND NAME THAT REALLY SAYS, "LUNCH"

I was cutting up a pear this morning to take for lunch, and I tried a piece of it. It was really tasty. I wondered if it might be an organic pear. I had already removed and thrown away the sticker, so I picked up the only remaining pear in the fruit bowl to check it out. No sticker. The only time I've wanted the sticker to be there, the only time I haven't seen the sticker as an annoyance, and there was no sticker. What are the odds?

Speaking of lunch, I love my bento box because it has two little compartments, a matching belt to hold the compartments together, a matching bag, and a matching wee fork that's quite similar to the toddler forks I have in my utensil drawer for Hypothetical Child. And it's an authentic, Japanese bento box, so it's extra cool.

But the brand name is a little . . . I don't know.

Like many other things about Japanese culture, I find this delightfully disturbing.