(I posted out of order. This is what happens when you post stuff about once a week. This is for Saturday, September 5.)

Last night I kept dreaming I was hanging out in the shop. Sigh.

I signed myself up for a lot of distracting things today on eventbrite.com.

10 a.m. "The Future of Collage" lecture...and the Lawn Guys are blasting every single loud thing they can as this starts.
* "What is collage? I'm not sure?"
* "I think of collage as a game where context is the most important word."*
* "Todd Martell likes to say that everything is a collage... Which doesn't get us anywhere, but it's fun to think about."
* "Everybody can do it, but few people can do it well."

In all honesty, they were far more interested about talking about how gathering in person is important than the rest of it. Which is NOT HELPING RIGHT NOW.

* "Max, you and I have never met in real life. We haven't gotten drunk and had a bar fight over these ideas."
* "Art movements some times shift depending on the personalities of the people involved."
* "When all the abstract expressionists hung out in a bar, things happened."
* "Do you have any suggestions as to how to coax collage artists out of their hobbit holes to interact with society?" "Cheese and booze."
* "If you Google collage, what you get is college."

I signed up for a meditation class at noon, but got "invalid link" when I tried to log in. I guess that worked out since that is when I heard from Redhead Sarah. She suggested having him send up a light beacon and pretend he's a lighthouse signalling the kitty back, and contacting the neighbors to see if the cat got stuck in a garage or shed somewhere by accident. We're not sure how much of a factor that is in the country, but that's a good idea and she said it happened to one of hers for a week. She also said local lost and found Facebook groups.

Mom called to ask if I wanted a nice lap desk (yes, she's ordering them for everyone) and then insisted on staying on the phone until I agreed to get the wood one even though I could only find the black version on the Internet when she kept telling me to look for it. Oh, WHATEVER, it's not like it was going to be an interesting color anyway.

After walking around the house for 90 minutes and doing some weightlifting by using liter water bottles as dumbbells, I settled in to watch "Love, Guaranteed" on Netflix.

So Nick (Damon Wayans) decides to sue the matchmaking service he's been using for a thousand times, literally. That's the plot. Rachael Leigh Cook is his lawyer.

* "I should use the basement ladies room more often." "It's where all the magic happens."
* Where...on earth...did she get that old beater orange car?!
* "986 dates" with actual human women?"
* The user fine print agreement says you have to go through 1000 dates for the guarantee to apply. "The lawyers thought no one would go through with it, but clearly, I did!"
* Nick has nicknames for his dates like episodes of Friends. Why? How else will he tell them apart? "You know how many Chloes I've dated? 14. Plus 12 Emmas and like half a dozen Zoes."
* Nick brags that he takes his dates to fancy restaurants and keeps it under an hour "like an oil change." He literally has a date for every meal.
* Shockingly, Nick's dates are all "hey, he looked like his picture and showed up," whereas of course hers don't go well. One of Nick's dates says he says he's trying to find love, but really is trying to prove it doesn't exist.
* "Turns out the groom's in love with my mom, not my sister."
* "Why do you think I proposed to Dante after two weeks? It's a jungle out there."
* "Two good eggs make an omelet" is how Jerome matchmakes.
* Nick has his 1000th date tomorrow. Congratulations? "Wish me luck." "Hardly seems appropriate."
* Nick's date is either a picky eater or very allergic. His shellfish joke doesn't go over at all.
* "You need a sandwich and a nap!" Susan's onetime date is both drunk and narcoleptic.
* "I had to make sure you weren't intentionally tanking the dates." This waitress ('You work fast, Nick") is a hoot. When Susan doesn't nitpick her order, the waitress is all "I like this one."
* "This is my lucky table?" "Is it, though?" '"No! Go sit somewhere else!"
* She named her car Zorro because it tracks down ruthless villains.
* Nick has no clue who Tiffany is, as apparently her favorite song is "I Think We're Alone Now."
* "Some ground rules before we go in there: I do the talking: You: no snarking, no snickering, no snorting."
* Tamara Taylor, glamour CEO of "Love Guaranteed," went to Tibet and her life purpose is "I will solve loneliness." Nick immediately snorts.
* For the record, Nick is suing for 500k and to deep-sink the name of the company.. They offer him 100k and an NDA. Now Susan wants to sue for a million. Nick drops an imaginary mic.
* "Whose idiotic idea was it to guarantee love, anyway? Who am I firing today?" Dude: "Yours." Tamara to the only woman in the room: "You're fired." WTF?
* We find out that the Tiffany tape has been stuck in her car since the 80's and plays or not randomly, poltergeist style. I am deeply amused. "So your car is possessed by Tiffany."
* "Are you lawyering a four-year-old?" "I'm willing to make concessions."
* I just LOL'd that the company is loopholing that people find love BECAUSE of the site, not that they actually set up dates.
* The company's argument is that Nick went on 1000 dates not looking for love, but a payday.
* Now she's crying in her car. "I hate you, Tiffany."
* He gives up on the lawsuit in court, very romantic. I'm amused that the owner of the company offers them 250K to become the poster couple. (Nick is all "I knew they were fake.") Susan negotiates it to 500k.
* "Anything but a first date."
* "The one he didn't see coming."
* The disclaimer at the end is too long for me to quote, but adorable.

Here is an article about the use of Tiffany in this movie.

Later I took a class on Norse runes, which I thought was cool. However, I still didn't feel like I could actually read the runes once i tried tossing a few around the house. I don't really know how to translate "how many runes should be here in a group?" and "what do I do with the flipped over ones?"

I briefly watched a Virtual Pub Crawl, called "Time Travel Pub Crawl: Literary Dives!" Seanan McGuire's girlfriend Amy McNally turned up in it! It appears to be an online tour of famous pubs. I watched a bit of Virtual Burning Man Burn Night old videos.

Later I watched the Maximum Occupancy improv show, with guest Lauren Adams from The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (Gretchen), who used to work there.

* "It doesn't matter how i feel, I still have to keep pushing through." -Dave Pierini, who then told a story about getting punched in the genitals onstage.
* Lauren: "I got engaged during the pandemic. It's a weird time to celebrate stuff....He was planning it before the pandemic started." No one asks to see the ring in quarantine, she says, or get to say the word fiance. Now she gets to do both!
* "Just be honest, don't worry that we're all watching...." -Dave
* As Lauren says, "Becky always gave all the interns free weed--" "Becky no longer is working here."
* There's a story about someone having diarrhea in the middle of a show (anonymous) and Lauren had to go out and kill time.
* To Jon Hamm: "Hi, I'm going to be staring lovingly at you for the next week...."
* Jon Hamm once distracted everyone when a woman couldn't stop coughing, by saying the same thing happened to him. "Very loudly."

The improv itself was just so-so and didn't seem to incorporate her stories much, but oh well.

And at the end of that, I heard from Scott! The cat is okay! They went out looking for her and she just casually walked by his mom.... Now she is definitely inside, for the moment anyway. And all other cats are present and accounted for. WHEW. Also, go St. Francis, for lo, that trick worked again!

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