free lunch

I wrote this on April 7, 2011, and it's been languishing in my drafts ever since then.  It is still true.

This was one of the first things we learned in PR classes in college:  TNSTAAFL.  There's No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.

I begin to be amazed at the number of women out there who seem to be dating solely to get free lunches (and dinners, and drinks, &c &c).  I cannot for the life of me figure out why anyone would do that.  There is no worse way to spend dinner than struggling through a conversation with someone who genuinely doesn't interest you.

I can say, with a totally clear conscience, that I've never gone out with someone solely because I thought he would buy me food.  Give me scrambled eggs on the couch, any day.

a communications blackout period

Reporting live from my couch, 9:30 pm, Saturday, July 26, in the year of our Lord 2011.

I am wearing a sundress and no bra.  I am drinking a Sam Adams.  I am watching the second season of The West Wing.

It's making me wish that I was in DC.  You know the old exhortation Go west, young man?  I hear Go east, young woman in my head all the time.  But that's neither here nor there.  Here I am, on my couch in Los Angeles.

I should be at a party, but I'm not.

In the meantime, Toby Ziegler is singing my life with his words.

"The last the flight control has heard from Galileo was 11 minutes before landing, when all systems were operating normally.  Then it entered what they call a communications blackout period, and hasn't been heard from since.

I know how it feels."