so far, I see no problem with shopping under the influence

You may have seen recently, like, all over the internet that a lot of people apparently shop online while intoxicated. I was at first flabbergasted (my gasted was flabbered, I dare say!) until I remembered the time in college I stumbled home from the bar and almost ordered the entire Time Life 60s Greatest Hits compilation. I had my credit card in hand, I did, before I realized I should probably hang up the phone.

This wasn't the first time I'd been tempted. I usually stumbled in from the bar around 4 in the morning and, if Charles in Charge wasn't on TV Land, I was forced to watch the only thing available...infomercials. Luckily, these were the dark days before the invention of the Snuggie or the PedEgg, so I was hardly ever tempted, but when I heard the tender crooning of The Temptations and those Beach Boys harmonizing all over the place, all I wanted was to own each and every CD in that Time Life collection.

It never occurred to me that I could jump on Napster or Kazaa or whatever we were using for piracy at the time, oh no, I needed that fancy box set. I'd already started clearing a space on one of my shelves so I knew I had room. I picked up the phone and, after several misdials (800 numbers are long, you guys!), I navigated my way through the robot-voiced menu and was finally speaking to a Time Life representative. She was so nice! And I was in luck, they had the compilation in stock! All I had to do was give her my credit card number! I dug through my purse, unearthing gum wrappers and receipts and a half-eaten granola bar. But I finally found it. It was at that point that I asked how much it all cost.

"Just four easy payments of $59.99!" my friend replied. I hung up immediately, narrowly avoiding overdrawing my bank account.

And, hell, dialing a phone and operating the automated menu required a lot more concentration than clicking a few buttons on Amazon, especially if your username, password, address, and credit card information are already saved in there. In fact, it's almost too easy to buy things nowadays, no matter where you are, whether it's from your computer, smartphone, iPad, or whatever other crazy spacetime device they come out with next, and so I'm glad my heavy drinking days seem to (mostly) be behind me. I say mostly because I'm an adult, dammit, and I'll make bad decisions if I want to.

For instance, this past New Year's Eve, I had a few too many cocktails and allowed, NO, ENCOURAGED Joe to buy both Hey, Dude and The Secret World of Alex Mack from Amazon. I don't know how this happened. One moment, Joe was asking, "Did you know Hey, Dude is on DVD?" and the next thing I knew, I was screaming at him to, "BUY IT BUY IT JUST BUY IT ALREADY."

This is unlike me. I'm always the Scrooge in these situations. I can talk myself out of buying almost anything, whether it's something shiny that I want, like a fancy, new camera, or something I actually need, like, I don't know, new bras. To be fair, though, replacing all of your bras is probably more expensive than a lot of fancy cameras. It's painful to spend that much money on something most people are never even going to see, which is why I'm always wincing as I sign the receipt.

But for one brief, shining moment, at the tail end of 2011, I was one of these people. Those lucky, beautiful people, who, the morning after a heavy night of partying, aren't haunted by the memory of drunk texts or one night stands, but piles and piles of brown boxes stacked high on their porches.

I don't understand the question, and I won't respond to it

I have absolutely nothing to do this weekend, and so of course I have written ZERO articles. My plan was to write as many as possible and it looks like as many as possible might turn out to be, oh, one or two. But Heidi is ditching me for California next week so I'll have many, many hours to fill and I'm sure eventually I'll run out of Internet and be forced to do some actual work. Wah wah waaaaaah.

Last night, Heidi and I took (and failed) the Chipotle challenge and then came home and watched Project Runway and decided we're going to vote Tim Gunn for president. Later, Bridget Jones came on and I told Heidi that I could probably recite the entire movie along with it because I've seen it no fewer than 100 million times. I realized that I wasn't lying as we watched the movie and I told Heidi where all the dubbed over curse words should be. Question. Why can they say "sod off," but they changed, "wiping Saddam Hussein's ass" to "washing Saddam Hussein's cars?" WTF, TV?

Whatever, I mean, that pretty much shot all of last night and then this morning, by the time I drank half a pot of coffee, read some Fitzgerald, and took a shower, it was time to go visit my grandmother and THEN I had to go mooch chili off of my parents and THEN I had to go to Kroger.

You know, when I was little, I remember going to the grocery with my mom, sitting in the cart, and asking her to buy me every piece of crap toy we'd come across. You know the ones I'm talking about? Those shitty plastic toys that just spring up in the cereal or the potato chip aisles? I don't know why I wanted them. Inevitably, it'd break or my sister would throw it out the window on the way home (true story), but I WANTED THEM ANYWAY. I hardly ever got them, though, because my mom realized they'd either, um, break or end up on the side of the road somewhere.

Which is why I'm so happy to now be an adult with my very own money, so that when I run by the grocery to pick up cat food, I can buy my own piece of shit toys:

When I'm with you, baby, I go out of my head. And I just can't get enough, I just can't get enough.

Dear Internets, I miss you so much. When I come home from work, the first thing I do is fire up Google Talk even though my eyes are still burning from staring at the computer screen all day long. Sad? Yes, but also dedicated. Right? Is dedicated the word I'm looking for?

I don't think I realized how many hours a day I used to fuck around on the Internets. WORKING hours. Oops. Now I don't. Now I am a good girl. I have just decided. No more drinking, no more boys, no more slacking, no more cursing, no more cheesecake or thin mints or junk food . . . hahahaha oh my god I'm totally kidding. My stomach! It hurts! From the laughter!

I'm really tired. I can't get used to being on a normal schedule. At my old job, the hours were all fucked up . Some days we'd start before 7 AM, other days we'd start late and work late and on SOME DAYS, some very, very bad, dark days, we'd work on Saturday. Did you know that if I was still at my old job I'd have to work this Saturday? On St. Patrick's Day? ST. PATRICK'S DAY. I would have cried. True story*.

OH! And also? It is SO WARM OUTSIDE you guys. So warm. Like 75 or something. Which, I realize in the grand scheme of things is not that warm because I bet it's at least 87 in hell, but compared to the stupid stupid frigid cold of the past, I might as well be in hell. I mean that in a good way. Although, it only took one day of warm weather for me to start complaining about it. Because when I got in my car after work it was all sunny and hot and I started sweating because I have to dress for the -15 degrees it is in our office and I HATE sweating for ALMOST any reason so, yes, I was complaining but no one heard me or anything. Unless the guys standing outside smoking have very, very good hearing. One of them saluted me as I left. I'm not sure what that has to do with anything, but I thought it was worth mentioning.

I forgot to tell you all something really, really exciting. Heidi and I somehow got new silverware from Kohl's for . . . wait for it . . . $5.99! And it's good silverware, too! It was the last set of silverware with the pink handles (yes, we have pink silverware now . . . suck it) and when it rang up as only $5.99, I do believe smoke came out of Heidi's ears and I'm pretty sure my eyes got so big that one popped out of my head and I had to chase it down the aisle. Eyeballs are bouncy. True story**.

*lies (but I would have been upset)
**more lies

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!

So, I'm done with all my Christmas shopping, everything is wrapped, I still have a cold and sound like a man, and yet here I sit, waiting for Heidi to get home so we can head over to Hell -- I mean The Mall. And it was my idea! WTF, I ask you? Double-you. Tee. Eff.