Today I was thinking about how, in the first entry I wrote in this blog, I promised to be funny.

Looking back, that was a pretty hefty promise. People, after all, have very varied senses of humor. I, for example, just amused myself by using the term “very varied.” But some of you probably wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t pointed it out. And I know there are plenty of other instances of this.

When I flew to Florida last week, the snack on the plane was Save the Whales crackers. They were like cheese golfish crackers, but shaped like whales. The package said, “Save the whales. Or eat them now. Your choice.” Wow. Funniest airplane snack ever.

When I was in Sweden, when I took the bus to campus, we passed a pizzeria that was called “Dal Baffo” and had a picture of a buffalo on the window. Haha, thinking about it still makes me laugh. Funniest Swedish pizzeria ever.

Every day on the el, I can look out the window and see a hotel called “Hotel Wacker.” Come on. Perhaps only for those that have a slightly dirty mind, but still, funniest name for a hotel ever.

One night, I was watching VH1 with a friend, and he looked at me completely straight-faced and said, “Hey, did you know that in music videos, they record the singing and then they just lip sync?” He was honestly shocked by this. Funniest naive statement ever.

If you find all those things funny, congratulations. You will probably enjoy my blog.

But what really is it that makes something funny?

Sometimes it is family background. For instance, I got a message from a cousin of mine this morning that said, “You are a Rich. You are not supposed to be on time. Ever.” This tickled me, and I’ve been smiling about it ever since. You may think it’s cute. But only my parents and my sister and perhaps another cousin or two that read this blog will really find it as funny as me.

Sometimes it is a state of exhaustion. After I had just finished a whole day of hiking in Sedona, a friend and I checked into a hotel and found that we had a room with a handicapped bathroom. The shower was huge, there was no tub, and there was a phone in the bathroom. And for some reason, these perfectly understandable and expected details struck me as hysterically funny. I did not stop laughing for a full fifteen minutes. The friend I was with laughed too, but mostly at me, not at the bathroom. It was only my state of exhaustion that made it funny.

Of course, I also can’t leave out that sometimes it is all about your level of drunkenness. I came home from a night out at the bar once to find my roommate’s yoga ball in the middle of the living room. This, for some reason, was the funniest thing I had ever seen. Funny enough that I felt the need to pick up the ball (which is about three feet across), carry it to the doorway, and roll it down the porch stairs to my other roommate. I was laughing so hard I could no longer stand up.

I will also admit that most of the time, humor is all about timing and delivery. Every episode of Friends that I watch makes me laugh. However, ask me to tell you what happened in an episode, and I guarantee that my delivery will suck every bit of humor out of it. I’m a much better writer than I am speaker.

So, I guess humor is complicated. But I’m going to continue to attempt to write about the things I find funny. I hope occasionally, you think it’s funny too.

To quote my senior play, “And if I laugh at any mortal thing, tis that I may not weep.”

So perhaps if making you laugh is too lofty of a goal, I’ll settle for not making you cry.

But no promises.

I recently received an email from the helpdesk at my alma mater, informing me that my UserID for the online services provided by the university would expire in one month. I read through the email, remarkably unconcerned that I would no longer be able to register for classes, search for internships, or pay tuition bills. I did, after all, graduate almost a year ago.

But as I read further, I realized this also meant I would no longer have access to my university email address. The message advised me to go into the system and forward any emails I wanted to save to an alternate address.

I used my university address exclusively for most of my college career. Gradually this year, I have phased it out. However, as I am cursed with a lethal combination of a ridiculous level of sentimentality and my grandfather’s packrat gene, I knew I must have over a thousand messages saved on the webmail system.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve spent hour upon hour going through these messages one by one. It was like paging through a book that chronicled the past five years of my life.

You can probably imagine that this was a bittersweet experience for me. While plenty of pleasant memories came back to me, the email account was also a very accurate record of the unpleasant experiences during my college years.

What I quickly realized, though, was that I got to decide what stayed and what went. A sense of power came over me as I forwarded everything I wanted to remember and deleted everything I’d gladly re-forget.

A message from a high school friend, telling me about the beginning of drumline season and how difficult it was for her to have new instructors and watch the morale decline. Haven’t heard from her in a long time, but I miss when we were that close. Forward.

A message from a professor, confirming a time to meet and talk about a paper grade I wasn’t happy with. I remember that meeting. He didn’t raise my grade. Still got an A in the class. I win. Delete.

Series of mass emails I wrote while in Sweden, summarizing each month of my trip in pretty good detail. Forward.

A scolding from another exchange student while I was in Sweden, telling me how I made her out to be a bad person and was dishonest in my journal. Delete.

A message from a college friend, sent shortly after I returned from my study abroad program and was feeling lonely, that simply said, “Smiles are pretty. I hope you are smiling.” Awww. Forward to myself, and also to him just to say thanks almost two years later.

A whole file of energy and phone bills from my apartment last year. Ugh. Delete.

An invitation from a cute guy, asking me out for coffee at the beginning of my senior year. Hmm. Tricky. Went out with him several times and liked him, but then it just faded out. Later I found out he now has a baby with another girl. Eh, forward. He still bought the coffee.

Email from one of my students when I was a TA, telling me he couldn’t come to class, ever, because he had to work, and that I should do everything I could to help him. Ha. I’m relatively sure I failed the sucker. Delete.

Panicked message from one of the pastoral team members at the church I attended in my college town, asking me for the hundredth time to go to the church and move the food for our food drive to the “storage location” (i.e., my apartment). Delete.

Very complimentary message from said pastoral team member, thanking me for moving the food and commending me for “taking the bull by the horns.” Yay. Forward.

Emailed version of an evaluation of the retreat I co-directed, with nothing at all negative on it. Forward.

Blank message after blank message after blank message with only data and syntax files attached from various stages of my honors thesis. Delete, delete, delete, delete, delete.

Message from my thesis advisor, telling me the first draft of my paper was disastrous and several sections needed to be rewritten. DELETE.

Final message from my thesis advisor, congratulating me on my defense and assuring me she would take care of all loose ends. Forward.

I’m nearing the end of the emails now, and I must that while I enjoyed the sense of power for a while, I’ve also started feeling a bit foolish. I can’t really just delete an email and pretend that it never existed, or that the events it described never happened. Scrolling through four or five of the most influential years of my life has made me realize how much I have changed since I was the tender age of 18, and how every incident, large or small, remembered or forgotten, deleted or forwarded, has already left its mark.

Still, I think it was important for me to realize that the choice or whether to forward or delete was mine. All the events chronicled in those emails are part of my past whether I like it or not. They do not, however, have to be a part of my future.

The expiration of my university net ID feels like the official closing of my college years. I forwarded what I wanted to take with me, and deleted what I wanted to leave behind.

Mildly philosophical, isn’t it? And perhaps hopelessly idealistic?

Maybe. But enough to inspire this sentimental packrat to try to make more moments into messages I would forward.

I am certain many attempts to do so will be failures, but that’s okay.

My current email account, after all, has a “delete forever” button.

Alright, boys and girls, today's topic is: blending.

Over dinner last night, my roommates and I were talking about touring college campuses as high school seniors, thinking we were big and bad and blending in. We all agreed that later on, when we were actually college students, we could always pick out the college seniors on tours. If the high school varsity jacket didn't give them away, the desperate attempt to look like they knew where they are going did.

So, what made us so sure at the time that we were blending in, and what really does make people appear to belong where they are?

(I would like to briefly stop and point out that it has always annoyed me that the English language does not have a good gender-neutral subject pronoun. Thank you. Carry on.)

I've been living in the city for over ten months now, and just like when I was a high school senior, I've been trying desperately to blend in ever since. This morning, I became convinced that I have succeeded.

I have approximately an eight-block walk from where I get off the el to my work building. During that walk this morning, I was stopped three times and asked where something was. Maybe I finally look like a city girl.

Or, maybe the tiny butterfly clips I put in my hair this morning made me look young and naive enough that people believed the city has not jaded me enough yet to make me unfriendly.

Either way, I was quite proud to have been asked for directions three times today. I was even prouder to have known where all three places of interest were. I am comforted to know that I blend.

But why is it that I wanted so badly to blend? Here's where you think I am going to get all philosophical, but really, I'm about to be a bit of a snot.

I want to blend and I want to be normal simply because I don't want to end up an annoying old lady that can't deal life's roadblocks. Let me give you a perfect example of what I mean.

There is an older woman that sits in the cubicle next to me at work. Simply for reference, we're going to call her.... Beatrice.

Beatrice apparently lost her wallet last night. How do I know this? Because I have overheard approximately ninety phone calls that she has made today.

Let me insert a comment here that assures the reading audience that I have lost my wallet before, and I completely understand that there is nothing worse than the sinking feeling I got in my stomach when I realized it was gone. I sympathize. I really do.

However, only the rest of my cubicle neighbors can truly understand how this illustrated Beatrice's inability to blend.

First she called to cancel her credit cards and debit cards. Completely understandable.

Then she called the DMV to see if they could tell her a "good time to go" to get a new driver's licence. People, is there EVER a good time to go to the DMV? And even if there is, can a person that works full time go during that time? Doubtful. Still, this phone call is only mildly annoying. I suppose it was worth a shot.

However, the next eight or so phone calls were ridiculous. Several were calls to her husband to loudly berate him for not taking care of anything and making her do it all. But the last couple pushed me over the edge.

She actually called to cancel.... HER JEWEL CARD.

For those of you not in the know, a Jewel Card is a little barcode you carry on your keychain. The cashiers scan it at the checkout of the grocery store, and you get to pay $1.29 for a loaf of bread instead of $1.49.

And she called to cancel it.

She kept the person at the Jewel on the phone for a good five minutes, just to make sure that the card could not be used for identity theft.

I know, I know, she'll be laughing someday when I don't cancel some random card and someone steals my identity.

But "Beatrice" has never, and will never, blend in. There's an imaginary line around her that no one in my office likes to cross.

So by all means, be your own person and don't feel you have to be just like everyone else. Have your own identity. Clearly my last post shows that there's at least one aspect of my personality that makes me weird.

But if you see me on the street someday, stop me and ask me for directions. It'll help to convince me that I am well-adjusted enough to blend in to my surroundings.

Because friends don't let friends become Beatrice.

Hello, my name is Katie, and I am obsessed with musicals.

I've always known I had an atypicial appreciation for live theater, and for musicals in particular. After all, when I saw my first musical (a middle-school production of The Music Man) at age 12, I made my mother buy me the cd and I sat next to the stereo in our living room with headphones on for weeks, playing each song over and over so I could write down all the words and memorize them. It was the beginning of an era. As of today, I have seen 41 musicals, not counting the ones I have seen more than once.

But I didn't really realize the depths of the giant chasm between myself and most of the rest of the world until this weekend. RENT is currently playing in Chicago. Many of you may be surprised to know that each performance of RENT, no matter where it takes place, carries with it an opportunity for "rush tickets." The first and second row is reserved and the tickets are sold for $20-$25. The show's creator wanted people who could not otherwise afford to see the show to have an opportunity to experience it.

Here's the catch: The tickets are not released until two hours before each performance. Therefore, obtaining a rush ticket usually involves a substantial amount of waiting in line.

Somehow, I managed to talk a couple of my coworkers into rushing RENT with me on Saturday. We arrived at the theater at noon. They were just opening the box office for the matinee rush tickets, and we could have walked right in and gotten the last of the them.

But we didn't. Why? Because I wanted to wait in line.

"What did she just say?" you are thinking to yourself.

I wanted to wait in line.

The idea of walking right in to get rush tickets bothered me. Why? Because for me, rushing is not just about getting a cheap ticket. It's about sitting outside a theater on some cold concrete for six hours, watching the rest of the world walk by, and showing everyone else that you think it's going to be more than worth it. It's my way of getting up on a soap box and telling the world that the art of musical theater is underappreciated.

Lest you think that I am all alone in this, let me tell you about the people in line in front of me. Six college students from the state of Iowa were at the front of the line, complete with pillows, sleeping bags, and blankets. They had been there since 1 am and would have been first in line for matinee tickets. But no. They waited for the evening show.

I spent the next six hours talking with them, and it was the most fun I have had in perhaps my whole life. They helped me with crossword puzzles, made fun of me for spinning in circles to keep warm, and asked me about living in the big city.

And, of course, as 6pm grew closer, we collectively belted out the lyrics to many songs in the show. We, of course, all knew all the words by heart. In fact, when we ran out of RENT songs, we briefly switched to singing songs from Wicked (which we also knew by heart). My friend Meg commented that I "needed some friends like these" when I was in college.

The box office finally opened and we all got our first row tickets. We went to see the show and cheered and sang and mooed from the heart. (Yes, mooed. One of the characters asks the audience to "moo with me" in the show. Want to know why? Go see RENT.) After the show was over, one of the Iowans stood up, walked over to me, and hugged me, just because he was so overcome by the awesomeness of the show.

So, turns out my people live in Iowa. Who knew.

I think my coworkers, had they made the choice, would have opted for the matinee. And I don't blame them. The wind was bitter cold at times, and I can totally understand that they did not have the same connection with the people from Iowa as I did. But props go out to Sarah and Becky for humoring me and sticking it out.

Because yes, my name is Katie, and I'm obsesssed with musicals. And I'm damn proud.

I confess. I gave in.

Everyone told me, "Start a blog, Katie! Everyone's doing it!"

I tried to stave them off with the traditional, "If everyone was jumping off a cliff, would you do it too?" But eventually I gave in. Mostly because I was bored. But also because sometimes, I just have to rant.

Life's funny sometimes, after all. I'll try to maintain regular posting with the funny parts of my life. As I work in corporate America, take public transportation everywhere I go, and live with roommates that I moved in with blindly, something semi-interesting tends to happen to me every day.

And of course, my sparkling commentary will boost it from semi-interesting to interesting.

So, what to talk about today? Hmm... we're going to go with the first thing that came to my mind that made me giggle.

At work, we are asked to put a sticky note on our cubicle name tags when we are gone so that people who come by looking for us know not to wait. This policy makes a certain amount of sense to me, but some people use the note to reveal more information than their coworkers really want to know.

For instance, a woman had a sticky note on her cube that said something like this: "Out sick, 4/3-4/5. Asthma."

Ok. The point of the sticky note is to let people know that you are gone, not to tell them why! What's next? "Out sick, 4/6. Pelvic exam." "Personal day, 7/6. My kid got suspended from school for starting a fire." "Vacation, 8/9-8/13. Going to Canada mostly for the cheap booze."

And honestly, most of the sticky notes would read like this: "Out sick, 9/18. Faking."