The following blog post was retrieved from a server going out of service. Given the time that has elapsed since these posts were originally published, they are being reprinted here for your reading pleasure.
Originally Posted: Saturday, October 4, 2003 at 7:54pm
Amanda asked for the rest of my day off, so here goes. After breakfast I went home, surprising Dave who was dancing about the living room in just his underwear. I learned he does this most mornings before class, especially if the man on the 12th floor in the building across from us has his binoculars out. I think I was lucky he was still wearing his underwear.
“You’re a total pervert, you know.” He gyrated his hips at me and I told him to go get dressed.
I then told him about my morning outing with Amanda. For some reason, however, I couldn’t tell him about Amanda appearing and disappearing. Nor could I say anything about the curse. Each time I tried, he interrupted me, saying we should have woken him up.
I gave up and asked him what he thought I should do with my day off. He said “Shop.” There is only one type of shopping I like to do. Comic book shopping. I’m not a total geek. I don’t have the figurines, the statues and the academic studies about “graphic novels.” I simply have a large comic book collection (all carefully stored in boxes on a wall of shelves in the dining room). I said maybe I’d go downtown and look for some of my missing issues.
Dave rolled his eyes at the suggestion. For him, shopping starts at Holt Renfrew in Yorkville and ends at the “hot new” designers on King Street West. Periodically he’s threatened to get me on one of those makeover shows but he knows better. I’d refuse. I know, how could I say no to a $5000 new wardrobe plus a week in New York? I’d just be too embarrassed to go on the show. How totally humiliating to have your clothes (and you) ripped apart on national television! No thank you! I’d rather stay an unknown fashion dweeb.
I ended up not going shopping. Instead I indulged in daytime television. I didn’t recognize half the soap opera characters, but that didn’t matter. The story lines are always the same. Totally crazy melodrama.
Amanda didn’t contact me for the rest of the day, so I finished it off my usual way: dinner, dishes and prepping for work. I remembered to cough a few times the last couple of days at the office, just to cover my tracks. Otherwise they were perfectly ordinary.
I wonder what Amanda has planned next?
Comments (2)
Yes, I’d like to know too. I have a feeling she has no idea. Andrew
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Good post, Gail. I have another teeny-tiny request. Could you go into more detail about your day to day life? I need some more background to complete the picture. And what I have planned is none of your business, Andrew. Kisses! Amanada
Alex F. Fayle 
Erin
October 5, 2010 at 6:43 pm
I’m totally with her on What Not to Wear! They are so brutal. Thanks, I can tear my own ego down without it being televised. I know I’m not a fashion plate, so there! (And sometimes Stacy wears the most hideous things, and I wonder how she can bear to be seen in them.)
Love the characterization of her roommate, and I’m beginning to wonder whether this curse includes her sense of adventure, so even the thought of going shopping gets put out of her head — much safer, more boring, to stay home and watch the soaps.
Alex
October 5, 2010 at 7:52 pm
@Erin Thanks! This is one of those moments where I nod sagely and say “why yes, that was my exact intent” but then I’d be lying so I’ll have to give the subtly credit to my muse who knows what to do even when (or should I say especially?) I don’t give her direct orders.