I’m not much of a cook. I don’t mind making dinner, and I can handle simple recipes with little to no problem. If I’ve got enough time (which I rarely do), I’ll venture out and try something more involved and challenging. But, as a general rule, I don’t spend much time in the kitchen. We looked at a house this weekend, and I got excited because it has a smaller kitchen than the one we currently have. (Less to clean!) That probably puts me in the minority.

Let’s just say it’s a rare occasion that anyone is BLOWN AWAY by something I create in the kitchen.

This weekend I made something called Pesto Pollo Penne. It’s seriously the easiest recipe in the world: shredded chicken, penne pasta, pesto, cream, parmesan cheese. Combine and eat. Quck and easy. No big deal.

Y’all, it was AWESOME. Amazingly good. It was great hot the night I made it, and it was even better cold the next day for lunch. I got five meals out of it, and today I was sad that I couldn’t eat it for lunch. Again. for the fourth day in a row.

Can man live on pasta alone? I think maybe so.

My name is Brandi, and I’m a sore loser.

Somehow it’s gotten worse as I’ve gotten older. Aren’t we supposed to mature with age? Cuz that ain’t happening.

Last night was the final game of the regular season in our volleyball league. We went into the game 5-1, with our only loss coming the first night to the best team in the league. I could take that… they’re amazing, and we had never played together as a team before. It wasn’t fun, but it made sense. The team we played last night is one we’re pretty evenly matched with, and I was excited for the competition.

We arrived at the gym to find that two of our five players were out. We have two guys and three girls, and our two guys (Aaron being one of them) are really good - big hits and blocks. So with one guy out, we were a much shorter team, not to mention being short a setter. We started warming up, talking strategy and figuring out how to best cover the court with three players. The other team arrives, six strong. I have to admit, I was a little psyched out.

We played well in the first game. We got down a few points at the beginning, but rallied in the middle and came within two. They pulled it out in the end, though, getting us with a deep lob pass when we’d all crept too close to the net. At the end of the first game, I was EXHAUSTED. Usually, with three girls, we sub out every couple of rotations. And, with four players on the court, there’s a lot less ground to cover. I felt like I’d been running a marathon, and we were only halfway done. Things did not look good.

We lost steam in the second game… they got a few points in a row, and we were done. We had no momentum. I really think we could have held our own, but we just didn’t have it together. We got down and we got frustrated, and that was that. They beat us by ten points. TEN. So embarrassing.

And y’all, I was MAD. I do not like to lose in general (just ask Aaron about my Phase 10 behavior), but when it’s something I could have helped it is so much worse. I got frustrated with myself, frustrated with my team, frustrated with the people who couldn’t make it to the game. And, of course, frustration just leads to more mistakes. I’d hit the ball out of bounds, be irritated that I did that, and then hit it into the net the next time around. Tired + frustrated + irritable = not pretty.

We hung around after the game and talked to people, including a couple on the other team that goes to our new church. That was really cathartic… I needed to relax and remember that the reason we play in the league is to have a good time, to meet people, and to be active in a sport we love. Not to win. (Or, at least, mostly not to win.) We ended up having a really good time hanging out with people we didn’t really know. I’ve been feeling the need for some new friends lately, so meeting and hanging out with people we’ll be going to church with was a good start.

Now, the tournament starts next week. According to the bracket, it looks like we’ll play them again in the second round, hopefully with our full team. And while I’ll be focused solely on fun and fellowship, of course, I can’t say I won’t be motivated by last night. Revenge is sweet, my friends. You can’t lose to the same team TWICE… that is too much for my sore loser self to handle.

First, the dream.

Then, yesterday, I caught the end of some celebrity cooking show. The host? That’s right.

And then, this morning, a commercial for a cruise or vacation or something came on. A freakishly tan man in a Hawaiian shirt holding a fruity, fruity drink stood on the deck of a boat inviting me to come along to the fun headquarters that are that ship. Who was this freakishly tan man, you ask?

Alan Thicke. Why? Why is he everywhere? What does he want from me?

I am very afraid.

Last night I finished Pledged: The Secret Lives of Sororities by Alexandra Robbins. Aaron gave me a hard time for reading it, and I have to say that the robotic blond girls on the cover didn’t help my case. But it was a mostly entertaining read, although I could have done with out the preachy ending.

I didn’t give the book much thought - I was never in a sorority, but I was curious as to the inner workings of groups like that. But then the other night a commercial came on for a new movie came on. I wasn’t paying much attention until I heard the words, “From the makers of Bring It On, comes…” Bring It On! I love that movie! My interest was peaked. A movie about gymnasts? I told Aaron I would definitely be seeing that. (He told me that was something I would be doing ALONE.) Then he asked me why I was so interested.

And… I don’t know, really. I thought about rushing when I was at North Texas, but I’m glad I didn’t. I’m not a sorority kind of girl, and my life would be so much different now if I’d chosen that route. I was never a cheerleader (although I did try out in 7th grade. It was not pretty.), and I never had a chance at gymnastics. The balance beam and I did not get along.

So why the interest in ‘the other side’? Why the fascination with those girls, the ones with the perfect hair and the perfect boyfriends and the expensive clothes? Do we want to be them? Maybe. Maybe we just want a glimpse at what the ‘good life’ entails. An idea of how it might be. A picture of a different world. There’s something exciting about a life of privilege. Or, at least, reading about one.

I don’t think I want to be those girls. I don’t think I could keep up with the lifestyle, and I’m certainly not fabulous enough. But I think there’s a strange fascination with the upper crust… a life so unfathomable that we can’t help but be curious. Something about the illusion of having it all is intriguing. We want what we can’t have, or in this case, to be who we can’t be. In my head I know I should be all about treasures in heaven and blah blah blah. But sometimes I think I would like to drop $700 on a Marc Jacobs bag without having to even think twice about it.

Part of the allure, I think, is the sense of belonging. The ability to walk into a room and own it, to feel confidence instead of fear and insecurity. To be the one people are looking at instead of the one doing the watching. To be more concerned with what you think of people than what they will think of you. Those are the pieces of the lifestyle I would like to have.

I don’t really want that life, with the dressy and the fancy and the money. I don’t. But I do want to read about and live vicariously, just every now and then.

You know those old people who still have rotary phones and black and white televisions in big wooden frames, who, when you try to get them to talk to someone on a cell phone, look at it like it might eat their head and holler into it because there is no way the person on the other end can hear them through that tiny little thing?

I think I am on my way to being one of those people. The 2060 version.

Aaron went to some kind of technology conference yesterday and came home buzzing about all the new things they saw. Phones that open one way to be a phone and a different way to be a PDA. Boxes that connect your TiVo with your XM radio with your phone with your sprinkler system so you can access them from anywhere. Phones smaller than Zoolander’s. Microchips you just embed into your wrist that keep lists of your favorite songs, movies and tv shows and feed that information to advertisers so that billboards and magazine ads change as you walk past them. (OK, maybe not that last one… yet.)

And I guess that stuff sounds cool. I just don’t need it. We’re already a pretty low-tech household as it is: we don’t have cable, internet (or a computer, really), camera phones, TiVo, wireless, big- or flat-screen tvs or anything interesting. We have old cellphones. We have rabbit ears. We use VHS tapes to watch grainy Gilmore Girls episodes. And I’m okay with that, even though I know Aaron isn’t. He’s a gadget guy. And someday, hopefully, we’ll be able to upgrade our house a bit.

But if we don’t, I’m alright. And because of that, I’m afraid that I’ll slowly morph from She Who Does Not Need Technology to She Who Shuns All Things New And Hobbles Around Complaining About Kids These Days And Big Brother While Squinting And Adjusting The Foil On Her TV Antennas.

And no one wants to be That Person.

I have rarely questioned my decision to marry Aaron. But when the man you chose to spend the rest of your life with starts a conversation with the words, “You wanna know what the best line in Ernest Saves Christmas is?”… you kind of have to wonder.

I do not understand Rascal Flatts.

Why? Why do people like them? WHAT IS HAPPENING?

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not a big fan of country music in general. I like the stuff my parents listened to when I was growing up, and I LOVE the Dixie Chicks, but my interest ends there. I don’t find tight jeans and hairy chests and cowboy hats attractive. Cowboy, please do NOT take me away.

While country is not my first choice of music, I do see the appeal sometimes. Just because it’s not something I like doesn’t mean it’s something NO ONE should like. It’s a particular kind of music for a particular kind of consumer, and I have no problem with that. I even understand why people are Toby Keith fans, and I really hate Toby Keith. I’m not ragging on the genre as a whole.

But y’all, I do not get Rascal Flatts. They are all over the place this week – their new album is selling like crazy. This is a problem for several reasons. It’s bad enough that there will soon be banners all over town, in front of every office that has any kind of connection to the band. I’m not looking forward to having to hear strains of their new single floating up to my office from the lobby television. But the real problem is this: over 800,000 people have bought that album in its first week. EIGHT HUNDRED THOUSAND. Who are these people? What is wrong with them? What do they hear in that nasaly voice that makes them want to keep listening?

I could even see forgiving that nasal voice if the band was hot. But they aren’t. At all. Just say no to mesh tank tops. Let me refer you to the recap of the American Idol episode they appeared on last year. Jacob nailed it:

“Carrie sings that song I like, “Bless The Broken Road,” with Rascal Flatts. I do not know this Rascal Flatts person, but he cannot sing at all, and also looks like a girls’ basketball coach with a hair gel problem. They sound like hell.”

So true, Jacob. So true.

Hey party people! Welcome to the new blog. Many thanks to Geof for hooking me up. I’m still learning my way around, but all the old posts should have made it over here by now, so things are looking good. Yay!