Katie Doyle, Girl About Town

Thursday, Dec. 29, 2005 - 8:18 p.m.

You know, I could resolve for 2006 to make this diary entirely more witty, well-written, and cheerful.

That sounds like way too much work.

Instead, I resolve to lose 30 pounds and thin my ass back down to somewhere between its formerly svelte 118 or an acceptable, though less satisfying, 125. I miss swimsuits, cute shirts, size 5 jeans, and little black dresses.

I could resolve too, to get back in school and become my own woman again.

That might happen. It's a long and winding road, though, so I will need lots of motivation, some chocolate, and more than a few feel-good tunes like "Walking on Sunshine" and "Head Over Heels." Maybe some "You Might Think" and "Shake It Up." What can I say? I am a child of the 80s.

Speaking of the 80s, I found Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic 2 for X-Box over the holidays. As Sonic and Sonic 2 are my favorite home videogames EVER, I snatched them up and to hell with the consequences. I then went home and tried to play Sonic. Much to my everlasting disgust, Sonic skillz are not at all like riding a bicycle. I suck. Big time. Of course, the joy in that is that I am no longer stuck perpetually on Level 3 of Zone 6 in Sonic 2, doomed to roam the fiery halls of hell forever, burning both Sonic and the hapless Tails to a crisp. The disappointing flip side, however, is that I forgot where all the cool hidden stuff is.

Alas.

And yes, I know Sonic is actually a 90s convention and not an 80s one. But, the discovery of the Sonic Super Plus pack was accompanied by an 80s find, so we will leave it at that for the moment.

How am I doing with the cheery?

What the hell; I have 2 days left in 2005. I can make with the cheery for that long.

Of course, there are 2 days left in 2005. Things could still go horribly awry. One musn't make assumptions.

Still haven't called my dad.

(See? I have already blown the cheery; doh!)

I had something fun to say, but it seems my digression into depressing has sapped it from me. What the hell was it?

I might even redesign Katiedoyle here in 2006.

(That was not the fun thing. I just thought of it and thought I'd say it. Type it. Whatever.)

I am writing this at work when I should be typing what other people have to say. I feel this is not so much a priority as it should be. Probably because my work week this week (in the dark of television production that almost always exists between December 23 and January 6 or so) was supposed to be exactly 2 days long. That two days has since expanded to encompass the entire week, because instead of shooting 5 interviews on 5 or 6, maybe 7 30 to 60 minute-long tapes, they shot fricking 13. Hours. Do you know how much it blows to have to come into an office and work when everyone else is getting the week off to live it up and have fun? They will come back to the office all supercharged for having had at least 11 days off, and I will still be here, slogging away at this fucking keyboard, typing out in excruciating verbatim the words of people with only slightly evolved language skills, having had a whopping 4 days off from the experience. Four days is not enough time to allow recovery of a certain amount of happy equilibrium. Hence, while everyone else will be cheerful and reasonably re-adjusted, I will still be grumpy and irritated, only now I have had a solid week to get used to quiet, so their loud gab-fests and laughter will be just that more annoying. So yeah, I'm messing around a lot at work today. I don't see that as such a bad thing, though the sense of entitlement accompanying the goofing off is slightly disturbing.

My coworker over the holiday week (the only other person who has also had to be here the entire dark week) has provided me a mantra with which to cope when people piss me off. When people cut her off in traffic or are rude, she says to herself, "I want a million dollars." I have decided that a million dollars - while nice - is nowhere near enough money to have a pacifying effect on me, so I decided on 10 million.

That lasted about an hour.

I rapidly escalated to 100 million, and then 300, because let's face it: what earthly good can you do with 100 million? And then by that logic, I settled on $500 million, because if I tell the universe I want $500 million, then what will probably happen is that that $500 million will come in the form of a lottery win, which the government will take roughly 40% of, leaving me with - wait for it - three hundred million dollars.

Which is really all I need.

So now when people piss me off - cut me off in traffic, honk at me for no reason, tailgate my ass on the 101, force me off the road on the narrow, twisting street up to my house, etc. - I very loudly (though not rudely, because what would be the point of that, and why risk the bad vibes?) say to the Fates, God, the Universe, anyone who's listening, that I want 500 million dollars.

This has the affect of a) venting some of my irritation, b) making me feel that there is a way out of my current predicament, no matter how remote or slight the chances of it happening, and c) causing me to think instead of all the fun ways to spend half a billion dollars. If I were to win $500 million, I would buy my friends and family members homes. In secret, of course. I would pay off existing mortgages without ever telling them it was me who did it. (I wouldn't tell them I won the lottery, either.) I would deposit money into bank accounts, again, without ever telling them it was me. I would go to a factory in India and give every woman working there her full wages every year for the rest of her life. (10 years for 100 women would cost me roughly $100K, so that's not as generous as it sounds) I would go to Lesotho and build the AIDS orphans there a hospital, dorm, and school, so that they could live in safety and get an education. I would pay for as many as was feasible to go to college and follow their dreams. I would pay for college anywhere they wanted for my nephew and Em's daughter. I would buy new cars for every single one of my friends who needed one. Em and her hubby would get two: a Mercedez or Volvo (something heavy and safe) and a Honda hybrid. I would also buy them a house anywhere in this country they wanted to live AND one in Ireland, where they also wish they could live. I would move to France and have houses in Paris and in the Loire Valley. Maybe one in the south of France, in the Pyrenees. And when I say houses, I mean big honkin' chateaus. Historical places that would host kickass parties. Then when I wanted to have a party, I would fly everyone over from the US who wanted to come. I would give CuppaJoe money to do good stuff with and invest in his cool clean-the-air scheme which I keep meaning to write about here. I would go back to school, and also, just for the hell of it, I would go learn French at the Sorbonne.

Just imagining how much fun it would be to do good or nice things for people and see the looks on their faces is enough to make me wish like hell I actually did have $500 million. The things you could do with that much money, the difference you could make in the world, is nuts. Me? I don't need $500 million to be happy. I could pretty easily get by for the rest of my life on one. But $500 million? That's just stupid fun and cool. So yeah, when life sucks, I put that out there. I want five hundred million dollars.

Because you never freaking know.

Happy New Year, peeps.

Peace out,
Katie

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Yesterday's News - Next Stop

In which Katie shares sad news - Wednesday, Apr. 01, 2015
In which Katie returns after a very long absence - Monday, Jun. 25, 2012
In which Katie pokes her head in and brushes some of the cobwebs away - Thursday, May. 06, 2010
In which Katie asks you to write your congressman again. - Monday, Jun. 02, 2008
In which Katie asks you to please click the link and send the message to protect the rights of artists - Wednesday, May. 21, 2008