Too long.

You know you have issues when, upon receiving the Macy's Thanksgiving Sale circular in the mail, your first response is not, "Oh, look, shiny toys!" or "My god, it's true, I really do need a 60-inch HD flat panel TV for Christmas," but rather, "Dear lord those men modeling sweaters and ties and flat-front Dockers are hot. H-O-T-T. Hot."

With a thick moustache...

I've never had HBO, mostly because my cable bill is already outrageously high enough that I just can't bring myself to pay for the extra channels, as well. So, while I had heard any number of good things about Deadwood, I'd never actually seen an episode until a friend dumped the DVD set of season one in my lap last spring. I went home and dropped the first disc into my player.

After finishing that first episode, the only reason I didn't sit in front of the TV for the next twelve hours straight was that, knowing the show had been cancelled, I wanted to stretch out my viewing experience as long as I possibly could bear it. Deadwood changed my life--and I don't just mean that in a hyperbolic, gushy sort of way. I mean that, thanks to this show, I actually look at the world in different way. What do you mean, you might very well ask? And my answer is simple:

Facial Hair.

You see, I have sensitive skin. I have come home with a rash after particularly, er, fruitful dates, and this began to color my perception of men's facial hair, i.e. I came down pretty much on the side of Against. And I noticed it creeping into my perspective on language, as well. If a friend referred to a man as "ruggedly handsome," I started hearing "doesn't shave well," and I tended to shudder inwardly.

And then I started watching Deadwood, and I'm not sure if it was just repeated exposure, or some alchemical reaction at work, but I realized I was looking at men differently. Goatees? Great. Sideburns? Bring it on. Good lord, I was even finding moustaches sexy. ("Oh my god. Did you see the handlebar on that guy? Is it hot in here or is it just me?") My last relationship was with a guy who, for the vast portion of the time we were dating, had a beard AND a moustache--and I liked it. I've just started watching season three of the show, and of late my daydreams have been filled with mustachioed men in vests and long coats sweeping me off a dusty thoroughfare and into a dimly-lit bedroom in the nearest broth--

Okay, so maybe the show is having a greater effect on me than even I realized. But, hey. I'm also living proof that television can bring about tangible change in the lives of its viewers.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got a date with Al Swearengen.

Do you miss Mother?

I called my mother this evening to discuss the piece on CBS news about Sandra Day O'Connor's husband getting a new girlfriend. Her response: "So, are you projecting that this is what is going to happen to me and your father?" Let me just mention here that both of my parents are in extremely good health and showing no signs of senility other than the typical amount parents seem to inflict on their children. Well, um, no, I wasn't. But it seems that a new spot has just opened up on the extremely lengthy list of Things I Worry Vaguely About. Yay.

We move on to happier topics, or at least ones that don't involve aging and/or death, and as we wrap up the conversation she says, "Call and let me know how the audition goes tomorrow."

For those who haven't ever done an on-camera audition for a commercial, let me promise you one thing right now: it is less exciting than you can possibly imagine.

"Sure," I tell her. "Yeah, I'll call you up and tell you how I stood in front of a blue screen, acting out the two partial lines I have telling my husband to stop calling up our auto insurance company in the middle of the night, while the very sweet, but seemingly incompetent, intern at my agency stands off-camera, reading the lines of the husband. Then I'll pretend to be a Rachel Ray-style cooking show host whose show gets interrupted by auto insurance experts who want to make a burrito. Or something. I might have three lines in that one."

"Well," she says. "You can't do that first one without lying down with a pillow."

"And yet, I'll be standing up, miming an invisible pillow, and trying to decide exactly how much I can get away with closing my eyes while feigning sleep, before whoever ends up watching that tape starts thinking I don't have any eyes. 'Cuz that's what they're looking for to sell their product."

And that will probably be the high point of the audition.

Don't get me wrong, it's better than the audition I didn't go to last week where there was no dialogue, and my friend had to mime grocery shopping as a "struggling single mom" (so, I guess, the bags are heavier?). This one may even be enjoyable.

But still, I can tell my mom exactly "how the audition went" right now.

Just until I can get my bearings.

I have a terrible track record.

I've never been able to stay interested enough in keeping a journal to keep it up regularly for more than a couple of weeks unless it's required for a class, (which is less "interest" than "self-interest," to be accurate) and even when I am interested, something in my life usually finds a way to distract me--or at least offer a convenient excuse for me to slack off.

Much like my attitude toward the gym.

But my time here in the Midwest is wrapping up, and this year is lot more malleable, time-wise, than the previous black-hole-that-is-a-graduate-education has been, and I'm choosing to be optimistic.

Now if only my life would become vastly more interesting and full of outlandish, madcap situations and scintillating conversation overnight, this would all work out just fine.