1. When you’re a FBI agent, there are always one or two cases per year that will hit way to close to home and you’ll get too personally involved. Recognize the signs and step back. Don’t be reckless, that’s how your partner gets shot.
2. When you open a closet door, draw the shower curtain back, take garbage out to the bins or retrieve your ball from the bushes, mentally prepare yourself to discover a dead body. Those are the most common dump sites.
3. If you hear a noise while you’re home alone, it is a serial killer. If a door to your house is open or unlocked when you distinctly remember locking it, it is a serial killer. If someone comes to the door and you’re not expecting company, it is a serial killer. Should I continue or do you get where I’m going with this?
4. When there is a famous guest star, they are always guilty. So it stands to reason that should you see a celebrity on the street, run. They are mostly likely about to murder you.
5. Don’t trust anyone. Not even children (almost especially children) and old people.
6. Women serial killers rarely kill other women, so ladies can take some comfort in that. Unless they want to drug you and make you into a human doll. But that’s not a common profile.
7. Do not make eye contact. Ever. It can easily be mistaken for “a connection” with you and when you fervently deny said connection, you will be murdered.
8. Never go to the second location.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must go check that my doors are locked. For the third time.

Regardless of your feelings re: drugs, parenting, etc., there is absolutely no denying her talent. And if you try to deny her talent, I’ll cut you. RIP

Side note: Now, I know people use this expression quite freely and, thus, it has lost some of its meaning over time. Believe me when I tell you, this is one of the funniest things I have seen in my 24 years of existence.

So, on the eve of Christmas Eve, I leave you with this excerpt from Crumpet the Elf:

Twenty-two thousand people came to see Santa today, and not all of them are well-behaved.

Today, I witnessed fist fights and vomiting and magnificent tantrums. The back hallway was jammed with people. There was a line for Santa and a line for the women’s bathroom, and one woman, after asking me a thousand questions already asked, which is the line for the women’s bathroom? And I shouted that I thought it was the line with all the women in it. And she said, I’m going to have you fired. I had two people say that to me today, I’m going to have you fired. Go ahead, be my guest.

I’m wearing a green velvet costume. It doesn’t get any worse than this. Who do these people think they are? I’m going to have you fired, and I want to lean over, and say I’m going to have you killed.

Merry Christmas.

things I love about the holiday season:

1. hot cocoa + peppermint schnapps = toasty
2. profile pics w/ironic photoshopped santa hats
3. friends coming home from the far, far corners of the earth
4. the yule log burning on the flat screen
5. the christmas story on repeat for a full 48 hours
6. exchanging gifts with family, friends, and the boyfriend
7. a new year with new resolutions (which I have no illusions of keeping)

did I forget anything? OH! a special 2011 event (well, technically it will be 2012): adventures at the rose bowl with little sister.

Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.