Dear Cleaning-Lady-At-My-Gym,

First of all, good job!

Seriously, the gym is really clean. I have never once, in my thrice-weekly trips to the gym, found a weight covered in mud or sat down in a pile of dirt. That is a credit to you, my friend.

So you'll forgive me if I ask a stupid and please-don't-take-this-the-wrong-way question:

Is it really, truly necessary for you to wash the treadmill WHILE I AM ON IT?

I mean, I understood when you were vacuuming under my feet while I was lifting weights. I didn't even mind when you persisted in scrubbing the sinks while I was washing my hands.

But there are NINE OTHER TREADMILLS WITH NO PEOPLE ON THEM. Must you sit behind me with a bucket and sponge and scrub under my feet while I jog? Besides the obvious slip-and-fall factor, I spend all my time worrying about kicking you in the face.

And I don't want to become Girl-Who-Kicked-The-Cleaning-Lady-In-The-Face at the gym. Trust me, I've seen how they talk about Old-Woman-Who-Fell-Off-The-Treadmill and I will NOT be the next topic of gym gossip.

(Speaking of Old-Woman-Who-Fell-Off-The-Treadmill, wasn't that the best day EVER at the gym? I mean, once we found out she was ok and everything. Of course. But I'm just saying that watching that dazed look on her face was pretty awesome. Right? Ok, Judgemental Cleaning Lady, just so you're aware, I am NOT a mean person just because I sometimes-and-not-very-often enjoy watching a slightly elderly woman fly off a treadmill. She was FINE! It's not like I pushed her.)

Errrr....well yes. I seem to have gotten a bit off topic there. But what I'm saying is, could we make a deal?

If you promise not to wash the treadmill whilst I am merrily jogging, I hereby promise never once to kick you in the face. Also, I shall try to laugh less at falling old ladies.

Deal?

Kisses,

Jill

THINGS:

Today I saw a crossing guard wearing stiletto heels.

This means that somewhere in America right now, there is a stripper wearing crocs.
______________________________

Reading the newspaper is depressing. Here is a fun game that helps:

Every time you see the term "nuclear war" in print, replace it in your head with the term, "toga party."

Voila!
______________________________

The U.S. Treasury has announced that a new $5 bill that will start circulating in 2008 will have splashes of pastel colors and an arc of purple stars.

It seems the design was created on a recent reality show, "Queer Eye for the Five-Dollar Bill."

A thing I have learned about me:

There are very few things in the world that I care about enough to write about them in capital letters.

And I am a firm believer that nothing short of nuclear war or free cookies demands more than one exclamation point.

So the point, and I think there is one, is that if your online dating profile says, “I LOVE WALKS ON THE BEACH!!!!”, I can say definitively that I would rather iron my face then go on a date with you.

There.

COMEDY SHOW SNIPPETS:

ME: Hey guys, where are you from?

COLLEGE STUDENTS: University of Miami in Ohio.

ME: Ohio?

GOCS: Yeah. They call it "The Harvard of Ohio."

ME: Oh. I guess Harvard calls itself "The Harvard of Everywhere Else."

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE CEO OF STARBURST FRUIT CHEWS:

Dear Sir or Ma'am,

I don't generally write letters (open or otherwise) to CEOs of companies. I am quite a busy girl. Just ask my blog readers who, if they were reading this, would say, "Hey Jill, how do you have TIME to write LETTERS to freakin' CEOs when you're only writing blog entries like once a WEEK and they're not even very GOOD? Huh? We remember when you used to be FUNNY!"

They have a good point.

But I feel that this is a unique case where I could really offer your company some useful-and-marketable-and-money-saving advice.

Stop making the yellow ones.

Seriously. Everyone hates them.

Yellow Starburst are the Dallas Cowboys of candy.

See, I tutor children for a living. And what better way to lure children into my office than free candy, right? "Expand their minds whilst ruining their teeth," that's our motto. And since Starburst are individually wrapped and yummy, they are our candy of choice.

So, every single day I start out with a lovely bowl of multi-colored Starburst sitting expectantly on my desk waiting for the day ahead: dreaming of the possibilities that the day holds and the children that will lovingly take them home and eat them with reckless abandon.

And every night I am left with a bowl of yellow Starburst.

Just to be clear, they're FREE. People will eat cardboard if it's free and they STILL won't eat the yellow Starburst.

For the love of God, just stop making them. Throw out the yellow food coloring and the lemony-fresh Pledge-scented flavoring. Give the yellow-Starburst-factory workers a few weeks off (they need it) and then find jobs for them in the pink-Starburst-factory.

Because pink Starburst, my friend, are delicious.

"Do your homework or no pink Starburst for you," is a bargaining chip used many a time in my office. Pink Starburst are.....

Hey wait. I just thought of something.

What if the existence of yellow Starburst is just a PLOY to make the pink Starburst taste better by comparison?

I'm convinced that martinis were invented on just that principle. I think the green olive guys were like, "Hey, green olives taste sort of yucky. What're we going to do to push these olives to consumers? I know! We shall invent a drink that tastes even WORSE than the olives. Something with gin, I think. THEN, the gin will taste so BAD that by the time people get to the olive it will taste DELECTABLE by comparison. Genius!"

Errrr....so if that's your plan....well then ignore everything I just said. Splendid thinking, chums.

Good day.

Jill Twiss

It's sort of hard to explain, really.

See, there was this company called Signature Days that was going to take me whitewater rafting. In a bouncy raft. With helmets

(I saw the pictures. There are helmets.)

Why would they do this? Well, they are a company that makes dreams come true and my dream was to go whitewater rafting.

(Ok, that's not exactly true. MY dream was to have fairies come down and sprinkle glitter and do my dishes and make me a cake. But Signature Days doesn't have a package like that, so I settled for whitewater rafting.)

They were going to take me whitewater rafting and then I was going to write about it on my blog. That was the deal. Free advertising for them, and free near-death experiences for me. And helmets.

But then I had to go and get SARS. Or malaria. Or whatever I had that made me lose my voice and be sick sick sick for three straight weeks. And I could not go whitewater rafting.

So they held up their end of the bargain. But I failed at the showing up part. So I thought that, to be fair, I should write a blog about them anyway. Because they were awfully nice. And whitewater rafting with them looked awfully fun.

And I do like helmets.