Surprise!

Well, this past weekend has been full of surprises. The first one I encountered was at the MAC store in the Beverly Center where I came upon a very lovely face, adorned with all the right makeup, a look I wanted transferred instantly to my eyes, cheeks and lips. This face happened to be a that of man. But, that wasn't so surprising because one comes to expect some of the prettiest faces decorated with MAC makeup are often men. The surprise was that this was a very manly man. Big arms, buf and a bicked head a la Bruce Willis. The shiny head before me made me feel like Harvey from Celebrity Fit Club was standing before me in drag. He sold me a great lipgloss and soon after the shock of the shiny, bald head faded from my memory. 2nd, my future sister-in-law and I spend the weekend trying to pull of a surprise party for my brother. A house full of Italians in the dark, all of whom had consumed copious amounts of alcohol prior to his arrival was enough to scare anyone, but he was definetly stunned and shocked is more accurate. When the lights flashed on and everyone shouted, "SURPRISE!!!" we realized we'd definitely pulled it off. But the surprises didn't end there. OSCAR was full of surprises last night and one that I couldn't be happier about is Phillip Seymour Hoffman winning for his role in Capote. What a great guy. Jon Stewart brought a touch of the Daily Show style to it and we had a good laugh. But the biggest surprise for me was having Crash win "Best Picture." And perhaps one of the best surprises of all, (no, it wasn't the coveted engagement ring I'm so yearning for . . . ) my belated birthday gift from a good friend of mine. Over the weekend, actually at the surprise party, I opened my present, the novel, A History of Love by Nicole Krauss. I was practically jumping up and down because the truth of the matter is, with all the review books I read and books I read to research authors for interviews, I often don't have time to read books for leisure. A word that's been absent from my vocabulary for quite some time.

I'm ready for the workplace to re-institute that Kindergarten rule of "nap-time" because I think we'd all benefit and hey, how fun was it to sleep on your mat after some warm cookies and a glass of milk at 2pm? Let's put this into motion America. Who's with me?