2009 has been a big year so far for amigos de pseudostoops. I’d like to alert you to some major happenings from some of my friends- people I know well enough that we’ve been seriously drunk together on more than one occasion (Is that a weird measure of closeness? They’re all college friends, which may explain it.)

First, from my amazing friend Brian, with whom I’d fallen out of touch until we reconnected on Facebook this week, an honest to god BOOK with a publishers weekly review and everything HOLY SHIT I am proud of him:

Seriously, Brian is one of the most talented writers whose work I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading. When he said he was going to be a writer, he said it with such simplicity and so little ego that it was impossible not to believe him. My copy of Match Day is in the mail.

Next up:  from the lovely Molly,  (a bona fide food blogging celebrity with whom I studied abroad in Paris), a new book that I was astonished to see to staring up at me from the pages of my People magazine, where it was was THE FEATURED BOOK this week (OH MY GOD that has to be good for sales!):

Molly and I once trekked together to a health foods store in a rather far-flung section of Paris on a mission to find organic vegetables. We also drank mojitos and talked about our shared affection for Camper shoes. It is quite possible she remembers none of these things, but I still like to say I knew her when.

Finally, a film offering from my hysterical friend Danny, who wrote this movie when we were still in college and has been working like hell to get it made ever since. It came out in theaters a few months ago, and was just released on dvd, and seriously you should put that shit in your Netflix queue.  (Or, better yet, buy a copy.  It’s really very good. Seriously, we went to see it in the theater and afterward, John was all “you know, I went because I knew your friend made it and it was important to you, but that was one of the best movies I’ve seen in a long time.” Kristen agrees with me- check out #28)

Oh yeah, and John’s college roommate just got franchise tagged.

It’s kind of amazing to see those big dreams – the kind you talk about at 3 in the morning in the hallway of the dorm, clutching red cups of warm Natty Lite – come to fruition.  It’s enough to give one kind of a complex, actually, if one weren’t so pleased for the great success of great friends.   Hooray, amazing friends!

Isn’t it funny how a series of seemingly harmless decisions can lead to such total disaster?  Allow me to present you with just such a series of decisions:

Decision the First: Since it had been, ahem, three years since I sharpened my knives, I took them to the knife sharpening place this week.

Decision the Second: I rarely get manicures, but on Friday, to celebrate Bird finishing the Bar Exam, we went for mani pedis at a place near my house.

Decision the Third: Saturday evening, I was in the kitchen making dinner when I decided that the baked potatoes were baking too slowly and I needed a snack to tide me over.  I reached for the new box of Banana Nut cheerios (purchased at Target on mega sale, surprisingly delicious).  As I moved to open the cardboard flap on the top, I looked at my nails and paused.

See, several months ago I was at a sewing class, and this rather prim-looking woman who was also taking the class had absolutely impeccable nails.  Someone complimented her on them, and she said “my mother always told me, ‘you have to stop treating your fingernails like tools, or they’ll never look beautiful’”  Kind of weird and impractical advice, I thought, but I thought nothing of it again.

Until Saturday.  Now GOD HELP ME I don’t know why this prim sewing-class woman’s voice ran through my head at that particular moment, but I decided she had a point, so I reached for my (newly sharpened!) paring knife to slice open the top of the box so as not to ruin my manicure.

(We can see where this is going, right?)

Decision the Fourth: Because the knife was newly-sharpened, it seemed reasonable to use the dull side of the knife to slide under the flap, so as not to dull the newly-sharpened edge on the box glue.

Aaaaaand….the knife hit a chunk of glue and slipped, and I was pushing with a fair amount of force, and it slid with that fair amount of force riiiight into my thumb and wrist, where it left a substantial gash ending in a verrrry deep puncture wound.  (Like, I could see where the layers of skin ended and the…stuff….underneath began.  Eeesh.) And at that precise moment, the oven timer started going off.  Awesome!

So there I am, standing in the kitchen, bleeding profusely, while the world’s most annoying timer is beepingbeepingbeeping and I yelled “help!” and my brother-in-law came over and took the potatoes out of the oven (though he did not turn off the mother-loving timer for like 5 minutes, despite my repeated pleas from where I stood hunched over the sink, breathing deeply and running cold water over the wound, willing myself not to pass out.)

We put a pressure dressing on it, and all seemed fine until I was getting ready for bed and I tried to change over to a regular bandaid and the profuse bleeding began anew.  So off we went to Walgreens to purchase those totally bad-ass butterfly wound closure things that boxers use to hold together lacerations.   I’m sporting a honking bandaid on my hand over those, and it’s sore and bruised, and I’m more than a little embarrassed, because OF COURSE a mere two days before this little incident I’d spent fifteen minutes sternly lecturing John and my brother in law about how lethal the knives were now that they’d been sharpened, and how they should be super careful.  Fortunately, they’re too gracious enough to remind me of that smug little speech.