I’m notoriously difficult to shop for. Not that I don’t give people ideas when gift-giving times roll around. But the things I want aren’t usually the sort of thing you want to run out and get professionally wrapped.

“Hm, Christmas already, you say? Well, I lost my tweezers a few months ago, so I could use another pair. Um, I eat a lot of cereal. I’m running low on paper towels?”

I’m one of the most easily delighted human beings on the planet, and I try to be concretely aware of just exactly why I love the people I love, every day. So when it comes to tangible tokens of that love, I’m a “buy me what I need” kind of girl. My favorite presents ever? A tie between a luggage set my parents gave me when I turned eighteen (and still use to this day) and the pairs of Rainbow flipflops that my nearest and dearest seem to keep buying me as my old ones start to embarrass them in public.

HOWEVER! My twenty-fifth birthday is coming up on July 24, and this year I’ve thought of a sheer-decadence present that would please me more than anything I’ve wanted in my entire life. (Except my Creepy Crawlers set when I was eight. Thanks, mom and dad!)

And the best part: it’s completely free. No shipping costs or anything. Genius, right?

This birthday, I want everyone I love (or like or admire or have ever gotten ice cream with) to record a message from their Five-Years-From-Now Selves to Past Kat, telling me something that’s going on in the year 2016. I’ll listen to them once, on my birthday, then burn them all onto one audio track that I’ll send to a friend for safekeeping, to time capsule until my 30th birthday, when I’ll play them again for maximum hilarity slash poignance.

Doesn’t that sound fun?

“Dear Past Kat, today I hoverboarded to the galactic-store to buy rocket fuel and organic peanut butter. Everything’s fair trade now! It’s crazy! Come join us!”

“Dear Past Kat, I’ve got to admit, things have been a lot more efficient since the robots triumphed in the inevitable Cyborg v. Human Uprising of 2013. Plus, now I can legally marry my waffle-maker.”

“Dear Past Kat, man, get with the program. Nobody says ‘dude’ in 2016. We all call each other ‘brigadier.’ Briiiiiiiig.”

How fun would fifty or so messages of that be?! I might be getting a little choked up thinking about it. But am mostly grinning my biggest dinosaur-hunter grin, imagining all the brilliant, hilarious snapshots of my favorite people I’ll be able to carry with me from year to year.

It’s all of my favorite things: visions of the future from the past; unbridled youthful exuberance; a moderate vein of narcissism; something I will never have to pack up and move cross-country. In fact, this is what I want for every holiday ever, now. You’re welcome, everybody! I will never ask you to buy me tweezers again.

What would five-years-from-now you tell yourself on a milestone birthday? How crazy’s 2016 going to get, y’all?

NTKOG Year Two, #18: The kind of spontaneous romantic who, when presented with the culmination of astronomical odds, wagers her heart (and a potentially awkward two-hour train ride) on the chance that it might. be. fate.

I am: continuing the story I started here, if you missed the first installion.

I am not: buggin’ if you don’t want to go back and read it.

The Recap: Spent a while flirting aggressively with a cute Canadian in a grad student bar in New England College Town. Afterwards, realized, whoa, he was actually kind of into me? and I was kind of into him? and I didn’t know anything except his first name? Went to New York (ie: the biggest friggin’ city in America), and in that city of seven million people, of all the trains at Grand Central, and all the cars on the train — he chooses mine.

We lock eyes. I blush and offer him a seat. He accepts. Okay, back to…

The Scene: The Canadian takes the seat across from me and my eyes stay snapped on him, looking for words like digging through a snowbank. Justice and Kiss-Ducker carry on their own conversation, like mama lions following from a respectful distance, keeping a cautious eye on a cub attempting its first kill.

TKOG: So I forgot to ask you the other night: you’re at Badass University, right? What do you study?
The Canadian:  Architecture. I’m in the second year of a three-year masters program.

He slides down a few inches in his chair, his knee grazing mine. An architect. I’m always drawn to men who live in quiet, orderly apartments inside their own minds. But architects, they think with their hands, don’t they? That’s something altogether different. His knee grazes mine again, more deliberately.

He asks what I do, and I explain that I’m a writer, sort of, and went to school for Russian literature. His eyes light up.

The Canadian: I double-majored in studio art and comparative literatures! I love Russian literature!
TKOG: Who’s your favorite?
The Canadian:  Totally Gogol. That guy’s awesome. He’s so hilarious.

We chat about The Overcoat for a few moments, before The Canadian exclaims:  Yeah, that story’s so funny! It reminds me of that show Curb Your Enthusiasm! Do you watch it? No, I tell him, and he launches into a five-minute reenactment of a scene, laughing a bit too slowly at his own recreated punchlines. I pull my knee away from his and he switches gears.

The Canadian: What’d you do in New York?
TKOG: Oh, we had a great day! Went to the Met for a bit, saw some German Expressionism — that’s totally my art jam. Walked around Central Park, then went to a cool Belgian beer bar and got classic cocktails at Pegu Club. You?
The Canadian:  Man, it was epic. I came up on Friday and spent the night with a high school friend. We smoked a lot of pot. Then hung out with a college friend. We smoked a lot of pot. Then I hung out with another high school friend. We didn’t smoke any pot.

…epic indeed. But — but he goes to one of the best architecture graduate programs in the country! He’s just one of those weekday Type-A personalities who relaxes intensely on the weekends! Besides, there’s nothing hotter than a man with a concrete talent, who works toward it with great ambition.

He digs through his backpack for gum and I see a sketchpad. Hey, I tell him, my friend has a National Draw A Dinosaur Day coming up on January 30th [click that link, y'all!] — you’re an artsy dude. Can you draw me a dinosaur I can submit and pretend I drew? He gamely produced the following masterpiece:

Architect! Artsy! Sort of! I pursue this.

TKOG: So, I like architecture but I don’t know anything about it. What’s the best building in the world? Like, what’s your personal favorite?
The Canadian:  Uhhhhhhhhhhhh. I don’t — oh! Yeah. There’s a building I like in Toronto. It’s this big brick building. It’s pretty cool.
TKOG:  Cool. What kind of building? Like a bank or an old library or…
The Canadian:  It’s made of brick.

That thud you hear is not the beating of my feverish heart, just to clarify. It is the thud of a conversation dying forever and, with it, any interest I could possibly lather up in the human being sitting across from me.

TKOG: So, uh, how much longer ’til we get to New Haven?
The Canadian: About two hours.
TKOG: Oh. Okay.

Justice, Kiss-Ducker and I spent the rest of the trip in an animated discussion of the social networking model of internet search and writing captions for New Yorker cartoons, tolerating his awkward intrusions  with conspiratorial smirks at one another.

When we finally reached the station, dead-tired and happy to be rid of him, he bolted out of the train ahead of us, then slowed to a walk so we could catch up again. Hey, he asked, are you taking a taxi, or…? It was the kind of wintry New England night so cold that your scalp constricts to shrink-wrap your skull and roman candles go off behind your eyes.

So Justice, gracious goddess that she is, dropped him off at his apartment, then took us back to her place where, exhausted, I crawled into the guest room bed alone alone oh god so happily alone.

The Verdict: To this tale of urban dating woe, I see three morals:

1) You know all those times you have sultry eye contact with a stranger, walk out of each other’s lives, and spend days wondering, by god, WHAT IF?! It’s okay, dude. You probably didn’t miss the love of your life.

2) But SERIOUSLY?! I meet a grad student. At one of the best universities in the free world. We instantly like each other. Then happen to meet him again, days later, in a city of seven million people. And he’s read Gogol. And he’s STILL a kinda-dumb stoner? How is that possibly the end to this story?! I’m not even disappointed in the universe — I’m mad at it.

3) Disappointing though this was, we can all agree that dinosaurs make things better. Draw A Dinosaur Day is Sunday, with submissions accepted today through then! You should submit one! I know I am.

[Edit: A few hours after writing this post, got an email from Justice:

"So I'm sitting on a bus right now on my way to the grad student ski trip and guess who's sitting next to me? Yup, the Canadian. Destiny."

Hmmmm. Maybe he's HER soulmate...? Too bad she's already engaged!]

Over on Secret Society of List Addicts, check out some crazy lies my parents told me that I didn’t find out the truth about until embarrassingly late in life.

NTKOG Year 2, #12: The kind of girl who pits her (non-existent) desire to wake & bake against her law-abiding status and comes up with an, uh, interesting solution.

I am: a total fuddy duddy now. Y’alls, I don’t even jaywalk. And as for any desire to experiment with drugs, well, let’s just say those ended around the time Maroon 5 stopped pumping out number one jams.

I am not: all that psyched with how epically uncool I’ve become.

The Scene: A ritzy headshop (heh, I totally just said ‘head’) on Newbury Street where, after nervously shuffling at the counter for a few minutes, I selected a bag of K2, the legalized pot-alternative that’s been sweeping the nation for the past year or so. The scruffy dude behind the counter rolled his eyes as I asked him half a dozen questions, then asked me, “Dude, have you never smoked pot before?!” Uh, sir, I don’t even take cough syrup. But instead, I just attempted to bat my eyelashes until he agreed to roll me a fake-weed joint.

It’s not that I haven’t smoked pot, for the record. I did it maybe a dozen times in college — mostly courtesy of the culinary genius running the unofficial Stoned on Scones bakery out of the apartment next-door. I just don’t love it: it makes me lazy, anxious, and exquisitely famished. Which is to say, it doesn’t do anything at all. Still, in light of California’s recent failure to decriminalize marijuana use, I thought it would be fun to investigate the last legal recourses of stoners.

Drink deeply of the illicit image, kittens, 'cause in real life you're more likely to see me hold a cockroach than a roach-roach.

Surely any legal substance couldn’t actually get me high, right? RIGHT?! To answer that question, I present you with the musings of Stoned TKOG, who wrote the following completely unedited text after consuming a full joint of K2:

The Choreography of my Evening as a Legal Stoner

During walk from the store, marvel over its delicate sweetness – like a mixture of lemongrass and chamomile tea, you think. Perhaps it shall taste like childhood! It can’t possibly work, you know already, so your sober-as-friggin’-melancholy streak can go on another day.

Walking back from bus, pass convenience store and debate purchasing alleged “munchies” for the purpose of scientific inquiry; consider the contents of your bank account; vigorously veto experiment. Deliberate whether to smoke the fake joint outside, or to smoke it in the warmth and – well, let’s be frank here – nudity of your own apartment. Opt for the latter because you can’t bear the thought of anyone thinking you’re a stoner. It’ll be your little secret.

Back home, use torn cover from Oprah Magazine to wipe the dust bunnies off the plate under your obligatory sad-single-girl bath candle. Get so caught up in architectural marvel of a well-rolled joint (see Exhibit A) that you light it and puff curiously before remembering to open bathroom windows. “Eh,” you reason, “it’s organic. It’ll probably smell like incense. No way you’ll even be able to smell it.”

Yikes! Not a well-rolled joint! The first inch and a half are packed too loose and burn down in three seconds, (“Am I smoking too fast?” you worry, “Should I check into rehab?”) creating a truly prodigious cloud of smoke. After a few puffs, though, it burns slower and you can take satisfying pulls – without the usual lung-searing feeling. Become so fascinated with smoking process that you want to smoke as far into the joint as possible, and try to use small bathroom implements to extend the joint’s length.

Look up and see yourself – dude, seriously, life choices – in the most grim of drug tableaux: naked on the shower rug of your grimy bathroom, holding a fake-weed joint to your lips using a toenail clipper as a roach clip

Flush the roach down the toilet, then throw open the bathroom door to realize two things: 1) you are stoned. as. balls.; 2) judging by the skunky smoke billowing under your door crack, everybody in the building knows it. Judging by the reek of pot pervading the hall, there was enough K2-infused air pumping through my building to contact-high all my neighbors and several rounds of their ancestors. Uh, so much for no one thinking I’m a stoner.

Back into my apartment, and there’s only one urgent task at hand: camouflage the stench of pot wafting from my apartment.

Man, why did I veto the munchies experimentation? Mistakes were made.

Oh, no, right, the smell in the bathroom. Immediately, without thinking, turned the shower on at full blast. …with my head still in it. Drew the curtains and closed the door. Five minutes later realized, oh, I shouldn’t leave a shower unattended! and dashed to the bathroom to turn it off. Felt proud of myself. Got distracted by sad-single-girl bath candle and realized it could cover the smell, so lit it, went to close the door.

“Oh daaaang,” I realized, “my carelessness is increasing with comic exponentiality. I’m totally the after-school special about fake-marijuana use. I’m one scene away from a tragic-but-morally-nourishing grisy ending.” Decided to fend off tragedy by babysitting the candle while it works its de-incriminating smell magic.

Which makes me now a much more nuanced yet still grim drug cliché: naked on the shower rug of my grimy bathroom, hunched over a laptop, hoping the smell of a TJ Maxx hazelnut/toffee candle will overpower the odor of fake-weed billowing from my apartment at 9:21 on a Wednesday night. I – I often wonder what choices have brought me here.

Whoa, my heart’s beating the usual speed, but harder, and every beat’s reverberating like the taut face of a drum.

Screw this. I’m going to order a pizza and read a book about centaurs.

I only have three more distinct memories of the night. First, after an hour of deliberation, finally dragging myself to the pizzeria across the street and realizing, whoa, I feel almost happy.

Next, finding this picture by @cakewrecks, and laughing out loud to myself for a full three minutes…

…before thinking to myself: “How embarrassing to misspell that on your van! That’s weird, though, she usually posts pictures of cakes.”

Finally, just before I passed out, I grabbed my phone and frantically texted myself: “I feel very calm but I don’t feel very useful. Don’t do this again, dude. This isn’t you.”

The Verdict: Okay, Stoned TKOG, you may have almost set your apartment on fire and mistaken a cake for a van, but you managed to pull out a little wisdom at the bottom of the ninth. Cannabis lovers (and cannaibs lovers too, for that matter), I’ve got good news for you: legalized K2 is a fairly legitimate product and, though it isn’t identical to marijuana, it offers a very similar high.

Which means I’ve got bad news for myself: turns out I just don’t like the feeling of being stoned. Guess I’ve got another sixty years of fuddy duddying in my future, huh?

Over on Life As A Human, I reveal the rogue sixth stage of break-up grief: putting down the imaginary dog.

NTKOG Year 2, #11: The kind of vivacious, breezily social cafe-hopper who, when beckoned to the next table over, figures, “What the hell?”

I am: notoriously picky about the people I spend my time with. All I ask is that they be smart, cool, socially aware, and capable of making me laugh so hard my stomach cramps.

I am not: asking too much, am I?

The Scene: Borders Cafe in Copley Square, at 8pm on a Saturday night. I’d been working on grad school applications since 10am and, dudes, let me say that while in the best of times I’m no pageant queen, duuuude, I was A Situation. For starters, I hadn’t showered since Thursday, and my hair was pulled into a fifth-generation ponytail. And as for make-up? Ha! Not since October!

At some point, realize I haven’t used the restroom all day, so catch eyes with the guy at the table across from me and point to my computer. “Hey, can you make sure no one steals my computer? If they try, maybe rough ‘em up a little?”

He nods and I leave. When I come back, I give him the thank-you wave, but instead of turning back to his own laptop, he takes a step over to my table.

Cafe Dude: Hey, are you good at punctuation?
TKOG: Uhhh, yeah, I’m really good at it.
CD: I could tell when I first saw you!  You’re an English major or something, right? The second I saw you, I was like, “This girl looks like she knows about punctuation!”

Weird. I don’t remember putting on my “I brake for Oxford commas” t-shirt this morning. Although I was wearing my “I said anarchy not MANarchy” pin…

Walk over to his table, where he pulls out a chair and pats it; I resist and look at his screen to see the punctuation query — then he closes the computer altogether and proceeds to tell me a lengthy, intricate story about his med school experience, the residencies he’s applying for, and the philosophical convictions shaping his particular phrasing of the last sentence of the first paragraph.

To this, two immediate reactions: 1) whoa, this guy’s friendly; 2) but he’s a doctor. If I leave the table right now, my mom will KILL me.

So I open his computer back up and set to work helping him redraft the thank-you letter he was writing, attempting to rein his rather fractured grammar and add some concrete language to his uncomfortably flowery prose style. Between every sentence that I edited, he would spin me tales about the unpleasant environment at his current medical school, the backstory to the academic strike blemishing his record, the qualities he valued at the hospitals where he’d interviewed.

After half an hour, I’d reworked the first of three paragraphs and he blinked up at me in surprise: “Whoa, you’re actually a good writer.”

Um, yeah, obviously. Why else would he have — oh. Oh. Is this that thing that the kids sometimes do? That flirting thing? It all started to make sense: the subtle way he’d coaxed my name out of me, the casual allusions to facebook, asking how long I’d been in the city, why I was spending Saturday night hunched over a laptop.

But whatever, dudes, we had a botched thank-you letter to finish editing.

I moved my things over to his table, and we worked on the letter for another hour, mixed in with conversation on just about every first date topic you can imagine. He told me about his moral opposition to the institution of pet ownership; I teased him pretty ferociously about it; he admitted he’d only joined Facebook the previous day, but would I friend him?; after he whipped out his laptop I, after some deliberation, agreed.

Eventually I looked up and realized that three hours had passed and the cafe was closing around us. So we packed up our things and he walked me back to the T station, told me he hoped I had a nice night.

Only when I was walking down the stairs to the station did it dawn on me: wait a minute, did I just accidentally go on a date?!

Except it was better than a date, because where most real dates leave one with nothing, this one at least resulted in a pretty exquisitely rewritten thank-you letter. Plus, I didn’t have to shower first.

The Verdict: Though I have less than zero interest in this guy, I’m always pleasantly mystified when interactions like this crop up organically in nature. While I sincerely doubt that I’ll meet the Great Love of My Life randomly in a cafe or bar (unless said bar is across the street from MIT, obvi), this was a good reminder that there are pleasant people out there, and it wouldn’t kill me to waste a little time with them.

Although if there’s any speculation as to whether this guy and I had a love connection, allow me to end it right now: At one point, he gestured to his keyboard and told me, “Hey, you know there’s a more efficient keyboard system, but they started using this layout because people like typing slower?”

“Oh!” I jumped in, excited, “you mean Dvorak?! That’s actually an old wives tale!” I started to explain some of the backstory behind that urban legend, but he just furrowed his brow and started shaking his head in bored confusion.

Sorry, Cafe Dude, but discussing things like Dvorak v. QWERTY is practically bedroom talk for a girl like me, and if you’re not on-board with that, this isn’t going to work out. Come to think of it, there might be a “talk nerdy to me” t-shirt in my near future…

Over at Life As A Human, some musings from my first 100 miles of running.

NTKOG Year 2, #8: The kind of masochistic utter slave to hair removal who, not content with using specialty products to rip off fifteen layers of epidermis (and attached hair), gets a little, uh, weird with it.

I am: a sucker for test-driving pretty much every item I see at CVS with that alluring little “As Seen On TV!” sticker. Vidalia Chop Wizard? Couldn’t live without mine. Ove Gloves? Practically have erotic dreams about ‘em.

I am not: surprised, therefore, that I finally gave into the allure of SmoothAway: a revolutionary hair-removal system, consisted of a pad “covered with superfine crystals that buff away unwanted hair, leaving your skin so soft and incredibly smooth”.

The Scene: Sprawled out on my bed, of a Thursday evening, giggling with girly mad scientist glee while opening the SmoothAway box and gazing at — sandpaper. I mean, it’s sandpaper, right? That’s what we’re talking about here.

The contents of the box were unimpressive. A flexible pink plastic mitt with a few ovals of extremely micro-grit sandpaper meant to attach to its face. But it’s no secret that I’m into painful body hair removal — heck if there were a spa in the city that specially trained, like, Argentinian swallows to peck out errant chin and nipple hairs, I’d be there — so pasted the microcrystal paper to the mitt and started a-rubbin’.

$14.99 -- plus $6.99 in Shipping and Handling. Or, uh, eight bucks at CVS.

The thing I like best about As Seen On TV products is, gosh, the thing I like best about most endeavors: that first moment — the lean-in, as it were — when what you’re about to experience exists simultaneously in the realms of fiction and reality. The exhilaration of infinite potential. A phrase that sounds a little too elegant to describe the actual tableau: my too-large bearpaw awkwardly crammed into the flimsy pink mitt, lowering tentatively over my sun-bleached arm hair (the last memento of summer!), rubbing five times clockwise then counter, and then –

Holy frig! It totally, totally worked!

Is it possible? An As Seen On TV product that works as well as advertised?! …well, sort of. Fifteen minutes of fierce rubbing left my arms weirdly (but not unattractively) hairless, and exfoliated within an inch of their lives.

Alas, though, the hair-removal panacea was not to be. Sated with the initial glee of the experiment, moved the mitt to attack the few days’ of accumulated stubble on my legs, and — nothing. Glued a new pad on the board, in case my excessive vim had already dulled the microcrystals and — ouch! More painful nothing. In a fit of grim curiosity, more than anything else, decided to test the packages claims that SmoothAway could quickly and painlessly remove armpit stubble.

And I don’t know if you’ve ever spent upward of ten minutes vigorously rubbing your armpits with an abrasive pad, but if that’s what the marketing specialist qualifies as “quick” and “painless,” then I have a feeling she spends most of her professional life writing copy for ballgag disinfectant. On the bright side, though, the treatment did detract from the appearance of stubble on my pits. ’cause who’s going to notice a little underarm stubble when the whole region is inflamed seventeen shades of fire engine?

Yes, I did test SmoothAway on my bikini line. No, we’re not even going to talk about it.

After spending something like an hour experimenting with my new toy, came to the conclusion that it works by more or less disintegrating hair into a  fine powder with said microcrystals. Also, because of the broad-swath application method, while SmoothAway was decently effective at clearing areas of thin, fine hair, it doesn’t have the same brutally effective nuclear-winter-for-all-body-hair results as more exacting methods, like shaving or waxing.

That said, if your arms make it look like you’re turning into a werewolf, or if you want to, like, thin out peach fuzz on your stomach (is that a thing people do? feminine grooming puzzles me — I honestly have no idea), and dip a baby toe into s&m at the same time, there are worse solutions.

Also, for what its worth, if you ever get the idea: “Hey, if super-fine grit sandpaper works on my super-fine hair, maybe regular hardware store sandpaper will work on thicker hair!”? Don’t — don’t follow that inclination. Unless you want to experience the rare thrill of developing a bruisy rash on the back of your calf.

No comment on how I know that.

The Verdict: Every time an As Seen On TV product doesn’t work as I’d always dreamed, a little sliver of my hope for humanity withers away. At least I still have my Ove Gloves.

What “As Seen On TV” products always send you guiltily reaching for your debit card?

NTKOG Year 2, #5: The kind of casual superhero who, promenading the streets of a night, notices a stray kitten clinging to the highest tree branch and punches it down.

I am: more mild-mannered than Clark Kent, only because…

I am not: extraordinarily good at doing anything that’s actually useful to other people. Writing? Sure. Calculating tips? As long as it’s not an end-of-night bar tab. Righting wrongs and doing good deeds? Dudes, my cape is at the dry cleaner’s.

The Scene: The chaotic streets of Allston/Brighton, only a few weeks after the city-wide menace known as Moving Day. And if you’re from a city too smart to observe this horrifying tradition, a word of explanation: because the population of the greater Boston area swells exponentially when all the college kids come back, sadistically brilliant landlords have set something like 90% of leases in the city to start and end on September 1st. In theory, this allows our nine-month residents to move into new abodes at just the right time, and leave a solid three months on their leases to sublet when they move back home or take internships over the summer before coming back. In theory.

In practice? If you ever want to see a seventeen-mile traffic jam consisting exclusively of U-Haul trucks, well, get thee to Allston/Brighton on September 1st.

One of the many harrowing upshots of this citywide menace is that furniture stores, hardware shops and big-box sundry emporiums (love you, Target) are nigh unbearable for the week or so following the universal move — leaving many apartment-dwellers to camp out with the bare necessities for a few weeks, then spend the last half of September lugging purchases into their new homes.

Even now, it’s not uncommon in my neighborhood to, near midnight, watch a dude struggling with an oversized Target bag or IKEA bookshelf, broadcasting that particular animal scent of despair that accompanies all housing woes.

So, last week, I decided to focus my (utterly non-existent) spidey sense on one of the few demographics I know I can help: dudes carrying heavy stuff. Y’know, no big deal. Just avenging physics.

Came upon my first opportunity while dragging myself home from my sister’s last Monday, near 10pm. As I shuffled along the main thoroughfare connecting our apartments, noticed a woman — mid-thirties, sweatsuit, hair coaxed into the type of extreme frizzball that can only signify a short, intense period of physical duress — apparently attempting to wriggle her body through the crack between her apartment’s double doors while lugging two boxes full of anvils.

In my mind? Swooped up to the stoop invisible, a force of nature, swung the door open, then disappeared into the night before she could turn her head and even flash a smile of acknowledgment.

In actuality? Turns out if you’re going to suddenly appear behind someone well after nightfall, you should, uh, give them verbal warning from a few paces away. Yeah, I don’t know, dudes. It’s not like there’s a WikiHow on this.

For the next few days, when I saw people on their stoops in my neighborhood, struggling with door handles through armfuls of boxes or grocery bags, flashed up behind them (after giving sufficient warning!) to grab the door. Such a little thing, but the kind of thing I’ve never been socially forward enough to do.

Then, on Friday, the excuse to take things just a little further. As I dashed downstairs to the convenience store, noticed a girl in my foyer struggling with two boxes of unassembled bookshelves and a small coffee table. She was one of those girls who, y’know, accidentally-on-purpose wears a translucent shirt to work, who has thoughts about bronzer, who, ten seconds after meeting you at a party, compliments your hair and then touches it. Not the kind of girl I know personally, is what I’m saying here.

And over the course of my short life, I’ve seen many things that touch my heart. Summer sunrises, babies laughing, the works — yet still, there is nothing in this world or probably the next that I find quite as compelling as seeing an extremely beautiful girl in distress, mewling like a kitten at her own helplessness. Ironclad don’t-talk-t0-neighbors policy be damned. Finally, an opportunity to fully utilize my newfound social proactiveness?

Asked if I could help her move them anywhere; she cautioned about fifteen times that the boxes were extremely heavy, and offered to go halvsies on the lifting; I laughed with gentle scorn, then let her step aside as I carried the boxes into a neat pile in front of the elevator.

Which was broken.

Cue twenty minutes of lugging increasingly heavy boxes up to the entrance of her fourth-floor new walk-up, after which, one quick thank you, and back I flew onto the streets, ready to receive my next assignment. As long as it didn’t require any heavy lifting. ’cause, I mean, ouch.

The Verdict: Hee! That was super fun! I think it’s bizarre that — based on my own experience, conversations with friends, and the occasional email related to this blog — most of us suffer this universal paralysis when it comes to stepping in and helping strangers with something minor. Counter-intuitively, we’ll sometimes hold ourselves back from helping a dude because we’re afraid of what they’ll think of us. (Like, oh, I don’t know, “what a helpful person!”?)

Presumably, after a few more years roving this occasionally hostile earth, it’ll sink in forever: people are kind. People are good. People want to give and receive love, even in disposable one-bite doses, like catching a heavy door or showing off your strictly average upper-body strength.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have an extra set of bedsheets I need to sew into a cape.

At Life As A Human, I realize my neighborhood convenience store is nothing less than an urban farmers market.

At Secrety Society of List Addicts, I angst about which of my 24-year-old habits my 16-year-old self would have HATED.

NTKOG Year 2, #4: The kind of disgustingly perky Pollyanna who love-bombs semi-strangers with thank-you-(for-existing) notes.

I am: insanely grateful for the hundreds of quasi-anonymous strangers it takes to make just one of my days great — or at least keep it from lapsing into apocalyptic status.

I am not: as good as showing it as I am at thinking about it.

The Scene: Looping my favorite Coolidge Corner haunts after a fairly grisly day at work. Something about the grey autumnal weather casts a pall over my usual nauseating chipperness. All day, I cursed my computer and grimaced through phone calls, and just when I’d hit my breaking point, I did what any good American would do–

I went shopping.

Specifically, I ran to the big-box supermarket across the street from my office, vowing not to return until I’d found a way to buy a little sliver of sunshine. And, as is its providence, happiness was lurking in the last place I’d suspect: the stationery aisle.

Specifically, in the guise of a ridiculously overpriced pack of “Mommy Messages” — those little notecards printed for Dr. Phil-watching’ suburban housewives to tuck into their little cubs’ lunchpacks.

As I was taking this picture, an old man walked by and said: "I wish I were cool!" He was wearing a fedora, so I felt no qualms about immediately telling him, "I'm pretty sure you are cool, sir."

Quick jaunt around Coolidge Corner after work, while I wondered how I could possibly dig up five recipients. There’s … let’s see … the girl who rang up my last Wodehouse book at the Brookline Booksmith. And can’t forget one for the driver of the 66 bus. Oh! And big-smile cashier’s on duty at Trader Joe’s!

Huh, what do you know. After ten minutes of note-writing, I began to wish I’d picked up a second pack.

Sadly, there’s no real story to the giving of the notes: I went to each respective retail location (slash awkwardly swung myself onto one bus, before declining a ride and walking home), waited patiently in line, then smiled at the respective cashiers before muttering, “I, uh, I wrote you a note. Have a good day!”

PS: Marry me, please, Brookline Booksmith.

Got smiles in return, but didn’t stick around to watch anybody read them, ’cause why ruin a pretty okay thing?

Although, nice coda: whether it was the brightened weather or my disgusting love for Pollyanna-ing, my mood for the rest of the evening was all gossamer and unicorn nuzzles. Stopping by a neighborhood hardware store on the walk home, I spent five minutes bantering with the clerk about various types of drain snakes and, when he told me to have a nice day afterwards, I could only grin ’cause, dude, how could I not?

The Verdict: How do I always forget that the best way to ninja-kick yourself out of a funk is just to pay more attention to the people who are trying to make your life great?

And I think it’s no secret on the blog that I’m a little obsessed with chatting with retail clerks. In truth, the subject is dear to my heart. The summer after freshman year of college, I got my first-ever real job, working as a customer care rep in a big-box video store. For the first few days, I was overwhelmed by the indifference and casual beratement customers showed me while running their annoying everyday errands.

Then I realized how often I ran my own errands, snapping at salesclerks and chatting on my phone in line — pretty dang often, considering I was locked in that teenage it’s-cool-to-be-jaded mindset that, thankfully, most of us outgrow. And I thought about how many days I spent pacing a fretting, sinking into the quagmire of my own dissatisfaction, praying for just one little goddamn thing to go right for once.

So I made the first good decision of my teenage years: every day, at my stupid job, I’d try my hardest to be that one small, good thing for someone. Somehow, as though by magic, that silly summer of alphabetizing videos taught me how to be happy. Finally.

And now, many happy years later, nothing else makes me quite as ecstatic as seeing conscientious and enthusiastic retail clerks and cashiers making that same decision — to make their little corner of commerce a slightly dazzling place to be.

Oh goodness, I’m way too perky today. Who in your life deserves a little shout-out? Favorite barista, inspired hairdresser, cute old man who sits alone at the library every day? Let’s hear it!

NTKOG Year 2, #3: The kind of rabid running addict who makes her rounds in rain, snow, sleet, hail and Hollywood-ready thunderstorms.

I am: a fair-weather jogger. C’mon, dude — isn’t it enough that I haul my lazy bones out of bed at 6:30am without having to add hurricane conditions to the mix?

I am not,: even at the best of times, fond of that clear, non-alcoholic liquid that falls from the sky. (What do they call it? Rain? How quaint.)

The Scene: My warm, comfy bed at 6:45am last Wednesday, where — nursing a hangover and a few half-remembered glimpses of a dream involving Adrien Brody — I dragged my ass out of bed and into some (ugh) running gear. As I clicked on my “get psyched!” playlist and hit the street: horror.

A volley of raindrops the size of babies’ fists pummeled my bare neck and shoulders. Any normal day, I would have shrugged with mock-regret then turned heel to finish that rendezvous with Mr. Brody. Instead? Cranked up my music and surged onward, uphill.

After five minutes, I’d turned up my music to full-volume to compete with the mad thrashing of rain on pavement. Five minutes after that, I gave up the fight altogether and focused on the unrelenting hiss of water intent on wiping out the streets around me. Uh, anything to distract from the fact that my shirt and bra were entirely soaked with half an hour to go.

By a miraculous fluke of nature, the rain let up for a few minutes, and I enjoyed the unfamiliar coolness of air searing my wet skin — was just prepared to consider starting all my runs with a light shower — when I rounded a corner and THE WORLD CRACKED OPEN.

In the space of half a footstep, the whole visible horizon was swallowed by a monstrous grey cloud bent on weeping all of mankind to flood and extinction. I’m grimly compelled by storms, the way they can, in a moment, swell to cinematic Hollywood proportions — but this storm wasn’t even out of a movie. Or, if it was, not a very good one. Water dumped down in half-gallon jugs, thunder sound effects cued at cochlea-imploding levels, jags of lightning painted across the entire sky in a child’s melodramatic scrawl.

Out of nowhere, the storm was so bad that it wasn’t even a work of realism. It was an expressionist painting, and the paint was smearing all over me. (And, okay, maybe my feline aversion to rain and proclivity toward graphic description is overselling this. But, you guys, I might just be underselling the thing.)

By a mile from home, I had already passed half a dozen other erstwhile joggers, clustered miserably in bus stops or seeking shelter under awnings. Lightning cleaved the sky in a garish mo-friggin’ tableau. I unplugged my iPhone in a superstitious bid to ward off electrocution, but kept on at a steady pace on the now-empty streets.

And maybe it was my waterlogged brain, or a leftover sense of unreality from the previous evening’s riesling but — for those last several blocks — my silly morning jog became a little epic.

With the sky leaking water at a frankly absurd rate, the apocalypse-gray morning had the keen of scenery from the kind of movie I wouldn’t even admit to watching on Lifetime. The scene where the protagonist goes on a hero’s quest to regain his Great Lost Love and is thwarted from his true aim on all sides — planes crashing, dead dial tones, doors slammed in his face — and once he gets within a stone’s throw of his dream, running in slow-motion to her door, mother nature pelting him backwards one step out of every three, he turns his face up to the heavens — worn down to nothing but lizard-brain and stupid goddamn optimism — and bellows, “Ha! Is that all you’ve got?!”

…I — I spend a lot of time in my own head. Anyway. The point is, it rained really hard, but I still took thirty seconds off my usual mile pace. And I totally wanted to kiss my running shoes afterwards, ’cause they are champions and so am I.

The Verdict: Hey, rain? I’m not afraid of you anymore. And in a couple of months, you can go ahead and tell mother nature I’m only, like, mildly terrified by snow now.

And in related news, hey, I finished the Couch-to-5k program! Not only can I run for over half an hour without crying or vomiting afterwards — I actually do it like four times a week! Somewhere in Nevada, a former middle-school PE teacher just clutched her heart and keeled the frig over.

NTKOG Year 2, #1: The kind of hardened pick-up artist who slays men in her wake by mastering the art of The Neg — jabbing the object of your desire with semi-insults until they … magically want to sleep with you?

I am: already kind of working The Neg in daily life. Or at least already the part where you’re not super nice to dudes.

I am not: mega adroit at communicating that I want to smooch a dude even when I totally, totally do. Let alone when trying to appear aloof, craft witty dialogue and remain seventeen moves ahead in the chess match of seduction — all without spilling my drink.

The Scene: First, a quick lesson in The Neg, for those of you who aren’t as obsessed with bro culture as I. (You’re welcome, mom.) The Neg is basically the pivotal tenet of the Mystery Method — right behind stupid hats — and suggests that women, especially beautiful women, have been hit on so many times that they automatically filter out compliments, so in order to woo her, you need to pooh-pooh her. The Neg can range from homicide inducing (“You wouldn’t think a girl with your figure would look so nice in a dress like that.”) to the subtle (“Huh, you’re not a lot of fun, are you?”). And, when properly applied, is supposed to coax any woman into desperately trying to prove just how wrong you are. With sexytimes.

The stuff men come up with, eh? Still, I’ve witnessed The Neg used with mortifying effectiveness on all kinds of smart, cool women, so why not give a few dudes a taste of their own medicine?

Neg the first: Late-twenties guy sitting on the stoop of my local convenience store, comforting a young girl whose giraffe rubber Silly Bandz bracelet has just snapped. He’s attempting to finesse the tiny bracelet into a delicate knot.

Usually I’d pass on hitting on stoop-dwellers — for some reason, almost none of them have read Camus, if you can believe it — but seeing a guy comfort a random child does something for a girl. As he futzed with the bracelet, I hovered and we made friendly eye contact. Everything was so positive. So of course it was time to throw The Neg.

“Hey, if you hold the broken ends to a lighter, you can probably fuse them back together.” He blinked up at me, non-plussed. “Don’t stress. You’re too cute to have to be clever.”

According to the Mystery Method, I should have been friggin’ in there like swimwear. Angsty glances! Flirtatious verbal sparring! Sexytimes? Instead, he rolled his eyes and I awkwardly shuffled away. But when I peeked back at him, he was indeed trying the lighter suggestion. So, uh, victory?

Neg the second: Since my first attempt felt less like flirtation and more like just plain rudeness, let the venerable ol’ Mystery script my first encounter. Stopped in alone to a neighborhood bar after work and grabbed a stool near a dude who was sitting alone, trying to read the head of his Sam Adams like tea leaves.

After I’d established goodwill with a little neutral chatting (weather! Sox!), I dropped the bomb with a neg line stolen directly from a Pick-Up Artist website.

“Dude, you want some gum?” I offered sweetly.
“Uh, no thanks. I’m drinking a beer,” he grunted.
“No, no really. You should probably take some gum.”

I’m sorry, in what parallel universe does this lead to make-outs? Dude turned away from me and suddenly became very invested in the Sox game. Which is probably just as well, since I don’t carry gum anyway.

(Accidental) Neg the third: On the way home, I toyed with the idea of staving off psychological debilitation long enough to try out a few more negs and, in that vein, jaunted to the convenience store to pick up a pack of non-phantom gum. The brah at the front of the line spent ten minutes mulling between Pall Malls and Parliaments, and in that time, I established standard mute-courtesy rapport with the attractive mid-twenties girl behind me.

After I rang up my pack of Orbit, I ripped off the cellophane to take a piece, then, since it was open, held out the pack to her. “Gum?”

She declined, politely, but I held her gaze for a moment too long afterwards and her face clouded with anxiety: “Do I need gum?”

Pause. Pause. I smirked, not unkindly. “Well, a little gum never hurts.”

Gave her the piece, walked out onto the street where — oh, I kid you not, my blessed kittens — two minutes later she shot out after me, physically stopped me, and proceeded to chat with me for nigh ten minutes about the neighborhood, laundry days, and how hard it is to make friends when you’re new in town. After the conversation had reached its natural end, she smiled at me — still chomping the gum — and said she hoped she’d see me around again.

The Verdict:  Holy frig, guys. Holy frig. I may have gotten shot down by two guys, but I PICKED UP A STRAIGHT WOMAN. Rejection be damned! Never before in my life have I felt more like a bro.

That said, maybe I was doing it wrong, or maybe I’m not the type, but I’m going to go ahead and veto The Neg for any future seduction attempts. While it’s devilishly effective on women, I’m not convinced the approach translates well across gender lines. After all, at least according to bar-hopping stereotypes, women are either wooed or ignored, and thus captivated by uncourted rejection; men, on the other hand, get rejected all the dang time, so it’s barely a blip on their radar.

Whether it’s gender differences or just the stupidity of the method, hey, The Neg, this is me rejecting you. (Though hopefully that’ll make you want to hook up with me. Call me?)

NTKOG #250: The kind of bold, optimistic adventurer who — fortified by a year full of uncharacteristic experiences — leaves her fate for a day entirely in the hands of her beloved blog readers.

I am: amazed and thrilled to announce this is the last official day of my project year.

I am not: afraid of anything anymore. Thank you, guys. Thank you.

The Scene: All over my fair adopted city, my love for which courses through me with the intensity of a volcano, yet the tenderness of a hiccuping kitten. For the last day of this strange, amazing project, decided to chance fate and let my truly beloved readers choose my adventures. And, dudes, you took the task seriously.

Adventure #1: “Write haikus! About things that you do today. Especially trivial things.” (from @xoxonatalie on twitter)

Perfect! I may have just the slightest tendency to get lost in verbal fireworks (nooooooo, really?!) slash lengthy descriptions of passers-by’s messed-up teeth, so let us approach this Choose My Adventure Day via haiku-cap.

Choose My Adventure:
it seems you conspired for my
ultimate delight

Adventure #2: “Swing on the swing set in Ringer Park in Allston. (If there still is a swing set and/or a Ringer Park).” (from commenter Mominlaw, who went on an early date with her husband there and who, ps, I hope is having a lovely birthday!)

Packed up and walked to Ringer Park in the drizzle, and was delighted to find I had the place more or less to myself! Then was even more delighted to get on a swingset and remember just how friggin’ fun that is! Uh, someone remind me why I haven’t done that in sixteen years?!

Dude, what is a swing? / Lever? Pulley? A machine? / Frig it, I'm swinging.

Adventure #3: “I would say joining kids’ games. Cartwheels anywhere there’s a spot of grass, hopscotch anywhere there’s chalk and sidewalk.” (from @PepperJess on twitter)

You don’t want to see an oaf of my caliber attempt a cartwheel (hint: destruction imminent), but — muddy grass and cute skirt be damned — still swing-dizzy, I found a hill on the playground and rolled right the way down. Afterwards, took chalk to asphalt and learned: 1) why professional hopscotch players don’t carry heavy messenger bags; 2) that my feet have apparently grown considerably since the last time I played.

Not great cardio / but it's still good for the heart. / (Is that too cheesy?)

Afterwards, a young couple strolled up to the playground, obviously on a date, and watched me attempting to make the perilous third-square hop. “Wanna play?” I asked them, then handed them each a stick of chalk. When I left, a few minutes later, he was drawing her portrait on the asphalt and I was meltier than the rainy chalk.

Adventure #4: “locate the toy that you loved most as a child/feel some attachment to and play in a park” (from Kelsey)

Although I’m a sucker for Slinkies, Play Doh and Creepy Crawlers, as a kid I was most obsessed with arts & crafts, and one item in particular:

Sammy D. Sapling / always keeps both his eyes peeled / seeking hot dryads

Swings, hopscotch, tree eyes.
Whoa, did I just take myself
on the perfect date?

Adventure #5: “What if you paid the bus or T-fare for a random person?” (from commenter Jessica)

Harmonica dude
with the sign by the bus stop,
stop playing and ride.

Adventure #6: “Stop at an animal shelter and play with the dogs or cats that looks like they need attention the most (usually the old guys)” (from commenter Erin)

Couldn’t find a local shelter I could public transit to on time, but stopped by a local pet store as they were packing up all of the weekly rescue kittens, and complimented a dignified former feral tabby on his glossy coat.

Fistbumps for kittens!
Love you temporarily;
hope you find a home.

Adventure #7:  ”i challenge you to buy and eat one cash register candy you wouldn’t ordinarily eat” (by @whowantssoup via twitter)

Adventure #8: “Please lie down on a busy sidewalk for a couple of minutes, and if anyone asks, tell them that you’re just looking up at the sky…” (from SapioSlut [warning: link nsfw])

Adventure #9: “take [your] reading outside to an iconic plant in your neighbourhood (Canadian sp) and, for good measure, bring some cold black tea to pour on its roots.” (from Naomi)

Adventure #10: “Bike to the Arnold Arboretum, find a secluded patch of grass and share a bottle of wine with yourself and Thoreau.” (from Neal Simpson)

Is it just me, or do these combine into one delightfully eccentric picnic? I had forty-five minutes to kill before free late admission to the Museum of Fine Arts, so I stopped by a local diner for a to-go Earl Grey, then spread a fleece blanket on the wet sidewalk and gazed at the grey-wooly sky while tourists hopped over me in confusion. Occasionally as I looked up, they would peer down anxiously and, for a moment, we would lock eyes. I smiled up warmly; they twitched away and kept hurrying on.

After ten minutes, I really gave them something to edge away from, when moved onto the lawn, nuzzled my face in the grass and read it excerpts from Walden while sneaking sips from a tiny bottle of Merlot. Maybe it was just the wine, or the luxury of getting soaked on a rainy day, but I was Thoreau-ly entertained. (Oh man. Oh man. That was awful.)

Rain came in buckets / Dude asked what I was doing / "Reading, sir. And you?"

After I fed the grass some of my cooled tea, headed into the Museum of Fine Arts for late afternoon admission:

Adventure #11: “should be lots of art students @ the mfa today. Could pay one $1 for a 1-minute sketch?” (from @kharied on twitter)

He captured my smirk / my rosy cheeks, crooked nose / and my lack of limbs

Adventure #12: “Give a high-five to all the cyclists you can.” (from @teeheehee on Twitter)

Good day, fair cyclist!
Kudos on braving the rain!
Knock and/or lock it.

Adventure #13: “Tell three strangers you like their outfit/hair. Yay for compliments!” (from Scarlet)

Well what a cute skirt!
Where did you get that necklace?
Those shoes are divine.

Adventure #14: “get a mimosa! Yum!” (from @scarls17 on twitter)

Adventure #15: “challenge a random dude or dudes to a game of buckhunter at a bar.” (from ohhayitskk)

Adventure #16: “I want you 2 walk up to the next hot guy you see hug him, tell him you love him and then walk away, preferably into a crowd.” (from @katiedeniselee on twitter)

Ducked into a sports bar near where I work to pick up an unfashionably late-in-the-day mimosa (yummy!) and stake out the console game situation. Although they didn’t have buckhunter, they did feature a game whereby you — and I’m so glad I live in a world where this exists — emulate throwing beanbags with a roller control.

Found a trio of dudes who had obviously been drinking since the beginning of the Sox game, and singled one out. His slight squiffiness was absolutely key to this mission.

Sir, let’s toss some balls.
The loser hugs the winner?
(My wager is love.)

Yes, for the first time in Boston, I told a dude I loved him. Not for the first time in Boston, a dude in a bar laughed at me. Awesome. (He also completely kicked my ass in the game, but this was to be expected.)

Adventure #17: “Pick 5 things from your apartment that you no longer need & give them away to 5 people. Uncluttering + charity!” (from @ericfriction on twitter)

I purchased sweaters
in all the colors I hate.
Well, some need the warmth.

And into the Whole Foods drop box they went! Freeing up more drawer space for me to, I’m sure, buy more clothes I’m going to immediately tire of. I … I might need a make-over.

Adventure #19: “Drink a Hot Toddy.” (from Toddy)

Adventure #20: “please have a sweet snack and a cup of tea before bed if you can.” (from commenter Susie)

Earl Grey and brandy:
ghetto toddy burns so good,
with bacon cookies.

Yeah, you heard me, bacon cookies, because a year as enchanting and bizarre as this one deserves to end on a sweet but weird note, don’t you think?

The Verdict:  You guys! My last NTKOG of the project year! I — I don’t know what to think! There’s a lot happening in my head right now. What I can say for sure is that my epic and exquisite Choose My Adventure Day was the pitch-perfect end to the experiment that has made this past year undoubtedly among the greatest of my life.

Thank you guys for sticking with me through it! And trust me, this blog isn’t going anywhere. Give me a few hours to catch my breath and still my heart, then come back tomorrow for some schmaltzy reflections and news about what’s happening to the blog now that I’ve (oh my goodness!) finished the 250!