(It’s St. Patrick’s Day, and I have the local paper open to the puzzles and astrology.)

Friend: “Oh, read mine. I’m Virgo. ”

Me: “You could go overboard when celebrating your Irish heritage. Resist your tendency to overindulge.”

Friend: “Well, I’m all German, so it doesn’t fit. But that is SO my husband!”

(My friend stops and reconsiders.)

Friend: “But he’s Scottish. And he’s in New Orleans. And he’s not a Virgo.”

(I and another friend whoop with laughter.)

Friend: “That was stupid, wasn’t it?”

Me: “No, that was brilliant! Comedy gold!”

(Since I’ve had some trouble sleeping, I’ve started drinking a tea called “sleep well.” It seems to work, and when we run out my mom goes to the grocery store to get some more from me. She is standing in the tea aisle with a male customer)

Customer: “Are we looking for the same thing?”

Mom: “I don’t know what you’re looking for, but I’m looking for ‘sleep well’ tea.”

Customer: “I’m looking for ginger tea. But, ehm, if you’d sleep next to me you wouldn’t need any tea to sleep well.” *winks*

Mom: “…”

(I’m from Washington State, which, during Twilight’s glory days, was an endlessly annoying factoid. If I even breathed my home state, Twilight groupies would sometimes swarm me for info. Sometimes the questions were harmless and, more often than not, people found it endlessly amusing when I debunked myths about the places that were incorrect in the book. On one occasion, I swear I am going to be lynched.)

Me: *talking to [Friend #1]* “My dad took me up to Forks a long time ago for some business trip. He was meeting an associate up there. It took a whole day just to get there.”

Friend #2: “No, it didn’t. It takes a few hours if you drive fast enough.”

Me: “The speed limit on that winding, twisty pretzel of a road is at best thirty. Any faster and you fly over the ledge of the cliffs.”

Friend #2: “Bulls***. You can get there in, like, three hours.”

Me: *rolls eyes, knowing it’s pointless* “Well, anyway, when we got up there, Dad went to do some work and I—”

Friend #2: Ooh, did you see any wolves up there?

Me: “Uh… no, I didn’t. The only wolves in Washington that I know of live in Wolf Haven International sanctuary in Tenino. That’s nowhere near Forks.”

Friend #2: “Yeah, right; I’ll bet they escape and run up there every day! Or maybe they even secretly run the place and it’s really their secret base! That’s gotta be so cool!”

Friend #1: “Have you ever even been to Forks?”

Friend #2: “No, but I don’t need to. Stephenie Meyer obviously did, since she wrote about it. I’d like to go there, though. You know, live the quiet country life and the maybe pop down into Seattle for the day and do some shopping.”

Me: “Okay. One, you cannot ‘pop down into Seattle’ from Forks like in the book. It takes at least a day to drive down there so you’d have to stay the night there. Two, even if you could drive ninety miles an hour to Forks, you would run out of gas long before reaching the place, and three, YOU CANNOT DRIVE TO FORKS IN THREE HOURS! It is physically impossible to do so without getting into a possibly lethal accident!”

Friend #2: “But it was in the book! Forks is a real place and Stephenie Meyer went there! It has to be right since she wrote about it!”

Friend #1: *to me, in an attempt to ignore our idiot friend* “Anyway, were you able to see La Push at all?”

Friend #2: Oh, come on, don’t be stupid. La Push isn’t a real place. Native Americans don’t live in Washington for real.”

(I exchanged looks with Friend #1 and sigh, and I sadly recounted Tukwila, Puyallup, Snohomish, Quileute, and Snoqualmie: all places in Washington named by various native tribes that have lived out there and still live out there. Is it any wonder why I hate the Twilight books?)

(My roommate has a smart phone with Siri on it. She doesn’t use the feature, except to insult Siri every time it turns on accidentally. Because she can’t figure out how to turn Siri off, this happens more than she would like and we get endless amusement out of it. One day Siri starts talking in my roommate’s pocket.)

Siri: “I’m sorry; I didn’t understand the question.”

(Exasperated, my roommate pulls out her phone and presses the button to talk.)

Roommate: “You need to clean out your ears.”

Siri: “You are entitled to your own opinion.”

(We all laugh and my roommate presses the button again.)

Roommate: “Touché.”

(At this, Siri pulls up a Wikipedia page on fencing terms. Needless to say, we couldn’t stop laughing for several minutes.)

(My best friend and I are getting into her van. We have plans to go to a fan convention in a few months with my brother. She will probably end up being the one driving since she is the only one with a license despite all three of us being 17-20 years old.)

Me: *looking into the back to see how much space there is* “You CAN fit a scythe back here… Awesome!”

Best Friend: *confused and slightly distressed look* “What?”

Me: “For [Convention], remember? I’m going as [Character] and she carries a scythe that can convert into a high caliber sniper rifle?”

Best Friend: “Oh, yeah, I forgot!”

(We both start laughing.)

Me: “Sometimes I forget you aren’t in my brain…”