Dear Man at Panera,

I need to know where you buy your clothes. Twelve hours have passed since I saw you, and I am still flabbergasted by the top you were wearing. Seriously, where does one find a button-down dress shirt with a thick, elastic waistband? I asked Google, but it would only give me the phone number for What Not to Wear's Stacy and Clinton. And Cuil just coughed quietly and went back to doing Sudoku puzzles.

Now, I can understand the convenience of this hybrid shirt, of course, since tucking in those regular shirts can be difficult (not to mention trendy). The other businessmen at Panera were looking so five minutes ago with their classic suits and ties. But, oh man, you put them all to shame. You swaggered in and let your shirt do the talkin'. And you clearly thought it was saying sexy things to all the ladies. Personally, all I heard was, "Man, sweatshirts and button-downs should never mate."

So tell me, stranger. What is this contraption called? Where did that shirt come from? Most importantly, how hard is it to burn this monster-making establishment to the ground? (Oh yeah, and have you met my friends from What Not to Wear? I think you three will have a lot to talk about.) My email address is on the contact page. Talk to me.

Much love,
Rachelskirts

This morning on the way to work, my mom and I passed a sign advertising Bingo events for seniors. Now, I hate social gatherings, and people usually bore and/or annoy me. But I found myself with an intense desire to register for seniors' Bingo night (or morning, probably). Of course, this could be because I'm 82 years old. Or, perhaps, I'm just really excited about the idea of sitting down with a tape recorder and a camera and simply documenting the histories of people I've never met. I wanted to tell little old ladies that they looked exquisite and actually mean the words I said. I wanted to cheer excitedly when Gertrude won for the third time that week. I wanted to listen to John and Ed talk excitedly about the old days while their wives sat by and rolled their sparkly little eyes.

It might sound silly, but I was happily lost in this daydream for most of the morning. And then, as if Fate had heard the wishes of my heart, an old man stopped by the church office. He started off with the Batman / ribbon joke and transitioned seamlessly into a tale about Normandy. (War stories! How did he know? I love a good war story. Or even a bad war story.)

Here comes the troubling part. I woke up this morning at 5 a.m., as you might have read in the previous entry. I didn't die. I then had pleasant thoughts about interacting with other human beings. And I still didn't die. But a bug did bite me on the lip yesterday (okay fine, it was today, but that doesn't fit the storyline as well), which seems to me like sufficient proof that I am morphing into my own archnemesis — a morning person and a people person ALL ROLLED INTO ONE. Next thing you know, I'll be hosting a show with Regis and playing Scrabulous with Oprah on Facebook. You've been warned.

My mother and I had a fight yesterday. I set my alarm for five o'clock this morning. A lot happened between those two sentences, but I'm just here to tell you that the house is really nice and quiet at 5 a.m. I'm still not a morning person, but dang was it nice to be able to move about without tripping over family members and accidentally interrupting someone's TV show or saying something embarrassing while my mom is on the phone with my grandma. When I'm not employed at a nine-to-five gig, I tend to get up at 3 p.m. and stay up until dawn. I hadn't realized how much I missed having the house to myself and how quiet the whole world seems.

Now, I really woke up this early to get some projects done before work today (projects that sadly do not involve writing love letters to Elijah Wood), but it would have been a crime to waste another pretty sunrise. So voila!

No lines this time, either. (Sorry, I don't secretly live next to the world's largest LCD screen.)