Monstro and I had a date night last night so after a Lagunitas IPA draft and three, $3-apiece maki rolls (Hiroshi's Pub has rockin' sushi), we went to the local multiplex to see The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo: the one directed by David Fincher, starring Daniel Craig as Mikael and Rooney Mara as the fictitious-heroine-force-for-our-time Lisbeth Salander. It kinda sucked.

The rest of this will be Not Safe For Work so go click on a picture of my kids to go somewhere nicer.

I've read all three Girl novels and seen all three Swedish movies, so I am more informed than someone, say, Monstro, who is married to someone who has read all the books and seen the movies.

For him, the plotholes and myriad family characters with Swedish names “who they threw at us for like 5 minutes and that was all” was detrimental. “Oh, and everyone's out raping everyone else.”

The sex in Fincher's film is gratuitously… gratuitous. Mara's Salander thrashing and bucking her should've-been-bonier ass while chained to her conservator's bed. Salander wouldn't bounce her bottom all over the place. Puh-leese. Also, I don't think Salander kicks the dildo up his ass during her revenge in the novel, but I'd have to check the source material to make sure, and I don't wanna. Also, I'm afraid that the Salander rape scene and her ultimate revenge will set back the home-bondage-and-anal-play movement by 20 years, at least. Pity, that.

I did five sun salutations before I ran for 30 minutes today, and both felt pretty darn good. This was the first “good run” I've had in a few weeks; after my fit-test fail I took a couple of weeks off (per the suggestion of “Runner's World,” honest). Yesterday I ran about two miles and today I ran just over that, starting at a slow baseline for 10 minutes and then upping either the speed or the incline for 4 minutes, then recovery.

Also, my hypothesis has been confirmed: Clevelanders drive better in the snow than Massachusettsians do.

Also, on the morning of New Year's Eve, I finally got the Ohio plates for my minivan. Now I just have to send back my old ones to MA.

It will surprise none of you to learn that Monstro and I were the hit of the New Year's Eve party we went to with our best friends here in Cleveland. If you're looking for a way to spend New Year's Eve, go to a party that skews old: where you, your sweet baboo, and your two friends will at first only know yourselves and each other, and throughout the evening become acquainted with the other four people at your large, round, white-tableclothed dinner table. Our table was right next to the open bar and I also got to speak with the two bartenders and the policeman, and I got to kind of school him because he totally let me reach for a napkin on the counter within inches of his well-armed holstered-gun hip. (No, that's not code for anything. He had a gun.) Overall, it was like crashing a wedding on a cruise ship.

Even though the music started in the 1930s, the DJ brought us to a promising Shirelles song that would've had my dad spouting, “now *that's* some great music,” and finally threw us a “how will this go?” round of Let's Get it Started, for which Monstro, Karen, and I raced to the dance floor to vote with our feet. Someone should've called homicide because we were *killing* it on the dance floor. I'm pretty certain the “wooh!”s from strangers were for us. Well, OK, for me. I tore it up.

The surprising buzzkill of the night was Adele's “Rollin' in the Deep” (also the dog of her Royal Albert Hall live recording, because she got all stuffed up during her first encore, “Someone Like You”). RitD simply didn't keep it going on the dance floor, because although it thumps pretty hard, the tempo is not as quick as you think it is. If it got sped up, that would be an amazing song <-- my overall philosophy on improving The [American] Songbook.

The hotel down the road offered a free shuttle as well as a free make-up shuttle when we missed the one we had the reservation with, because the digital clock in our room was 10 minutes slow, which you know the guy who had the room before us did just to mess with us; thanks, buddy.

I also invented another new drink last night. Instead of my Virgin's Blush (tonic water and the merest drizzle of Chambord), this new one doesn't have a name yet; I like “jaundiced zombie” for its irony, because it's a light, rehydrating cocktail that settles one's overextended tummy right quick. Next time you're in need of something low-alcohol, fresh, and stomach-settling, try tonic water mixed with a 1/3 shot of Grand Marnier. Tonic water has a lot of sugar so if you're watching that, try it with Schweppes' diet tonic water, the only one worth mixing with quality booze that I know of. How about you?

With either tonic, it's delicious –fizzy bitter orange– but if your bartender's Polish and wearing a patchworked vest of Crown Royale bags? He'll look at you funny.

It's worth it. *Best* of all, though, was that we had an OVERNIGHT SITTER (cue angelsong) and didn't come home until noon, well, 12:02 on New Year's Day. And, because it's Sunday, we'll all still get to watch the Tournament of Roses Parade tomorrow morning on HGTV, where it will I believe be broadcast commercial-free.

Happy New Year and best wishes for 2012 from all of us here at Motormouth, who love you very much.

Mom's health aide arrived 20 minutes late. “Are you OK?” I asked. “I feel like I might be coming down with something,” she said, “but I hate calling in.” I sent her home. Now, my house is cleaner than it would have been if she'd been here for 5 hours, so I'll take that.

I'm having coffee tomorrow morning with the woman who spearheaded Cleveland's Parkinson's Disease fundraiser, and I'm really looking forward to it.

I may also be within three steps of getting Ohio plates on my car, but I don't want to jinx it by saying anything.

Finally got my Lohan cover-issue of Playboy and I've got to give it to Lindsay, her boobs totally point in the same direction. Too bad her eyes don't.

Sorry for the bummer post left below for the holiday season. That was the day that I took my three-month fitness evaluation and learned that after attending the gym 40 times from Sept. 11 to Dec. 8th, I was actually two-percent fatter. I am the only person I know who goes to the gym “like a machine” (other people's words, not mine) and gets fatter for the effort. For real. I can run three miles in 36:30 and five miles in less time than it used to take me to run four, and I'm fatter.

All-in-all I guess things are going OK, with just enough annoyances to keep me from becoming too proud of myself. The Master Theorem is going on hiatus and I'm bummed, bummed, bummed, as it was a once-a-week assurance that I would use my brain for something. There's something very… turgid about answering The World's Most Obvious Questions day after day, hour after hour, sometimes minute after minute (BK's a repeat-requester, the one who asks me to do something while I'm doing that very something). I sent M, TMT's master of the game, a pathetic thank-you note that he probably found hilarious, because more and more I'm learning how funny my pathos is to other people, and as I believe that comedy exists to help to alleviate our –inherently human– fear of death, there's something rather apropos about the whole thing.

The good news is that even though we weren't there for Christmas Eve or Christmas morning, we have found a church, and the people are friendly and welcoming and we're enjoying the effort we put in. So far I've made salad and garlic bread for our shelter-ees one night and also brought a plate of our homemade cookies for their finger-food festival fellowship hour (that feels like it should be in capitals but I'm not going to change it). As I handed over the cookies the lady accepting them said, “Lynn, you get to take a bye for a week,” inferring an as-needed basis. Nice.

For those seeking closure on a few things I've written about:

1) “Hey Lynn, what happened with the guy who gave you your first kiss and then went on to commit your hometown's first murder in nearly 20 years?” [Ed. note: tragic photo accompanies article and the whole story's' a total bummer, which contributed to my downwardness before Christmas.]

2) “Played any ukulele lately?” (yeah, and the picture makes me look like a chinny dork, but also captions me with the wrong name, so it's fine.) My book is on the right.

Anyway, it's nearly the new year, and it's time for new heights and new goals and new things that not only let-but-encourage me to use my brain. Coming soon!

Some days are for running hard at the gym; other days are for crying in the changing room. Today was the latter.

Sorry for the lack of a birthday post prior to this. It was indeed an incredible day. Monstro bought me a spectacular piece of jewelry, I had two tequila shots at our family's Mexican lunch (one was free and came with a song and a sombrero. Olé!), and then Monstro, the boys, MFM (My Favorite Mother for those of you keeping track) and I went to the opening-day premiere of “The Muppets.” Words cannot express how much of an impact the Muppets had on my formative years, so for their new movie to premiere on my 40th birthday was kismet. After the movie we went home and then once the sitters arrived, Monstro took me to dinner at our new favorite restaurant, where the owner gave me the sweet-potato-pecan pie he was going to have on his Thanksgiving (he let me share it with every patron in the restaurant), and then we went to an Irish pub with a kickin' band (for old guys) and our next-door neighbors showed up and they played One Bourbon, One Shot, and One Beer, which made me curse Alex a little for being such an asshole and killing himself, and then we went home, and in the morning Monstro and I had furtive “don't let anyone know we're already awake” sex. Which, besides camping sex, is about my favorite kind of sex.

All in all, a spectacular ringing in of this new decade. Holla!