Just a little update, because I know you lost sleep over it.

Bring it on, summer.

I have a swimming suit. And I felt so strongly about my good fortune that I'm not only sharing it on my blog, I'm sharing it in next Sunday's column. My good fortune. Not the swimming suit. No, I'm not sharing that. But it's pretty. It's green and black. It's not scandalous. It's not too nunnish. It's ... it's ... the perfect suit.

And, at the very least, it means I don't have to go swimming suit shopping for at least two years. THANK GOD.

(Photo: time.com)

Great. Now you've done it.

I once wrote a column for the school newspaper about my extreme phobia of crickets. I know "extreme phobia" is a bit redundant, but it's the only way to describe my paralyzing fear of them, and of the sound (and feeling) made when stepping on them. Oh, god. My blood just went 30 degrees cooler. I may be dead. I don't know.

See, every summer, my mom and stepdad's house (which is on a farm) is infiltrated with a whole mob of crickets. Big ones. Everywhere. I'm not talking "Erin, you're so silly, there are 10 or 11 in the basement." No. I'm talking you open the silverware drawer and they're in there. Yes, they, as in more than one.

They're in the bathtub. In the dryer. In the toothpaste drawer. Under the computer desk. In the cereal bowl I set on the table. Under the couch where I sleep. Outside, in my car.

Mom's house isn't dirty; it's just when it's July through September, it's cricket season in the country, and Mom's house happens to be in the country. (Ha, like I how I planned my wedding to be AFTER cricket season? So I won't be crying about bugs on my wedding, or losing sleep the nights before the wedding because I'd be sitting up with a flashlight and a shotgun, just daring one to crawl out of its hiding place -- and, no, I've never shot a shotgun).

It's so bad that for a while, I avoided going home when I'd either, A.) have to spend the night, or B.) have to spend long periods of time inside. Outside you can run. Inside, they can pin you between a wall and, well, another wall. Some may call it a corner. I told Mom it was because I LOVED paying to do my laundry in the machines in my apartment's basement, with all the creepy people and the abusive parents and snotty-nosed kids. Love, love it. I told her I didn't need to be fed. Nothing wrong with eating a little PB & J every day. I think she saw right through it.

So, extreme phobia. Got it? OK. Are you prepared for this? I'm not sure I am. But it's time to bring up the purpose of this dreadful blog: They've found more. As in, crickets that -- how wonderful is this!? -- hadn't even been discovered by scientists. Sure, right now, they're in Arizona. But someone just ticked 'em off, and now they're going to come out of the cave and hop eastward. WAY TO GO, GUYS. WAY TO GO. YOU'RE THE REASON WE CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS.

Just what you've been asking for: More Madonna, more horses

There really is no excuse for this. Not when uh, paper prices are so high, and she's so 20 years ago ... Make it stop. Are they kidding -- 58 pages?? That's longer than, well, ... my attention span. How many different horse/Madonna poses could there be?

Crap. Forget I asked.

Madonna stars in 58-page photo spread for W magazine

NEW YORK (AP) - Madonna is back in the saddle again.
The Material Girl/Mom, who broke nine bones in a horse riding accident last year, stars with six Andalusian stallions in a 58-page photo spread in W magazine’s June issue, on newsstands May 19.
On the magazine’s cover, she wears equestrian-inspired garb, complete with a riding crop and fishnet stockings.
Madonna, 47, suffered three cracked ribs, a broken collarbone and a broken hand after falling off a horse on Aug. 16.
Her "Confessions Tour" kicks off in Los Angeles on May 21. She will be supporting her 2005 album, "Confessions on a Dance Floor."---

(Photo: AP)

Ugh. Gross.

This weekend is the weekend of broken hearts.

Who's doing the breaking? Me. To me.

It's time to try to find a swimsuit. Oh, god. I haven't had one in three years. Haven't had a use for one, really. And something about trying on bathing suits in a store under fluorescent lighting with the ink tags and the people waiting to use the dressing room and the tall, tan girls modeling in front of the mirror ... Uh, no thanks.

I'm not the girl who hates what she looks like, or pinches at her stomach in front of the mirror. Nah. I'm OK. It's just that no one -- not even (insert your favorite model or actress here) -- looks good under fluorescent lights. Ugh.

That, and I have unreasonable expectations. It must look cool. Be comfortable. Make me look tanner and taller than I am. Etc. Oh, and be inexpensive, too. Is that too much to ask? I don't want to end up coming home, saying "what's another year" and eating an entire pizza or something. Ha, ha.

Well, at least I have a sense of humor about it.

He does the blues? What?

You thought Oshkosh had it nice when we said Lyle Lovett was coming to town this summer. But it gets better: Jeff Daniels is coming, too.

Yeah, as in the "Dumb and Dumber" star. Only he's not going to get up on stage and re-enact scenes from America's favorite movie (too bad, because I honestly do like it ...). He's going to get up on stage and sing the blues (and do a bit of comedy).

What? Where did this come from? According to his Web site and the news release we got, he's been writing the blues for years. What?? Iiinteresting.

Weekend time

It's that time of week: Almost the weekend, so it's time for Weekend. This week, we've picked out the best music picks in the state for the summer. Not too shabby.

Also, speaking of music in the state, can you say "Julia Roberts' ex-husband"? We can, cuz he's coming to Oshkosh. No, for real.

Now that's a sexy man. Uh, kidding, guys.

Erin's nerdy confession

I have a confession that makes me seem like a big nerd.

I worked late tonight, but that's because I took an hour break for supper. Usually it's not so long. I go the break room, eat some Easy Mac, flip through some channels, go back to work so I can go home earlier. But tonight, I just had to take a longer break.

To watch "Jeopardy!"

Because I can't watch it at home.

I turned on the TV in the break room, and instead of just watching whatever channel someone else was watching earlier that day, I found the menu button. Oh, sweet caroline, it had a menu button. And it had that graphic thingy that lets you watch part of a show in the corner, while scanning other channels. Whoa. I mean, I'm talking tech-no-lo-gee. I vaguely remembered what it was like when I had cable, so I knew how it worked. But man. It was like I died and went to TV heaven. And then I chose a network TV show.

Ha.

I chose to make myself feel stupider and stay late to satisfy my TV needs. But, see, there's a real couch at work. And a sweet, huge TV. And cable. And I just had to watch TV.

Sigh.

Yeah, I just became that girl. I just hung out at work to watch a game show. Oh, god. I think I need a vacation. Or cable.

Come on, who doesn't like babies?

A few of my cousins have had babies before. Well, just two, I guess, on one side.

But this ... this, my friends, was the first Niese cousin baby born. This was the first cousin who I was fairly close to, because on that side of the family, there are only 10 of us, instead of 30-plus on the other side. We're all close, in a weird, would-make-a-good-Lifetime-movie kind of way.

This morning, my cousin Jennie gave birth to a baby with three first names. Whoa. That's a lot of first names (only the last one is actually his last name, it just so happens to be a first name to 99 percent of the English-speaking world). A lot of first names for a lot of baby: that sucker was 9 pounds. Eek. I sat and cried about that and then swore I'd just adopt or something. My god. Also, I hope to never use the phrase "gave birth" in another blog, unless I'm making fun of someone: "So and So gave birth to the spawn of (Satan, etc.)," for example.

Anyhow, all unpleasantries aside, this is weird. I mean, I've seen the kid, so it's kind of "real" to me. He's cute. He's a newborn. He may have been 9 pounds, but he's still tiny to me. He was about .75 inches tall when I saw him on my cell phone in a picture message, actually. The unreal part is that my cousin is about a year older than I am.

She was always the one my other cousin, Kristin, and I would look up to, to ask questions. Now she's got a baby. Now she's a mom. I don't quite know how to handle this. But I do believe I've exceeded my self-imposed once-a-day limit of using the phrase "awww," so I should probably leave well enough alone now and just move on to talking about insignificant things, like celebrity break-ups, or that dull article in Elle this month on Robert Kennedy Jr., which I read just because I think he's hot. Awww.

OK. That's it. ENOUGH.

(Photo: Not really the three-named child. He's just some random baby from -- and I'm not making this address up -- www.pregnancy-leads-to-new-babies.com.)

Pearl Jam just won't go away.

Really, I don't remember when Dave came home last night. He worked at the midnight sale at the record store to bring the people the new Pearl Jam CD they needed about 10 hours before the rest of those in the Central time zone got it (unless they purchased it from iTunes or something).

Wow. What noble work.

Apparently, it went incredibly well. I can't imagine why. But, then again, I'm more of a sleeper than a midnight shopper; I haven't actually been shopping after midnight since my roommate and I did it every Tuesday in college at our beloved Meijer. This regular-hours-at-work thing really messes with my post-midnight grocery shopping.

But, I digress.

This afternoon, I asked him how the sale went. Apparently, it was successful, as I said, but he was especially upset that so many people bought Tool albums. Now, I'm not going to waste my time trying to Google "Tool, new CD" or "Tool, discography," just so I can act like I know when their latest album came out. Was it today? I don't know. That's how much I don't care. I don't even want to know. It will have no effect on my life whatsoever.

But Dave was seriously offended. As if people could actually go to a record store at midnight and NOT buy the new Pearl Jam, even though -- and I paraphrase nearly perfectly -- he "had it blaring on the speakers both inside and outside." I suppose it is kind of odd. It'd be like a bookstore having a Harry Potter midnight sale, and selling like, Goosebump books or something.

(I wonder if people came all dressed up like Harry Potter fans. Guys would wear wigs and their favorite flannels, and stand around looking like they have gout or something painful like that. Man, how cool.)

Well, Dave, I guess you can't just sell the Pearl Jam CD if the people want their Tool. But the people who want their Tool should have stayed home until 10 a.m., as I'm sure it's not really worth losing sleep over. Or, better yet, just set $14.99 on fire instead of actually buying it. I'd rather do that.

I'm sorry, was that mean? Sorry. Sorry. Tool has sold more albums than I ever will. Blah, blah.

And, perhaps because of some odd twist of karma, I now have a large cardboard Pearl Jam poster of the CD cover in my living room, taunting me for ever saying I was bored with Eddie.

Wait (15 seconds elapse). OK, I HAD a Pearl Jam poster in my living room.

I hid it. Who's got karma problems now?

(Photo: From howstuffworks.com; Sleeping: Notice how nowhere in there does it say "this stage is often interrupted for Pearl Jam CD purchases.")

There's no excuse for this. But, please, tell me the windmill spins for real.

I've been sitting here for a good half hour, trying to come up with something witty to say, but I think the windmill kind of speaks for itself.

So, here you go. The beard championships in Germany.

I think it's time I stopped surfing the Internet. Sigh.

(Photo: AFP)

If you believe there's nothing out there to see ...

OK, I found this link on Pop Candy, but it's awesome enough to repeat.

This made my Monday night.

Who loves R.E.M.? Erin. Who loves Bruce Springsteen? Erin. Who loves R.E.M. and Bruce -- together, singing "Man on the Moon"? Uh, duh.

Although, I'm perpetually surprised at Michael Stipes' energy. He looks as if he should be laying around in a hospital gown, complaining about a tapeworm or something. My god that man is grossly skinny. Especially next to Bruce Springsteen, who looks like he could benchpress Stipes. Huh.

(Photo: athensmusic.com. Stipes is in the middle of doing the Elvis bit from "Man on the Moon." I think. Or else he's collapsing from hunger. Whichever.)

Oh, Eddie. Wash your hair.

Things I would not do, unless given $50 in cold, hard cash, under the table:
1. Buy the new Pearl Jam album.
2. Enjoy the new Pearl Jam album.
3. Volunteer to work at midnight to sell the Pearl Jam album on the day it's released.

Things my fiance will do, and would probably pay $50 to do:
1. Buy it.
2. Enjoy it.
3. Volunteer to be the kind guy to hand your tired soul a brand new, sealed, fresh outta the box Pearl Jam album. At midnight. In Wisconsin.

Seriously.

It's not like I don't respect Pearl Jam. I do. Way to go, guys. You did that whole grunge/Seattle/flannel shirt/greasy hair thing. You're not bad musicians. You've got a legacy. Your music isn't bad. As a matter of fact, most of it rocks.

I'm just bored with you. I'm sorry.

If it makes you feel any better, Eddie, Dave still loves you. As a matter of fact, he's not bought coffee, fast food or CDs since he heard you're coming to Summerfest. He's savin' all his couch change, just to see you.