impatient chicken

In which I talk about the contents of my sinuses

2012-01-12T20:13:00.003-06:00

Warning: this is gross, ok?

So, sinus surgery. I did that. A few days before New Year's Eve, I checked in to the hospital in the morning, and by evening I was back home, a little wobbly on my feet, but overall doing fine.

They made me shower both the night before and the day of the surgery, which you know I was fine with, or rather, would have been fine with under normal circumstances. Unfortunately, they told me that I was not allowed to put on any lotion after my shower. This I did not care for. I apply moisturizer with a frequency that should entitle me to some sort of bulk discount. So that part was tough.

I expected to have quite a bit of pain afterward, but it was pretty manageable with just Tylenol. They gave me some anti-nausea medicine, which I didn't see the point of until a few days later, when the massive amount of drainage I had going on became a little much to take on my stomach. Didn't like that. Also didn't like the fact that I the inside of my face felt raw. Also didn't like the fact that every time I got out of bed and moved around, no matter how little I moved or exerted myself, I had blood start running out of my nose into the handy mustache bandage taped under my nose.

Also didn't like having to chew with my mouth open for several days due to the fact that absolutely no air could get into my body through my nose. Pretty sure RR didn't care for that, either. But she was very sweet about her self-imposed nursing duties. She picked up my prescriptions, brought me food, helped me move around, forced me not to over-excert myself, tolerated my choice of television shows, and sua sponte checked my bandage. I guess what's a twin sister for if not to check your bandage to see if it's full of fluids that ran out of your nose, right?

Finally after a week I was allowed to go back to using my neti pot and washed quite a bit of blood out of my sinuses. I cheated a bit and did it a day earlier than I was probably supposed to. It was gross. It was goopy, to a degree that made me afraid I'd done some damage by using my neti too early. I made RR look at what came out in case it was maybe not just blood and mucus but maybe also a part of the foam they sprayed in my sinuses in lieu of packing gauze into my nose. RR--Dude, I'm so sorry. Clearly, I owe you.

I'm still getting blood out of my sinuses, actually, but it doesn't worry me as much. Yesterday, I went for my post-op appointment, and the doctor said everything looked pretty good. Well, except for the part where she decided she needed to vacuum a bloody clot of . . . something out of my ethmoid sinus Apparently, I had some blood (or something) that had solidified and wasn't going to come out, even with the neti. Have you ever had anyone put a suction device into your sinuses? Let me tell ya, it hurts. A lot. I think whatever it was did not want to come out. I thought she was going to turn my face inside out with that vacuum.

I mentioned to her that I'd been getting a lot of blood out with my neti pot, and she nodded, saying it made sense, explaining to me that "if you think about it, when you have the surgery, blood pools there in your sinuses and congeals there." Congeals. She said it "congeals" there. I think she meant that to be reassuring.

"Wait," RR said, interrupting me as I was telling this to her, "she said 'congeals'? Not 'coagulates'? Like Jello?" EXACTLY. That's exactly what I thought when the doctor told me that. We're not twins for nothing. "Yep," I told RR, "blood Jello."

At least this cleared up a mystery for us. Starting a few days after the surgery, I became afflicted with a persistent smell in my nose. It was not exactly revolting, but it was definitely unpleasant. No matter what I did, that was pretty much all I could smell, and I smelled it all the time. A family consult resulted in a verdict that it was probably blood. And I think we were definitely right about that one. Must have been the blood pooling there. And then congealing.

Last night I tried to tell RR that the idea of her eosinophils "degranulating" in her esophagus was way grosser than blood jello, but she stood firm in her position that nothing we could talk about that day would be more gross than blood jello.

I guess if I look at it objectively, she's right.

But at least I have a new descriptor I can use. For example, when I called RR today to tell her that I figured out why my face was hurting today, "because when I blew my nose, I got out a lot of blood jello." That's way easier than trying to describe its physical properties to her, which you know I would have.

I'm wondering if we should give it another name, like "cranberry sauce."

Hey, I TOLD you this was going to be gross. I would not lie to you about that. But I think it's probably best if we just end this post here.

At least we all like Starbucks, so we've got that going for us

2012-01-12T12:00:00.001-06:00

Well, the holidays are over, and I’m happy they were so uneventful. My immediate family spent several hours at my grandparents’ house before relocating to my parents’ house to spend a few more hours. My grandfather wished that we had stayed longer, but although we didn’t tell him this, we had all had about as much as we could take of the central heating. My grandfather, now that he is in his 80s, has succumbed to the elderly-person habit of cranking up the heat high enough to make his house suitable for incubating baby animals or growing tropical plants. He’s always been on the cold side—I can’t remember a time in my life when he didn’t wear a cardigan all the time, even in summer. But lately, it’s worse. My grandmother has always liked the house cold, so we could count on her to keep the house temperature lower than, say, how hot my paternal grandfather liked to keep his house—a temperature that guaranteed limited visits because we could only stay for about half an hour before becoming too physically uncomfortable to stay longer. It was oppressive. Sitting across from my dad in the living room, I’d gauge when we needed to leave by how close he looked to passing out. As soon he’d start looking wilty, I’d start making the departure talk.

We’d always been spared that at my maternal grandparents’ house thanks to my grandmother, but since she returned from the hospital, she’s a changed woman as far as her body temperature. She was our last line of defense, and she’s been breached. So far, it’s not “no, really, you’ll die after an hour” temperature, but it is “Are you sweating? I’m definitely sweating” hot.

Gift giving didn’t take up too much time, as my family has mostly gone the gift card route due to a standoff over what kind of gifts we’ll buy and when they need to be purchased. RR and I flat out declined to give a wish list this year because they never want to buy us what we really want and because we thought we should focus on family rather than presents. My family is not so much on the “spirit of the season” bandwagon, though, so we got gift cards. Don’t worry, we had our revenge. I’m sure that my teenage cousins, parents, brother, and grandparents were all thrilled with the flock of chicks that RR and I purchased on their behalf from Heifer, International.

I’m not normally a fan of making a charitable donation as a gift unless it was a request or if it’s for someone who you know will appreciate it. As with all gifts, the key is knowing the recipient—the Kiva gift certificate I got as a gift one year from Hils is still one of my favorite gifts ever. But most of my family is more on the materialistic side. Wanting a physical present at Christmas doesn’t make you a terrible person, since that’s the expectation we’ve encouraged people to have, but I feel like with my religious family, it should be easier to counter. I wouldn’t mind more gift-giving because I love giving presents, but my family takes what should be a fun activity—buying something to give to someone you love—and makes it on the same level of fun as doing your taxes or changing your tire in the rain.

We’ve tried lists, but then my family members shop from their own lists before Christmas, so that you have to either expect to make another days-before-Christmas to the store for an exchange or wait and buy your gift at the last possible opportunity to make sure that they haven’t already bought what you want to get them. When we try to buy them something not on the list, then with the exception of my dad, they are visibly unexcited about their gifts. But actually getting them to tell you what they want at any time more than a week before Christmas takes an excessive amount of nagging. And my brother often waits until mere days before Christmas before deciding that he (a) thinks us siblings should go in together on a gift for the parents and (b) should probably call us to see what we want to buy. None of us are organized, so I wouldn’t fault him for the last-minute-ness, but about 95% of the time, RR and I wind up being the ones going to the store to buy the gifts, a chore we've come to loathe. And I don’t know why he bothers anyway, because he always has a better idea of what they’d like than we do, and yet our parents always assume that we picked out the good gifts, so it’s not like he even gets credit for it. Maybe if he bought his gifts on his own every year, he’d have a better gift-giving reputation.

This year, my sister and I suggested a gift to my parents, and they seemed agreeable to it, but then, days before Christmas, we got the brother phone call, which ultimately resulted in the Day of Disappointment, as I have decided to call this year’s Christmas celebration.

Him: What do you want to get them?
Me: We’re getting them a membership to the [local museum we all enjoy].
Him: Hmm. [Pause] Mom said Dad wants a Shop Vac.
Me: Oh. So . . . you don’t want to do the membership?
Him: I don’t know. It just seems like they won’t use it that much.
Me: But they said . . . [banging my head against the wall] Ok, I’ll ask them again.

So I called my parents, and days before Christmas, they decide that yeah, they’re not sure they’d use the membership that much. Mom: Your dad wants a Shop Vac? Me, cracking under the weight of frustration: I’M NOT GOING TO THE MALL ON CHRISTMAS EVE!

I may or may not have said this is a raised tone of voice, standing,with my parents, outside of the museum that my parents thought they would probably not visit very often, on our way into said museum.

Of course, I didn’t want to be a total killjoy, so I was willing to contribute to a Shop Vac, just not to brave mall craziness. Would brother step up to the plate and take one for the team?

Me to my brother: They don’t want the membership.
Him: You want to do the Shop Vac?
Me: I’m not going to the mall on Christmas Eve.
Him: [pause] We can get them Starbucks gift cards.
Me, in my head: I KNEW IT.

Every year, RR and I try to get our family to focus more on doing activities together or starting a new tradition to celebrate Christmas rather than focusing on presents, and every year we get rebuffed. I guess spending more time together is not something anyone besides RR and I looks forward to. That’s all fine and good, but neither RR and I really want more stuff, so every year we tell our family that they can make a charitable donation in our name, or they can give us a gift from a list of practical items that we need to buy anyway, or they could, you know, not buy anything. But they never want to do any of that. They always want to buy us stuff, which we don’t want.

One year my sister tried to talk my grandmother into making a contribution to buying diapers for orphans, and my grandmother shot it down immediately, saying “they’ll be plenty of time to buy diapers for you later.” This despite the fact that (1) the diapers weren’t for her, (2) she doesn’t want kids and plans to never have any, so there won’t be any reason to buy diapers for her later, and (3) this was the gift she actually wanted. But my grandmother didn’t want to buy RR the gift she wanted. She wanted to buy RR the gift she thought RR should want. And that’s how my family operates. You should want this e-reader, and therefore I will not buy you the gift certificate to the used book store that you’d actually like to have.

So this year, RR and I cracked and decided that if they would force gifts on us that we don’t want in the name of doing something nice for us, even though it’s the opposite of what we want, then turnabout is fair play. Hence the Heifer, Int’l donations.

Have you bought anything from Heifer? It’s fun. We had a hard time choosing. You can buy a flock of chicks, a flock of geese, a flock of ducks . . . but as RR pointed out to me, there’s no flock of seagulls option.

Anyway, the holidays are over, and hopefully we’ve all learned something. I’ve learned that if I want gift buying for family to not raise my blood pressure, I have to pin them down early, whether they like it or not. And hopefully they’ve learned that if they don’t cooperate, they’re going to be awfully disappointed on December 25th. But I think what we’ve probably all really learned is that next year, we’re all getting Starbucks gift cards.

Some consequences of being scheduled for sinus surgery

2011-12-01T13:33:00.001-06:00

One consequence of having a sinus surgery in the near future is that I have had to learn more than I want to about sinuses. While I was consulting my new doctor the Internet, I came across a website discussing acute ethmoid sinusitis. This website kept referring to something called the “middle meatus.” So now I have finally found a term I find more unappealing than “bolus.”

I do not want to hear the word “meatus” spoken. I do not even want to hear it in my head. I do not want to think about a part of the body being described as “the meatus.” And somehow adding the word “middle” to it just makes it worse. And yet I know I will find myself saying it, for example, to demand that the heat be turned off. “Turn off the central heating! The meatus commands it!” This will simultaneously amuse and disgust me. I'll laugh at my own comment, and then feel disappointed in myself.

A more positive consequence of having sinus surgery is that I won’t have to get any flak for my usual New Year’s Eve celebration of kicking back in my jammies and watching movies. My surgery is just a few days before, and I may be puffy or have facial discoloration, and if they're going to put in splints or anything like that, they'll probably still be there. Also, I may have to be sporting what they call a "mustache bandage," and there ain't no way I'm going out in public like that.

As much as I like the idea of attending a glitzy New Year’s celebration, I don’t enjoy staying up that late or drinking champagne or mingling with strangers. But I do enjoy being at home, watching movies, and wearing my pajamas. People always seem a little disappointed when I tell them my plans, but since as a person I tend to be a little disappointing generally, I think they shouldn’t be surprised. “Oh, you want to hear about my work as an attorney? Great. Let me tell you about this argument we had the other day about whether we should say that ‘the plaintiff’s claims should have been dismissed’ or ‘the plaintiff’s case should have been dismissed.’ I thought for a minute there it would come to blows.”

But this year, all I have to do is preface the discussion of my plans with the statement, “Well, I’ll still be recovering from surgery, so . . .” and then I’ll get nothing but sympathy and understanding. Win! My meatus and my mustachioed self can enjoy the evening in peace.

Nosebleed season is upon us

2011-12-01T11:18:00.001-06:00

Ah, winter. Although it hasn't started staying cold during the day yet, it has been cold at night and in the mornings. I love this time of year because I can wear cute plaid skirts with fun tights, and boots, and cute jackets, and scarfs. I love cold-weather clothes. I love flannel pajamas. I love cuddling into bed to read under a thick pile of blankets. And of course, I love the holiday season. It is, after all, the most wonderful time of the year.

What I do not like about this time of year is the dry winter air and the even drier inside air. My sinuses, alas, are pathetically wimpy. The minute the central heating gets kicked on, the nosebleeds begin.

I’ve had nosebleeds all my life. When I was a kid, they could be really bad. Once I reached my teens, they became a lot less severe and more infrequent. Now, thanks to the wonders of saline nasal spray, I hardly ever get blood running out of my nose. But I do, however, spend most of the winter with blood in my nose. Sneezing? Blood in the tissue. Using the neti pot? Blood clots in the sink. It’s gross. It’s annoying. And the inside of my nose always feels raw and irritated. That makes me irritable.

It also makes everyone around me irritable because I insist that the heater be run as little as possible. If I’m in the car, I hope you have heated seats, because that’s all the warmth you’re gonna get. In my townhouse? My poor sister freezes because I set the heater high enough to keep the pipes from freezing and not much above that. At the office? My office has the thermostat that controls my office and the ones around me. It’s mostly guys, so they haven't complained, but my friend in the office next door? She freezes. The other day she asked me, “Does it seem cold in here to you? I’m freezing?” I feigned ignorance. “Not me, I’m hot,” I said. I was hot, but only because I’d just sneezed several times in a row. I didn’t tell her that I’d spent the previous 5 minutes sitting on my hands because they were too cold for me to type.

It’s only going to get worse at the end of the month because, like hundreds of thousands of people do every year, I’m having surgery on my sinuses to get rid of a chronic infection. Is this surgery common the world over, or just here in the U.S.? I don’t know if we have defective sinuses over here or just bad environmental factors that make us prone to infections, or if maybe it’s a design flaw in the human body generally. But in any case, I’m having my problem taking care of.

Getting information from my ENT about this procedure has been like pulling teeth. When the nurse called to tell me that a CT scan had shown that, yep, despite round after round of antibiotics, that infection was still hanging on, so the doc wanted me to have surgery, she didn’t ask if I wanted to talk to the doctor about it. She just asked, “When do you want to schedule it?” I asked her, “Um, are there any, like, downsides, or anything?” (Ok, yes, I sounded like a teenager, but I was so taken aback at the “YouneedtohaveananteriorethmoidectomyandabilateralmaxillaryantrostomyWhendoyouwantoscheduleit?” that I couldn’t form a coherent thought.) Her response? “Um, not that I know of.”

Dude, there are always downsides to any medical procedure. I asked her if there was some place I could get some information and she told me I could google it. I could google it. That’s how I could find out about pros and cons of surgery. But she warned me that of course there’s a lot of misinformation out there. Yes, I know. That’s why I asked someone at my doctor’s office about it instead of asking the Internet. Fabulous.

Anyway, according to the Internet, you are at risk of nosebleeds for about a week or so after the surgery, and you need to keep your sinuses from drying out. Considering that they are already in a constant state of dried-out-ness, I’m not sure how to accomplish this, but I’m pretty sure I’m now required to buy the Hello Kitty humidifier I’ve been eying for a few years. It also means that everyone around me is about to get a little bit colder. Sorry, RR. Sorry, coworkers. You’re just going to have to suffer for a bit. The Internet said so.

My Halloween: The Trouble With Harry

2011-11-07T19:55:00.000-06:00

Thanks to a healthy dose of professional-grade guilt trip served up by mom, I spent Halloween night at my parents' house helping my dad hand out candy. My mom couldn't be there because she was at the rehabilitation facility with my grandmother because my grandmother had guilt-tripped my mom into staying until she (my grandmother, not my mom) went to bed for the night. It's true what they say--guilt rolls down hill.

But the night before Halloween, RR and I celebrated by watching The Trouble With Harry, our favorite Hitchcock film.

It's not a Halloween movie, but it is a fall movie, and it seemed appropriate. I haven't met many people outside of my family who like this movie, and I think it has something to do with expectations. This movie isn't like any other Hitchcock movie other than the fact that the sense of humor that runs through it. It's not a suspense movie like Rear Window or a scary movie like Psycho. It's a comedy, the only one Hitchcock ever made to my knowledge. But TTWH is a black comedy, and that may be another reason some people don't like it.

Not a lot happens in the movie (one more reason some people may not like it); the whole point of the movie seems to be to showcase the quirky inhabitants of a picturesque New England town. The trouble with Harry is that he's dead, and nobody is quite sure what to do about it, and the question of how he died and, more importantly, what to do with his body are basically the entire plot of the movie. I can't explain why we like the movie so much, but it might be because we love dark comedies, and we love the dialogue. And the skeptical and deadpan reactions of Mildred Dunnock, the actress playing Mrs. Wiggs.

I want to be this woman.

And everything about John Forsythe's character. And Shirley Maclaine, charming the socks off of everyone. And the adorable Edmund Gween and Mildred Natwick.

And of course, Jerry Mathers in his pre-"Leave It To Beaver" days. Here he is trying to explain to Sam Marlowe (Forsythe's character) about days of the week (see about a minute in).

And last but not least, the score by Bernard Herrmann is absulutely perfect for the movie. I defy anyone to listen to it and not feel the urge to get into mild mischief. (You can listen to it online if you have Spotify.)

All in all, I'd say it was a perfect way to celebrate Halloween.

Speaking of black comedies, if you're a fan of the genre, you should consider watching Kiss Me, Kill Me (킬미).

It's a Korean movie from 2009. The movie is about a suicidal woman who hires a hit man to do the job for her, his reluctance to carry it out, his evolving feelings about his chosen career, and the connection the two characters come to feel to each other. I'm not sure if it's available on Netflix, but it is available online at various websites. It's heavy on the "black" part of "black comedy," but it actually made me laugh out loud in some moments, and that's rare for me when it comes to movies. It also made me cry, so fair warning. I would definitely recommend it if you like that genre of movies.

Any suggestions for good movies along these lines?

State Fair 2011

2011-11-05T16:09:00.003-06:00

A few weeks ago, Hils, RR, and I made our yearly trek to thestate fair. It's a rather mild trek, asfar as treks go amongst the three of us. While we were in college together, we took a number of road trips together, but something alwayswent wrong on those trips. Our firsttrip together included such funactivities as having a flat tire, then nearly getting hit by a train at a"look and listen" railroad crossing. We apparently were not looking in the right place and didn't know therewas a train there until we felt the tracks rumbling right as we crossed them andthen heard the train behind us right as we got over them. Actually, one of us suspected that bright lightheading toward us was a train, but the other two shot down the suggestionbecause the light was "coming right at us" and therefore had to beoncoming traffic.

Ahem. Anyway.

After two subsequent trips, one that involvedgetting stuck on a roundabout and the other that involved two separate (minor)car accidents within a 3 hour period, we realized that the incident rate wasescalating to the point that the only thing left was something involving deathby fire for one if not all of us. Now westick to local outings.

And for years now, one of those local outings has beenthe fair. We love the fair. If you havenever been to a state fair, and in particular a large state fair like the onehere in Texas, you are missing an excellent people watching opportunity. You see the most interesting mix of peoplethere. And by "interesting," I mean "I did not know those peopleactually existed" kind of interesting. It is America at its best and at its worst.

If you want to know whyAmericans are so fat, here is a perfect representation: a butter sculpture that was almost as tall as I am. Isit only in this country that every year we build a monument to fat? It's pretty impressive work, and I am alwaysboth charmed and horrified by it.

From the butter sculpture, we proceeded towhat we call "The Hall of Crap." That's where they sell a lot ofstuff that you see on informercials, like the ShamWow. I seriously love theHall of Crap. That makes sense, considering how much I also loveinformercials. But not everything in thebuilding is garbage or "As Seen On T.V." They also sell some quality craft-type goods, and I buy a scarf thereevery year.

We also stopped by thebuilding in which they sell Texas-made products. They were selling these pecansthere.

This packaging really botheredme. First of all, "Sinamen"?No. Just no. Please stop changing the spelling of words so that you can have towords that start with the same letter. And cinnamon is not "sinful"no matter how good it is. And cinnamon ends in "mon" not"men." And also, it's never, ever "sassy." Second, what isgoing on with that poor man's arms? One is completely misshapen, and the otheris missing! That does not make the labelcute. It makes it either sad or scary,depending on whether the arm situation resulted from a tragic accident or somekind of science experiment gone wrong that turned him into a mutant who couldgo "sassy" on you at any minute.

We also saw the world's tallestmattress stack, which actually was not that impressive.

As much as I love thefair, the best part of the weekend was when we made nachos using homemade Roteldip. And when I say homemade, I mean wemade the American cheese used in the recipe.If you aren't familiar with Roteldip, then you probably aren't from the American South. It's just Velveeta "cheese" meltedwith a can of Rotel (which is just chopped tomatoes and peppers). It's mildlyspicy, it's terrible for you, and it's kind of disgusting, seeing as how it's Velveeta.But it's also kind of wonderful and addicting. Whenever you have some, youthink "I am never eating that again because I don't want to die thisyoung." Then you recover, time passes,and you decide once again that fake cheese and chemically preserved vegetablessound like a good idea for dinner. And it was a tradition of our state fairweekend for years, right up until RR and I got diagnosed with our manyallergies and had to stop eating both Velveeta and Rotel.

AND THEN RR found arecipe for how to make your own American cheese, a discovery she announced to me via an email with the subject line in all caps and multiple exclamation points (because yea! nachos!). We made it, melted it down andadded a jalapeno, a Fresno pepper, some tomatoes (except for RR, who isallergic), and some gochujang. It wasfantastic. In total honesty, though, I have to acknowledge that although homemadeAmerican cheese tastes better than Velveeta and is less toxic, eating too muchof it will still make you feel nauseated.

But all in all, it was a good weekend.

Fact Friday!

2011-10-28T21:36:00.003-05:00

I have hypermobility in my elbows, which means I sometimes accidentally freak people out, but also means there's no spot on my back that I can't reach. Jealous?

Before the Rain

2011-10-23T21:03:00.002-05:00

Here are some more pictures of the Texas sky, this time before the rain. Nights like the one in the pictures are why I love living in Texas. Yes, this part of the state is flat with short, stubby trees (compared to other parts of the country, anyway), but that just means you see more of the sky. Of course, I say it's flat, but then I took these pictures looking up at slight hill, so maybe these aren't the best illustration of the big sky I'm talking about.

These pictures were taken yesterday from and near the parking lot of the rehabilitation hospital where my grandmother has been staying, where they force her to grudgingly exercise to rebuild her strength, so that she can get out of the wheelchair she's been in since she fell. She doesn't think she needs to do them, and she gets mad at my mom for making her, so she pretends to be asleep when my mom tries to make her go through her routine. I have already talked to my mom about how she's not going to be stubborn like that when she's her mother's age. She says she won't be, but she already kind of is, so I imagine in 20 years my mother will be pretending to be a sleep when I visit her.

I took some of the pictures on my way into visit my grandmother, about half an hour before I literally bored her to sleep (I think at one point I tried to talk about how new and clean her socks looked--and that was me making an effort) (I was tired! I did not bring my conversation A-game).

The rest of the pics I took as I pulled out of the parking lot on my way home. Yes, while driving. Don't worry, there were no other cars around, and I was watching the road, not the camera (hence the slight blurriness).

As expected from the pictures, we had quite the storm last night. Don't you love the way the air feels after it rains?

I hope everyone has a great week!

It's Fact Friday!

2011-10-21T22:52:00.000-05:00

Well, hello there! I don't have time to post anything substantive today, but I don't want to put off posting, either. I figure that I have time to post a very quick fact about myself. And maybe I can make this a regular Friday feature? That would be an easy way to make sure that I post at least something every week.

So here's something: I'm left-handed.

(I didn't say the fact would be interesting.)

The view from the parking garage this morning

2011-10-12T21:46:00.003-05:00

I think I speak for everyone in the North Texas area when I say, YEA FOR RAIN!!! Even though the storm was very loud, and I was a little afraid our windows might break, I can't feel anything but happiness that it rained during the night. And then this morning, the sun coming through the clouds was breathtaking. These pictures don't do it justice. It was pretty easy to be in a good mood after this.

If These Events Were Sports, I'd Always Win Gold

2011-10-11T19:32:00.000-05:00

I'm not athletic, not every close, although I sometimes take a stab at it. But that doesn't mean I don't have certain areas in my life in which I perform better than the average person. Oh, no, my friend, I have skills.

Unfortunately, although the kind of skills I have make my life a little easier, they aren't exactly marketable. For example:

(1) Tossing a bag of trash into a dumpster--even when the dumpster is really full.

This really is a skill that takes developing. You have to know where the bag will fit and how hard to throw it so that it sticks the landing. You can tell that not everyone can do this by the bags of trash that can always be found surrounding a full dumpster.

(2) Changing into comfortable clothes.

I don't like wearing constrictive clothing, a category that for me includes jeans and everything I wear to work. As soon as I have verified that I won't have to leave the house for the rest of the day, or at least for a few hours, the pants are off like a flash, and (usually) the yoga pants come on. I'm seriously fast.

(3) Getting out of the vehicle as soon as it's come to a stop.

I'm always the first person out of the car. I don't know what takes everyone else so long. I don't see what they're doing because I'm out of the car. It baffles me. Seat belt off, grab your bag, open door, exit. Where the delay comes in is a mystery. What are you people doing in there?

I'm thinking I need to develop some new skills, or else find a way to make these skills work for me in a way that pays. I'd be a terrible actress, so I don't see how the quick-change ability could come in handy. While trash-tossing could be a fun hobby, I don't see that translating into a job. So that leaves the getting-out-of-the-car thing. I can't think of how that would work in a job that's legal. I can see that getting out of the car fast would be useful if one was fleeing from the police after knocking over a bank, but that's it.

Ideas? Anyone?

Portland!

2011-09-29T22:23:00.000-05:00

So, RR and I went to Portland, Oregon. We've never been to Portland, Maine, but I hear it's lovely there. But we can only speak about Oregon. It was pretty.

One reason we went was to visit our friend who just moved there. She doesn't know anyone in Oregon, and she's starting her Ph.D. program and was a little nervous about it (I don't know why, she's brilliant). Another reason is because we'd heard that there are lots of restaurants and bakeries that were willing to accommodate people with multiple food allergies--that, unfortunately, turned out to be true (see references to weight gain, below).

I had never been to the Pacific Northwest, but I'd wanted to for a long time because I love trees and green things, and they have lots of coffee there.

So we did a lot of this:

You know what they also have a lot of there? Chocolate. CHOCOLATE, y'all. [side note on the importance of commas: without a comma in the previous sentence, I would have been saying that they have a lot of "chocolate y'all" in Portland, and I don't know what a chocolate y'all is, nor do I know if Portland has any. Commas matter, y'all.]

Anyway. CHOCOLATE. That even I can eat. And I did. A lot.

RR and I were a little afraid that the housekeeper at the hotel would open the fridge and see it stuffed full of partially eaten chocolate items and think "this is why everyone in this country is fat." That's not incorrect, but I really don't want to be Exhibit A in the case of The Problem With The American Diet.

That is one of the reasons why we kept the "do not disturb" sign on the door for most of the trip. The other reason was that I don't need housekeeping to notice that I pack each article of my clothing in its own individual Ziplock bag and decide that I'm crazy. I'm not crazy. I'm just really, really paranoid about bedbugs, and Portland has problems in that area.

We also visited the Portland Farmer's Market, where they had a lot of beautiful vegetables, some good coffee, and, oh, yeah, a stand that sold chocolate pie we could have.

We bought two.

We ate one that night with a coffee stirrer, being unable to make ourselves wait until the next day when we could acquire cutlery. In our defense, I can't tell you how long it's been since we were able to buy pie we could safely eat. And we seriously love pie.

To help balance things out, we walked a ton, and I love that Portland's downtown area is very walkable. Some of our walking was due to our repeatedly getting lost. Even with phones with GPS, we still had problems. Yes, we are that talented. But it is always a little bit of a blessing getting lost, however annoying it is at the time, because you get to see parts of a city you might otherwise not ever visit see. Of course, when we got off a bus at the wrong place on the Pacific Highway, it didn't feel like a blessing.

That bit was kind of my fault, as I'd insisted that we take the bus out to this one particular grocery store that we all like here in Texas. I thought it would make my friend feel more comfortable in her new city, and she could stock up on her favorite groceries. But not only is it not close, but it's a smaller store than the one she's used to, and it didn't have some of the items she was really looking forward to buying.

I won't consider it a total waste of time because now my friend won't spend any time thinking she'd like to go there but feeling too afraid to get on the bus to the suburbs. No, she won't be going back there soon, if ever. I think it was the nearly missing the bus on the way back that did her in. Or maybe the weird guy at the bus stop in the middle of Sketchyville on the Pacific Highway. I'm not sure. But either way, she's seen it, and now she knows she's not missing anything.

They did sell this:

I've seen this mistake before, but only on the Internet, never in person. I was delighted to see it. I don't always laugh at mangled English. It's not hard to learn enough of another language to get by in restaurants or at grocery stores, but it's very hard to learn another language really fluently. So I try to give people a break. But I do laugh when the language mangling is done by a company that surely has access to people who speak fluent English. And I do laugh when, by merely changing a letter placement, the company changes the name or description of the product from something people want to buy to eat (bean curd) into a word that people use to avoid saying "sh!t."

So that was our trip to the suburbs. Tigard, Oregon, I salute you and your bean crud.

We didn't just walk around in circles while we were there, although sometimes it felt like it. We saw "Dial M For Murder" in 3D. We, of course, went to Powell's Books, where I bought Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior. It was an enjoyable, interesting, easy read, and I managed to get most of it read on the plane ride back. That was a huge deal for me because I usually get too nauseated on planes to read. Our friend was so happy that we didn't get sick on the plane, she jokingly said, "Hey, now you're ready for the trip to Korea!" Yeah, not so fast. I haven't even made it to Europe yet. And I still get antsy if I have to sit on a plane for four hours. But still! Progress! Maybe one day I'll even make it to Australia, although I've kinda given up on that dream because of my fear of all the deadly things there. I can't pack myself in a giant Ziplock. Right?

And of course the Farmer's Market and the chocolate places. Thank you, Moonstruck and Cacao, for making us a little fatter.

Cacao. The picture's a little blurry because I was too excited to have a steady hand.

Oh, and, the cafe at the Nordstrom in downtown carried a cookie that we had over a year ago and haven't been able to find since.

Yea, peanut butter fatness.

Oh, and we went to the Oregon DMV. Twice.

I don't mind going to the DMV, generally, because it provides cross-section data of Americans. Everyone has to go to the DMV (well, everyone who wants to legally drive or go places that require I.D.), so you see all types. But it can't truthfully be described as a pleasant experience, and twice seems excessive. And sadly, our friend will have to go yet a third time because even though we had all the right forms by the second trip, we weren't told on the first trip that she needed to wait until school started so that her enrollment could be verified. The DMV employees were all very nice when they turned us away, but it still gave one the feeling of defeat. That was ok, though, because as we discussed with our friend, going to the DMV is a universal American experience--meaning, wherever you go in the U.S., the experience will be the same. You always know what to expect there. So it kind of makes you feel like no matter what state you're in, you're still home.

I guess that's enough about our trip for now. I don't have a good ending for this post, so here's a picture of trash that was in a chair in the lobby of the hotel we stayed in.

Stay classy, Hilton! Thanks for charging us pages we tried to print on your computer that never actually printed.

"They tried to make me go to rehab, but I won't go because they're trying to kill me."

2011-09-25T11:01:00.003-05:00

I know I shouldn't joke about this, but my grandmother is in the hospital and thinks the doctors are trying to kill her. She fell and broke her hip, and she's going to have to have rehab after her surgery, but she's Not Pleased.

I would say it was a symptom of mental deterioration related to old age, but she has always been, as my dad said in a moment of understatement, "suspicious." Her motto in life might just be "Trust No One." Nobody knows more than her about anything, and the fact that the doctors were not letting her go home, and were giving her treatment that she did not agree with, that could only mean one thing: they wanted to kill her.

My mom was not having it. "What information do you have that they need to kill you to keep you quiet?" she asked. My grandmother did not have an answer. She also did not have an answer to my statement that yes, she's right just because people are doctors does not mean they know what they are doing, but "they know more than you do." I am quite certain that she is still, days later, thinking up a response to that, which I will hear about later.

She was so indignant the other night about the fact that on the day she was admitted, the medical staff had referred to her as "uncooperative." Apparently, at some point they had to strap her down just to treat her. She referred to this as "putting [her] in handcuffs." She's a little free with the hyperbole.

"Can you imagine?" she asked me the next day, shaking her head. "Calling an 85-year-old woman 'uncooperative?'" Y'all, she was so offended. I mean, the very idea.

Oh, but I can believe it, alright. That's basically what we've been saying about her my whole life, only we don't say "she's uncooperative." We say "That's How She Is."

But I resisted saying anything. I'm just glad that my mother had warned us that our grandmother was being a tad difficult. She doesn't think of herself as difficult, of course. She thinks it's everyone else.

I know I shouldn't make jokes about the subject, especially since my grandmother is not in the best of shape right now. But that's the family way--do whatever grandmother wants, but gather in groups behind her back and complain about how she is not inhabiting the same plane of existence as the rest of us.

She really is being ridiculous, y'all. As far as I know, her sisters (the eldest of which, in traditional Southern style, she has always referred to as "Sister") do not even know that she is in the hospital. I don't know why, I didn't ask, I just obeyed my mother's frantic early-morning text (waking me up while I was on vacation, I might add) telling me not to say anything on Facebook. Oh yes, my great-aunts, who are all over 80, use Facebook more than I do. So, yeah, we have to protect the news like some secret family shame.

Of course, this is the same grandmother who, only a few years ago, asked my mother if my sister and I, since we were then over 30, were old enough to be told that one of my relatives had been divorced. So what would be shameful to my grandmother really doesn't have to be that shocking to anyone else in the country.

On the upside, this whole thing has provided an opportunity to see my uncle who lives out of state. He flew in to be here from my grandmother's surgery, and it was nice to see him again. He asked at one point if we were Facebook friends with his daughter, my cousin. He's a nice man, so I said only that I rarely go anywhere near that site. I also thought but did not say, "dude, we are not any kind of friends with her as she does not see fit to associate with this side of the family, and we only ever mention her in connection with that time she got attacked by the alligator and how we were glad she wasn't permanently injured because that way we can say how she kinda had it coming after skipping out on our grandparents' fiftieth wedding anniversary just so she could have a slumber party, and yeah that probably makes us terrible people, but she hasn't visited in at least 12 years, even though during that time period when she apparently had the time resources to fly around the country exhibiting pugs in dog shows. The End."

Spending time with my family can be very stressful because I never know when one of them, particularly my grandmother, will say something that I disagree with, or even something that I find horrifying, which will put me in the awkward position of choosing between being rude by contradicting an older family member, or not saying anything, thereby indicating apparent agreement, which kills me. Thus the reason I have the reputation in my family for having "a little bit of a mouth on me."

At one point yesterday, my grandmother proudly told her nurse, who is Vietnamese, that my sister and I were learning Korean. My sister, the nurse, and I all just looked at each other, the nurse with a look that said "How do we get out of this conversation because I am not sure how to react to this" and us with looks that said "We know that Korean and Vietnamese are not the same so please don't hate us." I gave a slight shrug and shook my head a little bit.

In her defense, I know that my grandmother was just searching for safe small talk topics and that she knows that they are not the same language. But I don't think she knows that Korean and Vietnamese are so different that identifying her nurse as Vietnamese and then following up with a remark about Korean was a total non sequitur. And I don't think that she realizes that assuming that a person from Vietnam would give a damn about someone learning Korean, when the only thing those two languages have in common is that they are spoken on the same continent, is a teeny bit racist.

The nurse just said, "I . . . don't speak Korean. [pause] But learning another language is hard."

She's a really tactful woman, that nurse.

Then my grandmother helped a bit by saying that we also spoke French, which allowed us to move the conversation to learning languages generally, a topic that I'm always happy to talk about, seeing as I would like to learn every language ever spoken. And it enabled us all to pretend that she was only bragging about her grandchildren's language learning abilities and not implying that all Asian languages are the same.

But that brief awkward moment? That's what hanging out with my family, and in particular my grandmother is like, all the time.

I guess I should just be relieved that that's all she said. It really could have been anything. I mean, it could be anything. My grandmother is what is sometimes referred to as a "loose canon."* Going out with her in public has always been an adventure because her sense of humor and her sense of propriety, though generally proper to the extreme, has a tendency to go off at the most inconvenient moments. This is not because she's old. She's just like that.

Oh, she also asked the nurse if she was a Christian. That was a tense moment. I wanted to quickly divert the conversation to something else, or shout out, "You don't have to answer that!" but I was frozen in horror at what might come next. The nurse said that no, she was a Buddhist, but she would pray for my grandmother (that's what started the conversation--my grandmother asking us if we'd pray for her). My grandmother thankfully waited until the nurse's back was turned to roll her eyes.

I'm from the South, and we respect our elders, but I was fully prepared to either walk out of the room or apologize for my grandmother right in front of her if she had started trying to convert that poor, patient nurse. But for once, my grandmother let the awkward conversation drop.

I bet the nurse is totally used to that kind of thing if she works around old people a lot, so I guess I shouldn't worry about her being offended. But it was exhausting trying to stay one step ahead of my grandmother. Grandmothers! You can't live with them, and you can't go out in public with them, but they sure do make life interesting, n'est-ce pas?

할머니 사랑해! But please spend the rest of your time in the hospital in quiet reflection.

So, anyway, that's what's going on with me. Next post: my recent trip to Portland. It was fun!

*EDIT: My grandmother is sometimes referred to as a "loose cannon," not a "loose canon." We never refer to her as a clergyman or an authoritative set of written works, loose or otherwise. Nor do we refer to her as a body of principles, although she kind of is, but in that way she is more rigid than loose, if sometimes somewhat contradictory. Sorry if that caused confusion.

Time to Buy Eye Cream, Apparently

2011-08-27T22:13:00.003-05:00

Today at Whole Foods, somebody thought I was my sister's mother. We're twins. We're twins, but I apparently look an entire generation older than her.

This is at least the 3rd time this has happened.

I think I'm going to stop hanging out with her.

In which I lose my temper and storm out of Radio Shack

2011-08-15T23:34:00.004-05:00

Oh, excuse me, “The Shack.”

I guess I didn’t really storm out of That Place so much as just say “never mind” to the cashier and leave, but it felt like storming out.

See, I had a little disagreement with the saleswoman about whether I would or would not be buying a Tracfone. She seemed to think that this was something I should not do. I explained that I was buying it for a friend that would be returning to the States next month from overseas and who would need a phone for the first few days until she had a chance to sign up for a cell phone plan.

[She is totally fine with being stranded in a new city with no way to contact anyone in case of an emergency, but I am paranoid and am not fine with it, so I'm sending the phone to her in Korea]

That's a decent reason to buy a disposable phone, no?

Well, no, apparently. We had to go a few rounds over whether in fact the best idea regarding cell service would be for my friend to spend 14 hours on a plane, and then 2 hours on a train, and then, when she arrived at 8 o’clock at night in the city that she had never been to before and in which she knew no one, with all her luggage, without a car, to march herself immediately and directly to a Radio Shack and get herself a phone plan. Yes, that sounds like a great idea, I will pass that along to her. Now will you please sell me this $10 phone in case my friend does not want to do something that insane?

My favorite part of that conversation:
Her: She can just call when she lands to get her account activated.
Me: Uh huh. And how would she do that without a phone?
Her: [pause] She doesn't need a phone. She can come by any Radio Shack. We don't close until 9:30.

I was about 20 seconds away from asking her point blank if she was refusing to sell me the phone when she finally relented and allowed me to proceed to the register. But by that point, oh, was I annoyed. I thought that there couldn't be anything left in the transaction to annoy me, but I had forgotten about Radio Shack’s ridiculous policy about not selling you anything without you providing your name, phone number, address, and a blood sample. Ok, not a blood sample, but you know that's coming. Anyway, I was annoyed enough when she asked for my name and number, but when she got to my address, I snapped and said, “You know what, never mind. I’m not going to buy it.” And then I left.

Oooo, dramatic.

Yeah, that’s my version of storming out. You do not want to mess with this. I am clearly a force to be reckoned with.

But I was pretty proud of myself. Then I had to call my sister and tell her that I had to find somewhere else to buy the phone on account of me losing my temper at Radio Shack. Fortunately, there’s a Target in the same shopping center, and they sold the exact same phone, advice-free. I’m now in possession of a pretty craptastic (crap-plastic?) cell phone that I think will serve its purpose.

Needless to say, I will not be programming the number for Radio Shack into my friend's new phone before giving it to her.

Coworker serenaded us at lunch again. Oh, and my cat ate a plastic bag.

2011-08-11T19:50:00.002-05:00

That was a nice $500 trip to the vet. After he threw up one piece of plastic, I thought, "well, that's gotta be all he ate, 'cause why would he KEEP eating plastic?" Turns out I was wrong. Turns out he's high-strung and a "stress eater" like his me. Only I eat jars of cashew butter and boxes of ginger candy. He eats the wrapping on the roll of paper towels.

RR and I do not know what to do about that cat sometimes. We spend a lot of time asking him "Whhhhhhhyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy?" WHY does he refuse to eat his food when we know he's hungry? WHY does he stand on my neck in the morning to wake me up to feed him because he's hungry from not eating his dinner the night before? WHY does he insist on trying to get in the cabinet door that he can't quite manage to pry open more than a few inches before losing his grip, thereby slamming the cabinet shut again, producing a constant "kuhTHUNKuhTHUNKkuhTHUNK."

He never gives us an answer, though. He just looks at us blankly and goes back to eating the carpet on the stairs. And that's why we love him. We do not, however, love the vet bills.

Anyway.

So, yeah. Got sung at during lunch at a barbecue joint. And my boss ended a three hour lunch week before last by making me and one of my coworkers go to a store that sells supplies to magicians. I hate that store. I've said so, repeatedly. She said it would be a reward for our hard work. I said, "it wouldn't be a reward for me." She still made us go. And then she made us pick out a deck of cards for doing card tricks, which she bought for us (after having the poor employee demonstrate the tricks for us). I'd say it was nice of her and it's the thought that counts, except she knew I didn't want it, so I'm not really sure how I feel about it. I seriously almost cried in the middle of the store. That's kind of what my whole job has been like lately, which is why I haven't posted much. I've way behind, and my boss seems to be engaging in some kind of psychological warfare against me. Boss, if you're testing me, let me save you the trouble and just tell you: yes, I will give up company secrets if I'm locked in the magic store.

One month until vacation. One month until vacation.

Back soon, for reals

2011-08-01T21:38:00.003-05:00

This is the busiest time of year for me at work, and it's kicking me in my sit-me-down-upon. I'm taking a break, though, to tell you that I have actually thought of some topics to blog about, so you have that to look forward to. Of course, by the time I have the chance to blog again, I will probably have forgotten what I was going to say, so it will be just more of the same ol' "I don't know what to blog about anymore, so here's my grocery list" type posting. (hint: LOTS of ginger)

(By "ginger" I mean the plant and not, say, Damian Lewis or Julian Rhind-Tutt, although don't I wish this was an option at my local Whole Foods.)

(I think "by ginger!" should be a new exclamation of surprise. "By ginger, we've been hornswoggled!")

(And by "hornswoggled," I mean bamboozled, not smacked down by the WWE wrestler, about whom I knew nothing until spell-checking the word hornswoggle, and about whom I wish that I still knew nothing.)

(And by "bamboozled," I mean taken for a ride, not beaten with bamboo sticks.)

(And by "taken for a ride," I meant a nice drive through the country, of course.)

This post appears to have gone out of control, so I'm getting back to work now.

Haters gotta . . . be as petty as possible, apparently

2011-06-30T20:37:00.004-05:00

Not much news on ParkingGate, but based on today, either Coworker McPettypants doesn't have much of an "A" game, or she's lulling me into a false sense of security. Today's story is about a pot of coffee, a note, and a serious inability to leave well enough alone.

Here's what happened. Every day when someone makes the first pot of coffee in the morning, that person takes a paper towel, writes the date on it, and sticks it in front of the coffee carafe. This is a wasteful practice paper-wise, but it does help prevent those moments when you take a big swig of your first cup of coffee in the morning only to discover you're drinking yesterday's coffee. Anyway, I was the first person in the break room this morning, so I started the coffee maker going and went ahead and wrote the note and stuck it in front of the carafe. I was about to leave to go check my mailbox while the coffee brewed when McPettypants walked in.

She was startled enough to see me that she let out a "good morning." She seemed to regret it immediately. And then she ignored me.

I left to go check my mail. While I was gone, the coffee must have finished brewing because when I came back, McPettypants was gone, but before leaving she had poured the coffee into the carafe.

And she had replaced my note with one of her own.

And her note had a smiley face on it.

That's stupid, right? I mean, that's really stupid. You're feeling a little let down in the story, right? This seems like such a small thing, not something to get worked up about. Why am I even telling this story?

But that's my point. Why did she do it? What is her motivation? What went through head that made her throw out my note and write a new one?

Is this really her idea of sticking it to me? Because that's pretty weak. Or does she just hate me so much that she can't stand to get coffee from a carafe next to a note with my writing on it? Or does she need to take credit for making the coffee? Is the smiley face her way of flipping me off, or does she actually think if she pretends like she cares about cheering up any of the people we work with, they will start liking her even though she blames her screw ups on them?

I stood there for a good 30 seconds, coffee cup in hand, staring at that note and that stupid smiley face, trying to convince myself that it was my note and I just wasn't recognizing my handwriting, and she'd just drawn a smiley face on it for some reason. My brain could not accept the idea that someone would actually use the time and physical effort to do something so completely pointless. I was baffled. I still am. So I guess if her goal was to waste my time, then, well done, McPettypants. Touché. You got me.

If this is the best she can do, if this is the kind of thing she's got lined up for me in her quest to . . . whatever she's trying to do, I look forward to seeing what comes my way.

Oh, and by the way, she's now parking one space over from where she had been parking, in a spot that is still not her assigned parking spot. And that's all I'm going to say about that.

Maybe she's a robot designed to make my head explode

2011-06-23T20:30:00.003-05:00

I cannot even describe for you just how ridiculous is the latest work drama that I'm involved in. It is so stupid that I'm embarrassed to be associated with it, even though it's not my fault that it turned into this nonsense. It's so stupid. It involves parking, y'all. Drama over a freakin' parking space.

I won't go into the whole story, I'll just give you these four facts:

(1) I was assigned a new parking space at work.
(2) A coworker started parking in the spot next to my new space, even though that was not her assigned space, because she liked it better than her assigned space, and the person who is assigned to park there apparently never uses the space.
(3) Because of the size of the parking spaces and her vehicle, it is impossible for me to get into my space if she's parked there.
(4) I asked her to not park in that spot that was not her space because if she parked there, I cannot get into my assigned space.

And because of this, she became very, very angry. Because of a parking space, she hates my guts. Because of a parking space, she has started telling random coworkers how much she doesn't like me. Because of a parking space. BECAUSE OF A PARKING SPACE. Because I asked her not to park in the spot that wasn't hers, because her parking there meant I could not get into the spot that is mine. This is apparently worth of a blood feud.

I think what really set her off was when she came up with what I guess she thought was a winning point--she asked me, "well, what are you going to do if the person whose spot that is starts parking there"--and instead of getting flustered, saying "you win, keep parking there," or arguing with her, I just said I'd deal with it when it happened, "and anyway you said no one ever parks there, so it shouldn't be a problem." At that point, if she could have turned me into dust with her laser eyes, she totally would have.

I just can't, y'all. I just can't understand it. People who so badly need drama that they have to create it over stupid stuff, I just can't . . . I just . . . I JUST CAN'T. I really want to laugh, but also I am afraid that she will show up at my house one day with her crazy eyes and a knife.

Despite my fear, I seriously cannot wait to go to work tomorrow.

Toward Zero. With a Little Sex in It.

2011-06-20T21:19:00.003-05:00

Last night, my sis and I watched the French adaption of Agatha Christie's Toward Zero. It was pretty good, save the two random sex scenes and the random nudity.

I know, I know. "It's French," you say. "Of course there's sex and nudity."

My problem isn't that the movie has The Sex. It's the way it was done. They took a story that had no sex in it, and then just threw it in there, I guess in an attempt to make it interesting to modern viewers. Or to make it French, maybe. They adhered pretty faithfully to the book other than that, so switching to suddenly to a scene of, "oh, they're having sex, randomly," it makes you very aware that they just stuck those scenes in. The scenes weren't done in a way go with the tone of the rest of the movie at all. It takes you out of the experience. Same with the nude scene. Well, really just a topless scene. A woman sits on her bed crying and drinking wine (naturally). And she's sitting there with no top on and no bra on but still wearing a slip on her bottom half. Do you know anyone who does that? If you are going to add sex and nudity to a movie based on a story that doesn't include that stuff, it had better have a point. You know? Like any scene in a movie, it needs to serve some purpose. It better not just be so you can sell it as having sex in it. It just doesn't fit, and it's insulting to your viewers, who you seem to think will not watch a movie without it.

But other than that, I liked it. The pacing could be better in some spots, but most of the characters looked the part and acted well, and they did a remarkable job of setting a movie in modern times but making it also making it look period. I mean, it was truly fabulous in that respect. The clothes, the cars, the styling, the decor--none of it is out of place now and yet it had an old-fashioned feel to it. RR and I were in awe of that aspect of it.

All in all, it was a far better adaption than some of the garbage that ITV has been putting together lately. If you like Agatha Christie, I'd definitely recommend it over any of that stuff.

It's a White Hole.

2011-06-15T19:35:00.003-05:00

Ok, so, yesterday when I was talking to my coworker -- wait, let me clarify. In our little department, besides our boss, there are me and two other coworkers: Blerg Coworker and Super Nice Coworker. Super Nice Coworker is, by the way, incapable of standing up to Blerg Coworker (or most people, really). Anyway, Super Nice Coworker told me that our boss had asked her if she knew why I'd been upset at lunch.

At lunch, we started discussing a project, and my boss told me in what direction she thought we needed to go, and I said we could do that.

And then she told me why again. And I repeated that we could do that.

And then she told me why again. And then I said, again, we could do that.

And when I tell you that she repeated her reasoning, I don't mean that she elaborated or rephrased her points. She really just repeated what she had just said, to which I had responded in a way indicating understanding and acquiescence. And that made me so upset, I turned bright red, raised my voice, nearly started crying, threw my napkin on the table, and stormed out.

No, of course, I didn't do that. I wasn't upset. Not even a little bit. I may be a little unreasonable sometimes, but I'm not ridiculous.

I was, however, a little confused (and, honestly, a little amused) about how I'd managed to get trapped into a white hole.

So what is it?

Maybe it was my facial expression? Maybe my "wait, is she really saying the exact same thing again? Does she think I didn't understand her? But I said ok. So why is she repeating herself? Hmm. Have I lost the ability to speak and understand English? What is going on here? Ok, I'm just going to keep saying the same thing, too, and see where she takes this" face is the same as my "all worked up" face. Since I don't have a better explanation, I'm going to start practicing my "confused" face in the mirror so maybe I can be more facially explicit in the future.

I also might have a tone in my voice that I don't know about. I do sometimes have a tone in my voice that don't intend, an "I will kill you right now and also you are a moron" kind of tone. As you can imagine, unintentionally having such a tone can have some unwanted consequences. So I've worked on that one over the years. Maybe this is a different, previously undiscovered tone? So now I get to practice making faces and talking to myself in the mirror. That will not make me seem crazy at all. I'm sure it will help me a lot.

Ok, so, yesterday when I was talking to my coworker --

Visually-Striking Exciting Revenge Movies

2011-05-19T19:10:00.000-05:00

is what Netflix is suggesting for me as a category of movies I would enjoy, based on my recent addition of "The Good, the Bad, and the Weird" and "Last Man Standing" to my queue. Netflix isn't wrong--who doesn't like visually-striking, exciting revenge movies? [See "Ajusshi" a/k/a "Man from Nowhere"] But it does feel disconcerting to see it right there on the page staring at you, like some weird personality test I didn't know I was taking. What about suggesting movies based on my love of Jane Austen, Netflix? Huh?

Actually, it did also suggest a Fred Astaire movie. That was a little strange. "We think you'll like this movie about killing people! And also this movie with tap dancing!"

These are practically the same movie.

I've always wanted to see "Last Man Standing," which is supposed to be an adaptation of Yojimbo, which, from the description, sounds an awful lot like Hammett's Red Harvest. The man who made "Yojimbo" said he took the plot idea from Hammett's Glass Key, but it sure sounds like Red Harvest. I love both those books, though, so I guess I don't care. Anyway, point is, I want to see "Last Man Standing" despite it's bad reviews because it's based on a movie that's based on a book that I love. And, hey, Bruce Willis.

Wow, that was really boring. I think talking about your Netflix queue in a blog post may be the clearest sign that you've got nothing to talk about.

And I really don't have anything to talk about, or anything that doesn't make me tired to think about. 2011 continues its determined march toward topping my list of "Years I Was Sure Glad To See The Back Of" (hence the current slowness in posting). I really thought "death of grandfather" was when the year was going to bottom out for me, but alas, I was mistaken. I won't bore you with the details, suffice to say that I just keep telling myself that this time next year, this will all be past. Everybody has to have this kind of year, right? To make you appreciate the good times?

So, boring and depressing. I'm on a roll here.

[My brain is on low battery right now, so just pretend I am now making a smooth transition into a new topic]

So, I decided to make this a week of No Complaining About Boss Lady Or Coworker. I knew it would be difficult, but I felt it was for the best. I’m way too negative at work. I really don’t care if my attitude has a negative effect on my coworkers, but I don’t want to look for another job. That means that if I don’t want to be miserable about work, all I can do is change my how I feel about my job. So baby steps—first step is trying to go several days without complaining.

Of course, I had this resolution last week, and that didn’t go so well. Last Friday my coworker made sure I was going to be here this past Monday so she could work from home and then informed me that we were on Blerg duty starting today. It’s a Monday, and we are on Blerg duty, and she’s going to be out of the office? What are the odds???!!!! Frack on a stick, y’all. Sweet Maui onion. So, yeah, last week, not feeling the love for the work place. But this week I decided to try again. Positive attitude. Totally freakin’ positive. No complaints here.

That went about as well as you would expect. I tried, I really did. And actually I did manage to stop myself from complaining several times. But then my boss made a decision that made me feel like she has absolutely no trust in my professional judgment (Me, for 10 minutes, on repeat: "I think it's X." Her, for 10 minutes: "I think it's Y." Random coworker: "I think maybe it's X." Her: "Oh, maybe I should look at this again."). But that's TOTALLY FINE. I don't mind at all.

So I'm going to try again next week.

...

Hey, speaking of positive, I really love my tai chi classes! I will say, though, based on some long-time members of the class, it doesn’t appear to have weight-loss benefits. Yes, I know that’s a tacky thing to say, but I guarantee that if you took this class with me you would think the same thing, as evidenced by three other members of the class who joined at the same time as I did independently coming to the same conclusion. As someone who ate many, many peanut butter cookies this past weekend, I’m not judging, I’m just saying—don’t practice it for weight loss. But I still recommend it for a nice way to relax and add some movement to your day.

I think I've complained enough for today, so, if you will excuse me, I'm going to go get in bed so I can get up early because in a moment of insanity, I agreed to meet a friend for coffee tomorrow morning at 7:15. Fingers crossed that my alarm clock is working now after it's run-in with my water glass this morning!

Update: Totally almost made it on time for my coffee meet-up this morning! Only 3 minutes late--that counts as "on time," right?

Music Notes: Sounds Like

2011-04-27T21:09:00.003-05:00

Have you heard TV on the Radio's new song "Will Do"? Yes, Tunde Adebimpe sounds like Peter Gabriel--it's almost uncanny--but they really don't sound like a copy. And this song is intensely catchy.

TV ON THE RADIO "WILL DO"

Totally download-worthy.

Sad Family News, Grumpy Fig Face

2011-04-27T19:26:00.004-05:00

Ok, so, as RR mentioned, our grandfather died last week. As sad as I am, my grandfather had not been in good health for awhile, so although it took me by surprise, it wasn't a shock. It does make me sad, though, naturally, so like RR, I'm operating under the "just don't think about it" plan. And, in keeping with that, I'm not really going to talk about it here.

I will say that this experience is giving me a new appreciation for attorneys who have impulsive clients who don't listen. Or rather, clients who don't think to ask questions. My uncle is the "this seems like the thing I'm supposed to do and I don't think I need to bother asking anyone about it" type, so I feel like we've been just one step ahead of him in estate matters. I don't mean he's trying to steal my dad's share of their (small) inheritance. I mean that it didn't seem to occur to him that there might be important legal-type information that he doesn't have but really needs before taking any steps relating to my grandfather's stuff. I'm a little worried that he will do or not do something that causes a situation that takes money and/or not insignificant effort to fix.

"Well, technically, you don't have to go through probate, but if you want to sell the house, it's not in your name, and Grandpa can't sign the deed, him being dead and all, so . . . Yeah, please don't try to sell the house yet."

This post is kind of a downer, so I will move on. Here's a picture of a fig I can't bring myself to eat, for reasons that should be obvious:

General rule of thumb: don't eat something that's staring at you. I think that's just good advice.

Are you making moral judgments, Mrs. Peacock?

2011-04-19T21:54:00.002-05:00

[warning: this post has not been checked for spelling, grammar, flow, content, or coherent-ness.]

As you may have guessed from the title, RR and I are watching Clue right now in honor of Tim Curry's birthday. Just thought you should know.

So, what I have been up to instead of blogging? Fascinating things! Except not really. Allow me to tell you about it in poetry form.

Oh, I kid. Allow me to tell you about by referencing quotes from Clue, also known as "how I conduct most of my conversations."

"Does anyone here not make their living from the government one way or another?"

Lately I haven't done much besides work and think about how I should be working. It's been depressingly busy lately, but I think it's about to be just busy, not depressing. I'd had this project that I was working on, I was way past the deadline for getting it done, and I was starting to feel like I'd never finish. You ever have that feeling that you're just going to get in your car, drive away from work, and never come back? Yeah, I felt like that. Frequently. But then I FINALLY finished it (only to have my coworker tell me it was "the most boring thing she'd ever read," to which I said, "Word.").

So now, I'm behind on everything else I am supposed to have done, but I no longer feel like I'll never catch up. And, consequently, I no longer feel like I need to flee my life by moving to a small town, appropriating the identity of a dead woman, and later killing my abusive husband in self-defense. Am I referencing Enough or Sleeping With The Enemy? "Looks like we'll never know."

Yeah, I don't know what happened with that paragraph. I'm a little slap-happy from the lack of sleep after my frikkin-frakkin neighbor decided to play music late last night. I could be saying anything right now.

"Why would he want to kill you in public?"

Not a lot has been going on with me, other than work. The only new thing I've added to my life is tai chi, which, y'all, I love. I didn't think I would, but it has grown on me.

I'd looked into because I'd read that it was good for people with rheumatoid arthritis, which my mom has. She seemed tentatively interested, and I figured it'd be better to attend an actual class, at least at first, rather than just buying DVDs. On the same day I did research on local classes, a coworker friend (the one who bought me an orchid) was telling me about how stressed she'd been. When I told her that she should maybe take a yoga class, she said that she'd once taken a qi gong class and loved it, and that she'd love to do that again.

It was a sign! Or so we figured. I'm big on seeing signs when the mood strikes me.

So we decided to sign up for one of the classes. And then we saw that another tai chi class was at the botanic garden, we signed up for that one, too, because we are both overachievers and indecisive.

Our first tai chi/qi gong class, I didn't know what to expect. The only tai chi classes I'd had before had been at the gym. When our instructor said we'd be ending the class with some "sound vibrations," I almost ran right out the door. I could not look at my coworker for fear I'd break out into hysterical, uncontrollable giggling.

But then the class started, and it was kind of like yoga in that after awhile, I was totally getting into what I call the "zen zone." I felt all my work stress just melting away . . . until, until, UNTIL I did one of those ball-of-energy-sliding moves to the right, looked over and saw that one of my classmates had decided to take her shoes off. And put them out of the way. By the wall. On top of my handbag.

Her *shoes*.

ON.TOP.OF.MY.HANDBAG.

I'll just let that sink in with you, along with what you know about me and how I feel about germs and feet.

Needless to say, I snapped out of the zone reeeaaal fast. Every time I looked that way, I felt "flames . . . on the side of my face . . . heaving . . . heaving breaths." Oh, the rage.

I did manage to hold on to my sanity long enough to realize that violence against my classmate was not the answer and, let's face it, would likely get me kicked out of the class. Plus, my coworker might not want to drive me to my car after that. So I managed to choke down the rage instead of my classmate and continue with the class, but I did not find it relaxing.

Oh, and the sound vibrations were really just like meditation, so it wasn't too weird. It involved no machines or touching of auras. And the next time there was no shoe-upon-the-handbag event, and it was very relaxing.

And our other tai chi class is awesome. RR is taking it with us, and I gotta say, although I'm still a yoga girl at heart, I want to keep taking these classes.

"I had been out all night at the movies."

So I was supposed to finish telling you about our birthday celebrating. On the weekend after our birthday, we went with a friend to have dinner and then to norebang, which is like karaoke, except you get your own room so that you don't have to humiliate yourself in front of people you don't know. Our friend had told us that she was bad at singing, but actually she was great. And while RR could not make a living as a singer, she has quite a pleasant singing voice. So I guess in this day and age she probably could make a living as a singer.

Anyway, point is, I was the only bad singer. And somehow I ended up singing the most. Or maybe it just felt like I sang the most because it was painful? Hint for my readers: Prince's "Kiss" is not easy to sing if you are a terrible singer.

But it was also fun. I would totally do it again. Only this time, with people who also can't sing or who are mostly deaf.

Also that evening, our friend spilled coffee on her white pants only a few minutes after I told her how brave she was to (a) ever wear white pants and (b) drink coffee at the same time, as I would surely spill my coffee all over my pants if I were to forget myself and attempt it. So yeah, I am pretty sure I caused that. Our poor friend was so upset, and I don't blame her because she looked adorable. But then we went shopping for more clothes, so that was fun. AND we got to introduce her to the magic that is Carbona. And it totally worked! Of course it did. Carbona is awesome.

Oh, we also went and saw Detective K. We really enjoyed it. We'd planned to go see Jane Eyre, but it wasn't showing at a theater near us (also: seriously? What's up with that? We don't live in the middle of Nowheresville, USA). So we went to see this instead because (a) we like Kim Myeong-min, and (b) I like almost anything even remotely related to solving a mystery. And our friend got to see a movie in her native language, so it was win-win for everyone.

And I've now run out of things to say.

Happy Birthday, Tim Curry!

Just how petty am I?

2011-03-29T13:52:00.002-06:00

The only member of our janitorial staff--a wonderful woman--is out this week. Unsurprisingly, when I went into the break room a few moments ago, I noticed we only had about five paper towels left on the counter.

The site of the tiny little pile of paper towels surrounded by crumbs and small coffee spills stirred up dual emotions. First, anger at my coworkers*, who either pretend incompetence at menial tasks or hold the false belief that they are above such tasks as opening up the cabinet and extracting a new package of paper towels (and sometimes both), and second, curiosity at just how long my coworkers would go without paper towels in order to avoid performing such task.

Provoked, I took all of the remaining paper towels on the counter and hid them in a drawer in my office.

I can't wait to see what they do now. Complain? Panic? What will they do when they spill something? My guess based on previous history: leave it there and walk away. Possibly there will be anger. Possibly tears.

Yes. I am that petty. But it's the little things that get you through the day, right?

*Really only my fellow attorneys. I really like working with them, but they do act like they deserve to have someone clean up after them.

Birthday Part I: In Which I Thought The Day Would Suck, But It Didn't

2011-03-28T16:11:00.002-06:00

You know how sometimes you have the same birthday as one of your coworkers, and most of your coworkers remember it's his birthday but not yours, and they have this big to-do for him, but not for you? Yeah, I hate that.

My birthday last week started off alright. Alright for turning 35, I mean. When I got to work, I found that one of my coworkers had left me a box of Reed’s Ginger Chews, which she knows I love. Good way to start the day, right? I sent her an email to say thank you, and in response, she came into my office to tell me happy birthday in person and to apologize for only giving me one box. She's sweet like that.

Right before she walked into my office, I had started checking my email. So as Ginger Chew Coworker is telling me happy birthday, I saw an email from another coworker with a subject line that says "HAPPY BIRTHDAY." So at first, I think, how nice! And then I reread the subject line of the email, which was sent to the whole office, and I noticed that it actually says "HAPPY BIRTHDAY JOE.”

There was no corresponding “HAPPY BIRTHDAY [JLR]” email.

That of course made "HAPPY BIRTHDAY JOE" seem more like, "AND WE DON'T CARE IF IT'S ANYONE ELSE'S BIRTHDAY BECAUSE WE ONLY CARE ABOUT JOE." 'Cause why would you single out ONE coworker for a birthday wish if you liked both coworkers equally, or if you were willing to put on a front to the rest of the office that you liked both coworkers equally. It's like when both RR and I get hair cuts around the same time, and the next time someone sees us, they remark, "Oh, RR, I really like your hair cut." It's hard not to turn that into "I really like your haircut," right?

Then yet another coworker (we’ll call her “round-up coworker”) came by my office to tell me and Ginger Chew Coworker that we needed to head over to the break room “to sing Happy Birthday to Joe.” And, apparently, someone had brought him a cake. So I had *a* coworker wishing me happy birthday, and Joe had the entire office wishing him happy birthday. And also singing to him. And he had cake. And balloons. And a birthday hat.

Ginger Chew Coworker kindly pointed out to Round-Up Coworker that it was also my birthday. From her face, it was apparent that Round-Up Coworker had not realized it was my birthday (awkward!), despite her having signed the obligatory "from everyone at the office" birthday card at some point. She looked a little embarrassed and uncomfortable for a moment, and then came up with, “Yeah, but you’re not turning 40.” Well, she had me there. Good recovery, Round-Up Coworker.

I declined to go sing happy birthday to Joe because Joe is my friend, and I knew Joe would point out to people that it was also my birthday (this is a topic he and I joke about pretty much all year long), and then everyone would feel uncomfortable, and there would be an awkward, “um, happy birthday to you, too, we totally did NOT forget!” from everyone. Plus, they’d feel compelled to direct singing at me, and I didn’t want that.

Then I logged onto facebook and saw that my sister’s coworkers had decorated her office for her. My coworkers, on the other hand, didn’t even remember to give me the office birthday card, the one that everyone always gets on their birthday from the rest of the office. No worries, though! Someone remembered to deliver my card to me the day after my birthday.

And pretty much all day long, that’s how my day was.

Why did I care about all this? Did I really expect my coworkers to spend their day telling me how great I am? Not at all. The thing is, when it comes to birthdays, I don’t need a lot of hoopla or attention. I don’t actually care if people don’t remember my birthday. We all have tons of information we have to keep in our heads all the time--does remembering my birthday mean you're a better friend than someone who doesn't? No way. If someone is a friend, he or she has proved that to me in a million ways that actually matter, and not remembering my birthday doesn't take away from that. It's not even on the list of things that prove you are my friend. Just like remembering my birthday can't cancel out you being a jerk to me, either.

So it's not that there wasn't a big deal made about my birthday that bothered me. My problem was, it makes it hard not to take it personally when you share a birthday with a coworker and they make a big deal about him (more so than they usually do for people on birthdays), but for you they don’t even remember to say happy birthday. The contrast is noticeable, no? So for about an hour on my birthday, I felt a little sad. Ok, a lot sad. It felt like my coworkers were telling me what they really thought about me, and it wasn’t flattering.

Then I guessed (correctly) that it was an intern who is also one of Joe's students who brought the cake and balloons. That didn't explain the getting together to sing Happy Birthday, which we've never done for anyone before in the four years that I've been there. But then I reminded myself that Joe talks about himself a lot. I mean, a lot. A LOT. In your whole life, you may never have met someone who talks about himself as much as Joe does. He’s a really, really nice guy, so instead of being annoying, it's mostly just part of his charm. But there’s no denying that he spends most of his conversation time (and the guy talks a lot) relating the epic tale that is “The Amazing, Unbelievable True Story of Awesome Joe and his Awesomeness and Amazing Accomplishments,” starring Joe. There’s no possible way that people could be unaware of his birthday. He'd have told them a million and half times. It would have been built up into a birthday event.

And I am the opposite. I only mentioned to a few people that my birthday was coming up, and then just in the context of having plans for the weekend. And I didn’t even mention the exact date---people would have had to go through the trouble of looking up on the employee list to see exactly when the date was (or, you know, looking at the birthday card they signed). That made the fact that several people did remember my birthday so much more meaningful. So although it felt like an intentional slight at first, and a crappy way to start the birthday, I snapped out of it and was able to enjoy the rest of the day.

And all of the people that I’m actually friends with at work all wished me a happy birthday. Another coworker brought me a beautiful orchid, and some others took me to lunch. Still another told me that she had planned to decorate my office but her whole morning had gone wrong, and she couldn't get there before me in order to make it happen. I really appreciated the thought. Knowing her, there was just no way she would get to work before me, so the fact that she had planned to do it meant a lot. So basically, I was sad over nothing, and once I realized that, my day was pretty good. You know, for turning 35.

And then I had a great weekend, which I will tell you about next post. I will end this with part I of my birthday celebration with RR, which involved this:

Look look look!

Yeah, that's right. My copy of The Man From Nowhere came in, and it's still awesome. Kim Sae-Ron still makes me cry. Won Bin still looks good. Still can't shake that image of him in that hideous designer shirt.

Words of Wisdom from RR

2011-03-15T21:15:00.002-06:00

This evening, after I told her about my day:

"Don't worry, tonight you can reload, and tomorrow you can shoot yourself in your other foot."

She has a good sense of humor.

Blerg at the office

2011-03-14T17:47:00.003-06:00

Ok, so at my office, there is an unavoidable task, which I will call "The Blerg" (because I hate it), which must be done, but not by me. What I mean is, although other people with my job at my office have to do The Blerg, I usually do not. When at one point, my coworker asked me if I wanted to lateral into the job I have now, I declined, and I told her expressly that it was because I never wanted to have to do The Blerg. She assured me I would not, because the office was hiring one person whose job it would be to do The Blerg for every department, so none of the rest of us would have to. So I moved into the job I have now without worry.

But now, due to budget cuts, when The Blerg Lady left, the powers that be did not replace her. So now each department must take care of their own Blerg work. I have not had to deal with it yet because my coworker normally does The Blerg. But this week, we are on Blerg duty, and my coworker is "conveniently" taking vacation. I say "conveniently" with a slightly, but only slightly, sarcastic tone. It's only slightly sarcastic because her daughter is on break from school, so it makes sense that this week would be the week she takes vacation. But I can't leave out an element of sarcasm in my tone because she always takes vacation or sick days on the days when there is something unpleasant coming our way, leaving it to me to take care of it.

I used to think this was just the product of my resentful imagination. You know, how when you really hate doing something but have to do it anyway, you start looking for people to blame it on, even though it can't possibly be anyone's fault. I'm usually pretty good at stopping this tendency in myself. So although at first I'd begin the resentment build-up over it, I'd just make myself do some yoga breathing exercises and calm the heck down before I had a melt down over something ridiculous. But after awhile, even other coworkers starting noticing her, shall we say, fortuitous timing. And then when those coworkers left, even their replacements noticed it. so I know it's not just my imagination.

The first time I had to do The Blerg was a few months after I started working here. The was before The Time of The Blerg Lady, back when, like now, each department did their own Blerg work. My job at that time did not include Blerg work, but my coworker decided to take some time off at Christmas, so she just announced to me that I could not take any days off around Christmas because she needed me to be there to do The Blerg. So, basically, she banned me from taking vacation so I could be there to do her job. Resentment. I definitely had it then.

Then The Blerg Lady came, and I moved jobs to have basically the same job as my coworker. Then The Blerg Lady left, and now I can't even get resentful about having to do The Blerg, because now it's technically part of my job. But my coworker usually has to take care of it because the Blerg work that comes in usually relates her area of expertise. This week, however, it doesn't matter. I have to do all The Blerg. And I'm trying not to resent her for it.

Before she left last week, I told her that I would be working from home on this coming Friday, for part of the day, because I had to take my cat to the vet. I told her I'd have the office called me if any Blerg stuff came in, and I'd come in then to deal with it. Her reaction? "Oh, Friday's are terrible." Translation: actually, you are not taking your cat to the vet for his EKG, at least not on Friday. So basically you have to do The Blerg, and it will be even worse than you thought. The sing-song "HA ha!" was just implied.

I really, really don't want to get annoyed with my coworker over what is surely coincidence (and not behavior that is at best conscious indifference and at worst intentional offloading of unpleasant work), but I'm afraid that there isn't enough coffee in the world to make me be reasonable about this. So for the next week, expect me to be cranky, tempered by a slight hope that my super power will work so that all my complaining here will prevent any actual Blergness. Cross your fingers for me, y'all.

"A," not really based on effort

2011-03-08T23:18:00.003-06:00

Just took my test online--nailed it! I studied for it, and I did all the reading (ok, I skimmed part of it), but I still wasn't sure about quite a few of the questions. Good thing it was multiple choice. I have to say, I'm not sure I like what it says about community college when you can make an A on a test even though for at least 25% of the questions, you picked your answer by the "uh, that answer sounds good" method. I want to think that it's because I'm so super smart that even my random guesses are usually correct, but that's really not the case.

At least I'm willing to admit when I don't know something, though. I don't know why so many of my guy friends feel compelled to give you an answer if you ask a question, even if they have to make something up. Sometimes after one of them has given me some clearly-not-based-on-knowledge answer, I just want to look at him and say, "Seriously, you can just say you don't know." But actually, I don't think they can.

At least on multiple choice tests, you have an answer to pick from. That makes me feel a little better about being able to get an A even with gaping holes in my knowledge. But it also makes me think that either I am doing something wrong or the instructor is.

I'm not going to complain to the school or anything, I'm just saying.

Allergies, The Sleepies, and Studying Fail

2011-03-07T18:36:00.003-06:00

WARNING: I have The Sleepies! Boring Blog Post Ahead!

Today at work, I ate a piece of gooseberry candy that a friend gave me, and although I don't see how I could have an allergic reaction to any of the ingredients, something hit me pretty bad. I got to the point when I thought maybe I should use my epi pen, which, according to my allergist's instructions to me, means I probably should have. But if I did that, then I'd have to go to the doctor and explain what happened, and I really don't want my doctor to tell me that everything was fine and I'm just a big ol' hypochondriac.

Side story (it's related) (thought I'd already blogged about this but can't find it): I got a cold once in college, and I seriously thought I was almost recovered when actually, I had developed bronchial pneumonia. So my roommate ratted me out to my mom, who then drove down to my school and basically kidnapped me and took me back home to my doctor. My doctor said, "bed rest," and I said, "no, math test, gotta be back to school on Tuesday," and the doctor said, "haha, sure! Mrs. R, may I see you in the hallway for a moment?" So, no one would drive me back to school, but my doctor did give me a note for my professor, so I didn't cry. I was at least happy to have an unexpected chance to see my sister and also to maybe get to go to the Tom Petty concert that she was going to, but she and my mom both laughed in my face at me thinking this was a viable option. I was all, "It's outside, I can just lay down on a blanket," but no. So I was therefore forced to stay in bed with nothing to do. And then I finally, FINALLY realized, "hey, I feel so very crappy right now." And that's when I realized that I'm not any good at paying attention to how I feel.

So since that incident, if I have a cold that hangs on for a good period of time, I go to the doctor. And the doctor always tells me it's just a cold, and I feel stupid for wasting people's time. And so now I pay attention to how I feel but won't do anything about it. Whenever I don't feel well, I have these competing feelings of not wanting to go to the doctor over nothing and not wanting to wind up in the hospital out of sheer stupidity.

So, back to today: I wound up just taking an antihistamine and monitoring myself, and I did get to feeling better. But now for the rest of the evening, I'll be completely distracted by any new symptom. When I'm around other people, I underestimate the severity of any symptom that I might be having because I figure that if I pass out, someone will do something. But when I'm by myself, all of the responsibility is on me, so I freak out about every little thing. And because I don't want to overreact, but I also don't want to die (or get another lecture from my doctor), I have this constant dialogue going on in my head. "Now should I use my epi pen? How about now? Now should I?" My fear of either over- or under-reacting makes me very, very focused on my current physical state but completely unable to do anything about it.

It's bad timing on my part because I have a test for my nutrition class this week, and even though I'm not taking this class with any thought of pursuing another degree, I still can't not study. So this evening is my study night, and if my ability to focus is any indication of how the test is going to go, I better hope I do well on the other exams. Because if you were watching me this evening, here's what you'd have seen:

Me looking up flood blogs, start planning future meals.
Me studying.
Me going upstairs to get lotion, come back downstairs to find my cat in my chair. Move computer to another location, glare at cat, who responds with a "what?" look.
Me studying.
Me reading a runner's blog, then looking up new running shoes, even though at my current jogging schedule, I should not wear my current ones out until approximately 2026.
Me studying.
Me thinking about Nutella.
Me considering using my ottoman. Me staring at said ottoman and trying to move it with my mind. (Did not work)
Me studying.
Me texting RR.
Me freaking out that I might be getting hives.
Me calming back down.
Me realizing that my lips are really chapped and then, as a true OCDer, having to go get lip balm because unable to think of anything else, other than the fact that my neck itches.
Me thinking maybe I am getting hives and going to check out my neck in the mirror.
Me calming down again and realizing I'm really thirsty.
Me getting water.
Me studying.
Me noticing that I have a headache and that my back and ankle itch.
Me noticing that I'm holding my breath. (Why do I feel like I'm about to pass out? Oh, right, not breathing.")
Me studying.
Me noticing that I have distend-a-belly, which is what I call it when I get a distended stomach due to eating something that I'm allergic to. Spend a few moments patting my belly to comfort it. "It's ok, Tummy! You'll be ok!"
Me being really glad that I was alone when I started talking to my tummy.
Me making up a song, the only words of which are: "I am so sleepy, I think I might cry."
Me realizing it's only 6:30 p.m, and I'm already sleepy enough to go to bed now. Le sigh.
Me posting on my blog.

And now, I'm going to go finish off the jar of Nutella before RR gets home. And make some coffee. And then, for real, I'll study. Really. But, uh, don't ask me how my test went.

Curses

2011-03-03T22:50:00.002-06:00

Sorry to do this to you, folks, but I have to tell you what songs I get stuck in my head so that they will maybe actually get unstuck.

Like most people, I randomly get song medleys stuck in my head. I've mentioned before that I used to default to Elvis's "In the Ghetto." That song would just show up in my brain out of nowhere and hang on for days. Then it switched to that @#$%@^ Hamster Dance song. Don't know what I'm talking about? Click here.

You're welcome.

Sometimes people try to be helpful by giving me a different song that they think might displace the song that's on repeat in my brain. This is not actually helpful because any song will become annoying when you have to listen to it over and over again all day. Plus, I usually just get a medley of the suggested song and "mahna mahna," which is way worse.

Again, you're welcome.

Lately, however, I have a whole new medley. It's a combination of two (very short) songs you may or may not have heard of. The first one is just a few lines from a Teen Girl Squad episode. See if you don't catch yourself singing "Garbage disposal, what a way to go. Garbage diSPOsal!" after you've seen it.

The other song is from an episode of Courage the Cowardly Dog. In this one episode, Eustace has stolen a slab that had previously been stolen from an King Ramses' tomb, and the mummy wanted his slab back. As a warning, the mummy sends three curses: locusts, a flood, and, in a stroke of genius, a really annoying song. It's one of those funny-because-it's-true instances because of course, having a song in your head does feel like a curse.

You wouldn't think that a short song, the only words of which are "The man in gauze, the man in gauze/King RAMSES!" would stick in your head, but boy does it.

And right now, I can think of nothing else. And because I'm selfish, and because I believe that getting a song stuck in someone's head is the only way to dislodge it from your own brain, I'm sharing. Good luck to you all.

***BONUS!***
Yeah, this song [which followed this Homestar Runner video] sticks with you for days. I know, because it was stuck in my head the whole drive up to visit my grandfather last weekend, and then all the way back again.

Why Am I Stupid?

2011-03-01T22:11:00.003-06:00

Well, I survived the trip to visit my grandfather. My parents actually managed to get along pretty well. Most of their road-trip squabbling comes from personality differences that don't arise generally in their day-to-day lives. They have completely different driving styles, for one thing, something that is barely noticeable driving across town to the mall but is pretty much impossible not to focus on when you spend 20 hours in a car together. They also have totally different preferences on how to spend their days off. Do you get up, take care of all your "to do's" for the day, so you can spend the rest of the day relaxing, like my dad? That's me. If I have something I know I have to do, I'd rather not put it off. But my mom, on the other hand, likes to sleep in, putter around the house in her pajamas, and get dressed in a leisurely manner. She doesn't care that it might be 2pm before she gets out the door to start running errands. This might be because she's a bit of a night owl, so even if she doesn't get done with her list of things to do until 7pm because she's still got hours of her day left.

My dad and I are both early-to-bed types, so if I get home at 7, I don't have any free time left to my day--the rest of the day is spent getting ready for bed, and then getting in bed. This is both because sleeping's my favorite, and because I'm always trying to get in bed before that point in the day when my body just powers down like a robot. At some point I stop making any sense, I can't form sentences or complete thoughts, I get nauseated, and, often, I start to cry. This is all involuntary, but still annoying to deal with, if you ask RR, who has had to deal with it all her life. Probably even in utero. Probably the reason why at one point my umbilical cord was wrapped around her neck was because she woke me up from a nap.

I'm not joking. You don't want to be the person that wakes me up.

Anyway, Saturday was an opportunity for my parents to get very annoyed with each other, when by 8:30, dad was up, breakfast eaten, all packed and ready to go visit my grandfather and then get on the road before noon, while my mom was barely out of bed but had managed to get herself in front of her laptop playing Farmville. I'm pretty sure Farmville is the only reason she brought her laptop on the trip, by the way, because of course Farmville is that important. I won't tell you what I think about that; I'll let you just guess by telling you that the previous sentence, if read aloud, should be said with a sarcastic tone.

Anyway, my dad could have snapped at my mom for lolligaggin', and my mom could have snapped back at him and then sulked the rest of the day, but that didn't happen. And both of them put up with me soapboxing about the environment while they were trapped in the car with me. And for dinner Friday night, they picked a Japanese restaurant over barbecue solely for my benefit. So all in all, I have to say that my parents were awesome, and I am eating crow with a side of humble pie.

This seems to be happening a lot lately--I complain in anticipation about something that I just know is about to happen, something I just know a person is going to do, and then the opposite happens. I should think of this as a lesson from God about not prejudging people, and not getting myself in a twist about things that haven't happened yet, and maybe about how my life is not nearly so bad as I like to make it out to be when I'm in a mood. But instead, I'm thinking that I have a really awesome superpower here. I appear to have been given the ability to bend situations to my will. If I don't want something to happen, I just need to complain publicly about how unfair it will be, and then the opposite will happen. This is an awesome superpower for me as I'm perfectly willing to have to publicly retract previously made statements if it means that the thing I dreaded never comes to pass.

Sometimes I find a way to screw my apparent superpower, too. Like how I was sure my parents would want to go eat some place where I could get maybe some dry lettuce with mealy tomatoes ("you can eat that, right?" "Well, I can."), and I complained about that to RR before I left. And then they suggested we go some place where I could get sushi. It's maaaaagic!

But then when we went to the Japanese restaurant, and I ordered a veggie roll, which turned out to be Roll of Death. Well, ok, more like a roll of "if you eat that, you'll certainly be uncomfortable later, at the least." They came with (1) carrots, which I should have anticipated, and (2) some sort of mayonnaise-type condiment, which I totally did not see coming. I'm allergic to carrots, and I'm allergic to the eggs in mayonnaise.

But did I decline to eat these items on the ground that they could make me very sick or possibly kill me, and that best-case scenario, I'd spend the rest of the evening feeling pretty crappy? Of course not. Why would I be smart about it? No, I picked out the carrots ineffectively and scraped off the condiment as best I could, which is to say not very well, and then I ate the roll. Why did I put into my system two things that I'm allergic to? Because I'm stupid. Because the waiter might ask me if the roll was not to my liking, and I'd have to tell him that I was allergic to it, and then he and the sushi chef might feel responsible some how, and might try to comp my meal or offer to make me something else, which would make me uncomfortable because it was my fault for not being more thorough in finding out what was in them. And I don't like being fussed over.

And my parents might think I was still hungry and try to get me to order something else, which would inconvenience them, and might once again result in the waiter and/or sushi chef hearing about the situation. I didn't want to make other people uncomfortable. It was bad enough that I'd already remembered to ask about sesame seeds and had them leave that off, and then the sushi chef, rather than the waiter, brought my rolls to me, and presented them while saying "rolls WITHOUT SESAME SEEDS," which made me want to shrink in my chair. I felt like he thought I'd completely dismissed as inedible food that is prevalent in his food culture. I wanted to assure of my unrequited love for sesame, a food that punish me if I ate it, and beg him not to take offense. So I ate the veggie roll. Apparently, I'd rather rush back to my hotel room to take more allergy medicine, and then stay up late to make sure I didn't have a serious reaction while I was all alone. I pictured me in the middle of the night, groggy from allergy medicine, trying to find my epi pen in the pit of despair, a/k/a my purse. I couldn't think of a way that would turn out well, so I had to stay up late enough that I felt nothing worse was coming.

To my credit, I'm not completely stupid, so I didn't eat the whole roll--just enough to make sure the waiter didn't think I hated the food. And then I left a 40% tip just to make sure they didn't hate me there and didn't take my picky eating as a slight.

So, point is, with great power comes the obligation not to find a way to ruin it. That part I'm still working on.

Well OF COURSE I did that

2011-02-21T20:49:00.003-06:00

In replying to comments on my Betty Garrett post, I said that I try to find blogs on blogger, but I "always wind up with only mommy blogs (not that there's anything wrong with that, just not my area of interest) and blogs written in (I think) Portuguese." And then I noticed that one of my few followers is a mom, and I remembered that another writes her blog half in Portuguese. This is what I get for trying to be funny. Maybe it would have been better if I'd prefaced it with "no offense."

What do you think, Natalie? Does that work?

Yeah, I didn't think so, either.

For the record, I like plenty of blogs by women who are moms, I just personally can't relate to blogs that are nothing but pictures of children I don't know. And the only reason I don't read blogs that are written in Portuguese is because, you know, I can't.

This is like when RR and her coworker were talking about how creepy they think clowns are, and another coworker said she used to dress up like a clown to visit children at hospitals. Only worse, because clowns are creepy, which I think you know deep down inside even if you are a clown.

So this is me trying to fix it. Sorry, guys. No offense?

There's a possibility that I won't be blogging next week because I will be sitting on the side of the road in Arkansas or in jail.

2011-02-21T20:14:00.003-06:00

I didn't do anything to celebrate President's Day today, other than not go to work. Yea for holidays!

I also ate homemade cinnamon rolls with cream cheese frosting, but that was less "honor our presidents" and more "because they were there."

And I made yakbap, also known as yaksik, because a friend had mentioned that it's a Korean dessert that is typically eaten around the lunar new year, and I was all, "dessert, you say?" RR and I love celebrating foreign holidays because it makes us seem like we are multiculti, when really we just love dessert. I have spent days making a "Christmas around the world" food list.

I also watched Perry Mason, of course, and it turned out to be one of my dad's favorite episodes ("I was . . . frightened."). That was a plus.

I also went with RR to the gym to run around the track there, which was torture. I don't think I'm ever going to like running, I really don't. I had to stop running after 1 mile and just walk after that, while RR kept going like a little gazelle. We look so much alike that there's no way people don't know we're sisters, which means they wouldn't be able to not compare us. One is about 10 pounds thinner and running, while the heavier one is walking and looks like she's about to die. The about-to-die look was from trying (and failing) to do math in my head, trying to figure out how many more laps I had to go before it was time to leave. RR is ahead of me, all, "I think I can, I think I can," and I'm "I swear on that frat guy's life, I'm going to kill someone if they don't turn the air on." So yeah, that was fun. I'm glad I went, though (see cinnamon rolls, above).

Speaking of cream cheese, if you are wondering if it is possible to put to much cream cheese in your Philadelphia rolls, the answer is yes. And also, something tasted off in my philly rolls, and I ate them anyway (they were there), so tomorrow I might get to stay home from work again. Yea food poisoning!

Well, if my food makes me sick, I'm sure I'll be recovered in time for this weekend's road trip to visit Grandpa. If my parents and I return home without me ejecting one of them or myself from the moving vehicle, it will be a President's Day miracle. My parents get along just dandy when they are puttering around the house or going shopping for plants, but get them on a road trip together, and the fuses, they shorten. I start to feel like Pee Wee when he throws himself from the train rather than stay with the singing hobo. I don't have a lot of patience for that kind of squabbling, and although I can keep my thoughts to myself for awhile, after about hour five, it's hard for me not to say things like "can we please all agree to stop acting like children" and "using that tone of voice is unnecessary" which are things you don't want to hear from your kid, even if said kid is in her mid-30s.

It's a well-known if unspoken family fact that my parents figure that they will probably have to live with me when they are old but would much rather live with RR. Or with pretty much anyone else. Except my brother. They'd take me over him any day. Unless he marries his current girlfriend, in which case, I'm back down to the bottom of the list, right under "swarm of angry bees." I, on the other hand, have no problem with my parents living with me, because if they are old and feeble then I can finally stop them from leaving the television running all day long, even when no one is in the house.

The fact that I have thought of all the ways in which they will finally have to do what I want them to do should clue you in as to why they don't want to live with me.

This is especially true of my mother, a woman who is free with the unsolicited advice for her parents and her children but who once said that she doesn't like to take advice from people because if someone gives you advice, "they're basically calling you stupid." True story. For the record, my mom is lovely (outside of road trips), gives good advice, and dispenses it because she cares so much. It must be disappointing to her that she has such stupid children.

I guess I don't have the right to joke about that, given that I did eat sushi rolls that I thought might have gone "off."

Ugh, I think the rice has formed a ball in my stomach and is now expanding. Coffee helps with that, right?

R.I.P., Betty Garrett

2011-02-13T17:58:00.003-06:00

[FYI, Red Skelton is doing a bad fake Spanish accent (on purpose) because his character is pretending to be José O'Rourke, the character played by Ricardo Montalbán.]

Jessica Fletcher would approve of the jogging but probably not the feelings of moral superiority or the consuming of questionable foods

2011-02-09T21:19:00.003-06:00

Things are frozen outside right now, as are things inside my refrigerator, which has apparently decided it wants to be a freezer instead. The vegetables does not appreciate it. Neither do I, because it means that instead of drinking my just-brewed cup of coffee, I had to take the time to defrost the cream to put into it. Does cream defrost ok after being frozen? I hope so. Not surprisingly, I used it anyway. I don't seem to be suffering from any ill effects.

"Icy chunk of fat for your coffee, ma'am?" "Oh, yes, that would be lovely. Thanks ever so." I mean, it's better than nothing, right? And better than an icy, rancid chunk of fat.

Oh, man. I hope it was just a solid because it was frozen.

Speaking of cream for you coffee, I recently learned that half and half is not something that all countries have, or even all Western countries. Obviously I didn't think that all people all over the world eat and drink the same things that we do here, but it never occurred to me that not all coffee-drinking peoples of the world would use half and half. Not to sound like a chauvinist, but I honestly feel sorry for people who don't have regular access to the perfect solution to the "milk doesn't cut it but I can't bring myself to commit to actual cream" problem. Doesn't compare to real problems--it's not starvation or malaria or genocide or anything--but still. They're missing out.

In other food-related news, I did manage to enroll in my nutrition course after all. In addition to learning actually useful things, I'm also learning fun things that I can talk to unwilling listeners about, like the word "bolus." I can't stop saying it even though it makes me feel a little grossed out when I do. "Can't run right now, the bolus would be angry." "Well, [Patting my stomach] the bolus is moving slowly today." Yeah, I'm like that. My coworkers love me.

We don't have actual lectures in our class, just these educational videos we watch online. They are, how to put this, very much something you'd expect to see on public access television. I guess it's good that the public has easy access to simplified nutrition education, if only it were interesting enough for the public to watch and actually informative. A coworker is taking the class with me, and we watch them together, which is probably better than either of us taking the class with other people around. I say this because we have views on food and nutrition that vary quite a bit from some of the stuff they like to talk about in the videos. (Disclaimer: I have very strong views on the American diet, including the joke that is the USDA food pyramid, common but clearly bad for human health food additives, the benefits of eating organic and local, and the evils of Monsanto and their put-corn-in-every-freakin-thing ways. My coworker is vegan for reasons relating to the environmental and the way animals are treated in the food industry, and I am largely vegetarian on the same grounds.) The two of us watching the videos together involves much scoffing, eye rolling, and occasional yelling at the computer monitor. Also, cutting remarks on the fashion and hair choices of the people in the video, because it was made in the '90s, and because people should know better than to tuck their t-shirts into their elastic waistband shorts. That never looked good on anyone.

Does that make me catty? Maybe I need to work on my empathy skills. I'm glad no one is in there to have to listen to our comments. I mean, we're right, but that doesn't mean other people should have to listen to us. Like why my mom doesn't like to watch television with my dad or us kids.

I am also learning about digestion, so there's that. But nothing I already knew or have learned from the class stopped me from eating three cinnamon rolls after breakfast this morning. They were small but dense, like a dying sun, if I may borrow a line. Like a fat raccoon holding a bowling ball. Sooo good. And then I made some more. I feel kind of sick right now, actually. Good thing I am going for a jog in a few minutes.* Maybe jostling the bolus will speed of digestion. Probably it will just stir up acid reflex. Don't be too jealous.

*It's late, so I'm not going outside for a real run, I'm just going to jog around my living room while watching "Murder, She Wrote."

It may not be fair to be annoyed at UPS for not delivering my package when the roads are iced over, but I am

2011-02-02T16:06:00.003-06:00

After all, the USPS still managed to deliver my mail just fine. If I may quote from The Matchmaker, "What kind of ineffective--yet not inexpensive--system is this?"

Miscellaneous culture question

2011-01-30T16:02:00.002-06:00

The other day I was listening to the Old 97s's "Big Brown Eyes" on the radio, and at the line about "calling time and temperature just for some company," I started wondering--do other countries have a phone number you can call to be told the current time and temperature? If so, how widespread is it? Is it government sponsored, or do companies sponsor it like they do here? For that matter, do most or all cities in the U.S. have a time and temperature number, or do I just think they do because there's always been a time and temperature number everywhere I've lived?

This inquiring mind really, really wants to know.

I don't have anything else to say, so I will tell you what movies I saw last year

2011-01-30T15:02:00.006-06:00

My last post covered current events, the weather, and sports, so I guess this post should be entertainment news. I will therefore complain about the fact that I did not know that Prince was going to be in town. I would have paid to see him in concert. Probably. I mean, I hate crowds, so maybe not. But still! Prince! Yeah, I think I would have gone.

That's all I've got in the entertainment news area. I guess I could talk about movies?

I love watching movie trailers. I regularly go online and hunt down new trailers so that I can decide in advance, months and months in advance, whether I'll want to see a movie. By the time the trailers starting hitting television, and my friends start mentioning to me the movie they think I'll be interested in, my reaction is less "oh, that sounds interesting, I'll look into it," and more, "oh, that's finally coming out now?"

I think that what I like about trailers is the possibility a trailer represents. The possibility of seeing a movie with friends, the possibility that the movie will be enjoyable, that kind of thing. Actually seeing the movies, on the other hand, is something I usually don't get around to doing. I think it takes some extra factor besides just "I think I want to see that" to make me actually get in my car and go see the movie. I saw two movies last year: Alice in Wonderland and The Man From Nowhere. I saw Alice because a friend wanted to go see it. I mean, I wanted to see it, too, in the sense that, in theory, I was amenable to the idea. But she wanted to see it in the real, concrete sense, the sense that involves actually picking a day and a theater and a time, making plans, committing to them, and following through. So we went because I had someone for whom the statement "I'd like to see that" is something that you follow up if you have the means, rather than just a statement of wishful thinking that you can't actually make come true merely by taking affirmative steps, like "I'd like to win the lottery."

So I went to see Alice, and I didn't love it, but it wasn't bad. Visually, it was certainly interesting. Helena Bonham Carter was fantabulous.

I wanted to see The Man From Nowhere because I love, love, love action movies, but what got me to actually follow through with seeing it was that it was a foreign film. I knew if I didn't actually make plans, it would be gone from the theaters pretty quickly, and I had no way of knowing if it would be available on DVD here. So I went, and I was really proud of myself for that. It was quite good, if you like action movies, and in particular the "awesome conflicted, damaged main character battles bad guys to try to save innocent victim" type of action movies, which I do. A lot. If you don't like those types of movies, I can tell you that although visually, it was quite pretty (I don't know film terms but I liked the coloring/lighting of it), there won't be much else to interest you. If you do like that type of movie, then you should see it.

Also, Won Bin is not bad to look at. At least, that's what I thought until I looked the movie up online and saw pictures from some event relating to the movie, in which he wore a shirt that made him look like an extra from a Tupac video:

You see what I mean? And some things cannot be unseen. I'm sure that shirt is from some high-end fashion designer's collection, but some things don't look good on anyone. Let's please all agree to lay off the outfits that make some people have flashbacks to their sophomore year in college when "California Love" was on heavy rotation on MTV. *shudder*

So. Those were the two movies that I saw last year. Despite my love of action movies, I did not go see Reds or Salt because I didn't have a friend who wanted to go, and I knew I could get them on Netflix. Which of course, I haven't done, because I also don't rent movies, and when I do rent them, I don't watch them. My Netflix queue is where movies go to die. I refer to it as the list of movies that we're going to pretend that we'll watch eventually.

Oh, wait, I forgot that I also saw Due Date. Well, "blocked it from my memory" is probably a more accurate statement. I would love to have those two hours of my life back.

But this year is starting off well, as far as movie watching goes. I watched The King's Speech this month (thanks to the same friend who wanted to see Alice), and I loved it. Of course Colin Firth can make me cry without saying a word, and I'm a sucker for any story set in the lead up to World War II, as well as a movie about a person overcoming a personal disability, or overcoming family problems, so they basically wrote this movie for me. But still, it's only January, and I've already seen a movie in the theater, so this year is looking good for me, entertainment-wise. I can't think of anything else that I want to see this year, though, at least from the trailers I've seen so far. Except for maybe that Justin Bieber movie. Ha! I kid.

Seriously, though, this year is not looking good for me. I do want to see Desert Flower, and the new Jane Eyre looks decent (though I don't see how it can top the recent BBC production), but I'm not sure either of those will be something I see in the theater. Unless one of my friends wants to go, of course.

Movie suggestions, anyone? And please don't say Black Swan.

Run normal! This would be the path where normal people run! The weird triathlete training complex is somewhere else! Ok? Run normal here!

2011-01-30T14:35:00.003-06:00

Thank heavens that Januay is almost over. This has not been the greatest month of my life. I probably shouldn't complain because it could have been worse. But it certainly could have been better. Just as an example: one day last week, when I was trying very hard to get to work on time, I got stuck in traffic that had not been reported in any of the traffic reports on the radio. Then, when I got to work, I got stuck in the elevator. It was only for about 10 minutes, and it wasn't crowded, so it could have been worse, but still. That's not how you want to start your day. The rest of the day was better, but that's all I can say about it--it was better than being stuck in an elevator.

Also this month: had to replace all four tires on my car. One of my tires was completely flat when I went to leave work one day, and the other three were apparently pretty worn out. Also, I think I might have a cold. And that's just the least of my January troubles.

So I think maybe January is out to get me.

But looking on the bright side, the weather this weekend was beautiful. That's what I love about winter in Texas--it's January, and it's sunny and warm. Seriously warm--it was 70°F (21C) this weekend. Of course the high on Wednesday is supposed to be 28°F (-2C), so it won't last long. But then it's supposed to be back up into the 50s by next weekend. This could be January's last try at killing me, since my body tends to freak out when the temperature fluctuates this much. Nice try, January, but I'm not going down that easily--I'm used to feeling crappy! Never give up, never surrender!

At least I get to work from home on Thursday and Friday to avoid Super Bowl traffic. I'm not at all excited that the Super Bowl is hosted here this year. This would be a really cool event if I liked football, but I don't, at least not professional football, so it just means that a bunch of drunk crazy people will be driving around my neighborhood this weekend. My plan is to not leave my house for four days. It will probably turn out just like when a big winter storm blows in every year threatening to leave ice all over the roads, which, if it turned out as bad as the weather forecasters said, would leave us all iced in for several days since we don't have the equipment to clear the roads. So we all rush to the store to buy milk and toilet paper, and then it doesn't ice over at all. I always hate those days. I feel so let down. One Monday this month everyone was grumpy at work because bad weather had been predicted, and we had all expected to not have to go into work, but then the bad weather blew in early and just ruined our weekend instead. I think that's probably how the Super Bowl thing will go down. Not that it will blow in early. I mean I'm preparing for the apocalypse and in reality, traffic (and crowds at the grocery store) probably won't be that bad.

But I'm still going to work from home on those days because I like to work in my pjs. Also: no judgment on how much coffee I drink, and on a related note, nobody noticing how many trips to the bathroom I make. I swear my coworker across the hall keeps tabs on how many time I go. I don't think he can help it, I would too if the person across the hall from me was constantly popping in and out of his or her office, but still, it makes me feel weird about it. I am tempted to say to him, "yes, that's right, I have to pee again," but I don't in case he hasn't actually noticed how many times I leave my office, but he will in the future if I point it out to him. Also, I'm pretty sure saying "pee" is kind of vulgar. At least, we weren't allowed to say it growing up, so I feel like a 8 year-old boy every time I do say it. But my usual expression wouldn't have the same oomph, because saying that I need to "step across the hall" would, in this case, be a little vague, so I'd have to say something like, "yes, that's right, I have to 'step across the hall' again, and not to make copies or get more coffee or check my mail, if you know what I mean, and I think you do." I think we can all agree that it would be better to just say nothing.

Ok, I just sneezed so hard that I gave myself a serious headache. I officially hate January.

Speaking of hate, in jogging news, I can jog an entire mile now. A slow, plodding, angry mile, but a mile is a mile, and I'm pretty proud of myself. The first two times we went a whole mile, I thought, "hey, this isn't hard at all," except for the part where RR and I realized that we ran like (and were kind of dressed like) Joe from If Lucy Fell, and we started laughing at how ridiculous we must look. It's hard to run when you're laughing. Plus, we jogged past a big puddle of water that was, I swear, shaped exactly like Africa, which was, for some reason, hilarious. Probably because we were short on oxygen at that point. But yeah, it wasn't bad.

But every time since then, I've hated every step. I'm guessing that this isn't going to change and that when I get up to two miles, I'll still feel the same way about it, except I'll be angry for twice as long. But I'm sticking it out. When I get to the end of my jog, I get that weird feeling in my legs that you get when you are no longer in control of some part of your body, but that only lasts for a few minutes, and I'm pretty sure that means I'm doing it right. Right?

And by the way, I think people who run form some kind of weird cult-type thing, because everyone I know who runs is super excited that I've taken it up. My coworker who is training for a marathon, despite hating running, is always telling me how great I'm doing and giving me tips to keep going. My doctor was practically beside herself when I told her I'd started, and she mentioned that she and her nine year-old grandson ran the Turkey Trot this past November. A grandmother and a child can run more than I can. I'm going to choose to think of that as inspirational instead of really depressing.

If anyone has any tips on how to stop hating running, or how to keep running in spite of the hate, please pass them along.

Dear local community college,

2011-01-05T13:07:00.005-06:00

I can’t help but notice that you have not yet replied to my application to take some classes at your campus. Please allow me to point out that I already have a bachelor’s degree and a J.D. I don’t argue that this makes me more important or more qualified to take classes at your school than your non-degree-holding applicants, because it doesn’t. But to the extent that your application process is designed to weed out those people who aren’t ready for college classes, my education history does establish that when it comes to higher education, I can “hack it,” as the kids say.

So what’s the deal, school? If some unmotivated slacker who chose community college over getting a job because she thinks it means she can put off becoming an adult takes my spot in that nutrition class, I may do something drastic, like writing to my state representative. Or maybe angrily shaking my fist in your direction.

Also, I stopped by your cafeteria today, and two of the grapes I bought from the salad bar look moldy. Plus, I think I might be having an allergic reaction to the non-moldy grapes, which makes me wonder what you did to them. I was also disappointed to see that you didn’t have any bananas among your fresh fruit selection. Even my neighborhood gas station sells bananas. I really don’t want to take that as a sign of what to expect from your school, but so far, I’m not impressed.

Sincerely,
Future Student, or Possibly Just Angry Taxpayer

--
On an unrelated note, I hate UPS, and this is a big part of why:

I get extra points because part of my jogging route is up a slight incline

2011-01-04T22:16:00.004-06:00

So, I decided to start running. My legs, to paraphrase Covert Bailey, are saying with surprise and shock, "Oh my word, she's running."

No, I do not anticipate having to outrun pursuers anytime soon. I just decided that I need to get in shape. Yes, I have said this before. No, I haven't been successful at at.

But this time I've actually been making progress. RR and I have been walking regularly, and now I can run half a mile at a time. That's a laughable distance for real runners, but that's more than I've ever been able to run at a time. I haaaate running. Every part of me feels like it's falling apart---my knees, my ankles, my shins---it just feels like all of my bones are crashing together and I might shatter at any moment. I blame that on my very, very slight scoliosis, a condition that's to blame for my hips being uneven, and, I suspect (despite the total lack of any scientific or medical confirmation) the fact that my ribs stick out so much that I can't wear button-up blouses if they are too fitted. It doesn't help that my legs are uneven, too, with one leg being longer than the other, which makes me stand crooked, which prompted a "friend" in college to tell me that I looked like prostitute on a street corner when I stood still. We weren't friends for very long considering that was about the nicest thing she said to me during our friendship.

But it's probably not really the lopsided body that makes me hurt but rather the fact that I don't know how to run properly. Also, my running shoes are years old.

I say "run," but of course, I run like a grandma. A grandma who's out of shape and beat down by the trials of life but who keeps plodding on. Instead of "run," it's really more accurately described as the slowest, saddest jog you ever saw. I imagine it's how I'd run if I had rabies: a slow but purposeful forward movement, more or less in a straight line, staring off into the distance, wearing a confused, angry look on my face. I don't foam at the mouth or anything, but the cold air does aggravate my asthma, and I get this wheezing, phlegmy thing happening, so I feel like I'm filtering my air through a mucus filter, and that's kind of gross. I keep at it, though. I plan on ordering one of those cold air masks, which I guess will make me look like someone who has rabies jogging on her way to rob a bank. Hopefully, though, after a few months, I will look like a slim, trim, rabid jogging would-be bank robber.

As an unrelated note, I can't believe that I left Ok Go off of my list of favorite songs from 2010. "This Too Shall Pass" and "White Knuckles" should have been on that list, and no, I am not a hipster-in-training. I just like Ok Go. And of course I also like their videos. Ok Go is just one of many music acts out there that, in my opinion, weigh against the arguments of some people that American music videos are generic and uninspired.

I don't know how to end this, so here's a drawing of a squirrel playing the drums:

You can buy a t-shirt with that screen print at the Ferdinand Home Store website, btw.

Music Notes: Favorite Songs of 2010

2011-01-03T13:56:00.004-06:00

I'm a little late posting a "best of" list, since those are usually end of the year tasks. But I'm late for everything else, and it's only three days into the new year, so I think I'm ok.

JLR's Favorite Songs of 2010

These songs don't have much in common other than the fact that I like them all. Some are fun, some have a good beat, some have great lyrics, and some are just fun. These are not necessarily what I would classify as the “best” songs that came out in 2010. Some are. But some are just songs that either I couldn't stop listening to, or songs that made me happy every time they came on the radio. So here they are, in no particular order.

The National, “Bloodbuzz Ohio”
It's hard for me to narrow down a list of songs to my absolute favorites, but this one was a no-brainer. This song is both my favorite song of the year and my vote for the best song of the year. The National is one of those bands whose music is so good (and sometimes so over my head) that I feel like maybe I shouldn't be allowed to listen to it, like a club I got into by mistake. “Bloodbuzz Ohio,” like The Pretenders' “My City Was Gone,” has to do with going back home to Ohio, but that's the end of the similarity between the two songs, either in focus or in sound.

Gorillaz, "Melancholy Hill."
It's dating myself, but I'll admit it: my adoration of Damon Albarn goes back to the early 1990's, when I was in high school. I liked Blur in the early days (you had me at "There's No Other Way"), and I liked how the band continued to evolve, so that later albums sounded different from earlier albums but were still recognizable as Blur. Gorillaz seems like it's turning out the same way.

Arcade Fire, “Ready To Start”
Was there a music critic this year who didn't like Arcade Fire's The Suburbs album? They pretty much swooned over it, and for good reason. I liked "Modern Man" best at first, but I wound up liking "Ready to Start" the most.

Sleigh Bells, “Rill Rill”
It seemed like whenever I searched for Sleigh Bells on the Internet this year, I would find people writing about “Tell Em.” But it's “Rill Rill” that makes my favorites list, probably because I found myself playing it repeatedly every night for weeks as I cooked my dinner. Any song that makes tedious dinner-making feel like fun-time dance-time gets two thumbs up from me. And apparently, someone at Time.com agrees with me. (And on a side note, the same Time.com list includes Yeasayer's "Ambling Alp," which was also one of my favorites this year).

The Burning Hotels, “Allison”
I posted about this song not too long ago. This is another one that I listened to obsessively this year. I'm not sure what it is about it that makes it so addictive, but listen to it once and see if you don't find yourself singing it the next day.

The Black Keys, “Everlasting Light”
Speaking of songs I listened to obsessively, this is a song that I kept telling myself not to keep putting on repeat lest I get tired of it, but I kept in on repeat for weeks and I never did get tired of it.

Spoon, “Written in Reverse”
I love Spoon. As in, “I can't help but think a little less of you if you don't like Spoon” love. If you're not a fan, maybe this song will change your mind.

Broken Bells, “The High Road”
I wasn't sure what to expect from Broken Bells, but this wasn't it. It was a pleasant surprise, not in the sense of “I hate The Shins and Gnarls Barkley so I'm surprised they didn't put out garbage,” but more of the “This isn't at all what I expected they would sound like if they got together.” I loved “The High Road.” Loved it.

Deer Tick, “20 Miles”
Oddly enough, I wasn't blown away by any of the other songs I heard from this album. I say “oddly enough” because I really, really liked this song. Good music, good story, with exactly the right voice for the song.

The Cat Empire, “On My Way”
If you saw me in my car this year, dancing as I drove, there is a good chance I was listening to this song.

Sarah Jaffe, “Clementine”
I'd never heard of Sarah Jaffe before this year, and honestly, her voice reminds me of a number of other female indie singer-songwriters. But that doesn't mean she isn't on my list of favorite new music discoveries. “Summer Begs” is a great song from Suburban Nature, but “Clementine” is more than great. One of those pretty but heartachey, bittersweet songs.

Dutch, “Just Before the Rain”
Dutch is another collaborative effort, this one between Liz Fullerton and Stoupe of Jedi Mind Tricks. Not that Dutch sounds like Portishead, really, but something about the music/voice combo when this song first started playing triggered a PTSD-like flashback to the hours I spent hanging out in my upstairs neighbors' apartment in undergrad, mooching their food and cable and begging them to play something, anything other than Portishead. But then I snapped out of it and realized that I actually really liked this song. Whether it's Stockholm Syndrome or it's just a good song, you'll have to be the judge for yourself.

Janelle Monáe - "Oh, Maker"
Janelle Monae has one of those voices that sound effortless, and I can understand why she seems to be making everyone else's best-of list for 2010.

The Orbans, “Like a Liar”
See my previous post.

And for songs that make me happy when I hear them:

Hockey, “Song Away”
This one was technically released in 2009. But they have two videos for the song, and I'm pretty sure that the second version came out in 2010, so I'm putting it on the list because it's my happy song. I've seen some people who really liked "Too Fake" but found "Song Away" too light-weight. I don't care. When I have a bad day, this song cheers me up. Like making a good comedy, making a good "it's gonna be ok" song is an under-appreciated and harder-than-it seems art form. Plus, how can a song that references Roxy Music be bad?

Guster, “This Could All Be Yours”
Like “Song Away,” this song makes me happy when I hear it.

The Pass, “Crosswalk Stereo”
The beginning music actually reminds me of “Song Away,” so maybe that's why I like this song so much. Or maybe I like “Song Away” because it reminds me of this one.

And that's all I got. If you have any recommendations for good stuff I missed, please send it my way!

Merry Christmas!

2010-12-25T09:55:00.001-06:00

It's only 10am, and I've already had too much to eat. Gonna be a good day.

I might be unreasonable about this. But I think if you can't work a freakin' coffee carafe, don't drink the coffee.

2010-12-06T20:50:00.005-06:00

I have complained many times on this blog about the fact that someone in this office is apparently trying to go all Taliban on us by setting up an IED in the form of an empty coffee pot left cooking away on a hot burner. If you want to burn your own house down or shoot yourself up with shards of exploding coffee pot glass in your own home, I could not care less, so long as you don’t get anyone else hurt. But please, don’t do it at the office. Leave us poor worker ants out of it.

Now I have something related but new to complain about. You knew I couldn’t go a whole week without complaining about something, right? And yes, this is coffee-related.

Lately, whoever has been making the coffee has been, instead of putting it into the carafe to keep it warm and toasty, leaving it in the coffee pot sitting on the hot burner. You know how I feel about this. This used to happen occasionally, but now it happens every single [gosh darn] day. More than once. Why the face, y’all?

Someone does not understand the concept of a carafe. I really, really want to put a sign on the carafe that says, “Hint: I am not for decoration.” Or “if you do not understand how to use this complicated piece of equipment, someone can explain it to you.” Or maybe, “Put the [farking] coffee in the [farking] carafe, you inconsiderate [beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep]. I hope that coffee has formed a solid and you choke on it.”

Yeah, I get a little bit coffee rage-y sometimes. I realize it’s inappropriate. Obviously I can’t say at work what I really want to say, so I vent here. No worries, I will not be blogging in the near future anything that starts with, “so, I went all ‘Falling Down’ at the office yesterday.”

Speaking of Michael Douglas, don’t you just love him as an actor?

Anyway, possibly part of my problem might be that I suspect who is doing it, and this person is an "I am above doing things I don't want to do and my way is always right" type, and I'm not overly-fond of her, and this is just one more thing about which I can say, "well of course she does that." But I do not like to chew my coffee. And anyone who won't pour that [bleep] coffee into the [bleep] carafe either doesn't actually like coffee or is just lazy and inconsiderate and is basically flipping all of us other coffee drinkers the bird. So. Result: coffee rage.

Sorry about that.

It's ok, everyone can calm down now, crisis averted, no need to panic.

2010-12-04T10:50:00.000-06:00

I found my coffee.

Music Notes: Sounds like . . .

2010-11-30T19:31:00.004-06:00

Is it just me, or does Scott McCurry's "Don't Do It" make you think of Lasse Lindh? I'm not sure if it's his voice or the combination of his voice and music, but every time I hear that song, I think "Oh, it's Lasse Lindh. Oh, wait, it's not."

Not that I don't like Scott McCurry. I do. But this one song always makes me expect someone else.

Seriously. Listen to "The Stuff,"

And then listen to "Don't Do It" (from Like the Sun). (sorry I don't have an embeddable clip for that one).

Can you hear it, too? No? Just me, then? Ok, fine.

I'm hearing musical similarities all over the place these days. The first thing I thought when I heard "Allison" by pop-punk band The Burning Hotels was, "that music sounds exactly like 'A Hundred Hearts'" (which is a great song by The Swimmers from an album of good songs--you should buy it). And then I thought, "I really dig this song." And then I decided it's not exactly like "A Hundred Hearts."

The more I listen to "Allison," the more I like it, and the less it reminds me of The Swimmers.

But judge for yourself. Here is "A Hundred Hearts."

And here's "Allison":

The music is very similar in one part, really almost exactly the same. And I know that's not just me. But both great songs! Support your local indie band!

And on that note, I'll end this with a song that doesn't remind me of any other song (and totally unlike the songs I mentioned above). The Orbans are a Fort Worth band. Buy local, right? If you don't like this band, there might be something wrong with you.

Happy Thanksgiving

2010-11-26T10:42:00.003-06:00

For Thanksgiving this year, RR and I had our second annual family Thanksgiving boycott. We had a great time, and the food we cooked was delicious. We are excited about all the fun stuff we'll make with leftovers. But as we were about to dig into to our meal, we realized that we would have been just as happy with a box of cereal and some half-and-half. To us, it's pretty hard to beat granola or sweetened rice flakes.

So now we know what we're doing next year. Try not to be too jealous.

I hope everyone's Turkey Day was fabulous!

I know that damn cat food plate moves into my path deliberately. I know it.

2010-11-24T09:21:00.004-06:00

Otherwise, how could I accidentally step on it all the time? This is further proof that everything in my home is plotting against me.

Solidarity with South Korea

2010-11-23T21:48:00.002-06:00

I had planned to blog about the limited good news that Burma had released from house arrest Aung San Suu Kyi (I say limited because it's not like Burma has made a move toward democracy), but I want to take a moment instead to address the attacks on South Korea. Obama (or at least his press secretary) stated that we stand "shoulder to shoulder" with South Korea. I don't know how much that statement will translate into any actual policies or actions, but I agree with the sentiment 100 percent. My thoughts and prayers are with the people of South Korea. To all my Korean friends . . . I don't think you know about my blog, so you won't be reading this, but I hope your family is safe.

I assume most if not all Americans are aware that the war between North and South Korean never officially ended--they just called a truce. If anyone wants to know more about the craziness (and huge, huge problem) that is North Korea, I suggest you start here (even if you only have time to watch Mr. Hong's presentation and not the whole video). If you don't have time to watch that eye-opening talk but want to read more, go here, here, here, and here (to see video from the Vice Guide to North Korea, go here). It is almost unbelievable. If you want to help out North Korean refugees (who, if they are caught in China, are usually sent back to North Korea to be put in Nazi-like work camps or executed), you can start here. This is what South Korea is dealing with, and, really it's a problem of the whole world.

Can't think of a better way to describe how I felt about my day today.

2010-11-22T21:48:00.003-06:00

Courtesy of Natalie Dee.

All of Your Cookies Are Belong To Me

2010-11-21T14:40:00.002-06:00

This weekend, I have eaten at least four dozen cookies. I kid you not. I think that easily answers the question of why my clothes don't fit me. It's only partially my fault because I have absolutely no willpower, and RR simply would not stop making cookies. She was going to a gathering of friends, and they were all supposed to bring cookies. She didn't think she had enough. I pointed out that if there were seven people there, and they all brought only one dozen cookies, then that made seven dozen. That's 84 cookies. I think that's enough.

And then she made more cookies.

And then of course she had lots of leftovers, which she brought home.

And then she left me unsupervised for several hours.

So it's mostly her fault.

Today, I am going shopping with RR and our friend MJ, and they are two of the tiniest people I know, so I will get to feel extra fat. It will be kind of like the time in 10th grade when a friend I'll call Shanna went shopping with me and RR. At that time, I could have stood to lose maybe five pounds. Shanna, how to put this, Shanna was not a small girl. When RR tried on a dress, I thought, "oh, that looks nice on her," but Shanna said, "gosh, you make [JLR] and I feel like a couple of whales." "Uh, only one of us is a whale," was what I did not say but definitely thought. I get mean when I get insulted. But at least I only thought it, unlike Shanna, who felt free to speak for me the thoughts she assumed I was thinking. "Your tininess only serves to emphasize the hugeness of both me and your fat, fat sister, who, in my head, I refer to as Humpty Dumptiest."

Today, however, that statement would be kind of true. Standing next to RR and MJ, one cannot help but feel whale-like.

Last week I went shopping with my mom. I love my mom, I love spending time with her, and sometimes I even like shopping with her. But oftentimes, shopping with her can be an excruciating experience. When we made plans to go, I told her that I didn't want to be leaving the mall at 9:00 p.m. (when it closed), and she swore she was too tired to stay that late anyway. I guess she was right because we left at 8:50, and I really don't think she could have made it those last ten minutes.

It's my fault, I guess I should have been more clear. I should said, "I don't want to be leaving the mall at 9:00 p.m., and please take that not literally but in the way that you know I meant it, i.e., I don't want to be there for more than one or two hours, and any departure time close to 9:00 is too late."

My dad had been there with us for the first part, but he had to leave after about half an hour. I want to think that it's because he had gotten up really early that morning and was dead tired and not because at the Origins counter, my mom announced loudly and insistently to the lady working there that my dad was "obsessed" with getting rid of his blackheads. I think my dad really appreciated that.

Besides being mildly embarrassing, it's not a completely accurate statement, or at least I don't think so, because in my mind "obsessed with getting rid of blackheads" is not the same thing as "fascinated with pores and also with the way Biore strips work." My dad, my sister, and I are all very interested in things that other people seem to find mundane. We're a little bit like Rain Man, I guess.

Anyway, good ol' mom was on a roll that night. She also told the employees at every skin care/makeup counter we stopped at that I had The Rosacea. "AND SHE HAS TO BE CAREFUL ABOUT WHAT SHE PUTS ON HER FACE BECAUSE SHE HAS THE ROSACEA. YOU KNOW, THE ROSACEA. ON HER FACE. MAYBE I SHOULD SAY THAT AGAIN BUT LOUDER." And then I'd do a little half-hearted wave, to acknowledge that "yep, that's me. I'm defective."

Mom is not normally the type to attempt to embarrass her loved ones in public. Quite the opposite, in fact. But then again, Mom knows no secrets. By that I mean, she doesn't see the need to keep personal details private. She is not embarrassed by the whole world knowing everything about her, so maybe it doesn't occur to her that her children and husband are the complete and total opposite.

Turn about is fair play, though. I am pretty sure that I embarrassed her by my abrupt-to -the-point-of-rudeness treatment of the lady at the Lancome counter who was trying to put the pressure on Mom to buy me something that I had only casually mentioned that I was considering buying one day. I don't like pushy people.

I never buy Lancome anyway because in my mind, fairly or unfairly, I think it's for old ladies. This may be because my grandmother uses it. I am about ready to be upgraded to "old lady" status, though. I turn 35 next year, which I don't think makes me old, but let's face it, I've been an old lady inside for years now. And now my feet also smell old. Let me clarify. My feet do not smell like they've been around for sixty years. They smell like the kind of ointment that old people supposedly use. And they smell like that because I use Badger Balm, which smells like the kind of ointment that old people supposedly use. I started using it one day, and then I got used to it, and now I can't not use it. I don't know what it is about me but once I start using some kind of product, if I use it for more than a few days, it becomes mandatory. Years ago, I made it a habit to put on hand lotion before handling paper because I found it cut down on paper cuts, and now I cannot force myself to touch paper if my hands are not sufficiently moisterized. If someone tries to hand me paper when I have dry hands, I just stare at them.

So now I've gotten so used to that stupid Badger Balm that I can't even just put it on at night anymore. I now have to use it in the morning, too. If RR tries to talk to me before I have applied it to my feet, then all I can think is, "I CANNOT HEAR YOU MY FEET ARE DRY," or, sometimes, a more calm but still crazy-making "dry feet dry feet dry feet dry feet dry feet dry feet dry feet dry feet dry feet dry feet dry feet dry feet dry feet dry feet dry feet dry feet." So I accept my fate of old-lady-smelling-feet.

Actually, I think old ladies tend to use perfumed lotions, so probably I smell like old man feet.

And now I will go eat some more cookies.

If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all, which is why I can't talk about work sometimes

2010-11-07T10:57:00.003-06:00

Holy fazzoli, HOW has it been that long since I posted something? I guess maybe nothing has happened to me except work. Not that post-worthy things don't happen at work--they do. I discuss it with RR ad nauseam (well, to the point of her feeling nausea, I just get more irritated). But unfortunately, my fear of getting fired or somehow violating ethics rules prevents me from talking about it much here.

So I will just say that sometimes I really think my boss is just messing with me.

On a happy note, today I am going to the store to buy these rice puffy things, the name of which I do not know, which makes it difficult to ask for in the store. We went to one store to look for them yesterday, but they didn't have them. It took a while to figure that out, though, because we don't know what they are called, and "rice puffy things," accompanied by hand gestures approximating their size, is apparently not that descriptive.

So we are going to a different store today. And then we are going to Central Market, which isn't anywhere close to the first store or our home. But we like cashew butter on the rice puffy things, and all other cashew butter pretty much pales in comparison to that of CM. That's a lot of grocery stores. And driving. But I am terribly excited about it. It's going to be the highlight of my day. Sad, but true.

We'll probably have to swing by the parents' abode to say hello, which would normally be fun, but the whole time we're there, I'll be thinking about those rice puffy things just sitting in the car, waiting to be et.

Let's see, um, I finally joined the rest of the world and downloaded Skype. I did this so that RR and I could talk to each other without having to shout if one of us was upstairs while the other was downstairs. That is some serious pigritude, but I am unrepentant. But here was the cool part. I look terrible on the webcam (no surprises there), BUT my eyes show up as this really odd blue color. This was like, crayon, colored contacts, laser beam blue. If my eyes were this color in real life, NO ONE would mess with me. Because I really looked like I might be (a) a supernatural being, (b) possessed, or (c) a robot. It was awesome.

In other News, I am considering adopting old-fashioned Rules for Capitalization. Said Adoption might be accompanied by adoption of old-timey Spelling. No Reason, just sounds fun. And confusing. And slightly nerdy. In other Words, Me.

Again With the Bug Death?

2010-07-29T21:56:00.004-05:00

A wasp nest is being constructed on our front door. Well, technically the door frame. But in either case, we have to walk under it and stand there to lock or unlock the door. This makes us worried that a wasp will get in the house and sting someone, the "someone" for whom we are concerned varying depending on whether you are talking to me (one of us) or Wally (RR).

It made for a moment of disbelief on my part when we had that conversation, and it became clear that her worries were more for our cat than either of us. I guess I see her point. If a wasp came inside, I'd avoid it, but Wally would go after it and probably find a way to either get stung or just make it really mad and then be totally ineffective at killing it. But I'm not crazy about the idea of having to avoid whichever room the wasp decides to go in until I think it might have died of natural causes. And there's no way I'd be able to get to sleep at night.

Anyway, point is, we're pretty sure we need to Take Care Of the wasps before the situation gets out of hand. For about a week now, every morning as we're about to leave for the day (with RR checking out the window to make sure no wasps are right by the door, then us dashing out, me gently shutting the door and locking it while RR keeps a lookout for trouble), we say, "ok, for real, tonight, we have to spray the wasp nest. For real." But every night we manage to not make time for it. Because spraying wasp nests makes us feel like murderers. Because that's what we are. Wasp killers.

Meanwhile, the nest gets bigger everyday.

In other news, my friend at work is leaving at the end of next month. Sad! Who will be my sushi buddy now? Mmm, avocado rolls. Is there anything better than rice and avocado put together? And also, I will miss her lots. *sniff*

In other other news, we're currently on an experimental homemade marshmallow kick. It's fun, though fattening. And it's cool. It's SCIENCE! (said in best Bill Nye voice)

And I guess I'll end on this little gem. I have finally figured out the one thing that could cure me of my Nutella addiction: throwing it up. Why didn't I think of that before? Yummy.

Kill or Be Killed, I Guess

2010-07-14T20:05:00.003-05:00

I definitely am starting to think that we live in The House of Death. Last night, I killed a bug in my room. Normally, I try to trap bugs and put them outside, but I kind of freaked out because (a) I had never seen anything that looked like it before and (b) this one was heading for under my bed, where I feared that by the time I returned with some trapping device, it would have vanished, and I would never see it again, or more accurately, I *would* see it again, but not until it jumped on me in the middle of the night and tried to kill me. So I squashed it. It punished me by leaving behind what looked like blood stains on my carpet.

I had thought that maybe my killing Mystery Bug was balanced out by the fact that just a few minutes before, I had seen a tiny beetle-type bug scurrying across the kitchen floor, and I decided to just let it be. I mean, it seemed either scared for its life or very purposeful, either way clearly in a hurry to be somewhere else, so it seemed like the right thing to do let it go. And I found out later that RR had seen the same bug and had also opted to let him alone (at least, I hope it was the same bug). But then after I killed Mystery Bug (which, by the way, was difficult to kill, and I felt like a terrible person repeatedly clobbering it with a shoe, WHOMP [lift shoe] “still not dead” WHOMP [lift] “still not dead?” WHOMP [lift] *sob* “still not dead”—at least I didn’t have to use a hammer), I went back down to the kitchen only to discover that a spider had found Mr. Beetle, and unlike me, spider dude was not willing to live and let live with the beetle. RR and I were horrified. We acknowledge that spiders have to live, but it still made us feel like, at a minimum, bad hostesses. “Feel free to live in the kitchen, don’t mind the murderer over by the pressure cooker.”

"If you are flammable and have legs, you are never blocking the fire exit."

2010-06-26T21:56:00.003-05:00

RR and I just rewatched the old Comedy Central Presents episode with Mitch Hedberg. Man, he was funny. No matter how many times I watch his shows, they still crack me up.

And since I don't really have time to do a full post right now, I thought I'd type up a few of his jokes.

I don't have a girlfriend, I just know a girl who would be really mad if she heard me say that.

[on playing golf] I never got a hole in one, but I did hit a guy. And that's way more satisfying . . . You're supposed to yell "fore," but I was too busy mumbling, "there ain't no way that's gonna hit him."

Wearing a turtleneck is like being strangled by a really weak guy all day.

I bought a donut and they gave me a receipt for the donut. I don't need a receipt for a donut. I'll just give you the money, you give the donut. End of transaction. We don't need to bring ink and paper into this. I just cannot imagine a scenario where I would have to prove that I bought a donut. Some skeptical friend? "Don't even act like I didn't get that donut. I got the documentation right here."

If you have a few minutes and need a laugh, you should check out his bit about restaurant wait lists, which never fails to make me laugh out loud. And it will give you something to smile about the next time you have to wait for a table.

Ninja Assassin wins! Rain still looks hot. In other news, the sky is still blue, water is still wet.

2010-06-07T18:09:00.008-05:00

I don't watch MTV, and overall I couldn't care less about their movie awards, but I couldn't be more thrilled that uber-sexy-and-adorable Rain (Bi) (비) won last night for "Biggest Badass." Have you seen "Ninja Assassin"? He deserved the win. And even without the movie, he deserved to win for these abs alone.

I think we should start calling him the Ninja Ab-sassin. Ha! I am so good with the puns.

Anyway, I don't want to be that ripped personally, since I'm a girl and all, but I would like to be closer to looking that toned than to what I am now, which is someone comprised almost entirely of bones and fat. Like good soup stock material, actually. Yet another reason to stay out of hot tubs.

I've never wanted to be famous. In fact, my goal is to try and get through life largely unnoticed by most of the world. I like being able to walk down the street without anyone knowing who I am. Nobody needs to follow me around the Central Market bulk foods section, watching me buy large containers of cashew butter, and then blog about it. ("JLR buys out entire section of nut butters at local upscale grocery store") But I'm beginning to think that I need someone whose job it is to follow me around all day, knocking peanut butter cookies out of my hand and telling me to hit the treadmill. So maybe I need to become famous so that I can justify (and afford to pay for) having someone like that around.

Anyway, congrats, Rain. Even though you are six years younger than me and look even younger than that, if you knocked a peanut butter cookie out of my hand, I wouldn't even get mad at you (note to anyone else: do not even attempt it).

Because you are hot. And even though you are a pop singer, when you can move the way you do, and when you look that good, neither RR nor I will ever mock you for referring to yourself as a "bad boy." Also: like the suit. But don't think I'm going to go see the new Karate Kid movie just because your song is on the soundtrack. That's all about Jackie Chan, who I adore. Hils saw him at a subway stop once and called RR to tell her, but RR couldn't understand her whispers and thought she was saying "something about your hand?" It was a very Chandler-in-the-vestibule-with-Jill-Goodacre moment, which made me love Jackie Chan even more, even though he really didn't have anything to do with that story other than that his name was involved.

On an unrelated note, today at lunch, I took the cap off of my container of coconut aminos (not the bottle it came in, the container I used to transport some to work), and it let out a pop of air, sprinkling the aminos onto my hand (and onto who knows what else that I haven't discovered yet). I hope that it's a sign that I had the lid on really tight and not a sign that the aminos have fermented or something bad, like that time BF/R left pineapple in a tupperware container, unrefrigerated, for so long that the bacteria that grew on it off-gassed enough to blow the lid off the container. But it's hours later now, and so far, so good. Yea for not getting botulism!

Speaking of tupperware containers, right after getting aminos on my hand, I then poured the aminos on the broccoli in my tupperware-knock-off container, put the lid on it, and shook it to toss, and OF COURSE, despite me really believing I had the lid on well, I wound up tossing broccoli right onto my pants. OF COURSE.

Why am I always wearing a skirt on the really windy days?

2010-05-12T09:23:00.002-05:00

And is it bad that I don't really care if I accidentally flash people?

Yes, ok. I shot the sheriff. But I did NOT shoot the deputy.

2010-05-11T23:29:00.002-05:00

So, my blog used to be funny sometimes, way back when I first started it. Now I'm usually too tired to do anything but post random stuff that is funny to me and RR but not to pretty much anyone else on the planet. That's ok, though, because she's basically the only person that reads it. So I mostly write stuff for her amusement.

This really, really does not make my blog funny. RR and I have a long list of things that we find really hilarious that even we recognize is, objectively speaking, not even remotely amusing. I don't know if it's because we're sisters or because we've spent too much time together. I’m confident that none of the stuff on that list would make it into a successful comedy routine. This list includes things like accidentally saying words that don’t exist (like the time one of us tried to say "exactly" but we said "presaply" instead*); waving at trees as we drive past them, saying “hi, guys!”; and intentionally using a strong Texas accent when speaking french.

Another item on that list is reciting song lyrics as part of a conversation. I don’t mean quoting them as in “yeah, man, it’s like the song says . . . .” I mean acting like we are not quoting anything, just talking. We still crack up at remembering the time in high school that our friend came into the social studies office and declared with a straight face that life was a highway, and she wanted to drive it. All night long. Why this is so funny to us, I do not know.

The key component to making this funny (to us) is to make sure that you do not use the emphasis and cadence of the song as it is sung. You also have to put on a serious, “here’s a deep thought for you” face. Also, it’s really only funny if the person to whom you are speaking knows what you are doing and plays along.

Of course, we also think it’s funny to repeat back what the other person just said as though we had just thought of it. “I think we should put the pie crust in for 10 minutes instead of 12.” “Actually, you know what? I think we should just put it in for 10 minutes.” “That’s a really good idea, but I think 10 minutes would be better.” “Yeah, I see what you mean, but my suggestion would be to go with 10 minutes.” “Huh. I had not thought about that. Well, I have an idea, how about 10 minutes instead?”

We recognize that those conversations go on way longer than they should.

We also like to do the suspicious eyebrow raise back and forth at each other. But last night for some reason when I was doing this, I got a foot cramp, so just in case those two things are related, I might not be doing that anymore.

Also funny to me: when I try to go to the I'm Not Benny blog, about 90% of the time, I accidentally type "im not beeny." I like his blog because once he mentioned that he has large eyeballs, and though he may have been(y) joking, I could totally identify, as I wear the contact lens equivalent of granny panties.

Beeny. Cracks me up.

Sad, huh?

Not funny to me: carrying the conversation at the weekly work lunch that our work group takes.

I really thought I'd blogged about this before, but I can't find it. Anyway. So. Work lunch.

There are four of us in our work group: our boss and then three of us that report to her. We go to lunch together almost every week. The lunch is almost always at least--at least--two hours. There is no good reason for it to take that long, it just does.

These lunches are exhausting for me because I am an introvert, and I usually use my lunch break to get away from people so that I can make it through the afternoon. At some of my former jobs, I'd sometimes eat lunch in my car just to get a break. But on work group lunch days, not only do I not get a break, but I have to actively participate in the conversation. My two coworkers who are not my boss have told me, repeatedly, that when I'm not there, there isn't much talking. I was very surprised by this, but it did explain why when I can't make the lunch one day, they will almost always reschedule it for a day when I can be there.

We only spend a little bit of time talking about sustantive work stuff. Other than three recurring topics, I don't like to gossip about my coworkers (those topics are: "Further Proof That Coworker A Has Gone 'Round the Bend"; "Further Proof That Coworker B Is Sexist And Also Very Patronizing For Someone With Such A Tenuous Grasp Of The Law"; and "Coworker C: Why So Angry?"). And I don't want to talk about my private life, or anything about pop culture that might give insight into my likes or dislikes or what I do in my spare time (a/k/a private life) because I am a little bit protective of said private life. Perhaps irrationally so.

I've always been this way. Even back in the sixth grade, when I would get a letter from my pen pal, and my mom would ask me who I got a letter from, I was always so offended that she would intrude into something that didn't concern her. Because obviously the mother of a preteen doesn't need to know who her daughter is getting mail from.

It's not much different now. Ask me what I'm watching on t.v. right now. Answer: if it were any of your business, I would have already told you.

I recognize that I'm a little crazy about it. But it works the other way, too. I totally respect other people's privacy. When my boss said she'd be out of the office for a few days because she was having surgery, I did not ask what kind or if it was serious. She might have thought it was disinterest, but it was just me respecting her privacy---if she'd wanted me to know, she'd have told me. It was also a little bit disinterest. I'm kind of a cold person sometimes. But even if this had been my best friend telling me this, I would have just hoped that she'd tell me what kind of surgery. I wouldn't ask because that's information you give out to the people you want to have it.

But the upside of my privacy weirdness, if you have incriminating stuff that you don't want people to know about, when I come over, you can just leave it lying around. In fact, if I had to get something from your desk, and I saw that there was a document on your desk with the heading "Confession" and the subheading "To Be Sent To The Police After My Death," I wouldn't read it. Because I respect your privacy.

Also, I would probably realize that if I read it, I might have to take some sort of action, and in addition to being cold, I am lazy. But mostly, I would recognize that it's just none of my business.

So, anyway, I don't want to talk about my private life with my boss, who is a caring person that I'm quite fond of but who absolutely refuses to recognize boundaries, even when they are pointed out to her. Even when she hits them with her car, puts the car in reverse, and then backs over them. Thus, she is on a need-to-know basis with respect to my personal life.

To make a long story short (too late), due to a lack of safe conversation topics, I am aware that I neither start the conversation at lunch nor provide much material to keep it going. This left me baffled as to why they supposedly all sit there in silence when I'm not there. But when we went out to lunch the next time after they told me that, I realized why. I am the only one that consistently makes eye contact with our boss. I'm the only one that consistently acknowledges that someone is talking, the only one that consistently responds with appropriate facial expressions and vague comments. One of my other coworkers participates some, but only intermittently. I think she keeps her eye on me to figure out when I'm about to snap, and then she jumps in just long enough to give me a breather.

What the hell, y'all? Why am I the one that has to take the bullet? I guarantee you, I am NOT the person there that's the most interested in what is being talked about. Because we are usually talking about coworkers, my coworker's personal lives, or my boss's personal life, none of which I care about (see: cold, above). The other people in my group care, but I do not. And you know what else I recently realized? They always strategically sit so that I have to face her at lunch. They totally throw me under the bus on that. And they make me sit behind her in the car where, I kid you not, she spends more time looking at me than she does at the road. You know, to see if I'm paying attention to the conversation. I have taken to texting either RR or the coworker sitting next to me, just so that I can avoid eye contact on the drive. My boss is nice, really and truly, but I am an introvert, and I get tired from all the people interaction.

So anyway, weekly lunch day: NOT funny.

Also, work-related: a new low on the laziness. I actually avoided working on something the other day because it would have required me to roll my chair about half a foot and pick up a folder, and that seemed like too much effort. No problems with walking to the break room to get more coffee, though.

Ok, bedtime now.

*I SWEAR I have blogged about this incident, but I can't find it.

Possibly I am overreacting, but I'm still sad about it

2010-05-05T12:08:00.003-05:00

Yesterday started out on a bad note. Not that I really believe in signs or omens or anything like that, but when I walked out to go to work and found my car covered in (presumably) animal blood, I did kind of wonder if the universe was trying to tell me something.

So, I think some small animal met its untimely death on the top of my car. I didn’t notice it when I put my bag in the passenger side, but when I walked around to the driver’s side, I saw a sizeable pool of blood on the top of my car. Not person-sized, but definitely more than you’d see if maybe two animals got into a fight. Then I noticed that the windshield, hood, and side of my car had blood splatter all over them. It was disgusting, and for me, it was almost unbearably sad.

Obviously, I had to go get a car wash, although it almost seemed disrespectful to whatever it was that died. Driving the car . . . well, I don’t know if you’ve ever had to drive a car splattered with blood, but I wouldn’t recommend the experience. I couldn’t turn on my windshield wipers because I was afraid that, instead of cleaning the blood off the windshield, it would just smear it. Then I wouldn’t be able to see, plus I’d look like I’d been in some sort of hit and run accident. So I just had to peer through the blood pattern. I also didn’t want to drive too fast for fear of causing the blood on the top of the car to fly off and hit other vehicles on the road. Fortunately, the car wash wasn’t far.

The car wash experience wasn’t exactly cathartic. I went through one of those touchless/brushless car washes at the gas station. I don’t know how other people would feel watching blood wash down their windshield, but I felt pretty awful. I thought for sure that I was going to either cry or throw up in my car, but I managed to not do either. Of course, the car wash didn’t get all the spots off, so I still had to go use one of those scrubber/squeegee tools at the gas pump. The whole experience was just . . . it was gross, of course. But it was mostly just depressing. Heaping a final bit of indignity on the late whatever-it-was by scraping its remains off with a squeegee so I could go to work and get on with my life.

I wanted to find the humor in it because that’s how I normally deal with unpleasant situations. Even if I’m complaining, it’s usually really just an offer to others to laugh. That’s kind of the whole point of my blog. If I can make myself or other people laugh at a situation, then I don’t mind it, it’s not that bad. But I couldn’t laugh at this. I accept the whole cycle of life/food chain part of living in theory. I get it. But in practice, I’m just not that comfortable with violent death, be it a person, an animal, or even an insect. Don’t get me wrong, I will kill any bug that I think might kill me or that’s carrying disease (looking at you, evil roaches), but I still feel bad about it.

And then of course, all my food seemed disgusting to me after that because everything reminded me of the blood all over my car. It didn't help that I have OCD (ok, self-diagnosed, but . . . trust me), so all day, it's all I could think about and picture in my mind. Buckwheat muffins? Yep. Yogurt? Yep. Grapes? Yep. Tomatoes? Well, obviously. I couldn’t bring myself to eat the tomatoes.

I feel a little bit better about it today. I just keep telling myself that this really is just how life is, and we can’t all live to be really old and then slip away peacefully in our sleep. But I still don’t think I’ll get to the point where I can laugh about it.

Instead, I’m distracting myself by being irritated at a coworker who SAYS she had food allergies but then eats all the stuff that she says she can’t have. And then offers it to me. And then I have to bite my tongue to keep from saying, “No, I am ACTUALLY allergic to that, and since I don’t feel like stabbing myself with my epi pin today, I’m going to pass. And if you eat that donut in front of me, if you talk to me about eating that donut, if I can smell the sugar glaze on your breath, I SWEAR I WILL KILL YOU.” I find a little bit of irritation goes along way in distracting me from sad stuff. So that’s what I’m going with.

And I recognize that I'm talking about killing someone after whining about the sadness of some animal's demise. Whenever I threaten to kill someone (pretty much daily), whether out loud (other drivers on the road) or in my head (to my coworkers), to use one of my favorite lines from a t.v. show, "that is what is known as an 'empty threat.'" But it does make me feel better, so I don't know what that says about me.

I don't know where I was going with this

2010-05-03T16:51:00.004-05:00

So, I didn’t want to work today. If any of my coworkers (a) knew about my blog and (b) read it, they would be responding to that comment with an eye roll and remark that I say that same thing every single day. They would be wrong. I say that almost every day.

But today it’s not just that the weather was nice (before the clouds and tornado-like winds blew in) and I’d rather be hanging out on a patio with my friends, sippin’ a tasty beverage. Today it’s not work in general, it’s the specific work that I had to do. It’s that my work required me to come up with a very basic explanation for a concept that I’ve already explained, thoroughly, in writing. So it was basically a “this concept for dummies” explanation, complicated by the fact that (a) the person I had to explain it to is higher up than me on the work ladder so deference was required and (b) the person is not actually a dummy (quite the opposite), and I didn’t want my explanation to make it seem like I think she is. I don’t know how to take an explanation of a concept, which I already thought was pretty clear, and make it even more basic in a way that does not come across as patronizing. So I spent two hours writing and rewriting two paragraphs. TWO HOURS. Then I took a break, and then I worked on it for another hour. Maybe if I had more coffee, I could better walk the line between enlightening and insulting. But for me, it was difficult.

So that was my morning. My afternoon wasn't much more productive.

So that was my day.

I wish I could say that I had an eventful weekend, but I didn’t. I went to a housewarming party for a friend of mine, and that was fun, but that was about all I did. RR bonded with a coworker’s girlfriend because they both name their plants. And this morning, that coworker brought me in some tomato plants from his girlfriend, so that was kind of awesome.

Yesterday, we went to my parents house for a little while, and I got to be the insensitive, terrible daughter who tells her parents that she won’t take vacation time to help move furniture out of her grandfather’s house. We’ve been planning to take a family vacation the last week of May, but we never got around to planning anything, and now my family wants to use that time to go clean out my grandfather’s house (he just moved into a nursing home). But I have work stuff going on that week that can’t be rescheduled, so I would have get people to cover for me on some stuff that no one wants to cover for me on, and I hate asking people to do stuff for me that I already know they don't want to do. I would do it if we were taking an actual family vacation, which we haven’t done in a long time, but this is something we could just do on a weekend, so I don't see why I should take vacation time for it.

Plus, and I didn’t get into this with them, but it does seem like whenever RR or I (or my brother for that matter) have time off from work, it becomes “help the family paint the living room,” “help the family put in new flooring,” “go on a road trip to visit family,” etc. It’s to the point where, if my mom asks one of us if we have [whatever the next upcoming holiday is] off from work, we are really tempted to lie and say we don’t. Because if we say yes, there’s at least an 80% chance that we’ll get conscripted into spending it doing something for a family member. And I kind of resent that it’s just a given that it’s my job to do this stuff, instead it just being a favor that I’m not actually obligated to do. And it bothers me that my family seems to feel not at all guilty about it.

Which is not to say that my family isn’t great, because it is, which is why I feel bad for having told my mom so bluntly that I just wasn’t taking vacation time. And now I’m annoyed because I know that I’m going to cave and end up going on that road trip to move furniture. This is why I want to move to another country. Stupid law school debt! If not for you, I could move to Taiwan, get some random job teaching English or cleaning houses or whatever, and marry Jerry Yan.

I kid! I would never marry someone who has better hair than I do. Or who was thinner than I am. Or someone who had been in a boy band. And he is all of those things.

Way*

Better

Hair

But I would happily be the hair stylist to someone who has better hair than me, because I think that would make my job easy and thereby give me immense job satisfaction. Plus, being a hair stylist is a great excuse to do funky things to your hair, and being a lawyer is kind of the opposite of that. I just don’t see there ever being a time in my career where I could get away with dying my hair blue, and that just makes me sad.

So:

Dear Jerry Yan [or anyone else with good hair and lots of disposable income],

I’m very accomplished with the blow dryer. Just ask what little hair I still have that has managed to stay attached to my scalp despite me attacking it daily with a round brush while I’m attempting to persuade it to be straight instead of curly. Also, the flat iron is my BFF. I do not actually know how to cut hair, as you can tell from looking at my bangs, which I tend to trim on my own rather than trek to the stylist because I am cheap and lazy, even though that makes my bangs look wonky.

So if you have need of someone to blow dry your hair but not actually cut it, and you are willing to compensate me highly for that service, you just give me a call. As an added incentive, I will tell you that I'm very good at listening to other's peoples woes with sympathy, an important skill for a hair stylist.

In fair warning I should tell you that, as my sister will confirm, if the hair stylin’ starts going awry, I have a tendency to just walk away and leave you to fend for yourself with a half-done hairdo that can’t really be salvaged into anything presentable. But one time in college I pulled myself out of bed even though I had the worst hangover ever [WORST.EVER] and managed to fix my friend's hair for a dance she was going to. I don't really drink anymore, so there wouldn't be the danger of me skipping work because of drink-induced vomiting, I'm just telling you that I can play through the pain, so to speak.

But please note that I don’t do shampoos.

Sincerely,
impatient chick

On a side note, why is my hair getting so thin lately? I’m not THAT old.

I can see that this post isn’t going anywhere, so I’m just going to end it here.

*I'd like to give credit to whoever took these photos, but I have no idea who that was. But these pics came from JY's facebook page, if you want to see more pictures of awesome hair.

Why Do I Have This, Exactly?

2010-04-29T23:17:00.004-05:00

I have this Tigger mug. This is Tigger:

Isn't Tigger cute? I love the blue colors, and I love Tigger (cause Tigger's a wonderful thing). This is very much a mug I would have bought for myself or been happy to receive as a gift. But I didn't buy it for myself, and I didn't get it as a gift. I do not know how I acquired it, actually. My suspicion is that it belonged to crazy girl Leeann, and Kara and Valerie wound up with it. Then when I lived with them in Austin, somehow I wound up with it when I moved back to Fort Worth. But it doesn't matter, because I have adversely possessed the mug for the statutory period, and he's mine now. Adverse possession, baby!

Sometimes I actually like being a lawyer.

But you know what I'm not happy about having? This:

It's the cover for a Type O Negative cd. Don't get me wrong, I liked "Black No. 1" as much as the next alterna-girl college student in the '90s, but I don't know any of the band's other songs, and I didn't buy the cd. I might have been ok with it winding up in my cd collection, though, except that I don't have the cd. Just the cover. Not sure how that happened.

The cover does have a cd in it, but it's about as far from Type O Negative as you can get. Take a guess what band it might be. Just guess. Can't guess? I'll show you:

Yep, Duran Duran. I don't know why I kept this cd once I discovered that it was living in the Type O Negative cover. Maybe it's because I used to think that I liked Duran Duran. Then a few years ago, I realized that if I changed the radio station anytime one of their songs came on, that probably meant I wasn't a big fan. (I do like "View to a Kill," though.) Anyway, although I don't know why this cd is in that particular cover, I do know that I did not buy this cd, and I do not know how I got it. Or why it's still living in my home. I think neither RR nor I want to take responsibility for it, and we just pretend that it's not there.

Here's another cd cover of mysterious origin.

Now, I do like Shostakovich, so I would have been happy to have this cd in my collection. But I don't. Once again, we have an odd couple match-up. If you hear Shostakovich playing, you don't think, "WTH is this? Turn it off!" But that is what I think when I hear this group:

Again, not sure how we acquired this. No offense to UB40 fans out there, but ugh, I would never have bought this. Sure, "Red Red Wine" is fun to listen to while you're getting ready to go out on the town, but . . . no, I would not have bought this. Ever. EVER. And I don't know which of my friends or acquaintances is guilty of buying this and leaving it at my house, but whoever it is, he or she had better not speak up, because you can be sure I will think less of them.

And that reminds me of the time in high school where a classmate said she liked this song as it was playing on the radio, and I said, "I don't like reggae," (because at the time, I didn't like it) and she said, "this isn't reggae, this is UB40," which was unintentionally hilarious, because I know, right? I will never think of UB40 as real reggae. But she thought "reggae" was the name of a band that I was confusing UB40 with. It's petty, but at that moment, she sort of killed any chance that we would become better friends. Because I love music, and I am just that petty that I cannot be good friends with someone who doesn't love music enough to know what reggae is. Or to keep your mouth shut when you don't know something lest you sound stupid. So. Yeah. At least this cd makes me laugh when I see it.

I really want to get rid of these cds, but I don't want to throw them in the trash, but I don't see what cd resale store would take them without a cover. Right now my plan is to wait for RR to move out one day, and I'm just going to slip them in with her stuff. I guess it's possible that we still have them because RR secretly likes them. In which case, RR, I still love you. You are still a great sister. But we will not be listening to these cds on any road trips.

Trapped in my office

2010-04-28T13:08:00.002-05:00

I am trapped in my office right now. No, not like before. This time it’s because it’s my coworker’s last day, and he’s leaving soon, probably in the next half hour or so. Right now, he’s standing in the hallway saying his goodbyes to another coworker. I like the departing coworker, he’s very nice, and I hope to keep in touch. But I am horribly, horribly awkward with goodbyes. I don’t like them. They never go well for me. I always say the wrong thing. And do we shake hands, which I’m not good at? Do we hug? We’re not that close, but a hand shake seems weird, and just a wave seems too cold, more like a “have a good time on vacation” than a “goodbye to someone I might never see again.” I guess I could give it a try. Let me test it out in my head.

[picturing myself waving]

No, that’s awkward.

So I’m trying to avoid it. I’m hoping he’ll just leave, and then I can send him an email later telling him what a nice coworker he’s been so that he doesn’t leave here thinking, “well that was weird” and having that be his last interaction with me.

But right now I really need more coffee, so instead of thinking of what a nice guy he is, I’m thinking, “hurry up and leave already.”

This is why RR is known as “the nice one.”

If you are wondering why I'm not getting work done today, it's because I have a bad headache, and all I can think is "coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffeecoffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffeecoffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee," which is not helpful when trying to do lawyery things.

coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffeecoffee coffee coffee [infinity]

UPDATE: he just stopped by to say goodbye, and it was every bit as awkward as I'd feared it would be.

My day today: I think I just got applesauce in my hair.

2010-04-28T11:10:00.002-05:00

Whatevs. I'm going to starbucks.

I WAS thirsty, but also I was BORED

2010-04-28T10:35:00.008-05:00

Yesterday I had to sit in on a meeting for a project I won't be working on, so instead of taking detailed notes, I just wrote this:

Yes, I was thirsty.

If you write the same word over and over again, it will start to look strange, and, if you are like me, you will start to wonder if you are spelling it wrong. So I started questioning myself, as you can see here:

Yep, I had to write out the word "thursty" to make sure that "thirsty" was correct. And then I decided it was weird that some "thir" sounding words are spelled t-h-i-r and some are spelled t-h-u-r. I made a note of some of them.

If you can't read that, it says "thirsty, thursday, thirty."

So that's what I did yesterday. My life, it is fascinating.

Boring Job-Related Vent, or Why The Thing That Makes Me Good at My Job Makes Me Very Slow at My Job

2010-04-26T22:11:00.004-05:00

I spent all day working on a project that was supposed to be easy, and I was very happy because almost nothing I work on is simple. It's like I have the magic touch, only the opposite of that. Even one of my coworkers who I don't work with directly but who sometimes looks over my stuff for me has commented, "how come you get all the weird stuff?" And other coworkers randomly offer me condolences. And like most of my work assignments that are supposed to be easy, this one turned out to the kind of project that lures you in with it's deceptively easy appearance, all "hey, work on me today, I'm a Greenpeace boat, it'll be so easy," and then you start working on it, and it turns out to by very "why the face" and in fact NOT easy. WHY DOES THIS KEEP HAPPENING TO ME?

I can only blame myself for spotting the problem under the surface anyway. Nobody else involved in the matter brought it up. But I spotted the problem, and now I’m obligated to address it. This afternoon, when I went by the office of the senior attorney I work with and told her, hey, I think I spotted a problem, and told her what it was, she said, "yep, that's a problem," and then she looked at me and said, “why do you keep doing this?” Like it's my fault!

But it feels like it is. Because I keep spotting problems that are, shall we say, challenging to solve. I spend weeks working on it, then I give up and go talk to the senior attorney, explaining why it's so difficult to me and hoping she, in her wisdom and longer experience, can give me some guidance, and she inevitably says, basically, “I don’t know what to tell you.” And then we go have this conversation with our boss, and at the end, she’s like, “hmm, yeah, that’s a thinker.”* And then we sit there in silence until someone comes up with something else to talk about, and they think about (I'm guessing) how glad they are that someone else is taking care of that problem.** And I go stare at my office walls for awhile until I come up with a plan. Which I always do. But not before thinking at least once that I'm just going to walk out right then and never, ever come back.

And then I find a solution and everything is great. Until the next one.

So, anyway, I’m a little irritated with myself because if I had not spotted the problem, probably it would never have become an issue to not address it, but now that I’ve spotted it, I have to take care of it. Also, I’m irritated because earlier when I was complaining to my friend and said, “My stupid brain!” I knocked on my forehead with my fist as I was saying it (because that made it more dramatic) and gave myself a headache, which I still have, hours later.

And right after I did that, I dropped applesauce into my computer keyboard. Fantastic.

I really shouldn't be surprised at the way work goes. I've been, for years, the person in the group that ruins everyone's fun by shooting down someone's great plan with a "that's never going to work" and then an explanation of why this person's bright idea is doomed to fail. As you can imagine, I am very popular at parties.

On a brighter note, RR and I were cracking ourselves up today via email over the idea of peeling bananas. We were talking about peeling fruit to reduce allergy reactions, and I told her that I kept picturing myself peeling a banana. Not taking off the banana peel, but getting a vegetable peeler and scraping off the outer layer of the part you eat. For some reason, this was hilarious to me. RR, being RR, thought it would be an excellent idea if I did this at work one day to see if anyone said anything. And I told her that was an excellent idea, but I needed to come up with something to say if anyone did say something. The best scenario is to not explain, but obviously if someone asks, I cannot say, “I just wanted to see if someone would say something.” So far my best suggestion is to say, “I just don’t like the bumpy part.” I think I could say that with a straight face, and RR and I thought this would be very funny.

I think maybe RR and I need more sleep.

*Don't think badly of them for leaving me to fend for myself. The reason they don't have an answer for me is because there is not one.

**Do not think badly of them for that, either. We all do that around the office. There is always, always at least one project that someone else has that you are at least secretly, but usually openly glad that you don't have to deal with. I think the unofficial motto of our office is, "dude, I feel bad for you, but better you than me. Have a donut."

Post Script on That Last Post

2010-04-20T14:53:00.001-05:00

I just realized that my pattern of swapping cardigans and shoes when I get to work means that (a) on my way to and from work, the top half of my body is stylin’ but my feet look frumpy, but while I’m at work it’s the exact opposite and (b) this means that there is never any part of my work day when I look put-together. I always look at least mildly frumpy. Even on days where I wear a suit because on those days, I take off my suit jacket as soon as I get to my office and put on my office sweater. My totally cute shoes are always offset by my baggy, wrinkled cardigan while I’m at work, which by the way pretty much covers up most of my outfit. And my when I’m not rockin’ the dad sweater, I’m wearing old lady nurse shoes (because I have old lady nurse feet, so I can wear cute shoes at work because I rarely get my sit-me-down-upon out of my chair, and when I’m in my office I take off my shoes anyway, but for walking, comfort rules).

So if you walked into my office wanting to hire an attorney, you would have a lot of confidence that the person behind the desk was someone who lives in her car and who is only in the office because she broke in to use the computer to troll the comments section of online news articles.

Well, I take it back. For the few hours of every week that I have to be in court, I look reasonably close to “like a lawyer.” I say only reasonably close because let’s be honest, it’s me, and if I remembered to put on eye shadow and lipstick or woke up in time to do my hair, it’s a minor miracle. I’d like to think that if I actually had to interact with the public every day, this would be a different story, but I really can’t say that with any conviction.

As an aside, I might need to hire a lawyer later today because the document I’m trying to read and summarize is propped up on my laptop/docking station, and it keeps sliding down toward me, and I push it up, and it slides back down, and I swear if it doesn’t stay put then I WILL KILL SOMEONE.

I would totally hire someone that looked frumpy, though, because even though I look like I don’t have my stuff together, lawyer-wise, I’m actually kind of awesome.* The appearances, they can be deceiving.

*when I’m not having focus issues, and if it doesn’t involve me getting out of my chair.

Incident Report And A Comment

2010-04-20T13:47:00.001-05:00

I've got nothing going on, so I thought I'd offer up an Incident Report (a la RR) and a random comment.

Incident Report
Time frame: last 30 days

On the way down the stairs in my townhouse, I missed the last step and fell. When I was on my way out of town for a conference. And was running about two hours late. Hurt like heck, but I persevered, got on the road, and got to the conference just in time to miss the sessions that I wanted to see that day but right in time for the tour I didn’t want to go on.

This month, I got stuck in my office not once but twice, though neither time was really my fault. I don’t mean “had too much work to do and couldn’t leave,” I mean literally trapped inside my office. I had this felt Easter basket full of coworker bribery (a/k/a kit kats and peanut butter cups) hanging on my door. When one of my coworkers came in to talk to me, she shut the door so we could talk confidentially (because we were talking confidential lawyer stuff and NOT because we were talking about one of our coworkers). Part of the basket stuck between the door and the doorjamb, and this somehow made it impossible for us to open the door from the inside. I had to call a coworker to let us out. And then, not being one to learn from our mistakes, I didn’t bother to move the basket and the same thing happened again a few days later.

By the way, you just don’t know how stupid you can feel if you’ve never had to call someone to ask him to come open your door for you. And then have to call again a few days later.

I dropped oatmeal on my pants two days in a row. And on each of those days, it happened twice. Went to take a bite, somehow missed my mouth, poured oatmeal on my pants, swiped furiously at my pants with a napkin, and then freakin’ did it again with the next bite. This was in the presence of the same coworker with whom I’d been stuck in my office, so I’m thinking that something about her aura makes be even more of a catastrophe than I usually am.

Spilled coffee on my pants one day, tea on a sweater the next day, and the managed to get a mystery item on my cardigan the day after that.

I'm really wanting to try working out using a kettlebell, but I'm terribly afraid I will drop the darn thing on my feet or accidentally fling it at my cat.

***
Random Comment

On a non-incident-report note, I am the Mr. Rogers of the office. On days that I don’t wear a suit, I almost always pick out a cardigan to wear that matches my outfit, in case my office is cold that day. But once I get to work, I always—always—take off the cardigan I wore in and put on my "office sweater," a large, soft, cuddly sweater that I keep in my office. And then when I leave, I change back. And I also usually wear a one pair of shoes to walk in from the parking garage and then change into fancier shoes when I get here, and then change back when I leave. I have no plans to change this behavior pattern. But I will accept the mocking comments of my coworkers.

Sneezles and Such

2010-04-19T17:24:00.002-05:00

So, my allergies today. Blech. Do you ever have one of those days where, if you tilt your head back, you get a nice flow of mucus right down the back of your throat? That was me today. Yummy! But I’d rather it drain than stay in my stuffy head, so I spent quite a bit of time staring at my ceiling today. And yet I was strangely productive. Of the work kind, not the phlegm kind. I was the phlegm kind of productive all through last night, when I hacked up all kinds of stuff. Yes, that’s gross. That’s why I’m sharing. If I have to be grossed out, then so does everyone else. That’s why I didn't bother to close my office door today and just went ahead and let my coworkers have to deal with it. They all got to hear me sneeze and blow my nose (although if I had started doing that really gross snorfling thing, I would have closed my door because I don’t actually want anyone to throw up).

I almost left work early today because I have a strict rule that when I run out of kleenex, I go home. I draw the line at having to use the incredibly thin toilet paper or the prison-issue paper towels.* I barely made it through with just the one box.

I also drank lots of water and hot tea, and I have a thing about only using public restrooms so many times in one day before the OCD takes over and I CANNOT do it anymore. Plus, I just know that the guy who has the office across from me counts how many times I go to the bathroom. He’s never said anything, but I just know it. He must because after awhile, it would be noticeable to even the most unobservant person. And I have to stop making trips before I think he’s reached the point where he’s thinking, “damn, woman, maybe drink a little less of the water, or maybe get medical help.” It’s kind of like the time we were watching television at our friend’s house, and he said, “hey, it’s been an hour, and [RR] hasn’t had to go the bathroom yet.” I don’t want that happening to me.

You know what I think would help me today? Ginger chews. Not for any reason other than I can’t stop eating them, and now I really want some, so I will come up with a rationalization for buying some. This is strange to me because up until a month or so ago, I couldn’t stand the taste of ginger. Like, drinking a ginger ale when I was nauseated was not a good idea unless I actually wanted to throw up. But these days, there’s not a lot in the candy department that I can have, so I started eating ginger chews, and now, I loves them. I’m still not a ginger ale fan, but I have a feeling that’s gonna change before too long. This just goes to show that taste buds really can adapt. Like, not long ago I bought a jar of Jif peanut butter, which I used to have in the top five of my list of Best Things In This World, and now I think it’s too sweet and not peanut-y enough. I was kind of sad to find that out, but also glad because now I’m not tempted to eat it by the jar like I used to sometimes do (ha ha, just kidding, I would never eat a whole jar of peanut butter in one day and then, hypothetically, have my face swell up ). This makes me wonder if I wouldn’t like Twinkies now if I ate one. I almost don’t want to know. Because Twinkies, though not really fit for human consumption, are awesome.

And since I’m whining about allergies, I will add one more complaint. On Friday, we are having a going-away lunch for a coworker. It’s at a Tex-Mex restaurant that I used to love. And there is literally nothing on the menu that I can eat. So I will have to eat before I go and then sit there while everyone else eats some of my favorite food right in front of me. Suuuuuucks. But it will be worth it to show my support. And also, I should rack up enough pity points that it will get me out of several group lunches in the future, so there’s that.

Let’s end on something positive. Staples now sells argyle file folders (at least in the store I was in recently—I don’t see them online). And we all know that I loves the argyle. And I love office supplies. It’s hard to be unhappy when someone has put those two things together. They are so choice. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking some up.

*I joke about our paper towels being like something they’d use in prison, but our hand soap is actually made by prisoners, so I’m not sure that these paper towels aren’t actually the same ones they use, if not in prison, then at least in the county jail.

Thirsty, much?

2010-04-15T18:45:00.003-05:00

What is the limit on the number of beverage containers I'm allowed to have on my desk at the same time? I need to make sure I stop allowing them to collect there before the labels "pathetic" or "pathetically lazy" can accurately be applied to me.

Work-Related Post With No Real Work-Related Substance

2010-04-15T18:18:00.003-05:00

I have had a song stuck in my head for three days. I don't even like it. Or at least, I didn't use to like it. But now, I'm starting to like it. I told one of my friends today that it's like a version of Stockholm Syndrome. It sticks around torturing me for long enough, and I start feeling like, hey, it's not so bad.

I had to take some time away from work today to blog because I needed some distance from it. I really need to get some perspective on what I’m working on right now. What was an almost finished document draft is now morphing into a never-gonna-end treatise on the subject. I can’t seem to stop myself from adding more info. It will surprise no one when I say that I suffer from what I call “over-explaininess.” I’m not as bad as some people out there, but I do tend to go a little long. It's not just the blog posts, folks! It happens at work, as well. And my coworkers appreciate just as much as you do.

I don’t really have much to talk about because I don’t do anything interesting at home and I’m hesitant to talk about work too much for fear of getting discovered and then fired. Not that I would talk about anything confidential, but there are definitely some people here who are a little on the sensitive side. As far as I can tell, they do not actually have a sense of humor. But what they do have is the ability to fire me. So. I don’t talk much about work.

But there are some topics about work that I do feel reasonably safe talking about. They aren’t very interesting, though, but that’s what we’ll be talking about today.

(same old coffee rant)
I would first like to spend just a minute to remind the people I work with (who don’t actually know about my blog, so, yes, this is just me venting) that if you leave the pot of coffee sitting on the burner all day, it congeals into something disgusting. That’s why we have a carafe. Please use it. I love coffee, and, what’s more, I need it, so please don’t ruin it for me, and don’t force me to drink gunk. It’s not like we start with high quality stuff to begin with here, so the experience is already pretty much downhill from the moment the brewing starts. Also, I would like you to take a moment to read up on how the coffee brewing process works, so that you will understand that (1) if you don't use enough grounds, the coffee will be bitter, and (2) when you put your cup under the drip to take the first part of the pot of coffee as it brews, you are taking the part that tastes the best and leaving less of the flavor for the rest of us, because (especially when you don't have enough grounds) the part that comes out last is the part that's bitter. So thanks for that, all of you. You should know that for a few seconds of every day, I hate you just a little bit.
(/same old coffee rant)

I managed to get our of our work group lunch this week. Victory! I won’t get into why that makes me happy (see coworkers with no sense of humor, supra). It just really, really does.

[warning: nerdy legal writing discussion begins here]
And continuing on the topic of talking about work without really talking about it, one of my coworkers edited something for me today, and he tried to tell me to change a citation from something that was correct to something that was wrong. Look, dude, I know you don’t know this about me, we’re not that close, so let me just tell you this now---do not mess with me on the Bluebook. The BB is my BFF. We’re tight, man. But he totally had me doubting myself, because wouldn’t he make sure he was right before telling someone else that she had made a mistake? I should have known better. This is the same guy that once tried to change my “Id. §” to an “Id. at §.” You do not “id. at §” statutes, dude, you “id. §” them. Sheesh. I admit to accidentally making BB errors sometimes, so I’m not going to judge if you forget to italicize “see” or occasionally forget your pinpoint cite. It wouldn't be right for me to judge you for your mistakes considering how lazy I’ve gotten about proofreading my own writing. But if you are going to tell someone she’s wrong about a rule, shouldn’t you make sure she’s actually wrong? So that kind of bothered me. This is just another reason why I don’t like editing anything for most of my coworkers. I spend soooo much time making sure that I’m right about anything before I’ll tell anyone to change something that it takes me way too much time. But apparently some people do not feel that pressure.
[end of nerdy legal writing discussion]

Now let's talk about coworkers and binge eating. I’ve noticed something about my coworkers and myself when it comes to the matter of free dessert.

About my coworkers:
Let’s imagine that somebody brings in some dessert for everyone to share. Let’s say it’s a cake. At first, everyone comes in and takes some, so a good portion of it is taken pretty much right away. But then people start coming in to the break room for seconds. But nobody wants to look like That Person, the person who eats all the cake, so people just take a little bit, or they don’t take any but keep coming in to look and see how much is left, only taking some if it looks like it’s going to be all gone soon. So the day goes by, and after the first round of snacking, the amount of cake that’s been consumed stays pretty stable, riiiight up until the end of the day. Then, suddenly, around 4:30, all gone. It's like there is this collective agreement among all office workers that whatever is left at the end of the day is fair game, and you can't be judged for taking whatever you can get your hands on, so everyone rushes in to grab some as soon as it's late enough to qualify as the end of the day. You could go in at 4, even 4:15, and they’ll be pretty much the same amount as there was after lunch, but by 4:30 or 4:45, no cake. Well, I say no cake, but sometimes there’s a teeny, tiny piece left because nobody wants to take the last piece (and note that this piece will be left, sitting on a table, uncovered, all night, and yet the next morning, someone will eat it). But basically, it’s gone. Which means that there are people who are sitting around their offices spending the day planning out when would be the best time to take more cake, judging what time to go into the break room so as to be able get the cake before someone else does but not so early that they look bad. I’m not judging because I’ve certainly done that myself for really fantastic dessert before. I’m just saying that it’s apparently really common.

About me:
I am petty, and I like messing with people. This is what I’ve learned about myself. Because if I am the person that brings the food, I sneak into the break room about 3:30 or 4:00 and take everything that’s left back to my office to take it home with me. Even if I don’t really want it. And if anyone says anything about, “oh, is the [fill in the dessert here] all gone,” I either make vague, noncommittal, “oh, I don't know, is it?” comments, or I outright lie and say it’s all gone, even though I’m usually very uncomfortable with telling lies.

I don’t do this every time, but, yeah, it happens. Because there’s a part of me that thinks, look, if you want to be the person that eats several pieces of cake in one day, I’m cool with that. It’s not a good idea, but I’m in no place to judge. I have, on more than one occasion, consumed an entire large bag of Reese’s peanut butter cups just in the time it took me to drive from the grocery store to my house (for obvious reasons, I’m not allowed to eat these anymore). But you gotta own it. Just be that person. I’m just not going to help you if you want to pretend that this isn’t what’s going on, that you aren’t obsessing over food–food!!—and getting really weirdly possessive and predatory about eating way too many empty calories. Especially if you are going to then tell me that I don’t get enough nutrients in my diet and proceed to give me advice on eating a balanced diet. Not that that’s ever happened. But if it did ever happen, that might make me enjoy messing with you by taking your food away and then denying it, which you can't challenge me on even though you want to because that would basically be an admission that you have food issues. Hypothetically.

So that’s basically work these days. I don’t want to give the impression that I dislike my coworkers, because I actually really, really like 95% of them. Just not the 5% who don’t know how to make coffee.

Song(s) of the Day

2010-01-24T11:25:00.002-06:00

Today, I'm cleaning the abode, which makes me feel better but isn't exactly exciting. When I'm doing heavy-duty tidying, I like to have some music playing that makes it seem more fun. What about you? Need some pick-me-up music today? Maybe one of these will work for you.

(1) "Home," Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeroes. You can listen to it on their myspace page. Yes, they are a bunch of hippies, but that doesn't bother me (and no, Deals, not because I'm one of them---still shaving! still bathing! don't wear patchouli!), and I hope it won't bother you.

I don't know where I was when this album came out last year because I totally missed it. But I'm trying to play catch-up---I've had this song playing more or less constantly for the last month.

Not your style? Try this one:
(2) "Down The Road Tonight," by Hayes Carll.
I just love Hayes Carll. I'm a little sad I didn't go see him when he was in town recently, but the show didn't start until 10pm. 10pm!! I'm old, y'all. I can't stay up that late.

I'd also recommend "Bad Liver and a Broken Heart," "It's a Shame," "Good Friends," and "Beaumont," but they don't fall into the "pick me up" category. If this song doesn't make you bop around your house, you must be dead inside (or at least you must be in the throws of depression).

Want something a little bit more smooth? Can't go wrong with Robert Cray:

(3) "24-7 Man" and "All the Way," by Robert Cray.
Take Your Shoes Off may be one of the most perfect albums of all time if you like your music with a dash of the blues. Well, even if you don't. When it came out, "24-7" was on rotation at our house pretty much, well, 24-7. "All the way" is slow, not at all bop-around-the-house music, but it's got soul, man. As RR said, "if it's a nice Spring day, it's sunny, the house is clean, and I've got nothing to do, this is the only song I want to listen to."

I hope these songs help you forget that it's Sunday, which means we all have to go to work tomorrow.

The Incident, as we are calling it

2010-01-22T13:19:00.002-06:00

Last night, I got to tag along with some friends (thanks again, you guys!) to see Eddie Izzard. In a word: awesome. I had such a great time.

In other news, let’s see, what’s been going since last we met? Hmm. Not much. The holidays were pretty uneventful.

Oh, yeah, I haven't talked about The Incident yet. Cheese and crackers, y’all, I owe RR big time. BIG TIME. If it weren’t for her, I might be dead.* (link contains NSFW language). Ok, I may be exaggerating slightly. But here’s what happened.

See, because I am sick and tired of feeling like dirt all the time because of my allergies, I signed up to get allergy shots. You know, you go to your doctor and get injected with minuscule amounts of what you are allergic to, and then when your body gets used to that, you start getting injected with slightly less minuscule amounts of the allergens, and so on, until eventually you have trained your immune system not to freak out that "holy moly, it's duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuust!!!!!"

On a side note, I hope it helps with the cat allergies soon because Wally has started doing something RR and I call “upcreep.” He used to sleep down by my feet, and, in cold weather, behind my knees (or, if I made the mistake of sleeping on my back, then on my knees, and if you’ve never had 10 pounds sitting on your knees, pressing them slowly but persistently backward in the direction that knees do not bend, be glad). But lately, he’s started creeping upward in his quest for prime cuddling real estate.

It started when the weather got colder. He’s always turned into velcro when it’s cold, but this year, man, I have one leg under the covers, and he’s already trying to climb up the sheets that I’m holding up to get under. It’s very pitiful. So, I guess the knees don’t generate enough heat, and maybe he was informed that women have most of their heat not at their extremities but to keep their innards warm, because he started creeping up to sleep on my stomach. Which, hey, great, let’s just think of that as a diet aid because you can’t eat too much at night or too close to bedtime if you want to get any sleep with ten pounds standing on your stomach and if you don’t want to, you know, throw up, or, best case scenario, spend the night with excruciating acid reflux. And if you think I can just roll over and get him off of me, you are mistaken. He’s very good at shifting his weight.

Anyway, then he started creeping up to “the girls,” if you will, which also, DON’T WANT TEN POUNDS PRESSING DOWN. If I slept on my side, he creeped up to my upper arms, and ten pounds on arm=arm falling asleep. But now he’s almost to my collarbone. I think he’s either trying to get to my axis of snorgling, or it’s part of his master plan to suffocate me one night. Either way, he seems pretty pleased with himself.

ANYWAY.

So, on the Monday before Christmas, RR and I had taken the day off because we had not done one bit of Christmas shopping, and we wanted to knock it all out in one day. RR agreed to go with me to get my allergy shot first. By now I’ve worked my way up to only slightly diluted shots. I didn’t feel great that day, and they say don’t get your shot if you don’t feel well, but I’d done it before, and it was on my to-do list. So we go, wait the 15 minutes they make you wait after your shot, and leave. So far so good.

Then we go right around the corner to get Einsteins coffee, where this incredibly rude couple practically slams the door on us going in and then takes freakin’ forever to decide on their bagel order, because oh, I don’t know, maybe I want to breakfast bagel, do you have any more of the plain ones? just the plain ones? like in the back? hmm, I don’t know, so, hmm, and SWEET BEANS AND RICE I JUST WANT COFFEE. So, hated them.

Anyway, we go a few minutes up the road to our first shopping destination. While we were there, I started coughing a bit. No big deal. But I kept having to cough. And I kept coughing for longer, and it was like one of those coughs where you get into a loop, and the more you cough, the more you need to cough. And I thought, what the frak is going on here? And then it dawned on me, thank God, that maybe there was the sliiiiightest possibility that it was in some way related to my allergy shot. Not wanting RR to be alarmed, but thinking it might be a good idea if someone else knew what might be going on, I nonchalantly mentioned to RR that I could maaybe be pooossibly having a bad reaction.

She, of course, was exactly as alarmed as I thought she’d be, but I insisted, hacking all the while, that we go to the store next door because they had candy. RR looked skeptical but agreed not to drag me bodily to the car, keeping her eye on me the whole time. I agreed to let her drive when we left, though. You know. Just in case.

So as we were leaving the candy store, the coughing got worse (this whole period since the coughing began in earnest probably wasn’t more than 5 minutes or so?), and then the wheezing began. Wheezing that started out sounding like an asthma attack and then moved into wheezing that made me think, “crap, was that me that just made that sound?” RR wanted me to use my epinephrine pen. Me: (cough) No (wheeze) I’m feeling better. RR: [Skeptical look]

RR said she was driving me straight back to the doctor. I said she wasn’t. She reminded me that she had the keys, and I didn’t really have a choice in the matter. I didn’t want to look like one of those people who assumes she’s about to die when she gets a paper cut, so I asked if she’d just call the doctor’s office, and if they agreed that they needed to see me, then we’d go. So she talked to them and, yeah, they made me come back.

The whole drive there, I was all, “I'm feeling better!” and "I don't want to get on the cart." RR: [not buying it]

I really did seem to be wheezing less, or at least, the sounds started to sound like wheezing and not non-human sounds. So I fully expected the doctor’s office to be all, “well, let’s take a look at you, hmm, yep, sit here for a few minutes, and if it gets worse, we’ll do something.” Instead, I walked back to the nurses’ area and said, “my sister just called about —“ and before I could get any further, the nurse cut me off, said, "Yep, let's go," and took me into the little evaluation area, where three nurses started taking my vitals and asking for details (maybe it was a slow day at the office). My doctor, who I love, was out on vacation, but her practice partner, who is also great, was in the office that day. He came in and asked me about exactly what happened, and when I told him about it, he asked if I’d used my epinephrine, and I said no, and he and the nurses said, exasperated, basically, “FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE, WHY NOT?” And I tried out my “feeling much better” line and said I was just waiting to see if I got to where I couldn’t get in any air, because surely that is when I could be certain I was having anaphylaxis. And the doctor’s kind but firm response involved the phrases “by the time” and “would be dead.” So, basically, DON’T wait until you actually cannot get any air in to use your epinephrine. It maybe will not go well to try and use your epinephrine after you've passed out.

So then, yeah, I started to cry. I just felt so, so stupid. Plus, I felt like crap. You know, from the anaphylaxis. And stupid. And then they all looked like they felt really bad for me, the poor crying stupid woman, and one of the nurses handed me a bunch of tissues with this "there, there," pitying look. They were sweet. It was so embarrassing.

Somewhere in all that they gave me a shot of epinephrine, and then they kindly but firmly reminded me that taking your epinephrine when you don’t need it won’t cause any health damage but not using it when you DO need it will.

Then the doctor asked if I needed a breathing treatment, and I said, “No *wheeze* *sob* *wheeze* I’m feeling better.” Seriously. What is wrong with me? But he just gave me a look, kind of like the look your parents give you when you’re a kid and you say that yes, you did brush your teeth, when really you hadn’t. And I said, ok, yeah, maybe, treatment, yes. And so they gave me a breathing treatment and some other kind of medication. And after the breathing treatment, the doctor asked how I felt, and I said much better, and he said, “See, now I don’t believe you.” Which, of course, I deserved. But I DID feel better. Shaky from the epinephrine and the breathing treatment, still a little reaction-y from the shot, but no longer like I was facing (bum-bum-bum) Certain Doom! After making me sit there for a little longer, and pretty much every nurse there coming to check on me (they are all so sweet), they finally let me go.

The positive that I’m taking away from the experience is that I feel like I have permission to take a bad reaction seriously and not feel like I’m a hypochondriac for using the epinephrine. The lingering downside, however, is that RR was right. And everyone at the doctor’s office told her so. And, in front of her, asked me, wasn’t I glad she was there with me? Which I was of course. But now I will never get to be in charge of my own health again. Anytime I think I don’t need to go the doctor, this is going to come back to haunt me. She’ll be all, “you’re not alright, you had a ‘sode.”

But I’m glad that she was there and that she’s all paranoid about my health, so I guess I’ll just have to take it. And also, this past week, the shoe was on the other foot (how's your finger, sis?), so there's that.

Were the cashews poisoned? Looks like we'll never know. Unless . . .

2009-12-18T14:02:00.002-06:00

I just ate a whole bag of cashews from Starbucks. Yea for healthy lunches! Hey, at least it has nutritional value of some sort. But even aside the fact that the bag has about 500 calories, I’m thinking that I may have made a mistake. I’m afraid that it might have had some of what you might call “artificial flavoring,” a/k/a "I don't think that's supposed to be in there."

I’ve eaten far more bags of Starbucks cashews than I probably should have over the years, but I think I may have to give them up. While I was eating the cashews today, about halfway through the bag, I noticed that they tasted a little funny to me, but I thought maybe cashews just don’t go with gingerbread latte very much. Or possibly my taste buds were still a little wonky from the peppermint puff I’d had earlier in the day, the one with the red dye food coloring that makes me feel bad enough that I’ve started to believe the “red food dye will kill you” stuff in the Internet.

But now, I’m thinking it was just the cashews. I’m thinking they were a little “off.” Y’all, I really don’t feel too well.

This is not my first experience with Starbucks cashews What Gone Wrong. A few months ago, I bought some cashews from Starbucks, and they also were a little “off.” If you’re thinking that after my previous experience, maybe I should have figured out this time that something was wrong a little earlier in my dining experience, you’re wrong. First of all, I was in a hurry to eat and move on to work, so I was barely even chewing. And second, that time before , it was pretty obvious after eating just one that something was wrong.

“This tastes weird,” I thought. I tried to figure out what the problem was, exactly. “Kind of a chemical taste,” I thought. I tentatively sniffed the bag. Yep, chemical smell, too. A specific kind of chemical smell.

I took the bag to a coworker, because of course that’s what you do when you eat something that tastes bad—get someone else to try it. I usually don’t try to make people eat stuff that I really think could kill them or give them cancer or even just food poisoning, but I’d already eaten one! I needed to know that if later, I started having stomach cramps or went blind or something, that it was or was not because I’d eaten a toxic substance. So, yeah, my coworker was asked to participate in a small clinical trial of sorts.

“Do these taste funny to you?” I asked her. She hesitated, took one, put in her mouth, and made a face, nodding.
“Maybe like gasoline, maybe?” I asked.
“Yes!” she said, spitting out the cashew. Then she got mad at me. I can see that. The whole “may or may not be coated in gasoline” thing was information she should probably have had before the tasting, I just didn’t want to put the idea in her head and taint my data. Now I had confirmation that it did, in fact, taste and smell like gasoline. And then I made her feel better by suggesting that we get another coworker to try it. But then I felt bad and only made coworker #2 smell them. The consensus was—definitely gasoliney.

Of course, the whole thing was kind of worth it later. I’d left the cashews on my coworker’s desk so that she could remind me to contact Starbucks and ask for a refund (which of course I never did). A few weeks later, in her office, another coworker said something kind of snarky to her. She paused, looked him straight in the eye, and held up the bag to him. “Cashew?” she offered, straight-faced. She totally would have let him eat one, too, and my wide-eyed look of horror didn’t even make him pause, and although I thought it would be funny, I had a pang of conscience and stopped him. But her devious payback for the snark made her go up a notch in my list of cool people (and she was already pretty high up there).

So, anyway, yeah, I think I’m done with Starbucks cashews.

A hunting we will go

2009-12-14T13:53:00.003-06:00

If you were wondering what the current state of the housing market is, I am here to tell you that even with the economy the way things have been, some sellers are still more than a little overly-optimistic about what their homes are worth.

Lately, I’ve been looking into the idea of looking into buying a house. It’s all very tentative. A longtime friend of my mom’s is a realtor, and she’d been helping me see what’s out there and talk through the process of whether this is really something I want to bother with.

On the plus side: no more landlord, a buyer’s market, and low interest rates on mortgages.

On the downside: yard work, which I don’t do; home repairs, which I don’t like messing with and don’t want to pay for; a committed relationship with a bank, which frightens me; and a commitment, at least for awhile, with one particular area of one particular city, instead of being free to move around the metroplex to whatever area is at that time most convenient for me.

But on the plus side: no more landlord. The no more landlord thing, that’s very appealing to me. I want to be able to rip up carpet or put a hole in the wall and answer to no one.

One of my coworkers just does not get this. She keeps trying to get me rent from her former landlords. Me: I want to be able to rip up carpet or paint a room without asking anyone first. Her: [clearly not listening to what I’m saying, as usual] I’m pretty sure they’d let you replace the carpet, depending on what you wanted to replace it with. Me: . . . Like I said, I don’t want to have to ask permission. Her: Oh.

And then a week later we have the same conversation.

Meanwhile, I’m trying very hard not to let my boss know that I’m looking. She’s a very helpful sort of person, and she’d be very supportive, but that would turn into her basically taking over the search. We’d probably have to go look at houses during lunch.

Anyway, weekend before last, I finally drug RR out and looked a few homes. The second house we looked at was lovely, but it already had an offer on it. The rest of the homes were, well, disappointing. Now, I remember looking at homes with my parents when we first moved to the area, and maybe it’s because they had more to spend than I do, but I don’t remember it being such a literally nauseating process.

The third house we went to had lovely hardwoods throughout, and a nice little office nook behind the family room that would be a great place to work. I loved the kitchen. But the floors in the living room slanted. A lot. Actually, it looked like maybe they had buckled, because the right side of the living room slanted to the right, and the left side of the room slanted to the left. Then they had also left one of those scented plugin-thingies in one of the outlets to pollute the air with a nauseating perfume-y smell. The floors made me feel like I was on a boat and hadn’t quite mastered my “sea legs” yet, and combined with the scent, I felt a little seasick. So, suffice to say, I couldn't leave there fast enough, which is not how you want to feel about your home. Also, it had an above-ground pool (which, sorry if you like those, is of no interest to me), as well as a hot tub, my feelings about which I’ve made pretty clear. Definitely a “no.” And most of the backyard had been inexplicably paved-over.

The third house had water damage and a second floor that did not give me or RR confidence in its structural integrity. There was another that I can’t remember what I didn’t like about it other than the carpet.

But the trip began and ended with the worst of the group, or the best, depending on whether you want to live there or just have something interesting to talk about at lunch.

The first house was just so darn cute from the outside. I'd been eyeing it on the real estate listing website for months now, more and more sure that this was going to be my new house. I'd even driven past it twice now, just to get a look at it in person, and it only made me want it more. On the inside, though, it was bewildering and confusing. Well, maybe it was the gas leak we detected that confused us, but I really think it was the house.

The entry was ok, an odd shaped room with hardwood floors, but immediately to the right was a very small room/alcove/entry area from the garage, a step down from the living room, laminated with some sad, old linoleum. It wasn’t big enough to be used as an actual, functioning living space, and it wasn’t set up right to be a mud room or anything like that, and although we discussed it for several minutes, none of us could figure out what it was for or could be used for.

Off the back of the living room was a family room that was actually quite cozy with a gorgeous fireplace. But there were cracks in the ceiling and floor that made it clear that it wasn’t standing on a good foundation. And in the room was a closet that, instead of a normal door, had what we we’ve been calling a “Scooby Doo door.” Instead of having hinges on the side, it had a hinge in the middle of the top, and it swung around on the hinge like the secret door always does in a Scooby Doo episode. You know, the one that the caretaker-disguised-as-the-monster is hiding behind, that swivels around so that the caretaker is in the room with Shaggy, and Scooby is in the secret passage. Except it wasn’t secret, and it was ugly.

The bedrooms were very interesting. The front bedroom had a closet that backed up to the hallway. The back wall of that closet had a door with a lock on it leading to the hallway. Which . . . what???? You can’t use the bedroom door to go into the hallway?

The back bedroom had a separate entry to the backyard with it’s own screen door and peephole. The back door looked like it had been attacked by a pack of angry dogs—a good quarter of it was missing pieces. Then, when we went outside to look at the backyard, we couldn’t get back in through that way because the push button on the screen door was missing. Fortunately, we were able to get out through the fence. I was not in the mood to climb anything.

All in all, after seeing it, we understood why it had been on the market for so long.

The last house was a historic two-story in a neighborhood that I’m dying to live in. It was understood before we went to look at it that it would need some work. Ultimately, we didn’t even go in. This is because when we got there, it was impossible not to notice that the entire house was leaning heavily to the right (well, technically, stage right). We looked at the house, at each other, and back at the house, and unanimously decided that we were done looking for that day.

And that was that. My first foray into looking for a home. I gotta say, if house hunting is going to be months of this, then the idea of continued renting is somehow seeming a lot easier to swallow.

If this were only a marketable skill, I'd be rich

2009-12-10T18:23:00.003-06:00

Just because we're twins doesn't mean that RR and are good at all the same things. When it comes to dancing, there is no comparison---RR got the full share of skill in that area. But I have my own area to shine when it comes to movement. Awkward movement, that is. I'm talking of course about being a klutz. My friends, I am good at it. RR is no slob in that area, sure, but I am a star.

Look, anybody can be clumsy. But me, I make it an art form. I'm a bumbling artiste.

Like tonight, for example. Anyone can lose her balance and stumble. But it takes true talent to lose your balance, stumble against the trash can, regain your balance by throwing your foot down perfectly onto the pedal, lifting the trash can lid to smack yourself in the sit-me-down-upon. That, my friends, is talent.

No, I mean it. The stuff I do on a daily basis looks like it was choreographed. That's good, because I think if you have to be graceless and uncoordinated, you might as well be entertaining at the same time.

Of course, my favorite clumsiness stories are from when I was in law school. I thought that I had blogged about it, but I can't find it anywhere, so here it is.

Second favorite clumsiness story (I swear I think I've blogged about this):
One day before class started, I was sitting in my chair. I had on heels, and I had them stuck between two rails of the chair underneath me. I do this all the time. I just like to sit that way.

I dropped a pen, and I leaned over to pick it up. The weight of me leaning over caused the chair to lean with me. I went to put my foot down to stop the chair's movement, only to discover that both feet were firmly hooked into the chair rails and weren't coming out, and I was going down. And sure enough, the entire chair tipped over, with me just sitting in it. Anyone can fall out of a chair. I give it a little something extra. My classmates were concerned that I might have hurt myself, but for me, it was just another day.

Absolute favorite clumsiness story:
One day I was walking to class, arms full of casebooks, backpack on my back. Heavy, heavy backpack with my heavy, heavy laptop tucked inside. I approached the door, but my arms were full, so I did what I usually did, what I had done successfully for years, first at work and then at law school: I pressed the handicap button with my foot so that the door would open by itself. And this did in fact work, as it had so reliably in the past.

But this time, I was wearing boots avec just a bit of a heel. And when I swung up my leg to push the button, I lost my balance and started to tip backward. I couldn't use my arms to regain balance because they were full. Being somewhat experienced with balance loss issues, I could have regained my balance with just my legs, resulting in a "I'm just dancing here" kind of movement, except that I had the aforementioned heavy, heavy backpack strapped on, and the extra weight just tilted me straaaaight backwards. Straight back. Down to the ground. On top of my laptop. Casebooks still firmly clutched against me. I wish, oh, how I wish I had it on film. I mean, straight backward. You don't see that very often outside of the movies.

And, naturally, because I have TALENT, when I had started to fall, as I tried to recover my balance, I threw my door-opening leg straight back down---hard---to the ground . . . .right into the nearly-waist-high paper recycling bin by the door. Which I took down with me, leg still inside it.

Ta-da! Bet you can't top that one.

Chicken's Finger: Wally Has The Last Laugh

2009-12-09T21:13:00.008-06:00

Deals pointed out that I should post more. I wish I had more to talk about! Well, I wish I had more that I could talk about. Mostly, I just work, and I'm afraid to blog about that too much. Some of the people I work with do not have a sense of humor about that kind of thing. But oh, the stories I could tell.

But I can tell you about the stupid thing I did last night. See, RR and I have to give dear ol' Wally subcutaneous fluids every couple of weeks because he's in pre-renal failure. It's kind of like hooking a little I.V. up to him. So the last time we did that, I left the needle on it (with a cap on it! for safety!) so that I could remember how to hook it up properly and to make sure that we didn't actually leak more fluids out of the bag between doses. But of course, RR and I were very, very careful to make sure it was covered, and we put the whole apparatus in a bag to keep accidents from happening.

I think you see where this is going.

So, yeah, I stabbed my finger with the needle. The needle that had been injected into my cat, removed, and then left around for several weeks. It bled like . . . something that bleeds a lot. I got no sympathy from the cat.

And today, it still hurts like the dickens if I brush it up against something. And now of course, I'm paranoid that I'm going to get some kind of weird infection, or cat scratch fever by proxy, or something. I'm keeping an eye on it.

I was telling my coworker about it, and she asked the same thing I was thinking, which was, "If you're worried about it, do you call your doctor or your vet?" I still don't know. But so far, nothing's swollen or weird-colored. I'll keep you posted.

Three Things

2009-12-09T21:08:00.003-06:00

I redid my blog design a wee bit, and somehow blogger changed my links to old, old, old links, and I'm not entirely sure how to fix it.

I currently hate blogger.

I ate way too many cashews, and now I feel ill. And fat.

It's not waterboarding, but it feels like torture

2009-11-18T21:29:00.003-06:00

Y'all, one of my coworkers likes to sing at people. This is one of my pet peeves. Yes, I have a lot of them. I don't have a problem with someone singing in general. A person who sings while she works or is walking around or looking at a menu or whatever is a happy person with a song in her heart. But that's not what's going on here.

Like, say, we're sitting at a table in a restaurant, and she wants to tell you about a song that you aren't familiar with. She'll sing it at you. The whole thing. Like you bought a ticket for the performance. She likes to put on a show. She's not concerned with whether you want to hear it, just about whether she wants you to hear it. Normally the show is directed at me, but we took our intern to lunch the other day, and she got to be the recipient.

And I really didn't want to listen to my coworker, even if she wasn't singing, because what I really wanted to do was eavesdrop on the only other table there. This is because as we were being seated, I heard one guy at that table say to the other, "I shouldn't even be telling you this." You know that whatever they were talking about was way more interesting than what we were talking about. And definitely more interesting than the one woman show going on.

Of course, she did buy us coffee on the way back to work. But she also made us listen to a cd that she had playing VERY LOUDLY. And if we weren't paying enough attention and instead started trying to talk to each other, she'd say, "Oh, this is a great song," and then turn it up louder. My ears, y'all. MY EARS. I could not make eye contact with my other coworker, because she knows I don't like being sung at or forced to listen to music, and I knew she'd give me a knowing look that might lead to an uncomfortable discussion with the singer/music oppressor. I mean, my music oppressive coworker is nice, and I get that she's excited about music, but this just happens to be a major pet peeve of mine, and it . . . flames . . . on the side of my face.

But the coffee was nice.

Speaking of music, don't you love the song "A Hundred Hearts" from the Swimmers new album (currently streaming on their website)? RR and I have it on repeat. Very catchy. Now, see, if my coworker had been blasting that, I wouldn't have had a problem with it. Except that she made the poor Starbucks barista shout so that she could hear him over her music, so never mind. That's just rude.

Avast, me hearties!

2009-09-19T10:03:00.002-05:00

It be that day again!

Minor Annoyances

2009-09-15T21:02:00.005-05:00

This past Saturday, I marched into Sephora in a fit of what I was thinking was optimism but more accurately could be described as temporary insanity and demanded that the sales associate give me a recommendation for idiot-proof liquid eyeliner. Ha! RR and I were going to an art exhibit that night, so maybe I thought it would make me seem more arty? Anyway, they were out of stock of the sales associate's favorite, but not to be deterred, I ignored my better judgment and purchased her second favorite with, despite very clear and helpful instructions, predictable results. Thank goodness for qtips and eye makeup remover.

In other news, there are lots and lots of dead little gnats all over my bathroom. This gives rise to three questions: (1) where is the security breach, i.e., how are they gaining entrance, (2) for what purpose are they here, and (3) WHY ARE THEY ALL DEAD? Are they coming in to die?

Speaking of gnats, this happened:

Clearly crazy.*

I really don't know what to day, other than this: doesn't it look like her face was just poorly photoshopped into the hideousness? That's how bad this outfit is. It's not daring, it's just sad. And also: I think I need to go into the business of celebrity stylist because clearly some people will wear anything.

*(credit where credit is due: this photo is from gofugyourself)

In a way, it's funny, but mostly I am appalled

2009-09-14T09:21:00.003-05:00

At the mall this weekend, a sales associate thought that my twin sister was my daughter.

This is the second time that this has happened.

Eau dear.

2009-09-08T18:48:00.006-05:00

The other day, one of my coworkers told me that the elevator in the parking garage had smelled like urine that morning. “Like, seriously bad,” she said, wrinkling her nose. There are two elevators in the parking garage, and I didn’t notice any smell in the one I had taken. I got to work only a few minutes before her. I don’t know if she rode on the same elevator that I had taken that morning.

On the way from my car to the elevator, I sprayed some perfume on myself.

And now I’m wondering if my perfume smells like urine.

Needless to say, I didn't ask her about it.

Toilets, Babies, and Starbufee

2009-07-21T18:09:00.005-05:00

Yesterday, the automatic toilet flushing mechanisms thought they'd have a little fun with me. On three separate trips to the bathroom, the toilet flushed whilst I was still upon it. Three separate times. Fortunately, I wasn't in the middle of anything other than my usual o.c.d. arranging of the t.p., so I was able to jump up, but still. Ew.

In other news, BF/R is having a baby in a few short weeks, and I still haven't bought a present for her. Because I suck. Also, I am majorly indecisive. But mostly, I suck.

And, finally, to conclude this short post about nothing much interesting, a friend of mine gave me a Starbuffee gift card as a thank you for doing her a favor, and she put way too much money on it. It makes me feel guilty because it wasn't that big of a favor. That being said, it's awfully handy. I love it when people subsidize my habit. But is it weird that when I went there with her today, I couldn't bring myself to use the card in front of her? As though using the card would somehow convey to her that I didn't appreciate the gesture, that I took her nice thought for granted? Yeah, I guess it's weird. Hmm. I will have to make sure to use the card the next time we go.

Project Runway Excitement!

2009-07-09T19:57:00.005-05:00

Project Runway is back! Project Runway is back!

No, not the original Project Runway.* Project Runway Australia.

So excited.

*Please note that I'm not knocking the original, which I love obsessively. But season 1 of PR Australia didn't have a Wendy Pepper, Jeffrey, Santino, or Kenley in the final three, so in a way, it was far, far superior to the U.S. version.

And Now For Another Installment of . . . Overshare Theater!!

2009-06-09T20:42:00.004-05:00

Right. So. I went to the allergist (finally!) last week and got tested (finally!) for various things. And I am allergic to everything.

Ok, I am not allergic to everything.

But I am allergic to pretty much all the grasses there are, most trees, cats (yep, as I suspected, I'm allergic to my cat), dogs, other stuff, and dust. I am very, very allergic to dust. Yep, I am the one in the "one in ten people are allergic to dust" statistic.

This list of many allergies? It explains so much. For example, why I feel so lousy most of the time. I go through tissues faster than I can replace them, frequently using paper towels because that's all I have left. That leads to an attractive condition called "chapped nose" that everyone feels the need to comment on, only I don't really mind because they know I'm not faking feeling sick when I look like that. But then I forget about until I wash my face with salicylic acid face wash, which hurts like heck, and I start to swear, but I get as far as "holy feeeerrrrr" (that's the sound of me trying not to swear), bite my lip, and then wash it off as fast as I can. And then my nose looks even better.

I use my neti pot, oh, 6 or 7 times a day---more if I'm home all day. At least once a month, I have a night where I wake up at least once an hour to have sneezing fits, and then I sneeze all day (hello, chapped nose!), which I'm sure disgusts my coworkers. I have frequent sore throats. And, apparently, I rub my eyes a lot. Normally, if RR catches me, she will point it out to me because I do it so much, I don't even notice anymore.

And it explains how, whenever I get close to a carpet, or go in a room with a lot of dust, I get all those things, sneezy, congested, itchy throat and eyes, plus I have a little bit of breathing trouble. Rights. That's allergies. This, I could not figure out for myself. The pollen allergies, I noticed that all by my lonesome, but the dust problems, that I had to have someone tell me.

So my allergist gave me a list of things that should help, although the costs start to add up, including (and this is the part that cracks me up), I should not be the person doing the dusting. In fact, I shouldn't even be in the house when it's being done. But if I have to do the dusting, (specifically, this is what cracks me up) I must wear a dust mask.

So now I will look like my grandmother, who I always kind of made fun of. Not to her face, but in my head. Of course, she wore one outside---I can still picture her walking out into their giant backyard, approaching us with that mask on her face, gesturing the whole time and telling us that it was time to come inside and we could play Uno or bingo or something---but it may come to that for me. I should add that she was very loving and sweet, and I think really she wanted us to come inside so that she could spend time with us without having to be outside with the pollen. But she looked ridiculous.

Ok, you are saying, this is just sharing. This is not so much oversharing. Wait! I'm getting to it!

(and I promise all of my oversharing won't always be about mucus) (but this is) (but first, a little something to make you sleep better tonight)

Did you know that dust contains, among other things, the feces and decaying bodies of dust mites? Did you know that the average mattress contains tens of thousands of dust mites, and then of course, when they die, they stay there for you to breathe in their decaying bodies at night while you sleep? Did you know that the weight of your pillow increases over time with the addition of dead mites and their droppings, which you also breathe in at night? You're welcome!

So anyway, back to phlegm. Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, I had ye olde green mucus again. I don't know why it is that when I finally figure out what I need to do to get rid of my allergies, they take a turn for the worse. Using my neti pot has been fun, let me tell you. Especially when that stuff comes out of my nose and then doesn't go immediately down the drain but just sits there in the sink looking at me, so I have to look back at it while I'm trying to pour enough water into the sink to encourage it to move along. Yes, I know, it's gross, and it's not the sort of thing you should share with other people. But that's why I'm sharing---I refuse to be disgusted alone.

I think this may be related to the pressure I've been feeling in my ears. Well, first of all, Monday at one point, I sneezed so hard that my ear popped, or whatever you call it when your ear goes from being fine to feeling clogged. I do not have feminine, dainty sneezes to begin with, they are much more of the "AAACCHOOOOO" variety (which is usually ok because as my dad says, if you have to sneeze, you might as well make it worthwhile), but this one was a doozy. But luckily, I later sneezed again and it unclogged. At least, it felt like I did, but I've been doing that old man, cup your ear and say, "Eh?" thing all day, so maybe not.

It still feel like I had a lot of pressure, and I hope that's why my ear was itching, because I always have this fear that a bug has crawled into my ear and died. That is not an irrational fear because people do get bugs in their ears sometimes when they sleep. The bugs crawl in and then can't get out. I slept with my sheets pulled over my ears for months after I learned that.

I spent most of Monday holed up in my office because I was afraid that I would sneeze with all that force, only in front of someone, and it would be scarring and gross for them and horrifyingly embarrassing for me. And I felt so bad for my coworkers anyway because you really can hear everything through the walls, so the coworkers with offices next to me get a real treat when I have this kind of thing going on. On Monday, I was relieved to see one of the coworkers, the one who can hear the best what's going on in my office, had on headphones. Because the sounds I was making when I blew my nose . . . those are sounds that would make me wish I had headphones if I was forced to listen to someone else making those sounds. I just hope that I'm not *why* he had on the headphones.

Anyway, I'm feeling better today, still stuffy and phlegmy, but of the normal variety, and things are mostly clear. But I'm still irritated that I had to deal with it at all because I'm already THAT person at work. That person that is always sick and talking about being sick. So now, I'm THAT person, plus I'm disgusting.

And oh great, I just realized that if I'm talking about my allergies all the time, then I really AM my grandmother. Next thing you know, I'm going to be saying that my parents' dog "thinks she's people" and using "quaint" little expressions like "dishy-washy washy dishy!" Please stop me if this happens.

Ta-da!

That concludes this installment of Overshare Theater.

Large Bird and Computer Problems

2009-06-09T20:27:00.003-05:00

Note: I wrote this in April and am just now getting around to posting it---sorry!

Ok, so, for about a month, I have been engaged in a battle of wills with my laptop, which I refer to as "my stupid laptop," because it has never once, not since I got it, behaved correctly. I should have known. I bought it from the Dell outlet, "certified refurbished," which didn't worry me and shouldn't worry you if you ever decide to buy one from there---between my sister and I we've now bought four computers from the Dell outlet, and mine is the only one that causes trouble. And I should have known better, I really should have. Because I called the 1-800 number instead of ordering online, and the one that I wanted had already been sold, but the guy on the phone was all, "oh, hey, we have this other one that has all the same specs you wanted, only its cheaper." I should have known better.

And oh, yeah, he said, it's pink. Bleck. I didn't want a pink computer. I like pink, I have lots of pink sweaters, but a computer I did not want in pink. Because that says, "I'm that girl. I like pink so much that I have to have my computer in pink. I'm such a girlie-girl, even my computer has to make a statement. Look at me, my computer is pink. I giggle a lot. I'm THAT girl." No offense, y'all, if you bought a pink computer by choice. But bleck. So, yeah, I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN. But whatever, I hate pushy salespeople, and I just wanted to get off of the phone, so I took it.

And it pretty much ain't worked right since I received it. So many blue screens of death have flashed at me. And then, finally, for the last month, I'll spare you the details, but I had some corrupted files that appeared to be interfering with my installing important updates and so when I've not been working, I've been trying to fix my computer. And the free online tech forums I'd posted to, which are so helpful to other people, for me their advice was the equivalent of your company's IT guy who always asks you if you've rebooted your computer, even when your problem is something like "I just poured diet soda all over it and now there's smoke coming out and I hear sizzling."

I am happy to report that finally, finally, I won! Except only sort of, and it was a bittersweet victory, because my laptop was not prepared to go down without a fight, and in the end, I wound up just totally reinstalling the operating system. Only OF COURSE I forgot to backup my Internet bookmarks. So the massive amount of allergen-free recipes that I had accumulated over the last year? ALL GONE.

And my computer said, "HA ha."

I'm STILL not sure that everything is working right, but at least I got those updates to finally install. I do have a problem now with my cursor moving for no apparent reason, so now I find myself typing in the wrong place in documents, resulting in sentences that make no sense whatsoever, but as long as I notice where the errant typing went, it's ok. Annoying, but fixable.

On a totally unrelated note, recently, as I was sitting in my living room supposed to be working but instead struggling with my laptop, I just happened to glance over out our french doors onto the deck, and do you know what I saw? No, you'll never guess, so I'll just tell you.

It was A TURKEY. Well, it might not have been a turkey. But it was A HUGE bird. And of course I was alone. But I took pictures (albeit not very good ones), just so no one could say I was crazy.

Turkey.

Lurking.

Saw it with my own eyes.

See? HUGE. And of course RR wasn't here. I'm so sad that she didn't get to share that with me.

Life is Great

2009-04-15T20:25:00.003-05:00

So, I recently watched the season (and possibly the series) finale of "Life." Wow, you guys. It was soooooo good. I couldn't sit down for most of it because I was too nervous. The season one finale just about made me sick to my stomach, I was so tense watching it, so worried about what was going to happen, and this one wasn't much behind that.

Do you watch "Life"? RR and I had not planned to be regular viewers. I remember when the show was premiering, I saw the promos, and I thought, 'Lame!' I had absolutely no desire to watch it. And then, one night when we were bored and nothing else was on, we were flipping channels and happened to see the first few minutes of the episode “Farthingale.” It was all over after that. We were hooked. RR and I immediately watched all of the previous episodes online, and we haven't missed an episode since.

Yes, the show is about two police officers, yes, they solve crimes every week, but this show is absolutely not another "Law & Order" or "CSI." This show isn't a cop show anymore than "Veronica Mars" was . . . other than the fact that the main characters are cops. This is a show about a man who happens to be a police detective. Just like how on the first season of "Veronica Mars," Veronica solved a case every week, but also was working to solve the season-long mystery of who killed Lily, this show has a mystery that underlies the whole season. The center of the show is the character of Charlie Crews, who, as we learn in the first episode, spent 12 years in prison for a murder he didn't commit. Released from prison after new evidence turned up, he got his job back on the police force. This show is about Crews figuring out who set him up. And my friends, it's quite a ride. It will suck you in.

The show also develops very nicely the relationship between Crews and his assigned partner, Danni Reese. Over the two seasons, they develop a real friendship that is just lovely to watch.

Damian Lewis is PHENOMENAL on the show (you may remember him from "Band of Brothers"). Y'all, I was right about "Arrested Development," I was right about "Veronica Mars," I was right about "Pushing Daisies." I'm right about this show, too. And, naturally, since it's a smart show, people don't watch it, and it's in serious danger of cancellation. I'm begging y'all. Get season 1 from netflix. Watch the first season*--it's only 11 episodes. I promise you'll get hooked before the season is over, and you'll want to see what Crews finds out. If you do, buy the episodes on Amazon or buy the dvds, and then tell your friends. This show doesn't deserve to be canceled. *I suggest you watch the whole first season because it takes a bit for the series to hit its stride.

Oh, and did I mention the show was funny? It's funny. It's a drama. But like Veronica Mars, it's funny. Trust me. This one's a keeper, and without more people watching it and SOON, we'll lose one of the best shows on t.v.