Blown Fuse

Faster than you can file false charges...

Damn those wiki-writers work fast.

My favorite line: "...Crystal Gail Mangum (born 1978) is an African-American student and prostitute..."

I guess they calls it likes they sees it.

Okay, so chicken?

Went to the grocery store with the intention of getting Easter fixin's, and came out mad. That country ham I was looking for? $20. No way in hell I'm paying $20 for a "partially-bone-removed" ham for two people. That's not even a real ham - that's that hoity-toity bullshit they sell to people who really don't know what ham is.

For $20 I'd better be getting an entire ham named Wilbur with Templeton the rat and Charlotte the spider thrown in as a bonus.

I know it's weird.

My teeth hurt. It's a weird kind of hurt - it's as if my teeth have hayfever. I feel this way EVERY SPRING. It sort of feels like they're all loose and riddled with new cavities when I know for a fact that I went to the dentist last week and I only have one new hole :-). It also feels like there's a chunk of Slim Jim stuck between my molars.

I looked this up a couple of years ago on the internet and saw that it was pretty common, although for the life of me I can't remember what it's called. Everything feels like it's back to normal within a couple of weeks. I just hate feeling like my teeth are going to crack.

Cunning, ain't I?

This is so awesomely pathetic that I thought I'd share. Count them - yes, there are 13 stamps on that size 12 envelope. Yup.

I needed to include a SASE in a package I needed Scott to mail yesterday, and wanted to go ahead and put postage on it and seal the outer envelope so that no pieces got lost before he made it to the post office. All I could find for stamps were one first class rate stamp that I had accidentally adhered to an envelope in the past and then snipped off and glued on, and 12 two-cent make-up rate stamps (that the machine gives you back instead of change when you use the stamp dispenser at the post office). I needed $0.63 in stamps, so...there you go.

Jealous?

I feel bad about my mess.

My home office/craft room/pumping station (a.k.a. the living room) has become a way-station of clutter. Normally I'm pretty good about creating some semblance of order in the high-traffic areas of the house, but as I've been in a crafty mood lately I'm becoming bogged down in reference materials, electronics cords, half-finished organizing projects, printed photos, scrapbook ephemera, designer paper, baby swag, and so on.

I'm working on it - really, I am. With all the home improvement-type stuff going on in the house right now I'm having to purge out a lot of paper and various artifacts that have been sitting around since the dinosaurs roamed the Earth. I get started cleaning something out and then get distracted by a pretty piece of paper or a new cat piss depositor, so all the stuff I was sorting through becomes part of the overall mess.

I'm going to fix it today - I promise.

So. Go blog about your mess and make me feel better about being a slob.

Yeah, that was helpful.

Yesterday I had an appointment with a financial counselor-type person downtown. Although I left in enough time to be 20 minutes early, I got there 20 minutes late (do the math). Downtown Durham is such a clusterfuck of construction that I had to waste that many minutes of my life trying to find a street that is about two blocks long (and one way).

My intentions were to find out whether my debts are excessive, whether they could negotiate some lower interest rates maybe, and any suggestions for creating a liveable budget once my income regulates to more than a very slow trickle of cash in for articles I've sold too cheaply.

98% of the meeting was a waste of my time. I think she probably shut down and went into autopilot once she found out I have a college degree and aren't some schlub who got myself into this situation by being a complete idiot. I sat there watching her plug numbers into a computer program to see if debt consolitation would be a practical way to handle my consumer debt. If you could see the expression on my face right now, you'd know the answer. Not only would I have to pay MORE per month, but they would want to charge me a handling fee for the pleasure of mailing checks for me. No thanks - I have stamps and a mailbox of my own.

She wrote up an action plan for me and the first item was "find job that pays net $220 per week." I have no fucking clue where she got that figure from. That's just for household utilities, gas, baby diapers, and the occasional box of Kleenex, right? 'Cause there's no way in hell I could even afford to work if I was earning that. And, um, daycare? Yeah. Add that figure in, lady.

I should have known I went to the wrong place when instead of the people with the next appointment waiting patiently in the lobby, they knocked on the woman's office door twice and poked their head in to say "Just wanted to let you know we're here." (Yeah, because the walls aren't paper thin and we couldn't hear your loud ass talking out in the waiting room.) Then when I was leaving and the rude woman's girth was in the way of the door, I said "excuse me" because I had to step over feet her a bit. She just looked at me blankly like I was speaking some foreign language that doesn't have courtesy phrases in it. She might have even grunted.

Anyway. I'm pissed. The positive thing is that I got on the ball and shredded four months of old statements and sat down and wrote out the actual total of my debt in preparation of the meeting. That was probably all I needed to do in the first place.

Have blog, will travel.

You know, I kind of want to go to Blogher this year. I'm not tickled about the fact that it's being held in Chicago in the dead heat of summer, but hey - I've never been, so how can I complain about it? I've been blogging for long enough that I could certainly use some help keeping fresh and it'd be kind of interesting coming face to face with some bloggers I've read consistently.

I happen to have a couple of plane ticket vouchers that need to be used by July 31, so maybe Scott and I can use this as an opportunity to use them and both see Chicago. I guess there's just the matter of seeing how much the conference will bleed us (meaning Scott). Shy of staying in a hostel, the hotel accomodation prices are looking kind of ouchy.

The only problem would be what to do with the baby...

Fuck.

I have that damn song "Happy Talk" from South Pacific stuck in my head, and I keep walking around the house singing it and doing the hand signs from the movie.

Someone stop me.

The definition of masochism.

As read on a page on my Stitch 'N Bitch calendar:

"If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, try it for eight, sixteen, thirty-two, and so on. Eventually, one discovers that it is not boring but very interesting."

-Zen saying.

What. Ever. Lay off the peyote, dude.

Can run, but can't hide.

Ugh. Why can't Sprint have a feature built into cellular voicemail where you can turn it off when you don't feel like being bothered by people?

I know the whole concept behind voicemail is that people are merely informing you that they would like to touch base, but by doing so they're also locking you into an promise you didn't make - that you have to call back.

I just want to press two buttons, shut it off, and just check my caller i.d. for anything that looks interesting. I don't want to have to call Sprint customer service every single time I choose to turn it back off or on.

Maybe I'll just change the number. That'll prevent a lot of those voicemails from getting through. Hmm.

I can see clearly now the fuzz is gone.

What do you think of my new specs? They're a bit more square than my last pair and I think they fit my face a bit better.

Because the prescription is brand new and due to the fact I hadn't replaced my lenses in umpteen years, things are a bit distorted when I look down - it looks like I'm standing on a hill. In past experience that problem resolved itself fairly quickly. I really like that I don't have to wear these glasses so close to my eyes that my lashes are touching the lenses. They're also very lightweight, which I totally didn't expect.

I'm happy with my choice.

Obligatory boring Sunday post

AWESOME!!! IT'S RAINING!!! HARD!!!

Y'all know about my love affair with precipitation, right? Rain on Sundays when you have nothing else to do but sit around nagging your husband is super-relaxing. I did want to get outside and rake the leaves out of our driveway while there are two of us in the house to tend the baby, but I guess that'll have to wait [if I could figure out how to get him safely strapped into his carrier I'd just wear him while raking, but that sounds like a head-bump waiting to happen].

In other news, anti-social me has volunteered to plan/host events for other local moms with babies Rosco's age. I figured it'd be a good way to network with people whose extracurricular activities don't include barhopping and one-night stands (I'm all grown up, I guess!). I'll let you know more about that as the first event approaches.

Better than a white-tipped cane, but oh well.

You may not know this about me, but I wear Coke bottle glasses. Or would, anyway, if I ever took my contact lenses out. I'm super-nearsighted. I've been wearing corrective lenses since I was in the fourth grade. I would have been wearing them before then if my mother certain people had actually believed me when I said "I can't see!" Instead, they just chalked it up to me wanting to sit really close to the television. No, I'm not bitter about the fact that my eyesight could be much stronger right now if I was treated earlier. Not at all.

Anyway, the last pair of frames I bought was in 1999. Those bitches were expensive - a pair of plastic Calvin Kleins that were the latest fashion. Add to the cost of designer frames the expense of special lenses that are cut from a special material so that your lenses aren't as thick as a glass coffee table and we're talking upwards of $350 for one pair of glasses.

Needless to say I kept those frames until now. I only replaced the lenses once...shit, it was before we moved into this house. 2003? Well, that's what happens when you're blind as a bat and don't have lens and frames coverage.

When we got this year's tax refund I had to get a pair of glasses. Had to. I can't keep wearing contact lenses all the time (even if the doc did say my eyes look fine for someone who sleeps in the seven nights/week).

What I hated most about my CKs was that I had to push them all the way up to the bridge of my nose to be able to see clearly, otherwise I had to peer over them like a librarian. This time around I didn't care about aesthetics - I just wanted something that would stay on my face. I actually wanted something really, really dorky a la Arvid from Head of the Class. Unfortunately, my optician didn't have "dork" in stock. Nerd or geek, either.

I guess the pair I picked out are pretty conservative. They're similar to my old glasses, but slightly more square which I think will balance the roundness of my face a little better. They're just plain, brown glasses.

What I'm worried about is that I opted NOT to get the "thin" lenses this time to save a few bucks. I fear that when I get the glasses and put them on my eyeballs will look like they're the size of dimes because of the refraction. That's not a stunning look.

Oh well, what do I care? I already have a husband. I ordered them on Monday, so maybe this week you'll get to see just how thick I'm talking.

A Pox on Spike

I hate it when Spike runs those all-day marathons on holidays. Sometimes it'll be something tolerable like CSI or, of course, Star Trek, which I don't mind because I actually watch those shows. Today, they're playing The Three Stooges.

Recently they've been using Fridays to show MXC marathons. I hate that damn show almost as much as I hate Iron Chef. Anything that cuts into my regularly-scheduled Star Trek is crap. (In case you didn't know, Star Trek: TNG is on daily between 3 p - 5 p, and Voyager between 5 p and 7 p. I don't watch DS9 which comes on at 2).

I'm a girl who thrives on routines, so when a monkey-wrench gets thrown into my t.v. viewing schedule it makes me a little hot under the counter. I hate flipping around to find other stuff to watch. True, I could try just doing something productive like cleaning my house, but what's the point of that?

Another hair-brained plan.

I have a sudden compulsion to cut my hair short like this. That was me seven years ago, and the only reason my hair was so short then was because I had two bad haircuts in a row and had to do something to fix it. As it was too many different lengths to salvage, I had a woman at the Supercuts in the mall sic the clippers on me. It was February, and cold, and as soon as I walked outside I regretted the decision. The cut grew on me, though, after I stopped waging war against my natural texture.

I have no real reason for wanting to cut my hair right now other than the fact that I'm bored with it, it takes too long to dry, and because it's so curly it never appears to grow - it just gets bushier.

My intent was to leave it in its current state until it grew out to a favorable length...whatever that be. Truth is, I really don't know how long my hair is. I last straightened it when I was pregnant and at the time (for obvious reasons) I didn't do that great of a job at it. I know I can pull it all back into a messy bun if it starts getting in my eyes, and that it's long enough for Roland to wrap his sticky little baby fingers around to pull on.

Yesterday, a little voice in my head told me that today as soon as Scott left for work and the baby was down for his nap to hook up the Flowbee and cut it all down to an inch long. I still have that nagging, twitching feeling to do so.

Scott probably wouldn't appreciate the action very much, so, I don't know if I'll actually do it. Maybe I'll try one more time to let a "professional" do something with it before I go at it myself. I just want to do some maintenance before it starts to turn into dreadlocks.

Yeah, I'll call you.

"Hi, Tiffany, this is your fah-tha. Give me a call when you get a chance."

My dad left me a voicemail yesterday. After a series of connections (me to my oldest half sister after finding her on myspace, my oldest half sister to my sister after I gave my sister my oldest half sister's phone number, and my sister to my dad after oldest half sister gave me his number which I gave to my sister) he's come into my phone number.

To give you the short version of the long backstory, I'll just say that I haven't spoken to my father in almost fifteen years. This is mostly due to the dysfunctional relationship between my parents. My mother is one of those women who likes to make life difficult for everyone involved after she's scored (she also likes to blame her children for her relationships falling apart even when we were nowhere near spitting distance of her men). After the divorce it was understandable that there would be estrangement between the two, but it was wrong of her to try to keep our father from us. On the flip side, he's not blame-free. He always knew where I was, and I haven't lived with my mother since I was nine. My grandma wouldn't have cussed him out for calling.

I'm not mad at him as much as I am confused. I think about my son and get all weepy and irrational when I think about going back to work and sending him to daycare. How can any person who calls themselves a parent allow someone as crazy as my mother to take their kids and not try to be present at least part of the time? It boggles my mind. If only he knew what kind of shit she put us through.

He called yesterday evening...around 7, I think. I'm sure he was afraid that I would have some sharp words for him, but fortunately I didn't hear the phone. I haven't called him back yet because I'm just not prepared for several minutes of uncomfortable conversation where we "catch up" on what I've been doing in my adult years.

He and my mother are about equal on my "scale of scorn" right now. If they didn't spend all of the late seventies and eighties peering through a cloud of pot smoke, they'd probably realize that they they're crappy parents.

Ew

I was running out to the post office this morning and on the way to the car I dropped the kitchen trash into the outdoor garbage bin. In the process, I dropped half of the mail I was taking and my wallet down into the bowels of the receptacle.

As I'm 5'2", the can is easily 4' high, and since the dropped items had slipped down the side, I couldn't get my stumpy little arm far enough down to get my wallet. Of course I was pissed seeing as how I had taken a shower fifteen minutes prior, and there I was digging into a dirt-splattered, foul-smelling plastic bin.

I had to stand on the upside-down recycling bin to get my wallet out.

I feel so. So. Dirty.

Maybe I should start downloading books to my iPod.

I love to read. One really can't call herself a "writer" if she doesn't spend a good amount of time with her nose in a real, hold-it-in-your-hands book. Unfortunately, I haven't had time to read much fiction over the past year, and I'm extremely aggrieved by that.

I got pregnant February of last year, and if you recall I spent my first trimester with my head in a toilet. The only reading I got done was pregnancy magazines and books that reassured me that it was normal to have the dry heaves all day. Second trimester I caught up on some knitting projects. Third trimester I couldn't find a comfortable position to sit in to read because I was a behemoth. Fourth trimester Now I have an almost-three month old kid who keeps me up most nights.

I feel a tremendous amount of guilt when I try to read during the day because I know that there's vegetable oil splatter on the kitchen walls that need wiping and that the baby has run out of clean pajamas because they need washing.

To put this in some context, I've been reading the same issue of Martha Stewart Living since last Thursday and I'm only halfway through it. Yes, I could be reading now instead of writing this blog post, but what you don't know is that I'm also starting dinner and drying Rosco's clothes (because he succeeded at pooping on two changing pad covers in the past week). I'm also watching for the mailman who has a tendency to sneak up to the door to deposit packages ONLY on the days I have the blinds open. I don't like being stared at by people outside my house, so I have to skiddaddle into another room when the truck lumbers up to the box. You can't concentrate on reading when you're doing all that.

Hobby whore that I am, I'm also sorely behind on several knitting projects and scrapbook pages. I started a sweater for Rosco a couple of weeks ago that i'm making for whenever we get around to having that first family portrait done, but since his hair is currently falling out I don't know when that'll be. Chances are that when his "real" hair grows in, the sweater will be too damn small and it'll be another sweltering North Carolina summer.

Oh, and taxes. I've started working on the taxes, so whenever I have the courage to start up the program I'm using and to type in those deductions to make sure we get a few cents of refund back, that takes time from other things. I'm still waiting on a couple of tax documents (come on you slow fuckers!), otherwise we would have filed already.

What was I getting at? Oh yes - books. Look, I could spend hours in a Barnes and Noble store, and if told that I could only take one book home I'd break out into a cold sweat. Yet here I have a stack of novels whose spines haven't been cracked because all of a sudden my plate has become full.

When my house finally becomes clean after a year of neglect and Rosco is old enough to amuse himself, I'll still be making some excuse for not getting my reading done. Feh.

Do what now?

I love it when "people" comment on old-ass entries:

man well you are the stupidest person who has ever lived crazy enough to do something like that but i dont know you and you dont know me all i CAN tell you is that if you were me i would be careful and take care of my body.AND BY THE WAY THERE IS ANOTHER EASIER MORE UNPAINFUL WAY OF MAKING MONEY ITS CALLED A JOB YOU SHOULD GET ONE FOR YOUR SOUL AND YOUR FUTURE but i dont know do what ever you want with your life im not you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I like how it was almost relevant to the entry, but not enough for me to blacklist his/her/its 166.127.1.200 "Linda Zambrano" ass.

Don't bother searching for it - I deleted it. And also the next one from the same IP's "Ivette Linda":

well i just read the 1st part and u r a crazy ass girl!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Indeed.

!!!

Just found out today that my estranged father is still making babies. Still. My son has an aunt 3 months older than him.

*head spins, feels nauseous*

Who does he think he is, Trump?

I'll go out of my way to not go that way.

I hate going to Old Navy. I'm specifically referring to the brick and mortar store closest to our house. I worked at the store when I was in college and some of the same jokers still work there. It can be particuarly awkward to go there and shop when you have to interact with people who knew you during your bad hair college days.

Anyway, I need to return my low-waisted pants and this wrong-color shirt that I bought online, but don't want to have do deal with the hassle of re-shipping and picking out other things online which will probably NOT be in stock by the time the new order gets to the distribution center. So, I'm just going to go to the store.

I'm a'feared. If that one manager is there today...*sigh*.

Not on THIS waist.

I ordered some Old Navy clearance stuff on Monday that arrived today. If you've ever shopped Old Navy clearance online, you may have experienced items being removed from your cart because you're not fast enough and some other person has checked out before you. That happened to me, and I'm quite pissed about that.

I decided to go ahead check out with the four items I did have in my cart for risk of losing them as well. You know what happens when you hurry? You don't read the details.

I am now the proud owner of a pair of ultra low waist pants. Five years ago that would have been okily dokily, but in my old age I can't stand the feeling of a draft on my butt crack. They're going back...as is this t-shirt they shipped in the WRONG SIZE.

Wankers.

Solid as a marshmallow.

Okay, I've got about ten pounds to go before I'm back to my pre-pregnancy/pre-Lupron Depot weight. I can't lie and say that my weight loss is as a result of smart dieting and exercise, because it's not. It's due to a faster-than average metabolism and having little time to eat because of having a new baby.

I realize that losing this final ten pounds is going to be tough because I'm breastfeeding and the body tends to want to hold on to some fat in case of emergency (drought, famine, being stranded in snow, etc.). Additionally, from the bottom of my knees up I have absolutely no muscle tone. My huge, bulging guns have disappeared, and my abs are still weak and separated. I know fat is lighter than muscle, so if I begin exercising at this point I have to be prepared to gain some weight before I can lose any.

I have to decide whether I'm content with being doughy.

Got pod?

If you have an iPod or other device capable of storing and playing podcasts, which ones do you subscribe to? I have a quite a few on my list that I play when I need to concentrate or when I just want to hear other people talking besides myself. They are:

What's your 2007 calendar?

We didn't really put up a calendar last year in the house until the end of the year when I started counting down the remaining days of my pregnancy. Additionally, by that time my hormones were all out of whack so I was having difficulty remembering not only appointments I had scheduled but also, most basically, what day of the week it was (my t.v. viewing habits would normally act as some kind of reminder, but during rerun season you can't rely on that).

I needed a visual cue to remind me a couple of days ahead of time that I had some obligation to fulfill, so I took one of those cheap tiny freebie calendars that come in solicitations from insurance companies/realtors/etc., took off the decorative magnet, and taped it to the white board in the kitchen. That way I could scribble a note such as "Prenatal appointment: 11/15, noon" on the board and then look at the calendar to see if I was supposed to be doing something else at about that time. You would think that there wouldn't be much to keep track of when you're at home all day, but trust me - you need the calendar even more. Often I would note, "Ah, that's a Wednesday. Harris Teeter is doing buy 1/get 1 chicken breasts on that day. I'll pick some up since I'll be out."

My alma mater sends me a calendar every year. Last year's went into the recycling bin, as I had a perfectly functional jumbo desk calendar at work and a PDA I used frequently. Now I need a little extra help. My short-term memory is shot, so up the calendar goes.

What's your calendar this year? No worries - I'll forgive you if it's "The Best of Barbie."

Auld Lang Syne

The older I get, the more seriously I take making New Year's resolutions. They're like promises you make to yourself and if I fail to follow through with them by year's end I'm racked with guilt that I didn't meet goals I set for myself. By nature I have a guilty conscience, so I don't like setting myself up for failure.

I keep my resolutions simple and attainable. [I remember that I resolved to quit smoking for a couple of years, but my heart wasn't really into it. Smoking was one of my favorite hobbies - I didn't want to quit, so that was a piss-poor resolution to make. I quit when I was good 'n ready.]

Without further ado, here are my resolutions for 2007. To celebrate the fact that I'm committing these to memory by screaming them out to the entire blogosphere, tonight I will have my first sip of alky in more than ten months and will open this experimental-looking case of beer.

Happy New Year, folks!

Tiffany's 2007 Resolutions (in no particular order)

1 - To write out a freelance writing business plan and actually take steps to implement it.
2 - To make the laundry room less creepy and mucky and do something about the weird, super-grody camel cricket problem. *shudders*
3 - To cut down on Rice Krispies Treat consumption by at least 75%.
4 - To gradually reincorporate exercise into my weekday routine in efforts to banish the mommy gut, mommy butt, and mommy hips.
5 - To nag and bitch until Scott becomes sufficiently annoyed enough to do something about aforementioned camel cricket problem.
6 - To shave 20% off our grocery bills and cut back on heavily processed foods (see #3).
7 - To remember to talk to my son as if he's a human being rather than a super-cute puppy ("Who's my widdle widdly woo woo baby? Yes, you are! Yes, you are!")
8 - To find more time to check in with friends and family

Things you realize while standing over the trash can peeling an orange.

Know what I just realized? Scott and I aren't the kind of couple comprised of participants whom finish each other's sentences. That's probably why we haven't maimed each other and filed for divorce by now. There has to be some mystery, you know? If I felt like I knew everything about him I'd find the whole marriage situation incredibly boring. It would be like having to read a book over and over again. Even if it's the greatest book you've ever read and it made you cry just a little, after the fifth or sixth perusal you're ready to put it in the donation pile.

And now, some Christmas Rosco for your viewing pleasure. I told you -- all about the kitsch.

Over the river and through the woods.

Off to the in-law's. Merry Christmas to all who enjoy it, Happy Festivus to the rest of ya.

Deck the halls.

I have a confession to make. Secretly, I'm all over holiday kitsch. Snowy village coffee mugs, garish Rudolph sweaters, UNC Santa figurines - you name it. The thing is, I'm a reasonable human being who is willing to make compromises with the people I have to live with.

Scott would prefer that anything that crosses the threshold into this house have neither visible logo (unless it's a Nike Swoosh or Jumpman icon and even then only on a sneaker) nor color scheme not easily found in nature. If it were up to him, the holiday cards we send to all his acquaintances would be solid silver with no design on the outside with the word "Happy." printed in foil on the inside. He would then sign his name with a flourish beneath it and call it a day.

I have squashed my desires for garish seasonal décor in order to keep the peace. Yes, I send my friends and relatives cards that I KNOW are borderline gauche. They expect that from me - it's one of the few ways I exhibit personality, and if I sent them some boring-ass card they'd probably think that I was depressed.

Next year, though - you wait and see. I'm going to have this house so decked out in a rainbow of large size Christmas lights that you can see it in space. Additionally, just for the hell of it, I'm going to get one of these and place it in the window instead of a Christmas tree.

How you know you haven't had enough sleep

(AKA "Not enough pistons firing.")

You open up the refrigerator to place your bottle of Ivory dish soap on the top shelf.

A'travellin' we will go...

Did I ever tell you that I won a pair of plane tickets? I can't remember and I'm too lazy to do an archive search. Yeah, I entered this "win a vacation" type deal online back in June or so thinking that it'd be an instant win/instant notification situation. It turned out to be a drawing done a couple months later.

Anyway, I won. I didn't win the grand prize (airfare PLUS accomodations for 4 select locations), but I was a "first prize winner" and won a pair of tickets to anywhere in the 48 contiguous states. (No Hawaii, damnit!) We have to use them by July.

We've discussed going to Vegas, which seems like a place where the only way you'd get bored is if you just happen to be a boring person, but I'm having second thoughts. I don't have strong feelings about visiting anywhere else, either, but I want to go somewhere I haven't been before. Nothing is really exciting me right now, especially not the idea of being on a plane that many hours.

Anybody have any other suggestions? I don't want to go somewhere where the hotel cost will throttle us towards bankruptcy, but want to leave feeling like "I wish we could have stayed a few more days." Whether you think you know me well enough to give an opinion on what I'd enjoy, just shoot it out there. I'll state what my comfort zone is just as soon as I figure out what it is myself.

Blah blah "Greetings from All of Us to All of You." blah

[I have a confession to make. I'm guilty of cropping myself out of my kid's pictures. While you can generally assume that at least part of the time when his picture is being taken someone is holding him. In the instances where I upload the images and see my flaccid gut or wild hair, I alter history and crop myself out. Some day Roland will ask why there are no pictures of me holding him and I'll have to pull out some dusty piece of technology, long since abandoned by the world like the eight-track, in order to open files I sneakily saved where nobody could find them. I have the original, undoctored images...but if I'm printing or posting them I have to take myself out. It's not humility, it's "Damn, I look bad!"]

I've noticed over the past week that the mail has become increasingly slow due to the approaching holidays. In-state delivery of mail items normally takes a day. I can send first class mail to New York and it'll normally be there in two days. Things are taking at least a day longer, and I'm sure the delay will become much longer the closer we get to December 25.

I have "thank you" cards to scribble, birth announcements to mail to family members I've lost the addresses of ("oops."), and Holiday cards to personalize and launch into the hands of USPS.

Frankly, I just haven't felt like it. I love sending out cards (and I love receiving them), but while Roland is asleep more utilitarian tasks have to be accomplished...like peeing and eating and such. I want to send little pictures of the baby using the gear he's been bestowed with the "Thank You" notes, but I have to wake him up to do that. *sigh* All the same, I'm going to try to get these suckers into the mail next week. I'll get out my glitter pens and start finessing them tonight.

I know a lot of people like to send out family portraits with their holiday cards. No sir, we won't be doing that. Momma doesn't look so hot right now (even though the double chin of pregnancy has melted away) and Roland is battling a bad case of baby acne. In fact, between the three of us Scott is the only person in this house that can take a decent picture with any sort of regularity. I always look like I want to beat the shit out of the person holding the camera. Roland is a wee widdle baby and doesn't understand the concept of "don't blink."

*sigh* Now I've got a headache.

Let it snow/sleet/ice.

You know, I really enjoy inclement weather as long as I don't have to go out in it. The thing about growing up in a coastal community is that on the rare occassions we got any of the frozen wet stuff, the entire county would shut down. School buses would be pulled off the roads (schools closed, of course), and kids would wake up early to glue themselves to the television screen to make double-sure that their school system was indeed closed and not on some crap-ass delay. The worst case scenario would be that school would be open, but would be dismissed in a couple of hours (having the students there just long enough to be considered a full day that didn't have to be made up).

I think the state of North Carolina owns three snow plows with two of them being stored somewhere in the mountain region. The third is in the shop. I'm sure that any plow my county ever saw was hooked to the front of some farmer's pick-up truck. If whatever stuff on the roads doesn't melt off, it wasn't coming off if you lived out in the rural end. I felt sorry for the mail carrier. I always worried he'd slide into one of those super-deep ditches.

Inclement weather days are best enjoyed on Wednesdays in order to break up a long week. True, you'll probably have to return to school or work on Thursday, but that mid-week vacation makes it a bit more tolerable, no?

People in metropolitan areas just don't know how to slow down during these rare blessings. They'd rather argue that [insert group not native to area] can't drive in snow and make themselves martyrs by going to work to grind out 15 minutes of productivity over 8 hours. Not me. As long as I have bread and something to wash it down with, I'm not leaving this house on a snow day for anything (except when I smoked - I left the house to find an open convenience store for cigarettes. Ended up going to the grocery store to get them.).

It would be an entirely different situation if this were Michigan and we could expect snow regularly between November and March. People in Michigan would never get anything done if they slowed down for a half-inch of ice on the roads. At the same time, if the tables were turned if it were 90 degrees and humid there on an April day, I gurarantee you that a good percentage of adults in Michigan would be skipping work in favor of anydamnthing else.

It's just an excuse, folks. It's nice to look out the window at while it's coming down, and it's a great reason to stand over the heat vent holding a cup of tea after going out to the driveway to get the newspaper.

Don't assume that Southerers can't drive in snow. Anyone who's ever terraplaned on a dirt road or extricated their vehicle from a mud patch can drive in snow. We just don't want to.

In for the day

I have very few clothing items that fit well enough to wear in public at this point, so if I have to endeavor outdoors for some reason, I want to squeeze in as many errands as possible. I've been putting off going to get my free flu shot because it seemed like a waste of clean pants if they'll be running the retail events for the next several weeks.

I showered, dressed, and went out to vote this morning after doing about five minutes of research on state judicial candidates. Of course, there's a cold rain coming down - the sort that would normally merit carrying an umbrella if you weren't walking such short distances between your vehicle and the buildings you're trying to get to. As my hair was still wet from the shower, having cold droplets fall on my head to replace the shower water that my brain has been keeping lukewarm was less than pleasurable.

Anyway, voted. Then I went out in search of double-sided tape, or at least some close fascimile that would train the cats to stay off the kitchen table. I went to the Food Lion closest to the voting location first. Nope. Then I went to CVS. Nope. Then I figured I'd drive to Petco and see what sorts of furniture repellants they had. Surprisingly, their selection was a lot better than what my normal pet supply superstore carries. I bought a spray bottle of bitter stuff to spray on my chairs so that [that damn cat] will stop chewing the spindles. They also had a special tape that can be attached to fabric to prevent your cat from scratching. It was super-expensive, so I left it be and checked Target.

Target, of course, had double-sided tape, but because I've become incredibly cheap since my "sabbatical," I didn't want to pay $2.59 for the 3/4" name brand stuff. The Target brand, 50 cents cheaper, was sold out. I left the store, annoyed, and resigned to jerry-rigging some booby trap from packaging tape - which we have in spades.

Driving home, I realized that since I'm wearing clothes this would be a good day to go to one of those flu shot events. OF COURSE there isn't one within 10 miles today...the next one close to my zip code is Friday. That's what I get for procrastinating, I guess. I really want to get one before the kid is born so that we'll both have some immunity, but it's so hard to get out the house. There are a couple tomorrow, so we'll see.

On to domestic tasks, I guess.

Things that do not work #1

Asking your cats where the remote control is.

"Y'all have sweet tea?"

We Southerners love our sweet tea, and in fact tend to get very bristly about it if people behave as if they don't know what it is.

Sweet tea, in case you do not have the distinct pleasure of living below the Mason-Dixon, is prepared tea where an entire batch (usually half a gallon at least) is pre-sweeted using sugar, honey, or simple syrup while it is still warmed. The batch is then quickly chilled with refrigeration or ice and finished off by the preparer before anyone else in the house knows that any was made. The person preparing the beverage always sweetens to his/her taste. Typically, it'll be just sweet enough to be refreshing, however at times it'll be Bojangle's sweet: super-sweet so as to cut through all the salty chicken waste you just consumed.

Restaurants founded in the South, or else who dare to put franchises here, always have a pre-sweetened tea on the menu. My friends, SWEET TEA IS NOT ICED TEA. Iced tea is a "Yankee" thing. In iced tea, the imbiber sweetens to their taste, usually having to constantly stir the sugar on the bottom of the glass (cold tea does not dissolve sugar as well as tea that is warm).

I can remember several occasions of visiting friends and family up North and making restaurant visits where the waitress gave me a blank expression when I and others in the party asked for "sweet tea." "You want what?"

Non-Americans reading this are probably wondering, "Why the hell would you want to drink cold tea?" Well, because it gets hot as hell here. Add in the humidity, and on some days it feels like death by climate. You try sipping hot tea in a mug while you're lounging on your front porch!

Um...thanks?

I'm all for getting free stuff in the mail, but what the heck was CVS thinking in sending me a Gillette Fusion razor?

Firstly, I'm a chick. While yes it is true I shave, this sucker looks like it has enough sharp edges on it to remove any offending hair as well as several layers of skin.

Secondly, my husband wouldn't use this thing even if I threatened to take away his Dr Pepper. Why risk razor cuts when you can plug your electric shaver in and be done in less than 2 minutes?

I guess I'll stick it into my drawer o' junk and save it for one of those rare emergencies where I run out of chick razors.

Bitch, moan.

I keep writing posts and deleting them.

I am SO boring at this point that I'm boring myself. The problem with waking up pissed off every morning is that my ability to think on subjects that have nothing to do with a) Oprah, b) AmeriCorps hatred, c) unemployment, d) inability to sleep due to pregnancy, or e) what's for dinner is significantly compromised.

What am I pissed off about? See b, c, and d above.

If I can't be out earning a living, I feel like I should at least be doing something productive during the daytime hours: a load of laundry, a scrapbook page - whatever. But see, the thing is I can talk myself out of ANYTHING. Even getting out of bed to go to the bathroom.

My life is a series of prenatal appointments sprinkled with the occasional pee or poop accident by the cats. Everything that happens in between those milestones is just frosting. This feels sort of what being like a kid too young to enter kindergarten feels like. You look forward to things 2 weeks away to get through the boringness.

I don't think I'm turning into "depressed pregnant woman you should keep an eye on" but I could probably do with more ice cream in my life.

I don't even know.

Do you ever sit and wonder what the hell you're doing?

That's what I'm doing right now. I can't drum up enough brain fire to remember what it was that I sat down at the computer to do.

I know there's lots of things I should be doing right now, none of which I have any real desire to do. I could be working on my portfolio. I could be finishing that f-ing novella I said I'd finish this month. I could be applying for even more jobs that I really don't want to do (and learning that I really was underpaid by about $10,000 for that job when I was doing it).

Actually, I could go back to sleep and that would solve a lot of my problems because, being asleep, I won't have to try so hard to avoid things.

Meanwhile, I'm going to get up and retrace my steps back from the t.v. room to my desk and maybe that will refresh my memory of why it's so important for me to be sitting in this chair right now.

It's the little things...

I'm so happy my car has four seats again. You see, when I quit that AmeriCorps gig I was doing, I had a crapload of school supplies in my spare bedroom that had been collected from some local companies. Don't even ask why they were in my house and not at the office. *deep breathing...deep breathing*

Anyway, those supplies were supposed to be dropped off at a certain elementary school who is sort of slow to return phone calls. I had phoned them before school started to try to coordinate a drop-off, but Durham schools are notoriously swamped for the first few weeks. [If I were less interested in following through on prior commitments, I would have just put the crap in my garage and played the "forget about it" game] I finally heard from the assistant principal yesterday and she told me to bring the stuff on out.

The supplies have been sitting in my car for...oh, nigh on three weeks. I hope the crayons aren't melty.

Anyway, they'll no longer be sliding around in my cargo bay. They're sliding around in the school's janitor closet, instead.

Carolina Phoneathon: Training Hustlers of the Future

Occasionally, I'll answer the home phone given the area code be right and I can somewhat recognize the party's name.

When the caller i.d. reads "Carolina," sometimes I mistakenly think that it's my doctor's office or something like that.

BUZZ! Wrong answer! This is the second time I've fallen for that dupe. It's the Carolina Phoneathon - current Carolina students who get paid to call alumni to extricate money out of their cool, clammy clutches. It's not exactly telemarketing, but it's not really a warm call either. I don't know any alumni who'd cuss some kid out for calling - we all expect to be called by the Phoneathon, but damn it if they don't keep trying.

The last time they called, I guess it was six months ago, I told the guy, "Look, I just don't have it right now. I've already given a lot of money to WUNC this year." I don't fault him for asking. It's his job after all.

Today when the chick called, they always verify your address and such to catch you off guard. "Are you still at XXXX blah blah, Durham?"

Me: "Yep."

She: "Oh, okay. And Carolina would love to know what alumni are doing with their degrees."

Me: (nonchalantly) "Oh, I'm unemployed."

She: "Oh-kay, that's understandable. Now...(insert spiel about overseas educational opportunities for students and need for funding). Can you find $100 in your budget to support student programs?"

Me: "Uh...no, not rigt now."

She: "I see. Well, any little bit would help. Would a $10 or $20 donation be doable?"

Me: "Uh...no, not with the unemployment and all."

I know they're following a script, but geez. There's got to be a little button they can push when people say "I ain't got no job" that'll bring up a prompt on the screen saying "Thank you for updating your information with Carolina and your time," or some such crap.

Eh, kids.

Shh! Maury's on.

Unemployment suits me well. Because I'm pretty easily entertained when I actually have a desire to be entertained, I can go for hours lounging on the sofa watching reruns.

True, I'd rather have a job where I earn enough money that on the weekends I can go to the mall and buy crap, but right now I'm sort of using this time to find a job that I actually want to still be employed in five years from now.

So, I've been pulling up lists of businesses in the surrounding area and scouring thier job listings for anything remotely related to writing or editing (that pays). I've been on all the local and national job boards looking. I've even driven around office parks in the area trying to see what large companies are located near me. I refuse to go into another one-man-shop type environment. Unfortunately, I'm trying to break into a field where I have no network whatsoever.

I've applied for a few entry-level type things, but we'll see. I can only hold my breath so long before I have to go out and do some temp work to pay for baby bibs.

I've learned the hard lesson that no matter how broke you think you are when you're working, you can totally afford to tuck away $100 here and there to have an emergency fund for situations like this. Just a couple thousand dollars could go a long way.

"Oh lord, here comes a manager."

Do I look like a thief? Obviously, that's a rhetorical question, because only a sprinkling of you have ever seen me in person. True, I leave the house looking like a bum on some days (today included), but I don't read "thief."

Okay, see, because I worked in retail for longer than I care to remember, I know how to spot a sketchy customer. Even to this day if I'm in Wal*Mart and see some character behaving suspiciously, 90% of the time I can pick out if they're just weird or if they're waiting for you to go away so they can shoplift.

I don't fit the thief profile. For one thing, being pregnant means being slow. I'm not going to shove an electric pencil sharpener under my shirt and then try to make a run for it. I stand far enough back from the displays that you can see everything I'm doing. I carry a purse too small to stuff anything of significance into. If I have to get a shopping list or the phone out of my purse, I make a big show of it so that those people watching me on the security monitors can see that I'm not stealing.

That being said, I don't like being customer-serviced. Let me examine the 47 varieties of #10 envelopes in peace before you ask me if I need help. If I'm scratching my head and looking back and forth between two packages, you may assist. If I'm just standing back taking in the display - shoo. I'm more than likely comparing prices.

I know a lot of these big retail chains (clothing stores, especially) force their employees to provide proactive customer service, but I find it annoying. I just want to be left alone to shop until I either need help or want to be checked out. I don't want to waste four words ("I'm fine, thank you.") on someone. I need that energy to yell at the cats.

I should go pet her now.

Last night I had a dream that there was a swarm of grey cats under my deck. Most were either fat or ugly. Yes, there is a such thing as an ugly cat.

Somehow Puffy had darted out the back door and had mingled amongst them...and I couldn't figure out which cat she was.

Bodie has a distinguishable white belly splotch, and I've never seen another cat that has a face like hers. Puffy...not so much. She just looks like any other skinny grey cat. She's cute and all, but she's in puberty - who knows what she'll look like a year from now.

Anyway, I woke up feeling like a failure because I couldn't figure out which one of those cats was mine. And that's sad because in hindsight, they were actually beavers.

Braving a heart attack to board a plane.

I think that what my life up to this point has been missing has been travel. When I was a kid, I was perfectly aware that there were people living near me that had never even left the county. Given the small size of the county, I found that unbelieveable, but assumed that everyone had their reasons - lack of transportation being one of them.

By the time I was six or seven we had taken all the standard family trips - to New York (where all the relatives lived) and back, to Connecticut (to a funeral), to Detroit (to a wack family reunion), to New York some more, to Florida (to meet Mickey Mouse with the church) - you get the drift. We never really went anywhere that required a great deal of planning.

(OH SHIT, I SHOULD GO GET A PEDICURE BEFORE THE SPA GETS CROWDED! Fuck it, I'll go tomorow.)

I'm not a girl with insatiable wanderlust - on any given day, I'd rather be home in mismatched pajamas sipping tea and working on some craft project it'll take me a year to finish. I guess now that I'm at an age where there's so many complications preventing me from travelling (work, young'un on the way), I just have more of a desire to do it. I never even went on one of those cheap spring break trips during college; I always had to work.

As much as I hate airplanes and what they do to my ears (left ear still haven't fully uncorked from Tampa trip), I want to fly to Vegas and walk the strip eating from a different buffet every meal. I want to walk around dusty old castles in England. I want to put my toes in the sand of a foreign beach.

I think that as soon as the sprout is old enough to sleep through the night, and I have at least a week's vacation accrued at the job after this job - a year and a half from now - I'm hopping on the first plane out of this country that I can get a cheap fare on. The older you get, the more it seems like the world is such a small place, and I just haven't seen any of it.

Scott, will you pay for my passport????

Hoping the cats don't eat the house.

I guess we'll leave here at around 11:30 for our 2:33 flight. I'm still sitting here in pajamas, balancing my checkbook and opening all of the untoched bills on my desk so that when I return it's not to a pile of debt.

I can't help but to feel like every time we pack up to go somewhere for a few days I feel like I forgot something that would have made the trip much, much more comfortable. The iPods are charged up, I've got various painkillers and anti-nausea aids in my bag, and *pauses to brush teeth* I've transferred all of my crap into my jumbo purse - perfect for hoarding tourist coupons and brochures.

I've always wanted to go to the Busch Gardens in Tampa, but it looks like they're calling for scattered thunderstorms for the next four days. When I read that my eyes went as wide as saucers. Thunderstorms every day for four days? Wait, now I've just checked another source which says it'll be clear tomorrow. >:(. Make up your frickin' mind!

Anybody who knows anything about Florida weather, please feel free to chime in and tell me that these will be 5-minute storms that'll go away quickly.

I don't know what my internet access will be like over the next few day. I know most hotels worth their salt have "business centers" with at least one computer in them, but I don't see that listed on this particular location's amenity list. I'll post via flickr if I can.

"Maybe you can ask public radio for some of the money I gave them?"

I think there should be some quid pro quo between college graduates and their alma matters...

If we have to abide by that honor code blah blah, they shouldn't call us for donations until AFTER we've paid off our tens of thousands of dollars of student loan debt.

I'm just saying.

"Let's go Caa-aanes *clap clap clap clap clap*"

I'm what you'd call a "fair weather fan." As a UNC alum, it's my sworn duty, as written in very tiny font between the lines of the Honor Code, that should Tar Heel basketball be going on, I must observe the basketball religion of facing Chapel Hill five times each day to pray and check the scores online.

See, I just don't care unless they're winning. If those boys get into the play-offs, I'm right there at work on casual Friday with my Carolina blue insignias on. If they suck, which happens often the year after an exemplary team decides to all enter the NBA draft at once, I just state the truth to those who gloat - I don't really care about basketball. Or any sport, for that matter. I was a frickin' band geek/cheerleader. I'm all for supporting the team and doing cartwheels and shit to make them feel all warm and fuzzy, but damned if I'm going to glue myself to the screen. I save that zeal for the first few episodes of American Idol each season.

So, our fair state has had a lot of attention for our professional sports clubs lately. The Panthers are doing pretty damn well for an 11-year old expansion team. The Hurricanes, well. I've been to exactly one Hurricanes game. I was so bored that I began people-watching to entertain myself. Regardless, they're one game away from either winning the Stanley Cup, or REALLY pissing off a lot of people who actually give a shit.

Am I going to watch the Hurricanes tonight in game seven? No. I'll be too busy watching reruns on Animal Planet. Better believe the first thing I do tomorrow morning is find out who won, though.

Myrtle Beach Recap

So, our stay in Myrtle Beach was overall pleasant. In hindsight, the one thing that could have been a little better was the hotel. You always run a risk when you're booking through places like Hotwire and Priceline.com that for the price you pay you're going to end up with something at the very bottom of your quality selection.

I booked a room through Hotwire at the M Grande Resort (and spa!). I was kind of excited when I went to the website and saw that they were renovating and that the rooms would have nice new furniture. Well, we didn't get one of those rooms. More commentary in the extension. (Oh, the picture was in front of one of the Hard Rock Cafe's spinx. The exression on my face is "Hurry the hell up.")

So, the drive down took a little over four hours. The traffic on the main strip, 17 Business, was hellacious and there were red lights every 500 feet or so. When we finally got to check into the hotel, I guess it was around 7, my first impression of the lobby was "Oh." The front desk attendant was listless and spoke in a volume so low that I wanted to check her pulse just to make sure she was all right.

We parked and went upstairs to our room. 1216. As I stated, the hotel was in midst of "renovations" which were supposed to modernize all the rooms. I guess they hadn't made it to the 12th floor yet. The bathroom was about half-updated (everything but the tub), and the rest of the room was a disappointment.

The furniture was old and there was a sketchy looking white stain on the sole chair in the room. Oh, and did I mention it was musty? I actually didn't notice that scent until yesterday morning when I woke up and smelled cigarette smoke being piped in from some idiot in the adjoining room or out in the hall.

At the retail price they list these rooms for (around $180/night), we got Super 8 quality digs. To make matters worse, it was the weekend before senior week, so every local heathen and hussy fresh out of high school was in Myrtle Beach and screaming on my floor at 1 in the morning.

Hotel aside, we had a good time. We went to the outlet malls, the Ripley's museum*, the Ripley's aquarium*, played a round of miniature golf, and sunned ourselves on Sunday. Scott came away with an interesting red tinge and my white coworkers are no longer tanner than me.

I wouldn't change a thing except the room. I hated to come back yesterday.

*see my flickr album for all the vacation photos

Wow. That's so nice. Thank you.

It's a few months early to be deliberating this now, but I'm really turned off at the idea of having a baby shower thrown for me...or at me throwing one for myself, for that matter.

For one thing, I'm sure that subsequent babies won't get the same attention. This is my own theory - if your experience has been different, let me know. I just happen to know for a fact that there are approximately 1,487 pictures of my older sister from birth through Kindergarten. I have maybe 5. Part of that problem is that even then I didn't like having my picture taken because someone behind a camera always tried to make me smile and pose. Anyhow, my mother claims that my pictures were lost when they were "moving" or in a "great flood" or something. Bullshit. I was number two - second girl at that. I was the newer model that came out when the older one still had less than 100,000 miles on it.

I digress. Yeah. Baby showers. I just don't want that kind of attention. For one thing, Scott and I have a hard enough time agreeing on paint and furniture without bring other opinions up in the mix. I don't want people buying us shit that neither of us like. And that's pretty hard to do. I tend to be the kind of person that will take the gift and wear it anyway because someone I care about gave it to me. Even if it's ugly as shit.

But we're talking about a baby here. We've got to furnish an entire room and closet, and seeing as how the probability me of taking a massive pay cut in the next couple of months is about 99.9%, I wouldn't mind a few generous, unsolicited donations...but stuff I've already picked out. Does that make sense? We're the ones who have to use the crib, changing table, blah blah for the next two to three youngun's afterall.

I just can't see having to tolerate a bunch of people in my house when I'm thisclose to popping. I'm sure my family fall back on the old-standby guilt trip and call me "ungrateful," but how can I be ungrateful if I don't ask them for shit at all?

Fuck it. I'll just have to finance my own private shopping spree courtesy of my credit cards and some crap in the closet that can be sold on eBay.

More room in the driveway

The buyer came to pick up the Honda while I was at work. I'm a little sad. I didn't think I would care. When I had to get rid of my Cavalier, decrepit piece of junk that it was, I really, really felt guilty for getting a much newer car (with air conditioning). I still miss that car; it was my first, after all.

Even though I had either car for about the same amount of time, I just seem to have more memories riding around in the Cavalier. What did I ever do in the Accord? Oh yeah. I drove to work. Pbst.

Oh well. I'll miss the leather.

One chore down, 167 left to go.

I was going to comment on how my weekend was so short but then I realized that, duh, it's already fucking Tuesday.

I put an ad on cars.com as soon as I found out that the title was safe in hand. By Saturday we had a winner. Unfortunately, state law requires that both buyer and seller be present before a notary to sign the title to transfer the vehicle. Because my grandmother, the official seller, is 84 and doesn't do highway driving, on Sunday I woke up early, drove to Suffolk to pick her up and brought her back. I put her up at the Sheraton for the night, which I'm sure she thoroughly enjoyed. I took 3/4 of my day off work yesterday to handle the rest of the business of getting she and the buyer together at a bank.

He has his key and title and I have my check. I did have to drive my grandma back home last night. I got home at around 8:45 and was in bed by 9.

So, Honda go bye-bye. Now my next major task on hand will be to open the stack of bills on my desk I've been avoiding for three weeks. Maybe my paycheck will be decent enough this month that I can pay some stuff off without feeling like I've been shafted by "the man."

Just fix it.

I just dropped my Honda off at the dealership for some work. I woke up in sheer panic this morning remembering that the car was supposed to be inspected last month which I didn't have done because I didn't have money to replace the tires...which is kind of a requisite when they're bald. Not only do I need at least three tires, but the ABS light came on this morning while I was looking for a Firestone to get cheap tires. Couldn't find it. Fortunately the Honda dealership has shuttles that can take your broke ass home after you drop your car off.

I still don't really have the money, but I'm stepping out on faith here and hope I can get this car sold in the next two weeks with the promise of getting a title to them within 30 days. Hell, I've got bills to pay.

Okay, so...one of the dumbest things I've ever done was purchasing a new car when my current one still had six or so payments on it. I love my Jeep - don't get me wrong, and I got a great deal on it. Paying two car payments at once, however, is sure to put you in the po'house.

I didn't want to use my Accord as a trade because I knew that there would be more value in a cash sale. I could have sold it to a dealer at any time, but I wanted the title in my hand before I made any deals.

Since my grandmother got the car for me when I was in college, I would have felt ike a real jackass if I had traded the car in. I did take over the payments a couple of years ago, but all the same that's a lot of payments she made. She's an old lady. She could have used that money to sun herself on a beach somewhere.

I decided that I would sell the car outright and send my grandmother whatever I could get...minus $1,000 or so for me to pay a couple of bills and maybe put some bucks away for baby furniture.

Cross your fingers and hope that Honda doesn't call and tell me I need new brakes. Because I'll cry, and that normally doesn't make them drop their prices.

Feh.

In general, this has not been a good week for the Tiffany. Everything pisses me off. Everything makes me nauseous. My cats think their butts are 4-star views, especially so when you're trying to type an email and they want to plop right down in front of your computer monitor to preen themselves (butt included).

I've been home sick for two days. Yesterday was the absolute worst day (to date) of this pregnancy. I threw up seven times and had the sickest migraine concentrated behind my right eye. Only after eating one of those chalky, nasty Pepto Bismol tablets at 6 PM was I able to keep some food down. I think it was Ore-Ida crinkle cut fries.

Today I stayed home because I was weak and exhausted from throwing up and not having any food yesterday.

Work sucks because people assume that I want to help them. Okay, that's wrong to say. Work sucks because people like to dump responsibilities on me that I'm not aware of until there's a problem that needs to be fixed. That pisses me off because I'm a person who likes to plan and do things proactively. If you dump some shit in my lap that should have been solved a week ago, I get reaaaaaally pissed off.

But, in happy news, my free ultrasound on Wednesday was proof that I'm exactly as pregnant as I think I am. Yulp. The process was uncomfortable because it involved a set of cold metal stirrups and stripping from waist down, but I've got to tell you that nothing will awe you like seeing your kid's heart beat at 9 weeks.

I think every mommy-to-be is a little paranoid that they're going to hurt the microbaby if they take a teensy sip of Dr Pepper or can't stand food for a couple of days. Pregnancy isn't exactly idiot-proof, but the young'un has ways of protecting itself during your puking phase.

I've spent the past few days learning that there isn't shit on cable between 10 am and 2 pm. I've watched more Spongebob and Dora the Explorer than I care to admit. I'll just call it research, you know...for the baby.

Oh, and you can Click here to see a fancy-smancy ultrasound picture of the microbaby.

So that's what you think, huh?

Do e-mail forwards count as e-mails?

I'll explain.

My mom tried to ream me out last week for not responding to her e-mails.

She rarely sends me a real e-mail. They're mostly forwards and "Oooh, look what I found on the Internet!"

She tried to impose a 24-hour response times for all e-mails.

Whatever. I'll send her e-mails that read, "Oh, that's cute!" and see if she thinks that counts. She also thinks that I spend more time with my mother-in-law than with my own family.

In other news, my boss wanted to announce my pregnancy to the whole office this morning. As much as I'd like to have people stopping by my desk every 10 minutes to ask me dumb-as-shit questions, I had to squash that notion. He wants to start doling out my duties already. How fucking long does he think I'll be gone? If I'm going take an extended, extended maternity leave I'll just quit. I won't be getting paid anyway.

Two tears in a bucket.

I know I've been pretty boring over the past week or so. Actually, I've been pretty non-existent. I've just been boring, is all.

I go to work. I go home. I do work at home. I get in the bed at around 8:30 and watch television until my eyes close. I haven't cooked a nutritious meal in about two weeks because I've been so drained from my so-called job. I've even been neglecting my poor kitties who are just crying to scratch and maul me.

I would probably be a lot less boring if I showed that I had some sort of social life, eh?This picture is from this past Saturday - I'm the one on the right. The one with the even bigger hair on the left is my would-be road dawg/best friend since Kindergarten/cousin Sheena. Yes, you can assume from my glazed-over expression that I was chock full o' cheap beer.

Our first meeting was on the first day in Ms. Ziemba's class. She got her name written on the board with three check marks. Either she was a bad-ass or Ms. Ziemba had a low tolerance for normal child-like behavior. I suspect a little bit of both was the case.

I'm not going to lie - my name was on the board at least once per month for some stupid shit. Like, some kid would look at my coloring page and copy my color choice and I'd be the one to get in trouble. That's some bullshit, right?

Anyway. I drove to my grandma's on Saturday for my semi-quarterly guilted-into visit. They got their hugs and nags in ("When are you going to have a baby? You'd better not wait until you're too old.") and I drove an hour south and got to catch up on gossip and such with Sheena and Crew (tm) a little later on.

Interestingly enough, we went to this downtown restaurant where who to my surprise was sitting at the bar with her momma? Why, my mortal childhoold enemy! They saw us and slinked at the soonest opportune moment.

More on that slob later.

Yuck!

I'm out of my usual teabags, so I rooted around in the cabinets at work this morning and used what was on hand. There were some "Chinese" teabags that someone had gotten with Pei Wei takeout.

This tea tastes like porkchops. And I'm gonna drink it anyway. I poured it out. Couldn't take the smell. I might have to suck it up and go to the grocery store after I'm assured that my primo parking space is secured.

College Nightmares.

Before I met Scott, I lived in a 2-bedroom apartment in the psuedo-ghetto with a roommate. It was in one of those apartment complexes where most people didn't speak English, where there would be diapers floating in the pool at any given time, and where strangers would allow their children to sit/play/stand on your car when they were outside.

Home sweet home. With my credit at the time it was the best I could do.

Anyway, my roommate was a girl whom I'd met in my...damn, what class was it? I think it was my chemistry 011 lab. She stood at the station beside mine. We sort of bonded over how crappy the T.A. leading the lab was. Often the students in our section went to the lab next door to ask the other T.A. to check our T.A.'s work. Anyway, that's neither here nor there.

We became friends and she often spent the night with my roommate and I in our dorm room. We had this super-comfortable recliner she would sleep in that just so happened to be more comfortable than the bunk beds.

At the end of the year, four of us (my roommate, myself, Chem chick, and a floormate) decided that we'd all move off campus for the next year and we tried to find an apartment to accomodate all four of us. Tried as we might, either the apartments were just way too small to accomodate four beds or we couldn't figure out a way to determine who would get a room to themselves if we got a three-bedroom.

We ended up parting ways on that endeavor: my roommate and hallmate opted for a more expensive one-bedroom apartment, and my classmate and I qualified for a less expensive two-bedroom 1,000 square foot apartment.

I'll cut to the chase and tell you the end before I get there: I moved out (unofficially) within six months of living there.

Chick was trifling. I don't mean your standard run-of-the-mill trifling meaning "nasty," but trifiling all the same.

On move-in day, I waited around for a little while after dumping in all my shit. I had both of the keys and needed to run some errands. When I returned she had come up with a U-Haul and her entire extended family to help her move in.

After they left, her friend still remained. Friend spent the night. Friend spent the next night. Friend never left.

It seemed I had inherited a gypsy. She never paid a cent of rent, however was there all day long, watching t.v., making phone calls, surfing the internet and what have you. This pissed me off to no end. I guess the way my roommate saw it was that if she was sleeping in her bedroom, then she was the one ultimately responsible for covering that part of the rent. I disagree with this logic. Anyway. I was sick of people using my shaving cream and eating my food. Having one roommate was more than enough. I was never home - I was either at school or at work. When I went home, I wanted to open the fridge, have a soda and watch t.v. I didn't want to have to fume over who ate/drank my food or "What's that smell?" (it was a bag of potatoes that had been left to grow foliage and rot under the sink). My roommate(s) spent all of their spare time in their bedroom with the door closed.

When Scott came along, I basically moved in with him the first night I met him. No joke. (I guess it's that whole "knight in shining armor" thing us girls look for).

I paid rent at that aparment for another five months or so even though my shit was gone and I didn't live there. I was so happy on the day I went to the apartment office and signed the forms to have my name taken off the lease. I was through with it. I actually feared going back into that apartment to remove my things thinking that I would have to confront my roommate. That never happened, fortunately.

That's about 8 months of my life I'd like to have back.

And the moral of the story is: never move off campus into an apartment with people who are obviously sketchy.

iPod Help

Tonight we bought an iPod dock thinking that we needed one to plug the electrical adapter into (erroneous). Well, that's okay - we can still use it to connect to the television.

The problem now is that our television doesn't have an S-video out port, but the DVD player does. How do we communicate to the DVD player that we don't want to play a disc, but want to use it instead to shuttle data from the iPod?

If anyone can tell me, I'd be most grateful.

Less work for you - don't say I never gave you anything.

Just an FYI: you will no longer be forced to preview your comment before posting.

I put that system into effect last year to combat the spam bots, but now that they're under control in the Munu kingdom, I've disabled them.

Feel free to comment your little hearts out. I know that's what was holding you back, eh?

Mine arms have seen the glory of the coming of the comb.

I'm contemplating if I should wash my hair. When it's curly and wonderfully carefree, I at the very least, condition it daily. When it's straight and processed, I shampoo less frequently.

The problem with having hair that's as thick as shag carpet is that it takes 30 minutes to blowdry. I just don't have that kind of upper body strength, y'all.

...I almost want to go out and pay someone to do it for me, but after too many hair stylist disasters, I think I'd prefer my hair to stink. Which it doesn't, by the way.

Oh, that's mine?

Do you ever have to wait so long to get something you ordered delivered that you forget that you ever ordered it?
I was about to get angry and indignant when I got home this afternoon. Back in November when I ordered my flute and accessories I ordered some tone hole covers. Yeah, I know - blah blah blah. To make a short story even more concise, the package came today. Yes, they use FedEx to deliver a 2 ounce item. Hmm.

Oh well. It's sort of like Christmas all over again.

Lend me your recipes...

For a cosmo cocktail and dry martini.

Please and thank you.

Resolutions

I'm not one for making New Year's resolutions because I'm VERY good at making excuses to not keep them.

All the same, it's traditional, so here I go:

Tiffany's 2006 Resolutions

Groveling to Gap

You may not know this about me, but I worked in an Old Navy store for close to two years. "Wow, I wouldn't have pegged her as having a customer service personality," you say? Well, I don't. I folded shirts and tried to keep my mouth shut, even when snot-nosed kids were blowing raspberries all over my pant leg. I still shop at Gap-family (Gap, Old Navy, Banana) stores because I know how the pants are cut - I don't have to shop around too much.

Anyhow, I've been having a shitty time with a certain pair of Gap khakis. To summarize, I've had two pairs of the same pants split in the same place after fewer than three wears.

I wrote the following email to Gap this email after extricating the pants from the bottom of my laundry heap:

"This message is regarding item 278560 - the Gap classic fit clean cut khakis in the stone color.

I have bought not one, but TWO pairs of these defective pants. I bought the first pair back in the fall at the full retail price of $44 and threw out my receipt - the pants fit fine and I intended to keep them. On my third wear of the pants, having neither washed the pants or worn them in any manner other than required in normal wear the area around the crotch split while I was driving home. The tear was NOT on the seam, but at the area beside it.

I should mention that these were a pair of size 2A khakis that were baggy in the thigh and knee - I could almost understand if the pants were too tight.

I returned the pants to the store of purchase a few weeks later and the manager exchanged them for an exact pair (of course, by this time they had gone into clearance).

I didn't even get two wears out of my new pair: I am uncertain of when the second pair split, however I realized it after I got home from work. They ripped in the exact same place - beside the crotch. I am still in ownership of the second pair. Again, I did not keep my receipt. What are the chances that this could happen TWICE? I wanted these pants and had no intent to return.

I'm curious to now whether there have been any other complaints with this style of pants. As a former Old Navy employee, I am typically reluctant to shop at stores not affiliated with Gap - I know what fits and I know the quality. I don't have to waste a lot of time trying on brands I'm not familiar with.

My situation with these khakis has been remarkably disappointing. Jeans and khakis are supposed to be a Gap staple: if I can't purchase a pair that won't rip after minimal wear, I'm at a loss of where I should purchase them."

I'm almost certain they'll send me an email telling me to return the pants to the store again for an exchange (if they're in stock) or a store credit at the current retail price ($19.99).

If they ask me to mail them back for a full refund I'm going to wet my pants in glee. Stay tuned.

Naps are the shit.

They're like a drug that you can't resist and I just woke up from one. I especially like the part where I stretch out beneath a warm blanket, wiggling my toes and doing a little "Yeeeeeeah, boy!" grunt to acknowledge my comfort. Yum.

This morning I heaved myself out of the bed at the asscrack of dawn and drove to work to administer even more of those exams I've been bitching about. Three of the six allotted people who signed up showed up.

I think that's hilarious - people apply for a government job and then two days later don't bother to show up for the screening exam. I guess they don't know how long the Fed's memory is. It's not like one of those "optional" Monday quizzes your Shakespeare professor gives every week for like 1% of your final grade. Heaven forgive they should need to apply again...

We're slated to go to a party tonight that runs from 9 til we drop. Something in my bones tell me that I'm going to embarrass myself by asking to leave before midnight. I'm too old for this shit. Right now I'm going to have a cup of hot tea, try to bend myself enough at the waist to paint my crusty toenails, and then possibly take another brief nap before showering and undertaking the monumental task of dressing.

Durham Community Concert Band Christmas Concert

Here's me last night during the Durham Community Concert Band's Christmas concert. Notice my intense concentration. I was really just pretending to busy so that no one would try to strike up a conversation with me about the weather.

The play list included: "'March' from Second Suite in F for Military Band," "Loch Lomond," "Sleigh Ride," "Themes from the Nutcracker Suite," "Russian Christmas Music," "Greensleeves," "A Christmas Festival," and the "Ultimate Christmas "Sing-along."

I had a good time. It had been five or six years since I've had to play an hour of music non-stop, so by the end of the evening my jaw and cheeks were throbbing. When the CDs from the evening get distributed, I'll try to upload a few snippets. I'm particuarly proud of how "Russian Christmas Music" sounded. I was a bit worried after last week's rehearsal.

A Public Service Announcement.

For all who have been navigating here using my old URL, blownfuse.us, after January 13 it will no longer function. You may still continue blown fuse by navigating to my real url, blownfuse.mu.nu.

Same Blown Fuse goddness: different channel.

I'm just too cheap to continue paying for a redirecting URL.

Lots of nog, little egg.

So...just how much rum are you supposed to put in the eggnog?

*hic*

A Quizzle

I get paid once per month, and seeing as how my next payday won't come until after Christmas, I'm starting my shopping now.

Kids are easy to shop for. I'll just go into Toys-R-Us and get whatever's cute and battery-operated. Perhaps I'll buy them all books (and they
d better be grateful, damnit!)

Adults are a bit more problematic to shop for. I know my grandma likes things that smell good, so that's easy enough. My mom likes things that make her look like she earns more than what she actually does. I'll get her a TJ Maxx gift card.

But what about the rest of 'em? I like the gifts I give to be somewhat thoughtful, so I won't just buy anything.

What are some some gifts you ended up giving after much deliberation and shopping?

I'm stalling.

We're home. We'll, we've been home for about 12 hours now, but anyow. My in-laws will be here any minute and here I sit in fuzzy slippers and my bathrobe blogging.

Actually, what I'm doing is discretely rearranging my personal effects to hide anything resembling a bill, bank statement, or article of possession I have no desire to discuss.

They're bringing the dog-in-law. This should be an interesting experience for Bodie. Puffy Savage is still locked up in the guest room (shit...am I going to need to evacuate her?) and Bodie is only tolerating her mildly. A good portion of the time she's attempting to swat Puffy with her little kitty thumb nail. Bodie will tear that damn dog apart...and he'll probably piss on the floor.

Only a handful of you have ever been inside my house, and when you were here it was probably in worse shape than it is right now in terms of getting the house presentable. Now it just smells like cat and looks as if there are toddlers about throwing every damn thing on top of each flat surface in sight....and so I sit blogging, instead of doing a quick clean-up.

Shows where my priorities are.

A wee blog post before Thanksgiving.

I've been rather lazy and boring lately so I haven't had much to bother you with. We're about to embark on the over the river and through the woods journey to Grandma's.

I'm supposed to meet up with my haven't-seen-in-five-years cousin later today. If I get into any trouble, I'll cellphone blog the pictures.

Gobble gobble!

The hangover aura lifts

I must have drank at least an entire bottle of wine last night. Thanks be to the Gods that I am a graceful drunk and know when to draw the line. My barometer is that if I can walk to the bathroom without swaying or walking forehead-first into a doorframe, I'm doing dyn-o-mite. According to my boss, I turn "nice" when I'm boozed up and I should have a shot of something before work each other. *whatever*

Anyhow, before I put some food in my stomach other than Snickers bar bites, I need to show off my new baby: the food processor (didn't realize I was taking a picture of the spanish side). I bought it on a whim when I was in Target shopping for party goods. I always knew I wanted, no - needed one, so here it is.

Now I have to figure out what the hell to do with it.

I slept through my vet appointment.

Uuuuuuuughhhghhhh that seventh glass of wine last night was probably a poor choice.

Oh well, at least I don't have any light sensitivity. I really was afraid that I would go to sleep and wake up drunk.

*relaxing yoga breath*

I need to go to Wal-Mart.

*inhales and exhales heavily*

I was at Target getting some stuff for a cocktail party we're going to tomorrow and I didn't get any portable pyrex food thingies.....I thought to myself that perhaps I should go to Pier 1 and get something funky...but, no.

Shit. Pray for me.

Closer and closer to middle-age.

Oh...kay. So, I'm home on my birhday. What now? My...

hold on, coffee.

Back. Like I was saying, my ulterior motive behind staying home today wasn't just that I had a whole bunch of vacation days to unload before the end of the year, but that I didn't want my boss planning some awkward lunch thing. I remember when it was divulged a couple of weeks ago that my birthdate was coming up. People started grabbing calendars and pencilling things in. That makes me uncomfortable for some reason - especially in knowing that one of those people carriers party streamers around like its no big deal - not in the mood.

If Bossman had taken me out to luch, he'd had to have taken everyone, and given my bitching and hissing about certain lazy officemates of of late, I didn't want them latching on for a free lunch.

Coffee's done. Be back.

I guess I'll get some laundry done today...the pile is starting to smell. I told a coworker I would make some brownies for her daughter's cotillion bake sale (stop making that face, Scott - I'll ave you a damn brownie). I need to put some gas in the Jeep...do a little vehicle rearrangement in the driveway. I've got band practice at 7:30 ish.

Sounds like a good time.

BAppy Hirthday to meee...

It's T minus 5.5 hours till my birthdate...I'm starting the party a few thousand seconds early. Please excuse the cat butt in the picture.

Ho ho holy cow.

This year I'm fully commited to the idea of having a Christmas tree.

Since Scott and I have been together we've never bothered doing anything out of the way for Christmas. Most of that was because we didn't have anywhere to put a tree. Well, now that the living room is presentable and there's a big space for a tree, I've started buying ornaments.

You've all heard about the UNC Santa I bought some time back. That was my very first ornament purchase.

Well, I went into Hallmark last week for...something or other, a card I think, and came out with four Star Wars ornaments, and one "I Love Lucy" ornament for myself.

$120 for six ornaments. Hmm. I guess the rest will be tacky glass balls until next year.

Single-leg Circles

I've felt suspiciously like crap today. The feeling of dread and "ugh" began to descend upon me at about 10 this morning. At that point I promptly stopped working in favor of other activities - like looking at shiny things and taking frequent outside-for-air breaks. I felt like at any moment I was going to keel over and fall asleep on my knees. Feeling better now, but I can't shake the feeling of "Arkgh!" in my esophogus.

I spent several hours over the weekend searching the internet for a gym or health club. What I really wanted was someplace where I could take yoga and pilates classes without having too many dilletantes in there taking up space and staring at me.

I narrowed my choices down to the new Y built down in the Tobacco Warehouse District downtown which offers mat classes and a full-fledged pilates studio near the mall.

I left work early yesterday afternoon with the intentions of scoping out both locations. Scott works near the Y, so I figured I'd make that stop last on my way home to say "Hi." Well, I didn't make it to the Y. I was so impressed with the atmosphere of the pilates studio that I went ahead and dropped the bucks on a block of mat classes.

The studio is a little under two years old and has modern decor and a quiet atmosphere. I took a mat class yesterday not knowing how many people would show up. You see, one of my biggest personality problems is that I don't like doing things by myself. That comes from spending at least part of my life having best friends that live in close proximity to me. Now my best friend lives in Winston-Salem and all my family is 3 or more hours away.

Up until recently I wouldn't even go to Wal*Mart by myself. I had such severe anxiety that I would be eaten up in the crowds. I had the same problem in college after I severed ties with people I had been associating with. I didn't even want to go to class for fear that people would look at me.

Let me tell you - answering phones all day and bossing people around gets you over that real damn fast.

But, I digress. I went to a class by myself expecting there to be a group of 8. There were only 2 for my first class (which normally is a $35 service), so I got individual attention for the price of a group class...but, I went. I didn't punk out.

Small victories, folks. Next thing you know I'll be willing to go to the movies during weekends!

First and 10

Twice in the past 24 hours or so I've considered taking my old notebook computer (a 6-year-old IBM ThinkPad) and dropping it in the nearest trash receptacle.

I don't use it. Not even to store large files or just in case I decide that I want to travel with it. The LCD display often goes off in its own little world and one has to restart it several times to get it back on.

Is there any real reason to hold onto a computer that age? It's slow as shit and because Windows XP was installed on it aftermarket, it has minimal drive space. As a result, it crashes a lot.

Anything I should consider before I punt it like a football?

It's a Girl!

Actually, it's a Jeep. Her name is Liberty. She weighs a ton and has bright red skin.

Zoom zoom zoom

My office has been in a new-car frenzy for the past few weeks. It all started when one of the female account execs had some weird shit going down with her Jeep. The fact that she's been having to make cconstant repairs to the vehicle was for her a gentle nudge in the direction of purchasing a new one. She's been test-driving a few vehicles and has been driving them to work.

Of course the fact that most domestic automobile manufacturers have been running that employee discount deal has pushed the "on" button for a few people. Bossman went out and bought a convertible Thunderbird. He now owns six cars.

When my car was acting like it had forgotten it's manners last week a little piece of me was hoping that it would be some costly repair where paying for it would be more painful than just trading in the lump for a new car.

Well...okay. So, my car works now... I have a couple of payments left on it and I'm ready for it to go. It has been a noble beast these past four years, but I'm ready for a new new car.

I'm going to test drive some wagons and maybe some small SUVs this weekend. I'm pretty sure I want an Outback, but what else is out there that I should be looking into? I'll look into some Hondas, but I'm pretty sure that brand new would be way out of my range.

Good news and bad news

Bad news first: my car cost $435 to fix...well, $20 was an oil change I was overdue for, but the rest was for replacing my worn out master and slave cylinders. I'll give you a minute to let that sink in.

The good news: my new digital camera arrived!

The photo on the left, obviously, is my cat eating my foot while I fiddled with the controls on my new camera. Since I didn't think to buy a memory stick to go with it I can only tak three pictures at a time at the high-definition setting. Frankly, I think it's pointless to take a digital picture if you don't use the best setting.

Hmm. I was just sitting here thinking about how I could knit a really cute case for it and while pondering about that whole memory stick thing I went back to the website I ordered it from to see if it was supposed to come with a stick. No, but there IS supposed to be a case. I don't see it. Are they talking about this little grey strap? Because, that's sort of not a case. Shit.

Oh Fudge.

My car's in the shop. I know already that the sense of foreboding I experienced this morning would preceed some tragic car drama coming to fruitiion.

My car is a pretty-well maintained '97 Accord. It has over 100,000 miles on it (no, I didn't do that.) and in addition to the cracked windshield I bitched about last week it also sports bald tires and has a possessed electrical system. Walk by on any given day the car locks will start popping all by themselves.

Those are minor problems: those are called "quirks." They're the sort of things you tell your friends and coworkers about when you complain about your car because they usually have the same problem.

This morning I backed out of the driveway as always and immediately began having problems with my shifter. I was just having the damndest time getting it into gear. It was as if there was a gnome strapped beneath my chassis holding onto a string and preventing me from moving it.

Several times at lights the only gear I could get into was second. Have you ever tried accelerating from 0 from second gear? To all but experienced drivers like myself you would have heard at least two tires peeling.

I didn't want to pull over to the side of the road because I was somewhat concered sbout what sort of people would offer assistance in that neighborhood so I just stuck it out until I got to work. I got into my usual space, shut the engine, and then on a whim started the car back up again. I could shift fine.

Weird. I wrote it off to the car being cold and didn't think about it again until this afternoon when I couldn't back out of my space. Various coworkers and myself all tried to find some insight to the situation but were unsuccessful in getting the stick to budge.

Needless to say that by the time Scott got there he got it to move just fine. That's the way it works, right? It's just like calling the exterminator. When they get to the house all the roaches are gone. Or like going to the doctor: when they're putting that thingie into your ear your ear infection magically dissipates.

The car is at the dealership now. Pray this isn't some costly repair. The last time my transmission stopped working I had to get a new car.

Click click!

I just ordered my very own digital camera. The one in my cell phone is good for taking pictures of the cat and all, but it really isn't good enough to capture those quirky little things about life that happen while I'm away from the house.

Our (meaning Scott's) digital camera is a huge Sony Cyber-Shot that you can't really be discrete about carrying.

If my coworker is wearing mismatched socks with pants that are too short, I want to be able to mock them publicly and electronically!

Anyway. I ordered a Pentax Optio that's small enough to carry around in my briefcase without arousing suspicion. It isn't a tiny credit-card sized camera, so I have the added benefit of not feeling like I'm going to break the damned thing.

Aren't you excited at the prospect of even more pictures of me circulating about the blogosphere?

Bwahahahahaha!

Stretch it or you'll wreck it.

I think I really fucked up something in my right hip flexor. Over the weekend it was just the outside of my hip hurting - I couldn't really localize it other than that, but I knew the area in general didn't feel up to snuff. Today I knew exactly what the problem was because I've experienced it before.

At one point or another I did serious damage to both sides during high school cheerleading. Between that, the falling arches, and shin splints, I always seemed to be in some sort of excruciating pain. This isn't really an injury you can wrap and tape and suffer through. It's like breaking a toe. No doctor is going to put a cast on your pinky toe, right? They're just going to give you a foot splint and tell you to tread lightly. In this case, you wear flats and try not to put pressure on that side for a few days...hard to do when your rolling desk chair is on carpet and you have to shuttle back and forth to the file cabinet.

[aside: the cat is sitting next to my chair and staring up at me. She's been in this stance for five minutes. Does she want to eat me?]

I'm trying to figure out when I strained it...I think it may be when we were on Bald Head on bikes and my seat was too high. The Sudafed high I've been on for the past couple of days have distracted me from HOW FUCKING PAINFUL it is. The pain is shooting down my leg in little ripples. How cute.

Image credit to University Sports Medicine

Skin Eraser

I'm considering seriously the action of having my tattoo removed. I've had people tell me that since I'm not fair-skinned, the scar the removal would leave behind would be just as obvious as the tattoo.

Is this true? Have any of you had this done? Who does this sort of procedure?

You're going to miss me, right?

I don't know why I always end up packing at the last minute. I throw a bunch of stuff in a suitcase and then wonder when I get to my destination why I didn't think to bring a sweater.

*sigh*

Hurricane Tropical Storm Hurricane Ophelia looks like it may threaten North Carolina in the coming week. If you want to see a grown woman cry, tell her she might have to cut her vacation short to evacuate.

How do people plan vacations at all if they're going to worry that some tropical depression is going to send them running home once they get good and settled? Right now I'm trying not to think about it and am hoping that I can at least get a couple of days of relaxation. I'm also hoping that Bodie doesn't freak out when I drop her off at the pet hotel tomorrow. The poor thing will probably think I'm abandoning her. *sigh*

Posting will be sporadic over the next week - I don't know if I'll have access to internet from the house, but I'll be sending pictures through my cell phone and Flickr when appropriate....if I can get a signal.

One last little [ghetto] thing - you know how you transport food items via ferry when you know the only grocery store on the island is super-expensive? In your suitcase. Just fill it with soda and booze and you're good to go. It's like carrying Skittles in your coat pocket that you bought at CVS into a movie theater.

STAY AWAY HURRICANES!

This has been one of those highly stressful weeks at work where it being well-known that i'm taking vacation next week encourages people to pile work on me before I go. I was tied up in a major project this morning and by afternoon I was catching up on the things that I normally do in the morning.

I still need to put my creative juices to work and finish up the campus recruiting packages that will be used next week. I have a guy that needs special documents uploaded and HTML coded for immediate use. (Did I mention that I refuse to work 12 hour days?)

Tomorrow sounds like a pretty shitty day. I know that people are going to be calling in non-stop with some new and exciting way to piss me off. I just checked the voicemail on my cell phone and some weirdo is looking for me to do work-related things in my off-time. Ha. That'll learn me to put my cell-phone number on my work voicemail, huh?

In better news, my new suitcases arrived yesterday. I've never really owned my own set of luggage, and I figured that this seemed as good a time as any to get some. Besides that fact, the suitcase I stole from my grandma has a big bleached out spot in it from where the Clorox tipped over in my car trunk. I got a set of three American Flyer pieces for about 90 clams. While it's not the pink Victorinix I wanted it'll do for the time being. If I ever find myself in a position where I travel more I think I'll definately splurge on something that makes me feel good.

Streaks of Crud.

Why do football players wear that black gunk under their eyes?

That question has been burning in my head for 24 hours, now. Someone PLEASE elucidate me.

Two fewer teeth in my head.

So, I had those two teeth pulled and I feel like shite. It's not my jaw that's killing me, but my head. I had sedation, so I suspect that the drug wearing off its what's causing it. Other than that I get a little light-headed when I stand up too fast, so I should probably stop that. I'm restricted to clear liquids and milk products (excluding cheese) right now. I want a taco so bad I could cry.

I need to go back to work tomorrow. With everything there being in a state of disarray from everyone moving around yesterday the phone system is all screwy. I don't want anyone touching anything because they don't know anything about how all this shit is connected and I don't want to have to, and pardon my crassness here, "rip them a new one." Yes, somewhere along the way I've become an obsessive compulsive bitch. That's actually written into my job description.

I took a pain killer about 4 hours ago. I really don't know what kind of shape my jaw is in (other than bloody and swollen), but I know I can't drive around after taking these things.

Honestly - should I be able to go back to work tomorrow? If I have to spend Monday cleaning up their various messes I'll be none too happy.

Now if you excuse me, I have to go pack in more gauze *blech*.

That'll make it easier.

I'm having teeth pulled tomorrow.

What did Bossman tell me before I left work today?

"Make sure the dentist doesn't pump you full of drugs to sedate you and then feel you up."

Gee, thanks.

Technical Difficulties

If you're currently seeing a whole lot of little red exclamation points next to the munu blogs in your bloglines list it's because our server is f.u.b.a.r.

It's a wonder you're able to read this.

If for whatever the site's down and you're itching for some Tiffany, keep trying.

This is really going to happen.

So, I called the realty company that rents certain homes on Bald Head Island this morning and tried to book the vacation house Scott and I had agreed on. The agent talked me out of renting that particular house because it was in a state of disrepair and the stove was broken. The owner expressed that he wasn't interested in fixing anything and wanted to sell it and blah blah blah.

So, we scrounged around and found one in a comparable price range. It's a little tacky
...but there's a pool right behind the building and we can take a bike or golf cart to anywhere on the island we want to go.

I'm getting more and more excited about this. Last time we went we were there for a long weekend and were staying in an inn. We had to eat out for every meal which got kind of burdensome.

Now we can take some food with us (whatever is tolerable to carry over on the ferry) and cook meals as necessary, although I expect most of those meals to be Bowl Appetites.

On a semi-related note, I'm having teeth pulled next Thursday. A few days of liquid food is all I need to drop a few pounds before making my yearly bathing suit debut. Nice.

Refining my Craft

I just ("just" meaning within the past few minutes) finished the first draft of a new short story I'm tentatively calling "Beige."

I feel really good about it because it's about an issue that's really important to me, but I feel like I'll never be able to clean it up enough for outsiders to truly understand some of the symbolism.

First of all, I laugh now at the very idea that I'm sitting here planning what symbols there are going to be in my work.

When I was going through school and analyzing countless works of literature I was so idealistic as to hope that these great writers had included those very profound connotations inadvertantly...as if Charlotte Perkins Gilman didn't intentially craft every word in "The Yellow Wallpaper" to convey some very specific point about emotion and womanhood (it ain't about the paper, folks).

I wanted to think that they were just SO GOOD that they spewed this stuff without even knowing it and that we were just sitting in class applying meaning to things where the author hadn't intended there to be any.

My problem is that I'm torn between wanting to write "literature,"--that is, the stuff that you take notes in the margins of and read twice to figure out--and writing humorous, "don't need to think about it to read it" disposable garbage.

*sigh*

Anyway. I have a lot of work to do either way.

Oogly Googly eyes

Have you ever been around one of those kids, say two or three, that look at you like they are curious of you?

I don't mean kids that you know, per se, but other peoples' kids in public places.

Last night we went to O'Charley's for dinner and there was this little girl sitting in a booster chair. Unlike any other three-year-old I've ever encountered, she was sitting there calmly, assessing her surroundings, and waiting for the proper time to begin sipping her juice.

She was staring at me. It wasn't the "Ooh! Can I have your Barbie!" type stare, or even the "Mommy, how come her hair does that?" stare, but the "I want to be just like you when I grow up" stare.

That shit weirds me out. I remember doing that when I was a pipsqueak.

Family Reunions

My grandma sent me a set of kitchen curtains and some information about a family reunion being held in Waterbury right before Labor Day.

Dude, my grandma is 83. I want to spend as much time with her as possible, but damned if I really want to spend time being henpecked by a bunch of people who smell like Jean Nâte and Old Spice deodorant.

I mean, come on, let's face it: I'm adorable. I'm short and I'm skinnier than the family average, and I have all my teeth.

That means I'm successful.

Although a part of me really wants to put my college diploma in my suitcase to go show off my mental prowess, another part of me just doesn't want to be bothered.

And besides, I'd never humilate Scott by dragging him to one of these things.

In case you're just tuning in, here's some illuminating backstory:

Scott is white. I am not. I am the descendant of slaves and jews with curly-fros. We're past discussion of such issues in our relationship because it don't matta.

The one time I allowed my grandma to strongarm me into bringing Scott to her church was the LAST time either of us have been in a church. There are always people who will spin gossip in your favor, so one of those people called me and let me know who was talking smack about us after we left - a person who wasn't even present in the building. Word travels fast in small towns.

And in case you're wondering the difference between black family reunions and white family reunions, I can dedicate an entire post to that...but, I'd rather someone else do it. I do have embarrassing photographs to corroborate mine, though.

It's not really that big of a deal, I guess. I could go by myself and be miserable and asked an arseload of stupid-ass questions about my occupation and "how I get my hair do do that" or I can sit at home and laugh maniacally.

I really don't want to find myself on a plane that close to Labor Day, anyway....I could leave early and drive, but....damn it. I'll need to flip a coin.

Retail Therapy

Typically I feel like a turd when I go out and buy myself new clothing. I consider the fact that I have a closet full of stuff that I never wear and feel like I'm being wasteful.

Feeling a little gloomy today, I realized that indeed, I have a lot of clothing but much of it is comprised of ill-fitting hand-me-downs that will be tragically out of style by the time (if ever) I grow into them.

I left work at around 3 believing that I would only buy a pair of shoes. I've already thrown away two pairs of black sandals this summer and needed to find a suitable replacement to wear to work. I had a DSW $10 coupon, so it was off I went. Like my new shoes? They're by Aerosole - yes, that company notorious for manufacturing "comfort" shoes. I think they've got a nice mid-century appeal about 'em and they should get me through the fall and the milder part of winter.

I then went to Kohls in search of tanks to wear under sweaters and jackets. All they had was crap. I called a friend and tried to have her talk me out of a trip to the mall which ended miserably.

Not only did I go to the mall, but I spent an hour and a half in JC Penney (under grandma's orders) (they're having an awesome sale, by the way). Got some stuff from Bath and Body Works, too (is it just me or is their sales staff a liiiiiiiitle creepy?).

So. I'm feeling a bit better than I was five hours ago. I've got stuff. Whee!

On a sadder note, the Gap khakis I bought on Sunday for full price are FUCKING DEFECTIVE and split down the crotch as I was driving home. Fortunately you don't need your receipt in these cases because I think I shredded it yesterday.

Can't win them all, I guess.

More Reasons to Hate Insurance Companies

My appeal for Blue Cross to pay for my most recent eye exam has been systematically denied. {See backstory.}

Basically, they've taken thirty days to get back to me with a letter merely repeating the information I provided them with to state that my request is denied on the evidence of "Blue Options Member Guide."

So...they're spitting out at me what I already know - that I'm supposed to have only one eye exam every 365 days.

Regardless of the fact that I got poor care the first time that necessitated a return visit to another doctor they won't pay.

Oh well. Can't win them all.

(says that but is really pissed)

Sob, sob. Heave, heave.

So, I finished the new Harry Potter book. *sigh*

You remember how somewhere in the middle of the Lord of the Rings trilogy how it was depressing as hell and there was nowhere to go but up?

Yeah.

That's all I'll say regarding that in case you were going to read it. I willl comment to all the people saying that these are kids' books that there are enough S.A.T.-level words in there to have a unabridged dictionary nearby.

*Thud!*

We ("We" meaning those of us without children) in the office have decided to form a dodgeball team and play in the City of Raleigh's rec department adult league.

Can you imagine? A bunch of high-strung people throwing big-ass balls at their annoying coworkers/teammates instead of the other teams?

I can just imagine what our uniforms would look like - I'm thinking knee pads, goggles, and some of those old-school leather football helmets.

We'll probably be the worst team out there, but at least we'll have a little comic relief. We can pretend we're in the Matrix and try to defy gravity.

Practical for home?

I noticed that HP has the same printer that we have at work on sale for $150. Yes, I know the cost of the cartridges will eat me up, but they do last a pretty long time, considering.

What do you think? Anyone out there splurge for a good home laser printer?

The beer oracle has spoken.

Last night I had a nightmare that I asked my boss for my evaluation/raise and he handed to me a report-card style statement saying that I was "A+" for everything except attitude, in which I recieved a "D". Because of that I would not be given a raise, however was officially fired. I would be given $500 in severance.

This whole, "Ask for a raise, stupid!" thing isn't getting any easier.

Tradeoffs.

I no longer wear a size 1. I came to terms with that this evening when I put all but one pair of my jeans and khakis into a bag to give away. I can't say that "the dryer shrunk them" anymore and contend that's the only reason they don't fit. I'm not going to lie to myself and say that when I'm done with the Lupron shots that my ass will dissolve like alka seltzer in water.

I will not pour talculm powder into my pants legs (like certain girls I knew in high school) and hope it'll help them slide on.

I can't be a beer drinker and be as svelte as I was a few years ago.

I've had my good cry and I'm over it now.

Hello, beer. Welcome to my thighs.

1 - 2, Cha cha cha.

I have a confession. I've always wanted to take a ballroom dancing class.

Are you done laughing? Good. See, I could go right out to the Fred Astaire place down the street but I'd feel like I was sticking out without a partner. I should remind you here that I am approximately 5'2" and I'm married to a man who's 6' 5" barefooted. I doubt he'd consent to humiliating himself by shaking his groove thing to the beat of meringue music.

It'd be just my luck that if I went alone I'd be partnered with some dude who is at best 5'3" with a Napoleon complex. I'd have to put him in his place quickly, surely.

What do you think? Should I go buy myself some dance heels and a bunch of weird ugly flowy skirts and take a class in the fall? Who knows - maybe someday you'll see me on ESPN 2 competing with li'l Napoleon in the Foxtrot round.

A Study on Bloggers

It was almost painless.

Fuckin' 'tards

My CitiBank Visa account has been paid off for months. After the fact they credited to me a $10.00 credit for signing up for paperless billing (like two years ago).

When I requested my $10.00 credit payable to me to close the account off once and for all I recieved a letter from the generic computer customer person thingie "S. Larson" that since my account was closed, blah blah blah. No check for me.

So why three months later do I recieve a $5.00 check in the mail reading "Below is arefund check for the credit balance on your account"?

Um...do the monkey processing the incoming mail scan for keywords and just print out whichever letter matches those? Then when they audit their shit later on they figure out that they owe people money?

Sounds bass-ackwards to me.

Take me out to the ballgame

Scott and I, along with a couple of my coworkers, went to a Durham Bulls game last night. You may have first learned of their impressive physical prowess in the movie Bull Durham starring Kevin Costner.

Scott's company is a season ticket holder so the staff all take turns using the row of seats. We had a good time. We drank cheap beer (and felt it this morning), ate salty foods, and dodged fly balls.

Hell, for $20 you can have yourself a damn good evening and walk out of there drunk and entertained.

I do feel like an asshole for not offering the two spare tickets to someone, though.

You're turning? Well, no shit.

I'm just wondering - what's the point of putting your turn signal on AFTER you've stopped the flow of traffic in your lane? I'm just wondering, because that's dumb.

Just wondering.

Any of you folks have a wall-mounted flat-screen t.v.?

If so...what do you do with all the cords?

Not even a trickle.

Our water went kaput last night. This is after I'd washed five loads of laundry. When I went to wash the dishes I got the usual pressure flow for about three seconds and then it died.

So, we had no water to shower in this morning.

And so I didn't go to work.

I'm sure I could have gotten up really early and went to work and taken a sink bath in the bathroom but I'm obviously not that gung-ho.

The Roto-Rooter guy came out to fix it this morning and everything's peachy keen.

Looks like it's too late to go to work, heh heh.

I'm the person you WANT to stand next to in line.

In the coming week, I will squirt out the last of the perfume toilet water I've been hoarding and using sparing for the past six years.

I wear Versace Red Jeans. When I bought that bottle I heard rumors that it was going to be discontinued so I thought, "Hey, I'll save it for a special occasion."

Now I wear it every day and it has become my signature scent. As far as I can tell you can still find it on some places on the internet.

I think I want to try something new and might go looking around this weekend.

What do you ladies wear? Don't you hate it when people sniff you, ask you what you're wearing, and then go out and buy it but don't smell nearly as good as you because their musky-ass body chemistry doesn't meld with the scent?

Eye give up.

Anyone else out there wearing ProClear (Coopervision) contact lenses?

If so, are yours as crappy as mine?

Traditionally I've worn Cibasoft visitint lenses. I'd worn those with no problems for 8 or 9 years. They're the kinds you keep for a year or so until you need to replace them. They didn't dry out my eyes, they didn't give me blurry vision.

I expressed that to my "Eyecare Professional" when I went in back in September. I told him that when I'd tried disposable lenses I'd found them to be painful as they dried out very quickly and my vision wasn't as sharp.

He again suggested that I try a different brand of disposable lens because it was in general a bad idea for me to only have on pair of lenses with no backup.

I relented, agreeing that not having spare lenses in the past has been an inconvenience. He put me in the Proclear lenses with the same prescription in each eye. My eyes' weaknesses are not equivalent, mind you. He stated that overcompensating in the left eye wouldn't do me any harm and this way I could get away with ordering only one box.

Cool. I'm all for saving a little do-re-mi.

Well. I put them on in the office and found that it was taking far too long for the lenses to settle and for my eyes to focus. My short-range vision was foggy, however I could see things pretty well that were across the room. He assured me that they were fine.

When I went back for my follow-up appointment a week later I expressed that I really didn't like the lenses and that my eyes felt like the surface of a sidewalk on a hot day.

He told me to use eyedrops. I told him I'd been squirting saline by the assload directly into my eyes.

Not once did he suggest I try a different lens. He just said again that these would be better for my eyes because they'd be cleaner.

8 months later these P.O.S. lenses have pushed me over the ledge. After a month of wear, the material of the lenses disintegrate to the point that the ridges in your fringer will leave noticable lumps on the surface of the plastic. God forbid you try to reorder them online through 1-800 Contacts or through lens.com because THEY'RE ALWAYS BACKORDERED BY AT LEAST 4 WEEKS.

Of COURSE they're in stock at the Doctor's office. Of COURSE the doctor marks them up by 25%.

I'm fed-up with the quality of care at the chain of franchises I've been using. I've only been patronizing them this long because I first visited them my senior year of high school and was informed that when I moved to Chapel Hill, there was a facility there where they could merely fax my records over to. Then when I moved to Durham I did the same thing (although they do like charging that new patient fee every time).

I'm through with all that now. I'm going to an independent practitioner this coming week. Sure, I'll have to explain a lengthy history and fill out all those damn forms again, but at least I won't have to put up with people who care more about making a buck than whether I can see or not.

Minimum sanity facility.

Okay, I didn't tell anyone to fuck off today, but I did have a frozen daiquiri with my lunch.

The waiter looked shocked as did many anal-retentives around me.

Ten minutes later people started ordering teas of the Long Island variety.

Okay. Remember some time ago when I ordered the vacuum bottle as my Blue Points prize?

Well, it arrived dented and I sent it back. On such occasions, the fulfillment people are supposed to send you a refund check for the postage cost when they send your replacement. I expected around three bucks back - I had to send it parcel post.

I got my new, undented, bottle today and inside the shipping bag were three one-dollar bills.

How ghetto is that?

When's Friday?

It's official - I'm going to work tomorrow.

I was going to use tomorrow as sort of an unofficial prequel to the long weekend, but decided to save my vacation day for use during a real vacation.

I planned on a drive to Podunk to do some genealogy research. I may still go on Saturday to visit the county library and look at some grave sites, but I won't be able to get my hands on any vital records as planned.

On a semi-related note, we hired some part-time help at the office. BossSon #3. Yes, there are even more BossSons than you thought, huh?

We're still actively seeking an intern as well. Some kid called in yesterday stating that he was looking for an "Unpaid Internship" which made our eyes bulge out in disbelief. Fuck an interview - you're hired, kid!

I need a mind eraser.

I'm just wondering if years later, anyone else has this stuck in their head:

"UP, UP, DOWN, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT, RIGHT, B, A, B, A, SELECT, SELECT, START."

Anyone else know what that is?

What I think about when I think about things.

I just had a revelation that if Britney Spears weren't famous and had to work a real 9-to-5 job, she'd drive a 1990 Camaro with a Hardee's Star on the antenna and wear button-up blouses that are too tight around the bosom and when she turns at a certain angle you can see her holey, tacky lace bra through the button edge.

Just thought I'd share.

Care to confront?

Some idjut stumbled across an old entry and is spewing nonsense. Care to teach her a lesson about the first amendment?

See this post.

She's not savvy enough to be a troll, so she must have did a Google search for "people who hate sorority girls" and ended up here.

Touché.

Look at my new phone! *click*

My old cell phone pooted out.

I now have a new one with a camera.

Does anyone else smell "trouble" in the air?

*evil cackle*

Zoop zoop zoop.

In case you're just tuning in, here are some things you might have missed (edited on 2/14/07):

There. It's done.

God. I hope my children never are as unmoivated about calling people on birthdays and holidays as I am. I just don't want to be lured into the beartrap that is conversation. My mother always reminds me that I should be attending church. I always admit that I should be and keep tongue firmly tied on the whole agnostic issue - sorry, Momma. Church can't cure that.

Grandma always has some pitiful voice curable only by a visit from certain grand-offspring.

Everyone else, lots of BLAH BLAH BLAH.

*pulls hair*

Scott, call your mother.

Salvation.

My paycheck for tutoring last month has just arrived. It's small and barely enough to cover the fat check I wrote to the anesthesiologist who drugged me during my laparascopy (and boy did they cash THAT fast), but it's enough to encourage me to wash myself and venture out in search of a new pair of flipflops.

I've just changed my mind. Malls are crowded. I'll shop online and go out later to buy catfood that doesn't smell as bad in the can as it does coming back out.

And ice cream cones.

Being Lazy

I don't feel like doing anything. The cat danced on my head for a couple of hours this morning, annoyed that she hadn't been fed. The audacity! Did she not know it was Saturday and that she gets fed late on Saturday?

I got up and gave her some slop that will, if the past is any guide, inevitably cause her to fart noxious fumes even whle sitting in my lap. I don't have a regal cat. My cat is uncouth as a housekity can get.

I had a weird sinus headache (likely brought on by the cat hair mulch in my sheets and comforter) so I took an Advil and went back to bed for a few hours. The cat decided to lay her [now] fat ass next to me which prevented me from rolling over.

Here, kitty kitty. She's tapping my arm now as I type. I'm sorry, kid. I've got nothing left to give you.

I guess I'll catch up on some laundry and clean some of the tumbling tumbleweeds of dust out of the bedroom. If I get really stagnant in the energy department, I may find myself sitting at the kitchen table with one ear turned to NPR and the other to the cat scratching in her litter box. And doing nothing else.

I thought I'd maybe take myself to an early movie. But I don't feel like dealing with people today. I'm not area-savvy enough to know which theaters are crowded at which times.

I'd go to the mall to get a new pair of shoes for work...but some Grinch called FICA stole my paycheck.

Oh, and Scott's away. Usually anatagonizing him takes up the bulk of my free time during the weekends. I don't feel like being creative.

Team in Training

I want to do this...but I don't want to do it by myself....and I don't foresee myself raising $1500 to participate in it, either. They say that your travel and lodging to the event is free, however I suspect they've already calculated that into the amount of money you need to raise.

Eh. Oh well. Another dream dashed.

Shit.

I somehow managed to break the strap on my right Steve Madden "dress" flip-flop. Ladies, you know what I mean - the more professional variety of thong? The bitch just snapped right off on my way from the mailbox.

*sigh*

Bossman will be gone all of next week, so he can't critique me if I wear rubber beach shoes, can he? I can't stand wearing regular shoes when it's warm-weather season. My hypochondria tells me that my feet are swelling.

Kwik-e Koffee

I hate being a nag, really I do, but when you have to depend on your coworkers to bring in coffee supplies when it's their turn there tend to be problems "rememering." I wanted to help them to "remember" so I took matters into my own hands and had a sit-down with the local sales manager of Diamond Springs to arrange for delivery.

So happy I did. We played with the machine all day and by 3 p.m. were so hopped up on caffeine we couldn't sit still. We're still in a trial period, but hopefully nobody will change their mind before Friday and decide they don't want to pay $15/month each for coffee. They're certainly spending a helluva lot more than that at Starbucks every morning.

A Little Boobage Story

When I was 11 or so and still hadn't developed in my upper region, I ordered a "Solution" from in ad in the back of one of my teen magazines. It promised to make your ta-tas grow like you wouldn't believe.

I waited patiently for 6-8 weeks for what I thought would be a cream or gel to rub on nightly with a prayer.

It turned out to be a ten-page booklet with sketches of exercises. One exercise instructed the flat-chested reader to put their hands in prayer position and nestle them under their breast shelf right at the sternum. Push up and lift. Release. Repeat.

I thought that shit working...and then I figured out it was only puberty.

I want my money back.

I care enough to send the very best.

I mentioned some time ago that I can't go into a Hallmark store without wanting to bawl.

Well, I've just returned from my quarterly card junket and I have confirmed my own suspicion that I may be a sentimental fool.

Although I spent a lot of time thinking, "Best mom in the world? Surely they can't be talking about my mother," Mother's Day cards in general tend to be pretty sappy, so I found myself getting misty-eyed over the corniest lines. I rectified the situation by constantly rolling my eyes. I'm sure the people in the aisle with me were thinking, "Wow, that card must be really, really bad."

Since I spend an amount of money on cards that is larger on average than the distribution of other people in my age group, I get a lot of coupons from Hallmark. I had a $5 coupon, so I bought even more cards than I originally did in order to earn the $5 coupon in the first place. I'm fully expecting that by July I'll be hoarding cards like crazy old ladies do cats.

Oh, there's no price tag too large for sprinkling a little happiness via the USPS. *gags*

I can open that eye now.

Every work morning I get up and step in the shower with one eye still partially closed and I wait for the perfect surge of well-modulated warm water to wake me up.

I spend at least two minutes adjusting the cold water knob with my toes, turning my body this way and that to find an inch of dry skin to test the new temperature on.

When that perfect not-to-hot temperature is set I can proceed to shower.

A lukewarm shower would just ruin my day.

"Can I see your I.D.?"

Here's why I didn't spill the beans on any details on my little outing on Friday night: there were none worth mentioning.

I went with my twin coworkers to a wine "martini" bar on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill, where apparently they're well known enough to not have to pay a cover charge, as well as anyone following them in.

I did get carded though, which while an inconveinence for someone carrying a purse that's built like a safe, is sort of a compliment. I was going to ask th bouncer if he thought people wearing wedding bands in Chapel Hill should automatically be considered over-21, but I kept my mouth shut.

I didn't have to pay for my own drinks because the boys simply walked behind the counter and got them themselves.

I only stayed for about an hour, long enough to make commentary on the "heiffers" (a.k.a. girls whose bodies don't work with the three inches of fabrc they're wearing), and to determine what the single twin finds desirable in a woman ("She should look like that," he said. "So, you want someone disposable?" I responded.")

I had my flip-flopped foot stepped on three times by people in heavy shoes.

I noticed I was wearing more clothing than any other "woman" in there.

At the particular parking garage I left my car in, they normally abandon ship at around 11 or midnight, so anyone left parking there should be able to drive out with no charge. When I drove in and the gate was down, I didn't take the ticket that popped out of the machine. I merely flicked it. (shut up).

An hour or so later when I was ready to leave and had no ticket, I had to screw up my courage and do something I never do: be nice and suggest that someone do something against the rules." Otherwise I'd end up paying for a whole day's worth of parking, which I would have done if push came to shove, but I only had $5 in cash on me.

To booth clerk while searching in dashboard: "Oh! I don't have a ticket but I came in an hour ago..."

It wasn't a lie.

The clerk shuffled some papers around and moments later quoted "$1.35."

Whew!

I went home and went to bed. I was under the covers by 12:30. I am so lame.

So. Tired.

I had planned on going out tonight. Really, I did. I had planned with my coworkers to go to a wine bar in downtown Chapel Hill, and was told by the person suggesting the location that we would be going "late."

I had forgotten what "late" meant. When you're in college, "late" means you leave your house at 10 p.m.

When you grow up and work a 9 to 5 it means "out after dark."

Here it is, 10:35 and I'm still at home. My female coworker was asleep at 9:30 when I called her to confirm, so she's out. I'm sitting here with crusty contact lenses and drooping eyelids, myself. At this point I really don't want to go, and it's not really too late to back out, but I don't want to be seen as indecisive about this.

For Pete's sake, who am I kidding? I get up at a few ticks to 6 a.m. every morning and am fast asleep by 11:15. Of course I'm tired.

Oops, there's the phone. Gotta leave now

My new sippy cup.

So, I chose the vacuum bottle. Although I really liked the pedometer, I realized that it would only motivate me to be active. And we don't want that now do we?

And besides, all three of our travel mugs leak when hot liquids are poured into them and like hell if I was going to pay $12 for a new one.

When I earn another 250 blue points, I can earn things like a car vacuum and a "massager." OooooOoooOoh!

Ooh! Free!

I'm 10 points away from earning a Blue Cross Blue Shield Blue Points prize for frequent exercise.

Hmm...what to pick? I'm attracted to shiny things, so the themos may be an option, but then again, I am a tee-shirt whore.

"Blue Light Special on Support Garments - Aisle 2"

I need to join a gym.

While I'm genetically predisposed to have more thigh than boob, things are starting to jiggle and it makes me feel self-conscious. That, and I'm sure the lupron shots are running a downhill race against the yoga and pilates I do every couple of days. Hellllooooooo, Estrogen.

I'm sure that joining a gym will make me feel all the more self-conscious because there will be so many body-vain people in there that I would just feel less than.

I would have to get up and go reeeeeally early in the morning so that no one would see me. Or is that when everyone else goes?

Damn. I don't want to look hot in a bathing suit or anything, I just want my curves to be where they're supposed to.

Are any of you members of one of those franchise gyms? Are you getting your money's worth?

Confession

I have a confession to make. When I was in Kindergarten I got in trouble for not following directions on the second or third day (in general it was highly probably that I would obey).

The teacher handed out a coloring page and a few crayons to each of us with the instructions that we shouldn't do anything until she said so--some freaky "Simon Says" shit or something. She would tell us which part of the picture to color when.

We colored a leaf. And then something else. And then the highly rational little devil that lives in my head said, "Fuck that bitch. You know how to color." And so I colored the sky blue...as did another little girl at my table who was copying me.

The teacher dashed over to our table and confiscated our pages and our crayons. I was so embarrassed. Here I was stuck in a class of kids who were still being taught to unzip their pants and I was being punished for not getting permission to color a damned sky. Tsk.

Anyhow, I don't know whether the excercise was about following directions or if it was about "this is what color this should be." Maybe a bit of both.

The point is I shouldn't have been in Kindergarten to start with. I was already reading on what was probably a second grade level by then, even if I couldn't recite those stupid-ass mnemonic devices they used to teach the alphabet. * I would have had to have started school in Virginia for them to have skipped me, but I don't think Grandma was going to drive me across the state line every morning to catch the bus.

I still can't color inside the lines to save my life. I call it needing a beer "being creative."

My masterpiece:

*I'm not that great at memorizing things. I have fantastic long-term memory, though. It's very hard for me to memorize a vocabulary list the night before a test, however two months later it'll all pop into my head as if it'd always been there. The same is true for the names of guys that I've dated and couldn't remember the names of.

"No, I'm okay. I'll sleep in the closet."

Yesterday Scott informed me that he would soon be leaving on a week-long business trip.

...

Okay, crusty exterior aside, I'm basically chickenshit when it comes to things that go "bump" in the night. If some criminal has been stalking me and knows there should be two cars there instead of one, I'm in deep shit.

*sigh*

When I was a kid my bedroom window was right against the front porch. We lived out in the boonies, so we'd get all kinds of critters walking up and moving the plastic chairs around.

Scared the SHIT out of me every time. I always knew that I would wake up dead...that some axe murderer or hunter gone crazy would punch through the glass and reach a hand through to strangle me.

I slept very close to suffocation every night because I would bury my head under the pillows to muffle out the noises.

Well, I'm still chicken shit in terms of courage. I need a baseball bat to put under the bed.

I need to get this off my chest.

Okay. I have a bad habit of wearing my heart on my sleeve face. Although I may try to say kind words, my expression will read something else entirely.

So, if there was a delayed response between you revealing your new offspring to me and the smile on my face, it was because I was trying to find something nice to say.

Not all babies are cute.

There. I said it. Yes, I know I'm probably going to go to hell for that.

More.

Chad got it first, and I was pissed because my copy of I'm Just Here for the Food was getting lonely [all by itself wih 30 other cookbooks].

So, I had to go and get it. I haven't cracked it open yet...but it has that whole "new book smell" thing about it.

Would you care for some paranoia?

I just got my first Lupron injection. Seeing as how the little sheet of side effect warnings I got revealed very little information, of course now I'm paranoid that everything off-kilter in my body is being caused by it.

Shit, my heart is racing. Must be the Lupron.

For the next two weeks I'll be in the midst of an Estrogen "surge." This should be very, very, very, very amusing for my male coworkers. Too bad they're not chocolate bunnies, because I'm really looking forward to biting their heads off.

"I hope you like-a jammin', toooo."

What is it about Subway (the restaurant) that attracts the shadiest characters for employment?

I went to the semi-ghetto* Subway for lunch on my way home from work today. Rasta-man behind the counter looked like he was stoned out of his mind. I could tell that he wasn't all there because he was moving in slow-motion and it seemed like he was counting my banana peppers and pickles...and the looooooooooooonnnng squirt of oil/vinegar was a suspicious action.

There was Bob Marley playing on the speakers and Rasta-man was wearing a Rasta-red/black/green leather necklace.

I do so enjoy mingling with the common folk.

*located in the same shopping complex where the Wendy's had a shooting a couple of weeks back

"I love you." That's my gift.

It's birthday season. Not mine, but just about everyone else's in my family. My mom and niece both had birthdays last month (cards). My grandma's birthday is on the 11th (card. flowers?). Scott's birthday is on the 13th (??????????). My aunt's birthday is on the 15th (definately a card). My sister's birthday is on the 30th (I might cut her a $7 check just for laughs).

I have a pretty breezy little gifting system going. It involves me checking the balance of my bank account and proceeding with great caution.

Most people know not to expect anything from me. I may be the only college grad in the family [excluding Scott], but I'm also the only one paying off student loan debt. I've also become used to not being the recipient of birthday gifts. All I ever want is a card that I can pull out years from now and reminince with.

Who started this whole birthday gifting thing, anyway? Surely it's a 20th century bastard.

Somebody save me....no, never mind.

I don't get out very much because I'm pretty damned anti-social, and I generally don't want to be bothered.

It takes a lot of convincing to get me off of my duff to do something outside the house.

Last night, for example, I knew with a high degree of certainty that I wouldn't be cooking dinner. So I realized that unless we would be satiated with Frosted Flakes for dinner, we'd have to go out.

I called Scott and told him as much.

Ten minutes later I sent him an email saying "never mind--don't feel like it."

Ten minutes later my stomach was growling and I called him to complain that I was hungry and "why aren't you here yet?"

Once I get where I'm going, it's usually not so bad. If someone can get me out of the house to go bowling or to Chuck E. Cheese, I'd be surprised if I didn't put up a fight...though I am in the mood for Skee-ball.

No I'm not.

Why did I...?

Do you ever forget why you're on the internet? You click open your browser and sit poised to type something in the address bar....and then you forget where you were going.

I do that frequently. When I can't remember what site it was that I had intention to go to, I always unconsciously type in blownfuse.mu.nu.

Do you ever do that? What's your "panic button" site that you type in when you can't remember where you were going?

Kissin' Cousins

Cletus and Clementine, sittin' in a tree...

So, first cousins from Pennsylvania make an Exodus to Delaware to get married.

I'm not even sure where to begin commenting on that. I will go as far as to say that biological children is a bad, bad idea--not so much from a genetic perspective, but from one of lineage. Dad would be both dad and, what, first cousin once-removed?

I don't know...maybe part of it has to do with the fact that I find my own cousins so distasteful and couldn't imagine doing such.

Woot woot!

One of my HP rebates arrived today. I need to run down to the ATM and deposit it so that I can have emergency cash in my checking account for this weekend.

*does a little money dance*

*clutches at heart*

I could tell that Terminix had been here by the big-ass footprints they left impressed into my already-too-compacted soil....that and the little white flags. Now, I understand they have to tread across certain places to get close to the foundation, but did they have to step right smack into the bed that is currently sprouting the early tips of my cannas? [shake your head "no"] Do I need to put up a knee-high barbed wire fence?

Poor babies. I have to go outside now and coddle them and tell them they're pretty or else they'll never come up.

At some point next week Terminix will be back to set up a fortress around the house to fend off the invading phalanxes of cockroaches water bugs. I can't say I'm excited about having so much poison around the house, but I have to say that I'm not particuarly fond of seeing large insects scuttle across my kitchen floor, either.

"Would you like to provide a credit card number now, or shall we bill you?"

Today at work I got a call from a pharmaceutical distributor who sells product to my doctor. It looks like I have to pay a $45 copay for each injection. Add that to $35 for each nurse visit where I go in to get said injection.

I'm going to go cut little green rectangles out of construction paper and roll around in them like they're dollar bills. It'll make me feel better.

A legitimate excuse for the telemarketers: "I'm broke, bitch."

I went to the doc for my post-op today. She seemed genuinely upset that I didn't call her after I left the hospital...I didn't know I was supposed to. Maybe she gets a lot of complainers calling the office begging for pills or something?

No new news, other than the fact that the injections that I have to get for six months are $400 a pop (no generics available). I think Blue Cross will pay 100% for that, but who knows. They may try to pull some shady shit and act like I can't read.

Blue Cross is going to pop a vein over this one--perfectly [otherwise] healthy 20-something that has already recieved more in insurance benefits for the year than she's ever paid. That'll learn them for jacking their rates up for us in the breeder age group--they should know we're going to try to get every penny back, even if we have to endure pelvic exams to do it.

Holy CRACKWHORE, Batman! I was typing this while waiting for my Blue Cross Blue Shield claims to load on their webpage and I had no idea that the anesthesiologist was going to bill separately. *jaw drops to floor*

Should I expect the little Leprechauns that were dancing in my head while I was under anesthesia to send me an invoice, too?

Fuckity fuck. I'm almost afraid to go to the mailbox.

Okay. Tiffany, be rational, find some perspective. You still have more student loan debt than you'll have from this little "vacation."

I confress.

It was Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody.

Because Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me.

|<< last song

There's one song I can put on repeat and listen to over and over again. It's one of those songs where there's a "raise your cigarette lighter as applause" part, a "bang your head" part, and a "gibberish" part.

Anyone care to guess the song and band?

Up to my eyeballs

I just checked Blue Cross Blue Shield's website to see if they'd been billed for my hospital visit yet.

Yes.

Ouch.

My insurance plan is pretty crappy. Since 86% of the office is younger than thirty, we assumed we'd be healthy and have a plan that requires us to pay $35 copays because it meant we'd have less money docked from our pay each month to pay for our portion of the plan. Typically, BCBS will pay 60% after I've met my deductible. My deductible is $1000. I've paid $0 towards the dedctible this year.

If my calculations are correct, I owe about $3500.

I gues this means that breaking any bones is out of the question.

Cheap fix.

Okay, see, I was wrong. It wasn't 64 in here. It was even colder and the thermostat was stuck. I ended up waddling myself up in a blanket and pretending it was an igloo.

Last night I submitted a request on Service Magic to go ahead and line up some repair quotes for today. One contractor happened to be monitoring his inbox at the moment and called us immediately and told us that he could come in an hour and take a look at it for $70. And he did. He didn't try to gouge us on overtime or after hours charges or whatever else they call it.

It turned out that something tripped the switch on the furnace and that's why it was blowing cold. He couldn't find a reason why it would do it on its own, so it was probably some rabid squirrel crawling around in there.

Aren't you happy I didn't freeze to death? *overdramatic*

Huddled Masses Wanted for Heat.

I came home and the temperature inside the house was 62 degrees although set at 72. Further, the heater is blowing cold air and it won't shut off. It's supposed to get really really cold by tomorrow morning and our heat isn't working (yes, we paid the bill).

People want $112/hr to come out to look at it tonight.

Screw that.

I wonder.

When I was hobbling out to the mailbox earlier at work (you know, you never realize how high up the curb is until you have stitches and forget to step down gingerly) I heard a dude on his cell phone talking to who, I guess, was his doctor.

He said something along the lines of "yeah, I'm still on my crutches. I can't even get off of them without feeling any pain. The medication I have isn't helping. I'm taking Vicodin [insert very high dosage here]. I'll need something else."

The bastard was walking around with no assistance of said crutches with his little pothead friend waiting in the car for him (said pothead friend is the son of the guy who rents the suite next to ours and works there according to his own hours and schedule).

I immediately suspected that he was a fucking poser, but who am I to judge? The two then drove off in a tricked-out Nissan with a very loud muffler making very sure to top second gear before they got out of the 100 feet to the business park exit.

*scratches head*

children. I really hope there's some system in place where the prescribing doctor won't just call in a new precription to the pharmacy without seeing the patient again. They're trying so hard to crack down on freakin' cough syrup over the counter, but if it's that easy to get drugs....sheesh.

Okay, I can see calling the doc and pleading for mercy because you're seeing purple horseshoes and rainbows whenever you close you eyes, but how can they tell you're not b.s.ing them?

*Cough*

When my alarm clock went off this morning and I wasn't met with a surge of pain around my stitches or a burning gnaw in my lower back, I figured I should go to work. And so I did.

Oops! informed my that everyone was inquiring on what exactly I had operated on. She played blonde and pretended not to know anything. I should have instructed her to tell them that I was having an attitude adjustment.

I spent the day surpressing coughs, all the while trying to expel a few drops of water from my trachea (how'd those get there?).

BossMan now has a desk out in the bullpen where he can keep an ear to the ground/crack the whip more easily...which makes it very difficult to check my personal email, surf the web, and check my Netflix queue. *sigh*

On to good things: I'm off the painkillers now, so I can resume my regularly scheduled beer intake. Check the extended entry to see the two-piece business suit I wore to work today. It does wonders for abdominal stitches.

Don't hate me bucause I'm sophisticated.

Gloop.

Suspicions confirmed.

Stuff burned off.

High on drugs.

good night.

Use a watch!

Some weirdo called Scott's phone at like 6:20 this morning asking what my phone number is.

Was it you?

Stop it.

Creepy

My computer just told me to replace my wireless mouse battery.

How does it know?

Scary, this technology thing.

Things I can't stand

Would you like some Monday?

Today I took with me to work for lunch two containers of salad dressing.

And no salad.

$2.49 worth of sentiment.

I don't subscribe to any religion (other than secularism). The only thing you'll ever find me worshiping is a Krispy Kreme donut.

That said, I must confess that I send out an obscene amount of holiday cards. The problem with being a child of the boonies is that everyone you know from your childhood is Christian...and they don't know that you're a devout secularist, nor do you plan on elucidating them to that fact.

I've somehow become the emmisary of tidings of hope and a bright future to all who attended my grandma's church. It's fun having a bunch of people pissed off at you because their momma, aunt, or granma won't stop berating them for having a kid at 14 and not going to college and not being like Tiffany. Oh, if they only knew. It was my destiny to get the hell up out of there. Don't they know that counties like that repel college graduates?

...I had a point in there but I lost it.

Oh yes, cards.

I have a stack of Easter cards that I promised to people. I bought the least Jesus-y ones I could find.

"But, Tiffany," you say, "He's the reason for the season!"

T'is true. I'm stepping out of my comfort zone as it is to be sending Easter cards in the first place. I want people to know I'm thinking about them, but I don't want to send them sentiments I don't believe in myself. So...I got four cards with gold foil butterflies on the front, one with a gold foil Egg, and one with a cross.

My plan is for Scott and I to take a snapshot of ourselves and stick it in there. The last time I sent out a photo was in 2002, so eh.

I think for this Christmas I'm sending out TiffanyDVDs.

Tips from Tiff

For all you ladies, and some guys who wear ladies' jeans, here's a tip:

If for whatever reason you've acquired a beer-butt and are filled with too much self loathing to buy jeans in the next size up, just get the ones with the "stretch" label. You won't need talcum powder for these.

I want to tell you a secret.

I just bought a Deep Fat Fryer at Bed, Bath, and Beyond ($10 cheaper than list price). I'm so excited, I can feel my arteries hardening now!

Lunch & Learn

Okay, this is work-related, but it isn't a rant. See, I'm trying here!

My boss put his business card in one of those fishbowls salespeople place out in restaurants to farm names and numbers from.

Well, his card got drawn and he "won" a free lunch for 15 people courtesy of American Express Financial Advisors.

In order to get the free lunch everyone would have to listen to a presentation about their services and then they would get to eat, fully expecting to receive a follow-up call from the rep.

I didn't go. "Free" is all well and good and everything, but there just seems something wrong about having to be solicited to get your prize. I certainly do not need any advisement from American Express.

Have you ever been to one of these deals? Was it worth it?

Um...who?

Why would someone take a phone message that included only a person's name and phone number? Am I supposed to know this person? What do you want me to do with this post-it note? Stick it on the phone in case they call back?

Ringadingaling.

I'm shopping around for a new cell phone. There's nothing wrong with the LG I have, it's just that it's a couple of years old and the buttons are starting to peel from cosmetics corrosion.

It's been a super handy-dandy li'l phone....but now it's just gross.

I'm finding it hard to believe that to by a new phone without a Sprint PCS contract extenstion is going to cost me $350 bucks (a la Best Buy).

Where can I find a better deal? I only paid $40 for the one I have now so I'm quite obviously not looking to shit out a ton of money.

*mumbles incoherently*

Sometimes I feel like a circus clown...the one with the little shovel that follows the elephants and cleans up their shit.

Don't you just love having to fix other peoples' fuck-ups? I really like the part where they blame you for their misjudgements. That's my favorite!!!!!!!!!

Fantastic Ideas R' Us

You know those little condiment packets that you get at fast food restaurants? They should make those with Pepto Bismol and distribute them freely. By the time you get through that Big Mac you'll need them.

Oh, my aching ass.

I decided to do the "intermediate" rather than the "beginner's" pilates workout yesterday.

Ow.

I knew I was out of shape at the exact moment when after peeling myself off the floor and considering whether I wanted a beer...I didn't have the energy to open one.

It has to be said.

I'm a pretty open-minded person for the most part. I give most people the benefit of the doubt even if in the end I come out looking like a total asshole for being so gullible.

But there's just one group of people I have unmitigated dislike for.

Sorority girls.

They just seem to always run in packs, which is fine, but can be a bit of a nuisance when in public they assume that other people won't be annoyed by their antics.

Now before you go thinking that I must have pledged and got rejected: don't. I never expressed any interest in pledging anyone's sorority: black, white, Christian, or otherwise. While all my college friends were prepping and preening themseves for selection by the Deltas or AKAs or whoever, I was the one person who avoided wearing red or pink so that no one thought I was trying to be recruited.

Now, that aside, I was at Target the other day (you remember that don't you?) I spent maybe ten minutes doing actual shopping (I'm not a dilly dallyier when it comes to crowded stores) and fifteen minutes in line.

The fastest moving line had one person who was just finishing up and three sorority girls who were in a group, but ringing up separately. They each had maybe two items. (I guess self-checkout would have been "work" for them.) I had less than ten (one being alcoholic), myself, and had i.d. and debit card ready to expedite my checkout.

I kept my distance behind them so as not to scare the poor dears with my married-inhabitant of the real world-wearer of comfortable shoes-normalness. As sorostitute sorority girl number three was about to ring up, she saw another sorority friend peeping magazines at the end of the line. "Hey, come get in line here!" she said, pointing to the spot right in front of my feet.

Excuse me? Did she not see that I'd been waiting in the line patiently for ten minutes, and doing my civic duty of giving them plenty of personal space? That, my friends, is assault. Fortunately, sorority-friend had already cut in line elsewhere and didn't have the opportunity to break in front of me. See, I'm the kind of person that feels bad when I have break line without items just to help someone check out at the grocery store.

I probably wouldn't have said anything, but I'd put good money on the people behind me that they'd have raised hell.

I'm using that anecdote merely to express that I have real problems with people who believe themselves to be more priviledged than those around them. I chose not to associate myself with those sorts of organizations specifically because, venom or no, I'm pretty down to Earth. People just change when they get sucked into groups that require certain standards of dress and living in general.

They come out of school with these huge networks of people behind them to help them find good jobs in their field of study. They believe that a pewter "Delta Delta Delta" license plate on the front of their car is going to cause people to change lanes for them.

I'm sorry if I've offended anyone's sensibilties. I work too hard at trying to make my life better than my parents' and grandparents' that it pisses me off that people have a "gimmie" attitude. I try to be patient and I'm polite to strangers. I even try to be cordial to people who are outright nasty. Some people just make it very hard to be nice.

I've got it! Transfer via telepathy!

I need to find a way to transfer all of my old documents off of my laptop with minimal frustration.

Really, I don't even want all of them. Some of those files can fester and turn purple and die and I won't care, but there are various mutations of manuscript drafts I'd like to get off.

No, I did not buy the super-deluxe file transfer kit when I bought the new computer. I figured it would just be some special USB cord and I wasn't getting snooked by that.

I have a few other logistic problems, as well...for example, I don't have any more outlets to plug shit in. As it is, I have to unplug my speakers to print things. My power strip is pretty big, it's just that the width of a couple of the plugs causes two otherwise free outlets to be blocked.

Shh! I need to figure this out.

I'M UP damnit!

I was supposed to get up earlyish today to have brunch with a friend. *stretch* *yawn*

Well, I'm up now.

The thing about this being a three-day weekend (for me anyway) is that you don't feel an overwhelming need to do much of anything. I sure as hiz-zell don't.

I'm going to go to Tar-zhay to kill two birds with one tire. I need a few grocery items and some toiletries to crowd that compartment under my sink. Wal-Mart just isn't in the cards today--too many people that are all too happy to run over ankles with their cart.

I've got a few other things on my "must do" list that I'd like to get accomplished today, like getting the new hallway light installed and jerryrigging the garage sensor light so that it doesn't stay on after people walk past it. I think all it needs is a little spit and some electrical tape...and maybe some Windex.

Here's a random realization: you know how men get beer gut?

I don't get that. I get beer ass and thighs. That reminds me that I have a pair of jeans to return.

Oh, I guess I don't.

I just noticed that I didn't get around to put an "About me" section on this page after I moved (thanks for the reminder Jim).

Okay, instead of doing the trite "100 things" that I always do, let's try something different.

Ask me some questions about myself (that won't make be blush).

I'll answer them as I have time and put them in a new section somewhere o'er thar-->

Drip.

Today I had to elucidate Oops! on what a Jheri Curl is...she's from New England. I'm not sure if that's an excuse.

Is anyone else out there clueless? Because I can recommend a fantastic movie as a reference.

"...follow the drip, just follow the drip."

Girls+Beer=Sexy

Walking out of the friendly neighborhood Kroger today I was being trailed by a guy on his cell phone. I'll relay his conversation for you:

"Hey, you still holding? Heh, I forgot you were there. What are you doing? Nothing, coming out of the store. I got distracted by this fine girl buying beer....no, she didn't even look at me. I guess she's pretending she can't hear me."

I think he was more attracted to my beer than to me.

"Here, meet my *cough*daughter*cough*"

My mother gave me a buzz at around 2:00ish saying that she, and a gaggle of coworkers, were on their way to Chapel Hill for some sort of banquet/training thingie.

I had to make sure I heard that correctly so I went outside and with suitable volume stated "Do what now?" into my cell phone.

To make a long story short, I drove to the hotel where she's staying and chilled for 20 minutes. I went wearing my favorite perfume: Eau de 3/4 Yuengling.

I reminded her of how old I am, and consequently how old my sister will be in April, and therefore how old she is.

Good times.

I think I scared her friends with my high-faluttin-ness. They have no idea. I think they thought that this is the big city. Pshaw.

Buh-bye Citi

I just tearfully paid off my Citibank Visa. I've carried around that debt for five years, and for what? A dress to attend a sorority (not mine) Valentine's Day ball? *Edited to add: I just found a picture from that damned ball. See the extended entry.* A few steak dinners with classmates? I hope at at least bought a few textbooks with all that money. ... I doubt it.

Hmm. I look almost waif-like.

Snobs

Never go into a Barnes and Noble store when it's getting close to quittin' time. In my experience, the associates there tend to be snobs to begin with and look down their noses at your gauche purchases as they ring them up. Excuse me for wanting to read local authors. I'm sorry if it's not Chomsky.

If you make the mistake of resting your pile of selections on a table while examining another book, at least don't turn your back: you'll find that a little book elf has come by and snatched away your carefully-selected stack to return them to their homes.

I also always enjoy how I never get asked if I'd like to become a "Preferred Reader." They always ask if I have a card, and say that "Without a Preferred Reader card, your total will be...", but they never specifically ask if I want to sign up. Never. Oddly enough, Scott was in the line right behind me last night with a larger purchase. The same cashier gave him a high-pressure sales pitch about being a Preferred Reader and lauded the program's great savings.

Bitch. I stood there by the door and watched her check him out, making it perfectly obvious that, Hey, I'm with him.

I like my book shopping experience to include people who circle around the store offering tips and saying "Hey, I've read that! It's pretty good!" not corralling themselves behind one counter to look things up on a computer.

Sometimes mass marketing sucks.

I'm a bawler.

I can't go into a Hallmark store without getting weepy.

I stand around reading all that sentimental crap and start thinking, "Oh MY GOD, that is so true, I love them SO MUCH!" Then I pick up something with a bible verse and get over myself: nothing like some Leviticus to get you over your mushies.

Yes, I am one of those people who spends thirty minutes standing in one spot trying to pick out the perfect card for whatever occassion. I'm not satisfied unless my eyes tear up to sniffle extremes.

I came out of Hallmark with seven cards--no 99 cent ones, either--and one of those card storage boxes they're selling in the commercial (you know, the one where the little boy is asking his mom if she has any "sorry" cards because he fucked up his brother's hair?)

This was actually a pretty good deal. For an additional $6.95 I have somewhere to put all my cards without them getting bent up before the occasion and three free cards to boot...and some coupons.

I love having new toys.

Solicitors

I hate solicitors. One just came to the door with a big crate-o-crap to sell and an order form which he promptly left in my custody with instruction that he'd return next friday to pick up the samples and the orders.

Fuck. What's the point of locking the door if they can see me through it?

Yes, FedEx did leave it outside.

My new HP printer and monitor arrived today. They're so pretty *pats them*.

I have the monitor plugged into my laptop because my laptop screen has the shits and only lights up every now and then.

I think I'm going to be ghetto and leave the protective plastic cover on the monitor for a few days--just until the newness wears off.

The funny thing about the new printer is my computer is too dumb for it. When I was installing the drivers, the installation wizard actually suggested that I upgrade to a new computer. The nerve.

Anyhow, my CPU is supposed to ship by the 8th along with my wireless keyboard and mouse.

I'm so excited I could pee.

tick tick BOOM!

Ugh.

This started as one of those mornings where I was all gung-ho about getting a laundry list of tasks accomplished by 5 p.m. or so.

I've gotten only one of those things accomplished and that was purely by accident.

Task number one was to go online and order a refill box of contact lenses. When I went to 1800contacts.com, I saw that my brand had "DISCONTINUED" stamped across the picture. I called them to query why and was told that they hadn't gotten any shipped to them in a while and the manufacturer wasn't being forthcoming with why. Okay. I tried Super Jumbo Retailer sites and they also didn't carry the brand. I saw on one e-distributor's website the following message concerning their in-stock lenses:

"The manufacturer of Proclear Compatibles® brand contact lenses advises that counterfeit Proclear lenses have been found in the U.S. market.

We have conducted a thorough review of our records and inventory and believe that lenses purchased at our webstore are authentic; however, because of our commitment to patient safety and education, we have decided to notify our customers of the manufacturer’s concerns."

Okay, so that answers the question...but like hell if I want to order them now considering there are some whackjobs out there trying to sell black market lenses. Ugh, decisions.

Task number two was to carry out a return visit of the girly-bits doctor. I left work at 12:30 for the afternoon and when I got to the parking lot of the clinic I was checking my planner for whatever reason and noticed that my appointment wasn't supposed to be until tomorrow. Oops...instead of driving back to work like a truly industrious person would, I went arts and crafts shopping. When I got home I tried to reschedule my appointment for Friday (when the office will be desserted and I can basically sit on my thumbs) and was told that the only available slots were for this afternoon. So I went back.

I didn't have to wait long to ushered back into the lair, but I did sit in the exam room for an unGodly amount of time waiting for the doctor. I sat there so long that I read every Female Reproductive Diagram on the walls and could have stolen a whole purse full of Trojan female condoms ("ribbed for her pleasure!").

Girly Bits doc wasn't completely convinced that my uterus is all well and good, but anyhow....

The third thing I was supposed to accomplish today was to pay some bills online. Seeing as how I got up early and purchased a computer and made a couple of purchases since lunch, that would require me to reconcile my checkbook. I don't feel like it, and therefore no bills will be paid tonight.

I don't particuarly care that one of them is three days late.

A series of unfortunate events.

So, it came to pass that New Chick Oops! had a little altercation with a pond a couple of nights ago while driving her vehicle.

She had went to a party and had a couple of drinks. A "couple" meaning "two"--not a "couple" meaning "Um...I lost count." I believe it was some kind of cocktail, but anyway....

She's about 5'1" and average weight (whatever that is). I, being of similar frame, can speak from experience that after two servings of hard alcohol, I feel fine. I'm walking around, talking to people, and holding all my fluids in just fine. I can get down a flight of stairs without taking a dive. I can remember my phone number and tell people witty anecdotes about my childhood. I can even remember how many times I've peed since "breaking the seal." Most of the time I can even drive home with no problems, other than my eyes getting glazed over and contact lenses threatening to fall out.

Well, New Chick Oops! lives in close enough proximity to the sticks that there's a strong probability that if she gets lost, something bizarre will happen.

To make a long story short, at around 4 a.m. on Sunday morning, the rain was creating poor visibility on the roads. Oops! turned down a gravel road to do a three-point road turn and ended up backing her Escape into a pond. I can see how even a 100% sober person could do this. The county I came from is notorious for having deep ditches with no guard rails. People would go around curves too fast and go sideways right into the holes.

She went to knock on the door of the farmhouse across the street thinking that maybe, if there was a God, they had a tractor with a hook to pull her out (it was just her back tires stuck in a little mud).

Nope. They just dialed 911 and the fire brigade, with all of its bells and whistles, went out. Along with them, some Barney Fife state trooper trailed along and queried, "So, have you had anything to drink?"

Of course she had, and she didn't lie. Basically, she passed the field sobriety test, but blew a .12 on the breathylizer, therefore and hence and hereby: DUI. If she had never backed into the pond, she'd never have gotten pulled.

So, I'll be carpooling for a while since I live closest.

Hat Guy finds this all quite amusing as he, admittedly some sort of Phish head in the past, once got taken in for DUI. He sat around the police station for at least an hour before he took the breathylizer and still blew a .14.

Scary. I'll admit that there have been a few 1 a.m.'s where I've had as much beer as not-beer when I've navigated home just fine, other than crawling along at 30 miles per hour. It could have been me pulled for DUI just as easily as her. In fact, I was pulled over one night under suspicion of drunk driving because I was swerving--I was sober, mind you. There was fog as thick as cotton balls at there was this car following me. Every time I changed lanes, they would. It was fucking freaking me out--I thought that as soon as I reached a stop light some psycho would jump out and try to stab me. It turned out to be some jackass police officer trying to make his quota. I told him straight out: "I'm swerving because it's foggy and YOU'RE ON MY ASS!"

"Okay. Drive safe."

Ass. There's just no way to tell if someone is impaired while driving. Sure, there are the obvious signs of people swerving too hard and too fast and too often and following too close, but how do you put a reasonable limit on impairment? When is it okay to make someone prove their sobriety? Only when they're pulled over under suspicion, or is it okay to piggyback on a incident of distress?

So, about last night...

Scott and I went to Applebee's (more on that in the extended entry) and then Circuit City last night.

I wanted to look at some HP computers and see how the off-the-shelf models compared in terms of price. I wasn't impressed. The rebates they were offering were about the same as what HP is offering right now, and at least you get to customize your PC if you order it from HP directly...so I'll be doing that. I may go back to Circuit City for a few accessories (read: mousepad), though.

While were there we found ourselves somehow strangely gravitating towards the big-screen televisions. Okay, well, I'm a chick, so booming electronics aren't really my deal, but damn. I want a big-screen television--specifically one of those flat screen HD models.

Have you ever seen what high definition television looks like? You don't think there's that much difference until you see an HDTV and regular projection t.v. side-to-side. Now that I've seen those I feel a deep sensation of covet-tation.

While $5000 seems like a helluva lot of money to spend on a television, I consider it an investment in our future. You see, I'm so fucking nearsighted that I have to put the alarm clock two inches away from my retinas to read it. A large screen television will not only allow me to back the hell away from the screen, but it will also give our home an overall feeling of we have a bigger t.v. than youness.

Oh, and about Applebee's: I wanted to go there last night because they're having that special where you can pick an appetizer/main course and dessert for $12.99.

I'll briefly comment that the steak in the Cowboy Combo was so tender and tasty that I almost ate the whole thing.

I'll also briefly comment that if you get the raspberry cheesecake as your dessert, request that they hold the red-tinted sugar water raspberry syrup and give you actual cheesecake instead. I swear, it tasted just like one of those no-bake mixes that you get at the grocery store... .. . ... not that I've ever had one of those, ahem.

Defeating the purpose?

How long should you wait after exercising to have a beer and Reese's Peanut Butter...oops. Too late.

*Rubs eyes*

Stayed home from work today. I seem to have a minor inner ear infection compounded with something else that I can't quite put my finger on. I'm periodically nauseated and am drowsier than Sleepy Smurf...oh, and since I just woke up, my face is bloated.

Oh, joy.

I do realize that if I'd still been a smoker, this bug would have mutated into a whole head infection (sinuses, eyeballs and all) before I even knew I had it.

Should have stayed home.

A public service annoucement about Nighttime Sudafed:

jaljkdfj jfkkaeicvbnbow. Ajdjboiuhnd!!!

I'm swooning. I took one capsule last night at 8:30. Was nauseous and drowsy at 11. Woke up at 6:37 a.m. (still nauseous).

I'm swooning and my fingers are numb. Is this normal?

I came in today because I have to call in the payroll, have a training module scheduled, and blah blah. I think I'm going to leave here at around 3. It's supposed to snow again this afternoon and I don't want to get caught in that deadlock again.

Ammunition

Here's a discovery I made this week about loud, cocky people: they have Achille's Heels.

Once you figure out what that is, you can cut them down real fast. They'll keep their mouth shut for days. Rule of thumb: whatever they gloat most about is probably what they're most sensitive about.

Just thought I'd arm you with that. Carry on.

Domo arigato, Mrs. Computo

Due to situations under my control - specifically my fabulosness - I will be able to afford a new paperweight computer.

*cracks knuckles*

I've decided on a PC. As Mac-friendly as my home is, I'll pass this time around. What are all the good consumer reports-type sites for Windows PCs?

I'm looking for a desktop unit with a fast processor, ability to render video at the correct speed (as opposed to certain computers I know...), and with a shitload of ram.

CHOCOLATE!

Does putting chocolate chips in homemade fudge seem like overkill to anyone?

...

I didn't think so either. Excuse me while I taste-test.

Humble Request from the Fusemistress

I don't do a whole lot of blog commenting since I've started my fucking job gainful employment, but I still do enjoy reading everyone's new entries through Bloglines when I get a spare few minutes. Shy of having everyone's new posts e-mailed to me, which would be entirely too burdensome, it's the best way I can enjoy the daily goingsons.

Now, I'll make my point quickly so I can go drink beer drink beer: if you don't have an xml feed, get one. I love you honestly and truly, but if you don't have a feed, you'll be shunned until I find the energy to Google you to try to retrace my steps to figuring out what your exact URL is.

That's all.

My day is a balancing scale.

Good thing: Shiner on sale.
Bad thing: Getting an invoice due January 7...on the 10th.

Good thing: power naps in your car during lunch time.
Bad thing: answering the phone during lunch time and getting roped into an "important" task.

Good thing: Bossman going away for two days to a conference.
Bad thing: remembering that noone else has a key and I'll probably have to stay late to accomodate them.

Good thing: strong coffee.
Bad thing: realizing the creamer is empty after you've already poured your cup of strong coffee.

Good thing: days when you have money to buy lunch at a restaurant.
Bad thing: when those restaurants (*coughcoughSubwaycough*) have stale bread.

Makes me feel less guilty.

I have piles and piles of strange and wonderful books that my uncle deemed that I should have after he passed away. For a while, I felt it was my family duty to keep the books in my home and allow them to accumulate a significant amount of dust.

Now that Scott and I are getting closer to a point where we can spend significant time and money fixing up this house, I'm in purge mode--if I don't love it, it's getting thrown out.

I sold many of these books on half.com and Amazon last year, but after I became gainfully employed, didn't have time to make daily trips to the post office to ship things. Some of the books were so rare that no one had heard of them, and certainly didn't want to buy them.

I felt guilty that I wasn't keeping the books that he wanted me to have, but after a while I figured that if he wanted me to have them, it's because I would know what to do with them. That doesn't necessarily merit reading them. I know how much he paid for them, and I know how many years it took him to collect them. I also remember how he used to drive down from New York every 2 weeks to cut my grandma's grass (don't ask) and whenever he came, he'd have a crate of books to hoard in the guest room like a squirrel with oh-so-many nuts.

I've decided that any remaining books will get donated to UNC Libraries in his honor. I'm sure many of them don't exist in their collections, and anything else they can sell during their annual sale; at least they'll go to collectors or people who are interested in the subject matter.

I think he'd like to see his books in a research library. He never went to college, but I think he felt like buying all those books made him equal to those who did.

Beer Blogging

Last year I asked my readers some advice on good beer, and I've been heeding it, believe you me. I've made Shiner my beer of choice and have encountered at least one restaurant that serves it on tap.

The unfortunate thing about being a Shiner drunk is that if a store has it, they only have a few cases. I'm probably one of three people in the state that drinks Shiner, so this means a couple of things: 1) I'm the only person that buys it from my local Harris Teeter and they only reorder it when I buy their last case, or 2) they don't carry it at all because they only carry cheap-ass flat beers made by corporations with names that start with "A" or "C."

Now then, today my local Harris Teeter was all out of regular shiner, and I wasn't about to experiment with the "winter brew" deal that they had on sale, so I picked up some Yuengling. I'm not digging this aftertaste. Blah.

So, I'm asking again. What's a good beer? Keep in mind that I don't do low-carb and I don't like girlie beer...oh, and I'm in North Carolina. That pretty much eliminates most microbrews.

Not an original thought to spare...

My mother rarely checks her e-mail. Mail clients like Outlook boggle her mind, and she just doesn't "get" webmail. However, she'll occassionally log in to her mail and forward to me every goddamned trash piece in her inbox. Here's a good one:

SUBJECT: FW: Fwd: This is cute! We all should think like this.

Today is no special day and I have no particular reason for writing toyou...I Have no news to tell you....Nor any problems to discuss with you....or gossip to tell you...It's only one of those happy moments...when I thought of you...and I would like to share these thoughts with you...

MANY SMILES BEGIN BECAUSE OF ANOTHER SMILE...

Always have good self esteem...

Take care of your friends, especially those dearest to you...

Take care of your body...

But most of all find time to relax...

A Big Hug from your friend...

Pass this on to all of your FRIENDS.. And if you receive this e-mail many times from many different people, it only means that you have many FRIENDS. And if you only get it but once, do not be discouraged for you will know that you have AT LEAST ONE GOOD FRIEND

ME

Yeah, she's right! That is SO CUTE! And we should ALL THINK LIKE THAT! If I forwarded stuff like this to every friend and cowoker in my address book they'd stone me to death. We need to put them in the stocks and let them be stared at by the townspeople...or perhaps make them wear scarlet "F"s for "forwarder."

I should change my shirt now.

Hi. I'm awake now. I came home and went to bed with my work clothes on again.

The headache is gone, but now I feel gross from sleeping in my clothes and on top of the wet hair I didn't bother to dry this morning. Now that I move my eyes about a bit, I can feel just a teensy bit of pressure behind my eye socket. I need to go medicate some more. If I take sinus meds, see you tomorrow. Those "Daytime Allergy Relief" things knock me out as if I've had oh-so-many mai tais.

I guess I could find something productive and work-related to do, like sketching out a redesign for my company's website....poo. I think I'll go nurse a Dr Pepper and see what kind of television programming I miss by working during the day.

"Let me sit on your head."

I have a throbbing, pulsing, stabbing, shooting pain behind my right eye. I went to bed last night with some twinges of pressure and woke up with full-blown headache. It's probably stress-induced, but what am I going to do, take the day off? I wish. I can feel pressure building up behind my eardrum now and on the right side of my nose, too. I hope this isn't a sinus infection. I can't afford a medical copay this month.

I would just go home if it weren't for the fact that we have people coming into the office today to user our teleconferencing system...and I've been trying to schedule an interview for a Georgia candidate since last Thursday and am waiting for some chips to fall before my boss pops a vein (he really should have let me find a location to host her before scheduling a date and time)....

No, I'm going home.

Just as soon as I run a test on this conference system I'm going home. There are too many sickies in the office as it is...passing on their nasty nicotine-infused germs to me.

Three? Four, perhaps?

How many Advil can you take before you start foaming at the mouth?

I'm just wondering because I'm usually an Aleve user, and since the recent drug scare, I'm been sort of wary.

Although Advil is quite tasty indeed, it takes longer to kick in. And it wears off sooner.

I think I need to take another one.

Geek.

I merged my hard drive partions last night and am in the process of purging files to make even more space.

My computer is a Pentium to with about 6 GB of space. That's not funny. It's a laptop, and apparently back in 1999 this was all the rage.

Anyhow, I bought The Sims 2 yesterday. I've been holding my breath since September when it came out and didn't want to fork over the money for it until now. Imagine the bitter taste in my mouth when I found out how much hard drive space I needed to run it. *sigh*

Even if my D: drive was entirely empty, there still wouldn't be enough continuous space to store it. So, I did want any irrational person would do and got rid of my drive partions. I crossed my fingers and thought to myself that if something fucked up--so be it. I'm planning for a new PC soon, anyway.

Right now I'm uploading all of my image files onto my web space to clear off a little more room for the installation.

Am I a bad shopper?

Scott and I went to the mall. *shudders visibly*

I went in with the intention of snagging some dress pants on sale, and didn't find any stores that weren't having sales. There was just the two issues of a) they weren't on sale enough or b) they were too long. I'm pretty durn short.

I found a decent-looking pair at Gap that I'm either going to have to roll up at the cuffs of or have hemmed.

I've also been looking for a pair of black pumps for a while and checked out a few stores for a pair that didn't look like they fell out of Sarah Jessica Parker's reject stash. Finding nothing I was willing to spend money on, I gave up. I guess I'll try web-shoeing tomorrow. *sigh*

I had a $15 Pottery Barn gift card from the office gift swap of last week. Let me tell you: $15 bucks doesn't get you very far at Pottery Barn, so my options were pretty limited considering I'm not in need of discounted placemats and Santa-patterned napkins. I spotted at the front a galvanized bin of paperwhite narcissis bulbs that were discounted 50% to $4.49 per bag. I bought three. I fully suspect that very few of the bulbs are viable as some of them upon inspection felt sort of soft, but I may get a few sprays of flowers out of them.

We went into Williams Sonoma to see if they carried travel mugs (no). Does anyone else feel like they need to make reservations and wear a jacket and tie to go into that store?

My feet hurt. I think I have blisters. That's what I get for wearing three-inch heels for 13 hours.

Nappy

I used to have a pretty tough time staying awake in certain places, namely church and class. As soon as the temperature dropped below 68 or went over 75, I was out like a light.

One day when I was in high school, I believe it was physics *retch* class, I fell asleep. Mr. Karl was kind of boring on those days we weren't out on the football field shooting potato guns, so I just nodded off.

There were only about twelve students in the class and I was sitting at the table right in front of his podium. When I woke up, I heard him say, "Let's all stand up and stretch for a couple of minutes."

I looked around and everyone was standing up, looking nonchalant, so I did too...or, tried to.

You see, the class thought it'd be a good idea to tie my ankles to my chair while I slept.

Hardee har har har. How they laughed to see such sport.

Didn't stop me from sleeping in there.

"Yeah, tell him 'Happy Birthday' and blah blah blah"

So, yesterday was my half-brother's thirteenth birthday. Note that I indicate the "half"ness as a means to show that we ain't close.

I remembered that it was his birthday at around noon and plotted ways to get around calling. I plotted not calling at all, seeing as how he didn't call me on my birthday. Then my aunt called and left a message on my phone saying something along the lines of "In case you forgot..., today is your brother's birthday and call him." Whatthefuckever. I haven't even called my sister in two weeks and we actually have much to discuss....like the results of "America's Next Top Model."

It's one of those situations where if you call the house for one thing, you get hooked into thirty minute awkward conversations with everyone there. Having to go back to work yesterday, I wasn't in the mood by the time my free cell phone minutes came up.

Fortunately, when I called everyone had left for dinner. I left a message, thereby relinquishing myself from further responsibility.

I do believe I'm turning into a prick.

The Life Cycle of a "Giddy"

With me being Miss Suzy Sunshine and all, I rarely get excited about anything. I can always find the "hair in the soup." Because I look for such things.

I made the mistake of being excited over my "bonus." Folks, I was almost giddy. So giddy that I was looking through the King Arthur Flour Bakers Catalogue for goodies. And then I remembered, "Oh yeah. You have bills to catch up on."

As I'm the administrative assistant/payroll administrator/human resources/technical support/travel agency of the office, I'm the one that gets to see the paychecks a week early.

Damn tax mosquitos done sucked the blood right out of that glee.

Oh well.

Just in case.

In case I get pissy drunk distracted, Merry Christmas to all, and to all a day filled with blog-fodder!

More Commentary on Pick-up Lines

I rarely go out to lunch with my coworkers as I have to phone sit during that time, however sometimes I miss interesting events. For example, today BossSon (the eternally single 20-year-old) made a pass at the hostess at the restaurant they went to. Fortunately for him, she didn't smack the hell out of him.

I sort of wonder what sort of women respond to pick-up lines. I'm not one of them. I expressed to the boys earlier that in my opinion the best way to pick up a woman (that you want to keep) is to approach her with a smile and say "Hi, my name is..." and to look at her like she was the cutest thing you've ever seen--not a greasy, "OOooooOOoh baby I like your breasts in that shirt" look.

They rebutted: "But we're shy. We think we're going to get rejected."

I responded: "And you will get rejected if you think pick-up lines give you courage."

The line BossSon happened to use was "There's only one thing in here that's better looking than the hamburgers."

Alllllllllllrightie then. The line he was going to use (and was advised against) was "You're not wearing any panties."

You see, the unwitting/dumb chick would respond "But, I am wearing panties!" Then the pick-up line shmuck would say, "Oh, sorry. I was seeing ten minutes into the future."

Gag me.

Here's a tip I gave. Shy guys would greatly benefit from asking women for their help. We're always right to start with, so when someone asks our opinion we're flattered. I told Hat Guy to go to Total Wine or some such place and to skulk around until an attractive, successful woman came by. Then he should say something like, "You look like you have good taste. Would this bottle go well with a steak dinner?"

The prey certainly wouldn't smack him for being fresh, and if anything they'd have a conversation.

I'm curious to know what my female readers believe to be the best tactics for snaring us. Some of you single men could benefit.

"C" is for "Cookie:

The office "party" got bumped to tomorrow because New Chick had to bounce early today to attend a funeral. It's going to be a beer (yes, at 3 p.m.) and pizza kind of thing and we'll do the gift thing, and then I have to bounce.

Scott's office has also planned their event for tomorrow afternoon, so I'll have to drive cross county to attend that for the sole purpose of snapping a few pictures before Scott bids them farewell.

I'm making cookies. Holiday cookies. Except without all the food coloring and sprinkly little candies. These will be very boring holiday cookies. Adult cookies. I'll cut them into little stars and let them nibble them while the morning coffee brews.

I have a pretty good ginger cookie recipe (if I can find it), and I'll do some tried-and-true sugar cookies of course. Maybe some gingerbread if I can keep my eyelids up long enough. I want to do something different.

Any ideas?

Memories

I once had a female friend who informed me that she liked the smell of her boyfriend's shit.

I kid you not.

This very same person also had a habit of asking people in her dorm suite to come in the bathroom to talk to her while she took a crap.

HeeHeeHeeHeeHeeHeeHeeHeeHeeHeeHeeHee!

Look what I found on the doorstep when I came home:

Two boxes of Cow Tales courtesy of my dear, dear, dear, dear husband.

I love early Christmas presents.

Those trusting fools!

Well, now. Looks like my WUNC/NPR pledge gift arrived today. I'll wear it this winter and show people what a dork I really am!

Oh...yes, the hair has reverted back to its Ronald McDonald state. My scalp itched this morning and so I washed my hair. I didn't have the requisite hour to blowdry it.

Hack! Cough!

I always found people who take handfulls of vitamins and pills strange. I wondered how they could possibly shove all that crap down their throats and not choke on it.

I've learned that if you pretend you're saying "Ahhhhhhh!" and toss them down with fluid they go down pretty painlessly. And the nasty ones don't even have to touch your tongue.

Let that be your "The more you know" for the weekend.

Well, well.

So, they finally got me to to Munu after months of pleading. One would think that certain people (*ahem*) went undercover as a online poker-selling comment spammer to get me to give up my host once and for all.

Well.

If that's all it took, why didn't you do it before?

I'll be moving what's left of my archives over as I have time this weekend.

You can stop holding your breath now--the snark hath returneth.

Lunch:

Three-day old (hard) hamburger patty and leftover rice.

I used to be really gung ho about getting my stuff together for work the night before. Now I find myself going to bed without preparing and waking up one or two minutes later each day.

I need either an extra hour in the day or an energy shot at around 7 p.m.

Might as well make it unembarrassing.

In preparation for today's visit to the crotch doctor, I did the following:

Bodily Harm.

Yesterday I made an appointment with my friendly neighborhood...ahem...crotch doctor. We [women] are supposed to go once a year, but somehow time flew by and I avoided the situation altogether for the past three years.

I went to the Blue Cross website and basically looked for a female doctor near my zip code and found one near the new(ish) mall. I got all my various numbers and dates together and called to set a date after lunch.

When the receptionist answered the phone, she asked all the standard questions (you women know what those are) and then asked how long it had been since I'd seen my friendly neighborhood crotch doctor. To my reply of "Mmm, three years," she gasped in shock and commented, "Well, we have a 3:45 slot for you TODAY! You don't need to wait ANY longer!"

Way to make a girl feel calm, eh? It's not like my uterus has fallen out in the past year or anything.

I considered the fact that my paycheck wouldn't clear until Wednesday and set an appointment for then instead. [I vowed some time back to never again float a check--especially not with all that electronic processing crap they're doing now.]

I'm not excited. I feel like a small child whose parent has threatened to take them to the dentist for the first time.

I'm contemplating not shaving.

Next step: combing with a pitchfork

I'm a bit picky about who touches my hair. I'd estimate that 2 out of 3 of my "professional" hair care experiences ended in dissatisfaction.

Unfortunately, I'm at the point now that my hair is at a length/thickness ratio best managed by someone else. I relax it about once every three months just so that I can get a comb through it (that is if I wanted to get a comb through it).

As I'm sick of seeing my hair flow into the shower drain, I'm about to give up and leave it in someone else's hands.

How does one go about finding a stylist? I cetainly don't want to call up a bunch of salons and ask for references, but then again, I don't want people experimenting on my hair (I supposedly have a "funny" texture").

How'd you find your last/current stylist?

Sticks head out rabbit hole...

Sticks head out rabbit hole...

I've put a quarter in the meter and my sanity has returned. Thanks to all who guest posted--you're all fantabulous and you're welcome back any time!

This Thanksgiving was my very first "Let me cook EVERYTHING event." I've spent years building up my cooking cred and even so there were many that doubted my mad skillz. Fortunately, the only mishaps were me burning myself when taking the second rack out of the oven to put the turkey in and then neglecting to put the rolls on a high enough rack that the bottoms didn't get too brown.

When we arrived in Suffolk, the new/old house my mom and grandma have moved into (a fixer-upper Victorian) reeked of paint. Apparently, my mother decided that that was a fabulous time to start painting the dining room red. Note the flush in my mother's face as she notes that my camera is about to seize an image. Note also that my mother is a shirt thief and I don't recall giving her that sweatshirt. The half-pint is my only niece (that I'm aware of). Oddly enough, she calls me "Tiffany" and refers to Scott as "Uncle Scott." Hmm.

I can't stand paint fumes, so Scott and I and my half-brother took a walk to downtown so that Scott could take some pictures. I'm sure they'll be appearing on his website shortly.

When did my hair turn that color? Ech.

My sister's newest rugrat made his debut. He looks just like his pop. Scott experienced the sensation of BabyFart for the first time. Bombastic, eh?

Dinner went as expected. My mother proclaimed her shock at the fact that my turkey ain't dry. There was too much food as always. Covert alcohol consumption. Yada yada. We ran out of memory on the digital camera on day one, so there are no pictures of me demanding in a very Martha-esque fashion that people "Get out of the damn kitchen!" I'll see if anyone else has any, though. Christmas will be here this year. Scary. Better break out the papier mache wreath now.

Just damn.

This is a 3 Stooges movie waiting to happen.

We have to go move a piano. But first we have to drive to Jacksonville
to get a truck (2.5 hours). Then we have to drive north to Edenton (3
hours) to where my piano and other artifacts of childhood are stored.
Then we have to drive back here so that Scott can go to work tomorrow (3
hours).

And there's ice on the ground.

And it's a big piano.

And it's just the two of us.

If you've ever tried to move something with someone who's not your
height, you how how difficult that may be. As Scott is a full foot and a
half taller than me, basic physics says that if we carry ANYTHING
massive I take the bulk of the weight because I'm closer to the ground.

It'll be fine for us to move many of the items as I could probably carry
them by myself if they weren't so awkward to hold onto. But the piano...

How the hell are we going to get a piano onto a pick-up truck, Scott?
Huh? Please tell me. I can see it now: I'll be squashed between it and
the ice and you'll have to get a pancake flipper to get me off the ground.

And then we have to have a pick-up truck with a "Semper Fi" sticker on
the back window in the driveway all week. Either the neighbors will
think that Scott went away and I brought someone else in to play, or
that Scott was foolish enough to trade in his beautiful Honda engine for
a domestic catastrophe.

*Tiffany procrastinates in brushing her teeth and begins to weep
uncontrollably*

Save me!

We're Back

We're back. Finally after 9 hours of driving and 20 minutes of actual
"moving." I swear I felt like one of the Beverly Hillbillies creeping
down the road (50 MPH on the interstate) with a pianny in the truck with
four chairs dangling over the side...and a mattress, box spring, bed
frame, headboard, footboard....

The piano is now outside in the truck, because although we were able to
get it ON the truck, there's no foreseeable way of getting it off...

We backed the truck up to my grandma's front porch and had my big strong
cousins from next door help Scott roll it over to the truck's bed. Yes,
it did indeed weigh as much as a small Italian car.

The problem now is that we don't have a front porch. Even if we did the
pathway is crooked and we wouldn't be able to back up to it. I could go
rent a U-Haul for an hour just for the purpose of using its ramp, but
we'd still have an issue of getting it over the stoop. Heh. Guess we
should have thought of that, huh?

Unless we find 4 or 5 beefy guys to volunteer their services (volunteer
as in "free"), Mr. Piano will have a light coat of snow on it come Sunday.

It'll make a pretty lawn ornament.

Lack of sleep makes Tiffany very philosophical.

I have no inherent fashion sense whatsoever. I don't buy into trends, and even if I did I feel like a fool for trying to look so "hip." If I can't wear it two years from now without looking like a throwback to an era gone by, I won't buy it.

Growing up, I had a definite style, I guess, but didn't we all? I had a pair of scrunchie socks in just about every color and like only 2 white pairs. I consider that wild now. My socks are pretty tame. I have a couple of pairs with flowers and the like that I wear with my "don't feel like wearing shoes with laces today, so I'll wear mules" shoes, but there's nothing particularly crazy about them. The wildest thing that I wear on a regular basis would probably be a "Lion King" band-aid, as I can't seem to quit cutting, burning, or otherwise mutilating myself.

My grandma used to do all my shopping for me. I kid you not. Up until I moved out after high school graduation, she would shop for me while I was at school during the day...I never even had to endure that whole torture of being measured for a first bra. She just bought one. It fit. Yeah, she has about 60 years on me, but she's better at figuring out what I would wear than my mother (who thinks I'm a toothpick), my sister (who thinks I should dress like a dancer in a Snoop Doggy Dogg video), and my aunt (who buys me clothes 5 sizes larger than the reality).

I don't really have a style anymore, and in fact I'm pretty conservative when it comes to buying clothes. I hate shopping because nothing ever fits right because I'm both short and petite. I have a closet full of stuff that everyone else has bought me that I've never seen fit to wear because I'd either look like a skank hoochie momma call girl or an oversexed secretary.

The problem with having no discernible style is that people are agitated over the fact that they can't find anything to stereotype me on. When that's done, they think I'm trying too hard to come across as "proper" because I have neither now or ever used Ebonics with any degree of proficiency. (Read my lips blog: Ebonics is not a language. It is not a dialect. It is a perversion. Disagree if you must--I'll debate you tat for tat.) Player haters...those are the same fools that hate your guts because you're nice.

*shrugs*

Without sounding like a Sesame Street segment, I gotta say that I like me. This is the me I will always be. Styles are going to change, but I refuse to change along with them.

Oink.

I have stuffed pigs, Pez dispenser pigs, piggy banks, ceramic pigs--you name it. I'm not so pig looney that I have a pig duvet on my bed, but if Scott would tolerate it, I'm sure I could find one.

I think it's time now to pack these suckers away in a box that I can pull out of a closet every now and then and gaze at. I love my little oinkers (especially the ones with money in them) but I got to admit this is one of the tackiest hobbies you can have...other than...

You see, currently we have a house that has one bedroom and two offices. I considered the idiocy of that and decided to be the benevolent one and am giving up my office space to be used as a guest room (*eye roll: interesting, considering I'm the one that's home all day and doesn't have an office at work*). Initially I thought, "If we don't have a guest room, then no one will come visit us...yay!" I have since learned that people will happily sleep on the floor, sofa, or anyplace else they are offered...especially when the house always smells like baked goods.

*Sigh* Oh well. Why couldn't I collect something that I could sell on Ebay for a few bucks?

Christmas is what you make of it.

I think I've just put a finger on why I hate Christmas. The best holiday I've ever had occurred years ago when I still wanted "stuff" under the tree, but ended up getting so much more. I was around six or seven, so I was still living in New York at the time with my mother. We were living with my grandfather in Manhattan and one night my mother took me by the hand and walked with me down to Rockefeller Center. She put me on her shoulders (she was my height then--about 5'2") and we watched the big tree get lit. The crowds were pressing in on us and we could barely see, but we were there--we even got to see the Rockettes.

The memory of that makes me cry now because things are so different. In a couple of years, I'll be as old as she was that night and I still don't have kids--she had two by then: one six, one seven. I feel like we grew up together, and as I got older, I learned that we'll never have the sort of relationship a mother and daughter should. But the difference is that back then, she tried. The fact that she failed isn't what makes her a miserable mother. It's the fact that she gave up. No amount of Barbie dolls or Babysitter's Club books can make up for one's ineptitude in trying to understand the kid you keep calling "sensitive" and "emotional". You can't hide "don't care--rather have my new boyfriend" with gifts. That's when Christmas started to suck.

Growing up with my grandmother was fine for me. I feel like had this been another life, the tables would have been turned and she would have been my mother instead. Sadly, I'm closer to her than I am to my mom, but in a way it's because I felt like she actually wanted me, even with all my idiosyncrasies and my coke-bottle glasses. She never picked on me.

So...as I sit here now contemplating getting sloshed at 7 a.m., I ask one thing: figure out what you're celebrating now before it's too late. It's better to be happy and recieve nothing, than to have the world at your fingertips and be bitter. I figured out how I will be celebrating from now on--by closing old wounds.

Merry Christmas to all, and a Blessed Chanukah to all else.

Brr.

Brr! It's windy and cold outside. I could barely light my cigarette.

You: Dumbfuck, go back inside where it's warm.
Me: Do you smoke?
You: No.
Me: So shut your piehole!

Anywho, had to get that out of my system since I seem to be saying it every two hours. I'm supposed to go out and clean the swingset sometime today. It was one of those things we inherited when we bought the house. We insisted that the sellers haul it away, and they promised they would. Ha! Then again, these are the same people that when we asked "Are you going to leave the lawnmower?" said yes, and left a yellow toy plastic lawnmower in the back yard instead. Hmph. What a sick sense of humor.

Anyhow, we placed a freebie ad in one of those local independent publications thinking that more than likely there wouldn't be any biters for it. We got three in two days. I guess "free" is always pretty when it comes to getting the kids Christmas gifts. Shit, they don't know that mom and pop didn't pay a dime for it. There it'll be outside on Christmas morn, clean and shiny with a big red bow around it. They'll think that it's just like the one they saw at Wal-Mart a couple of weeks ago, and'll actually behave for 3 days thinking Santa Claus really does exists because their wish came true.

If it's really going to be as cold tomorrow as I heard, there's no way I'm going out there with a bucket of soapy water. Sheesh, I must be more like my grandma than I thought. Here we are giving something away that's in great condition and I'm worried about how dirty the thing is. I need to be more worried about have fuckin' dirty my car is and give it a clean and wax before the frost really comes.

Expressions of Guilt

I've always hung on to a few "rednecks" as friends--no offense to any self-professed card-carriers out there. I've always recognized the difference between "redneck" and "racist." In fact, "redneck" is one of those linguistic oddities that I despise. My neck is red as anyone's after a few hours in the sun. Owe it all to my wonderful permatan and wrinkle-free genetic constitution.

In fourth grade there was a girl named Amanda whom I was friends with (she happened to mysteriously disappear after fifth grade...CPS?). She was a scraggly thing. She didn't wear clean keds sneakers or red camel tee shirts like the rest of us whose parents stalked the local Belk for the cutest matching Red Camel outfits for their kids.

She was the one kid in class who everybody would direct their snickering to when those hair lice checks were performed. People would take special interest to see if her socks matched on any given day, or if her hair had been washed.

But she was my friend.

She was the first to be friendly to me in class and nobody likes to be nice to the kid in school who was gone for two years only to return from New York having skipped a grade.

Unfortunately, I fell victim to a disease called "snobbery" once I was accepted by the cool kids in class. They didn't think I should associate with Amanda anymore, and I truly regret the fact that I abided by that edict. I hope she hasn't put me on some hit list like that stark raving looney dude from Billy Madison.

Stigmas suck. I should know--I've always been considered the white-chick black-chick. Why? I could state a few reasons, but it's pointless to get into. What's the point of questioning anyone's racial constitution, anyway? I could draw you a pie chart pointing out everything that I am, but what's the point? It's not going to help you determine how I'm supposed to behave, and it certainly won't tell you who my friends should be.

I like keeping a diverse circle of friends because difference is interesting. But so are those quirks that make us all the same.

Amanda, I'm sorry. I hope you have a better life and are still as openminded as you were in the 4th grade.

Got on my push-up bra 'cause it's a good day.

Ah....birthdays. For the past several years, "birthday" has meant "crying by 6 p.m. with no sign of stopping." It's officially 5:03 p.m. and I haven't started crying yet. Yay!

Last year, grandma had a heart attack on my birthday.

The year before, no one seemed to remember my birthday.

The year before that was three funerals and a wedding year.

Right now, I'm cracking my knuckles and battening down for what's probably going to be a very boring night, and I'm hella cool with that. I'd rather be bored senseless than spouting saline out of my eyeballs all night. There's some leftover Becherovka in the cupboard that I might down. I hate the taste of it, but hell, after a few shots, I'm guaranteed a good night's sleep.

This past weekend's moving excursion did not go well. After the previous weekend's disaster of us driving the three hours from Durham to Chowan County only to find out that there were no trucks available anywhere near our location, we made sure to make reservations in plenty enough time to have one for the next weekend.

That said, I made a reservation last Tuesday for use on Saturday, and it was confirmed. Again, we drive the three hours to grandma's house, and then another hour and a half to friggin' Moyock because that was the only place that had a truck. Guess what? We drove all the way there to find out that they didn't want to take a check.

So you think, "Duh, Tiffany, you idiot. Most people in Podunk won't take checks."

Well...no. They took checks but wouldn't take one from my grandma. Why? Because grandma wasn't the one driving the truck and that whole third-party dealy wasn't very savory to them. What kinda bullshit is that? Do they really think that gramma with two houses and a Lexus is going to bounce a piddly $180 check? Give me a bleepin' break. Hasn't anyone ever heard of an "exception"--you know, the kind of thing where, "YOU BITCH! We drove 5 hours to get here with no other money than what we spent to put gas in our car and you won't take this woman's check?" That's a real good business practice--alienating customers.

Anyhow, we called the U-Haul regional office to ask them what we could do to drive off with a truck that day and they told us to use a credit card. Um...if we had a credit card, we wouldn't have that problem now would we? We didn't even have an ATM card on any of the three of us.

Then, I happened to notice on my reservation printout that "U-Haul takes your personal checks over the phone!". That turned out to be a damn lie. The 1800 number people were confused at the very idea of such an innovation and the lady at the regional office claimed that she had never seen the said website and was confused. Oh well.

So, now we have to drive out there for a third weekend in a row. Shit. Even when I was single and living in the dorms did I not go home that much. I love my grandma to death, mind you, but geez Louise, and then to have to go again for Thanksgiving. One could cry with the very thought of it.

I burned a $500 hole in my apartment's deck on move-out day.

My sister is cool. This past weekend she sent me 4 cigarettes wrapped in aluminum foil in a plastic toothbrush case and $3. See, that's what sisterhood's all about--not having shit, and yet still trying to give away what you do have.

Unfortunately, $3 in my gas tank is a mere tease--like Ramen Noodles for my car. I pull up to the pump and poor Accordia expects a full 17-gallon meal: something to sit right at the base of her rusting, empty stomach and fill her up right. But, no. I can't afford the $22 meal, so she gets the free breadsticks and water with lemon equivalent of $3, maybe $3.01 if I'm triggerhappy.

There's an ugly-ass cat that keeps walking in front of my window and scaring the living daylights out of me. I mean, the cat is so ugly that you can't even stare at it real long and LIE to yourself that it's cute. It's the most nondescript striped cat I've ever seen in my life...anyhow, the little bastard had the NERVE to shun me yesterday! It wasn't wearing a collar, and I always see it outside so surely it can't belong to someone. I think it lives in the wooded lot next door and eats the dog food my neighbors leave out for their brutes at night.

It kept turning around and looking at me like "Ha, I'm not afraid of you...see, I'm not running, am I?" I wanted to throw a rock at it just to prove that I could make it fear me, but it'd be just my luck that I'd be on Animal Precinct next season. Does the triangle even HAVE animal cruelty patrols? Anyway...I suspect the overgrown rodent will be back as it suspects that I will let it and all of its little flea friends into the house to keep me company during the. I'll just shoo it out the little doggy hatch when my husband gets home in the evening.

No kids rang our doorbell for Halloween. I'm glad. You see, our front yard is a safety hazard and it'd be just our luck that some poor shmuck and his idiot kid would come into the yard and break their back on the cracked cement. The yard light near the driveway is broken and looks like it hasn't worked since before "Beetlejuice" came out so its darker than a closed septic tank out there at night. Anywho, there's still a Christmas bow up on the garage light that the p.ho's left up there knowing that we probably wouldn't have a damn ladder for a few years and wouldn't be able to take it down. The kids probably thought we had skipped Halloween altogether and rushed straight to the winter holidays...even though its FREAKING 80 degrees outside right now!

I'm supposed to call the water people today. For some reason, the water pressure in this place is slower than piss and that's not very good for washing the car. Hubby's been trying to get me to call them for a week, but I don't feel like it. Maybe I'll call tomorrow....