It’s official	August 28, 2006

I am a student! I got my student ID last week, and on Saturday I used it to save $1.00 on the price of admission to see The Illusionist (which I enjoyed, but I won’t say much more about it here – any comment I would have on it would be a spoiler!). I’ve also bought all my “school supplies,” which include: the fabulously sexy Adobe Web Bundle (on which that student ID enabled me to save $1,300!!), a fabulously sexy laptop bag, some notebooks and pens, and an academic planner in my token shade of turquoise blue. My first class is on Wednesday. I’m psyched!

The one thing that I am less-than-psyched about is the fact that I now have to come into work an hour earlier every morning, so that I can leave work in time to eat dinner and travel to my 6:00 night classes. I’ve tried to have an 8:00-4:30 work schedule before, with limited success. This time around, I don’t really have a choice. I did OK today, so I guess that’s a good sign!

On another subject, does anyone watch DesignStar on HGTV? If so, do you love David as much as I do? I’ve been rooting for him since he did such a spectacular job on the pet-store-room. I think Alice has a squirrel-face, and despite what the judges seem to think, she does not present well on TV. But I don’t think there is any danger that she’ll beat David out in the finale – there’s really no contest there. He rules. (If you’re unfamiliar with the show, it’s got 10 people competing at interior design challenges, and the winner gets his own show, and the winner will be David).

So cute it hurts	August 24, 2006

This morning, when I was walking to work, I passed a young woman on the street who struck me as unusually adorable. She had dyed pink pigtails and was carrying a handmade purse with an octopus on it. I thought to myself, “She looks like the kind of chick I’d be friends with.”

A few blocks later, I passed another apparition of adorable-ness, a young man with messy hair in a stripey polo shirt, pushing a double stroller with twin blonde babies in it. I thought to myself, “my, Dupont Circle is unusually adorable today.”

On my way home from work, I happened to pass both of them again. Together! Walking down the street, each holding a blonde baby. For some reason this caused my heart to swell with happiness – the four cutest creatures I’ve seen in quite some time are a family. All is right with the world.

Whaaaa...?	August 22, 2006

We’ve got this new head-of-administration lady at work. She’s what you might call a firecracker, with a no-nonsense attitude and a Long Island (?) accent. She comes into my office this morning, and shows me an invoice for some web work that we recently had done. It went a little something like this…

Admin Lady: Why are we paying them to do this work? Why don’t you do it?
Me: It’s pretty advanced work that I don’t know how to do.
She: Why don’t we get you some training so you can do it?
Me: We talked about that, and concluded that I have too much on my plate and if we added that, I’d go crazy.
She: Well then why don’t we get you an assistant?
Me: <jaw drops>

She then made the analogy that employees are like property – it’s always better to own than to rent. I guess they own me, and seem interested in doing some renovation.

Lately, I’ve been a little annoyed at work, but this – this is an exciting development.

Trippin’ balls	August 17, 2006

When was the last time I used that classy expression?

I thought I was having an acid flashback today. I was on the red line, traveling between Metro Center and Gallery Place, and these two high school girls were screaming at each other. I had cranked up my iPod and was staring intently out the window when I started to hallucinate. There were colors, and flashing, and movement, and eventually I realized that they were all taking the shape of the Target dog.

Maybe you’ve all seen them before, but this was my first time encountering the new metro ads. I knew that these existed – I had heard about them from friends and read about them in WaPo. But that didn’t stop me from freaking the fuck out about it. It was so unnerving, and the images were flippy and blurry, and left me feeling disoriented and, frankly, a little frightened.

Has anyone else had such an adverse reaction to them? Seriously, after getting off the train, I was in such an addled state, I walked right up to the turnstyle and stared down at it, expecting it to open, not realizing that I hadn’t gotten my SmartTrip card out. It was as though I was a time-traveler from the 1800’s who’d never seen these new-fangled moving pictures before.

Ulgh. Remind me not to look out the window anymore.

All Random-like	August 15, 2006

There have been several not-really-interesting-enough-for-a-blog-post blog posts running through my head lately. Scattered though they may be, I’m gonna throw them out to you…

As I’ve mentioned, I’ve been sick. Today, though, I am feeling pretty damn good, and I’ve been thinking a lot about protecting myself from getting sick again (the fact that a coworker forwarded this to me didn’t help). So on my lunch break today, I went to CVS and bought some Clorox Disinfecting Wipes and cleaned the hell out of my desk and phone. Then I looked at the article again and realized that the study was funded by the good people at Clorox. How totally and completely I bought into their scheme. I feel played. But it is nice to have a clean desk.

I discovered the Secret Safeway (on 20th and S) yesterday. I had heard of it, but had never seen it before. It was as conveniently located as anything could be, being that it was on a direct path between my point of origin and my destination, but it was pretty suck-tacular. It’s so tiny that the selection is crappy, and the prices are noticeably higher (how can they charge me 3.99 for goldfish crackers when the retail price that the Pepperidge Farm people print on the box is 2.99?), and not a single thing that I needed was on any sort of Safeway-card sale. Which is unprecedented – usually at least one kind of yogurt is on sale. No, I think I shall not go back. It just so happens that my favorite blogger Wendy recently posted something on the subject of shitty grocery stores. It’s a good’un.

I haven’t really been talking much about this, but I recently re-joined Weight Watchers for the hrmph^th time. Right now, I’m in the mode where I’ve got my serious WW groove on – I lost six pounds in my first two weeks. I keep debating whether or not I want to re-open my Loser blog. At the moment, I’m thinking that I don’t, mostly because I carry shame at having shut it down in the first place. But from time to time, I find myself really wanting to post something about high-fiber pasta or low-point smoothies. In a few weeks, I’m going to be able to upgrade my membership to include free access to the online WW crap (they’ve got a back-to-school deal), and maybe I’ll just take advantage of their message boards when I feel like ranting about my food scale.

Ah choo	My brother's birthday!

Man, I am sick. I started feeling sick on Friday (hence the going home and watching Starting Over), and my sickness has evolved from a yucky stomach sick to a yucky sinus/sneezy/cough-ey sick. Ulgh. Being sick in the summer is so unfair.

As a result, my weekend’s activities were somewhat subdued. Friday I did make it out to dinner and the Black Cat to see Washington Social Club (my pictures from that show are trapped on my hard drive at home, but I shall blog about it soon – it was a great show!), which was fun, but it made for a slow-moving Saturday morning.

Saturday was the one-year anniversary of mine and Steve’s first date (awww), and we had planned a day of travel, sun, swimming, and picnics, but… it was instead a day of sleeping in and hanging out on the couch. That night, we returned to the scene of the crime, Rosa Mexicana (where we went on our first date) and drank sangria and ate a yummy dinner. We then went to see Little Miss Sunshine, which you all must run out and see immediately. It is really one of the best films either of us had seen in a long time. It was funny, heartwarming, and sick and twisted all at the same time, which is a charming combo.

Sunday started out with more sleeping in, then I met up with Stef to see Who Killed the Electric Car. It’s an extraordinarily good film as well. A lot of documentaries I’ve seen recently are carried by the subject matter and were not really well-crafted as films (read: the Wal-Mart movie), but this film is excellent on both counts. It tells an interesting and outrageous story, and it does it well. The subject of energy conservation is one that I find myself getting more and more pissed off about, and I’ve been seeking opportunities to do more – my personal carbon output is already about as low as it can get.

Sunday night I returned to Steve’s to watch the new Deadwood – hard to believe that there are only two episodes left this season! This season has been moving a little slower than previous seasons, but it looks like it’s picking up for the finale, when it looks like an all-out war is fixin’ to break out between George Hearst and his Pinkertons and the good hoopleheads of Deadwood. Not to mention other juicy sidebars such as Calamity Jane’s, er, sexual experimentation and Wyatt Earp and his brother rousting up more trouble. AND the new season of Weeds starts tonight! All of which makes for some goooood watchin’.

Do people actually watch this crap?	August 11, 2006

I left work at 11:30 today. Oh, my stomach was not very happy with me, and I’m not entirely sure why, but I came straight home, stopping to buy bubbly water on the way.

So now I am chilling on the couch (with the windows open, bringing in the gorgeous weather outside) and I can feel my stomach settling somewhat. And I’m flipping through the channels, not finding much.

Has anyone ever seen this crap-ass show, Starting Over? Near as I can tell, they take 6 women, each with a full set of emotional baggage, and stick them in a house together with the schlockiest therapist I ever did see. They engage in self-empowerment exercises such as throwing their hands to the sky and yelling, “I’m queen of the world!” And eventually, they are deemed complete and allowed to leave the house and go back to real life. And when they leave the house, they are given a bedroom set, like the ones you win on The Price is Right.

This is not entertainment. It would be if they had fascinating emotional trouble such as pyromania or cleptomania or that disorder where you can’t help yourself from slapping people in the face all the time. But they don’t. It’s your usual run-of-the-mill woman-crap like being overweight or needy or self-conscious, blah blah blah. Why on earth would you want to watch this? It’s like those PMS-ey nights when you feel ugly and cry a lot. On television. For the world to see.

Don’t I have a caring and sympathetic soul?

Sweet Relief	August 9, 2006

I walked to work this morning in the gorgeous 70-degree weather with a dazzling smile on my face, and I arrived with narry a drop of sweat on my forehead. Oh sweet sweet relief. I am dying to open my windows at home and let some real air in – I hope this cool spell sticks around for a while.

So… I did a very silly thing last night. I was at Filene’s Basement, returning a backup-wedding-handbag that was not needed, and I saw that they had taken new markdowns, so I took a stroll around the women’s clothing. I happened upon a very vamp-y champagne satin Vera Wang evening gown, marked down to $45 (with an original price somewhere in the neighborhood of $900). Now, I don’t know that I shall ever have any opportunity to wear such a dress. But what was I gonna do, not buy it? I don’t think so (I hope you ladies can relate).

It’s the vamp-i-ness that makes it particularly useless. My comment to Steve was that it’s something Jennifer Tilly might wear on a red carpet. The bodice has whalebone details that create mad amounts of cleavage. But it’s pretty. And I like it. And it was 95% off. Please do let me know if you can come up with any reason why I should wear it anywhere.

Back to real life	August 8, 2006

Being in a wedding is fun. You get to dress up all pretty and get all sorts of attention, and then you get to drink like crazy and dance the night away. But what happens when the wedding is over? The happy couple has their honeymoon to look forward to yet, but all I get to do is return to real life. Where there is no cake, no frilly dress, and no adorable flower girls. A sad end to a month-long whirlwind of excitement.

That said, the wedding was fabulous. Everything went off without a hitch. The ceremony was beautiful, Cara looked amazing, and the reception was a ton of fun. I took very very few pictures (since there were professionals running around with cameras), so I’ll have to wait a while to see what we all looked like.

I guess the next thing I have to look forward to is my 10-year high school reunion. I finally received a package about it in the mail yesterday. Included in it was a list of people who haven’t been contacted yet, because the school didn’t have their info. That list was very very long and included a lot of the people who I would want to see at a reunion, which is making me less and less interested in attending (coupled with the fact that it costs $20 to go, which doesn’t include drinks). I already bought my ticket, and a trip home is a trip home, and I’ll enjoy going home no matter what. But if it approaches reunion date and I don’t feel like going, I won’t go.

Ten perfect tootsies	August 3 , 2006

Here you see my toes peeking out from under my pants which are way too long once I’ve removed my chunky black sandals. Yesterday after work I got the second pedicure of my life, as part of the wedding-prep. My first pedicure was when I was a junior in college and Sugar-D and K-Co bought me a “Day of Beauty” at the City Looks salon at Westdale Mall, which included a manicure, pedicure, facial, massage, hair, makeup… it was an awesome gift.

I know there are tons of women who get pedicures on a weekly basis, and I could never be one of them. Part of it is that it’s pricey, and part of it is that it’s work that I could easily do myself. But I think the biggest part is that it feels weird to be sitting up in this chair while someone else labors on her knees to clean the dead skin off your feet. I recall that during my first pedicure, I kept apologizing to the woman, “I’m sorry that my nails are too long,” and “I’m sorry that I didn’t shave today.” Yesterday, I spent more time scrutinizing her activities, “What does that goo do?” and “Can I see those little clipper-dealies?” My intention is to outfit my apartment with all of the tools of the trade so my toes can always be this beautiful without anyone else ever having to touch my feet.

Holy crap it’s August	August 2 , 2006

Which means it’s no longer my birthday month. Boo.

But the arrival of August signals the upcoming arrival of some things that I am excited about…

• This weekend: Cara’s wedding
• The end of August: school starts!
• Labor Day Weekend: trip home for my ten-year high school reunion*
• Late October: long overdue trip back to Pittsburgh

* So, this reunion thing has got me a little worried. It’s a month away, and I haven’t heard a damn thing about it outside of the initial save-the-date. Every time I’ve tried to check the web site, it’s been down. I already bought my plane tickets, damnit – there better be an effing reunion! Don’t they realize that some folks might have left the greater Cedar Rapids area after high school and may need a little advance notice of planned events? Leave it to my class to be so horrendously disorganized.