Yellow Mustard Blog

Location: Work.
Feeling: Whimsical.
Lunch: PF Chang's lettuce wraps and a rum and diet coke.
Smell like: Clinique's Happy, sweat, second-hand Parliament smoke.
Planned: Last day of moving stuff out of old place. Need to clean entire apartment.
Thinking: I shouldn't have let so many people throw up on my carpet.
Right after work: Eating a soy ice cream sandwich and having a beer
Can't believe: It's only Thursday!?!? and it's not butter!??!
Jamming to: Stone Temple Pilots
Feeling dirty because: Listened to the new Paris Hilton single and almost enjoyed it
Reason for posting this: Absolute lack of creativity and extreme aversion to work.

I think I already wrote about this and I may be repeating myself word for word, but that is a problem I have and there isn't much I can do about it. If you get a chance to talk to me for longer than 4 minutes, you'll notice I repeat myself constantly. Rory and Sachin can probably attest to this. The worst is my habit of saying something like,
Me: "Oh my god, did I tell you that the other day this guy totally got tackled by 2 secret service agents in the park and then somehow he escaped on foot while screaming something about the president??
Person I'm with: "Yes, you've told me that already. In fact I'm the one that told you about the guy in the first place. And like I told you 10 times, it didn't happen for real, it was an episode of 24."
Me: "Oh yeah. Well did I tell you about the time I was working on a chocolate candy assembly line and the candies started coming too fast and my friend Ethel and I had to start shoving them down our shirts?”
Person: "Hey, did I ever tell you about the time I beat you into a bloody, cowering mass of mangled flesh?"
Me: "No... was that on CSI last night? I didn't get to tape it."

Well anyway, like I've said before...I'm nervous about school starting. It's this coming Tuesday! Sure, I have my nerdy little backpack and my lab goggles and my Trapper Keeper and my Caboodles for all my pens and stuff...but I still feel unprepared. Eek! I'm most freaked about physics. I already took Physics once back in HS and I somehow passed physics with a B. Of course it wasn't a legitimate B. It was a B graced by the most forgiving grading curve in the history of education. If you applied that curve to Rob Schneider, he’d come out as George Clooney. Ok, no he wouldn’t. Nothing on this planet could help that poor leprechaun. But the point is…I completely did not earn my grade. Which was fine for me at the time, but now I realize that I retained nothing from that class. In fact, I think I actually regressed a bit. By the end of the year, I forgot which end of the fork to use when eating. I almost lost an eye thanks to that.
This problem all started when my physics teacher came in on the first day of class and said something to the effect of, "Guys brains are wired differently than girls...so guys will inherently understand physics better.” Now, I loved Mr. Serrapere. He was probably my favorite teacher, next to Mr. Edelman. (I guess I had a thing for older men whose teaching styles were shaped by alcohol, nicotine and the part of the 60s when no one bathed.) Anyway, I loved Mr. S but once he said that, my brain took that as a cue to exit, stage left. "It's not physically possible for me to understand this stuff? Well fuck this, I'm out. I'll see you at lunch...I think it's Pizza Hut pizza day, woohoo!" Mmmm. Brain like pizza.

Physics was the one subject I encountered that actually rendered me cross-eyed. With every other subject in high school, it was all a matter of how much I applied myself. It wasn't that the material was too challenging, it was that I was too lazy. But some concepts in physics were literally beyond my mental grasp. It was like teaching a fish to sing. I just. didn't. get. it. My physics homework took me weeks and most of my answers to test questions broke the laws of time and space. Yet, as I already mentioned, I still passed.
At the time I thanked the gods of public school mediocrity. But now as school approaches yet again, I'm thinking that it was probably bad that I was able to spend an entire year in a class and come out confused about gravity. To this day I’m fuzzy on the details. It involves fruit, I think. Or Fig Newtons? I dunno, it doesn’t cost anything, so I don’t worry about it. I'll let you know what I find out in class, in case you are all confused too.

Oh man, this post from Rory is so good and I'm so excited that he is posting again that I had to provide everyone a link.

Rory's website inspired me to create my own blog. So you can send him your hatemail and lay off me for awhile. But seriously, his writing is hilarious and this particular post is what I wish my own blog was like. Why can't I be like him??? Luckily what I lack in talent and wit I make up for with luscious, luscious breasts.

Enjoy!

hello my pets.
I have been so busy with moving and cleaning and working and grad-school pre-spazzing that I haven't had much time (obviously) to post anything worthwhile let alone original. But I have had time to think about my blog (guiltily) and I've been thinking...maybe it's time to revamp the old girl.
When i started this whole shebang 45 years ago, I knew nothing about posting or site feeds or blogrolls or etiquette. In fact, the "internet" hadn't even been invented yet! I entered all my posts into my T-81 graphing calculator. Most of my blogging consisted of strings of 0's and 1's. Thank god Al Gore came along and invented the world wide web and I was able to write stuff with words instead of cosine functions.

Ok, seriously. I am not good at this. I was and am one of those people that old-school bloggers hate. I jumped on the bandwagon and I jumped on in a slapdash half-assed manner. It's the only way i know! I used the first blog tool I found (yay Google!) and the least garish template I could find....which is obviously the one with the eye-searing orange stripe across the top. It was amateur and sort of offensive to the eye...just like me!...so I was satisfied.

But as my blog reading continues to expand, I'm realzing pretty much everyone else has nice graphics, neatly arranged post categories and color combinations that don't cause grand mal seizures. That's the kind of site I want. (One that causes seizures that is, not the kind that looks put-together).
Ok I'm kidding. I want a classy site. Something with lots of pop-ups and pop-unders and pop-ins and popovers and pop-sicles. And a midi file of an Avril Lavigne song that plays in a loop. And some pointless flash intro that takes 5 minutes to complete and does nothing but swirl a bunch of letters around, without giving you the option to skip the intro. Oh yeah. That is the essence of internets, baby.

Well anyway, since this blog is really for the viewing pleasure of my loyal fans, I thought I'd ask for your opinions...Should I overhaul the site? What kind of changes would you suggest? All silly jokes aside, I'd really like to do a new blog title and template something maybe with a mustard bottle. I am totally ignorant about this kind of stuff...does anyone know what I could use to jazz up the site? What do you guys use?

Thanks in advance!

Hey everybody!
Recently I was very honored to have my much-respected and hilarious fellow blogger, Jess (of Apropos notoriety) ask me to be a guest blogger for his site while he was away. I think this is just a testament to the awesome power of threatening emails and the timely application of hired goons. What a country!!
But seriously, it was extremely flattering and I hope that I can fill even a fraction of the Jess'sss shoes. And the shoes of the other very talented guest bloggers...Pea, Fuzzball, Datadog, The Fonz, RalphMalph... Wait, I think some of those names are from Happy Days, though. Who was Fuzzball? The cook?
Anyway, in addition to checking out the rest of Jess's site AND the blogs of these other fine writers, please click the link and check out my new post. I put a lot of effort into this one, as to make the most of this opportunity for more exposure. I used the SPELL CHECK. Wow. I know.

If anyone one else out there would like me to do a guest spot on their site, let me know. I hire out reeeaal cheap. I also do barmitzvahs, quinceaneras, christenings, petty crimes hearings and demolition derbies. Mention this post and get 30% off!!!

Take me to a better site, for the love of Carl.

No time for an actual post, so I decided to do things the American way:
Steal from another, more talented resource and pretend I had something to do with it. This is one of my all-time favorite articles from The Onion. Actually, all the Point, Counterpoint articles are freaking hilarious. Nothing will every top the column written by T. Herman Zweibel, but oh well. Enjoy!

My Computer Totally Hates Me! vs. God Do I Hate That Bitch

Seriously, what is UP with these titles, lately?? Now not only are they not funny but they aren't even loosely tied to the contents of my actual post. Whoever is coming up with this crap is a talentless douche rocket.

I don't consider myself obsessive. What's wrong with wanting to scrub your perpetually germ-ridden hands with bleach, one finger at a time, several times a day, while counting backwards from ten? Cleanliness is next to Godliness, you know. Which is right next to the shelf with the Tampons of Piety and the Raisin Bran of Charitable Acts.

But when it comes to important, life-effecting things, I do have a slight habit of obssessing. For instance, if I don't watch both the 7PM and 11PM airings of The Simpsons each weeknight, I feel despondant and incomplete.
I have to do a crossword puzzle at night before I go to sleep. And I can't fall asleep until I've completed at least one. If I go to sleep with an unfinished crossword, I have nightmares about papercuts and golf pencil stabbings. Ok, not stabbings. More like aggressive pokings.
And of course, I have to have at least one can of Henry's lentil soup in my house at all times. I don't know exactly where geographically Henry's is based out of. I just know they are here in San Diego and they weren't in Pittsburgh. And that the life I was leading before I found Henry's was a meaningless farce. Their lentil soup is thick, aromatic and filling. It's ready to serve and take about 2 minutes on high to prepare. PLUS a whole can is only 80 calories. !!! I'm sure there is some label printing glitch and the soup is actually 800 calories, but for now I'll keep the illusion. I freaking love that soup. I buy 10 cans at a time. And when the store are out of stock (which they usually are) I feel a sense of panic, as if the day has finally come and the soup has been discontinued and I am forced to wander the earth for the rest of my life, haunted by the smell of that delicious extinct soup.
So yeah, you could call me a soup fiend. But no one ever does. Not even when I grab them by the ears as they walk down the street and beg them to. My "Call Me The Soup Fiend" t-shirt isn't producing any results either. Where was I? Oh yes, Henry's lentil soup. *drool* I am seriously dreading the day when I move out of CA because where will I get my soup from!? I had a dream recently that I somehow won a lifetime supply of the soup, but I argued with the award presenter that they couldn't possibly know how much soup one person could consume in a lifetime. I dont' remember the rest of the dream but I probably didn't get any soup. Way to go, Subconscious Dream Me. Dropping the ball, yet again. I bet YOU are the one writing those awful post titles.

I came across an amazing article about the man that confessed to the "accidental" murder of Jon-Benet Ramsey. I was going to post it...but...I'm sure people have seen or heard about it already. And really, there is enough coverage of bad things, sad things, horrible stories, evil people and tragic events in the world every day. I want to instead link to an article from Mark, about his proposal to his new fiancee. Hopefully little bits of sweetness like this can help to dilute the mass of bad news out there every day.

Proposal :)

What a stupid blog title. Oh well. I don't really have much time to write something long, let alone humorous or even coherent. But I have noticed today that my smallest pair of pants are getting a liiiitle loose. DAMN IT TO PUS-SPEWING HELL.
I know, I know, some of you may want to beat me with your own foot for even complaining about such an event and maybe I deserve it. But you see, dear reader, I am now completely out of pants. If you suddenly ran out of a particular article of clothing, I wouldn't hate you. (Especially if you ran out of those mother-trucking hideous spandex leggings that are somehow back in style. I would send you a thank you card)

A few months ago, as the wedding approached, I changed jobs and started working OUT of the house for the first time in two years. All the sudden, I was losing weight. Maybe it was the pre-wedding stress. Or the friendly tapeworm that moved into my lower intestine. Or the fact that I was now about 30 miles away from my fridge most of the day. I really don't know. I'm not an expert on weight loss or Richard Simmons. (Although on certain days I bear him an uncanny resemblance).

So anyway, week after week, my pants would get bigger. And I would have to go out and buy another pair of pants. And then a week later, THOSE pants would get too big. I felt like my ass was playing a cruel practical joke on me. We used to have such a good relationship and then all of the sudden it was shrinking rapidly without consulting me first.
Anyway, after the wedding my weight seemed to level off and the pants I am wearing today were actually a little on the snug size. And I clearly remember feeling good about that..."Surely these pants won't get big on me, it's impossible!" But, no. My ass apparently has different ideas.
So, I don't have any room in my budget to buy MORE pants and I'm a little iffy on taking any of my existing pants to a tailor to get taken in. Last time I did that, my fancy expensive Gap dress pants came back as a pair of shredded gauchos.
So I guess the only solution is to .... steal pants. I am left with no other option. If any of you know any sweet spots to score some pants, let me know. Or better yet, SEND me your pants. And send boxes. And peanut butter cookies. Wait! Send a BOX full of cookies, wrapped in your pants. Perfect.

Yeah, this is where I say, "I'm SO sorry for not posting lately, it's just that X, Y and Z!!!" But really, I'm not sure that anyone out there in the blogsphere (requisite use of cultural buzzword) really cares that I haven't posted?

What actually saddens me is that I haven't had any time in the past few days to read some of my beloved daily blogs, like Apropros, My So-Called Blog and TGWAE. (On a side note, sweet baby jesus, how does Robyn write so many long, funny, photo-filled blogs? Oh, right...the whole talent and competency thing. I need to gets me some of that).
Anyway, I feel incomplete. Of course, I can't let any day pass without checking out White Ninja Comics and QC. (update...fixed the QC link. Stupid fake .com website!!) That's just a given (requisite plugging of blogs I like to both advertise and suck-up).

I'd like to say that this week will be calmer, but it won't. Grad school is bearing down upon me (still no financial aid in sight), I am looking for a second job (night-shift telephone book delivery route fell through), we are moving into a new place (boxes! I need boxes! Where in god's name did all the boxes go????) and my aunt is getting married this weekend in Las Vegas, so we're driving up for a wild time.

And in between all this I need to like, floss and put on pants and go to work. Just those things though. I've been getting a lot of weird looks lately; I guess some people have never seen a shirtless woman that hasn't showered or eaten or slept in a week. And I live in California. Go figure.

So I just heard from the financial aid office. I am not eligible for anything. Nada, nil, nin. No grants, not even a freaking Stafford loan. So now I only have one more option: take another part-time job. So I'll have a full course-load and two jobs. Thanks. I needed this.

Why am I not eligible? Because the government finds it suspect that I already have a bachelor's degree and now I'm going back to community college. Because the concept of trying to cheaply obtain pre-requisite credit for your graduate degree is just absurd. Who the hell do I think I am? Next thing you know, I'll be asking for reasonably priced health insurance. Oh, the audacity.

They also think that I make too much money. Well FAFSA, you made me fill in all my information for 2005 when I WASN'T married. Single. income.
Oh ho ho, but then, THEN when I came to the part where I had to provide my finances, you told me I had to include my husband's salary. Even though we got married after I filed taxes in 2005. And I just got married three months ago. After the wedding, we weren't handed one of those giant dollar sign bags that contained our combined income for the entire year. We actually were handed the catering bill. And cocktail weiners are more expensive than you think.

Oh hey PLUS, I live in SAN DIEGO. The city that's so expensive people get locality bonuses just to work here. I have a car that requires gasoline. I occasionally need my teeth cleaned. I am not rolling in the dough, despite my new shiny increased household income.

And to top it off, they even possibly think that my measly, previous single-person income was too much to qualify for any aid. Guess what. I quit my full-time job in March, before I was married, before I enrolled in school. I started temping for 12 bucks an hour. Sadly, I did not hoard all 54,000 dollars I made in 2005 in a pile under my matress. I don't have money. You suck, Uncle Sam.

No child left behind, my broke ass!!!

So I love to bake cupcakes. We all know this. It's like my own form of therapy. Therapy that will probably result in the loss of a foot from Type 2 diabetes. And I think I'm pretty good at baking them. As I understand more about the actual science behind baking (gluten strands, egg proteins, magical yeast elves) my cupcakes are improving. And thus far, I have never really had a failure. Until now. I baked a batch of delicious vanilla butter cream cupcakes for work a few weeks ago and they were a hit. I thought I'd take it up a notch and really impress everyone with some exotic new recipe. I am a BIG fan of chockylit's website (I need to add her to my link list) and I found this recipe recently. I don't know what possessed me to think that this was an easy recipe. Maybe it was the pictures. I like pretty pictures. I think my actual thought process was something like...
Recipe: Make batch of butter cream cupcakes.
My brain: Easy! I could do that with my eyes closed. If I didn't mind losing a few fingers to the electric mixer. But I don't want to be called "Stumpy." Not again.
Recipe: Make 3 different types of citrus curd...
My brain: Hm. I've never made any type of curd, let alone one with citrus. Citrus is fruit, right? Anyway, curd only has four letters, how hard could it be? Toast has five letters, so curd must be a snap!
Recipe: ...using a double boiler...
My brain: What the f is a double boiler? I don't have one of those. You know, I bet if I just balance this enormous metal bowl over top of this tiny pot, it will work just fine.
Recipe: ...whisk continuously for 8-12 minutes...
My brain: If I whisk REALLY fast, I can cut that down to 4 minutes! Ah shortcuts, the salvation of modern man.
Recipe: ...using a paring knife, cut small cones out of each cupcake to create a crevice for the curd filling.
My brain: There's that curd word again. Do I own a paring knife? I'm sure this giant, serrated bread knife will do the trick.
Recipe: Using a frosting bag filled with curd, squeeze out a teaspoon of filling into each cupcake crevice, replace with the cut out cupcake piece
My brain: I was supposed to save those cupcake bits?! I just ate them all! I'm sure I can force the remaining cupcake to close the gaping hole filled with custard I just made. I'll just use my bare hands...oops, I slipped!

Oh I could go on forever....Basically I took a complicated recipe, with steps I had never tried before and attempted to complete it in 4 hours. My curd never solidified (probably because I didn't follow ANY of the instructions properly. "Four egg yolks? Three should work, if I add extra sugar!") I got more filling on my shirt than in the frosting bag (did you know those things can squirt stuff out of BOTH ends??) and my butter cream frosting came out in this weird gelatinous goo that was seriously SO sweet, it made my eyes water. In short, they were the most spectacularly abnormal cupcakes in the history of baking. My husband made a good point, the end result wasn't bad...it's just that they came out more like the red-headed step-cousin of the original recipe. Similar...but wrong. Very, very wrong. Luckily my husband took them into work (Navy DOD). He said his co-workers are used to eating things not fit for human consumption.
So, I remain undaunted. Like the old adage goes, "The journey to 1,000 great cupcakes begins with the first hideous abomination." Actually, that isn't an old adage, I just made that up right now to justify my error. Oops.

Seriously. I knew I had a tendency to ramble and meander, sometimes even rant violently but, geez. I am ridiculous. Some of my posts have like, 10 paragraphs!! 10! I must have blacked out somewhere in the middle of those posts because I have no idea how I could have allowed myself to write so much.

So anyway, this is a little apology and a thank you, rolled into one. I call it an apolothank. Or thankyougy. Take your pick.

I'm sorry I break all the unspoken rules about blogging, like writing short posts, staying relevant, not going on and on about your daily bathroom activities, etc. Thank you for ignoring these faux pas and attempting to slog through my stuff. I hope it was momentarily satisfying. (You know, the kind of satisfying you get after you scarf down half a Snickers pie. For a brief moment you are in bliss, but then within a few minutes, you feel like a fatty.)

Damn, there I go again! I swear. I'm going to stop typing. Right. now.

Monday mornings are generally depressing and melancholy and that usually leads to a lot of critical introspection. Introspection which inevitably produces a short list of your personal faults, defects and weird odors. At least, that's how I spend my Mondays. This particular Monday, I came up with a few things that I wish I was able to do. Because it's the first day of the week, I chose to focus on things that I will never possibly be able to achieve due to my shortcomings. As each weekday passes I get progressively more optimistic until by Friday afternoon I am convinced I can fly and cure diseases simply by sneezing on the afflicted. Don't even ask me about my weekends. So without further ado ...

Thing #1 I wish I could do:
Wear my hair really short. Like Natalie Portman growing out her hair after V for Vendetta short. I attempted something approaching short waaay back in my sophmore year of high school. This was when Ellen (the sitcom) was very popular. So I had the hair butcher give me "the Ellen" but it came out more like "the mini-shemullet" that no amount of mousse could tame. (On a humorous side note, I attended Lilith Fair around the same time I got the short haircut. On the first day of band camp I wore my Lilith Fair tank top and my Ellen hair and was given several nicknames not appropriate for blog-reading children. You know what is the most shameful part of this story? The fact that I was in band camp.)

Anyway, I have a mishapen head (which houses my mishapen brain) and roughly 14 cowlicks in various places on my skull, so short hair would probably make me look like this. Not even someone in the marching band would find that attractive.

Exhibit 2:
Play the drums. If you know me slightly well, you probably know of my burning desire to play the drums. You also probably know that my drum-playing is roughly equivalent to taking a man with no arms, putting a drumstick in his mouth and lobbing him at a drum kit. Actually, I sound worse. It is kind of embarrassing that after playing an instrument for 10 years, I still don't have rhythm. Then again, the instrument I played was the dreaded French horn and I just faked it for the last five years. Honestly, by the end I was lucky if I blew air in the general direction of my horn. So to sum up my digressive tangent, I hate the French Horn.
And really, I have rhythm. I can identify beats and times and what not. It's more the hand-eye coordination or even just basic human motor skills that I lack. Forget getting my right hand to do something simultaneous yet different than my left hand. It takes all my concentration just to get a single hand to move on my command. Lifting a pencil can take every last ounce of my brainpower. So for now, I'll have to stick to playing the spoons. (and by "playing spoons" I mean bashing a spoon against a shoebox repeatedly)

Thing # C:
Quit work, give up school and open my own cupcake bakery. Honestly, I would love to do this. I don't know WHY but I am really enamored of the idea of putting every last cent I own into a business that will require me to wake up at 3AM to bake cupcakes for 12 straight hours and most likely fail in a year. I have been the recipient of several nasty concussions though, so perhaps that explains my weird affection towards cupcakes and inevitable financial ruin.
I guess what I want even more than a bakery is the ability to just go off the conventional path, risk everything and follow my craziest ambitions no matter what the naysayers nay say. But I can't. Dear reader, I have been fooling you. I am not the free spirit I appear to be. I don't skip through flowered fields spreading happiness and yellow mustard to all I meet. I am a neurotic goody-two shoes with an obsessive-compulsive habit of making lists for EVERYTHING. I make lists of what I need to make a list for. I don't have the cajones to deviate from my "plan". It's hard to believe now, but just a few months ago, the idea of quitting my job (the job that was slowly eroding my faith in human spirit one agonizing teleconference at a time) and pursuing a career I -gasp- would enjoy seemed blasphemous. Good heavens, not that! Go back to school? But I have my degree already and it's in computers. I have sealed my fate. There is nothing I can do! The italics represent my internal thought process. Duh.
The sad thing is it was HUGE for me to do this. To a seasoned rebel, quitting my job and pursuing a graduate degree in pediatric physical therapy is like taking your geeky half-cousin to the senior prom. It's lame, and it isn't the real thing. It's not like I dyed my hair orange and started my own avant-garde interprative dance/vegan crusader group.
So perhaps what I truly, truly wish I could do is be cool enough to have legitimately bad-ass rebellions. I think the best way to achieve this is to make a list....

Yesterday I took some time out of my busy day to do a little blogging. What was supposed to be a short post of course evolved into a massive multi-paragraphed behemoth, brimming with wit and clever insight. It was glorious! It was hilarious! It was not spell-checked! So without thinking, I clicked the spell check button, which launched a pop-up, which my pop-up blocker blocked, which forced me to temporarily allow pop-ups, which navigated me away from my main page, which was not saved and dissapeared when I hit the back button, which caused me to crumple into the fetal position and sob under my computer desk for 45 minutes, which caused my dog great concern, which he expressed by licking my eye and then falling asleep next to me.

So long story short, I lost my post, the world got a little colder, and I got a little more jaded.
Damn spell check! And damn my inability to change the date and time of my posts after I published them!!! Damn wysiwyg interface!!