Yellow Mustard Blog

haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay

2008-02-28T13:27:00.000-08:00

Anybody there?
Hello??

(tumble weed rolls by)

I have moved to a new site. If you are interested. Its not much yet and I can't promise anything exciting. But still, new shiny site!

http://yellowmustardgirl.wordpress.com/

maxim really gets my goat

2007-07-15T14:03:00.000-07:00

Well, hello, gentle readers! I'm back after a self-imposed spiritual hiatus (ie moving into a new place). And now that I'm back, I'm madder than hell, and I'm not going to TAKE it any more!!!

What am I mad about? Maxim magazine.

Now don't get me wrong. Maxim and me go waaaaay back. I used to giggle with glee when one of my college guy friends would have it on the coffee table. I spent countless hours laughing my head off at their $250 Joke of the Month or articles like, "How to Make Prison Hooch" and "How to Remove Your Arm from A Bear Trap".

When one of those sheisty door-to-door magazine salespeople came to our door (and we stupidly bought TWO magazine subscriptions so little Johnny FuckFace could rasie enough "points" to join the rest of his sales team on their spring break to Cancun) I encouraged my husband to get a Maxim subscription.

And when they came in our mailbox, I was the first to read it, cover to cover. So what ended up pissing me off?

Well, it wasn't the hot tail featured on every cover. I know that if I was greased up with salad dressing and airbrushed to hell and back, I too would look as hot as Heidi Klum*
What got me in the end were those AWFUL, insipid interviews they had, in which the girl and the interviewer work in concert to make the reader believe that this particular girl is JUST LIKE A GUY, except that she has boobs, YAY! Not only is she just like a guy, but she also will have sex with ANYBODY, including....no, especially the fat virgin slobs that read the magazine.

The interviews are always full of leading, idiotic tidbits like:
"I love football. I especially love to watch it while shotgunning Pabst and eating buffalo chicken dip, naked."

"Did I ever tell you about the time I won my sororities Banana eating contest? I did it with my hands tied behind my back, naked."

"Likes: letting strangers rub oil on me, naked!!
Dislikes: guys that don't like gangbangs!"

And it doesn't matter WHAT profession this girl is, what she is doing with her life, her 'likes and dislikes and interests and influences are all the same. She could be a world-famous concert cellist and she'd say,

"Musical influences: Shaggy and that guy that did the soundtrack for "Coed Cumbucket 4"

Ugh.

So anyway, I've sworn off Maxim. Luckily, my husband seems content to ogle the specs of Popular Mechanics. And I'm going back to my roots....I just renewed my subscription to Jugs.

*this is an enormous lie.

unstable mabel

2007-05-29T16:15:00.000-07:00

Yes, that's me.

Have you ever had one of those days/weeks/months/moon cycle's where you just feel a bit off your rocker?

I mean, more than usual?

I am on the tail-end of a massive sinus infection (i.e. the same sinus infection/t-cell genocide I experience EVERY TIME I am subjected to deadlines and stress) and I haven't been sleeping very well/much and I'm doped up on all kinds of white pills and I STILL have like, a bajillion assignments and other crap even though there are only 5 days of school left.

And anyway, I'm feeling unstable. Oh, did I mention I'm somewhere in the murky depths of a menstrual cycle? What? You didn't want to know that? TOO BAD DOUCHE MONKEYS! Here at YMB I hide NOTHING.

Evidence of my instability:
-Upon learning that I have to take anatomy *gasp* next semester and then shortly thereafter learning it is cadaver dissection, I feel it is imperative that I get comfortable with the idea of dead bodies, and start visiting terrible sites like cadaver.org and such to get acclaimated to the slab. What a terrible, terrible idea.

-Googling things like, "Cadaver" will take you to all kinds of morbid sites, like www.findadeath.com , which I spent many hours perusing, realizing that I have a definite fascination with death. Great, that's a cute little bullet point for the resume.

-In perusing findadeath, I came across a little entry for Jonathan Brandis, and I am plunged (once again) into an inexplicable sadness about the fact that my boy-crush from Seaquest DSV killed himself. I remember hearing about it a few years ago and just being so shocked. I don't really know why I was then....or why I am STILL sad about it ... several days after remembering it??? Latent realization of mortality, much?

-A bunch of old Coldplay songs keep popping up on my iTunes shuffle and they keep plunging me into one of those stupid saccharine nostalgic stupors....you know, when you think "Oh my GOD, I miss college so much..." because when "The Scientist" is playing, its hard to remember that college involved a lot of bad stuff too....
....like the time you played beer pong with Red Bull and Stoli's and ended up passing out mid-sentence at Mad Mex and having to be dragged to a taxi cab only to vomit in it 5 minutes later and thereby forcing one of your friends to clean it up while the other staggers down the street with you thrown over his shoulder, trying to figure out where the hell your apartment is and you wake up the next morning with vomit in your hair and missing your favorite pair of sandals....

Not that anything like that ever happened to me. It's just an example. But that gives me an idea...I think I'm going to mix myself a cocktail and think happy, stable thoughs.

Hope everyone is in good mental health!

holy matrimony, batman!

2007-05-19T08:05:00.001-07:00

Wow, I have gotten a lot of mileage out of that batman-marriage joke. Maybe I should stop.

Anyway, in one day, it will have been one whole year since I donned an enormous poofy white dress and paraded around in front of my loved ones.

No, I'm not talking about the time I tried to enter Ms. Tranny San Diego after watching half of "To Wong Fu, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar" on basic cable.

I'm talking about my wedding!!! Woohoo! If I can manage to stay away from a divorce lawyer for 24 hours, I will be married for one year!! (This may be tough, as I have to drive right through Lawyer Town on my way to Trader Joes...and we're out of soymilk).

Anyway, here's an old pic (taken at the wedding after-party, in which we crashed another snotty bride's karoake party and started singing non-stop Journey).

meh make up your own damn title

2007-05-18T21:37:00.000-07:00

Do you hear that sound?

Listen closely; it sounds very much like a heavy-set bearded man is pacing back and forth in a pair of enormous hiking boots over a large pile of Grape Nuts cereal.

That's right...that sound is a CRUNCH.

It's CRUNCH TIME. Aahahahahaha!!

Wow, how could a joke with that kind of elaborate set up turn out so un-funny?

Aaaanyway, it's that fantastic time in the semester, where all my professor's look at their calendar's and say:

"Hmmm, looks like three weeks till the end of the semester. These kids are fried. And they still have to prepare for the CUMULATIVE FINAL that I am forcing them to take for 60 PERCENT of their grade. I get stressed just thinking about how stressed they must be.
You know what would make me feel better? Assigning an endless stream of trivial papers, take-home assignments, labs, lab quizzes, journals, portfolios and other crap. Oh, and I'll make it all due in the weeks following up to the final. That will take their mind off the ENORMOUS, GRADE-DETERMINING (THEREFORE CAREER DETERMINING) FINAL that is coming up."

What vegan douches!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anyway, I've had over a dozen different things due in the past two weeks. Right now I am "working" on a take-home assignment involving Mendelian genetics (with a heavy emphasis on the sex-linked traits of fruit flies. Woo-pee.)

But its ok. Just a few more weeks. I think I'm perfecting the art of converting stomach acid into actual sustenance. It burns, but it's also filling.

Talk to you in a few weeks....

P.S. Everyone go to Jen's blog and read about what she is going to be doing in Africa!!! It is so cool!! Then pry open your tight, miserly fists and donate a few dollars to her cause. If you don't, we are so not friends anymore.

love me

2007-05-12T12:55:00.000-07:00

I'd just like to put out a public apology to any "vegan douchebags" that I may have offended in the preceding post.

I love vegans. I love douchebags.

Please don't stop reading my blog!

cows are going to kill us all

2007-05-12T12:46:00.000-07:00

I have been an on and off vegetarian since freshman year of high school. I think the first time I did it was just as one of those requisite teenage phases. You know, like how Greg Brady decided to become a hippie and started wearing beaded headbands and lived up in the attic? That kind of phase.

Only instead of doing that I gave up meat. (I did experiment with beaded headbands though...)

But at some point I began to develop a true aversion to the way most meat tastes and looks. To this day I can't pull meat off a cooked chicken. It turns my stomach. And ground beef?! I still have nightmares about that stuff...

My school cafeteria used to serve it on "Nacho Day" and there was always this one really fat kid we all gave our beef cups to and then dare him to eat it and he would and it was disgusting. (Not the fat kid persay, but the river of orange grease that would flow from his chin and form a pool on the collar of his shirt. That was pretty gross.)

Anyway, I eventually adopted a bizarre quasi-vegetarianism that I keep to this day, one in which I eat eggs, fish and occasionally some deli turkey. In moments of extreme protein crisis I've been known to consume "meats", the stuff that through virtue of their over-processing barely resembled actual animal at all. ie, Chef-boy-R-dee meatballs, Steak-ums, McDonalds beef-flavored sandwiches...

I'll fall off the wagon every once in awhile, usually due to extreme laziness. But inevitably, I'll have some ghastly encounter with a meat product and run back screaming to the Land of Broccoli. (Like for instance, when I found pieces of shell in my canned tuna, or when my package of deli turkey came enveloped in a thick film of slime).

My point to all of this is that I am a vegetarian because I don't like the taste of meat. I have never, EVER been a vegetarian because I care about animals. Unlike some people, I don't think "animals are people too." No, you vegan douches, they're ANIMALS.

Look, I am not promoting purposely being cruel to animals...unless it's doing something really funny you can put on YouTube. (I'm kidding!!) It's just....why do some vegetarians claim they don't eat animals because "meat is murder?" In all seriousness I do think the meat-producing industry could be more humane and more sanitary. Sure, I'll sign a petition for that. But after that, meat still isn't murder. It's called a form of sustenance.

C'mon people. We aren't at the top of the food chain because we are snazzy dressers.

And really, what I find the most baffling is that MANY OTHER ANIMALS EAT OTHER ANIMALS. Do you think lions are sitting around going, "God, I'm starting to feel like a big fatty every time I eat an antelope. All those hip urban humans aren't eating meat anymore. Maybe I should give up eons worth of vital evolution and instinct and start eating this dry, tasteless grass."

Because really folks, what's next? After we've converted all the cruel human carnivores of the world into plant eaters, are we going to start going after the grizzly bears? The great white sharks?

And are you PETA-ers even aware that the very creatures you are trying to save from being eaten would kill you in less time than it takes to hand out one of your informative, graphic pamplets???? No smart-ass; I'm not talking about lions or tigers or bears. Those are obvious.

I'm saying: cows, chickens, Atlantic salmon, rabitts, boneless baby-backed calves, all of them...they want you to die. They are plotting against you AS I TYPE. You wanna know why most people eat meat? To quell the violent uprising of the herbivores!!!

That's right, fellow vegetarians. The meat-eating folk don't want to tell us that because they're hoping that us tofu-eaters will be turned on first, and potentially sate the farm animal blood-lust long enough for them to escape to their underground bunkers.

Conspiracy theory, you say?

Ok, carrot-munchers, you can believe that if it helps you sleep at night.

a pick-me-up

2007-05-11T17:14:00.000-07:00

Further proof that I am a sick, sick individual:

While perusing my Yahoo mail, I noticed a banner ad out of the corner of my eye and upon reading it, burst out laughing hysterically. What was the ad?

ROLL OVER to learn more?!?!!? Aahahahhahahhaha!!!! Get it? Cause, it's an ad about genital warts and then they say "roll over to learn more", as if saying, "Roll over, off that anonymous dude you're boinking and get yourself educated!"

Maybe they should say, "Get off your back and learn more about genital warts, you tramp!!!!"

Too much?

**Once AGAIN, Blogger had thwarted my attempts to post pictures that are resized. They always come out too small and too grainy. Anyway have any tips on how I can improve this?

In the meantime, if you can't read it, just click on the picture and it will enlarge. Enlarge, hahaha!

Sick, sick, sick.

three parts sunshine, two parts sugar, one part shit-talking

2007-05-08T08:12:00.000-07:00

Hello, friends.

I'm still working my rosier perspective, which is a challenge. I literally WOKE UP in mid-gripe about my Biology class this morning. My solution? SKIP THE CLASS ALL TOGETHER!!
Oh, sure, this is the last Bio lecture before our exam on Thursday and he's 95% likely to be handing out the example short essay questions he will use on the test and it's pretty risky to assume that I will run into my Bio partner Wednesday and she will let me copy the questions and I may have very well put the final coffin nail into my poor grade.

BUT I'M SMILING!!! AHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHHHAHAAHAHHAHAH!

Erm, to continue...
This semester has been a killer. I won't bore you with the typical rant about the pitfalls and perils of going to grad school full-time AND working. What has been the most frustrating for me is that I'm trying to dip my toe into the icy kiddie pool of published writing.

I'd really love for some of my meaningless drivel to get into a magazine somewhere. But how can I spend any time writing when I'm too busy memorizing molecular geometry and hybridized orbitals?! Or processing 25 broker applications? Or scouring eBay for the perfect vintage dress to wear to an upcoming wedding only to be thwarted at the last second by some Aussie tart who had the nerve to wait until the last second and then add like 10 cents to my bid so that she could win?? BITCH! Doesn't she know that is MY move????

My point is, it's hard. Given that I have the attention span of a hyperactive, caffeinated hummingbird...

...sorry, I heard a weird chirping sound outside and had to investigate it. It was a squeaky toy my dog was chewing on....

...sorry! I had to itch my elbow and then I realized how dry my skin is so I went to put on moisturizer but then I realized that's only covering up the problem so I figured I should exfoliate first, but why stop at my elbow? so i took a shower and loofah-ed up real good and then applied moisturizer but at that point my hair was wet so I might as well put in a deep conditioner treatment right? and that takes like, 30 minutes so.....

DO YOU SEE?!?!?! This is what my life is like CONSTANTLY. Just getting through one post is a vast internal struggle akin to Moby Dick. (I'm Ahab, the blog is the white whale, get it? Or...would I be Ishmael? What was that Indian guys name? Maybe he was an Eskimo. Wait, have I ever even read Moby Dick?)

But don't worry, my intent is not to complain about what is. It is to celebrate the anticipation of what will be.

You see, come June 5th, I am done with classes for the summer. DONE!!
And summer will be a slip n slide of joy leading into a splash pool of fun and relaxation. Sure, maybe there will be a rock or two under the slide (the rocks being work and ... work). But for the most part, it will be awesome.

I'm going back to Pittsburgh for a few days in June, celebrating my one year anniversary at a Julian B&B, my birthday is in July, my parents are coming to visit (finally) in August and I'm going to Cabo San Lucas for an entire week!!! But the most exciting part is that I'm taking another writing class, "Personal Narrative Writing" at UCSD. That's an actual university! Unlike the DeVry College where I am currently taking my writing class. (I kid, I kid!! I love Mesa College!) And I've fully committed myself to doing some writing EVERY DAY.** (**Offer void on days when I have a hangover).

So, in conclusion......

SORRY! Dammit! I needed more coffee but then I thought maybe I should drink some juice instead. I ended up with water. Anyway, woohoo summer!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

what a difference a blog post can make

2007-05-07T17:51:00.000-07:00

**I want to apologize to Helen in advance for stealing the link below as well as pretty much echoing her recent sentiment about not taking stuff for granted. I usually try to avoid grabbing briliant ideas from someone else's post and passing them off as my own, I swear! But I was just so moved by what she had to say, and I was so touched by Yen's site, I wanted to make sure that the three people that visit yellow mustard blog get to experience it, too. So please consider this merely a conduit to other, more eloquent people on the inter nets.
Thank you.

Huh.

I had intended to post a quick little ditty about how baffled I am by the fact that Mesa College has bathroom stalls that are enclosed by shower curtains and all the social protocol, etiquette and psychological trauma therein. And I will post it, eventually!

But, before I sat down to write I did my usual perusing of some of my favorite blogs and came upon the latest post from Helen. First of all, her post alone is excellent and worthy of reading, as is. But she also put in a link to a blog about a guy named Yen and his relationship with his boyfriend Jesse, who was battling cancer. So I went to Yen's weblog and was just utterly captivated. I read pretty much all of it in one sitting, crying and smiling the whole time.

Anyway, I really think you should take a minute to just go and check out what Yen and Jesse had to say. Because at the core of it, it's not about being a gay couple, it's not even about dealing with cancer. It's about their strength and grace and just loving another person in general. I think everybody needs moments in life where you are re-calibrated; when you realize just how freakin' good you have it and how blessed you are to just be right where you are, right now, with the people that love you at your best and your worst.

Anyway, even if you don't go to the site, just humor me: take a second to get up and go find a person or animal or plant that you love. And hug the bejebus out of him/her/it. Say thanks. Breathe in some air. Unclench your fists. Whatever. You will be amazed, trust me.

Because I know, personally, that after a day of stressing out over school, bitching about exams, bemoaning my job, cursing my bad skin, shrieking at the incompetence of the President, the Mesa Science department, the guy driving in front of me and generally being a pissed off, whiney, self-involved brat, reading Yen's story and hugging my husband and dog made me feel like a new human. Even if it only lasts a little while, it was worth it.

But even grateful people can be appalled by shower curtains on bathroom stalls!!

sunday afternoon cartoons

2007-05-06T15:52:00.000-07:00

Aren't you in luck??!

During my furious studying session for YET ANOTHER Chemistry test, I came across some cartoons I had scribbled in the margins of my lecture notes. I felt the need to post them because they are so un-funny and lame that they actually become funny. Sort of.

Keep in mind I usually drew these 50 minutes into an 90 minute lecture and often under the additional duress of not having coffee and really needing to pee.

Also, you'll have to click on the picture to see it clearly. I apologize. But I still can't figure out how to correctly scan, compress and upload a picture. And considering I put zero effort into learning the processes with which to do those things, I am completely baffled as to why I can't.

(If you're wondering why I'm apologizing, its because you have to hit the back button after you maximize the picture, or you close the whole site. And if you're like me, you can NEVER figure that out, even after closing the webpage 8 times in a row. Like I did, while editing these picture posts. Dammit.)

Enjoy!

2007-05-06T15:50:00.000-07:00

Aw, I kind of feel bad for making fun of my chemistry teacher. She is the unfair recipient of some latent rage against my current chem grade but the truth is, I should be mad at beer if I'm blaming anyone. But I could never be mad at beer. Ever.

I love you, beer.

Anyway, she is actually a very good teacher and god bless her for trying to inject some life into her lecture, even if it is in the form of hackneyed, borderline sexist "men hate everything that women do and women always have PMS" jokes and innuendo.

2007-05-06T15:46:00.000-07:00

Sadly, all of these events actually did occur, in succession. Getting my head stapled back on was a bitch.

2007-05-06T15:39:00.000-07:00

Keep in mind these are actual thoughts that I have during chemistry class. And I am so bored during lecture that drawing them into a cartoon is the only way I can maintain consciousness.

Of course,this doesn't in any way excuse the extreme geekiness and not-very-funniness of the cartoons but, there you have it.

drunk dialing at its best

2007-05-05T23:21:00.000-07:00

"I don't mean this in a sexual way, but you are hotter than a hooker."

--my dear non-best friend Rory, during a drunken phone call he made from a cabin in the middle of nowhere.

If I haven't already said it, everyone should check out Rory's website because the kid is funny and has actual dedication to his site, two traits that I personally don't possess.

this post brought to you by the church of latter-day saints

2007-05-03T05:05:00.000-07:00

Wow.
It's 5:06AM. I have not slept since....12PM yesterday. I am to un-asleep to do that math. But I've been up for awhile. And not......tired. Don't understand. Can't complete full sentences.
Oh. no.

Just watched a program on PBS about the Mormon Church. Too much ridiculous information to put into one post. Did you know Mormons have an impenetrable cave in Salt Lake City that houses 2 billion names of deceased people (that were recorded)? The goal is to use these names to baptize people "in death" so they can get on the afterlife gravy train. This cave will literally withstand a nuclear attack. But I ask you, what of the living people, above ground? Shouldn't we be the ones with an impregnable fortress? If we're all toast, who is going to put our names into this catacomb? Who, dammit?!? Answer me, ghost of Joseph Smith!

Thinking about writing a play.

Thinking about writing a novel, too.

Thinking about taking a writing class and an art class over the summer.

Thinking about the odds that come summer I will abandon all these endeavors to commit myself fully to constructing a Slip-n-Slide obstacle course.

Thinking about purchasing a Slip-n-Slide immediately.

But seriously, has anyone out there ever had any of their writing published? I am curious how difficult/ego-deflating it is. And, yes, I consider a two-column farmers market review in the PennySaver as published work. Gotta start small.

in the life

2007-05-01T11:52:00.000-07:00

6:00Am:
I should get out of bed, I have class at 7:30AM. Who schedules a class at 7:30zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

7:00Am:
If I get out of bed now, I could potentially make it to my claszzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

7:15Am:
Shoot, I only have 15 minutes to go to class. I guess I could get up now and come to class latezzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

7:20Am:
Dammit!! Ok, ok, I really should get up and just go late. He is handing out an assignment and my lab partner always picks up my work for me and I shouldn't keep taking advantage of that. But I won't have any time to wash my hair or put on makeup. Ew, never mindzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

8:00Am:
Why do I keep waking up? Oh right, the dog keeps kicking me in the face.

8:05Am:
Wait, why is the dog laying upside down next to me, giving him the perfect position to kick me in the face?

8:07Am:
I am going to kick my dog in the face.

8:09Am:
Oh my god, I can't believe I just kicked my dog two days after he had intensive knee surgery. I'll remember to give him an extra treat when I wake upzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

9:30Am:
If I get up NOW, I can make it to my chem teacher's office hours. But I'm so embarrassed to go, since I'm tanking in her class. I don't want that judgemental bitch helping me improve my gradezzzzzzzzzzzz.

9:45Am:
I can't believe I called my teacher a judgemental bitch. I need to get up. I'm acting like a child. But I'm exhausted and I never get to sleep in and you're a meanie-head!
Shut up, little YMG!!!
You're such a bitczzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Where did you learn that language young ladyzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

10Am:
Oh my god, I slept in! I'm a terrible lazy person! But I feel so different. I feel...refreshed! Energetic! So this is what sleep is supposed to do! If I could just get a good night's sleep every night then---- Oh wait, feelings gone. It was just a head rush. God, I need some coffee.

10:15Am:
Mmm coffee. Man, I want a cigarette. No. Can't have one.

10:17Am:
Mmmm coffee. Man, I want a cigarette. No. Can't have one.

10:20Am:
Mmmm coffee. Mmmm cigarette.

10:25Am:
God, I disgust myself. Why don't I just take a hammer to my face instead of smoking? I know how bad they both are for me but at least the hammer won't make my LUNGS ROT. That's it, I'm not smoking another cigarette ever.

10:26Am:
Man, I want a cigarette. Also, my chest hurts.

10:30Am:
Good thing I ate an apple to counteract the effects of that cigarette. But my chest still hurts.

10:35Am:
Ok, now that I'm up and skipped my classes, I should at least do some homework.

11Am:
I can't believe I just did some homework! I am awesome. If you subtract the time I spent googling Amy Winehouse, reading Perez Hilton and Questionable Content and writing some non-class related stories, I did like...TEN whole minutes of work! Man, I'm wiped out.

11:10Am:
I'll watch a little TV as a reward.

11:11Am:
Wow, daytime television sucks. Even the Mexican soap operas are dull. Wait, I think that woman is about to marry a donkey... but she doesn't realize it's a donkey! This could be entertaining. No, never mind...they're having a civil ceremony. Bo-ring.

11:15Am:
Surely PBS will have something exciting to watch.

11:15:30Am
Wow, I couldn't be more wrong.

11:16Am:
But this show is about jazz music. I should watch it. Everyone seems to be into jazz lately. Wow, the commentator's job title says "Writer/Cultural Critic". You can be a critic of culture?!? I can do that!
"Everything sucks."
See! Easy!

11:17Am:
Crap the neighbors just caught me talking to myself again.

11:19Am:
Oh no, another commercial about male erectile enhancement. Can't...stop...watching. Ew ew ew! It's for really old people!! Ew!! Are those old people going to do it?! Old people don't have sex!!! Nooooo! I have to change the channel before they---OH MY GOD THEY ARE GAZING AT EACH OTHER SENSUALLY. They're like 97 years old! Ew ew ew!! Oh my god, where's the remote?? I can't find the remote! SWEET JEBUS I CAN'T TAKE MUCH MORE OF oh wait here it is. Click.

11:20Am:
Man, I want a cigarette.

11:30Am:
Ok, break time is over. I should work out or something. AHAHHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHHHAHAHAHAHAHAAAHA!

11:35Am:
AHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAH *cough* *wheeze* AHAHAHHAHAHAH

11:45Am:
Ahahahahahahah. Ahah. Ha. Wow.

12:00Pm:
Ok back to homework, for real this time.

12:01Pm:
OK. Starting homework....now. Right now. Seriously. Pick up the book. Pick it up! Now. Ok, NOW.

12:02Pm:
Hey! I bet this would make a good blog entry!! Homework break!!!

yay!

2007-04-25T21:38:00.000-07:00

Yay!

After a shaky start (waking up late for class with a bitchin' migraine), the day got much better...

It was a beautiful day with clouds and sun and the perfect amount of breeze! (i.e. not enough to blow my papers half-way across campus when I sit outside to do homework). Lately it has been raining here, so I was happy for the return of nice weather. I know, I know, I live in San Diego and you want to gut me right now. But did I mention that on Friday when it first started raining there were 109 car accidents reported in FIVE HOURS? The news even ran a segment on how people can't drive when it rains in CA. As a native Pittsburghian, I am just as filled with contempt for these fair weather drivers as you are.

After many days frought with tension and anticipation, my Kashmir CD finally arrived in the mail!! It's a CD from a Danish band I bought from a guy in Australia on eBay. I heart the inter webs. After I got into Mew (got into = typical frenzied obsession) I stumbled upon a whole gaggle of Danish and Swedish bands at Vibrashop.com. I ended up spending about 7,000 sheckles or whatnot on two t-shirts. Damn you Danes! (Is Danish the same as Dutch?)

My bio lab, while being very long and due tomorrow, is on beer brewing and fermentation!! I missed the brewery tour we took that preceded the lab, but that's ok. Considering I have participated in beer brewing on all it's levels (I'm talking ordering Mr. Beer from a SkyMall catalog all the way to mashing grain and making wort) I actually was able to do most of the lab using just my brain. Unfortunately, the large amounts of beer I have consumed also seems to have damaged my short-term memory, so I had to google a lot of words. Like, "yeast". Oh, the irony.

this ish is bananas

2007-04-24T15:46:00.000-07:00

I am quite the civic hero today. I helped an old lady locate her car. (No small task considering she said, "Silver" when I asked her what kind of car she had.) I signed a petition to shorten term-lengths of politicians. Or possibly lengthen them. I was too busy trying to remember if I voted last election. (I did. Go Nader!) I bought a CD from two guys that were wandering around campus asking people if they liked hip-hop. I actually only listened to about 20 seconds of it, but I liked what I heard, plus the guys produced the album themselves. And I love me some independantly recorded music. So I am karmically in the black today.

Wait. I stole a bunch of Equal packets from Starbucks. Like...a bunch. As in, way too many for me to even conceivably use in one cup of coffee. (Well, unless I wanted to spontaneously generate a throbbing tumor). I guess I'm just breaking even...

In case you are interested the CD I bought was from Kalifornia Bears. www.myspace.com/buckweed1111

Don't go yelling at me if you don't like it, but give new music a chance :)

procrasti-nation part duex

2007-04-23T17:57:00.000-07:00

Hahahah. I don't think I have comments displaying on my log (which brings up the question, should I display comments?), so I wanted to make sure this gem gets seen by the 3 to 4 readers that stumble upon this site:

"I might have a margin of talent, but last time I checked, I don't have balls.

A silly human called Salvador Dali said that talent came from the balls. Actually, it comes from the butt cheeks. Give them a good squeeze and you'll be amazed at the work you produce."

--Gorilla Bananas

I loved this comment because

a.) It is about butt-cheek squeezing
b.) It used the word "butt" instead of "buns" or..."fanny". God, I almost gagged just typing that.
c.) It mentions Salvador Dali, who rocks
d.) His mustache was an entity unto itself
e.) It reminded me of the time I was in Paris and decided to eat an ENTIRE baguette in the 10 minutes it took to walk to the Salvador Dali museum. When I got inside there was an exhibit that featured a room with all kinds of weird objects and lights and Salvador's voice was saying something in Spanish over the speakers and as all the blood left my head and rushed to my stomach, I was pretty sure I began to hallucinate that the chairs and table were doing a little box step waltz.
f.) I did not make that story up!

Anyway, thank you Gorilla, for making my day. Also, check out gorilla's site, in the minute I took to scan it, I found pictures of The Beatles, Pamela Anderson, that I Dream of Jeannie lady as well as references to divorce, zoos and feminism and the female gorilla. Esentially its a buffet of information for any inter nets lover.

pierced

2007-04-23T17:38:00.000-07:00

Here is the kind of lip ring I am considering getting. Mom and Dad, if you are reading this, don't freak out. Or actually, DO freak out so that you have it all out of your system by the time you come to visit and we can just enjoy ourselves.

I have been on a big tattoo and piercing kick lately. And by "kick" I mean, I have been obsessively researching and thinking about all the tattoos and possible piercings I want to get. Find it strange that a 24 year old out of college is just now starting to get more into tattoos and piercings (I already have 2 of each)? Well, consider the fact that I am no longer working for Innitech or Pennetrode AND I am basically a college student for the next oh, five years, so all those years I spent not getting something embedded in my flesh because I expected to be a cubicle monkey were for nothing!! Oh well. I'll put up some tattoo ideas soon. Because I require the opinions of strangers to make decisions for me.

Speaking of....who are yunz voting for in 2008?

P.S. BIG UPS to my good blog friend Big Daddy, for pointing out that you can embed pictures into your post very easily. I have been using Picasa this entire time, which sucks. And I feel like an idiot. But oh well.

procrasti-nation

2007-04-22T14:28:00.000-07:00

Sigh. Right now I should be finishing up my short fiction story and then moving quickly and efficiently onto Biology labs and Chemistry reading. But I am not doing that. Somewhere between 19-22 I lost my ability to work for hours on end, drop everything, go to the bar, come back tipsy and then pick back up on my homework. Yes, I used to do that! Now a couple beers just makes me want to sleep and when I do wake up, I want to sit around in my sweats and putz around on the internet. Like I'm doing now :)

The problem is that majority of my life is centered around science and tests and work and domestic stuff .... but the majority of my interests and talents are in writing, music, art, movies, etc. So when I sit down to do what I am supposed to do, I end up day dreaming about the stuff I want to do.
I have this mile-long list of books I want to read and movies I want to see and albums I want to buy, not to mention a string of ideas about art projects and stories I want to create. But at the end of the day, my time is spent on picking up the chunks of foam my dog spit up after eating a novelty football.

I am fascinated by people that spend their lives doing things like writing, painting, making music. What makes them different than us working schmucks? Talent? Testicular fortitude? The ability to live off of ramen and self-pity? I might have a margin of talent, but last time I checked, I don't have balls. Dammit. I keep hoping that I will run into this "sign" that will basically say, "You are meant to be a writer! Stop fucking around and just do it already!" But every time I turn on the TV, it just tells me there will be traffic on the 5 and every time I look into my cereal bowl, it only says, "I'm just oatmeal, you idiot." No signs there.

And you, dear blog reader, are probably sick of me whining about this too. "Write something funny about how paranoid you are of people realizing how bad you smell when you are on a plane!" you're thinking. "Tell us about how your dog mistook your leg for a fence post and started to pee on it!" "The only reason I come to this website is to laugh at your misfortune and remind myself that my life is much better than yours!!"

And you're right, reader! I should just shut up and write about brushing my teeth and then immediately eating garlic bruschetta and gagging. Or how I got through an entire day at school before I realized their were potato chip crumbs in my hair....from when I ate potato chips in bed the night before. That's my true talent!!! Making people feel better about themselves!!!! But I'll still keep you posted on the writing. And the new website. Just in case I get a sign.

LAST POST FEB 16!?! Whatjaafjdaiodjj393890jfakl?!

2007-04-22T14:11:00.000-07:00

Yikes. I'd say that I'm acting like an alcoholic lover with the promises of change and then the rank breath of promises broken...but I think I've already used that analogy before...after the like, 7th time I said I'd start posting more and then didn't. Hahahaha, doh.

Anyway, yeah. Here we are in April. Grad school has sucked most of my youthful zest, energy and time. On the upside, I can tell you anything you want to know about cellular respiration AND neural transmission (beta blockers, synapse receptors, etc). About 2 months ago at work they took away our internet access. GASP. CHOKE. I think that was probably 90% my fault, but still!! So that took away a big fat chunk of time I used to be able to spend perusing my favorite sites and pretending to update mine.

The bright light at the end of this dark tunnel is that school is over June 5th!!!!! And I have decided to not take classes this summer so I can devote myself to writing and my precious crappy website. I am planning to actually leave the confines of Blogger.com and strike out on my own, into a new website. This could all be very exciting. Or it could be a fantastic disaster but either way, stay tuned!!

une question

2007-02-13T11:25:00.000-08:00

Is there anything in the world better than soup?!?

I didn't think so.

I am planning to post something soon. Promise. Also, I have begun to write a novel. Really! Stop laughing!! You jerks!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2007-01-29T20:45:00.000-08:00

My name is Yellow Mustard Girl and I am addicted to exclamation marks.
And emphasizing things with italics.
And smiley faced emoticons. :D
And pictures of baby animals.

I can't live without passion!

pop a go go

2007-01-29T20:10:00.000-08:00

I like music. I wouldn't go as far as to say I am an audiophile...mostly because I'm not totally convinced that isn't a felony in some Midwestern states. I do not touch dirty music, ok??!Anyway, I am trying to be more open to all forms of music and accepting of everyone's tastes. The jaded, world-weary YMG of college got pissed off when a band I liked suddenly became popular and started getting Top 40 radio play. Back then, I thought it was because I was an elitist. Luckily, the self-medicating YMG of today is too hopped up to be bitter. And now I realize the real reason I get pissed is because when a band gets popular, their damn concert tickets shoot up from $12 to $60!! I better get a lap dance for that much chinga. And a t-shirt is 30 bucks now?!?! What is it made out of, Justin Timberlake and champagne dreams? oy!

But anyway, I try to give all music a chance (except for Big & Rich or Tiny and Smalls or whatever the hell that country band is. That top hat is NOT amusing!!) but mostly stick to my beloved indie rock. Oh indie rock, your name is almost as vague and all encompassing as "emo" which itself was coined by a drunken hobo during a bar fight and even then no one knew what it meant. I know, I know, indie music can be a little out there...a little pretentious...a little "grad student pretending to be poor and 'real' while carrying around a $300 ipod and an extra hot, venti soy latte with 2 pumps of vanilla and three Splenda. Splenda, not Equal, dammit!"

Back to indie, however. To me, that includes everything from whimsical, wistful Sufjan Stevens to bloodthirsty, pretending-to-be-angry My Chemical Romance. Quite the expanse of musical territory. I like music with substance; rich, colorful lyrics and beautiful melodies and complicated, lush soundscapes and bitchin' guitar solos. No fluff, no filler, no mercy! Music is an experience! It should be listened to with a purpose! It shouldn't cost 99 cents a song because that is deceptively cheap until you've bought 80 songs in a row and bounce your rent check!

So imagine my embarrassment when I went to an Ozma show recently (the kindred band of Weezer, the patriarchs of indie) and the opening bands "cute is what we aim for" and "HelloGoodbye" got me tapping my feet and bobbing my head! If you are not familiar with these bands, turn on MTV. No, ha! ha! ha! This isn't a joke, I swear. I know they haven't played music videos since 1987, but if you wait until the commercial break between The Hills and Date my Mom, they often play a clip of some hot and trendy band. And it don't get trendier than hyper-synthed, cutesy-ironic dance music like HG. The kids went CRAZY for hellogoodbye, they knew every word and shrieked and wiggled and convulsed along.

Being a grizzled old cow, this kind of public display of enjoyment normally gets my goat. But that night, it was infectious. By the last song I was singing along (you know, the old "mumble the verses, scream the choruses" trick) and dancing in the confetti and balloons that poured down at the end. CONFETTI! My achilles heel! I can't ever say no to confetti. I'd like to see ANYONE try to frown when confetti is around. Hey, that's catchy. I should make that into a t-shirt.

So after the show I went out and bought their 4 song EP, even with two of the songs being remixes of each other. Normally remixes piss me off. They're like prequels and Wayans Brothers movies: generated purely from the blackest pits of human misery and greed. But I bought it anyway and played it all the time. Pretty soon I couldn't start my morning commute without "Shimmy Shimmy Quarter Turn". Inevitably, my morning fix wasn't enough and I had to move to harder shit... their full length album. I actually ponied up 10 dollars of my hard-earned Christmas gift iTunes cash for it! And I listen to it compulsively. I sing the keyboard parts. I bop, for cripes sake. What has happened to me? Aren't I the girl that wept at back-to-back Radiohead concerts?? No? Yeah, you're right. I'm the girl that spilled my beer on someone's head at the concert. Sorry! but seriously, who sits DOWN at a concert??

Back to the point...don't I swoon to Morrissey and scream with The Mars Volta?? (but not Sparta, blech. talk about bad end of the stick) I used to go to Black Flag concerts and pump my fist for political consciousness. Now I gyrate for power pop and dream of a world where every child gets more orange sherbert. sigh. I guess in this crazy MySpaced, blog-saturated, Bluetooth-enabled, reduced trans-fat world of fear and overexposure, I couldn't help but crave something sweet and simple.

YES! How good was that last sentence? Fuck yeah, it's Readers Digest Good! No, no, wait....National Public Radio Good. oooh, nice. anyway, moral of the story...go buy the new HelloGoodbye CD and also, start researching ways that I can earn money for schilling HelloGoodbye on my blog.

when a part of you dies, you can't be expected to be creative

2007-01-21T22:54:00.000-08:00

First the Steelers lose the playoffs. Then Cowher retires as head coach. Now New England has lost to Peyton "I'm the Male Version of Carmen Electra meaning I will Whore Myself out for any Product that will Feature me in a Commercial" Manning and the Colts. I feel hollow and crispy inside....like my soul is a big pork rind or something. Why go on?

Anyway, I'm going to curl up under the kitchen sink with a bottle of Amaretto and half a box of Girl Scout cookies until the Super Bowl blows over. I'll also try to think up some things to post about that don't involve me bitching for the 7000th time about my appearence or lack of grooming skills. I've learned from Sex and the City that my whining is a "defense mechanism." I also learned how to make a "Flirtini": pineapple juice, vodka and champagne. Oh, those girls are like the slutty advice-giving aunts I never had (thanks to child-protection services).

Bye for now. Go Bears!!!!!!!

housekeeping

2007-01-20T12:16:00.000-08:00

Umm....

It's probably time to revamp and tart-up the old website....if only I had a monkey paw that granted me wishes...

But in lieu of that, can anyone tell me how to at least get rid of/block those damn annoying spam posts? I can't take the rollercoaster of joy and despair when I see 100 posts but then realize only two are from non-perverts....or five posts if you include the perverts that read my blog. Ba-zing!!!!

But seriously. The first person to suggest a workable solution will receive a bundt cake, autographed by me.

trumpets! confetti! mild enthusiasm!

2007-01-20T12:11:00.000-08:00

<><><>

I.

am.

back.

What, no one cares!?!? Oh that's right, I completely dropped off the face of the planet for several months and abandoned the blogs of the few poor saps that liked to visit mine. I felt a surge of vain glee when I saw my last post had 34 comments!! People MISSED me!!! My blog was important!!! I had a purpose!!!!!!! But then I saw it was just those damn spam posts for penile implants or sexy Korean exchange students or sexy penises learning Korean or something.
Sigh.

Well, the only thing left to do is crawl my way back up to the near bottom, where I reigned as queen of the mole people. I have made a new year's resolution (I've made several actually...#1. Eat more Snickers Pie) that I want to spend more of my LIFE doing things I enjoy and that I may have a passable talent at. Don't get me wrong, I love going back to school for PT (refer to posts 1-103 in which I explain I am a GIANT DORK) but I completely abandoned things like writing and reading blogs. Or other more obscure "talents" I possess like singing, acting, being creative, wearing a jaunty hat, using words like "jaunty" with complete seriousness and lighting up the world with my smile.

So anyway, that's my plan. I'm going to be 25 soon and just as sure as people order the big fries but drink the diet Coke, I am feeling the quarter-life crisis siren call. I want to do more cool shit and stop wrapping up my life in homework and regular work and the rising price of lip balm and kicking myself for saying "You too" to the waiter when he told me to enjoy my meal.(I do that so freaking often I should just start adding..."in the future" to save a little face. "You enjoy that meal too......in the future")

Of course I spew empty promises on a professional level but I'm going to give it an honest shot. So hopefully I'll be bloggin and commentin and shimmyin on a regular basis. I had so much good material logged up on scraps of paper and flesh but sadly I had to burn them all in order to keep warm. You don't believe me?! It IS FREEZING IN SAN DIEGO motherfuckers!!!!!! It SNOWED IN PALM SPRINGS last week. You don't believe in global warming?!?! Then I invite you* to fly to San Diego and sleep on my couch WITHOUT A BLANKET. You wouldn't last an hour. You sicken me.

well, ta!

*Farcical invitation only. Actually arrival at my premises will result in swift blowtorching to the fleshy portions of your body.

ad naseum

2006-10-10T21:18:00.000-07:00

today i woke up before dawn drove to class (late again) sat through Biology, aced a quiz, got a call from my lawyer (I have to go to an arbitration hearing right after Christmas, what yuletime joy), totally fucked up my physics problem set, cursed Newtons fig-eating soul, went to physics lab, messed around with a frictionless plane (now I understand the physics behind air hockey...that probably won't help me at Dave and Busters), drove to Walmart, bought a new Simpson's DVD, spent entirely too much time deciding over ink cartridges and dog food (I do that all the time at Walmart, even though my brain is screaming JUST GET THE CHEAP STUFF AND LEAVE, YOU FOOL!), came home, vaccumed and sprayed the carpet for fleas after I found one on my leg (AGAIN), decided to spray my house again for bugs, stumbled upon an enormous spider right. next. to. my. pillow. My PILLOW. THE PLACE I PUT MY SOFT, UNPROTECTED HEAD FOR 6-8 HOURS. Screamed like a drag queen for a full minute and then spent the next five minutes trying NOT to think about whether or not the spider had been there while I was sleeping (I decided it hadn't), gave up on the bug massacre, started writing up formal lab report, found an ant crawling near the computer, then another and then another and then another, started to go mad, tried to kill ants, there were too many, contemplated the effects of Raid on a hard drive, abandoned the computer, went to the laptop, finished my formal report, made some delicious miso soup, added too much spinach, fished a half-pound of spinach out of the soup, washed some dishes, discovered mouse droppings on the oven and counter, realized that despite traps and an exterminator we still have mice, realized that I'm living in conditions similar to a crack house, made some tea, opened my blog and that brings us to now. Now I'm going to put in my Season 3 Simpsons DVD and laugh away my bug-infested, homework-saturated troubles away.

PS. Check out today's Questionable Content!!! For secret identity purposes, I can't tell you how this particular comic relates to me, but I'm sure a few of you can figure it out. (PPS. It has nothing to do with the hot lesbian love triangle, sorry).

death becomes me

2006-09-27T14:09:00.000-07:00

I'm sure that recently, you've been asking yourself...late at night..."Why, why hasn't YMG been posting lately? There must be a good explanation! Only a plausible story, rooted in reality and full of heart-wrenching content will placate me!" Then later, as you drift off to sleep, you'll think, "What the hell does placate mean? Why am I asking myself questions out loud?! WHOSE PAJAMA BOTTOMS AM I WEARING!!??"
Don't worry my little paranoid peaches. I have a good reason. I just got a little old case of the bubonic plague. You know, just a run of the mill bout of the Great Black Death. Nothing a few hours in the Electric Needle Hut can't fix!!
But for serious, I've been really freaking sick. Luckily I don't have any time for old-fashioned, "Western medicine" treatments like bed rest or fluids. No, I prefer the Eastern methodology. Eastern Germany, that is. Yup! I'm following the classic Communist regime for getting better: extremely little sleep, big heaping spoonfuls of stress and arsenic and a generous amount of fear that I am going to horribly fail (all my exams).
I can feel my lymph nodes shrinking already! By shrinking I mean swelling. And by swelling I mean detaching from my neck and free floating around my body. And by free floating, I mean colliding violently with my other organs. Hooray alternative medicine!!!
Anyway, sorry for the absence. I've been percolating a lot of humor though, so expect an onslaught of hilariousness ... soon..ish. I can't make you any deadline promises...everytime I go to post something I start to feeling incredibly weak and I have to rest my enormous, mucus-filled head on the keyboard for a few min93q-[pf8iakkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk

YMG secrets

2006-09-11T12:32:00.000-07:00

The title should read, "YMG secrets" with the italics meaning a whisper...just like they do it in those Conan O'Brien bits. I have been a devoted Conan fan since 8th grade. But I realized something after watching that "guy falling down a mountain in a kayak" skit for the 100th time: If you were to randomly select one episode of Conan and watch it, you would probably think it was a very unfunny show. But if you could somehow view an average of alll of his shows, then you'd think it's freaking hilarious. That's my justification for why I still watch it, night after night. Also, I want to mother Conan O' Brien's pasty little baby. (Even in spite of the fact that I'm STILL bitter about Andy Richter leaving the show).

Anywho, here are a few of my most shameful secrets, for you mocking pleasure:

1. I really, really like the TV shows, "Reba" and "Girlfriends". If you do not know what shows I'm talking about, I salute you. You are a far more couthe and intelligent being than I. If you do know what shows I'm talking about, then...HA! Welcome to trash-town, whitey!
Both shows are on the WB or the CW or the WNBA or whatever. I don't watch them religiously per se, but let's just say...if they come on, I won't shriek and frantically scramble for the remote to change the channel like I do with soap operas or ANYTHING on Lifetime (including the commercials on Lifetime). Ew, I feel dirty after typing Lifetime twice.

2. I have a birthmark on my left forearm that is shaped like a brain. Seriously...it forms a perfect brain ... it even has the cerebellum sticking out at the bottom, and everything! (Someday I'll scan a picture of it but for now you'll just have to take my word). Anyway, for many many years I did not consider my brain a birthmark. It was the brain that was on my arm, just as much as my nose is on my face. Eventually, I started to notice other people had birthmarks...but it still took me a few years to finally make the connection. "Wait a minute. You mean...my brain is...just...a birthmark?!" I was very upset about this epiphany for a long time. Luckily I have come to love my forearm brain again and have been working on making it do little dances when I flex.

3. When I was little I thought that Burger King was actually "Burger Cane" and Pizza Hut was "Pizza Hot." Which is cute and all, until my mother told me that I was wrong. I adamantly, militantly disagreed with her. It wasn't just an adorable little speech nuance anymore, I truly believed that I was privy to information that my mom wasn't. I could hear it was Pizza Hot. My poor mom was just another foolish plebian, deluded into thinking it's Pizza Hut. Doesn't Pizza Hot make more sense?? I would go on for hours lecturing my mother, "Pizza is hot, so obviously it's Pizza HOT, Mom. GEEZ." I was a toddler with a superiority complex.
Obviously at four, my reading skills weren't that developed; so my poor Mom really had no way of proving to me that I was wrong. Nonetheless, her gentle insistence planted a seed of doubt in my brain. For about 2 weeks after that, everytime a BK or Pizza Hut commercial came on, I would run to the TV and put my ear up against the speaker. I would strain and strain to hear the announcer say "Cane" and "Hot". I begrudgingly admitted defeat a short time later. (Secretly though, I still harbored the feeling that I was right. Until I learned how to read. Then I felt like a big jackass.)

The moral of the story is...if you are a four-year-old egotistical stubborn jackass...you will eventually grow up to be an egotistical stubborn jackass that can tie your own shoes.

observation of an observation

2006-09-07T14:44:00.000-07:00

While I was compulsively re-reading my published post, I laughed out loud when I got to the line, "I am a withered old crone." This is disturbing in two parts because 1.) I laughed out loud at something I had just written nary two minutes before and b.) I have continued to laugh out loud for 15 minutes when I think about the line, "I am a withered old crone." For some reason, that is the most hilarious sentence in the history of sentences.

(With the exception of "If it wasn't for that horse, I wouldn't have spent that year in college.")

PS. How cool is it that Lewis Black has a MySpace page?

Answer: SUPER COOL.

observations

2006-09-07T13:41:00.000-07:00

1.) I actually function somewhat ok on 2 hours of sleep. I think it's because my heart rate was constantly racing last night thanks to an evening full of stress: my latest vermin discovery...MICE; my dog deciding that instead of using our ENORMOUS YARD, he'd rather poop on the kitchen floor; our neighbors security floodlight that kept turning on in the middle of the night, convincing me that there was a serial killer in our yard about, oh, SEVEN TIMES. So kids, stop relying on No-Doz to get you through those all-nighters...just start being bathed in a cold sweat and chock full of adrenaline for 12 hours. It's like MAGIC!

2.) There are a lot of people wearing formal shorts. Which is disturbing because I'm starting to think that my original hypothesis (people are wearing formal shorts as some sort of unspoken, collective joke) is wrong and people are actually wearing these things seriously. Formal. Shorts.
It's a contradiction in terms!!

3.) People in the nicest cars (Jaguars, BMWs, Kompressors) are always the ones that cut you off on the freeway, causing your blood pressure to rise with rage....and they are also always the ones that honk and curse and flash there lights when GOD FORBID you put your car in front of theirs...also causing your blood pressure to rise with paranoia..."Am I a bad driver? Did I just cut that guy off? But I thought there was room! I had my turn signal on!!" Either way they cause bile to eat a hole in your stomach which causes you to go to the doctor, which gets the doctor richer which allows him to buy an expensive car that he will cut you off in. It's the ciiiircle...the circle of liiiife...

4.) I go from zero to rank in about 4 minutes. Seriously. One trip across campus today and I smelled like a wet yeti.

5.) Even though I am 24 and have been out of highschool for 6 years, I still feel that insane pressure to have people like me...to have the attractive, "cool" people talk to me. I feel rejected if I am not asked to be in someone's group if we have to form them in class...in short, I still actually CARE what total strangers think of me and am STILL convinced that they are giving me more than 30 seconds of thought. Ugh. Oh, I'm also still a giant dork.

6.) Speaking of being 24... the age difference between me and most of the student body at Mesa isn't as bad or obvious as I expected. Really, the biggest difference between me and my classmates is that they are fresh-faced, youthful people with their entire lives ahead of them ... and I am a withered old crone.

7.) I am incapable of writing short posts or concise sentences, for that matter. And I'm just OCD enough to want to make up 3 more fake observations

8.) So I can have

9.) An even number in my post.

10.) Ahhh, much better.

school daze

2006-09-05T09:41:00.000-07:00

the deal so far:
Moved into the new house last weekend and in less than seven days I discovered ants in my bed, clothes AND hair; I killed 20+ spiders in varying degrees of ickyness; my dog and therefore my carpet got fleas, I dodged a SKUNK wandering around on the sidewalk (at night thank goodness); and I got too intoxicated on Friday and Saturday, the two days I had reserved for doing responsible things like....killing ants and bathing. Doh.
Today is my first day of grad school and I am typing this from the learning center computer lab. hooray! My first class was bio; we spent most of the lecture trying to figure out the contents of a mystery box by using the scientific method. My favorite part was when one kid determined the object inside was 'not alive' because the box "didn't smell." Then the teacher said she may have wrapped the living item in plastic wrap to keep its putresence from permeating the box, blowing his hypothesis out of the water. This is your tax dollars at work, people. Suckers!

Anyway I don't have much time to enthrall you with these stories...I have overpriced lab supplies to buy and chapters to highlight instead of reading and freshman to tip over. I am 6 years older than most of the kids here, by the way. The funniest part is that most of the girls wear more makeup on their faces than I own in my home. SO I actually look younger than them anyway. Oh, also because I haven't hit puberty yet. I'm still in the larvae state, according to my doctor. Wait a minute, none of this is funny. I want sex organs! Not fair :(

I am feeling antsy because we are still working on getting internet in our house so I haven't read my blogs in awhile and as you may have gathered that makes me VERY AGITATED. I feel like I'm missing out on something extrememly important when I don't do my daily reads. I don't even want to TALK about TGWAE...I'm probably 50 meals behind...I'll never catch up :( Everyone stop posting!!

Anyway, that's how life has been as of late. Lots of vermin, too much alcohol, a little education and of course, this blog. Not much of a difference, I guess.

Hope you are all doing awesome! Hit me up on MySpace! LOL OMG WTF! L8R <;*

10 Things You May Not Know About Yellow Mustard Girl

2006-09-01T15:25:00.000-07:00

1.) I like yellow mustard on almost anything. Eggs, salads, french fries, tuna, etc. I have been known to hoard mustard packets or stand in front of the fridge and eat mustard off my finger.

2.) The first movie I ever watched was The Land Before Time (I was five and I cried when Littlefoot's mom died. In fact, it gets me choked up just thinking about it now.) Second movie I watched: Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I was also around 5 or 6 and I swear, that was a pivotal moment in the shaping of my personality. Instead of turning into a hot cheerleader with a bad attitude and a nice ass....I turned into a band geek with a taste for British humor. Oops.

3.) I have a complex about parking my car straight. No matter how late I am, I will spend minutes inching in and out of a spot in order to be exactly in the middle of the lines or to have my steering wheel perfectly straight.

4.) In 5th grade, I wanted to sing "I Will Always Love You" for the talent show but my mom (wisely) suggested I do a comedy stand up routine instead. I used some of my own material but I borrowed heavily from a Paula Poundstone video that we got with a box of Pop Tarts. I got an honorable mention award... but then again, so did the kid that covered himself in American flag stickers and sang half the national anthem before dissolving into tears.

5.) I am often mistaken for an Asian man. Not in person, I mean. In person I'm often mistaken for an albino man. What I mean is my first name is of Asian origin and rather genderless to boot, so a lot of people that read my name without seeing me often call me "Mr." on the phone. The funniest part is that I'm a pasty Polish/Slovakian with blonde hair and blue eyes, so people are usually extremely perplexed when they finally meet me in person. They are even more confused when I tell them that my mom wasn't influenced by anything Eastern when naming me. My name actually resulted from copious amounts of gonge and Captain Crunch.

6.) I have a propensity for head injuries. To date, I think I've racked up 6+ mild to moderate concussions. Of course, I never got them because I was doing something dangerous and cool. Most of my concussions happened while doing every day activities like ...opening a jar of pickles. I have been told that multiple head injuries can alter your personality but I haven't experienced any RAAAAAAAAAARRR HULK SMASH!!!

7.) I have mood-ring-esque eyes. My eyes can be anything from yellowish hazel to blue to green to swamp water to red laser beams. My mom often says my eyes are grey...but she also thinks her eyes are gray and they are dark brown. So she's clearly had a stroke or something to affect her color sensing ability.

8.) I have photosensitive hair. My hair is blonde and has been since I was 2 weeks old. If I'm out in the sun for even an hour, the top layer of my hair will bleach to almost white...but the layer underneath will be much darker. It's like a tan-line for my head. My hair will stay white for a little while, then fade again when I'm inside. At any given time my hair is three different colors.

9.) Minutes after getting engaged I was chased down a mountain in pitch black by a pack of coyotes. Ok, this is a slight exaggeration. My husband and I really did climb to the top of Iron Mountain and he did propose and I said yes and then before we got back down the mountain it was dark. The exaggeration is that we heard about 10 coyotes howling their heads off and they sounded like they were getting closer and closer...to the point where we started tearing down the hill, stopping only to pick up a few big rocks as weapons. Maybe the whole thing can be chalked up to auditory illusion and pure weenie-ness, but it's still a funny story.

10.) I hate getting complimented. My severe neurosis usually makes me not believe the compliment and my akwardness makes me seem insincere and ungrateful. I just don't like having people focus their attention on me. Which is rather ironic because I want everyone and their mom to read my blog. I think it's because the nicest thing anyone can say to me is that I'm funny. When someone says I'm really funny, I get giddier than Helen did when Robert Best sent her a message. I think my whole "desiring attention but maintaining anonymity" is one of the weirdest things about me. That and the third arm I have sprouting from my head.

today, as of late

2006-08-31T16:10:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-08-31T15:38:00.000-07:00

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.

blogsploitation

2006-08-30T12:37:00.000-07:00

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!

pretty blogs get all the attention

2006-08-30T11:48:00.000-07:00

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!

guest posting

2006-08-25T12:16:00.000-07:00

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.

cheating

2006-08-21T15:24:00.000-07:00

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

my life would make excellent fodder for a really boring WB sitcom

2006-08-18T11:07:00.000-07:00

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.

second-thought

2006-08-17T13:10:00.000-07:00

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 :)

crisis of the pants

2006-08-17T12:47:00.000-07:00

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.

requisite copious amounts of apologies

2006-08-14T19:42:00.000-07:00

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.

frustrated

2006-08-10T12:48:00.000-07:00

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!!!

misadventures in baking

2006-08-09T13:14:00.000-07:00

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.

oh my god I write long posts

2006-08-08T15:40:00.000-07:00

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.

i'm good enough, i'm strong enough and gosh darn it, people tolerate me

2006-08-07T11:08:00.000-07:00

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....

blogger, why do you torment me so?

2006-08-07T10:55:00.000-07:00

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!!

some wedding pics

2006-07-31T23:27:00.000-07:00

This is Mike and I right after we said our vows. Note Father Creps in the background, giving his blessing.

Ok, this is really our wedding picture. We got married on the train tracks next to the abandoned glass factory in Turtle Creek. Isn't that cute?

this wedding brought to you by the king of beers and the king of kings

2006-07-31T23:25:00.000-07:00

Did you know I got married? Well, I did. It was pretty awesome. It started with a big poofy white dress and ended with my friends singing Journey at a karoake bar. If that isn't marital bliss, I don't know what is.

requiem for a benadryl-ized dream

2006-07-25T09:36:00.000-07:00

I haven't dreamed in a long time, because I haven't really slept more than 5 or 6 hours in probably a month, and I'd wake up every hour or so because Herve sleeps with us and periodically settles himself on my face. last night, at my doctor's recommendation, I slipped into a blissful coma thanks to two little pink benadryl pills. And along with a doped up nocturne, I had some crazy dreams...the best one was this:

I was having this big elaborate wedding and everyone was excited and I was in a red satin dress and part of the ceremony was that I tried on different shoes that my grandma made for me (she actually told me that she was inspired to make shoes by something I wrote in my blog). I was standing in a big sleigh, at the back of the church, flanked by all these littel girls I didn't know in white dresses. I was really excited and then I looked up and saw that I was marrying Rory and thought, "Oh...Rory is going to be my husband?" because I guess up until then I wasn't aware of who my new spouse was.

But then I got this weird feeling and all the sudden I realized....I was already married and I couldn't get married again!! At least not in a church!! So I told my Mom that everyone had forgotten I was married and that I couldn't do the ceremony. She listened intently and then said, "Ok, let me go check if this is true", then she ran out of the room!! This Asian man that I didn't know came up the aisle and started motioning and smiling and I was like, "Oh, oh are we starting now?" because people were still milling around. But he kind of nudged me down the aisle and I knew I had to stall for time, so I said, "I don't know how to walk down the aisle by myself, I need to wait for my mom.

Just as everyone in the church (which was completely white, and decorated in a very "Elvis" style) started to seem concerned, my mom came back in and grabbed me. She ran up and told the priest that everyone was pressuring me to get married and that, "We just can't deal with this right now!" She didn't make any mention that I was already married, more like I had other things on my action-item list and this was not a priority. The priest (who looked like a famous actor; a famous actor with giant eyebrows) said, "I understand." but then he gave me this really mean, judgemental Catholic look and then Rory was crying and I started crying. The worst part is that I was crying because the wedding looked really cool and I had to stop it, not so much that I was already married to Mike and no one (including myself) had seemed to remember this small fact.

This dream is ripe for so many interpretations, I'm not going to even bother. I'm sure most of them are sexual, and not in a kinky fun way, but more like a "secret sexual yearning for priests that look like Elvis" creepy kind of way.

another year, another series of empty promises to myself

2006-07-19T12:52:00.000-07:00

Birthdays always put me in a contemplative mood; once the buzz I get from cupcake frosting wears off, I tend to fall into meditative trance. I think about my life, the past year and what I want to do differently now that I'm a year older. Sometimes I make large goals ("I'm going to run a triathalon this year!") and sometimes I make small goals ("I am going use a fork for at least one meal a day!") but no matter what, I always want to change.
I'd like to think of myself as an continuously evolving entity; every day getting a little smarter, a little better, a little more efficient. Unfortunately that's pretty much a complete lie. I was lucky enough to get through puberty relatively unscathed and I think that took all the effort my body could muster. Now it's on a permanent hiatus... or screen saver, if you will. But you won't. You never do, you bastard.
Luckily, I've never been one to heed the call of reality, so once again, I'm setting some goals for my 24th year:

1. Read a book a week.
Oh god, I couldn't even type that with a straight face. Is it wrong to make a goal that you know is pretty much physically impossible for you to achieve? Oh well. I figure if I aim really really high, when I inevitably fail I might end up settling at something more reasonable, like say, a book a month. But truly, I have so many wonderful books backlogged that I owe it to myself to freaking read them. I'll just have to replace one regular activity in my life with reading, so no time is lost. How long can a human go with out peeing?

2. Get back in shape
You can't tell, but I'm mentally doing quotation fingers as I type "back in shape". I'd physically do them but then I couldn't type, could I, wise guy?? You see, what I regarded as being in shape previously would probably make some of you scoff. "Scoff!" you'd say, "Scoff scoff scoff!" To which I would reply, "Do you need a throat lozenge? You are coughing a lot."
But seriously. There was a time, many months ago, when I was running five miles every day. Where I was lifting weights on a semi-regular basis. Where I was taking 60 minute spinning classes and could still use my legs the next day!!! At some point before the wedding, however, I decided I would look way better if my muscles atrophied themselves into a shapeless goo loosely held together by my skin. And that brings us to today, where I am so out of shape that I gave myself an asthma attack after playing fifteen minutes of soccer. I don't have asthma, people. I am ashamed. But enough dwelling on the past. Today is the future. Er, yeah.

Jen has become so desperate for females to play in a co-ed soccer league with her she actually asked ME if I'd play. Counting the time I played a few weeks ago, I have played a grand total of ONE game of soccer in my life. D'oh! It's not that I don't want to play, it's just that I do not yet grasp any concept of the game (I just figured out the other day that when you teammate gets the ball, you do not run up and hover around them while shouting) and maaaaan, you do a lot of sprinting during a game. But anyway, the point of this paragraph is that I actually swallowed my fear and anxiety and committed to playing soccer. Oy.
Pretty much everyone of my friends out here is athletic; I think that everyone played on organized sports teams in high school, some even in college. So they all easily and eagerly play sport after sport: football, basketball, soccer, full-contact origami, you name it, they'll do it. Except, it seems, for me. Now, I love doing active stuff: hiking, biking, canoeing and kayaking, rock climbing, even just tossing a football around. But the thought of taking an activity and putting together a team of people and competing always brings back memories of gym class shame. I have this complex about stuff, including sports: I feel like if I don't pick up a new skill quickly and then excel at it, I am a failure. Which is pretty hilarious considering I don't really excel at anything at all. Oh man, that isn't hilarious, that's rather depressing. But anyway, if you compound that feeling of personal failure with the additional stress of feeling like you let your teammates down...well, it's too much for my fragile psyche to bear.
Have I waxed on enough about my insecurities and lack of ability in soccer? Have I completely buried my point, which is that I'm joining a soccer league in order to get in shape, no matter how painfully humiliating it is? Good. (You see dear reader, I like to do a lot of smoke and mirror tricks when I play sports; I talk so much about how horrible I am that people don't notice that I'm even more terrible than I claim to be. Or at the very least, I've set the bar so low for myself that people are impressed that I can even walk upright.)
Thus endeth goal number 2.

3. Write...and think more!!
For heaven's sake, I like writing a lot. I'm not really that good, but it brings me pleasure so I should at least try to do it more often. That includes putting more stuff into this-here blog and possibly dipping my toe into the icy waters of creative writing. Now that I'm enrolled back in college, I could probably even take a class. Assuming they can find a way to pry the $200 tuition fee from my miserly claw. I also want to talk with more people about writing and reading books and in general just get some more intellectual stimulation. I'll be getting my brain in shape too! I suspect it has also turned to a mass of goo. (Man, I love the word goo.) Don't get me wrong, I will never shake my love of Simpson's episodes and classic movies, like Super Troopers and Billy Madison. But I fear that I'm using the majority of my brain's capacity to constantly recite lines from Family Guy or Space Balls. Speaking of,

Dark Helmet: Before you die there is something you should know about us, Lone Starr.
Lone Starr: What?
Dark Helmet: I am your father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate.
Lone Starr: What's that make us?
Dark Helmet: Absolutely nothing! Which is what you are about to become.

Oh man, I love that movie. But now I'm going to want to watch the DVD instead of read. Maybe I can find an illustrated book version of the movie at a comic book store. Ooh! Comic books!

Thanks to any of you that read through this entire post. Even I kind of drifted off in the middle there...

Wednesday observations

2006-07-19T11:55:00.000-07:00

1. Today I drove into work and as I pulled into the parking lot, I caught a whiff of what smelled like burning rubber. I didn't think much of it other than, "Wow how come I never noticed this area smells like a heap of burning tires?"A few minutes later, when I couldn't find an empty space, I got back onto the street to attempt a parallel park (nailed it!) and again I smelled that burning rubber smell. I looked down and lo, my emergency break was on. Now Mike and I have both lately been leaving the e-brake on for some reason, and as Jen can attest, I've even driven long stretches of road with it on before noticing anything was wrong. So I had visions of me somehow driving on MULTIPLE HIGHWAYS at 80+ MPH with my emergency brake practically smoking while I shrieked along with my new Muse CD, completely unaware of the trauma my car was enduring. I contemplated going to a mechanic to have them assess the damage and the actual monetary value of my stupidity. However, when I got back in the car to run to Kinko's and back WITHOUT the brake on, I noticed the same smell. So, the good news is I probably am only half as dumb as I had originally thought. The bad news is that area around my office smells like a cross between a fat rendering plant and a burning pile of tupperware.("Once you get used to the it, you'll wonder how you ever lived without the smell of burning pig fat")

2. When I started working as a temp, I followed the office dress code to a T. I liked "business casual", mostly because I loved being able to wear cool grown-up clothes (most of which I acquired at Target. Gratuitous Target plug!!!). Trust me, after 24 months in the same pair of maroon velour track pants, the thought of wearing high heels and button down shirts was thrilling. Anyway, I would dress in my cute little outfits, but even then, I seemed to be overdressed for the office. I didn't really care though. And come Friday, I wore jeans like everyone else; I was never told Friday was a casual day, but I figured it was an unspoken thing. But then I saw people coming on Fridays wearing sweatpants and flip flops. Ok, I thought, I guess they have a very progressive stance on "casual". But then come Monday, I saw people in jeans and t-shirts. At first I resisted, but after a few weeks of getting to work late because I spent time ironing a shirt, I started wearing jeans too. At first it was jeans and nice shoes. But eventually I've deteriorated to what I'm wearing today: A dirty pair of jeans and a t-shirt that says "I Love Carbs" with beat up tennis shoes and my hair in pigtails. I look like I should be perusing the aisles of Hot Topic. The shirt I'm wearing also is on the small side and it tends to ride up and expose a little midriff, which I am mortified over. All day I have been yanking my shirt down and slouching so I don't look like the office slut. But just as I began to think I was the loosest dress code follower in the office, I ran into one of the ladies in accounting, who was wearing a pair of spandex running shorts and a tank top. She looked like she was going out for a jog...and she did!! And THEN, after lunch, she came back from her run and proceeded to walk around the office in her RED SPORTS BRA. I was in shock. And awe. She is in great shape, so it wasn't unpleasant, just...jarring. She looked like she should be curling 20's, not picking up a fax and chatting by the water cooler. So I'm pretty sure this Friday I can show up in my bathing suit and no one would bat an eye. If I could figure out a way to set up a slip n slide, I just might do it!

berfday loot

2006-07-18T12:28:00.000-07:00

Woohoo!!
I'm in a biblio/audiophile heaven!!!

For my birthday, I have already aquired 4 books and 3 CDs! And all before my actual birthday!!
Ok, granted, I bought 3 of those books and 2 of those CDs myself. But they were personal b-day presents. And Mike promised more books and music to come. Eeeeeee!!

I now own the new Muse, Thom Yorke and Gnarls Barkley CDs, as well as The Life of Pi, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time and My Goodness: A Cynics Shortlived Search for Sainthood.

I think at this point, I am honestly looking at a 12+ book backlog. I have a serious problem people. Last night, we stopped into Barnes and Noble to kill sometime; I picked up three books during the walk from the entrance to the back of the store. If I had to average it out, I probably grab books at a rate of one per half second. mother of god.

**Berfday update
My wonderful husband also got me two more books: Crossworld and Spin Sisters PLUS two basil plants, one rosemary and sage plant, and a giant Hawaiin orchid. And at Dave and Busters, Jerry played skeeball on a defective machine that pretty much added 500 points to whatever your score was, so we were able to amass 850 tickets, and I got my very own stuffed Homer doll. Best birthday ever!!!

23.99999

2006-07-17T15:26:00.000-07:00

Some thoughts on turning 24:

1. Woohoo!!
2. Wait, doesn't this mean I'm old?
3. I don't feel old.
4. Well, actually, my back kind of hurts.
5. Gasp!!
6. Well, at least I'm not old old.
7. Like 25.
8. Just kidding!
9. Not really.
10. So what is there to look forward to when you're 24?
11. Nothing.
12. I still can't rent a car.
13. And I still look young enough to get carded for buying like, cough syrup.
14. So, really, this is just a blow-off birthday.
15. Which means I can be happy!!
16. Cause it's an excuse to play skee-ball and get presents!!
17. And eat ice cream cake!!
18. Mmmm, fudgey center and chocolate crumblies.
19. Woohoo!!!
20. Look, I've come full circle! Also, now my list ends at a nice, even number. My OCD is appeased.

Sooo. Tomorrow I am the big two-four. Yikes. I'm not so much freaked out by turning a year older as I am by the fact that another year has already passed. Already!!! I feel like it was just yesterday when I was pummeling the heck out of my birthday pinata and stuffing it's contents into my pockets. (This is a true story.) Time sure seems to have flown. That or my senility is furthering it's icy grip on my brain.

Ten years ago...I was a wee lass, freshly turned fourteen years old. I still remember that day so clearly. I broke open my cocoon with my fuzzy proboscis and squirmed my way into the world, the sun gently drying my embryonic exoskeleton until it shone. I could hardly wait to unfurl my wings from under their armor-like shells and buzz off to find a male to mate with and possibly feast upon for sustenance.

Wait.

That didn't happen on my fourteenth birthday. That was an episode of Nova I watched last night on PBS. Damn PBS!! When will your entertaining yet educational programming stop appropriating my subconscious thought?!?!

So anyway.

Ten years ago
I was an akward fourteen year old freshman dork in the marching band, dating a guy named Mario Siciliano. As you can tell from the name, he was Japanese.
When I think back to what a silly obnoxious little geek I was, I want to go back in time and give Young Me a hug. I'd tell her, "Don't worry...you will get slightly less irritating". Then I'd trick Young Me into giving Current Me 20 bucks for "bus fare". Sucker.

Five years ago
I was 19, just finished my freshman year of college. I felt like I owned the world. I was a dating a very nice guy and I had 700 MP3's that I had gleefully pirated from Napster. Life was good. Unfortunately, this was also when I started waitressing at Pizza Hut. That summer, I was introduced to a breed of people I had never encountered before: The irate and obese white trash family. They were like locusts; they descended upon the lunchtime pizza bar with a fury that was almost mesmerizing. And nauseating. By the end of the summer, it was all I could do not to shriek:
"WHY are you even bothering to ask for the "salad bar"??? We both know that to qualify as a salad, you need to have at least some freaking LETTUCE!! Why don't you just ask if you can glop a pile of bacon bits, cheddar cheese and ranch dressing on a plate and shovel it into your mouth?? Oh, and don't worry, your deep fried mozzarella sticks will be out here well before we serve your stuffed crust pizza with triple cheese and meat. And the extra containers of grease and oven drippings. Shall I bring out the defibulator now, or after your left arm goes numb???"
(Note the use of red, to indicate rage).
It was during these three months I came to know the true meaning of the word "jaded".
Wait, actually, I worked at Dairy Queen the year before that, so I guess I was really quite used to having my spirit broken by disgust.

One year ago
I was engaged, so still ankle deep in wedding planning (shudder), we hadn't bought Herve yet, so I had yet to discover the joys of pulling dog hair out of my mouth every 5 minutes. I was still working as a project manager ... wait..sorry... I almost threw up in my mouth a little. Ok I'm better. I don't remember much else to be honest. It was blurry year. but I do clearly remember my birthday party, where my awesome boyfriend gave me a pinata, which I had ALWAYS wanted. He filled it with candy and army men and bouncy balls and I whacked the heck out of that paper mache donkey. It. was. awesome. And happily, I still get to relive that party to this day; I am still finding chunks of ancient Now and Laters in every crevice of our apartment.
So what will this year hold for me? I'm not sure, but given my past record, there will be a lot of sleeping, eating, and going to work. As for the other fluff, I guess only time will tell.

But I will worry about all that later. Tonight I am going to play skeeball. Mazel Tov!!

a survey a day

2006-07-11T10:41:00.000-07:00

Keeps me from coming up with an original topic to post about...yay!

I keep seeing this survey/question thing everywhere. I think a new version crops up every 2 weeks. Why do we love these things so much? What an exercise in self-indulgence. Here's mine!

Grab the book nearest to you, turn to page 18 and find line 4:
I am at work, so I am not near any books. I can however, turn to page 18 in my MESA COLLEGE FALL 2006 CLASS SCHEDULE and it has...well about 50 listings for English classes. How anti-climactic.
Stretch your left arm out as far as you can, what do you find?
A tape dispenser. Is that what it's called? For some reason that doesn't sound right. A tape holding dock?
What is the last thing you watched on TV?
The 11PM Simpsons on Fox. It's pretty sad, but I feel very OFF if I don't watch both the 7PM and 11PM Simpson episodes...every day. (The episode was the one where Homer steals free cable...a classic)
Without looking, guess what time it is.
10:15AM (Isn't if funny that when you are told to do something"without looking", you immediately want to look? I had to hold my eyeballs in place with my index fingers.
Now look at the clock, what is the actual time?
10:12AM.
With the exception of the computer, what can you hear?
The lady in the office next to me. For about 3 weeks I thought there was a man next door until one day when I saw this lady open her mouth and that man voice came out. Seriously, it's freaking weird. She also kind of looks like a guy...a guy that wears green eyeshadow and sweatshirts with iron-on pictures of dogs. I am digressing. Kids, don't smoke!
When did you last step outside?
This morning, while walking Herve. Did I say walking? I meant being DRAGGED by Herve. My upper body strength has deteriorated to the point where my 20lb dog can nearly wrench my shoulder from it's socket.
Before you started this survey, what did you look at?
I was randomly scrolling through blogs and found this "survey", which I have seen on several people's online journals now, including the very funny Ramin. If it weren't for online journaling, I would get work done. That's a very chilling thought.
What are you wearing?
A tub of mayonaise and a smile.
Did you dream last night?
Yes. About a tub of mayonnaise. That's what happens when you eat an entire tub of mayonnaise and then chase it with Peach Schnapps right before bed. It's a little cocktail I like to call, "Disgusting".
When did you last laugh?
This morning while walking Herve. He peed on a fire hydrant. Did he realize how stereotypically DOG he was being??? It just cracked me up! Although, truth be told, I laugh when anyone urinates on curbside objects.
What is on the walls of the room you are in?
Nothing. I am in a lonely, barren little hovel.
Seen anything weird lately?
This morning I thought I found a second head sprouting out of the top of my shoulder. It was actually just a freckle in the shape of my head (if my head was perfectly round and brown). False alarm. Again. Sigh.
What do you think of this quiz?
This is a quiz? Who the hell is grading this thing?! Oh man, I'm totally going to fail Answering Personal Questions 101.
What is the last film you saw?
I was going to say Hotel Rwanda (excellent film) but I just remembered this FREAKY movie I watched on KUSI two Saturdays ago. It was one of those obscure movies from the mid-80's that they always show on affiliate stations in the afternoon. I think it was called The Hotel New Hampshire. It had Jody Foster and Rob Lowe and honest to god revolved heavily around incest, communist pornography and family values. It was like watching my early childhood on film!!
If you turned into a multi-millionaire overnight, what would you buy?
I'd buy my parents a new house in woods, my brother Ian a college education, my best friends plane tickets to Europe, Mike a private recording studio, and myself...the entire DVD collection of the Simpson's episodes. Honestly.
If you could change one thing about the world, regardless of guilt and politics, what would you do?
I know it's extremely hackneyed, but I would eradicate world hunger. It's beyond absurd that America has the largest number of billionaires (276...compared to the next largest, Japan with 26), that we spend millions and millions on making our cell phones smaller and our iPods more user-friendly...and yet there are children that actually die every day because they can't even get a mouthful of rice. I think it's a global responsibility to ensure that every human being gets their basic human rights. steps off of soap box
Do you like to Dance? Sober?
I love to dance. Especially in public, in situations that do not warrant dancing. Ask my friends. I make them uncomfortable :)
Imagine your first child is a girl, what do you call her?
Oh oh oh, every girl has this picked out already:I would name my first girl Sophia and my second girl Daisy.
Imagine your first child is a boy, what would you call him?
My first son would be James (J-a-m-e-s. NOT JIM) and my second son would be Ezra. (or Chase if I let Mike name him in a post-epidural haze)
Would you ever consider living abroad?
Absolutely. Mike and I talk about it a lot. There is a very good chance that if Mike requested it, we could live in Australia or Europe for a year. I'm not sure if I'd be let into Australia, I'm known to proliferate very quickly and destroy acres of land in a matter of days. It's a hobby.
What would you want God to say to you when you reach the pearly gates?
It's about time you showed up. Have an ice cream sandwich.

A Public Service Announcement

2006-07-06T11:05:00.000-07:00

Dearest handful of readers,

The following post was inspired by my current workplace. It is a mortgage office that is about 95% female. So, I'm talking a lot about food, and weight, and menstrating, and burritos. I usually try to avoid posts skewed for women, but like my grandma* always says, "You can't fight genetics with a butane torch!" Hahahha, oh grandma*, you crazy old bat.

But I digress. The post is also pretty long, so maybe grab a soft drink or something. I will try to write about a gender-neutral topic tomorrow.

*This grandmother is not my actual grandma. She is a fictional character created to aid a joke. Grandma, if you're reading this...send more peanut butter cookies.

my diet tips

2006-07-06T09:59:00.000-07:00

You know what I tend to sneak in a lot when writing? Comments about weight. And food. And dieting. I am not overweight. But I do have a freakish relationship with food. And I am a female. Females are obnoxious about their bodies. We loooove to talk about particular body parts and how we need to get in shape and how much we weighed at a certain time. Personally, I enjoy talking about how large my butt was at certain times in my life. Some people measure their lives in milestones and achievements. I measure mine in ass volume. For instance, I remember quite clearly that on May 5th, 2004 my ass pretty big. Oh, and I graduated from college. Pathetic? Ass-o-lutely. Word play! Aren't I cheeky? Pun!! Isn't that fun? Rhyming!! Better stop before I start using anagrams.

Well, anyway. This post is going to be my random musings on weight and stuff. (Are musings ever not random? I have never really had a specific series of musings. Is it muses? Wait, no that's the plural for moose.)

Diet tip #1. How does one "gear up" for a new, intense, sure-to-succeed weight loss plan? Why, by bingeing on all kinds of foods he or she will be "swearing off" for the next 3 weeks, or 3 months or 3 decades. FOOL PROOF, I TELL YOU.

Yeah, I do that often. Well, not often, simply because I tend to go long stretches of time successfully avoiding all cardiovascular activity. If I could get my hands on a Rascal, I'd quickly atrophy into Jabba-the-Girl.

Anyway, on the occasions when I am really serious, however, I do this. Its just so stupid. How many times have I said, "This is the last (cheesecake or burrito or cheeseburger) I am having for THREE MONTHS!" And two weeks later I get my period and I order a cheeseburger burrito with a side of cheesecake. "Oh ok ok, THIS is my last burrito. I swear!!!" Actually, I don't say those words, I usually just emit a series of grunts while rolling around in my dinner.

The problem is, I have these "triggers". Girls know what I'm talking about. It's the food that creates a chemical reaction in your body which causes all your cells to scream in unison, "Eat this food or we will get malignant on your ass!!"

For me, that food is usually cereal. I truly, truly cannot keep a box of cereal in the house for longer than 2 days. The concept of having ONE bowl in the morning for like, seven consecutive days, is completely lost on me. I usually have one bowl every hour, on the hour, until I run out of milk. Sigh. I have also been known to eat my cereal with water. That's a cry for help, right there.

Tortilla chips do that too, or goldfish...or really...anything doesn't have a concrete portion size. Oh sure, the package may say that 7 tortilla chips is a serving...but really...who eats SEVEN INDIVIDUAL CHIPS and then closes up the bag and goes, "Mmm! Satisfying!!"

Oh.
You do? You suck.

So anyway I try to stay away from those. But there are other things too....foods that for some reason, set off this flag in my head that there is a party in my mouth!! and that now that I've eaten this food, well it's game over, man. Game over. How can I be expected to eat "healthy" now!? This body tainting food is usually a giant bean burrito, or a Carl's Jr cheeseburger, or pizza. Sometimes I eat all three at the same time; I roll them up and skewer the whole thing with tent posts.
I often crave these things when I'm stressed or emotionally unstable. I want a cheeseburger. Cheeseburger will make everything better. And fries!! And an oreo shake!! YES! EDIBLE LOVE!!!

This is the part of the post where the boys go to the gym and play kickball while the girls have a "chat".

I try to avoid talking about my period in the blog or... in any situation, ever. It's not even about being lady-like or not grossing out boys. It's just 'cause...well, ew. But anyway, I have to say lately my period (I'm going to start calling it " my era" or "my epoch". Much more poetic) has caused me to eat in a very bizarre manner.

For most of my life the idea of PMS was foreign to me. I didn't get moody, didn't get cravings...at most I got some vague lower back crampiness. I used to roll my eyes at girls that were bitchy and wanted chocolate..."They're being so ridiculous," I'd think, "they're just blowing this whole PMS thing out of proportion." Weellll, I guess menstrual karma has caught up to me because for the past year or two I transform into this snappy, whiney, lethargic, binge-eating freakshow whenever the miracle of womanhood descends upon my life. I'll be in an absolutely rotten mood for no reason. I'll want to eat soft pretzels, and nothing but soft pretzels, for 72 hours straight. Walmart commercials make me cry. It's hell. (And you experienced PMS-ers can laugh or roll your eyes at me. I deserve it.)

Diet Tip #2. Good intentions burn calories! Guilt burns even more!!!

I always come out of the "healthy" starting block sprinting! I love making anal little lists and I have a whole complex "plan" in my head about how I'm going to eat and when I'm going to exercise.
I'll eat stuff like yogurt and oatmeal and baby carrots. I'll do 90 minutes of cardio. I will feel empowered! And then the next day, I am sore and bitchy and eating an oreo and cookie dough blizzard.

yeah.

That's pretty much how I roll.

I'm kind of like an abusive lover when it comes to my body. At first I'm all like, "Come on baby, I'll do a good job this time. I'll eat this salad and you know I'll get to the gym. I'm going to do it right this time, I swear."

And inevitably two days later my body goes, "Fuck this! Get me a burrito, woman!! Don't you DARE talk to me about cardio, or I swear to god, I will shove this cheesecake bar so far into your mouth, you be forced to chew and swallow it. And maybe unwrap another. Do you WANT that??? DO YOU?"

Phew, all this typing is kind of getting my heart rate up. I better stop. Don't want to get a cramp. Don't worry, I'll be back with more of my tips. Until then, take care. And let me know if you're going to Chipotle.

don't give me hugs, give me blog hits

2006-06-30T15:22:00.000-07:00

You might have noticed a few minor changes to my blog format.
By "minor" I mean I have plastered every spare inch of bare space with ads and links and buttons. Yes, I have whored my blog out in every way I could find, in a feeble attempt to increase my "traffic". Do 6-7 readers count as "traffic"? I believe the hip kids are using the word traffic to mean "patronage of one's website". In that context, I think half a dozen visitors qualifies more as "charity". I need validation! My life is so empty!!

ahem.

In doing some research on how to increase the visibility of your website, I ran into a common idea: Your blog needs to have a theme. A purpose. A Thing That Makes Your Blog Worthwile. They gave examples like blogs on current political events, sports, philosphy and the hilarious hijinks of celebrity skanks.

So.
Anyway.

Instead of determining what the point of my blog writing is, I found myself questioning why I should have a point at all?

(As you may have noticed) I make a lot of references to humor, being funny, wanting to make people laugh, the homeless, etc. That is because....it's all I've got to offer. This blog is not informative. It isn't cutting edge. It doesn't make social commentary, or have profound observations on the state of humanity. It doesn't tackle controversial current events. It's barely grounded in real, actual fact. I don't post about my interesting life as a Peace Corp doctor or a nude traveling minstrel. My blog has no line of coherence; there is no main topic or event that glues all my random posts together. People don't read my blog to get educated or inspired. I think "mild acknowledgement" best sums up how one feels after reading my posts.

I really bring nothing of any value or demand to the blogsphere. I think this website is the equivalent to pouring a shotglass of water into a lake. It's a silly and pointless thing to do. But it's moderately funny if you are in the right mood!! That's me, baby!! Somewhat humorous under the right conditions in certain situations :)

I just like to write silly, pointless stuff. Why bother inserting "life lessons" or "substance" into any of my blog? That's what the self-help section at Barnes and Noble is for!! I write with the feeble hope that a few people will come across my blog and laugh. I say I am writing for others, but really I write for myself. I want people to think I'm funny...because...I think I'm funny.

It's embarrassing to even write that sentence. That's like saying you are an artist and then showing off the velvet marker posters of unicorns you have colored. Because stuff like "being funny" is so subjective!! Once you throw that statement out into the universe, you have to back it up! There is no standardized test with an essay section to license yourself as A Funny Person.
(Note to self: Create test for funny license. Include topics such as schtick, slapstick, satire and Adam Sandler movies).

But anyway, the reason for this entire post (another thing my blog lacks... a point) is that I started out today trying to get more people to visit my blog. And in doing that, I thought, why care about having people read your posts if you have nothing to worthwhile write about? That is the strange thing about having a personal blog. You want people to read how interesting you are so that you can confirm for yourself that you are as interesting as you want to be. Phew! How silly. Personal blogs are asinine.

But.

Lucky for me and you, being silly and asinine is the purpose of this blog!! Yay! I found a purpose. We've come full circle!! Thanks for bearing through that soul-searching rant. And don't forget to tell your friends about my blog!!!

darwin, you smug sonofabitch

2006-06-30T09:22:00.000-07:00

Today I reached a new low:

My phone in my "office" is not working, so I went to my boss's (boss'? bossesses???) office to get the user manual for the phone. I had just spent the better part of yesterday compiling this phone manual, so the irony was not lost on me.
Anyway, I'm explaining to my boss that I'm having trouble with the phone....

Bosslady: You know, there was someone in here yesterday that did just a FANTASTIC job of explaining how the phones work...
Me: Oh really?
Bosslady: Yes, they figured everything out --
Me: Was it the Dr. of Dial Tone????
Bosslady: (begins to giggle) No, it was someone named Bai*
Me: Really?? Wow, what a coincidence, another person named Bai??? Can they come back and--- oh. Bai. That's me.
Bosslady: (convulses uncontrollably with laughter)

fin.

I think it's pretty clear from incidents like these that evolution is trying to tell me something. I think it's something like:
FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THINGS HOLY, YOU CANNOT BE ALLOWED TO PROCREATE. THE PLANET CAN BARELY SUPPORT THE CRUSHING WEIGHT OF YOUR IDIOCY AS IT IS. SERIOUSLY. DO NOT SPAWN. TO BE HONEST, THE FACT THAT YOU'VE SURVIVED THIS LONG IS REALLY ASTOUNDING. HOWEVER, WE ARE FAIRLY CONFIDENT THAT DARWINISM WILL CATCH UP WITH YOU, POSSIBLY IN THE FORM OF AN ACCIDENT INVOLVING SAFETY SCISSORS.

Yes, evolution uses all caps. And tends to ramble.
With that, I'm off to enjoy my 4th of July weekend! I'm going to see how many lit sparklers I can hold in my mouth at one time. Should be fun!!!

*Names have been changed to protect the incompetent.

you down with OCD? yeah you know me...

2006-06-16T21:42:00.000-07:00

When your blogpost title has a tongue-in-cheek reference to a popular 90's rap song, you know this post is going to be terrible. Just...stop reading now. Trust me.

I need to stop referring to myself by my real first name and use my blog pseudonym from now on. The whole reason I redid the URL and my blog signature name was so I could blot out any reference whatsoever to my real-life persona. Yes, I have a persona. I also have a nom de plume, but it's embarrassing when it pops out in public. Anyway, the whole reason I want to erase any trace of my real name is so people like my sweet grandparents can't stumble upon this website while googling my name. Also, a guy from work mentioned that one of his colleagues visited my site regularly and really liked it. I don't know if I should have been flattered or worried. What kind of person does a web search for "young blonde college grad" and "yellow mustard on everything"????

oh well. On with the post.

Things that I am currently compulsively obsessed with:
1. Re-sale stores. I especially like the ones where hipster kids MUCH cooler than me donate their clothing. Then I get to try on their awesome clothes and dream of the day when I, too, can pull off black leggings, acid washed denim mini skirts, houndstooth newsboy caps and black lipstick.

2. Rock climbing. Top roping was the most fun thing EVER. Thanks to belaying, my pathetic upper body strength didn't stop me from physical activity! In fact, my weenie 115-lb body was actually an advantage for once!!! I also like bouldering. And chalk.

3. At The Drive In - Relationship of Command. I rediscovered this amazing album about 3 weeks ago. It has been especially perfect lately, now that I've upped my Radiohead listening to, oh, 16 hours a day. (Radiohead concert in 2 weeks!!!!) Whenever I feel my soul is being crushed by Thom Yorke's painfully gorgeous lyrics, I pop in ATDI and enjoy songs about one-armed scissors and killing hippies.

4. Fage Greek Yogurt. If you don't have a Trader Joe's or a Whole Foods near you, you might not know what I'm talking about. This yogurt is incredible. It's strained...I have no idea what that means but it makes the yogurt 100X thicker and silkier and deliciouser. Mix some maple syrup and sliced almonds in and you have a tasty orgasm snack...or "orgasnack" as I like to call it.

5. My wedding pictures. I can't stop looking at them. As one of the world's most unphotogenic people, I think I'm just obsessed with any picture that makes me look human. If you ignore the pictures with my zombie red-eye, my uneven eyebrows and my velociraptor face (the one I make when I'm laughing uncontrollably ... or about to dine on the flesh of a small rodent) there about about a good half-dozen pictures of me. Joy!

6. Post Secret. http://postsecret.blogspot.com I wish they would update this page every day, rather than once a week. I can't get enough of people's dark and painful secret confessions. I also really like rectangles, so post cards are fascinating to me.

7. The Bravery. I had heard of this band before, but lumped them in with other bands like Breaking Benjamin...or any band with a "B" in their name that is featured on TRL. I am a fool! I am in love with their sound...it's like The Killers mixed with Interpol. Of course, I think lots of bands sound like they have Interpol in them. Like the Editors. Maybe that's because all these bands are post-new wave darlings. And you know what? Pitchfork can kiss my white ass. I think formulaic new wave revivalist bands are AWESOME.

8. Cheap Target knock-offs of trendy expensive clothing. I'm all about the cheap knock-off. I don't care, I'll shout it from the mountain tops: "These peep-toe stacked platform heels are from TARGET! I paid 20 bucks for them! I'm not shelling out $150 for the designer Miu Miu version! Check out my awesome blue polo...it's not LaCoste! It's Mossimo!"I think I love Target because it's just like me: A dressed up version of Wal-mart.

9. Blogposts that require no creativity or thought. I could create lists of my banal opinions and preferences all day!

funny girl

2006-06-11T19:29:00.000-07:00

There are some stretches of time where I get the urge to do something worthwhile, usually after I've peeled myself off my kitchen floor and brushed off the remnants of a family-sized bag of Doritos bag that had occupied most of my previous night. I get the idea that maybe I can write for a living, and spend glorious days cranking out satire for The Onion and slowly building an adoring throng of socially ackward blog readers. I have a feeling that these dreams are due to the severe dehydration one experiences when consuming 2,500% of their daily sodium allowance in a 3 hour period. Once I've had some Gatorade, these thoughts usually turn into a strong urge to pee.

I've been entertaining the idea of writing a column for the SD Reader or some local newspaper. I've found that publications like these tend to hire professional people with a good grasp on English grammar. Since I'm still struggling with the concept of a dangling participle, I think I'd probably have to start out writing the lowest rung of newspaper articles. I can just imagine the sparkling wit and candor I will bring to such topics as "Local Kiwanis Club holds 3rd Annual Blood Drive/Three-Legged Race for Seniors", "San Diego Bike Cops teach course on How to Fight Off a Maglite-weilding Bum" and "10 Signs That Raw Sewage Has Yet Again Tainted Your Drinking Water".

But that won't make me happy. That's the problem. I want to start up at the top. I'm built for the high life baby. No human interest piece on the history of the corndog is going to satisfy my lust for exposure and fame. No, only a fourth-page bi-weekly column in the Life section of the Clairemont Bee will sate this journalism juggernaut.

Wait wait wait. Scratch all that. I don't want to write for any newspaper or circular or pennysaver. I just want to write stuff that will make people laugh. Not a belly laugh or anything, I don't want to be causing hernias. In fact, maybe not out loud, cause people might be chewing or something, and I don't want any choking accidents. Perhaps just a safe, inward chuckle, possibly while hugging a pillow. That's good.

tattoo me

2006-06-09T09:14:00.000-07:00

Two posts in one day! Wow!

I am getting the tattoo itch again, and I think I'm going to get one (or two) for my birthday. The question is...what should I get?
I am one of those people that wants their tattoo to be completely unique and artistic, so they end up getting a tattoo of a star on their arm, only to find that EVERYONE, including their great-uncle from Poland, has a star tattoo. On their arm. Way to go, wunderkind.

My first tattoo, of Braque's doves was definitely unique and I'm proud of that. I also like that it's on the back of my neck, it's like my little secret :)
But lately I've been wanting something people can see, so I've been thinking about getting a design on my wrists. In keeping with my bird theme, I thought about maybe getting one of those sailor swallows on each wrist. No, you pervert, not the phrase "sailor swallows" but the actual drawing of swallows. Sailors used to get them tattooed on their arm when they had successfully traveled like, 5,000 nautical miles and back. It was a symbol of hard work and achievement. And of course, in my usual fashion, I am going to rape this time-honored tradition in order to look cool.

I have also heard that recently released prison inmates get swallows tattooed on their wrist. So maybe I'll look like a bad-ass!! I guess with my one piercing and two tattoos, I'm more like bad-ass lite...but it's a start.

I am also really interested in getting a textual tattoo...a word or phrase or poem written on the skin. Lately I've been obsessed with Pablo Neruda, and I think it would be cool to get a quote or poem of his...somewhere. I also so a girl with a tattoo that said, "I have a strong will to love you for eternity" written on her hip. That's a line from a book by Milan Kundera. (He wrote The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and I love his stuff too)
Would it be horribly wrong to steal someone else's beautiful tattoo idea and use it for my own? I have this fear (keep in mind, I am a neurotic loser) that when if I go to a tattoo place and ask for this, they'll be like, "Hey! This is the exact tattoo in the exact place as another girl. You tattoo plaigarist!!!"
Also, you walk a very fine line between "eloquent" and "maudlin" when getting a text tattoo. So I feel like whatever is inked on me better really really mean something.

Here are some quotes I am thinking about getting, please comment if you like. They're mostly about love (when using Pablo Neruda material, it's usually about love or pain) because I'd like to get something to honor my new husband :)

1.
"These are the things that I want:
A room made of books
A house made of flowers
A love made of us"

2.
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;so I love you because I know no other way.
or
so I love you because I know no other way than this:
where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that when your eyes close I fall asleep.

3.
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists
aromas, light, metals
were little boats that sail toward those isles of yours that wait for me

4.
You gather things to you like an old road.
You are peopled with the echoes and nostalgic voices.
I awoke and at times birds fled and migrated
That had been sleeping in your soul

0r in Spanish:
Acogedora como un viejo camino.
Te pueblan ecos y voces nostálgicas.
Yo desperté y a veces emigran y huyen pájaros que dormían en tu alma.

5.
"You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep spring from coming.”

6.
"I want to do to you what spring does with the cherry trees.”

and of course:
"I have a strong will to love you for eternity"

what not to wear

2006-06-09T08:47:00.000-07:00

I dropped off some of my old clothes at Buffalo Exchange today. I'm not sure if they have that store on the East Coast? BE is a store that buys and sells used clothing. It's not really Goodwill type stuff though. It's more like clothing that hipster kids wear to make you think they are so ironic and clever to shop at thrift stores when actually they spent $50 for their "vintage" shirt. Damn hipsters!!!
Anyway, the store has a very LA feel about it, and I always feel more geeky than usual when I'm shopping there. But I really love the store in spite of it's power to lower my self esteem, so I figured I try and make some money...to spend at the store. Anyway, I take my big bag of clothes up to the front desk and the salesguy says they are looking for items that are really "hot" and in style or at least, vintage. Crap. Unless he means "circa 1997" vintage, I'm not going to get much here.
After ten excruciatingly long minutes of raised eyebrows and grimaces, the guy takes one pair of jeans. ONE item out of like, 25 articles. For some reason, I feel offended and embarrassed, like I'm the last kid to be picked for the kickball game. Really, it's pretty dumb of me to feel that way, after all, there is a REASON I am getting rid of these clothes. If I find them too ugly to wear anymore, then someone that can actually dress themselves attractively certainly wouldn't.

But at that moment, I was crestfallen; WHY wouldn't they take these crappy, drab clothes that reek of 9th grade angst and have been hanging in my closet for years?? (I literally have been lugging around some of these clothes since highschool. I don't know why. Maybe I was hoping to construct an apparel model of my stumbling journey through puberty?) The whole debacle was actually pretty funny; it felt like they were putting my fashion sense on trial when the guy rifled through my stuff. It was hilarious; I felt like I needed to give an explanation for each piece of clothing, as if to justify my terrible choices:

"I was young! I was still experimenting!"
"Everyone has owned a suede vest at some point in there life."
"I was going through a rough time, I used crushed velour peasant shirts to get through it! Please don't judge me!!"

holy mother of Todd

2006-06-08T10:04:00.000-07:00

So I have started to make the leap from comfortable, fluffy dreams to cold, hard reality. I am applying to graduate school for physical therapy. Eep. Actually, before I can even apply, I need to take some prerequisite courses...and take the GRE ...and earn about 200 hours of volunteer work under a licensed PT. Wow, piece of cake! A piece of broken glass-filled cake.

I am applying to three different schools for the PT program, to increase my odds of getting in, and also to prolong my misery. If I get rejected by one school, I have 2 more possible rejections to look forward to!! But I can't dwell on that idea too long...I get a stomach ache.
The pre-requisites for each school are basically the same, but each has a few variations that are put into the curriculum strictly so that idiots (like me) are immediately terrified and run away...thus decreasing the candidate pool. Classes like... Human Anatomy with Dissection Lab...Abnormal Psychology...Physics with lab including mechanics, heat, light, sound, and electricity (Does physics include anything else? I guess we're skipping the physics of magic tricks and embarrassing bodily functions). I'm particularly unhappy about physics. I sold my soul to the Devil in order to pass my honors advanced physics final in high school and I was promised by his minion (my physics teacher) that I would NEVER have to use physics again in my life. Aside from occasionally obeying the laws of gravity and time, of course. Lies, all lies!

So anyway, in order to ensure that I can apply to all three colleges, I need to take 17 classes instead of the basic 7. Doh.
That means I need:
General Biology with Lab
Biological Sciences I & II (this could be the same as General Bio...but they were listed as courses separate from Bio I...dammit!)
General Chemistry I and II
General Chem Labs I and II
Organic chemistry with lab
Biostatistics
Human Morphology (Anatomy)
Dissection Lab
Human physiology with lab.
Physics I and II with lab
Principles of Human Behavior
Behavior Disorders (or abnormal psych)
And if the grad schools for some reason don't except credits from Penn State, I'll need to take Calculus, Intro to Statistics and Psychology. AGAIN.

I am listing these classes in order to illustrate my panicked confusion about all of this, like....what the hell is biostatistics? What is the difference between human morphology and human physiology? Or biology and biological science???

What's that? Am I terrified, you ask?? Does the Pope where pants??
Of course he wears pants, that's not the point here. Focus, dammit!
So I'm intimidated, and not sure what to do. If I apply to only one school, I just need seven prerequisites. If I apply to two, I'll need nine. If I apply to all three, it's fifteen plus. What do I do?!? Is it better to spend more money and time getting more classes in just so I can apply to ONE more school? What if I don't get into any of the schools?? What if I find out I took the wrong prerequisites and need to take MORE?? What if I left my laundry in the dryer and someone is STEALING MY BEACH TOWELS RIGHT NOW?!?!? Sorry, sorry. I have too much on my mind.

I guess this isn't really a funny post, but I thought I'd feel better if I wrote all this out. And you know what? It didn't work. Whoever said writing about a stressful situation is stress-relieving in itself must have left out the part where you take massive amounts of codeine and let the monkeys in your hallucination do the typing for you. Now THAT's stress relief.

(Ugh, that last paragraph was awful. All this stress and worrying has turned my usually crisp and penetrating humor into asinine and cliched jokes. I think for now I should finish out with a couple of awkward sentences that trail off before making a point.)

it's time!

2006-03-28T22:07:00.000-08:00

For my semi-sometimes-sort of updated list of things I hate:

1. Segueways. When I see people riding on them, I want to push them over (and it won't hurt them either...they wear helmets and elbow pads to cushion them from the potentially brutal 3.5 foot fall) or throw cans at them or scream, "USE YOUR GOD GIVEN LEGS YOU FAT LAZY JERKS!!!"
What kind of country are we in when people opt for a form of transportation that is pretty much on par with being wheeled around on a dolly like a box of frozen hamburgers??? GAAAH!

2. That Enterprise commercial that features the three people on some sort of "Girls-Only Getaway" scenario. The leader shouts out triumphantly, "Let's go, girls!!!" and apparently that is the signal to "let loose". And according to Enterprise, when a woman "lets loose" she either:

a. Puts on a pair of outdated sunglasses (sassily)
b. Removes her hair from a ponytail and swings it back and forth a few times
c. Takes off the ugly floral print scarf from around her neck, and then, because she is SO carefree, she lets it go into the wind as the car takes off. And that brings me to the next thing I hate:

3. Any commercial, music video, sitcom, movie etc that shows a woman releasing her scarf into the wind. I guess it's used as a symbol of freedom...these women are so emancipated, so totally liberated they can throw away perfectly good articles of clothing. They are free to throw that scarf away, dammit, and no $150 littering fine issued by a bicycle cop is going to stop them!!! Female Power!!!

But really, when you think about it....what are they really being freed from? The bondages of scarfdom? The debillitating crutch of neck and head concealement? Floral patterned rayon fabric???
And if any of these women are like me (and they're not because they are usually in cute linen pants running barefoot down the beach) they would NOT express their independence by tossing out a decent looking scarf that took them 30 minutes to find in the Goodwill bin. No...they would do it through petty acts of vandalism in excess of $200. These media writers need to get a grip on what the real world is like.

I might have leprosy

2006-03-09T16:03:00.000-08:00

I am falling apart.

Not even so much mentally as physically. And really when I say physically, I don't actually mean like body parts are dropping off me like sandbags from a hot air balloon (which would be a reference to my leprosy title...when you have leprosy your nose falls off and stuff right? I don't know.)

It's more along the lines of my hygiene and personal care. Yeah, I'm about to blog about hygiene. This is going to get gross. Don't say I didn't warn you. Well, actually you can say it all you want. I'm not sitting there next to your computer. So go ahead, scream it from the mountain tops, you pyschopath.

Anywho, hygiene. Yeah. Now, I've always ranted on about how I'm not very good at being a girl...meaning that I don't know how to do a lot of the technical things that most girls do to smell pretty or look nice or stave off bacterial infections. Dammit, I try but there is only so much a girl with my kind of motor skills can accomplish! I have a stub thumb!! And throw in a good amount of stress, some sleep deprivation and a punishing schedule of work and wedding plans and recreational bonsai and well frankly, some things have to fall by the wayside.

Things like...flossing. Or showering every day. Or changing my pants from day to day. Or cleaning under my fingernails. Mascara? Why bother? Shaved legs? Who is really going to see those? Lately it's all I can do to slog through my day, run some errands, shovel some food into my mouth and then pass out in bed....sometimes with the unchewed food right in my mouth. And for awhile I've been so busy, so utterly consumed with stupid work tasks or wedding stuff or other dumb crap that I don't even really notice it. It sort of hovers somewhere in the corner of the brain, appearing only every once in awhile when I look in the mirror and go, "Ew."

But today I went to the dentist and had a wake up call. You could say, tartar buildup saved my life today. However, that would be a gross exaggeration of the situation, so lets just forget that.
The nice dental assistant lady had me sit down in the chair, asked me the same chitchatty questions and then took a look at my mouth. "Oh my," she said "you have a lot of tartar in here. You need to floss more."
Now, I'm fairly certain "You need to floss more" is some kind of cryptic dental code phrase, that actually has nothing to do with flossing, because I usually floss EVERY DAY and I STILL get that line.

So really, I was about to brush off the whole tartar thing (brush ...tartar...dental humor!!! I wasn't even trying!! I am priceless!) when the lady pulls out this GIANT POINTY METAL HOOK and starts jabbing at the soft tissue of my gums. "OK," I think, "This has happened before, she's just doing a little scraping, no big deal. I'll be out of here in time for Dr. Phil."
But then she kept scraping. And scraping. And poking. And scraping. I swear she had her eyes closed. She wasn't even hitting my teeth half the time!!! At one point I caught a glimpse of her latex glove and it was covered in blood. MY BLOOD! As if that isn't gruesome enough, it gets worse!!!

She got up after about 15 minutes and left the room. I think, "Finally! A light at the end of this blood and gauze filled tunnel!!" But then she comes back. Holding more tools. AND A SHARPENING STONE. And she proceeds to file down the little tooth pick thing into a. tiny. SHARP. point.
"This will make it easier to slip it in between your gums," she said in a sweet voice, masking the sadistic glee she had to be getting out of this.
So she stabbed away at my gums for another 5 or 10 minutes, then let me rinse my mouth.

She told me the reason she had to scrape so much is because I have GINGIVITIS. Holy shit. That's a hobo disease!! how the hell do I have that?? I started to mildly freak out.
now, I have to explain...up until recently, I was especially meticulous about my oral hygiene. A teeth geek if you will. When I was in 3rd grade, I saw my teacher brushing her teeth in the bathroom after lunch and i was in awe. I started bringing my own nerdy little toothbrush to school too. I floss religiously. I use fluoride rinse. I brush in small, gentle circles people!! I know my shit!!!
and then, to have the dentist tell me I have so neglected my teeth these past 6 months that I've actually developed gingivitis...well, I was devastated.

And when I started to think about all the other things I have been neglecting for myself, well its just gross. My diet lately has consisted of mostly sugar in all its forms (with a major emphasis on Thin Mints and Tagalongs lately...damn you Girl Scouts) so I have no energy and feel crappy. The most exercise I've gotten in over a month now is the climb up my steps after getting the mail...so I'm all winded and out of shape. My chin has all kinds of zits, because I sit at my computer all day at work and paw at my face with my greasy hands. My lips are chapped, my hair has split ends, my fingernails are all misshapen and I think I'm growing a hump. What is happening to me!!??!

Luckily for those who have to look upon me regularly...my last day of work is March 14th. I am so freaking excited I could pee my pants. But I won't because I haven't let myself go that far yet. YET. So I have made a proclamation. Starting March 15th, its STOP BEING A SLOB MONTH. (eventually I'd like to not be a slob all 12 months out of the year, but I want to start slow). Nothing is going to take priority over me taking care of myself. Not work, not wedding plans, not even babies trapped in burning buildings. Sorry babies!! Find some one else to whine to!! This gross girl will not go another day with gingivitis!!!!!!!!!

this is cool

2006-02-26T15:27:00.000-08:00

http://kevan.org/johari?name=taifighter

girls are dumb

2006-02-22T18:00:00.000-08:00

Excuses girls use to explain weight gain:

"I'm having my period. It's lasted about 6 months now."
"It's just water weight....I'm retaining water from that 1/2 lb of kosher salt I ate last night"
"These are heavy shoes"
"Muscle weighs more than fat." (Said while grabbing love handles)
"This scale is off by 10 lbs"
"I'm a skinny 180lbs"
"I have to pee, my bladder is making me heavier"
"My hair weighs at least 2lbs"
"I think I shrunk these jeans and my shirt and my socks and my bra and underwear in the wash."
"The camera adds 10 - 45 lbs...to each leg"
"This mirror must be warped or something, my stomach looks like its bulging out. That's weird. Hey, pass the Fritos"
"I have dense bones, I drink A LOT of milk(shakes). "

And my own personal excuse? That would have to be the one that goes:
"I don't know it keeps happening but I keep getting in my car and randomly driving to the Bahia burrito place and accidentally ordering a Surfer Gigante burrito with chips and then somehow, I trip and it lands in my mouth and I'm forced to chew and swallow it or I'll suffocate. Also sometimes I'll innocently manipulate Mike into buying me a Dairy Queen blizzard. It can't be the junk food though its probably just the stress, I heard that like, swells your fat cells or something."

Hahaahaha, too bad this is true. Well everything except the accidental and innocent part. My job is reaching critical mass, I pretty much have a panic attack every day. In the midst of that, and planning the wedding and determining how I will survive once I quit my job, I just have been chain swallowing burritos and cheeseburgers and ice cream. I don't know why. Well, yes I do. It tastes good and I'm too tired and fried to make an effort to eat anything else. Why don't they have a SALAD delivery place??

I'm not about to turn this into a whiney fatgirl blog, (you know, the kind that goes, "I looooooooooove chocolate. Why can't chocolate be calorie free? I wish there was an RDA for chocolate because I looove chocolate so much. But I can't have it, cause it makes me fat. But it's sooooooooooooooo goood." ) but I am going to say that, well...damn. It is frustrating to be three months away from my wedding and be gaining weight. not a lot. in fact, I know many, many people that would beat me with their own foot for saying that I have gained weight at all but, guess what. This is cyber space, baby. You can't hurt what doesn't technically exist in a tangible sense or something like that.

I guess what I'm saying is, it's hard to be a girl. It's even harder to be a neurotic girl with a shitty job, an impending wedding, an uncertain future and an elevated anxiety level due to her perceived need to look freakin amazing at her wedding. And a crippling addiction to Dairy Queen chocolate oreo blizzards.

Ok, I think I've used the word chocolate like, 6 times in this post already, that is a clear sign it's time to stop typing before I reach maximum female stereotypical-ness. I guess my post about PMS cramps, eyebrow waxing and Ashley Judd movies will have to wait.

kudos to me

2006-02-17T15:29:00.000-08:00

I know two blogposts in one day is a little overzealous, but dammit, I'm in an overzealy mood. I just had to post this because it warmed my tiny, ice-encrusted heart. I was going through my old blog posts, checking out comments I had missed when I found this from halfpenny:

"I was checkin out Rories Blog and out of sheer boredom I clicked on your link. After reading a sufficiently large amount of entries, in the most non creepy guy hiding in the bushes kinda way, I’d like to say you have one of the funniest blogs I’ve read in a long time, and I really enjoyed reading your entries. "

Everyone, all together now: awwwwwwwwwwww. Of course, now I feel all the more crappy for waiting two whole months to post again, not to mention the enormous pressure of knowing SOMEONE out there finds me funny, so now I have to keep it up. The bar has been set. Thanks a lot, halfpenny, you jerk!!!

i'm just kidding. Maybe all of you other anonymous readers out there should post encouraging and flattering comments about how funny I am. After all, you're the reason I post in the first place. That and the unbearable lonliness that comes with having no human contact for most of my day. boohoo.

the return of yellow mustard

2006-02-17T15:12:00.000-08:00

So, I'm back. From outerspace. I just walked in to find you here with that sad look upon your face.
Sad of course, because I took a 2 month hiatus from writing in my blog.
Don't worry, I didn't stop being funny. Trust me, I've been doing my knock-knock joke drills and watching Dane Cook DVDs and working on my Bill Cosby impressions and I am BUCKET LOADS of funny.
What happened is probably the worst thing that can happen to a first-time blogger.
My grand parents found this site.

My poor grandparents. If they are reading this now, I'd just like to say...Hi! Sorry I shocked and possibly horrified you with this website. And sorry I didn't bring it up when I saw you recently, but I didn't want to ruin Christmas Eve dinner. But by the way, I don't drink or swear or make ethnic slurs NEARLY as much as this blog would lead you to believe.

So anyway yeah, my grandparents read my blog, and then they showed my dad and then my dad showed my mom, and then my mom emailed it to the pope and he thought my shit was hilarious! Oops, see I did it again. I swore. That's the thing that made my grandparents finding this blog so embarrassing.

My friends know that I don't swear that often. I swear a lot in this blog because I think its kind of funny. It spices up an otherwise dull sentence. But I can see how anyone outside of my circle of friends would be confused by all my swearing, and all my abusive remarks about homeless people. You might find this hard to believe, but my sense of humor is kind of secret I keep from my family. I'm not the funny one in my family. I'm the blonde, sweet one that's successful but not as popular as the darling baby of the family. :)

Where was I going with this? Oh yes. So when I found out my entire family had read my blog I was mortified. I thought about just never posting on this blog again. Can you believe it!!! I don't really know why. It's not that big of a deal. This whole damn website is only written to amuse me and the handful of people that read it on purpose. So what if my grandparents now have a different perspective on what kind of person I am. I love them...and I think they still love me because I still got Christmas presents from them this year.

So I'm back. I did remove most of the references to my name from the blog (hence the new URL) just in case any employers find this website. I have this feeling referencing scotch 45 times in a website can hurt your chances at employment. (now you see, if I was really on top of my game, I'd have a witty zinger to follow up, something like, "unless you're applying for a job as a stand in for Tara Reid. Ba-zing!!!" or some other funny reference to someone that, you know, could drink a lot of scotch)

I will try to update this WAAAAY more regularly because really, theres so much going on in my life right now, its ripe for delicious fodder. I'm getting married soon (ball and chain jokes!!), I'm in a cooking club (food poisoning jokes!!), I'm preparing to quit my job and go back to school (poverty jokes!!).

Woohoo!!

2006-02-17T15:07:00.000-08:00

Testing testing testing

2005-12-06T12:56:00.000-08:00

Trapped Inside the Prison Cell, Part 1

2005-12-06T12:54:00.000-08:00

rice a roni, the san francisco treat

2005-12-06T12:53:00.000-08:00

aww camping buddies

2005-12-06T12:52:00.000-08:00

CHUBBY BUNNY!!

knitting and beer, a match made in heaven

2005-12-05T12:21:00.000-08:00

I went to the knitting bar yesterday with Joe and Michelle. It rocked. It was part dive bar/part artsy-political bar, but it was fun. They played oldies soul and I knitted 1/8th of a scarf. Actually right now it's a potholder, and a damn fine one at that. I am getting the hang of casting on and knitting...perling is looming on the horizon, but I'm scared. I'd much rather just knit stitches for an eternity. We also stopped in a yarn shop before we went to the bar, and one of the employees, a barefooted pot-bellied guy, went on for FIFTEEN minutes about how pissed he was that they cut out his "wizard battle" in Lord of the Rings so they could have a scene with Arwen. What was worse is that I knew exactly what wizard battle he was talking about. It's tough being a closet geek.

I watched Simpsons and Family guy last night and I've determined there are two types of people in the world: Those that watch Simpsons and Family guy on Sunday night, and those who watch Desperate Housewives and Grey's Anatomy. I think I'm like one of 12 girls that is in the first group. I've watched DH a few times and it's ok...it's a little too Knots Landing for me. And what's up with that nerdy little kid with the glasses? Why doesn't someone just slap the shit out of him? The Susan lady seems terrified of him...then again, she looks like she might break in half if she sneezed too hard...

Since Mike has been in Taiwan I've been cuddling with Herve in bed. I never thought I'd be the kind of person that slept with their dog, but then again, I also swore I'd never refer to myself as Herve's "Mommy" or dress him in little outfits. Getting a puppy must activate the cheesy 50-year old housewife center of my brain. Pretty soon I'll be decoupaging furniture and wearing sweatshirts with horses and kittens.

But anyway, it's nice to sleep with something warm (and furry?) at night, but every morning I wake up with my eyes swollen half-shut and a head full of snot. I don't think I'm allergic to dogs, but then again, I've never spent 8 hours face down in puppy fur. I should probably banish Herve to his crate, but his pathetic whining will probably be more aggravating then 20 minutes of nose-blowing in the morning. Also, having Herve near me allows me to be sure he is or isn't the one making weird noises at night that terrify me. If he's not next to me, I'll think his snoring is the sound of a demented chainsaw killer, sawing his way into my apartment to disembowel me for no reason. Sometimes, an over-active imagination can suck.

two peabrains in a pod

2005-11-23T11:41:00.000-08:00

Life with my puppy Herve has been good, for the most part. I think being a pet-owner changes you; I for one have developed an inexplicable interest in infomercials for products with names like "Urine-Gone". This is something I don't think I would have had before Herve. Well, maybe...but not as much.

Herve has also taught me the meaning of patience....meaning, when you have a puppy, you don't have any patience. Ahahaha. Seriously though, I don't know WHY I feel that saying "No" fifteen times to Herve will somehow have more impact than just saying it once. But I guess I've convinced myself that the 10th to 15th "No!" is really the one that will sink in.
He's like, "What? What are you saying? 'Dough'?
Say it a few more times? Oh, 'Nooo', ok I get it now. I'm glad you repeated it 13 times, I wouldn't have caught that otherwise."

But honestly, it's like Herve is autistic. He's completely in his own little dog world, and it requires me screaming like a threatened cow two inches from his face to get him to snap out of it and stop whatever he's doing. I don't know what's going on in his little pea-brain, but I think its something like, "Sniffsniffsniffsniffsniffsniff*mustlickmyself*sniffniffsniff".

Fortunately (for him) there is something that's just so damn endearing about how dumb my dog is. He'll have found a way to scale my kitchen table and get up on top of my laptop, and when I walk in, he just gives me a look like, "Wow. I honestly have no idea how I got up here. Seriously...I think I must have blacked out or something. I'm not even sure why I'm on your laptop. I am just as dumbfounded as you are."
And I can't yell at him, I can only marvel at how such a dumb dog has survived evolution.

And that's why I love dogs, really. We're equals, and when I run into a door because I'm walking towards it too fast to turn the doorknob in time, my dog doesn't ridicule me. He just looks at me like, "Man, I do that ALL the time."

Cats on the other hand, piss me off. They're just so freaking smug. I think I don't like cats because they're smarter than I am, and we're both painfully aware of that. And while I would NEVER laugh at a cat that perhaps got it's head stuck in a plastic bag, cats are not above staring at me condescendingly while I slice my hand open on one of their damn Fancy Feast catfood tins. They "meow" and it means, "God, you humans and your fat primative opposable thumbs. I can't believe you're serving me this food in a glass goblet. It's catfood for God's sake! Have some dignity!!!"

Not Herve though...he has no discretion whatsoever when it comes to the food I give him. He nearly has an aneurysm when I open the can every morning.
"OhmyGod OhmyGod OhmyGod, what is it what is it what is it???? Oh my GOD! It's LAMB AND RICE!! AGAIN!!! That's the 487th time in a ROW! Holy shit, I am the luckiest dog EVER!!!" How can you not love that unfailing gratitude?

This is why people love dogs so much more than cats, or lemurs, or iguanas or hairless rats. It's because no matter how stupid you are, no matter what unbelievable act of idiocy you performed that day, you can go home, put a blanket over top of your dog and watch him go completely nuts.
"Oh my god!! Where am I??!?! What is going on??!! I need to roll around on the floor or something! I'm so screwed!!!"
And of course, nothing beats that warm fuzzy feeling you get when you finally take the blanket off your dog and he looks up at you with pure, beaming gratitude. "Oh thank GOD! I wasn't going to make it out of there! You are the best owner EVER! Sniffsniffsniffsniff."

2005-11-21T12:42:00.000-08:00

oooooooooooooold

2005-11-21T12:41:00.000-08:00

Wow, it's like looking 40 years into the future...

2005-11-21T12:40:00.000-08:00

Jeff had an unhealthy obsession with his own breasts

2005-11-21T12:39:00.000-08:00

then again, hiding seems like a good alternative to drunken unflattering pictures

2005-11-21T12:38:00.000-08:00

Jen is so silly

puppy dignity

2005-10-19T13:12:00.001-07:00

Poor little Herve.
First he has his manhood surgically removed before he even gets to enjoy it, and now he has to walk around with a big cone around his head. And worse yet, his very bad owner makes him wear a luggage tag as a dog ID because she can't find where they sell the real ones.
It's a good thing dogs don't have a sense of dignity, because Herve wouldn't have a shred left. Actually, from the looks he's been giving me lately, I think he actually is saying, "What in God's name did I ever do to you to deserve this?" It doesn't help that he keeps running into things cause of the cone and I laugh hysterically at him. He must really hate me.

2005-10-19T13:12:00.000-07:00

everything about this picture cracks me up...especially his little "puppy member"

2005-10-19T13:09:00.000-07:00

Even wearing a cone, he is so cute

jabba-the-girl

2005-10-18T22:44:00.000-07:00

People have been discussing weight gain and weight loss a lot lately. And by people I mean me. And by discuss, I mean whine and complain.

Don't get me wrong, I know I'm not Sally Struthers obese. I'm not even Star-Jones-post-stomach-stapling fat. But I AM definitely not the same weight I was when I started college. I thought I'd lose most of the college weight once I graduated and decreased my daily Mickey's Ice and Pokey Stick consumption. However, what I didn't realize is that 40 ounces of malt liquor exist outside of Penn State. In fact, liquor is everywhere in California, so I can pick up a few at all kinds of convenient locations, like when I'm depositing a check at the local bank.

Really, its not the alcohol so much as the food. Sure, I gave up the Pokey Sticks and Cold Stone Creamery, but I exchanged it for burritos, In-n-Out, IHOP and Trader Joe cookies. I can't help it. I love food. I love cooking it, ordering it, going out for it, stealing it off of other people's plates, eating it and then leaving without paying the check, etc. Even as a child, food was a passion. Actually, scratch-n-sniff stickers and scented crayons proved to be hazardous for me; I went to the emergency room for "accidental" ingestion of a foreign object more times than I can remember....

But honestly, I can't blame the food. It doesn't force me to eat it. It's really about my lack of will power. If I want food, then I eat it. The problem is, a lot of times I want food, even if I'm not hungry. TV commercials are the worst, I end up craving whatever I see on the TV.
When this happens, my long-suffering boyfriend often tries to talk me down from the "food ledge".

"Honey, you don't even like fruit leather!"
"Sweetie, last time you ate that, you went into a coma for three days, remember?"
"Tai, that's not even edible. That's the 2005 starting defense for the Cincinnati Bengals."

I don't know what to do. I've heard hypnosis works, but I am definitely not putting myself in the clutches of a hypnotist. God knows what they would do to me. I know personally, if I were a hypnotist, I'd make the person pull down his pants anytime someone said the word, "inappropriate". So who KNOWS what a professional hypnotist is capable of.

I could get my jaw wired shut, but knowing me, I'd snap and start shoving Oreos into the tiny cracks between my teeth till I made an airtight seal with cookie crumbs and I'd suffocate within a matter of minutes. Seconds, if they were Double Stuf. (You may point out that I could use my nostrils to breath, but I have a feeling in that state of mind, I'd shove Oreos up there too.)
So what to do? I go to the gym pretty often, but you all know how I feel about that place. Besides, I usually end up eating a whole pie after I workout, just to get over the trauma I endure. (Like most recently, when I was forced to witness a 60-year old woman with the body of a 95-year old kiwi walk naked out of the shower. My. eyes.)

I could stop watching television to avoid the commercials, but then I'd have to read more, and I am determined to keep my reading level firmly at Grade 7.
Oh who am I kidding? I am on a one-way train to Kirstie-Alley-ville. Why fight it? Maybe I can even become one of those competitive eaters like Kobayashi. Or become one of the "before" models in an ab-machine commercial. Yes!

Mmmm, tv commercial. Now I'm hungry.

tales from the gym

2005-10-16T14:08:00.000-07:00

So, I've tried to resolve to go to the gym every day of the week. This was born out of college weight-gain, my upcoming wedding, and a strong appetite for self-abuse. The only problem is, I HATE going to the gym.
Don't get me wrong, I like to work out. I enjoy running and walking and even the other weird activities that can only be born out of a gym...like endlessly climbing stairs, pedaling a bike in place, or rowing an imaginary boat to nowhere. It's the environment of the gym that I loathe. I don't like the people. I don't like the music. I don't like the smell. I don't like the grimey, used equipment that reeks of sweaty beef jerky. I hate how all the TV's are tuned to the worst shows, like "All-American Bass Fishing Olympic semi-finals" or a food-dehydrator infomercial. And the worst part is, I actually WATCH these shows and become interested in them. I'll stay on the treadmill for longer than I planned, just because I have to see if Billy Bob can beat his unbroken record of catching a bass fish in under 5 hours.
Probably worse than the bad television are the ridiculous outfits that people wear to the gym, like coordinating spandex unitards with matching socks. What the hell?! Since when did I have to look like Step Aerobics Barbie before I drench myself in sweat? At my gym, girls wear hoop earrings and makeup. They carry their purses around with them. The guys wear shirts that are literally two pieces of string and about 2 inches of fabric...just enough to cover their abs, but not their nipples. GOD FORBID they cover those things up. The guys have pecs the size of small infants, but their legs are about as thick as my wrist. The girls do 400 repetitions with 3lb weights and spend the rest of their time discussing the carb counts in beer. Guys do 1 rep with 300lbs weights then sit on the bench and gasp and sweat for 20 minutes.

Every time I go, it's like watching a documentary on bizarre human behavior. People walk into the gym locker rooms as intelligent, discerning individuals... but when they come out, they have the gym look: the glazed over eyes, the scowling face and the brain washed mind that says it's acceptable to wear head-to-toe pink lycra or run on the treadmill while curling 20's.
Today was no different. The girl next to me on the stairmachine has it set so high that she is literally hanging onto the rails so she doesn't fall off. Maybe you burn a lot of calories clinging to a piece of cardio equipment, but I always thought actually moving your legs or arms was a better idea. And then of course, there's that greasy guy next me on the treadmill, who insists on talking, even though I have my headphones on and I'm running so fast I can't complete sentences. I hate when I'm hit on at the gym. I know some girls might find this flattering, and perhaps in some cases it can be. But there is a big difference between a nice guy who is genuinely interested in you and Mr. Robo-erection, the guy that thinks it's acceptable to hit on any person in any environment, including burn victims in a trauma ward. Here are a few sure-fire signs to discern between a nice guy that likes you and a creepy guy that likes anything warm and flesh-colored:

Sign #1. He hits on you even when you're grotesquely unattractive
Sign #2. He hits on every female within his line of vision and even objects that may look vaguely female, like a lamp with a coat draped over it.
Sign #3. He talks to you even if you are desperately trying to avoid eye contact with him.

In my case, all the warning signs were there. I was at the gym at 6:30AM, with no makeup, red-faced and dripping in 32 oz of my own sweat. mmm. I basically looked like a newly born albino baby, or even, a mexican hairless rat that had been fished out of a pool. I'm not exaggerating. The guy opens up with a brilliant "Wow, you're going to break that machine!" (Great...I'm assuming he means that as a compliment, but any idiot knows you never even INSINUATE that any object a girl is standing, sitting or leaning on will break. The girl will assume you mean she weighs the same as a Volkswagen Beetle, and that you are an asshole).
The guy follows up his first bomb with the ever-popular, "So, do you go to Penn State?"
Do I go to Penn State? But, how could you tell?! Could it have been from the "PENN STATE" written in tall letters across the butt of my shorts !? Noo! And what are the odds, my meatheaded friend, that I could be in a gym in San Diego on a Tuesday in October and still simultaneously be attending PSU?

I told the guy that I didn't actually go to PSU, but that I had stolen the shorts off a Tri-delt during a bar fight. He looked very confused and a little scared and my icy cold heart convulsed with pity.
"No, hahha, not really...I did in fact go to Penn State, as my shorts have pointed out."
The guy looks relieved and launches into another great question, "So, did you have to get up early to come here?" At this point my fist clenches in rage, but I am able to contort my hand into a friendly pointing gesture and stab gaily at the clock in front of us.
"Its 6:32AM...the sun isn't even up yet."
"Yeah. I know!"
"So...it's safe to assume...given that I'm here now, and it's very early..."
"Yeah it is!"
"Yes, yes it is...so clearly, I had to wake up even earlier to get here."
"Yeah, that sucks."
"I'm going to tear out your throat with my bare hands."
"What?"
"Nothing!"

I put my headphones back on as a subtle, friendly gesture that this guy repulsed me and I wanted him to stop talking. He of course, continued to chat with me and all I could do was occasionally nod and pretend to be enthralled with the Good Morning America.
"Sorry, I really can't keep talking...Al Roker is about to show his recipe for spicey fish stew. I really need to see this."

....a rope of sand

2005-10-14T12:57:00.000-07:00

Don't ask me about the post title. It came at the request of a deranged fan. I don't understand you little people, but I wouldn't have my fame and fortune and secret volcano lair if it weren't for you...so I have to give you what you want.

So, the other day I was watching some stupid television show on ABC or whatever and I realized, wow, these shows are so freaking bad I could be writing their material. (Seriously, I could cough up something onto a piece of paper and send it in and America would find it funnier than these shows. Although, to be fair, I should tell you that I also have a rare disease that causes all of my coughs and sneezes to come out as knock-knock jokes.)

I'm pretty confident I could bang out my very own brand-new sitcom, send it in tomorrow, and it would be snapped up by one of these white-bread networks in a matter of seconds. I'd be filthy rich!! Here's a sample of witty dialogue from the pilot:

Man: Hello my sassy, back-talking no-nonsense wife. You are looking extremely hot today, which makes it all the more inexplicable that you're married to a fat slob like me.

Woman: Hi, my fat, hairy and borderline illiterate husband! You know it's funny, I should find you utterly repulsive, yet for some reason I'm sexually attracted to you. Like, right now.

Man: I know, that is weird. You know what else is odd? How can we afford to live in this large and attractively decorated house when I'm a welder and you have no formal education?

Woman: Hahaha! Or how about the fact that you're cracking open your 3rd beer and you've only been home 10 minutes? Isn't it hilarious that I'm able to see past your profound alcoholism morbid obesity...and love you for the retarded bigot that you are?
Wiley old coot of a grandma hobbles in

Grandma: Add this to the crazy list...I've escaped from my nursing home and moved in with you, and instead of thanking you, all I produce is scathing critiscm and bizarre anecdotal advice. Yet you still haven't smothered me in my sleep!!

Man: Yet!

Entire family laughs
Jailbait sexpot daughter bounces in

Girl: Hi, stupid family!! I'm a total slut!

Woman: I'm not concerned with the fact that you are clearly having unprotected sex in your room and probably stealing money and pills from your father and I...or that you're breasts are far too large for a 14 year old...but I AM mad that you got a temporary tattoo at the mall!! I thought I raised you better!!

Girl: I hate you!! You just don't understand me!!!

Daughter runs out of the room, crying. Dad sneaks look at her ass as she leaves.
Smart-mouthed pervert son saunters in.

Boy: I'm only twelve but even I can tell her boobs are fake!
Canned laughter

Boy: By the way, last week I conned Dad out of $5,000 which my friends and I used to build a sex-robot in the basement. Just thought I'd illustrate yet again that I'm only in 5th grade, yet I'm the smartest one in this family.

Man: But I thought that was a science project!

Boy: Oh, Dad, you drunk!
Everyone laughs.
Obnoxious neighbor pokes head through window

Obnoxious neighbor: Where are my hedgeclippers?

Man: Oh Stanley, don't you have a dead wife to mourn?

Obnoxious neighbor: Hahaha! No, Bob, I soothe the pain and loneliness of being widowed by engaging in acts of voyeurism and stalking the people closest to me. By the way, Sally, I didn't know you liked thong underwear!

Woman: Oh Stanley! You wacky neighbor, you!
More canned laughter

Obnoxious neighbor: Seriously, where the fuck are my hedgeclippers?
More canned laughter
Cut to commercial

Cut it! Can it! Bag it! Send it to Hollywood!! You can look for me at the next Emmy Awards. I just need a title. I'm thinking, "Yes Dear, According to a Fat Man is Still Standing with Family Matters"

mmm a tasty slice of yellow mustard pie

2005-10-07T09:16:00.000-07:00

Lots of people approach me on the streets and say, "Hey, attractive and hip-looking stranger, I want to be like you. Tell me what kinds of things are you interested in, so that I may leech some of your coolness for myself." And I, being of the generous nature, regale them with long descriptions of my taste in food, clothing and expensive foreign manservants. These people listen in rapt silence, and when I'm done, they usually burst into uncontrollable laughter. Bastards.
But of course, I have the last laugh when I KEY their cars as an act of revenge. No wait, they still have the last laugh. In my rage lust, I usually end up keying my name and current mailing address into the side of their Ford Fiesta. About once a week I get a knock on my door and it's an irate keyed-car victim on my doorstep, wielding a mace. No, not the pepper spray, but the actual pointy medieval weapon. You may say to yourself, "Hey, why don't you just start asking who's at the door before you open it?" Well I TRY, but these people always have extremely convincing stories:

*Doorbell rings*
Me (from behind the door): Who is it?
Mace-wielding stranger: You don't know me.
Me: Are you going to attack me with a medieval weapon if I open this door?
Mace-wielding stranger: No.
Me: That sounds believable! Come on in!

...You can imagine the rest. Anyway, to save myself some pain, I decided to describe my interests from the safety of my own heavily padlocked home.

What I'm listening to:
Last time I counted, I have roughly 200 CDs. My CDs are essentially more valuable than my entire net worth. I guess that's good? Anyway, lately I've been listening to:
Pete Yorn - Day I Forgot
Blackalicious - The Craft
Nirvana - In Utero
Travis - The Invisible Band
The New Pornographers - Electric Version
OkGo - Oh, No
Death Cab for Cutie - We have the Facts and We're voting Yes (it's hard to listen to them when I know they're featured prominently on the OC, but I still try)

And what day would be complete without the sounds of Herve, my puppy, dry heaving up a piece of foam from the lining of a hockey mask we have inexplicably lying around the apartment. I am not making this up.

What I'm reading:
A Million Little Pieces - James Frey
Freakonomics - Steven D Levitt
Bad Habits - Dave Barry
Falls the Shadow - Susan K Penman
I Just Killed A Hooker, Now What Do I Do? - Christian Slater
Teach Yourself to Knit - Some old lady
(I bought this book...but did not buy yarn. It makes for extremely boring reading).
Learn About Famous Painters - back of my Ralph's brand frosted mini wheats box, surprisingly informative

What I'm watching:
Crash
Harold and Maude
Hostage
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
Lost (I simultaneously love and HATE this show. JUST STICK WITH ONE PLOTLINE FOR MORE THAN 30 FUCKING MINUTES!!! MY BRAIN IS CHAFING!!)
Any version of CSI, even the god-awful one with Dave Caruso. They make science look SEXY!
Sabrina the Teenage Witch (Don't ask me why, but I love this show.)
Arrested Development
My Name is Earl
(I'd just like to point out the cruel irony that the two aforementioned TV shows are HILARIOUS, and well-written and well-ACTED, and yet will probably be CANCELLED...while shows like "According to Jim" are entering their fucking 6th season)

What I'm thinking:
God, I want Arby's right now. But its 9:54AM. Besides, I just had some scrambled eggs. I wonder what Josh Homme is doing right now. I wish I could play the drums. I should probably be doing some real work right now. I wonder if we can stop for Arby's on the way up to the campsite. Should I make some coffee? I think I just figured out what the meaning of my life is!...wait, no, I still just want Arby's. Where did this bruise come from?

..yeah I know, scary. But there you go, a little "slice o life" from me to you. I suggest you use my taste in music, TV and stream-of-consciousness thinking to mold and shape your own life. Because lets face it, if you're reading this, you really need help.**

** JUST KIDDING! PLEASE DON'T STOP READING! I NEED ATTENTION!!!!

make up the breakdown

2005-10-05T12:46:00.000-07:00

I work from home and this means I don't have to maintain the same dress code or personal hygiene that most other people consider "normal". And lately, showering has been a hurdle for me. So you can imagine how frequently I put on makeup. The problem is, if I stop putting it on, I will forget how I do it. I was never one of those mini-Mary Kay girls, you know, the ones that could curl their eyelashes at 14 months. Makeup has always required a lot of practice for me; I'm just not very good at putting it on or pulling it off.
In addition to that, I also have the manual dexterity of a gimpy manatee...I'm lucky if I can put on some mascara without gouging out my eye.

And it’s not just that I don't know how to actually APPLY the damn stuff. I also have a face that’s well...challenging. Lots of bumps and valleys and nooks and crannies. I also have a naturally "rosy" complexion, which is a nice way of saying I look like a clown...a clown with severe rosacea. My red face only gets worse when I'm drinking. And inevitably a conversation about my face will begin:

Drunken douchebag: Haha! Oh my god, your face is SO red! Are you blushing?
ME: No, we've been over this a million times. I just have a really red compl-
Drunken douchebag: Hahahahaa, you're BLUSHING! You are EMBARRASSED! Why are you blushing, silly? Do you have a cruuuush?
ME: No, I do not have a crush. The doctors say--
Drunken douchebag: You have a crush!! You like to blush!
ME: Stop it.
Drunk douchebag: You and some dude sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I- *CLANK*
ME: Did everyone see that? I smashed him in the face with this frying pan because he wouldn't shut up about my face. And I'll do it again!! Let that be a lesson to ALL OF YOU!
The other guests nod their heads and cower in fear

...oook, so maybe the conversation doesn't always lead to deadly assault with cookware, but you get my point. It's traumatic, having this kind of complexion. To remedy the situation, I bought this special, expensive green foundation. Yes, I know. I didn't misspell. It's bright frickin green. Allegedly, green is supposed to balance out the red in your face. At least that's what make-up experts say. And by experts saying, I mean what I think I read on the side of a bus as it hurtled past me at 65 miles per hour.

Apparently this kind of "opposite color" theory is for all kinds of areas. You're also supposed to put on "yellow" concealer to balance out the "blue" of your under eye circles. Purple tints will balance out a "yellow, sallow complexion". I am not making this stuff up. It’s so obvious. Slap the opposite color on and your gross facial imperfections will disappear!! I really think the whole thing is a big joke cooked up by make up executives, for the purpose of ridiculing me, lowly and incompetent cosmetic user. I can just picture them now, sitting in their impenetrable Fortress of Lip Gloss and coming up with their latest marketing scheme. Pretty soon they'll be telling people like me to just go out and buy big bottles of finger paint and smear them all over my face. And I will. Just to keep that drunk douchebag from making fun of my red face.

Anyway, I got off on a bit of a tangent there, but even if theoretically this green stuff does balance out my complexion, even after applying, I still end up with a red face. The bottle instructs me to spread the goo on my face with a "light touch" and "blend, blend, blend" until it disappears. Now, I'm the kind of person that can melt microwave-safe tupperware or electrocute myself on battery powered devices, so the concept of "light touch" is lost on me. After about 5 minutes of ramming my fingers into my face, my cheeks look redder than when they started. I've even managed to give myself a little brush burn!! Then out of nowhere that drunk douchebag shows up in my bathroom and starts laughing at me. By the time I'm done bludgeoning him with my hair dryer, my face is beet red and I'm drenched in sweat. What a waste of time!!

I just won't ever be able to grasp this whole make up and grooming thing. This is probably why I have trouble making girl friends, because I don't know the finer points of lip liner or bronzer. Or maybe it's because unlike most girls, who are talking about the latest episode of sex and the city, I'm trying to remember all the words to the Transformers theme song. Out loud.

doomed

2005-09-23T15:39:00.000-07:00

Reasons why I'll never be able to survive an office job after working from home for a year:

1. The concept of wearing shoes, make-up or a bra during most of the work week has become completely foreign to me. In fact, last time I tried to put on a bra, I nearly choked myself.

2. My idea of work attire consists of:
-velour track pants, fraying at seams
-tshirt, sans bra
-slippers
-glasses
-un-brushed teeth
I will wear this ensemble for four days straight, then rotate in a new shirt.

3. Ever afternoon at 2pm, I watch Sabrina the Teenage Witch while updating my status reports. I have cancelled meetings with customers and my manager, because they interfere with my Sabrina time.

4. I have developed an unhealthy addiction to webcomics, which I read and re-read about 1000 times a day. I am particularly fond of White Ninja, Penny Arcade and Normal Life.

5. Because I work by myself at home, no one can see when I'm making faces on a business teleconference, or better yet, when I'm mooning them. And yes, I have gone to the bathroom during a call. The mute button was on, you perverts!!!

6. I compulsively update my blog and check for comments every 10 minutes. Sometimes, when I'm on a roll, I'll blow entire hours of my day blogging.

7. My daily commute: about 30 seconds...45 if I trip on the way across the hall.

when in doubt, blame it on that 40 ounce of malt liquor

2005-09-23T07:30:00.000-07:00

So, I've committed myself to writing down every single mildly humorous thing that pops into my head throughout the day. I feel like the only times I'm actually clever are completely random and inconvenient...Like when I'm slumped up against the shower wall, half-asleep. And later, when I can repeat my funny observation to an actual person, it's impossible to remember what I had thought up in the shower. Alcohol has killed off my slowest and my fastest brain cells, and left in its wake a vast and empty tundra of brain goo. Quite honestly, with the amount of Mickey's Ice and Adam Sandler movies I've consumed, I'm lucky if I wake up and remember what pants are used for.
But I digress.
It has been a challenge to write down every little" gem" that I think of, especially if I'm stuck in an elevator with just a Sharpee and the back of some guy's neck. It takes at least 10 dollars for him to let me write on him, and another $20 to follow me home, so I can transcribe his neck onto my laptop. And sometimes its one of those hairy Armenian guys, and the entire experience is just plain unpleasant.

I have managed to capture some thoughts however, and after typing them out and reading them out loud, I've come to realize that stuff said in my brain sounds a lot better than when I introduce it into reality. Maybe that's because I say everything in my head with a cheeky English accent. But too bad for you, I'm posting them all anyway.

Random thoughts while lying in bed at 12:45AM

- Why does grape or banana "flavor" taste completely unlike the actual fruit that its supposed to be imitating? Shouldn't we just stop kidding ourselves and give these flavors completely new names to reflect their drastically different tastes? Or at the very least, if we can't assign names, we should treat these flavors like a red-headed stepchild and make it clear to the world that grape or banana flavor does not have any natural relation to the parent fruit, whatsoever. So just stop acting like you're part of the family, you brat!

- Wouldn't it be embarrassing if you died by choking to death on a piece of "Death by Chocolate" cake?? God, the irony of it would be mortifying. If the chunk of cake didn't kill you, I think the total humiliation would.

- Why did that Mexican guy yell at me the other day when I accidentally ordered him to pull out maracas and sing La Cucaracha? I wasn't trying to be insulting, I just wanted to be entertained, dammit!! I couldn't make out a word he was saying anyway, it was series of grunts laced with Spanish profanity. Look, sir, I don't know much Spanish beyond the value menu at the local 24 hour taco stand. And as far as I'm concerned, burrito means "$1.99 worth of post-drinking goodness."**

**Mexico is a diverse country, rich in culture and tasty burritos, and I do not mean to disrespect any of it's fair citizens. For every false and hurtful Mexican stereotype I used in this post, I will give one dollar to the man I harassed. After he sings me that song, of course.

Idiosyncrasy is the new black

2005-09-22T13:10:00.000-07:00

Here, for your reading amusement, is a random sampling of my daily idiosyncrasies. (A better title might be, Stupid things I do on a Regular Basis, but "eccentricities" or "quirks" sounds much more adorable).

1.) I literally spend fifteen minutes in the soup aisle at Ralph's agonizing over the sodium content in each brand of soup. I finally choose a few cans with only 3% sodium per serving and triumphantly scamper home, knowing that I will live another day without hardened arteries. But as soon as I get home and heat up a can, it only takes one spoonful before I realize (yet again) that salt = tasty. I end up pouring about 2 inches of rock salt into my bowl and feel my organs practically pucker from dehydration. Of course, I will repeat this entire process next week.

2.) I buy one of those eye masks you wear at night so that I can fall asleep faster; by wearing one I won't be distracted by pesky lights or shadows in the room. It only lasts about ten minutes on my head before I have a panic attack: What if I won't be able to see the burglar/rapist/vampire that is creeping towards my bed? I can't have this thing covering my eyes!!! I rip the mask off and revert back to my old way of sleeping: with my head sandwiched between two pillows, clutching a head of garlic.

3.) I avoid making phone calls and answering my cellphone at all times to avoid any minute possibility of awkward conversation or long, embarrassing pauses. Friends and family members stop calling me because I refuse to answer my phone, even when I'm standing across the room, making direct eye contact with them while they're dialing. Even though I snub all phone conversation, I of course feel incredibly sad and neglected when no one calls or leaves me voicemails. This depression further deepens my anxiety; the fewer phone calls I get, the greater the pressure to not sound like a retard! Eventually I will end up selling all my possessions, moving into a cave and talking to my hand in order to avoid normal conversation with ANYONE.

4.) Every three or four days, I find myself in the throes of a terrible stomach ache. These are always brought on by eating my bodyweight in some kind of food (sushi, tortilla chips, cookies, shoe leather, etc). And each time, I swear on the grave of Bettie Crocker that I will never ever again eat so much of the said food (cooking lard, jelly beans, scrapple, etc). And inevitably, three or four days later I'm in the super mark-down aisle at Smart and Final, clutching a 5lb bag of expired Mexican pork rinds and saying, "Made from real Mexican pig and pig-related parts? Sounds delish!!"

like being in middle school again

2005-09-21T17:09:00.000-07:00

So, I submitted my blog to a big site that advertises your blog and lets people search your posts based on subject matter. I put mine under, "Comedy/Humor". They didn't have a category for "long, pointless rants".

The only problem is, they check for profanity in your blog, and if they think you have too much, they'll reject you!!!! (They also check to make sure your blog is written in English. Don't worry, I deleted that post I wrote entirely in Portuguese. You know, the one I wrote after I drank the juice from an expired bottle of martini olives and blacked out?)

Anyway, I'm worried, because I do .... on occasion...tend to dabble with "blue language". Actually, my last post had nine swear words in it...but they were in the form of a poem, so doesn't that sort of cancel them out? Hopefully the blog-auditor people will not use that one post as a representative of my entire blog. Even though I may curse, I'm really as sweet at sugar and sunshine!! Ask any of the old people I read to down at the nursing home. Well, don't ask that one lady with the eyepatch. She accused me of cheating at dominoes and I had to throw down...so now she has a slightly skewed view of my personality. (Literally!! a skewed view!! hahahahha, its fun to mock the afflicted.)

I guess my point in all of these sentences I threw together is....don't judge my blog by a few silly little cuss words. I think finding swear words offensive is so objective. What if I, conscientious citizen, really truly hate the sound of the word "tuba" or "hoodwink" or "Jessica Simpson"? Would I have the right to ask that those words be BANNED from most writing because it bugged me? (Actually, pending the 1,000th signature of my petition, Jessica Simpson WILL be forever banned from the english language).

But really, my apprehension over the swear words is really masking a deeper fear. I'm afraid the blogger people will accept my blog into their little family...but that once it's released into a greater audience...no one will care. Or worse yet, no one will think its funny. So far, I've had nothing but positive feedback about my blog and that makes me feel very happy. So happy I no longer need the highball of scotch every morning to feel better about myself. But the thing is, the only people that seem to have read this thing are my friends. And their views don't count. I've bought all of my friendships through blackmail, threats and good old-fashioned mail order catalogs. It's the opinions of strangers and non-friends that matter to me. And isn't that odd? I hate most people, regardless of race or creed, yet I really really want them to think I'm funny, to have their approval. I feel like I'm in 7th grade all over again.
(Literally. I've heard of late-bloomers, but I think this whole, "not reaching puberty" thing I have is rooted in a serious medical problem).

It's funny, because you think you have a thick skin, and then you put time and effort into something you really care about and suddenly you're absolutely terrified about any criticsm. I guess this is what it will feel like to give birth to an ugly child. But at least you can throw a sack over an ugly kid or give him to the circus...when you write something, you can't really take it back. It's there forever...etched into the very fabric of human history.
What's that? Delete button? Ohhhh riiiight. I forgot about that. Ok, scratch everything I just said. If anyone says that this post sucks and isn't funny, I'll just stand by my convictions, hold my head high and say I've never written anything in my entire life; it must have been the old lady with the eye patch from the nursing home!!!!

(Don't you like how I tied up a scattered collection of non-linear thoughts with a quick conclusion and a reference to a previous sentence?! I may not have made any kind of coherent point, but I brought the post full-circle dammit. Oops!! I mean dag-nab-it.)

haiku you doing?

2005-09-20T11:10:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd spice up an otherwise mundane post about my everyday activities by composing them in the ancient form of haiku. Ok, lets get this party started!

Fuck! how many words
are in a haiku again?
wait, syllables? shit!

Okay, I'm ready
no really, I got it now
wait, do commas count?

shit shit shit shit shit
okay, take a nice deep breath
haiku doesn't suck

there once was a man
from nantucket, who walked with
his foot in a - damn!

okay, not limericks
this is poetry, dammit!
pull it together!

I ate a cookie
chocolate and peanut butter
it was delicious

I need a shower
but I'll probably skip it
because I am gross.

Yesss! I just needed to warm up. It's like a verbal ballet. Now I need to lay down, that was really hard.

how to register for wedding gifts and avoid being beaten by teamsters

2005-09-15T04:53:00.000-07:00

Sorry I haven't posted in awhile!! Well, I don't really know who I'm apologizing to, its not like the Blogger cares. It's like when people write "Dear Diary" on the top of every entry in their journal, as if "Diary" is a real person that cares about their dreams, fears and acne. Actually, I used to do the same thing, only I'd address each journal entry to a different citizen of McDonaldland. As in "Dear Mayor McCheese, a funny thing happened to me while I was get fitted for my orthopedic shoes..." I wrote primarily to Mayor McCheese; I thought an elected municipal official would be the best person with whom to voice my concerns and feelings. Plus, I had a big crush on him when I was seven.

But anyway, the real reason I've neglected posting for so long is because I'm so BUSY! Aside from my normal routine of small-arms dealing to small-armed children and practicing full-contact origami, I now have to do a registry for my wedding. (In case you haven't heard, I got engaged. I'm the future Mrs. McCheese!!)

I know the phrase "registering for gifts" may sound as great as "hot girl on girl action" or "world's largest rice krispie treat" to the untrained ear, but trust me, it's not fun. At least it's not fun if you're a neurotic person like myself.
It's difficult enough for me to ask a bunch of people to give me presents, and then on top of that, specify the exact color, kind, quantity, price and gender of the gifts that I want. In addition, I find myself battling conflicting emotions when choosing anything for the registery. Even picking something as simple as a blender triggers a whole series of internal conflicts:

The modest altruist in me says,
"I don't need gifts! I want all of my guests to donate an orphaned baby to Africa. Or, something along those lines."
The cheap-ass in me then says, "These blenders are WAY too expensive! I don't need a blender for $12.99!! I can just mash together the smoothie ingredients with my bare hands!!"
Inevitably, however, the greedy biatch in my wins out:
"A $200 blender? I don't know...ooh, it comes in PINK!? I'll take three!!!!"

My poor wedding guests. I basically used this thought process to pick all of my items, which is why I'm registered for a two panda bears, a solid-gold toilet and a small family of Mexican children to wait on me hand and foot.

But seriously, it's not like you get to register for anything fun. I'm thinking, "play station!! lifetime supply of kettle corn!! giant keyboard you play with your feet like in the blockbuster Tom Hanks movie, Big!!!!" But proper etiquette tells me I need to pick things like "towels", "kitchen gadgets" and "China". (Tip: China is actually plates and other dinnerware, not the communist country located chiefly in continental East Asia. You cannot register for it. Don't even try. You'll save yourself a couple of hours of torture and UN hearings, trust me.)

The worst thing about china is that its so boring. I get to choose from white, off-white, and "whitish". My grandmother tells me I should register for twelve place settings. Twelve?! I don't have twelve friends!! The only people I hang out with are the local railway teamsters I play poker with every other Thursday. There aren't twelve of them, and besides, its BYOPH (bring your own prison hooch). I hardly think we would need platinum lined gravy boats or cereal bowls for that. Besides, even if I did set out my best china for them, they'd probably just swipe it...those no-good plate-stealing card-cheating teamsters!! (Note: I know absolutely nothing about actual teamsters, who they are or what they steal. If you are reading this and you are a teamster, please do not bludgeon me with a crow bar, or whatever blunt object members of your union prefer. Thanks.)

So, you can see my predicament. And the worst part is, I may have to register again even if I stay married (which is not likely since I'm marrying a fictional mascot for a fast food company). My mom mentioned the other day that you register for gifts when you have a BABY. If I'm having this hard of a time picking stuff myself, how the HELL am I going to be able to pick out gifts for a baby I don't even know!?!? Maybe I can just skip the baby shower altogether. The only people that would come are those damn teamsters, and they won't show up unless there are free finger sandwiches and Mad Dog 20/20.