"I'm a stalker in a Taurus."

The last line of this review made me decide to see Broken Flowers. Normally I am not a big fan of Bill Murray (or Jim Jarmusch, if we're being totally honest) so I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed this movie.

Not really because the plot - which was a bit too reminiscent of when my ex called me out of the blue last summer - but for the acting and the use of silence. (The "pregnant pause," my class instructor called it last week.) There was a point where I was actually squirming in my seat along with the actors who were sitting in prolonged uncomfortable silences on the screen.

And unlike with Lost in Translation or The Life Aquatic..., this time Murray actually convinced me that he was a sad older man wondering where his life had gone. I truly empathized (and sympathized at times) with his character - something I have never said about Caddyshack Man before.

In summary... thumbs up.

Attention, charities who send me mail asking for money:

Spell my name wrong (first or last) and your envelope automatically goes in the trash. So if you really have the cure for cancer and just need a few more benjamins, kindly do your research.

Sadly, this can help. And starting September 1, you can even add comments to my ZabaBlog saying what a cheapskate bad samaritan I am!

Jesus H Christ.

Know thyself.

According to many of the oh-so-helpful web resources on prepping to enter the interview world, one of the things you are supposed to be able to describe at the drop of a hat, are three scenarios where you felt highly motivated to "finish something." I presume they mean something work-related... Which is really unfortunate, because all I can really think of being highly motivated to do are:

• getting through the first disc of season four of Six Feet Under so I can start on the second disc
  
• getting Riley to the crematorium so that I don't have to touch his poor little dead body ever again
  
• getting through the damn interview so that the torture will end

Oy vey. I am in trouble.

A funny way to insult someone.

From ThinkGeek's local fortune file, which has stolen about 15 minutes of my life tonight:

Charles: "You know that hole, the one you put pie in?"
Gabe: "You mean my pie-hole. Yeah."
Charles: "Shut it!"

Constructive feedback.

Day two of my class featured BILL AT MY TABLE! Joy of joys. Thankfully he left early, but not before monopolizing the group activities and also giving me a hug goodbye.

Anyway. The class also included a section on the ever-hokey topic of how to "develop the constructive feedback message." The instructor warned us against trying this at home before mastering it at work (due to the emotional ties that come with home attempts), but because it's so hokey to me that I can't do it without heavy sarcasm, I've been practicing on Luna:

"When you meow incessantly for no apparent reason, I feel frustrated, because I don't know what's wrong and you don't accept any attention I try to give you to try to soothe your angst."

"When you meow incessantly when I go into the kitchen, I feel annoyed, because me visiting the kitchen does not automatically mean that you get your daily dose of squishy food."

"When you meow incessantly [are you sensing a theme here?] while glaring at me while I sit on the couch, I feel perplexed, because you can see a lap prime for the taking but instead you sit there and glare."

See? Hokey. Even more so in the business world...

I am not a crook.

Today I went to Nordstrom to see if I could find some things. All I ended up finding were some quality "hosiery" that I would never spend that much money on if I didn't have (approximately) 86 $10 gift certificates. The total came to $23.something, so I handed the Nordstrom lady two $10 gift certificates and a $10 bill. The only bill in my wallet, which I knew for a fact because this morning I'd had $16 and spent $6 of it at the car wash.

She gave me back $1.something in change. I stood there waiting and finally she asked if something was wrong. I nicely explained that I'd given her a $10 - the only bill I had in my wallet - but she'd only given me change for a $5. She glared at me very suspiciously and finally handed over another $5.

While she was glaring it was all I could do to keep myself from saying, "Come on, lady. Surely your uber snotty sophisticated eye can see that I am dressed entirely in clothes from Ross - do you really think I don't know how much money is in my wallet at any moment during the day?"

I want to live in a van down by the river.

We recently got a survey at work requesting our input about an offsite later this year. One of the questions had to do with motivational speakers - as in, "if we got a motivational speaker, who would you like to hear from?"

It is absolutely killing me not to reply with "Matt Foley." Out of respect for the dearly departed, I shall refrain, but how funny would that be...

The almost-Friday five.

Top five things that negatively impacted my "I'm going to have a good day" attitude today, in no particular order:

• Waking up at 7:08am and realizing I need to be in San Francisco by 8am for a class.*
• Bill, in the class, who insisted on sharing a personal story or commentary in response to EVERY SINGLE scenario or example the instructor discussed during the class.**
• Being denied a store credit card after making a very large clothing purchase at one of Union Square's chain stores and therefore not saving $40 with their "10% off this purchase" deal.***
• Seeing a really cool shirt at the Gap, on what appeared to be a sale rack, which is the only reason I decided to buy it, and then finding out at the register that it actually wasn't on sale.****
• Giving money to the clearly-strung-out-heroin-addict-playing-a-rare-Beck-song-on-his-guitar rather than the guy-with-the-dog-who-asked-politely-for-change on the street.*****

And so to make up for my bad day, I went to this store and spent lots of money on these, and suddenly everything was allllllll good. The "Waving not Drowning" one sounds pretty good right about now.

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* In an unprecedented series of events, including me leaving the apartment at 7:23am and even remembering to feed Her Majesty before leaving (a new personal record for me), I was only 15 minutes late.

** And ANOTHER fun day of Bill tomorrow! Yay!!

*** The only time I ever apply for those things is when I am spending a ridiculous amount of money. And then once it's paid off I cancel it. And WHY THE HELL did they deny me anyway?? My credit is perfect. I'm banking on the fact that it's because I have zero debt and therefore they knew they wouldn't make any money off me. Bastards.

**** I bought it anyway. What the hell, I never go shopping.

***** Thus perpetuating my internal conflict of giving money to homeless/begging people. If I'm in a good mood and see someone outside of the grocery store, I offer to buy them food. Or if I'm in a good mood and pass someone on the street that I'm going to pass again shortly, I keep a dollar handy for when I go back their way. But if I'm in a bad mood there's no point in them even asking. Unless they happen to know a rare Beck song, in which case all bets are (apparently) off.

Bored now, part two.

Luna is SO not amused with my new digital camera.

You can practically hear her saying "oh jesus christ, wtf already??"

Tales of the heart.

I recently, finally, saw House of Flying Daggers. No one told me it was a love story. Despite that, it was well worth my time. I need to watch more kung fu movies. Suggestions accepted.

And then last night I watched The Laramie Project. And I had to wonder: is the fact that I hate people who hate other people, just as bad as them hating other people?

Why?

Why does Microsoft need to send an error report when Firefox dies? Who are they sending it to?

Not that I ever send those stupid error reports anyway. I'm sure THE MAN is behind the scenes looking at where the error occurred. Lord knows, with all the porn sites I frequent, I'm already due for a visit from the Patriot Act folks at some point.

Exercises in cause and effect.

For the past three weeks, it seems that my going to the gym is directly related to how much cheese I eat the night before. A sprinkle on some pasta doesn't warrant getting up at 6am, but you can bet that a quarter of a package sure does.* I was doing really well for about six months but then work got crazy and I was traveling every week and... Well, maybe the ultimate reason is that I needed a break before beginning my next ten-pounds-down endeavor.

Whatever the rationale - I will be resuming my routine of going to the gym regularly starting again on Monday. I WILL. You can't stop me. Go ahead, try. I dare you.

________________
* For more exercises in cause and effect, go here.

Only so much brain space for the Y chromosome.

Re: car situation. I was very sad (well, ultimately happy, but momentarily sad) to learn that the multiple clicking sound the other day was, in fact due to a dead battery rather than a starter/alternator issue. Those must be single-click issues.

I used to know that. I guess all my "car maintenance" brain space has been superceded of late by "power tool" brain space.

I would gladly give up my "where to buy cheap cute shoes" brain space to get that "car maintenance" brain space back...

Yay me.

I've been reading through old performance evaluations and some recent comments on my resume from people I've worked with over the years. Even though I don't always feel like I'm doing a good job, I think I am, in the grand scheme of things. And gosh darn it, it seems that people like me.

Except for maybe the guy I yelled at (again) on Friday.

But otherwise... Let's just hope the job-poster-people think so too.

If they take my stapler then I'll set the building on fire...

To put a perfect cap on a day that reeked of pointy haired bosses (or is it pin headed bosses? I can never remember), spending 3 hours doing someone else's job, and feeling utterly incompetent because documentation I'm responsible for has been wrong for some time, is now and will always be wrong, world without end... My car is dead.

SIGH.

Dead in the "this requires AAA to come and haul your car to the dealer" dead, not dead in the "wait for someone to come into the garage to give you a jump" dead. Dead in the "radio still works fine but there's a weird clicking noise when you turn the ignition" dead - which implies alternator or starter, if I recall correctly.

SIGH.

However! Today a boss of the non-PHB variety randomly gave me a beautiful new red Swingline stapler. And a friend is driving me to run some errands tonight even though I blatantly said "I need to use you" rather than "I need some help" (though to be fair I did say I'd buy her dinner*). And I got out of an evening meeting I wasn't really looking forward to.

So... I don't know what all that means. Except that I will probably be spending my weekend at the dealer. As a friend uttered (about something unrelated) today - "worse things have happened - but that doesn't mean I can't spend a few hours complaining about it."

________________
* Which, you are damn certain, will involve a margarita. And if I ask for no salt, NO salt on the margarita, and it has salt on it, big grains of salt, floating in the glass... That'll be okay with me.

For the sake of momentum.

A recent Aimee Mann* concert provoked me to buy a copy of Magnolia, which I saw in the theater in 2000, absolutely loved, and haven't seen again since. I'm having trouble getting up the nerve to watch it again (kinda like with American Beauty). Yesterday I sat through about an hour of the "diary/making of" and it was enough to remind me why the film was so brilliant in its first viewing, and how seeing it again might ruin it completely.

So instead I watched The Princess Bride (also purchased on DVD yesterday) for the 9,856 time... Anybody want a peanut?

________________
* Some of you might recall her performance in season seven of Buffy... the Sleeper episode, to be exact, the one where they cliffhang Giles dying, where she's playing "Pavlov's Bells" at the Bronze and all hell breaks loose between Spike and his newest recruit, and Aimee walks out of the club saying, "Man, I hate playing vampire towns." Very reminiscent of Grandpa's quote from The Lost Boys: "One thing about living in Santa Carla I never could stomach, all the damn vampires."

Bored now.

To those who have inquired recently - thanks, and Her Majesty the Cat is doing much better after a week of 'roids. So well, in fact, it appears that she doesn't know what to do with all the time she was spending scratching and grooming. Really, she sits there and looks at me like, "what do I do now?" It's quite amusing.

Either that or the 'roids have a stoning effect.

It's probably a little of both.

I'm okay with that...

If it ain't broke...

My method of buying expensive technological gadgets has usually been not to - I wait until my gadget-loving friend upgrades and gives me her leftover gadget, or I just convince myself that I don't need the gadget. Usually the latter works exceptionally well... There are so many options out there and I have no patience or time to research all the variations and accessories and bonus features. But recently I've been coveting peoples' digital cameras, especially since the sand that got into my Elph during the Belize vacation finally did it in.

When I do buy expensive technological gadgets, I ask a different gadget-loving friend who has coincidentally (without my prior knowledge) bought the gadget recently. Such was the case with my printer (something like this - but an older model), which I am quite happy with. And I think such will also be the case with the digital camera I just bought, based mostly on his recommendation.

And then if it turns out to be a piece of crap, I know where he lives. We'll know in about a week.

Testing, testing.

Blogger allows images now. Gosh, wish my Firefox would allow images.* Anyway, this is the double arch rainbow I saw in Estes Park. (Essssssstes not Esteeeeeeeees.) It's not as clear in the picture but man, was it amazing.

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* One day it worked, the next day it didn't. I didn't change anything relevant, that I can think of. Suggestions accepted.

To lose no overage hairbrush.

Is the subject of this post:

a) the subject of a recent spam email I received?
b) my new goal in life?
c) all of the above?

"Bleach smells like bleach."

That was my favorite quote from Million Dollar Baby. My entire family (all three of them) raved about this film, and with the Oscar wins and all, I figured I should check it out.

I liked it. I did. Other than wondering why the hell Clint was still attempting to act (AGAIN with the still wondering) and why Morgan always gets the narrator roles, I was enthralled for the whole two hours. Yet that ("bleach smells like bleach") was my favorite quote. Says something about the story, I suppose.

So that's my review.

She is here to PUMP. YOU UP.

My cat is now on steroids.*

It all started about a year ago when I got a couch from Ikea, which she immediately developed a reaction to (and a bald spot on her tummy as well). One vet trip and multiple couch cover washings later, all was fine. Then last April she apparently developed "seasonal allergies." Another vet trip and a bottle of liquid-omega-acid-vitamin-something-or-other later, all was okay for a while, then not quite okay. When I took her to the vet again today she'd lost yet another pound (a year ago she was 12 lbs, in April she was 10lbs, now she's 9lbs)... Hence the 'roids.

If all goes well, she's going to be pretty fucking buff in about three weeks. I can't wait to see it.**

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* Alternate post titles:

• "She was a juicer. Using steroids. Diabonol, then Wisterol - they use that on horses, for Christsakes."
• "Just call her Rafael Palmeiro."
• "My cat can beat up your cat."
  

** OK, if all goes well she will not be scratching constantly and will have gained a pound or two. But wouldn't it be funny if she ended up that way instead?

SERIOUSLY??

The Dukes of Hazzard movie topped the box office this weekend. WTF IS WRONG WITH AMERICANS??? I'm soooo with Cooter on this one.

And unrelated but also sad... Man. He was the only one of the lot I could actually stand.

On dogs and penguins.

Yesterday I wasted 1.5 hours of my life watching Must Love Dogs. Rationalize it however you like - I had a free pass, it was at the theater 2 feet from my house, I didn't feel so hot but wanted to get out of the house, how bad could any movie with John be, I wanted to see a successful online dating story since my recent endeavors had been fruitless... All of these were true yesterday. But it just sucked. One hundred percent sucked. The two main characters didn't even have dogs. I've not been so bored during a movie since... well, I guess since The Woodsman less than a month ago.

So today I saw March of the Penguins to make up for yesterday's disappointment. I {heart} penguins. Those little beasts in Antarctica trek back and forth 70+ miles several times during the year just to survive. Next time I complain about my life, remind me of that fact, will ya?

Attention foodies...

Some news you might be interested in. Some other news. And finally, a quiz. (I'm a "debonair diner" - thanks in large part to some of the people I associate myself with... Otherwise how would I know what foie gras or a NY Strip was?!)

Hmm...

So it's NOT just me! Cool.

Death of a toaster oven.

Last night my beloved toaster oven died. Yeah, that's right, I said beloved. Yeah, that's right, about a toaster oven. See, a girl like myself who lives alone doesn't have a lot of use for a big oven most of the time, especially when said girl barely cooks a real meal more than once a week. So seven years ago I bought a toaster oven, and it's proven invaluable ever since. Well, until last night.

Now, do I replace the toaster oven, or do I swap that space out for a new microwave instead? I don't have room or electrical outlets for both right now... I've never really found the need for a microwave at home (I just take leftovers to work instead), but I'm starting to wonder if that's because they've always been so big and expensive rather than not needing one. These days you can get a .7 cubic foot dealie for just $50. (You can even get microwaves with built in toasters and microwave/toaster oven combos. Something about that just seems wrong to me.)

Hmm. Easily defrosted frozen veggies vs toasted bread. Popcorn in 2.5 minutes vs heating fake meat without turning the apartment into a dry sauna. Decisions, decisions.

Delayed reaction.

Two days ago, I missed the bus by literally 30 seconds, twice... Both going to work and going home from work. I also came 10 seconds from being hit by a car twice that same day. I was paying attention to where I was going - the drivers of the cars apparently weren't, though.

I'm not sure what it means, but surely it means something.

End of random bolded text for emphasis. It was just kind of weird.

And the award goes to...

Most clever cat name given by a 2.5 year old: "Sidewalk."

I'm wide awake it's morning.

And I would be so much happier sitting at home on my couch, with Bright Eyes blaring from my headphones, than doing anything I need to do today.