"... I don't think it was a person ... "

Normally I am a good driver who curses tailgaters, and expresses other road rage, but gets to and from my destinations in one piece with no major incidents or mishaps. Today was a day I should not have been behind the wheel.

I picked up a colleague and got on the freeway to go to a meeting tonight. Halfway through the tunnel, I noticed that the gas tank was on "E." I made it to a gas station two exits up, only to find that the gas station portion of the gas station was taped off and only the service shop was open. Luckily, I saw another gas station across the street and even though it was Chevron, and Chevron is EVIL for more reasons than their gas prices, I had to consent to their $3.71/gallon just to get me to my meeting and home with a little cushion room until I found cheaper gas. I meant to get gas yesterday and forgot. Bah.

At the meeting I actually came very close to saying this phrase several times. The meeting was frustrating on several levels and I was a bit flustered when I got back in the car to drive myself and the aforementioned colleague home.

I made it to the freeway alright, but as soon as I merged another car came up from behind/beside and nearly sideswiped us. At first I thought "bastard, whatever," but then I remembered that I had a passenger in the car, which I rarely do, so I tried to focus on the road and not the conversation we were having about the frustrating meeting.

Then I hit the chair.

The chair, or portion of chair, that was in the middle of the freeway, that the car in front of me successfully swerved to avoid, that I didn't see until I heard the incredibly loud noise and saw it in my rearview mirror. [Insert subject line from colleague here, followed by "I'm glad we didn't get a flat ... I'm glad it didn't hit the windshield ... I'm glad I don't have glass in my face." She will never drive with me again, I'm quite sure of that fact.] I should've known something was coming when I saw the pieces of the in-window-air-conditioner-unit strewn about the freeway about a mile back... But I saw nothing until it had loudly passed under the car and scattered behind me.

At this point, being fully immersed in an episode of "The Twilight Zone Meets The Surreal Life," I just kept going. I figured the sooner I parked in my garage, the better... I did a quick once-over when dropping her off, and seeing no visible damage I headed home.

The final straw was almost hitting the black cat sprinting across the road as I neared my apartment. Fortunately I saw it well in advance, and I was not going 65 as I was on the freeway, and to the best of my knowledge that cat is safe in its owner's house feasting on tuna and prepping for a nap. Or at least not squashed on the street in front of my apartment.

I am counting on tomorrow being so much better than today. All signs are pointing to yes, as long as it doesn't rain heavily in the morning. I'll explain later. For now, I need a drink and a bed, in that order.

No, I don't watch American Idol. I don't. I swear.

But if I did, I could easily say that Blake's got nothing on this guy.

Reader poll.

I can't decide - is this mean, or is it funny? It almost looks like the kitten is trying to get out of the bathtub but is afraid of the plug (therefore making this mean)... Or maybe the kitten thinks it is mightier than the plug and is trying to show the plug what for (which would make it funny)...

My perspective is all wonky because I just gave Luna the laser pointer exercise regimen (which is always good for a laugh) on this OH SO BLOODY HOT day (which is kinda mean). She is now laying on the floor, panting and glaring at me.

________________
Oh and also? I waaaaaaaaaaaaaant one.

An open letter to Mother Nature.

Dear Mother Nature,
WTF? Friday it was 60 degrees, windy and just plain cold. Today my car thermostat stated that it was 93 degrees outside. NINETY-THREE degrees. I don't think it was completely accurate, but I do know that I was bloody hot today.

You really ARE trying to kill the polar bears, aren't you? Might I encourage you to take a look at this cute little guy? It might lift your spirits, but if it doesn't the Dallas (or is it Falcon Crest?) theme just might.

With utmost respect,
Jen(n)

Work with me, people.

I get to pick my bridesmaid dress for my best friend's wedding later this summer. I'm headed back east for her bridal shower/bachelorette party in a couple of weeks, so I was hoping to find something before then so that I can compare it with the other bridesmaids' dresses and make sure we sorta look alike. So today I endeavored upon a day of shopping for that, and some other things.

At Baby Gap the woman forgot to give me the 50% off second pair of shorts until I reminded her. At Old Navy the guy forgot to give me 20% off my entire purchase as the email from them had promised, until I reminded him. Trader Joe's was out of frozen naan (AGAIN!! grr) and they also didn't have the pre-cut cheese variety pack I was going to pick up for a meeting later this week. No luck on the bridesmaid dress either.

Regardless of the aforementioned facts, five hours and $200 later I schlepped nineteen thousand bags upstairs and spent 30 minutes unloading them.

I ask you... How does this happen?

Useful business phrase.

"Thank you. We're all refreshed and challenged by your unique point of view."

Source: The Office daily calendar (... no, not THAT "The Office")

Under pressure.

Had a meeting today (yes, I do realize it's Saturday) where a respected peer formally and publicly stated his confidence in my ability to be successful in my new job.

Now that I know what I know about said new job, I sure hope he's right.

When good ideas turn bad, and then turn good again.

Tonight a friend came over for craft night. We painted/decorated photo frames for Mother's Day gifts. Hers turned out uber-cute. Mine started out fine, but then I started sponging yellow, red and green onto a white background and it just looked awful. But THEN, I started smearing the red and it turned into a distressed antique look, which will go over great with my antique-loving Mom. I found a couple dried flowers and five glue-gun minutes later, I had a finished product:


Now I just need to finish it off with a "mother/daughter" vintage photo and I can send it off. I hope I have one of those.

Otherwise, not much has been going on lately. I work work work work work, which is mostly fine but kinda sucks now and then, especially since I've been going nonstop since April 16 and won't have a break until this Sunday. Her Majesty's seasonal allergies are back so we're back on the 'roids. The Clientele are coming to town on May 26, so I bought a ticket to that show. Blah blah blah.

And so, I consult my book. "Show some skin" sounds interesting and also very easy - which, to a very tired person who wants to keep up her blog, is just what I need right now. So here's how I got my scars:

• The scar above my left eye. I either had when I was born, or developed shortly after birth, a cyst there. I had surgery sometime before age 2 to remove the cyst.
  
  
• The scar under my lower lip. I don't remember how old I was (3 or 4 or 5?) but I was in my backyard on our swingset. It was a metal swingset with a slide in the middle, two regular swings on one side of the slide, and a bench swing (with a bench seat on either side - kind of like this only the benches had actual backs) on the other side of the slide. ANYWAY. I was across from our neighbor, who I had a crush on from age 3 to age 12, and we were swinging kind of high, and at some point I wound up on the ground. Thinking nothing of it, I got back on the swing but my neighbor turned slightly pale and pointed at my chin. When I looked down and saw all the blood I screamed and didn't really stop screaming until the final stitch was put in. I'm sure the E.R. docs just LOVED me that day.
  
  
• The scar on the top of my left arm, just above the wrist. I was 14, it was summer. As teens were wont to do back before skin cancer and global warming, I was sunning in the backyard trying to get a tan. When my time was up I attempted to go back into the house but the back door was locked. My brother was inside, so I banged on the back door several times but got no response. Begrudingly I went to the front door (it was during my chubby teen days so I was very self-conscious about being in a 2-piece in front of my neighbors!) and rang the doorbell for about 10 minutes. No response. I returned to the backyard and proceeded to bang on the door and window until I actually broke the window with my hand. Naturally, I seized the opportunity and reached through the broken window to unlock the door... only to snag my arm on a shard of glass. And by "snag" I mean sliced in such a way that bled profusely and required five stitches. ONLY THEN did my brother come upstairs and see all the blood and get pale and hug me and apologize and... Honestly, I think that's the last time he hugged me. And that's only because he probably realized the world of shit he was in once my parents got home.
  

So there you have it, my scars. If you want to name them, leave a comment.

Happy cat... has run out of happy.

I don't really get the video game references, and I don't usually use internet-ish acronyms other than my favorite one (JMFC) but this one made me LOL. Click on Meme Cats to see more.

This kind of thing now has a Wikipedia entry. With links to these kinds of photos. And these kinds. And these kinds. And finally, these kinds. If you click on no other link, click the last one.

I was supposed to be in bed an hour ago but I got caught up in this and I'm kinda glad. I have literally not laughed so hard in a long time, as I have with some of these photos/captions.

Calling all comedians.

I am in need of jokes. Simple "what do you call a..." or "what did the X say to the Y..." type jokes that are simple to remember and tell, AND that are also funny. It doesn't matter why I need them. Just post 'em if you've got 'em.

Thanks in advance.

Awwww, you shouldn't have.

Most of the weddings I've been invited to have extended the invitation for me only. Even my oldest and dearest friend only alloted me one seat at her upcoming nuptuals. I couldn't care less - people who invite me to weddings know that they are not likely to attend mine anytime soon, and weddings are too expensive for me to bring a friend along for the fun of it, and I'm just happy to be nominated... er, invited...

Today I was pleasantly surprised to receive an invitation which indicated that two seats had been reserved for me.

TWO seats!

You silly, crazy, optimistic friends. I appreciate the thought but unless you want my whiny cat there, it's just gonna be me, my vegetarian self and I. And we all fit in one seat.

(Formal RSVP is in the mail. Whee!!)

You always wanna know why I've got memorable quotes from Office Space in my "favorites"? Well, take it in.

Today I got an email rejection notice for a job I applied for last year. The rejection notice only had the posting number and job title (no department).

I can't find that particular posting number amongst my countless cover letters so I have no idea which job I was actually rejected for, which in the grand scheme of things is kind of funny. The last three jobs with that title, I applied for in July, August and October of 2006. The first job I applied for at that level was in January 2005, and there were two others between then and July 2006.

Luckily for me, the email states that the recruiters are keeping my information on file for six months. Which basically means that if another position opens up that I'm remotely qualified for, they will have thrown out my information by the time they get around to reviewing my resume.

"Just remember, if you hang in there long enough, good things can happen in this world. I mean, look at me."

Like whating a WHAT?

Today's financial management for dummies class featured the following analogy:

Nonprofits are infamous for handing out titles over pay raises. Kind of like banks. You can't swing a dead cat in a bank without hitting 12 VPs of something or another.

[Digression #1: Now, I love cats but I also love the book "All I Need to Know I Learned from My Dead Cat." Despite the fact that I woke up and found my cat dead and stiff one morning, I still find the humor in that book. Even so, it was a random thing to say.

Digression #2: We have a hearing-impaired person in our class who has two interpreters working with her. I find myself watching them now and then just out of curiosity, because while I can sign the alphabet and a few words here and there, I couldn't hold a conversation without trying a deaf person's patience - so I watch to see how certain words are signed. It's like a bonus class on top of the class I am taking. End of digressions.]

Upon hearing this particular statement from the professor, all eyes immediately went to the interpreters to see how the hell they would sign "can't swing a dead cat."

________________
For the record, this is my favorite extension professor in the history of extension professors.

Define "pay," Bob.

Tonight was part one of my "financial management for dummies" class, which I'm taking to fulfill a requirement for Cal State's Non-Profit Management Certificate program (and also to help me in my day to day job). Not to imply that non-profit managers are dummies. But me, personally? I'm a dummy when it comes to non-profit management.

So far the class has been way more interesting than it probably sounds to you, dear reader, and it's definitely practical as well as way more interesting than I anticipated.

But by far, the best part tonight was when the instructor was defining "membership-based" organizations versus "non-membership-based" organizations. Someone asked whether a church would be considered "membership-based."

The instructor tried to explain... "Well, would a church charge a fee for any services it provides someone who attends church regularly? What types of services are you thinking of?" The questionner gave the example of Catholic church marriage classes, and threw out a couple other Catholic class/service examples I wasn't familiar with.

The instructor's reply started with, "If you don't have to pay to be a member of the Catholic church..."

He had to wait a few minutes for the giggles to subside before continuing.

Not by the hair on my shinny, shin shin.

Subject partially cribbed from Connie, who dragged me kicking and screaming to the Shins show at the Warfield last night.

OK, far from kicking and screaming. But I hadn't planned on going, only because I saw them for a brief set at the Download Festival and I also saw them for a very brief (and free!) set at Easy Street Records earlier this year and I'm also trying to be more cautious about money these days. But since I'd never seen a full show I figured, what the hey.

(Digression. Anyone with an extra Decemberists ticket for next week should disregard all previous comments and invite me immediately. End of digression.)

After a couple of drinks and a great Indian meal we wandered down to the Warfield. Timing couldn't have been more perfect - about 10 minutes after we sat down, the Shins came on stage. And then THEY ARRIVED.

I don't know what it is about me and the Warfield. The past three times I have had a seat in the balcony, I have had a chatty Cathy who praised my aloneness, an old man who kept falling on me due to his self-explained reliance on prescription drugs, and a couple who snorted coke and then made out (lather rinse repeat) during the entire show. (I think those last two were pre-blog. The old man incident occured at a Pretenders show - which is probably to be expected - but the cokehead makeout couple was at a Counting Crows show. Counting Crows? COKE? REALLY? I must have missed something in my appreciation for that band.)

The Shins were no exception. About 2 songs into the set, a couple sat down in the seats (providing at least 6 more inches leg room) directly in front of Connie and myself. (Did I mention that the legroom in our purchased seats was worse than Southwest's used to be? Yeah, it was that bad.) These folks proceeded to bob and sway and TALK TALK TALK and bob and sway and generally make it difficult to see or hear the band for about 15 minutes.

Now. Mind you, I've been trying to actively work on what I call my "people patience" - patience for people who, in my mind, are stupid idiots who care nothing about the entire universe that exists outside their own head - so I thought it was just me. Oh, no. Around song three of their arrival, Connie tapped me on the shoulder and whispered, "those people are annoying the HELL out of me."

THANK GOD. It wasn't just me.

Shortly thereafter, they snuck down to the general admission area to annoy those unfortunate people, and upon realizing this (thanks, house lights!) Con and I moved down a row to sit in their luxuriously leg-roomy seats. At that point, I totally relaxed and was able to enjoy the wonderfulness that is the Shins. And then? When their first song in the encore was a cover of Breathe in the Air? I could not have been happier about my $40 ticket purchase.

For long you live and high you fly
But only if you ride the tide
And balanced on the biggest wave
You race towards an early grave.

A journey of 2600 miles begins with...

... a couple days in bed, apparently.

My brave and crazy friend who is about to begin her 2600-mile journey from Mexico to Canada, is laid up in bed with a fever, chills, sore throat, aches and pains everywhere.

As she put it, Canada ain't going anywhere, so she is resting up and taking it all in stride.

Please join me in wishing her good health so that we can all live vicariously through her for the next six months!! I told my mom what she was doing and the first thing Mom said in response was, "don't ever tell me that you're doing that..." Followed immediately by, "tell her good luck!"

"Among Monday's dead was..."

Jesus Christ. This news story is incredibly troubling. Heartbreaking. Disturbing. And somewhat personal.

The school really is nestled in the picturesque Blue Ridge Mountains. I have my own pictures to prove it. There's greenery and beautiful graystone and brick buildings everywhere you look. Fall brings an explosion of orange, red and brown in the trees, and the drill field is a great place for mud flinging and/or mud wrestling (depending on your personal preference) after a big rain. Several bars downtown, as well as several fraternities, welcomed college bands and offered all-ages nights. (I first heard Dave Matthews Band at a frat party at Virginia Tech, if you can believe that.) In short, not a bad place to be when you're coming into your own after high school. It also had a LOT of dormitory housing (Monteith and West Eggleston Halls representin'!), which lent itself nicely to the "full college experience." My fondest college memories are of Virginia Tech, not of the university that actually issued my degree four years later.

When I attended for the first three semesters of my college career, the university had a phone system that could get voice mail messages to students through a bulk distribution listing. I can't imagine the same isn't still true, and I can't understand why they chose to use email for this particular message. But the attack did start small, and there's always the fine line between appropriate notification and fear-induced panic.

I don't fault the higher-ups for acting as they did, and my thoughts are with them and all the students, parents and faculty who were a part of this horrific experience.

Idea #50: Clean house.

Idea #50 in this book is to write about emptying your closets and letting things go, things that you've held on to a year (or more) too long. That idea, combined with watching five episodes of Clean Sweep this weekend, inspired the following activities and subsequent post.

First, I attacked the closet. I've been struggling with the balance between losing more weight than I'd planned to, and the concept that my new job is stressful enough and I've laid off the gym enough that I just might gain all that weight back in the next six months. (I don't hope to, for many many reasons, the main one being that I'm in a wedding this July and would like to have a nice figure to show off whatever strappy dress and bikini I end up wearing in hot, humid Puerto Rico. But another part of me really just doesn't care.)

Anyway, I haven't wanted to get rid of any clothes until today. Today, anything I haven't worn in the last year, I'm not likely to wear this year (skinny or not), so it went into the Salvation Army bag. I freed up about 20 hangers just on that purge. (I also kept three pairs of jeans and four shirts that no longer fit - but put them in a storage box to save closet space - in case I do gain weight again and need some emergency clothing. A girl's gotta plan.)

I keep my shoes in a verticle sweater hanger, which started out as an actual place to house sweaters before I grew up a little bit and bought a real dresser to house the aforementioned sweaters. Yesterday several of the slots housed several pairs of shoes, and there were five shoe boxes underneath also housing shoes. Now there are just a few slots housing several pairs of shoes and no shoe boxes underneath. (I love shoes. I consider this progress. Work with me here.)

And finally, the bookcase. Yesterday, the books I hadn't yet read were interspersed with the books I had read, and just looking at the bookcase before bedtime always made me way too tired to bother with picking one out. Now, all the books I haven't read are neatly organized on the top shelf:



All the books I have read (and will likely read again someday) are organized in horizontal ~ and~ verticle stacks on the bookshelves, creating a nice design element to the room:



And all the books I have no intention of reading or finishing are in the Salvation Army pile; all the phone books and old AAA guides that I will never refer to are in the recycling pile; the state and state park maps are in my car; and the pocket references are on my desk.

I understand how other peoples' homes get disorganized. It's easy to just pile junk in a room or a closet and not deal with them, ever. When I was in elementary school my desk was always a mess and spring cleaning with Mom was the dreaded event of the year.

Now, the idea of disorganization, or things piling up without dealing with them, feels so oppressing to me. I'm not sure if it's due to how many times I've moved in the last five years (the less stuff you have, the quicker the move), or if it's due to my immediate disgust when I pick up a book and see the clean space on the dresser where the dust has collected around it, or if it's because of my anti-capitalist attitude that makes me shun "stuff as happiness"...

Actually, I don't really care what it's about. It's me. And it feels good.

Belated Friday five.

Top five things that will result in me hitting the "back" button immediately after reading any of the following in your Craig's List "men seeking women" post*, in no particular order:

• typos
• run-on sentences
  
• insecurity about being divorced and/or a parent**
  
• "I watch Dr. Phil every night"
• "My only criteria was that she'd have to be breathing, but then I thought, should I make that mandatory or by choice?"

________________
* I only click links and view more details on posts with subject lines that don't include any innuendos relating to sex. This REALLY narrows the pool of posts I actually peruse, and the list above is representative of that pool only... I replied to a few tonight, just for fun. I'm sure they are all ogres but if not, remind me to delete this post after you meet them.

** I couldn't care less. The last guy I dated off and on for a few years (and fell in love with, which is a whole other ugly story) was divorced with a 5-year old boy at the time. The older I get, the more likely it will be that I start dating a man who was once married and/or has children. It's a fact. So just acknowledge that fact and tell me about your lovely child or children and how you have kept the relationship with your ex-wife amicable and I will be totally respectful of that fact.

Step 9: Do the hokey pokey and turn yourself around.

I might be able to find time to surf 3hive. But I certainly don't have time for all this nonsense.

I think my next online dating attempt will include a requirement: must take care of all my technology needs at the drop of a hat without complaining. That should weed quite a few of the weirdos out.

I want to work for THIS guy.

"In our system, managers are anonymously evaluated every six months by their subordinates. If they don’t measure up, they’re no longer allowed to fulfill a leadership role. It’s as simple as that. At our company, you’re a manager as long as your staff approves."

More here.

Get bent, TAX MAN!

It's a good thing my old company sent me a bonus check today, which I wasn't supposed to get since I didn't work through March of this year, because now I can afford to pay for the extra money the IRS claims I owe.

Except that I don't. Whoever entered my withholdings for 2006 reversed two of the numbers, making it look like a difference of $261 is still owed. Naturally there is no clear way to appeal the revised "amount due by 4/26" letter I received today with this information.

The process that is about to ensue, to get this all cleared up, is almost enough of a freaking headache that I want to just pay the damn $261 and be done with it. It took me 5 years to get a fraudulent credit card charge cleared up and I'm sure this will be a very similar drawn out debacle, which will take several years of credit report monitoring to ensure that things get cleared up as they should be.

But I'm having too much fun writing the condescending reply letter (oh and also it's 261 freaking dollars) to give in that easily:

Dear Franchise Tax Board,
It is my great pleasure to inform you that I DID NOT, in fact, INCORRECTLY COMPUTE the tax amount on my return as you so blatantly accused in your 4/11/07 letter. Please review the enclosed copies of my W2 (see item #17 "State income tax"), tax return (line 32 total payments and credits) and personal check in the amount of X (the amount of which, by the way, barely covers the payroll for the time it took your unfortunately dyslexic clerk to mistype some information, and send me this bloody letter).

Etc., etc... You get the gist.

I do fully intend to be condescending and I'm sure that will have some negative impact on some record of my existence somewhere in the country. But in the words of the great Billy Bragg, "if you've got a blacklist, I wanna be on it."

Especially if it's a Franchise Tax Board blacklist. I fucking hate taxes.

________________
No offense to the dyslexics, of course. I have been known to be one, myself, when it comes to numbers. I just think that if you do have dyslexia, perhaps accounting is not the profession for you.

I'm also debating whether to even let my old company know I got a bonus check. It's not my fault they forgot to terminate me on the correct date. I was good and returned THAT 2-week paycheck immediately. Maybe this recent windfall is my come-uppance for putting up with so much crap for nine years?

That whole "putting a face to a name" concept.

At last, now I know that the (actually) nappy-headed white southern conservative annoying "who the hell is he?" dude I always saw when bypassing all the crap cable news shows to get to Roseanne on channel 53 every night, is Don Imus.

So if nothing else comes out of this whole debacle, I can now rest easy with that knowledge.

And for the record, I am quite disgusted with Imus for distracting all the attention from who really is Anna-Nicole Smith's baby's father.

(War? What war?)

Honk if you hate nosybodies.

I was turning into a major intersection today and came damn close to hitting a woman who was crossing the street in accordance with the "walk" sign.

(Digression. Note to self: STOP THE DISTRACTING RUNNING COMMENTARY [TO YOURSELF] ABOUT YOUR DAY ON YOUR WAY HOME. End of digresion.)

I walk a lot, so I have nearly been the victim of vehicular manslaughter many a time. Being one myself, usually I am quite conscious of pedestrians and as long as they are following the rules, I yield to them. (Because seriously? The MOST ANNOYING THING is a jaywalker, and although I jaywalk myself now and then I have ZERO sympathy for jaywalkers.)

This woman I almost hit was abiding by the rules.

The woman in the car following me felt obligated to pull up alongside me at the next stop light, roll down her window and say "DID YOU SEE HER??? BE CAREFUL!!" To which I had three responses, in the following order:

A) Like I didn't feel bad enough about the near-hit.
B) Like I needed a random stranger criticizing my driving.
C) Like an entire five minutes later, a reprimand would even be remotely effective. Hello, lady? Have you seen our justice system lately?

My new theme song.

Driving home after a particularly crummy day at work today (yes, it's a good job, but it's still WORK which means it still SUCKS), I heard this song, which won the vote for "best of set" during KFOG's 10 @ 10 this morning.

I can see why it won - it struck a chord with me personally. (The first part, anyway. ) I just had a three day weekend and all I could think last night was, damn, I have got to find a sugar daddy. And, maybe I could just move to a cabin in the middle of nowhere and live off my savings for years. And actually, yes, I wish I could just get paid to watch cable TV every night. Because I do learn from hours upon hours of watching cooking/home decorating shows, and Jon Stewart really does make me "LOL" and sometimes "ROTFL," and I honestly do care about the Little People and am dying to see what the hell happens to regular-sized little person Jacob in tonight's episode.

I don't really want all the stuff at the end of that song though. Other than, perhaps, the McCulloch chainsaw, because if I learned nothing else from Grindhouse, I learned that you've got to be prepared in case nuclear splooge really turns people into flesh-eating zombies.

So, what do YOU want from life?

Hey look, Brady Bunch Lawnmower Massacre is opening for Cindy Brady's Lisp tomorrow night.

My favorite thing to do in used record stores, other than spending lots of time and money, is to spend lots of money on CDs marked "FOR PROMOTIONAL USE ONLY - NOT FOR RESALE."

In some small way, I truly believe that I am sticking it to the man when I do that... Even when the purchase in question is from an indie record label.

My second favorite thing to do in used record stores is peruse the band names. If only I'd known about this site, I could've saved myself a lot of time and money today.

Public service announcement.

BevMo's 5 cent wine sale is on. I highly recommend the Taft Street Cab.

Redemption in filmmaking.

I am quite certain that the people who saw me grinning as I walked down the street about an hour ago probably would not have guessed that I was grinning because I'd just sat through three hours of mind-numbing, senseless, graphic, campy, gritty, sarcastic, bloody, star-/cameo-/violence-/action-packed mayhem.

It's true. Hell, even I found my grinning a little hard to believe, but I really just couldn't help myself. Sin City had the same effect on me. I'm not sure what that says about me... and I don't want to know.

As with Sin City, I can't believe the man who brought you Spy Kids also brought you Planet Terror. And with Death Proof, Quentin has officially redeemed himself for that American Idol/CSI nonsense. Fans will note his trademarks: snappy curse-laden dialogue, obscure references to 70's pop culture, beautifully choreographed fight scenes and that brilliant 7-minute continuous shot of a conversation around a round table.

I also realized today why I probably didn't like Hostel - I tried to watch it on my little 19-inch TV. Anything Tarantino is associated with is meant to be viewed on a ginormous screen with excellent sound. Note to self.

In fact, if you are at all interested in seeing this film, unless you have a 52 inch screen and room for 20 friends, do not queue it up in your Netflix. GO TO THE THEATER. It was all about the entire experience this afternoon - the Grand Lake, filled with a bunch of late 20's/early 30's hipster types who GOT IT and clapped and laughed and groaned and squealed at all the appropriate places.

The Parkway would be ideal... I almost held out for that but my curiosity got the better of me.

________________
As an aside, I think Quentin is starting to rival Joss in the "women power and I'll be over here" sense. Starting to. He most certainly is not there yet.

News from the home front.

"Guess what! We had snow today - about one inch. The Christmas Cacti bloomed also."

That's right, sports fans. It snowed in Maryland (the lowlands, right outside of D.C., not the mountains). One inch. In APRIL.

According to weather.com, it's 39 degrees at my parents' house this very minute. In APRIL.

I was looking through old photos for something the other day and ran across several years' worth of Easter Sunday photos. (No, I will not be posting any of them. So don't ask.) I wasn't even wearing a jacket over my frilly pastel Easter dress in any of those photos, let alone a winter coat.

Maybe the polar bears should be migrating south.

Okay, but who's LOOKING OUT for a new plot line?

After that dream the other night, that I could not will myself back into despite the best of efforts, I just had to check out The Lookout today. I did have to will myself to pay $7.50 for a movie I knew would be mediocre at best, but I had the day off and it was playing at the local theater and I had some time to kill, so it seemed like a reasonable thing to do.

I was right - it was mediocre at best.

Really, Hollywood? Has the creativity been sucked so dry that you can't come up with one lousy brand-new story? You just have to retell the same story over and over again, but change out the variables now and then? "Hmm, let's do a bank heist film, but this time - YEAH! - this time let's feature a main character who has suffered a head injury and can't remember shit, and introduce him to some brand new people who - overnight! - change the core of his being and all that he has ever believed in, to make him the perfect accomplice to their bank heist! And the menacing guy, we'll call him Bone and he will have long hair and be scary and hardly ever speak but when he does it will be profound! And then at the end we'll throw in a twist - maybe the main character CAN remember shit after all!"

I doubt anyone will go out of their way to watch this movie but if you do, I haven't ruined anything. It was all right there in the trailer.

That said, Jeff Daniels was very good. Very good. (I was never a big fan, but I'm finding that I like him more with every new film.)

And, well, you know - staring at JGL for 1.5 hours never did anyone any harm. He was actually very good as well. In fact, all the actors did a great job. Several hours later I have all but forgotten the plot, but some of the dialogue and character interactions linger in my head.

But really, if you want to see what all my JGL hype is about, check out Brick. It's a much better use of your 1.5 hours.

You're a dream to me.

Last night I had a dream that I was on my way to Australia. In my dream, SFO was a sprawling airport... okay, maybe that part isn't so unusual. But the strange part was that you had to wait outside, on the runway, to check in - with all the planes coming and going pretty much right around your head.

(I have had that exact part of the dream before - checking in, outside, with planes flying around my head. I wonder what it means.)

I started out in the line with a current co-worker who I was either traveling with or just carpooling with - I was never quite sure. I had a couple freak-out moments where I thought I'd left my large bag, you know, the one with ALL MY TRAVELING NEEDS, at home and did some quick time calculations to see if I could make it back home to pick up my bag and still make the plane... Only to look down and see my large bag, the one with ALL MY TRAVELING NEEDS, right there at my feet.

(Not an unusual freak-out in a travel-related dream.)

Once I got into the airport, the terminals/waiting areas were a maze of amusement park games and activities. Mostly on the crappy boardwalk amusement park end - lots of pinball and other arcade games, some skeeball, but also a few water slides, a ferris wheel and a couple other county-fair-type rides. Soon after entering the airport I lost my co-worker (although I am still not sure we were actually traveling together) and started to wander around the maze of neon spinning shouting machines.

(That part of the dream could mean any number of things. I'm not too worried about it. For example, I'm really dreading a whirlwind trip back east for my best friend's bridal shower, and also planning a whirlwind trip to Puerto Rico for the same friend's wedding, so this travel anxiety is all totally reasonable. I mean, when you really think about it, pinball machines/skeeball + boring airports before an excruciatingly long flight = GOOD THING!)

And then I ran into HIM. And it was like we were old friends, meeting after not seeing each other for years. We smiled, we joked, we wandered amongst the pinball machines. He eyed a few of them with a childlike glee, so of course I encouraged him to play. But he just smiled, and took my hand, and we continued to wander around like an old married couple - holding hands, smiling at the kids and shooting the breeze.

For those brief moments, dream or not, I never felt so comfortable or content in all my life.

(I have a sense of what this part of the dream means. It could be any of the following, or a combination of all of the following:

• today was the last day for the JGL-ish type on my staff and I've been dreading it for many reasons, mostly because I really respect his opinions and input and it sucks that he's leaving and I couldn't do anything to get him to stay.
• the last conversation I had last night had to do with physical intimacy (or lack thereof, or desire therefore), and I realized on the way home that all I really want on the boyfriend front right now is a cute boy that I can hold hands with. That's ALL I want. And that seems weird to me.
  
• JGL is freakin' HOT, and my subconscious won't let me forget that.)

Anyway, back to the dream. Customs kept hunting me down because I'd left my bag sitting with his bag in the arcade but we hadn't stayed with our bags as requested, we'd just been wandering... And there was a question as to whether I'd actually make the plane to Australia since customs was trying to detain and question me. When I did finally make it on the plane he was nowhere to be found.

And then I woke up. At 8am. Which meant I was going to be late for work.

Which, in the grand scheme of things, is truly perfect, real-life expectation-setting after coming out of such a lovely dream.

Which is not to say that I didn't exert myself trying to get back to sleep, back to that dream, no matter how late for work I already was.

Thursday is the new Friday.

In the most ironic of ironic turns of events, Jen(n) the atheist, pirate-worshiping potty-mouth now works in a church for a Christian-based organization and gets Friday off because it's the day someone's lord Jesus Christ was crucified and died to save his people.

After sleeping in, watching 18 hours of Buffy reruns and commiting all seven deadly sins including gluttony at the birthplace of California cuisine, I will be sure to eat some hot cross buns to commemorate the occasion.

It's a free ride, when you've already paid...

Really, I just wanted a freakin' belt.

Having exhausted every possibility within a 15-mile radius in my search to find a non-black, non-brown belt I could wear with my still-too-big jeans on the weekends, I set out this morning for the freak show also known as THE GREAT MALL.

If you've never been to The Great Mall, let me explain. It's basically a GINORMOUS complex, built in a circle, that houses +/- 100 stores. Many of the stores are outlets (Saks, Neiman Marcus, Old Navy, Gap, Banana Republic), some are generic strip mall stores (Forever 21, Claire's, Shoe Pavillion, PacSun), and some are niche stores that sell items like hospital scrubs, "as seen on TV" items, and glass-encased scorpions that you can hang from a chain around your neck. Should you choose to do so.

And there's a big movie theater.

And of course, because it is such a GINORMOUS complex and just walking through half of it could take even a non-shopper six hours, there are also lots of restaurants, including Fresh Choice (my personal favorite), Dave & Buster's, Anderson Bakery (which you'd think would be my personal favorite) and strip mall standbys like Sbarro and Cinnabon.

(Digression. I hope to never, ever eat a Cinnabon ever again throughout the span of my entire life, because they are so utterly disgusting, but DAMN do they smell good. End of digression.)

One might think, that with all the options, I could easily have found a belt. Not the case. Not one lousy belt that met my criteria.

As I walked from store to store in that GINORMOUS mall, I slowly realized was that we are a society that makes so much crap that we can't even sell it on the regular market, so we have to create special "outlet" markets to attempt to sell the crap that wouldn't sell on the regular market at a discounted price, and then I started thinking about all the people who can't afford food and shelter and it suddenly just seemed SO VERY WRONG to be in The Great Mall.

And so I left, sans belt but feeling self-righteous (and full from my GINORMOUS salad at Fresh Choice).

Driving up 880 toward home, I saw a DSW Shoe store off to the side of the freeway in Fremont. I swerved three lanes and took the exit. Because I am ALL ABOUT the DSW shoes. And although I didn't find any shoes, I did learn that there is a Costco in Fremont, and it is well stocked! And well organized! And the people are nice, much nicer than in San Leandro or Richmond! And the lines were shorter! Although there weren't as many free samples. But anyway, instead of driving 40 miles to find a belt, I ended up driving 40 miles to spend yet another $122 at Costco on bargains I could never have found elsewhere.

And then I realized that consumerism is ingrained in my being just as it is ingrained in all of your beings, and...

And...

Well, frankly I just don't care. I mean, seriously! THREE POUNDS of dried cranberries for under $7? That's like six months' worth of cranberries that I can stir into my oatmeal or yogurt every morning!

God bless America.

Incommunicado.

I am tired.

Each day brings a new challenge. Some are great learning experiences and others are not. Some just suck, actually. True to any new job, I am sure.

I honestly had no idea what I was getting into. I had no real sense of the transition from six months of "cruise control" to being slammed into exactly the opposite. For 10-12 hours a day I use my brain nonstop, usually in conjunction with a lot of other smart people, and then I go home.

On a good day, I make dinner, make lunch for the next day, maybe watch a little TV or read a book, get to bed early, get up early for the gym. That was my routine for four weeks and it was good.

More recently, I've been making dinner, making lunch for the next day, getting back online for a few hours, turning in but waking up at 2am and fretting until the wee hours of the morning. Which results in no gym, no mental break and no time for Her Majesty. At this rate, I will never see my friends, let alone attempt (yet again) the dating ordeal. No job is worth that, unless you don't care about that stuff.

So tonight. I am not working tonight. I am watching the movie that's been sitting next to my TV for three weeks. Her Majesty will curl up with me. It will be good.

If I vow to do some variation of what I'm doing tonight, at least once a week, and increase as I can from there, I think it will all be jussssst fiiiiiiiiine.

Friday five.

Five women who have inspired me, in honor of Women's History Month, in no particular order... to call this a top five list would be ridiculous because obviously there's Ella Baker, Barbara Kingsolver, Barbara Lee, Sarah Vowell, Kate Winslet, Alice Paul, Ellen DeGeneres, Jane Austen, Barbara Mikulski, Anne Frank, Ani DiFranco, Julianne Moore... oy vey could I go on for hours, but let me start with these five:

• My grandmother, who raised seven children during the depression (six of them BOYS! one of whom kept getting stuck in quicksand!) while her husband worked all day. In her quiet, subtle way, she taught me that despite any family oddities like, oh, say, one son marrying a woman and the other son marrying that woman's daughter - and all the weirdness that comes with THAT gnarled family tree - the family always eats together at the holidays. And that the best bread is homemade bread, hands down, no questions asked.
  
• Princess Leia, who never gave up and always reminded the boys that they were no better than her. She was the costume of choice for my fourth Halloween, and the subject of my freshman English paper on personal heroes in college.
• A good friend in college, who taught me that this world is truly fucked up, left and right inside and out, and that whatever I could do to make it a better place would be a good thing. She's doing her part and now I am hopefully doing mine.
  
• Roseanne Connor, who was never afraid to speak up for herself, had a great sense of humor, stuck by her family at all costs and proved to be an endless source of inspiration and support despite countless trials and tribulations. At least through season seven.
• My mom, who grew up with six brothers and lived to tell the tale. The older I get, the more I respect and learn from my mom.

If I were a 13 year old girl...

I've been wondering why I got a copy of this magazine, the "original buyers guide for men," in the mail a few days ago. Out of curiousity I leafed through the articles riddled with randomly vulgar curse words, and the ads featuring beer and scantily clad women.

And then I saw this.


Oh, Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Your hyphenated name befuddles me, but I love you still.

If I were a 13 year old girl, that picture would be hanging over my bed alongside Brad Pitt's drenched half-dressed illegal Vanity Fair photo (that I can't even find a link to anymore), every photo of Johnny Depp that ever existed, and this photo of Ed Vedder. Or maybe this photo of Ed Vedder, or this one.

(But probably not this one.)

Aw, hell. Who am I kidding... I'm a 32 year old girl and I have no intention of letting go of this photo anytime soon.

It's hip to be [a few steps ahead of] square.

I'm not hip. I'm usually a few steps behind all the hipsters when it comes to music, movies, art, books, technology... you name it, I'll be there approximately six months behind you. And when I arrive, all the hipsters will shun what I've excitedly discovered, and I'll be behind again.

For example. I stumbed upon Dave Eggers accidentally several years ago. I was going to Belize and needed some beach reading, so a coworker lent me AHWOSG. I read it over two days. I was hooked. I thought I found the next best thing. When I got back home, I learned about McSweeny's, and 826 Valencia, and speaking tours with They Might Be Giants and Sarah Vowell, and, and... And suddenly Dave Eggers isn't hip anymore. But still I buy his books, and enjoy his books for the most part, so who cares.

Such seems to be the case with Jonathan Safran Foer as well. His first novel was fascinating and intricate and complex and confusing and beautiful (although the film adaptation stunk). I'm mostly through his second novel and although it's less so than the first, it's a far better second novel than most can claim. And then I read this, and well... Dang. Late again.

So this Friday a little indie band called The Helio Sequence is playing in the city, and my hipster friend played them for me while I was in Seattle, and I was all set to go, and be one of the first*, but then something came up for Friday early evening and something else came up for Saturday morning, and, and... And I'm just too damn old for all that nonsense.

But YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST.

Their MySpace friends Menomena are also supposed to rock. Doot do, do do do.

________________
* It's not so much about being one of the first, as it is the thrill of seeing an awesome band in a teeny venue before they inevitably hit it big and tickets go from $10 to $35 and suddenly you're sitting on the lawn of the Shoreline breathing in secondhand smoke for 4 hours watching this awesome band on a screen from 500 feet away.

Wading through all the teeny venue crap is another thing I'm just too damn old for. I need it to be POINTED OUT TO ME. Or within walking distance.

Crankypants.

Beautiful panoramic Sunday afternoon 4-hour hike, why do you mock me so?

Not only am I sunburned in such a way that collars, seat belts and turning my head in general really really hurt. That would be annoying enough.

I've also got the exact same crippling pains in my calves, that I got last year around this time after running uphill for 8 of 14 miles. THAT does not make me happy. I just got on a running kick and now I'm going to have to slack off for a week or possibly several until the muscles heal. And if this is any indication of my ability to do long hikes in the future... Well, get used to subject of post. And lots of it.

On the upside, I learned from last year's mistake - I'm already on the ice and rest plan, whereas last year it took 4 weeks and a 16 mile run to beat me into submission.

And hey, maybe I'll gain that 10 pounds I've been "whining" about.

"Do you have regrets about the way you lived your life? Because I think I do."

I think I've been watching too many Scrubs reruns lately.

Tonight, for whatever reason, I decided to pull out my old floppy disks and read through letters to friends and family that I wrote almost 8 years ago. That poor decision actually feeds some hilarious content for another post, but in the meantime, I just have to say...

For the most part I have learned from my mistakes. I have grown as a person, as a woman and as a professional. But seriously? The biggest mistake* I ever made was being a schizophrenic bitch to the nicest (comma only) boy who treated me with the level of honesty, decency and respect anyone in a relationship should display to their partner.

He was a law student, interning for the summer. I was a temp at his law firm during college. Despite our love for liberalism, red wine and our coworker's band, it was destined for failure due to the age difference (6 years, which, when I was 18, is a great difference), physical distance for most of the year (he was in NYC, I was in eastern bumfuck southern Virginia), and God knows what else. Or so I thought.

I read some old correspondence to friends where I described his cute letters and phone calls during the school year. I vividly recall a message I got from my Beevis-&-Butthead-loving roommate in college, who I made every effort to tolerate at my own expense, where she nonchalantly mentioned when I walked in the dorm door after a study session one night, that he "called, he said to call back if it wasn't too late" and I literally told her to get the hell out so I could call him back.

It lasted about a year, and ended badly due to me being a total crazy psycho who was convinced all he wanted was to get married because he was "of that age" where he was probably ready to start settling down and HOLY SHIT I was too young to think about that so of course the best resolution was to end - nay, rudely sever - all ties immediately.

I saw him a few years after we "broke up" while I was at a show, and he appeared to be with a fiance while I was with my uber-jealous boyfriend at the time. He didn't see me. Thankfully.

From time to time I wonder where I would be had I stayed with the nice guy. I'd probably be in a suburb near DC, raising a couple kids and working a decent liberal job while he fought the good fight with the court system.

And I try to convince myself that things happen for a reason, and that I wouldn't have found San Francisco and all the magic and friends and food that it offers, had I stayed on the East Coast. And I try to convince myself that this was all meant to be, and I'm doing what I need to be doing.

But I'm a child of the "choose your own adventure" era. I constantly wonder what's behind Door #2. I hope his family is doing well, wherever he and his inevitably beautiful and successful wife and children are.

And I curse the Internet for making me search his name these past 10 minutes.

________________
* That's the biggest mistake tonight. Ask me tomorrow, you'd probably get a different answer.

Oh, and also, if I were king of the forest?

I would ban movies with actors who don't bother to pick an accent. I was so distracted trying to figure out what country they were supposed to be from, and what country they were allegedly in, that I missed all the twists and turns of the actual plot. By the end when all was revealed, I found myself wishing I'd just watched Fight Club for the nine millionth time instead.

And the very loud dude at the gym. I would ban him as well.

If I ruled the world.

Entry #1 from this book for bloggers with writer's block: reign supreme.

If I ruled the world, people would care more about politics than Hollywood gossip. Anna Nicole Smith's death would've been back page news in the local paper, overshadowed tenfold by what Ron Dellums is up to in Oakland. Britney's head shaving incident would've been the last skit on SNL, after the sarcastically derogatory plays on the latest debacles of our fine government. No one would know about a celebrity's immediate entry into rehab after doing something [stupid/offensive/annoying] because they'd be too focused on the atrocities going on overseas. (Yeah, I follow Hollywood gossip. My point exactly.)

When I am queen, adults who litter will be immediately sentenced to 16 hours community service, which will entail scraping the scum from the surface of the local public watering hole (wading pants not provided). Parents whose children litter will be forced to put $50 per item of trash toward their children's college education, and the children shall be denied [candy/Dora videos/Wii] for 1 year per item of trash they carelessly toss on the ground.

In my kingdom, the following will be banned: Sub woofers. SUVs. Tom Cruise. Pointy-haired bosses. Linkin Park. Commercials, mainly just those featuring Tom Shane, but if I can ban the whole lot of them, super. Reality TV shows. Golf. $600 shoes. "Don't ask, don't tell." Bill O'Reilly. People who would rather film [whales attacking fishing boats/tsunamis/police beating citizens with billy clubs] than call or run for help. Twinkies. Office romances. Ticketbastard. That nasty "butter" at movie theaters. Las Vegas. Bridge tolls that don't go toward filling potholes. And last, but certainly not least - people who don't spellcheck their public lists of things that should be banned.

The post no woman wants to read.

After running Inspiration Point in the blazing sun and heat yesterday afternoon in record time, I returned home to enjoy the rest of the glorious sunny day by... Hemming lots of pants. WOOHOO!

See, here's the thing. I don't know if it's all the running, or all the running at increased speeds with no detriment to knees or other physicalities, or the fact that I haven't really been depressed about work since January, or the fact that I've been trying to save money by cooking more often, or a combination of all that. But since the beginning of the year I seem to have lost another somewhere-between-8-to-10-pounds. After losing big about 12 months ago, I held steady last year and did lots of shopping, but now none of my clothes fit. Belts don't help. And I hate shopping unless it's for shoes. So for a while I've just been layering and feeling like a slob. And in a rare turn of events, I decided yesterday to hem all the pants that fit 12 months ago but now hang below my ankles.

I contemplated gaining 10 pounds just to save myself from having to shop or get clothes altered, but I seem to be addicted to (obsessed with?) this running thing, so gaining weight while still eating healthy (I don't like chocolate, and with my family history of heart issues I don't want to dive into the french fries and gordo burritos either) is more of a challenge.

See - told you no woman would want to read this. I know, waaaaah, woe is me, right? Seriously though? It's annoying.

In other news... I want my hour back, dammit. This Daylight Savings crap is for the birds. And the squirrels. And the people walking their dogs, and the farmers, and the cats who get an extra hour of sunbeams to snooze in. But I want my hour back.

Friday five semi-double take.

I had iTunes on random last night and I heard a song that took me back, so to speak, and so tonight I was going to post five songs on mix tapes from cute male friends in high school that I misinterpreted as meaning "I'm interested in you" but really they were just saying "hey you should hear this, it's a great song," in no particular order... but I could only remember three songs, and I probably threw away or burned or otherwise destroyed the tapes over the years so there's no way to know what the others were but dammit there were many... but here are the three I could remember:

• Somebody - Depeche Mode
• Found - The Beloved
• Lovesong - The Cure

(One step closer to this... but several vodka shots short.)

For the actual Friday Five - five activities, scents or tastes that remind me of childhood, in no particular order:

• Swinging my feet - I do this at the gym when I'm on the arm press thingie, because I have to put the seat up high so that my arms are pushing at the right angle... and as a result, my feet don't touch the ground, so in between sets I kick my feet out one at a time (and if I'm in a really good mood, I whistle along with whatever's blaring in my ears from my iPod, which just makes it even more childlike) - try it, it's fun
  
• Swinging in general - there's nothing like flying up high in the air and swooping back down, only to go up even higher the next time and dare yourself to jump... when I was in college I visited my cousin and we were walking around his neighborhood talking about all this depressing shit (mostly about how I was depressed, I imagine) and we ran across this little park with swings... we swang and swang and swang and I remember expressing to him that I hadn't been that carefree in a long time... so now I try to swing whenever the opportunity presents itself
• Going barefoot - I hated shoes as a kid, I hate shoes to this day... I wear them because I have to, and whenever possible I wear flip flops or sandals, but as soon as I get home the shoes are OFF... and if I step onto a grassy knoll or a forest valley, my shoes are off almost immediately
  
• Peanut butter ice cream - there was this ice cream place in the local mall where I grew up that had THE. BEST. PEANUT BUTTER ICE CREAM. EVER... it was the first peanut butter ice cream I'd ever had, and the only kind I ever wanted after I tried it - basically just vanilla ice cream with big globs and swirls of peanut butter in it, not like that Ben & Jerry's stuff where it's a blur of vanilla and peanut butter flavoring - this was hard core straight up PEANUT BUTTER in the ice cream... when I get a craving I grab a pint of french vanilla, let it melt for a half hour or so, add in globs of peanut butter, stir it, re-freeze it and then eat it later - but I have yet to recreate that ice cream experience and the store, natch, is now gone
  
• Swimming pools - I can't even begin to count how many hours I spent at the neighborhood pool as a child... almost all our family photo albums have pages and pages of us at the pool as kids, and I still remember when I took swim lessons from the hot lifeguard Andy, and he was trying to teach me to tread water and I ended up butterflying from one side of the pool to the other, and he was all "that was GREAT! only next time, try staying in the same spot" and I felt so dumb... anyway, any time I smell chlorine, I am five years old stubbing my toe as I eat my frozen Reese's Peanut Butter Cup in the hot, humid July sun (Snickers bars are also excellent frozen, by the way)
  

(OK! One step closer to something out of this book, but several shots of courage short.)

Mindless crap, here I come.

Thanks to David Attenborough, I now know that some version of the weird little cover girl actually exists in nature.

Thanks to GOD, I am finally finished with all my documentaries for a little while. Animals, insects and brothels are interesting and I've learned a lot, and Sir David is really entertaining (especially when he sat there as the meerkat stood on his shoulder, or when he got up in the sloth's face and mocked it), and those kids took really good photos... but along with that comes the grim brutal reality of life and survival of the fittest.

And speaking of grim brutal survival of the fittest... Next up: Saw 2. Suh-weet!

Attention Franchise Tax Board.

Hi, Franchise Tax Board. I have a small request. If you insist on making me write a check that will cost more for your staff to cash than the actual amount on the check, could you please at least give me a self-stick label like the US government does? Or make sure the damn glue on your envelopes work?

Thanks!

Signed,
REALLY hate that my taxes are supporting your stupid war
Oakland CA

The porn is deleted.

Maybe all those induhvidual quotes are actually the early stages of brilliance?

I double-dog-dare you to use "putting the umption before the ass" in your manager's next performance evaluation. Me, I'll be saying "verbally bi" whenever appropriate from now on...

"Somebody call the police! There's a pants thief on the loose!"

On the way home from a three-year-old's birthday party today, it occurred to me that I am the same age my mom was when she had my older brother.

Now, I know that I'm more mature than I was five, even two, years ago. But everything else aside (the main thing being it would have to be an immaculate conception, followed closely by "I can barely remember to feed Her Majesty"), I definitely don't feel like I could entertain the thought of raising another human being right now.

And to some degree, I guess that's the point. No one ever feels ready. I mean, really - what adult who felt grown up enough to raise a child could actually have fun as much fun as my friends did just by throwing their kid a Spongebob Squarepants birthday party?

Technology IQ dropping to zero.

Since quitting my high-tech job, I've noticed an interesting decrease in my ability to complete tasks that involve technology.

Earlier this week I was trying to redeem an iTunes gift card, and it wasn't accepting the number. I emailed the friend who gave it to me, and he called the store, and they said to scratch off the area in the back and enter that number. I had been trying to enter the viewable number they use to scan the card, not the actual gift card number.

Mind you, I have redeemed at least 5 other iTunes gift cards in my life. This concept is not new to me. (To partially redeem myself, unlike the others, this one was glued into a fancy-schmancy card holder and the scratch off part was not visible until you unglued it.)

Yesterday I tried to use the self-scan at the grocery store. It took me about 5 minutes to figure it out. Five minutes isn't a long time, unless you're frustrated, you feel like an idiot and the people in line behind you start tapping their feet and sighing louder and louder as the minutes pass.

I have done this many times at Home Depot and have never had problems.

If my ability to use the remote control fails me next, I am in BIIIIIIIG trouble.

I think I'm gonna like it here.

The week started with my very first email - subject: "and now for more bad news." I thanked my office mate profusely for that one.

It got better as the days passed, though, and this afternoon I signed my first official documents.

And then I completely freaked out about signing official documents and actually being responsible and accountable for stuff.

But overall, it was a good week.

... yeesh, speaking of peripherals.

My new job's computer has MS Vista. Just when you thought XP couldn't get any more bubbly, impossible to figure out how to operate, and tab-heavy - BLAM! I cannot even BEGIN to express how utterly obnoxious and annoying that operating system is. Whenever I try to do things like, oh, insert bulleted lists into word documents or shade rows in excel spreadsheets, I suddenly turn into my mom - who couldn't navigate her way out of a wet computer paper bag.

That metaphor I just used? Yeah. THAT is how bad MS Vista is.

However. If this is the worst thing about my job, or even if it's just the worst thing this week, that will make it worth all the pain and suffering I endured to get to this point.

"At five I got saved... because I just wanted more of life."

[Ed. note: This post brought to you by a borderline agnostic leaning more toward athiest and is not intended to poke fun at those who sanely, mindfully, rationally practice Christianity. Ah, screw the disclaimers - I think I'd be hard pressed to find a dear reader, religious or not, who wasn't appalled by the content of this documentary.]

So... I got around to watching Jesus Camp tonight, featuring a preacher boy of 12 who uttered the line in the subject, as well as some pro-life speaking-in-tongues repenting-for-their-sins 5-year-olds, Jesus Camp Lady praying to keep Satan from interfering with her powerpoint presentation, and Mike Papantonio, the [no pun intended] godsend who offered the only rational point of view in the whole documentary. I knew the documentary would bother me, which is partly why I rented it (gotta keep my edge up!) but I caught Joan Rivers interviewing the directors at the Oscars and they made it sound fair and balanced.

If, by "fair and balanced," you mean the liberal version of Fox New's "fair and balanced," then yes, it was "fair and balanced." For about 30 minutes I really, really, REALLY thought I was watching a non-animated episode of South Park. It was so horrifying and disturbing - but mesmerizing and hilarious - all at the same time.

But then. Then they showed a scene of the girls in their "bunks" at Jesus Camp - wooden bunk beds in a small lodge dorm room - and I had a scary flashback. {{diddleliddlelit diddleliddlelit diddleliddlelit }} APPROXIMATELY 18 YEARS AGO, I ACTUALLY WENT TO A CAMP LIKE THIS. Not as psychotic, mind you, but I went. It was a weekend youth retreat where my friend (age 15) and myself (age 13) shared a room with four strange girls (age 17) who - gasp! wore makeup! and hairspray! and talked about boys nonstop! As the awkward just-turned-teen, I was completely out of place. All I remember is the guy with really bad acne who played guitar, and this teambuilding thing where we had to pass oranges to each other while standing boy-girl-boy-girl and holding the oranges between our chins and sternum. In retrospect that activity seems "going to hell"-worthy to me... but I haven't read the Bible lately so what do I know. {{return to present day}}

And then Jesus Camp Lady proclaimed that Harry Potter was satanic, and then Anti Abortion Man passed around plastic replicas of embryos at 7 weeks and 12 weeks old and asked the kids to pray for the confirmation of Alito to the Supreme Court, and then Crazy Preacher Man Friend of Bush proudly said "If the evangelicals vote, they determine the election."

And then I turned it off, threw up, watched a Jon Stewart rerun, lit some sage, pulled out my Shrub voodoo doll and tossed it into the pentagram I chalked into the carpet. And all was right with the world again.

Eleventh hour final Oscar movie review.

This is the first year in a long time that I've actually seen a lot of the nominated movies. If only I'd had the energy to watch Jesus Camp Friday night, then go to the Volver and Babel double-feature at the Parkway yesterday, the total count would've been twelve - a personal record, I think - but alas, it's only nine.

I haven't yet mentioned Children of Men. This is partly because I am still stunned and partly because I am still completely unsure about whether I liked it.

The attention to detail, editing and cinematography were utterly amazing, and how they pulled off some of the longer shots is fascinating. I thought the violence was well-crafted, well-choreographed, suspenseful, oh and also, did not make me want to vomit (unlike with Pan's Labyrinth). But the story...?

I saw it with my Seattle friend who is very big into the "what if" type of sci-fi plotline... so of course, he thoroughly enjoyed it. Perhaps I am too much of a realist. Perhaps I read too much into it, and got annoyed with some of the biblical references and the idea that it was the WOMEN who became infertile, not the MEN (especially since the next day, I read something about men's sperm counts declining 50% over the last 50 years). Perhaps I don't know enough about the immigration issues outside of the US to really grasp the relevance of the story. Perhaps the line from Julianne Moore to Clive Owen, "You hear that ringing in your ears? That 'eeeee'? That's your ear cells dying. You'll never be able to hear that frequency again. Enjoy it while you can." freaked me out because of all the EXTREMELY LOUD CONCERTS and subseqent 'eeeee's I have heard in my lifetime.

Eh. Perhaps I just need to watch it again?

Public service announcement.

Indie fave Spoon on Austin City Limits tonight, 8pm, local channel 15. And also the Killers if you care (I, myself, do not).

Oh and also? Rainn Wilson and Arcade Fire on SNL. Super sweet.

Good thing I don't have any hot dates tonight!

Fly on, little wing.

Skyline from below...


Skyline from above.

The end of an era.

It still floors me that up until today people were asking, "so you've been here, what - 3 years?" Yes. Three PLUS SIX years.

It still floors me that neither of my managers stopped by or called to say good luck today or any other day. In fact, I haven't seen one since last Monday, and I can't actually recall the last time I saw the other.

It still floors me that one of the higher-ups did stop by and say good luck. (I was actually hoping to avoid that. Fake smiles and fake good cheer is just so tiresome. But in the interest of not burning bridges I gave a fake smile right back.)

It still floors me that Monday morning, I am starting a brand new job... People DO do this all the time, right?!

T minus 8 hours and counting.

Tomorrow is my last day in Dilbert-land. I have five things to do: clean out my desk, fix one minor problem, show someone how to do something really easy and fun, forward all my calls/emails to my replacement, and send my "thanks and good luck and keep in touch!" email to a select list of recipients.

To be uber-cliche... what a long, strange trip it's been. What started as a temp admin assistant job nine and a half years ago, which I only agreed to because I was looking for a social welfare-type job and the temp job offered me flexibility to interview, and also I could type 947 words/minute which was apparently a requirement, turned into a nine and a half year endeavor. Six years of which were really good.

I've had several opportunities over the last few days to reflect upon my experiences (good and bad), thank fellow coworkers, actively avoid other coworkers, and promise everyone that I will keep in touch. Because this was my first job out of college, and I've been here for-freaking-EVER, it's a bit surreal to realize that come Monday morning I will have no idea what the hell I'm doing. I keep reminding myself that people change jobs all the time... But *I* don't, and this is all just very weird.

(That said, I should really change jobs more often because I've gotten more free drinks and random presents over the last few days than I probably have in a lifetime.)

And the whole "keeping in touch" thing feels a lot like high school graduation. I still talk to 4 people I went to high school with. Post Dilbert-land, I think the number of coworkers I keep in touch with will be slightly higher for a while, but it will eventually trickle down to 4 people who I can eventually proudly say I've known for 15 years or more.

With so many light years to go and things to be found, I'm sure that we'll all miss her so. I just hope they don't call me after I leave. For any calls beginning with certain prefixes, I'm already prepared to answer my cell phone with the greeting, "Hello, you've reached the winter of it's NOT MY PROBLEM!!"

Woah.

Wikipedia on the meaning of life.

The "Tuesday is the new Sunday" Friday five.

Top five reasons you know you're not in the Bay Area anymore, Toto, in no particular order (except the first one which is really lame but never ceases to amaze me):

• It rains off and on every single day for five days straight - it even rains while the sun is shining, for Pete's sake - and no one is carrying or using umbrellas but boy, do you wish YOU had one.
  
• Attention to architectural issues like the viaduct warrant the level of attention that the Fatburger debate brings about in your hometown.
  
• And speaking of the popular Seattle profession - the architectural wonder also known as the Seattle library contains seven different books dedicated to deconstructing Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but the local record store only has three Grateful Dead albums.
• While standing in the aforementioned local record store waiting for the free Shins noontime show,* people all around you are talking about how "yeah, this record store is okay, but there's this one? in Berkeley? called Amoeba? dude, it's AWESOME."
• You're eating the best tater tots you have EVER EATEN... at Goth Night at the local bar, 11pm on a Sunday night.

________________
* I was booking my flight six weeks ago and I randomly decided to get a Tuesday late afternoon flight home - figuring I could putz around downtown that morning after my friend went to work. Sunday I learned that James & Co were doing a free show at the record store 3 blocks from my friend's apartment at noon today. Pardon my overuse of the uber-overused word, but it LITERALLY could not have worked out any better for me.

That's right. I was standing 30 feet from the Shins nine hours ago. Who wants to touch me? I said who wants to fucking touch me??!

Ofelia, you're breaking my heart.

I held off on Pan's Labyrinth. It didn't really appeal to me. But Children of Men, which was in the cards for today, wasn't playing until 9:45 pm and... well, I'm too lame to stay up that late for a movie. So I went to a matinee of the aforementioned instead, mostly on the recommendation of someone who shall remain nameless.

I was expecting more of a fairy tale Brothers Grimm-stylie, with suspense and freaky characters and dark foreshadowing. And there was that. But holy bloody hell, I was not expecting all the point-blank gunshots to the head, torture, blood, utter disregard for human life... which far outweighed the fairy tale portions.

Sorry if I've ruined it for you. It was a beautiful film, don't get me wrong. (By beautiful, I mean gut-wrenching, engaging and amazingly acted.) And I get the messages the film was conveying, for the most part. But it was very, very violent. Very. Coming from a person who adores Fight Club, this is a significant statement, and the fact that I'm detoxing by watching a rerun of Growing Pains should emphasize that point.

After all that violence, it's no wonder I was so rude when I returned the call of a coworker who had an "urgent" question for me on my day off.

Oh, wait, maybe it's just because he called me on my day off.

Public service announcement.

Joss Whedon to direct an episode of The Office.

Still no sign of book, so more movies.

I like to kid myself that if I were to retire, or marry rich, I could easily fill the days without needing to work. This past week has proven this to be 100% untrue, as almost every day I have checked work email obsessively and also needed to do something structured with my day even when sleeping until 10am and going to bed at 9pm.

I received a gift card to AMC Theaters for Christmas, so I figured I could check out another Oscar nominee for free. The only films playing at the local AMC that fit my "schedule" (loose though it was) were The Departed and Children of Men. The latter is playing at the Parkway this week and I'd already decided to catch it Tuesday night, so I used my free pass on The Departed.

It's not a movie I would normally see. I hadn't even really planned on Netflixing it, to be totally honest. I grew weary of gangster/mafia/undercover cop flicks back in college and haven't really seen one since. But a film with Schmidt, Good Will, the Aviator, the only Baldwin who can actually act, Markie Mark, Charlie's dad - and directed by Martin - I was slightly optimistic.

Holy cow. That's the extent of my review: HOLY COW. I had no idea what was going on for most of the film, and then at the end I REALLY had no idea what was going on. (It should be noted that I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed when it comes to figuring out confusing plot lines.) But what the fuck EVER about the plot. I think I have a new favorite actor, and his name is Leo. I think that perhaps I have finally forgiven him for Titanic. Holy cow.

Markie Mark was awesome too, and the other actors put on a great show. Eventually I got the gist of the plot, which I guess is all that really matters, and I left nice and entertained... And questioning my previous statement about Forest taking the Best Actor Oscar. Just a little bit. I still think he'll win, but Leo is an excellent contender.

Off to put all his movies in my queue immediately. Except Titanic. May I live a long, prosperous life having never seen that dreadful endeavor that has sucked millions of hours from the lives of young teenage girls and wistful housewives.

Four out of five dentists agree.

Finally got around to switching my company-paid cell phone to a me-paid cell phone. You can keep the number but you can't keep the phone you have. Why? It took me three years to figure out all the toys and tricks on this phone (including how to silence/vibrate it, and boy was that a painful learning curve). Now I'm going to have to learn how to use a new one... Bah.

The sales rep at Working Assets went on and on about how my new "very thin and chic" cell phone has Bluetooth technology. Um, yay? I have no idea what that means, but it sounds like those tablets that you chew that turn your teeth red (or blue) where you haven't been brushing well enough. I don't think I want my phone identifying my dental plaque so I will be avoiding that feature.

Also, according to an Amazon review, there is a feature on this phone that allows you to screen calls as the callers are leaving a message. Just like I have at home ~ suh-weet!

Most importantly, though, it has a camera. Which means that at long last I can be like all the cool kids and take photos of Colin Meloy at the next Decemberists show... Awesome.

Because no one cares what movies I watch...

Now that I'm leaving The Office to work in a stable, productive, respectful environment, I am guessing I will be posting far less about work.

Never fear, dear reader. You will be happy to know that I finally ordered this book, which should give me ample material for the rest of the year.

I have already hunted down a couple of embarrassing photos for this entry, but I'm still working up the nerve to actually publicize them.

This should be interesting...

Gimme fiction.

Apparently the many documentaries (some more so than others) were not enough, so I took it a step further and watched Heavenly Creatures and The Lost Boys of Sudan earlier this week.

The former reminded me a lot of Finding Neverland, only with a more grisly ending. The latter reminded me that I needed to finish What Is the What, which I read about 300 pages of straight through and got depressed so I had to put it down for a while.

After that, I needed some fiction. So I went to see Hannibal Rising, mostly because the trailers looked interesting (a.k.a. bloody and suspenseful), and I'd seen something from the director about how the actor playing Hannibal really enjoyed going to morgues to get used to being around dead bodies. There was something creepy yet intriguing about that.

The movie explains how Hannibal got to be the Lecter we all know and love from Silence of the Lambs. Turns out, he's not just your run-of-the-mill psychopath, oh no - there is justifiable reason behind his transformation into a monster, and it's based solely upon revenge.

Revenge? Seriously? BOR-RING.

There were a few amusingly grisly death scenes and the Hannibal actor was decent, but otherwise, what an utter disappointment. So on the way home I redeemed myself by renting The Empire Strikes Back.

For the record, I {heart} Han Solo.

Realizing just how good you have it: priceless.

I was literally itching to get out of my apartment this afternoon (PTO = YAY!) but didn't want to spend too much money. So I figured I'd catch up on Oscar flicks by catching a matinee. It wasn't until I got there that I learned "matinee" now means $8.25. I mean, Jesus Christ already. And then I was hungry, so there went another almost-ten dollars on stale popcorn and watery diet coke. So much for the latter half of the plan.

Anyway.

The day Idi Amin died, my friend said something about how she remembered the day he was ousted from power and what a horrifying, genocidal disgrace his realm had been. Being several years younger than her, and having been brought up in the suburban white middle American public school system learning nothing but European history, I didn't recall anything about him. But I didn't tell her that at the time. Instead, I read a little bit about it, got disgusted (that was during the Carter years, right? Jimmy, COME ON!) ... and that was the extent of my Amin education, until this afternoon when I noticed that The Last King of Scotland was still at a local theater.

In the rare instances where I could let go of the cold, hard, brutal facts, I was able to appreciate the way in which the story was told. We see Amin from the doctor's perspective - at first a quirky, sometimes scary, but usually just "odd" man who loves Scotland and Uganda and wants to take care of his country. Eventually, of course, his true nature hits us over the head and we wonder how we never saw it from the beginning. That the plot is fictional is cemented in the last scene... Yeah, THAT would've happened.

I haven't seen any of the other films which have actors up for Oscars. But from what I know of those other films, the only one who might even come close to Forest Whitaker's performance in this film is Ryan Gosling, and if Gosling wins it will just be a crying shame heard 'round the world.

Oh and speaking of Oscars - cast your votes! He or she who guesses the most correct winners (and who includes their name on their entry, and who I actually know personally) will win a gift certificate to everyone's favorite local picture pub pizza joint!

File under: recently viewed.

This Film Is Not Yet Rated. The interviews and history behind the MPAA are interesting. That said, perhaps I'm getting conservative in my old age, but I think hiring private detectives to hunt down and publicly expose the people on the MPAA board took things a little too far. I understand the need to explain that no one on the board is a film student or artist so what gives them the right to judge a film ... I get that half the board has kids over 17 when the purpose of said board is to rate movies that their "kids under 17" might watch ... and I appreciate the critique of the ratings appeals board having two conservative clergy (not to mention the movie conglomerate execs) who vote on appeals ... but do I really need to know exactly who those people are? I don't think so. The Corporation, for example, was successful in getting its message across without publicly crucifying any specific person that the audience didn't already know was a capitalist pig.

Haven. Orly fans might enjoy this one. The non-linear sequencing seemed unnecessary to me.

The Lake House. SHUT UP. I KNOW. It ... wasn't ... that ... terribly ... dreadful. I actually watched it while doing a ridiculous amount of copying/pasting for a work project last weekend, so I didn't have to pay too close attention to the movie or the document. That was what you might call a "win-win," if you were to say such a thing, which I hope you never do.

Hustle & Flow. I can't say I didn't like this. Terrence Howard was very, very good, but... I watched part of the bonus material and the director made a big deal about how he wanted to make this character different from your run-of-the-mill pimp. The only differences I really saw, were that the main character was more of a chauffeur than a pimp, and he didn't wear shiny suits and gold chains (for the most part). Otherwise, between the verbal abuse, the physical abuse, and the jail time he seemed like your run-of-the-mill pimp to me.

Belated Friday Five.

Top five reasons I need a boyfriend, in no particular order:

• To be another lap for Her Majesty to sit on, so that I can move now and then while watching TV.
• To keep me from drinking nine gallons of wine at the next wedding.
• To be on call 24/7 to reassure me that the politics behind the new job will go away soon (or be replaced by other politics) and in the end, all will be just fine - so that I don't wear out my welcome asking my friends to do this 24/7.
• To drag me out on Saturday nights so that I'm not sitting at home doing laundry and watching documentaries about mammals.
• To encourage me to cook more often.