Down with the World Wide Web

More than likely, postings will slow down for the next week - Mom and Dad had a falling out with AOL in the late twentieth century and refuse to partake in the information superhighway from home any longer. Apparently, it was so emotionally damaging to my father, that the mere mention of internet at home drives him into a full on rage that can only be consoled with an evening of heart healthy Pop Secret and Miss Congeniality, Collector's Edition (he has a small crush on Ms. Bullock).

Although this has nothing to do with the reason for my parents e-boycott, I like to think back to the day that mom phoned me in college, distraught with little bro yet again (my going away to college left my very juvenile brother home alone with two people he had never been forced to maintain a conversation with before ... he most definitely embodied the tall, silent type). Yes, apparently bro managed to set the home page of the family computer on porn site, so every time the computer was turned on, it would spiral through an unending circle of pop-up pornographic advertisements. Mother lacked the deftness required to click these away before they completely overtook the computer and so went the battle of the treacherous computer porn, with mouse and keyboard as her godly weapons. Throughout town, cries could be heard pleading to the sweet Lord that they not be held accountable for their sins and lo! a swifter unplugging of the PC there never was.

And then there was one

After I leave for the evening, I will just have tomorrow left for work. Pretty surreal at this point.

A friend of mine, currently also a coworker, had a baby boy this morning - congrats to Regan!! It's been about 12 hours since he was born and he is yet to be named. Regan is one of the pickiest people to have ever walked the earth, so none of us are really surprised by this inability to make a decision. It's probably killing her to not be able to do additional internet research before deciding the best available option. Anyway, so I get to finish my second to last day at work by visiting a new baby in the hospital ... awesome!!

Do I really have to be the one that stands up and points out the conspiracy that is Scott Savol's continued presence on American Idol?

I thought we had press for this.

Only Me

I believe I have warned you that I am a sympathetic vomiter, truly my queasy stomach is rivaled by none.

I am no longer staying with my foster parents, but am residing at a friend's place while she is out of town. The sink in her bathroom drains painfully slowly. This morning, I ran the water just a couple seconds before I spit out the foamy morning mouth toothpaste after brushing my teeth. Instead of the thick, pastey, nastiness washing down the drain immediately, it lingered in a small pool of water. I did what any red-blooded American would do and vomited 3 times, on the spot.

I am way beyond ridiculously pathetic.

The Missing

If I didn't mention it before, when I moved all my things to South Carolina about a month ago, the moving company managed to lose one box. This comes across as more than just a little suspicious to me. Losing one box seems so much less likely than losing 10 boxes, or losing all of the boxes. However, Dr. J and I are most happy to have the other 52 boxes and just have the one missing.

The problem is that we can't seem to figure out which box is missing. The company kept a numerical tally of all the items (i.e., numbers 130 - 182 or so were recorded as "boxes") and one of those numbers didn't surface at the move in date, thus, the Missing Box. Every time I think of something that could have been in The Box, I jump on the horn with Dr. J and declare that, alas!, I've finally figured it out, but he has been able to locate all of the possible missings within a couple of days. (Yes, Dr. J is slooowwwwwly getting all the boxes unpacked) We are both starting to think that there is nothing missing whatsoever, which would be fantastic! Not only would we not be missing anything, we can never really be sure, and will hence have a fallguy for many future problems.

Allow me to explain.

A year into our future there comes a day that Dr. J simply can not find that cable that allows you to download pictures from the digital camera ... I certainly did not accidently leave it at the lab over the weekend allowing it to be stolen, it must have been in The Box. Same with the Special Edition Spiderman DVD that Dr. J carelessly lent to a friend without requiring him to leave behind a government issued form of identification, it was in The Box.

Something tells me that if you have ever given Dr. J or I a gift that was .... ahem, less than worthy ... that was probably in The Box as well.

Rude Awakening

As I refilled the lead in my mechanical pencil it occurred to me ... as of Monday I have to start purchasing my own pens and pencils (or ganking the ones at the checkout counters)!

I have 3 days left working for The Man

I can say one good thing that comes from working for The Man .... The Paycheck. Not that it is a good one, by any accounts, just that there is one. With my leaving on Friday, I will have tres meses to survive on uno paycheck, so I'm guessing this means no more Friday Lattes. There was a grander plan to survive off of two paychecks since I didn't pay rent this month, but that was quickly absorbed into having to pay for temporary health insurance, car repairs, and oh yeah, the bill for that little jaunt over to the emergency room came through. I guess my rent doesn't quite total a paycheck, this may have been part of the flaw.

This last week has been a blur of listmaking - dear God, the things that I have to complete by May 10. I'm hoping to move into the side of checking things off the list rather than accumulating them ... and soon.

I will take this chance to say one other good thing about working for The Man - I have great coworkers that have really made me feel like I will be missed. Carry on the banner, fellas, carry on.

It's Funny Cause It's True

If you aren't in my profession or a related one, this will probably mean nothing to you, but in the spirit of engineer joke Friday, I give you my favorite.

A mathmatician, a physicist, and an engineer were all given a red rubber ball and told to find the volume.
The mathmatician carefully measured the diameter and evaluated a triple integral.
The physicist filled a beaker with water, put the ball in the water, and measured the total displacement.
The engineer looked up the model and serial numbers in his red-rubber-ball table.



Imagine! A red rubber ball table!

Classic.

I feel bad because I shouldn't have been rude to her even if she is a crack addict

Every now and then, I make small ... ahem ... teeeeeensey advances in the planning of the wedding. Yesterday, I decided it was time to do call and get prices for getting hair done*.

A friend gave me a recommendation for a place in Hachie, let's call it F-, and ask for K-. I was most definitely unprepared for K-'s personality, especially in a town where people speak at the pace of a casette player with an aging battery. I mentioned to K- that I was getting married in July and trying to do some price research on stylists for the Day Of. Oh, and actually, I am badly in need of a haircut right now. I get about one-third of the way through this sentence when K- pummels me with her autobiography, complete with where she was schooled and by whom and why her prices are as outrageous as they are and how justified she is in making them so and how the city should be thrilled that she bless them with her talents when she could be working anywhere in the world. Since I never got to the part where I actually asked her a question the first time, I finally interjected with the, so how much do you charge for an updo? if i were to bring in, say seven people in the span of two and a half hours, would you give me a reduced rate?

Ladies and gentlemen, I kid you not. Her response:

"Doctors don't reduce the rates they charge to their patients just because there are more of them"

Now, I'm not sure what choice you would make in this situation, but I have to admit I was floored with her arrogance. I mean, I'm the first to admit that saving roots is right on par with saving lives, I just hadn't really put it into words so eloquently before.

My response:

"waaaa ha ha ha AHAHAHAAHA".

Needless to say, we probably don't have a healthy enough of a relationship to make this work in the end. And so the research continues.


* Boys, you may find this premature, but this will be a morning of a least a quintet of "updos". These things must be planned - that and I'm about to be out of the country for dos meses.

Dad and Mom are 56 and 9 years old, respectively

So when I get home from my evening run last night I had 2 messages on my voicemail from the parents.

Message 1 [6:32 pm]:
[Mom spitting words through fits of hysterical laughter] CALL ME!! (aaaaaaaaaaa ha ha ha AHAHA) It's so FUNNY! CALL AS SOON (AHAHAHAHHHAAA] AS YOU GET THIS!!

Message 2 [6:47 pm]:
[Dad] This is your father. Call me. Your mother wants to publicly humiliate me.

(sidenote: this is the same dad thatwould send packages to me at college containing a sheet of paper with the word M E M O R A N D U M along the top of the page. And yes, there was a listing of all enclosed articles - encl. - in the lower left hand corner of the memo.)


A little background. Mom and Dad are taking a Spanish class together, once a week, on Mondays, from ... I don't know. But it must begin close to 5:00 or 5:30 because my Dad can't seem to get there on time. After walking in late last week, the teacher asked my father to stand and recite the days of the week (in Spanish, in case you missed that). Dad obediently stands up, takes a deep breath, and begins reciting, "Tuna ... ..." To those of you that don't speak Spanish, let me assure you there are no days of the week with the same name as a canned meat.

Moving forward to this week. So I return their phone call and my dad answers the phone. It went something like this...


[Dad] I'm out trying to earn a living and so I'm a little tardy to class. I try to come in unnoticed since the room is silent and so I go sit by your mother and try to find where we are supposed to be reading in the book.

[Mom, in an inaudible whisper] She wants you to stand up and recite the days of the week.

[Dad, frantic and hurried] What?!?

[Mom, in a slightly less inaudible whisper] The teacher wants you to stand up and recite the days of the week.

[Dad, quickly standing to not lose any more time begins in a confident voice] Lunes ... Martes ... Miercoles ...

[Mom guffaws hysterically and points at the slow-witted class dunce ... cackling alone since no one else was in on the joke ... eventually has to apologize to the class because she is unable to control her laughter. Church giggles remain long after the laughing subsides....]

To Do:

- Buy a house.

This was added to my To Do List (yes, mine is an ACTUAL to do list, written in my red vinyl planner - and if someone out there cringed that I carry a vinyl planner, I won't turn down $150 so I can hop over to Franklin Covey and purchase me the leather one with the smart little buckle that I've been eyeing. Until then, yes, vinyl) I don't know the first thing about buying a house other than it sounds like a much smarter thing to do than to take that sum of money equal to my apartment rent, puree it in a blender with a little peanut butter and a squeeze of honey and slap it between two pieces of enriched white bread. Plus, I don't have to worry so much about having to repaint the walls white when my time comes to an end.

And did I mention that I'm going to be going back to school starting this fall? I'm pretty sure I swore on my mother's grave I would never go back (no, she's not dead. maybe that's why it didn't work. no hard feelings, mom.) So the home buying will be taking place right about the time my current salary is cut in half. I have two words for that. Awe. Some.

Good God.

She really did use this word in an actual interview.

Paris Hilton's found a new pop singer's daughter for her Simple Life
escapades, USA Today reports. Rod Stewart's daughter Kimberly will slum it with
the heiress in Maui for the fourth installment of the Fox show. Hilton told
reporters she wanted the change to make the fourth season
"funner."

I'm not sure I would ever use the word "fun" to describe this show in the first place. Miserably depressing, maybe. Perhaps soul-less. Fun? No. Funner? No-er.

Now I've Gone and Done it

So I posted my blog address on my profile of my high school alum page*. Am I insane? Am I setting myself up for incessant judgings and ridicule that could otherwise have been avoided? I mean, yeah, there are My Peeps from high school - and themz knowzez whos theyz are, and Iz stillz loves ya - but do I want to open myself up to a pool of the unknown KNOWNS? I'll let you know if I crack and decide that I can't take the stress of knowing they're all just still sitting around in a puddle of green and white pom-poms, eating their dry cauliflower and snickering at my stupidity. They may never have been this bad, but my I-showed-up-naked-at-high-school-and-was-forced-to-audition-for-the-cheerleading-squad-and-sweat-through-a-series-of-poorly-executed-toe-touches-in-front-of-the-entire-student-body nightmares say otherwise.

*Run by "a local". Hachie alum, if you're out there and interested, email me and I'll give you the site

Mish Mash

My foster parents are going out of town for the weekend and my only duties are to walk the dog, feed the cat, and have dinner ready when they get home on Sunday so we can have Family Night and Scrabble it up. In exchange, I have a weekend alone with TWO TIVOS 'n da house!! And last night I scheduled a dozen or so movies/shows for my solitary viewing enjoyment. Most of which were classic 80s movies, it's lookin very much like I'm going to enjoy myself a large pizza with side of breadsticks to the tune of Breakfast Club/All the Right Moves/Sixteen Candles. Gotta love WE and O - they really know how to make a good lineup. I actually have tons to do this weekend that require me sitting and writing/computer-ing, so the Company will be nice.

By the way, have I mentioned that I have 14 days left here? CRAAAAAZZZZYY!

Which means that (EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK!) I leave for ColOmbia, South America in a little less than 4 weeks. (Note to embarrassingly lazy self: do SOMETHING in Spanish starting this weekend) I know it's out there. But I'm not really dealing with it just yet. Not so much.

Cough, cough ... hack, hack

In case you are tempted, the Reduced Fat Nilla Wafers are NOT Nilla Wafers. Just suck up the extra 1.2 grams fat/serving.

[offstage right: dry heave and splatter of vomiting]




I'll probably eat them anyway though.

It's absolutely true that I am getting younger every day

This says I have the health age equivalent of a 14 year old and that I will live to the ripe old age of 84. Awesome. I wish my waistline reflected that, but a few evenings spent panting on the eliptical machine should cure that. I bet my mom comes out as a 7 year old.

So, public, let's hear it from you. How old do you feel?

Addendum:

After some replies from several people (and Dr. J saying he is "happily married" and coming out with an age of 18 and he is SO 35), I had to do a recheck. Apparently, post-wedding in July when I will THEN be "happily married" I will have a health age of 12. The benefits of marriage are seemingly unending.

I got this as a forward, but it's important enough to post!

I hate when people forward unwarranted warnings or virus alerts, but this one is important!!

If someone comes to your front door saying they are conducting a survey on deer ticks and asks you to take your clothes off and jump around to see how many fall off..., DO NOT DO IT! IT IS A SCAM! They only want to see you naked.

I wish I'd gotten this yesterday. I feel so stupid now...

Your Favorite Athlete (a quickie update)

stl marathon 7
Originally uploaded by missyajg.

You know, we walked it, but we had SO MUCH FUN!!! I did convince my Newest Training Partner to run the last mile and a half-ish, but mostly because it hurt so much to walk by that point that the running was a HUGE relief. I am a proud 3,686 finisher. And I totally smoked her there at the end (I tricked her into thinking I was ok with a tie - seriously though, that's her fault for believing me) but the official results either have it backwards, or we had our chips switched. That's what I get for being a chump.

I will spare you the photos of the blisters Mullsey and I have on our feet. I am only sorry that I don't have any of the post-post-post race photos (i.e., after lunch, after the nap, during the netflix movie soaking in Icy Hot, heating pads, ice, and a pan of brownies between us).

Mullsey, my original training partner, did AWESOME and ran the WHOLE long leg (that Mullsey is unstoppable) for her relay.

Sniff

Soon, I am going to just start delivering all my mail by hand.

And in case you are wondering, it is no coincidence that this is happening the year I am mailing out OH so many thank you cards, wedding invitations and the like. The Postmaster General has always had it out for me since the day I opened a piece of my neighbor's mail without realizing it didn't belong to me. And then for some reason I got flustered and decided I couldn't give it to them opened and threw it in the trash.

Whoa. whoa. whoa. WHHHOOAAAAA.

What in god's name is going on with people voting for American Idol's Scott Savol? WHAT? WHY?? WHO is voting for him?????? I am CLUUUUEEEEELESS. This guy is on the brink of committing probably his 32nd felony, cannot sing, CANNOT perform, cannot put together a coherent sentence worthy of a 2nd grade essay, cannot tuck in his shirt, cannot shave the line 1/2" below his jawline, cannot shave the 1/8" above his upper lip, and cannot breathe with his mouth closed. Mother of god, how has this guy lasted so long??

You may or may not agree with me about the singing part, but come. on. But it is not even possible that there is someone that thinks he's a performer. Need I remind you about the wire-rimmed glasses strip tease? Creepy. Raise your hand if you felt the need to go wash your hands after that one.

I ask you, Americans, to unite. Next Tuesday night, get out your cell phones and help me put an end to this circus.

A Friendly Reminder

To those of you who have been putting off your taxes: You have 8 days to postmark.

Get. On. It.
(to no one in particular)


My refund coincidently showed up on the day that I found the cutest little sundress. Happily, there is still probably enough left to justify the jean shopping that will commence this weekend.

Speaking of things that are this weekend, remember that half-marathon I was training for? That would be this Sunday. Things I have learned throughout this process are 1) I get sick too easily to battle 20 degree weather 2) I fall off the wagon like a watermelon off a 20-story balcony. This little debacle has been nothing short of catastrophic ending with my pneumonia and cracked rib, and severe shin splints and a hip injury for my running partner. She has consented to run the marathon relay with three of our other friends and I conned a friend into walking the 13 miles with me (the rib still does not permit the running). I paid the entry fee, I might as well cross the finish line and get all the goodies that come with. However, the "walk" begins at SIX A.M. I can only imagine that this is the penalty for my laziness.

Booooooooooooo.

I managed to thigh-rub a sizeable hole into the upper leg / lower crotch of my favorite jeans

Luckily, I noticed it before too many others did (I think).

Unluckily, I now must go jean shopping. I hate jean shopping. And it is always very unlikely that your new jeans will be anywhere near worthy of the old favorites that are down for the count. It seems to take me two or three pairs of moderately satisfactory jeans to find The Ones.

And there are no good outlet stores around here, which means I will probably be paying full price for the first test pair. Poor wounded wallet.

And to top it off, I forgot that I had a "package" sent to my parents house (since I'll hold temporary residence there for the next three months) and when I spoke to my dad this morning, I told him, "no, I don't know anyone in Las Vegas". Suspicion got the better of me so I am really the only one to blame for asking my dad to open my newly delivered birth control.

Awesome.


Addendum: apparently, he thought it was actually "medication" (see comments)

Long Time, No Post

Things are starting to wind down in the land of the overwhelmed. Although, I think I have a few more days of craziness before I go into full scale t.v. watching for some weeks. I should be working on my Spanish right now, because if you remember, este blog-o was created to have a place to post the Spanish learning process during my upcoming two months in ColOmbia. I can give you a quickie update for the now - it's going nowhere. The milestones I have left to complete between now and then are waning - merely dealing with some final "job hunting" issues, finishing up a project at work, attend a friend's wedding, polish up a couple bags of Doritos, and I think there is still a box of brownies left to be made. Knowing me, I'll probably start with the last one first.

I have a friend coming in tonight on business that I haven't seen in a very VERY long time. In fact, we used to date for some time, so this should be fun and awkward. I haven't seen him in about 5 years (I can't believe I'm even old enough to have not seen someone for FIVE YEARS that I dated until my senior year of college! Can this be right?!?!?!) Anyway, an evening of awkward silences probably lay ahead. This of course got Mullsey and I talking yesterday about what men we would much prefer come in town to visit us, and while we had a few that varied (I DO NOT SEE what you people see in Orlando Bloom and I refuse to put him on my list), we were able to essentially narrow our list down to a few:

1. John Cusack
2. Zach Braff
3. Ewan McGregor (me only, and not the Star Wars one)
4. Luke Wilson
5. Jude Law (me only)
6. Matt Damon
7. Edward Norton
8. Brad Pitt (really, it's cliche, but no list is complete without him)
9. Spiderman (late entry, see below)

We also made a similar list of men that are attractive, but have no real appeal since they seem to lack the quirky personality that makes men interesting:

1. Tom Cruise (notable exception: Top Gun, Risky Business)
2. Matthew McConaghey
3. Brad Pitt (yes, I KNOW he's on the list above. But ladies, let's give it to him, he's just THAT good looking)

There are many, many more men that belong on this list but my memory is failing me. Thus, there are blanks for your write in votes. I would love to put Tobey Maguire on the first list but I just read too much about him that makes him seem shallow enough that I half expect him to appear on the next season of The Bachelor. Spiderman, however, is a completely different story.

And just so I don't get into mucho trouble later, of course, the only man I really want is Dr. J. :-)

Thought for the Week

Based on a conversation Suzie the Bear and I were just having, I think it's time for a new thought for the week.

There is no freedom like that of not having to contain your own gas.
~ Missy

The mascara story goes like this

5th grade consisted of:

- the aforementioned perm/bang combo
- 3" thick lenses engulfed by heavy maroon plastic frame
- the fact that the frames were large enough to dip below my cheekbones and encroach upon the upturned corners of my mouth deserves its own bullet
- i was already nearing 5'4". i spent the next 15 years growing two inches, but when i was 10, i was a giant. in girth and stature.
- although i appreciate them now, my superman-long eyelashes gave me more than a little headache


So, sitting in class one day in 5th grade (mind you, I was right about 10 or 11 ... WAY TOO OLD TO DO THIS) I had reached the breaking point with the eyelashes brushing my glasses. It's not so much the downward part of the blink that's annoying. In the downward stroke, the eyelashes press past the eyewear and sort of invert their upward curly shape and have to lay on their sides at the blink-bottom. On the upward blink stroke, it can happen that the eyes can open entirely, while the inverted curl of the lash is caught on the eyeglasses. Thus, requiring the user to pull off the glasses or stick ones fingers behind the lenses to free the lash from the lens.

Let's add to this that my mother had me wearing mascara when I was 10 so that "people could see my beautiful eyes" from behind the pair of coke bottles on my face.

So in the blinking process, the downward blink caused mascara (aka, bat guano) smears splatterpainted in a line across my lenses, and the upward blink left me unable to open my eyes completely.

It was on one such occasion (blink, blink. strain to open eyes without using my hands, shoving my greasy fingers behind the lenses to release the lashes and leaving a smear of bat guano and palm grease in my wake) that a light bulb went off in my head.
Bathroom pass in hand, I sprinted down the hallway with the dreaded safety scissors tucked in my pocket (lord knows, I didn't run with scissors in my hand) and proceeded to whack off every last lash on both my eyes.

A happy blinker, I was.

Beat this.

If anyone needs me tonight I can be found swimming in a vat of flower-power brownies and bags of Doritos.

Today rocks. I overslept by about 40 minutes and managed to purchase my Friday Latte and still get to work on time. I suppose I should also be grateful that I didn't get a speeding ticket.

Oh, and! I spent the past two nights trying to thoroughly disinfect and repair wall boo-boos in my old apartment so I could get my deposit back. Yesterday, I show up to walk-through the place with the apartment manager and the moment we walk in the door I see two HUGE (1/2") nail holes (dr. j and I have a bit of a problem hanging things on the first try and it's the putting-in and taking-out that causes the large hole-age) that I completely forgot about. Immediately, I knew that would suck up my deposit (damn vultures), however, the manager proceeds to go open the oven door, refrigerator door, and toilet lid (I suppose I could have been storing something ghastly in any of those locations) and said, "looks great! c-ya!".

I really wish I could get those two nights back. I think they just wanted me to vacuum.


oh how times does fly!!!

28 DAYS REMAINING