In search of...

I’m still playing D&D. No, scratch that – I’m totally LOVING playing D&D. LOVING. IT. I love pretending to have weapons and be brave and bold and daring! I also love writing epic, “tan-tara!” filled narratives (for that is how this email-based version of the king of the nerd games is played. We the adventuresome band take our turns by writing out the inner thoughts and outer banter of each of our characters as they make with the great battle and then we stick in the game mechanics like “Massive Colossal Hit-in-the-Head blow, 1D100+50=51, Damage of a poke in the middle eye and Atomic Medieval Wedgie” and see what happens next. It’s excellent.) and strategizing ala “gosh, I don’t know. How do YOU think we should destroy this 8-ft tall, man-eating blamange?”

Seriously, I am enjoying this way more then I expected. Also I’m loving all this time with my nerd buddies. I’ve known these guys since they were short with round faces and no CHANCE with girls. Now they’re big, tall, handsome guys with excellent career options and SUPER-HOT wives, but deep down inside? Nerds. Total nerds. In the words of Fred “The Ogre” Palowakski: N-E-E-E-E-E-R-R-R-R-D-S-!

However recently I’ve realized that they’re also my dream guy.

Not them specifically, because a) they’re basically my little brothers, b) they’re married, c) to my friends (in one case even my BEST friend!) and/or d) Dude, my LITTLE BROTHERS!, but more of a nerdish guy like these guys happen to be. My hanging with these paragons of nerd virtue (nerdtue, if you will) have caused me to realize that what I want from a guy is a quality nerd! Someone who will find me awesome when I quote Star Wars (“let the wookie win”) or when I know who would win in a battle between Batman and Superman (Batman of course) Someone who finds tough girls hot and smart girls hot and tough, smart girls MOST HOT OF ALL.

After I made this nerdization I started thinking about how my favorite guys in the world are ALL nerds! The spouses of all of my girl friends and most of my family members are nerds. All my buddies from high school or earlier were nerds and if I’m still friends they’re still nerds. Guys I think are cool on tv are pretty much nerds. (either that or space-cowboys. But mostly nerds) I just really like the species of dude that we call? Nerd.

So now here’s my problem: where does one go to find a single, adult male nerd?

Because in my experience the nerds that are still single at my age are mostly of the “wears his coat 24/7, has his hair long but doesn’t waste time on that “shampoo” crap, does the fish handshake and ends every sentence with “and what have you.”” Type. (shudder) This I will pass on, thank you.

If anyone out there knows where one would meet appealing, single nerd guys please tell me where this would be! I am for them, James Kirk!

The Late Femtastic

In a word: bleah.

In more words, I feel crappy. I’ve felt varying degrees of crappy all day, with a migraine and general grossness. And all day long I’ve been sweating like I’m running a marathon even though I’m wearing a light shirt and running no “thons” of any kind. Needless to say I eventually took my temperature.

No fever, which is good.

Actually I was 96.8. Now I know that seems low, but you have to also realize that “normal” for me is a degree less than normal for most folks – I run 97.6 all the time. So I was only a little below my normal at about 2pm today.

Just now I got home from the Oscar bash and all, still feeling crappy, and I decided to take my temperature again (because still no thons, but yet still also with the sweating) and now I’m clocking in at 95.6.

So I have a theory (because seriously, when don’t I have a theory?): I believe that I died overnight in my sleep (which is a nice way to go, so I’m ok with that) but I have such a strong personality, not to mention a super-powered internal heater when I’m sleeping, that it’s taking me a long time to cool off completely. Or stop moving. Or stop t-a-l-k-I-n-g.

Based on my progress so far I’ll expect to finally cool off around Thursday, finally fall down about Friday and finally shut up… well, never. But two out of three ain’t bad. (do you think they can get a wireless signal to the morgue?)

Maybe it would help if I made one myself?

This country has had presidents almost the whole time, and some of them have been pretty dang good. It was for this reason that I decided to go ahead and take the day off last Monday, even though my employers seem to prefer to totally take our political system for granted and not give any time off at all. Whatever. (communists. Or socialists. Some kind of “ist” for sure…)

Anyway, the Royal Family was also off for the day so we decided to spend the day together, and to spend it at the coast.

Tangent which might be a rerun: Here in the Pacific Northwest (which is where Hippyville is located) we don’t have beaches really. We have ‘The Coast.’ “What is the difference?” you ask? This is the difference:

A beach is often sunny and lovely, and people have been known to swim in the actual ocean when they are at the beach, and sometimes there are people who lie on towels with very little clothing on them and try to get something they call a “tan.” This is a beach.

The COAST is pretty much always overcast, or maybe raining, and usually windy. You would NEVER swim in the ocean at the coast because the ocean is extremely dangerous and exists mostly to kill you. Also to house fish and other aquatic life forms, but mostly just to kill. You. You’d never even turn your BACK on the ocean at the coast, let alone go SWIMMING in it. The appropriate amount of layers of clothing to wear to the coast is somewhere between three and eleven, plus the requisite rain coat and floppy hat, cinched up right under your chin so as to not blow away. This is the coast.

Tangent done. (maybe again.)

If you’re from some of the places with beaches you probably think that the coast is a terrible place, but those of us from the Pacific Northwest love our coasts. We love to drive to them and park our car and walk on the long stretches of windswept sand or clamber over the lava formations peeking into the tide pools hidden among them. We think that poking a sea anemone or finding a starfish is cool like licking a celebrity or finding free money. And secretly? We like it all even more when its raining.

Anyway, it was this kind of northwestern, Hippyville-type enthusiasm that sent us driving over to the coast. Once there we were amazed at how NOT pacific northwesty the weather was! There was this big ball of fire in the sky, and the sky itself wasn’t the comforting, reassuring grey that we come to expect, but instead a shocking and even scandalous shade of LIGHT BLUE! Was there massive wind? THERE WAS NOT! I was even forced to remove layers! REMOVE LAYERS I SAY!

Despite this end-of-the-world-is-nigh weird weather we still had a lovely day. We poked anemones and walked down stretches of sand and everything. And the kids did those things that the kids do: Princess Longtoes took her first steps on sand, followed by long minutes sitting on the sand and marveling at the strangeness of sand. LONG minutes. Dude, sand is just stinking cool is all. Meanwhile, Princess Stinkbottom found a STICK! In fact she found TWO STICKS! And once she was done experience all the joy that writing in SAND with a STICK can bring she started noticing there were also SHELLS! There were also FEATHERS! She was in full-on astoundiosity about all the amazing things that are just scattered over the coastal range. And ALL. FOR. FREE.

Eventually it was time to take the 30 broken, extremely plain seashells and the 6 sandy, sad-looking seagull feathers and the two driftwood-y sticks and go home. Unfortunately by the time that it WAS the time to go home we were still walking down the sandy stretches. We still had a pretty impressive hike back to the car in front of us. A prospect that Princess Stinkbottom was totally GO about at the bottom of the hike and pretty dang DONE about once we finally reached car. Still, she made the hike, and was conscientious to check, and double-check, that her Dad still had the 30 shells and the 6 feathers and the 2 sticks all the way back. ALL the way back. Super-important shells and magically delicious feathers and could-cure-cancer sticks all made it every step of the way back to the car.

By the time we got back to town the somewhat toasted Princess Stinkbottom was now a lovely golden brown on both sides, with an ooey-gooey freak-out center. She had a meltdown in the Rite-Aid (where we stopped for bathrooms and beverages! Because there is no “Bob’s Bathrooms and Beverages” store on the coast! Or anywhere else in the world! Thank you very much Your Dang Mr. Highness PULL OVER THE CAR BEFORE I MAKE MY VERY OWN BEVERAGE IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN!!!) and another at the Applebees and she really just needed to be going home.

They dropped me off at my house and I open up the back to get my crap. And then I have one of those moments where the parents who know me remember that I can sometimes be helpful and therefore they shouldn’t just stop knowing me entirely even though that’s what makes the most sense right then. Because me, I don’t always have that filter in the brain between thinking of something funny to say and saying it which would ask the question “will the kids get that you’re joking or are you about to stick a grenade in that car seat?” No, I opened up the back of the car and grabbed my jacket and my camera bag and said to all in the car “and I’m taking all of these shells too.”

KA.

BOOM.

There is no amount of apologizing to the car full of parents who now have to talk their absolutely fried 4-yr old off the ledge of “she’s stealing my very special and magical shells!!!” that will do. And I’m pretty sure that the look that the King shot me over the head of his hysterical daughter should be registered as a lethal weapon. Because I actually fell over dead right then from it’s impact. No court in the land would have convicted him either.

(but for the record? The parents laughed first.)

looky, I gots a Wordle!

Thanks to The Bloggess and her general abundance of knowledgy things, I have discovered the wonder that is Wordle. Behold, you scan down and see the wordle that is Unlikely In Love!

It's a funny thing -- you throw in a URL, chocked full of things that you created, and it brings you a graphic. And then you have to try like hell to not read all into it! the obvious choices are the big words: Love, match, people... But I love that "y'all", "cheese", "stinky" and "olde" show up.

For instance, "olde" means I'm fancy -- see the unneccessary "e" at the end? I mean ende? And the "y'all" proves that I'm one of the people, just like George Bush and Brittany Spears and other regular folke. (I mean "folke".)

I think that I should use this as a way to set some blogging GOALS. If any of you feel like helping me with setting a goal, I'd love your help in picking three new words that will display prominently in my next wordle. Word me, people! Go crazy with it! Literally think outside this box!

Dear Mr. Universe...

I decided that the most appropriate way for me to “celebrate” Valentines Day was to finally write back to Mr. Carl and set up the cocoa date. You guys already know that I’m not really wanting to do this, but I said I’d do all the stuff and this is one of the stuffs and so I’ll do it.

Except that I won’t. Because Mr. Carl apparently thought that the most appropriate way for him to “celebrate” February 6th was to close our match. And this was a huge surprise to me, because why the heck would he not want to continue to send me emails that he could then wait weeks and weeks to hear back on? Who would find this not fun? Some stupid HUMAN guy, that’s who! So screw him and his stupid desire for respectful responses and stuff. WHAT. EVER.

(Sigh)

Right, so there’s no cocoa date to set up. I took some time to mourn the opportunity (and about 20 minutes to feel honestly relieved that I didn’t have to go meet this person, and about 5 minutes imagining that he found some super-wanting person who was looking for a guy who would call her all the time and want to know about her every move and around 3 minutes eating Valentines candy and 27 seconds sucking chocolate off my fingers.) and then I jumped online and pushed on.

But I still had to find an appropriate way to “celebrate” Valentines Day.

Right then I’m hearing the voice of one of my favorite work friends in my head. She reminds me of the me I probably could have been if I’d been more something earlier on, ya know? Anyway, to my surprise about a year ago she announced that she was engaged, AND that she met Mr. Right on Emelody. If someone had asked me to list 5 things I never thought that my work chum (who I will call Xena) would be caught doing they would be 1) crack cocaine, 2) sock darning, 3) mailing anthrax, 4) making local porn and 5) online dating (not necessarily in that order).

When I pinned her down and asked her what was the deal she told me that she decided that she needed to do something to show the universe that she was committed to this “wove” thing. And these were the words tobogganing through my brain as I sat on the Royal couch (while babysitting the princesses). And with that encouragement I send questions to both of the new matches that Emelody had just sent me (even though one is pictureless and the other is too old, too far away and too into fishing). But I didn’t stop there – I then went to lighter.com (just think about it) and I winked at about 6 different guys who were cute and not any of my deal breakers (religious, married, republican, eaters of babies, watchers of reality tv).

I have officially sent word to the universe. I will expect a prompt reply in the form of a hot, single rockstar/photographer from Australia…

Still waiting…

still waiting…

still waiting…

Mmmm, yummy chalk.

Saturday is that day every year where people in any kind of love (from new, shiny, yet-to-be-crushed love to aged, mature, slightly stinky like a fancy cheese and with Ye Olde Lettering on it love) to feel totally superior to the rest of us. Not that many of you DO, and what’s up with that anyway? If I were ever in love on Valentines Day I’d wear a shirt that says “I’m totally in love – don’t you wish you were?” and gold shoes with Cupid’s wings on the heels.

Still, I respect the restraint that you loved ones show we, the lonely masses. (also the name of my future rock band, by the way. “Hello Cleveland! We are the Lonely Masses! ARE YOU READY TO ROCK????” Awesome.) Here’s my lack of restraint:

• Number of heart-shaped chocolates I’ve been given so far: 3
• Number of chalk-flavored heart-shaped candies on my desk today: 45
• Number of flower delivery guys who came to my desk looking for someone else today: 3
• Number of spamails that I’ve received this month about Valentines Day: 12
• Number of these spamails that are specifically for “enlarging” things for the holidays: 3
• Number of little kids valentines I’ve received from co-workers this week: 4
• Number of temporary tattoos from such a valentine that I’ve attempted to stick on my arm: 1
• Number of tattoos that actually stuck on my arm: 0
• Number of excellent little kids that I’ll be baby sitting on Valentines day so that their parents, who are in love with each other, can go see a movie and have smooch dinner: 2
• Number of bits of dirty underwear I’ll be wearing under my babysitting clothing: 14

…after all, it IS Valentines Day, people!

And finally? Here's what my chalk-flavored, heart-shaped candies said to me today:

• I ♥ you
• Stir my ♥
• lover boy
• to
• sweet love
• my (mushy word, probably man?)
• Angel
• cool
• Awe Some
• Mushy word, probably Love?
• nice iru
• spice it up
• real love
• my treat
• how race
• lets kiss
• on
• love him
• dream
• sugar fir
• go grrrrr
• marry me
• sugar die
• ugahhhhhh
• sweet talk
• be fine
• ask
• top chef
• real gu
• get real
• (blank)
• only
• sugar pih
• my girl
• ♥ of golf
• ANID
• dear one
• mine
• top
• my man
• my arv

Here's hoping that you all eat your own fair share of chalk-flavored, heart-shaped candies while wearing secret Valentines Day underwear and reading your dirty Valentines Day Spamails!

The Plans Possible

OK, so apparently everyone in the world with a blog is either pregnant or has a kid or whatever and I hate them all. (even those that I know personally. Sorry, but there’s just too much hate being unused in the world now that Obama is in office and we’re all “Yes we can”-ing and everything. So I’m using all of mine on the parental people. It’s my duty as an American, y’all.) I don’t have a kid, and I’m approaching “super-old”, and I’m afraid that if I have a kid now my Mom and Dad won’t live long enough to help me with ABSOLUTELY EVERY PART OF THE PROCESS which is necessary because I’m (you may not know this yet) TOTALLY SINGLE.

So then I think if I’m just not gonna get to do the parent-thing then I should really be DOING something with my life. Taking advantage of the fact that I can pick up and fly to Borneo without having to pack little pink backpacks or find someone who would be willing to be someone’s mother for a week. I think of all the things that my parenty friends tell me they wish they could do but can’t, due to the additional steps involved when you have kids, and I’m not doing any of them either. So what the hell?

So I think I need to figure this out. I am either going to go to my doctor and say “please to start poking me with needles and soaking my brain in extra heaps of girly-chemicals so that I might spend all my days flashing back and forth from tears to anger to Cheetos, Cheetos, CHEETOS and just generally wreaking havoc on my life so that I can give you every single spare dollar I have to buy little wriggly boy-worms which you’ll use to infect me so that I can come back later and be told “nothin’. $300 please.” And then repeat over and over.
OR I’m going to quit my job and become a world-famous travel photographer, winging my way from Sydney to Paris to Reykjavik to Guadalajara and taking one draw-jopping picture after another, and I’m gonna go to all the amazing book parties in New York and tell stories like “and so after we picked all the shrimp tales out of her Wonder Bra and wiped the cocktail sauce off the Lamborghini we all decided there was nothing left to do but jump into the Jell-O pool. Again.” and just generally be that spectacular friend that you envy even though she’s always staring at your two kids with wistful eyes.

Or maybe I’ll just eat more Cheetos and watch some General Hospital. (they blew-up the O.R., y’all!)

Another example of “the crazy, I am full with it!”. By Femtastic.

The newest E-Melody match (remember that we are calling him Señor Spiffypants in the same way some people climb big mountains: because he’s there) hasn’t closed the match. Not at all. Which means, of course, that he’s not a good match. And in what way is he not a good match? Well he’s just not attractive. And I wish I were evolved and Zen enough to be all “who cares if he’s not much to look at, for I’m sure he’s an amazing person INSIDE!” but I’m not. I’m all kinds of human and flawed and wanting of everything, and when I saw his pictures my “ooh, he didn’t close the match!” became “oh. Right. Got it. Sigh.”

So THEN, later on I got a thing from Lighter.com (less of a “find your soulmate!” site and more of a “find someone super-cute” site) reminding me that they still love me, even though I don’t give them money anymore, and that I can look at their stud corral for free if I want to. So I wandered through, and there on the first page was this SUPER-hot guy! Smokin’, people! Yummy!! with a capital “YUM!” And so did I wink at him? I did not. And WHY did I not wink at him? Obviously because he’s way too hot and would look at my picture and go “oh. Right. Got it.” and cleeekity-cleeek the “no thanks” button.

So to recap, I’m looking for someone much cuter then I think I can actually get. So I’m going to reject those not cute enough, while simultaneously fleeing from those as cute as I’d like. I think this is a super-rabid strain of crazy, which should come with mouth-foaming and in-tongues speaking.

I also know that I have just left Mr. Carl hanging about the cocoa date. Which is bad, and kind of mean (except for the fact that I’ve taken so long to respond to ALL his emails so at least this is par for the course so far, but whatever…) and I’m totally going to email him today. I swear. Or tomorrow at the latest. By Friday for sure. And when I email him I’m gonna say… something committal about a cocoa date. Promise.

This is only a test...

E-Melody has sent me a message that I have a new match (we’ll call him Senor Spiffypants. Why? Because I get to. Start your own blog and you can call someone that too.) waiting for me at home. I have to wait until I go home because apparently some beaurocratic puppet-master, tool of The Man and controller of all things fun and not fun, decided that it wasn’t COOL for someone to be spending their work day surfing the web looking for love and they BLOCKED E-Melody at my work! UNBELIEVABLE!

Anyway, I got the “Haaaaave you met Senor Spiffypants?” email (with apologies to Barney*) today around 1:30pm. Now, let’s see how long between when they send the email saying I’ve got some awesome new match to go look at and when the good Senor (and his spiffy, SPIFFY pants!) close the match because my eyes are too close together or I don’t enjoy enough Opera or I look like I might, just MIGHT, worship Satan. Any guesses?

(sorry about the pessimism. I was mugged by a jar of peanut butter this morning before work and it’s got me all jacked out of shape.)

~TO BE CONTINUED~

*I have no idea why there are french subtitles on this clip. Were it my clip there would not be. But were it my clip there would be no clip because I have no idea how to make these clips. So thank god for the french bastards out there (or bastards who have french friends for whom they enjoy to subtitle video clips) who CAN clip things up.

Battle of the Bulge - Compare and Contrast edition.

So the battle of the bulge is in full swing! And by full swing I mostly mean that every yummy thing I eat is currently coated in a thick film of guilt, and I’m extremely aware of my tummy. To make matters worse, the Queen has been tracking her eating and exercising on her own blog. And it includes words like “non-fat” and “sit-ups” which make me throw up in my mouth a little bit.

To better illustrate the difference between our battle plans, here is what a week of eating and exercising would look like on MY blog:

Monday:
Breakfast = 2-3 handfulls of cheesy goldfish crackers, 12 oz. of Pepsi
Lunch = leftover Chinese food, some kind of Mein (probably lo)
Dinner = chicken Ceasar wrap
Dessert = 1 fudgicle (maybe 2? I got dizzy around 11:45 and may have treated myself with an additional fudgicle purely for medicinal purposes)
Exercise = biked to/from work twice, 1 bonus Monday hour of tap dancing

Tuesday:
Breakfast = 2-3 handfulls of cheesy goldfish crackers, 12 oz. of Pepsi
Lunch = P, B & J on white bread, 12 oz. of Pepsi, 10 min. of reliving my childhood through food.
Dinner = Exceptionally crappy Banquet chicken dinner frozen dinner w/ mashed potato & corn, 12 oz. of Pepsi
Dessert = 1 fudgicle
Exercise = biked to/from work twice, 1 hour of tap dancing

Wednesday:
Breakfast = 2-3 handfulls of cheesy goldfish crackers, 12 oz. of Pepsi
Lunch = P, B & GJ on white bread, 12 oz. of Pepsi, fat-free memories of youth
Dinner = Chicken Ceasar wrap, 1 dozen tater tots (maybe more – I confess I didn’t actually count them.) 12 oz. Pepsi
Dessert = The Last Fudgicle
Exercise = biked to/from work twice, 20-min. of crying due to lack of additional Fudgicles, absolutely NO tap dancing.

Thursday:
Breakfast = Oh cheesy goldfish crackers, only you understand me. You and your friend, 12 oz. of Pepsi
Lunch = Lean Pocket, which is neither lean nor a pocket, but DOES taste like cardboard filled with cat food and cheese whiz
Dinner = Cheese burger, OK? WITH pickles! And probably not even LITE pickles! But I had things I had to do and it was late and I didn’t want to make food and whatever! You’re not the boss of me!
Dessert = 2 small bowls of Frosted Flakes w/ 2% milk. Because it’s not just for breakfast anymore.
Exercise = biked to/from work twice.

Friday:
Breakfast = 2-3 handfulls of cheesy goldfish crackers, 12 oz. of Pepsi, who the hell brought cinnamon rolls?
Lunch = tiny 1-person cheese pizza w/ chicken scattered around the top because cheese pizza is boring.
Dinner = Take-out Indian Food!!! Chicken Tikka Masala and plain Nan. And big heaping bowl of nirvana because I love me some Indian food! (but it was low-fat nirvana, if that makes any difference.) and, OF COURSE, 12 oz. of Pepsi.
Dessert = 1 small bowl of Cap’n Crunch w/ crunch berries, 1 ice cube (fat free, y’all!!) to stop the mouth-bleeding from the sharp crunch-corners, candy bar at the movies.
Exercise = biked to/from work twice, built shrine to person who brought cinnamon rolls

…yeah, I don’t understand why I’m not a tiny, little size 2 yet either. Probably a glandular problem. Or perhaps a vindictive metabolism.

PS. Dear Pepsi, I expect your corporate sponsorship of this blog to commence immediately. Yes, I am willing to change the name to “Pepsi’s Unlikely in Love” in exchange for a lifetime supply of soda and the promise that you’ll change back the logo immediately. Femtastic don’t like image change!