Plan… C? D? #11?

The online matchmaking thing is a bust, and I officially wash my hands of it. (yes, again. And shut up.) I just couldn’t face spending another pile of money given the crap that has crossed my radar. Also I didn’t like the way it had me wondering if the reason that I kept getting matches of crap was because that’s my type: crap. Wouldn’t be the first time I wondered that, (and if you’d ever met my one long-time relationship you’d be thinking the VERY SAME THING.) but it’s still a bummer thought.

So moving on! Moving on to… ummmmm… yeah….

Ok, so this is the part of the plan that I’ve not really worked out in detail. Specifically the “plan” part. I guess to call this a “plan” is overly optimistic. It’s more of a general hope, or specifically-focused level of enthusiasm. Know what I mean? I’m not so much following a plan now as I am not following the OLD plan and, instead, hoping that the universe is done messing with me and will pony up the awesome match all on its own.

You can see why I’m so very optimistic. Really, how could this fail? Totally. Fool. Proof.

I have opened up my radar to a wider sweep (check me and my cool military references, courtesy of months of watching NCIS reruns. My GOD I am a catch!) by informing a few more folks that should they stumble upon that most rare and fictional of creatures (the single, decent, employed and washed single man my age) they should feel free to let me know. Or send him my way. Or hog-tie him and keep him in the trunk of their car until I get there. (I don’t want to limit their problem-solving skills, so I leave a lot to their imagination.) I sort of hate admitting to folks that I’m even remotely giving a crap, but I also hate irony. And the “not telling people” option increases the odds of me meeting Mr. Right at his wedding after another friend of mine fixed him up. To not me. Nobody needs that much irony in their life.

This change of strategy partially came around when I had not one, but two friends (one of which was the Queen, thank you very much!) tell me that they secretly never expected the online thing to work and that they think the only way I’ll find a partner is by making a connection with someone in a 1-on-1 interaction. I totally think they’re right. As one friend put it, “you’re gonna be somewhere and make one of your jokes and some guy’s going to get that joke and you’ll know HE’S the guy! Because HE got YOUR joke!”

My E-Melody profile should apparently have always said “Wanted: someone who will get my jokes.” Wakka, wakka, wakka.

So now, with this new plan, the only problem I have to worry about is being places where there are people with whom I could have that magical 1:1 interaction. And the good news THERE is that I have an active social life, doing stuff all the dang time with crowds of people! Huzzah! Never mind that every single gathering that I go to is full of married guys. Or that most of the parties I attend are all members of my family. Basically the only way this is gonna work is if I can get my entire family to move to the South and loosen their moral boundaries a whole bunch.

Man, what a girl will go through for wove. Wish me luck on the new plan goal hope general optimistic direction!

A different kind of bad influence

OK, so despite the dozens of polar bears who no doubt drowned to death last week with all the driving that I did to work I NORMALLY am a bicycle commuter. Even with my new wheels I’ll bike my ass to work every day. I hop on my super-cool bike (and it is officially super-cool. I’ve had totally random strangers compliment me on my bike. So it’s official. Super-cool. Go ahead and envy me – you’re allowed.) and peddle to and from work twice a day.

My bike-commuting gear in inclement weather normally includes big broccoli rubber bands around my pant legs, a big, shapeless, bread-pudding of a coat (but warm), a muffler so long that even if I wrap it around my neck 6 times it will still poke out the bottom of my shapeless dessert coat, earmuffs and clear work goggles with a mirror hanging off one stem.

But no helmet.

Before I have a record number of comments ever for one post (which I want, but not on this post) let me state for the record:

1) I have no doubts that helmets are safer than no helmets
2) I would never, in a million years, encourage someone else to not wear one
3) I totally get that my arguments sound absurd
4) If I DO smash my brains I’ll blame nobody but me.

The reason I have had no helmet so far starts with “my god, how is it possible that we have made it possible for golf, the lamest of all the sports, to be played on the moon and yet still bike helmets are both dorky looking AND uncomfortable???” and then rolls over into “it costs HOW MUCH???” territory before landing gracefully at “I have to work all day with whatever hair I have when I get to the other end. If that hair is lame I get to look lame. At work. Every day.” I understand that none of these things are as important as not splashing my shiny, shiny brains all over the ground, but so far (knock on wood) I’ve not had (knock on a bunch of wood) any brain-splashing problems (seriously, where do they keep the wood on this danged internet???) and the other problems happen 100% of the helmet-wearing time. In other words: I MIGHT get hurt, but I’ll DEFINITELY look dorky on the road, be uncomfortable, spend a bunch of money and have lame helmet hair at work.

So for these reasons I’ve been helmetless. And by the way? I’m totally not alone. Here in Hippyville, which is a danged bike-riding mecca, there are people all around me sporting caps and hoods and other head-gear designed to keep heads warm or dry (or super-snazzy!) but not so much smash-free. And we are all in our own little club. When someone on a bike without a helmet passes someone else without a helmet we nod like “Yeah, you understand. Your hair will look super when you get where you’re going, and how much do you really use those brains anyway, right?”

Sigh.

Anyway, here’s the deal: yesterday I was biking to work and there’s this one place where I go flying down an inclined road as fast as I can, letting inertia be my jetpack, and when I get to the bottom of this little hill I zoom through this little open space next to a big hinged car-gate-thing. I do this every day, twice a day, just like clockwork. And let me add that I am FLYING when I get down to this part. And also I go over this little hillock thing as I go through the space, so I’m generally not touching the ground for that moment. (it is AWESOME.) And this morning was like all other mornings.

EXCEPT!

Except that someone had opened the car-gate-thing (which never happens!) over the weekend and left it standing open. Standing open in such a way that you can’t really see that it’s open until you’re right on top of it. Standing open also in such a way that it was now completely blocking the space through which I usually fly. So this morning it was more like this: “Zoom, zoom, zoom… what the-?... HOLY CRAP, I IS DEAD!!!!!”

At the last possible section I turned slightly to the left and went through the open gate instead of the usually-open space. And I was fine! Huzzah! Oh sure, I peed myself and vomited up my heart from the racing of it. But 100% of my death was avoided!

But I’ll admit that it occurred to me that had I NOT noticed the blocked space when I did I would have most likely mashed my something, and brains was a fair guess. And so I guess this was the universe’s way of saying “Seriously, how long do you expect us to let you keep tempting irony this way?” to which I say “Fair enough.” I’m going to go ahead and get a helmet. (Actually I’m going to put it on my birthday list so that my sister can get it for me, which I know she will do because whenever she hears that I’m still not wearing a helmet she wails that I’m a terrible influence on her three kids, at which point I have to remind her that I’ve already schooled them on properly flipping the bird, not to mention offering to take them to get their first tattoos. The helmet thing is the least of her worries.)

I’m That Good

I.

Own.

A car.

(OK, so technically I already owned a car, but it was a broken car. And now I also own a car that is NOT broken. But it sounded way cooler to say “I own a car” then it would have to say “I own two cars, and the new one is also very not broken.”)

I waged battle in the car-buying wars today and I emerged MIGHTY AND VICTORIOUS! Not only did I successfully hunt down the prey of my choice (more on her in a second) but I did it for a SONG!* I went to my cartoonish car dealer friend Ali and said to him “I will have your car sir.” And he was all “Good! How much will you give me? I want $6000” and I was all “I will give you a kick in the shins and a rude hand gesture! And you will like it!” and he bowed down before me and thanked me for the experience!

OK, so some of that is kind of… lies.

I did go to my cartoonish car dealer friend to talk dollars. I already knew that there would be negotiating, because that’s how this car buying stuff goes. And I was feeling pretty good about my chances of making a good deal. My confidence was based on three things:

1. The car had been on craigs list for a few weeks

2. I’m a pretty good negotiator most of the time

3. yesterday I had this conversation with Ali:

Him: “How much did I list this car for again?” (and of course you should hear these words in a fabulous Persian accent)

Me: “$6,000.”

Him: (thinking about it.) “Hmmm, yah… I think we might have to go-“

Now at this point I’m thinking “Here we go, this is when it all goes to crap because he’s totally going to bait-and-switch the listed price and so now I gotta be ready to counter and I better get on my game face and BRING IT ON, CAR SALESMAN GUY!!!!”.

Him: “…lower…”

(I’m sorry, what?)

Him: “It would be really good to sell the car. I could really use the money.”

WORST NEGOTIATOR EVER!

So when I came to him today ready to talk details I was… oh, let’s say “confident.” (the right word would be at least “cocky” and probably even more accurately would be “ballsy as all get out!” but I’m classy, so we’ll go with “confident.”) He talked his numbers, and I talked mine, and when all the dust settled (and his office was a dusty place, my friends!) I walked away with my fancy, schmancy car for $4750 PLUS he’s taking away my old, broken car too!

There is not a humble bone in my entire body right now. I’m overflowing with hubris and ego and all kinds of “I AM THE KING OF THE WORLD!!!” Later, when I’m done being ridiculously pleased with myself, I’ll tell you the fabulousness of my new (used) car. It’s ever so fabulous. (like me)

*Note: no actual songs were exchanged for this fabulous car.

My Bad Boy...

So once again I’m totally in love with a new (used) car. And once again I know better than to let myself fall in love, but I’m still doing it.

I suspect this one is a bad boy. (oooh. Bad boys. So tempting!) It’s hot and has many features that I’d been dreaming about but never thought I’d actually find. It’s an automatic, but it’s ALSO a manual!

“Wait, how could that be?”

“I’ll tell you.”

“Tell me, tell me! I think you may be feverish with autolove!”

“But NO, it’s TRUE!”

“(liar…)”

“You are.”

“No, YOU are!”

…sorry, what were we talking about? Oh, right! The fancy transmission! This car, a sexy 6 cylinder beast with bedroom eyes, is a 5-speed Automatic, but there’s this swanky little slot at the end of the gearshift that you can pop the shifter into, and in this mode you control the ups and downs of the transmission. Just like a real car!!! (sorry, should have warned you that there was transmission snobbery comin’ up. There could be more)

Also it’s NOT RED! And it’s NOT WHITE! Every car that I’ve taken for a test drive so far (1/2 dozen at least) have been either WHITE or RED. I don’t really want a WHITE car, nor do I want a RED car, although I won’t say no to a good car deal due to the color. Except yellow! I’m not driving a yellow car! I draw the line at Y-E-L-L-O-W! But this little honey of a vehicle is a lovely blooooooo. I heart it.

In the category of “stupid things that I shouldn’t care about, and should even shun as being silly and frivolous, but that I really actually do want and in fact makes me go all giggly school girl” this car has a sunroof, a digital compass incorporated in the rear view mirror and a woofer built into the space-saver spare in the back. SWOON!!!

And it’s CHEAP! CHEEEEEEEEAP!

So now you should be asking the same thing I was asking: why the heck has this car been on Craig’s List for almost a month?

It’s a bad boy.

This car is being sold from this funky “lot” in a remote, farmy area north of our actual town by a guy who probably makes extra scratch playing “random Persian terrorist number 3” on the show 24. We’ll call him “Ali” (and we’ll only be exchanging one classic Mideast name for another because his real name is just like that.). Ali tells me that this car was “abandoned”, that it came to him with no wheels or tires. (uh oh.) Also no keys. (Yeesh!) And no title. (Danger, Will Robinson! Abort, abort!) From some other state entirely. (and now I fall over dead from too much bad news)

Now this could all be totally true! This could be a car that was abandoned and then had it’s fancy wheels pinched and whatever. But most folks will tell you that this car was probably STOLEN from the owner in the other state, its fancy wheels pinched and then the rest of the car transported to a whole other state to be… “disposed of” Still, because it is SO sexy and SO exactly what I want, for the actual dollars I can spend, I’m totally gonna keep wooing this car.

But fear not – I’m not STUPID.

I’ve been checking the VIN on every website that will check VINs and so far she’s all clean, cap’n. Tomorrow we schlep the car to my mechanic to give it a good going over, as well as to verify that the VIN from the other places on the car are the same number as the one on the block itself. The dealer had it registered over the weekend, which means the good people at our DMV are doing a title search right this dang second. All of these are good things. I’m focusing right now on the good things.

I wish I could honestly say that I’m being careful not to let myself fall for this car. I could totally say that, but it would be very much NOT honest. I’m absolutely smitten. I’ve taken to calling it “My Car.” As in “wanna see a picture of my car?” Or “Know what I love the most about my car?” Or “Everybody shut up, I love my car! He’s the only one who understand me!!! Daddy, I LOVE HIM!” That kind of stuff. When I find out for sure that it’s hotter than a three-way between Nathan Fillion, Mal Reynolds and Captain Hammer I’m going to cry. And cry. And CRY.

I think this search for love may be more difficult than the one that should end up with a man.

Synecdoche, New York – a film review

(Note: I am not someone who normally reads, or writes, or enjoys, or supports the right of others to be involved with, film reviews. But a movie I recently… ‘experienced’… was profound enough an occurrence that I could not resist.)

I watched the first hour of Charlie Kaufman’s latest filmatic endeavor Synecdoche, New York, but only because I, like most responsible gun owners, keep the bullets separate from my firearm and I did that classic thing where I forgot where I put them. I checked the closet for rattley shoeboxes, looked in the drawer of my bedside table, the junk drawer in the kitchen, gas tank on the car… And I thought to myself “Isn’t this exactly what the ‘right to arms’ activists are always warning you against? That you’ll finally have an urgent need for your weapon, like to put you out of the misery of watching another painful second of a terrible movie, and you won’t be prepared for the moment?”

Let me say, by the way, that I have very much enjoyed previous Charlie Kaufman movies. Like Adaptation? And also that Spotless Mind one, that was cool, as well as Being John Malkovich. And what was that one… Stranger Than Fiction! I loved that movie! The part where the narrator says “he cursed the heavens” and Harold Crick is all “No, I’m cursing YOU!, you stupid voice!!” Awesome. Anyway, my point is it’s not just that I don’t get from where Charlie Kaufman’s brain comes (or that my not getting it automatically makes me not like the attempt). Sometimes it’s the not getting it that I like the best because it’s like he’s filming a regular story but with the camera turned around like you’re looking through the “out” part of a pair of binoculars! (I checked and he didn’t do Stranger Than Fiction. Someone named Zach Helm did. Who was previously known for nothing I’ve ever heard of. So whatever. That movie was still awesome.)

It’s just that with THIS Charlie Kaufman movie I realized fairly early on (I’m gonna say the 3rd scene?) that there was nobody but NOBODY to like. Or cheer on or even not hate. And yet there was this natural desire to find someone I could cheer on. And if you’re watching Synecdoche, New York (pronounced “Help, I’m trapped in a box of pain and evil and can’t get out!!!”) and you’re trying to find someone to like I will warn you now: don’t do it. You will try and try and it won’t work and in the end you’ll just end up chewing off your face or the face of a friend or loved one in the vicinity. In fact, for the health and welfare of faces everywhere just don’t even watch this movie. Consider this one of those PSA's, and right about now that flying rainbow star-thing will arc across this blog and it will say “The More You Know” or “Now You Know” or “I Know, Right?” or something like that.

After the first hour of Synecdoche, New York (which, by the way, took 13 hours, 27 minutes and 4 seconds to live through) my soul collapsed under its own sad weight and I fell into a deep coma of sorrow and self-loathing. And I also started fast-forwarding through the movie. I’d been told that it was longer than average, but it turned out to be just about 2 hours. It just FEELS much longer than average, by a power of about 12. But having watched the second half at 4-times the normal running speed I realize NOW that it’s actually a short feature, about 30 minutes long (still too long, but better) about a sad, pathetic man who lives a long, painful, life amongst equally terrible and pathetic people and then dies. Or thinks he dies, or he pretends to die, or someone else dies and he really empathizes with them, or something. It was really fast.

Fresh M.E.A.T. anyone?

Just a reminder that the second chapter of Most Excellent Adventure Time (or M.E.A.T. to it's friends) posts today. dying to find out what Steve! and Gladiola will do next? ME TOO! The only way to find out is to jump the link!

Most Excellent Adventure Time this way...

I believe that children are our future...

Being an aunt is not easy, my friends. Oh sure, I didn’t push any watermelon-sized people out my cootch, nor did I have the hemorrhoids or the swollen ankles. (Actually to be fair I DID have both of those things, but I had to keep them to myself because I didn’t have the “I’m making life here! Lay off me!!!” excuse to fall on.)

Still, with all the things that are the responsibility of parents I don’t know that people give the proper due to the jobs that are solely the purvue of the cool aunts and uncles of the world. I take these responsibilities very seriously! Why just the other night my sister was foolish enough to leave town, for MULTIPLE DAYS, and leave her pesky kids behind in the care of myself. Oh sure, there were grandparents there who were really supposed to be keeping an eye on things. But in the end it was all about cool aunt Femtastic and the sharing of the super-awesome knowledge.

We started with high-fives. My sister’s kids (who are very awesome in their own right let me assure you) were rocking some terribly lame high-fives. They didn’t snap, they used flibbidy fingers and NOBODY BUT NOBODY was feeling actual pain at the five’s conclusion. Disappointing. And so I stepped in, because this is just the kind of thing that cool aunts should be in charge of. I schooled them on the need for firm fingers. That a quality high-five should flow THROUGH the air. That a truly GREAT high-five should end with a profound “Yowtch!!!” of pain.

I told them of the greatest single high-five of my life, which was more than 15 years ago. I was living on the whole other side of the nation, and I was attempting to build a waterbed frame using directions printed only in Spanish. One of my favorite relatives, my cousin (we’ll call him Chico de-Coolio), was helping me with this project. When at last we assembled the frame and it actually looked frame-like we cheered and I threw up my silly, girly high-five hand in triumph. And Chico, who had been high-fiving for years with other manly men in manly endeavors, slapped my palm so flat and hard that the sound was heard in dark jungles of Africa, a layer of skin disintegrated on contact and I lost all feeling in my palm for eleven days. I have aspired to such high-fiving skills ever since…

Once the kids were high-fiving with style and grace the conversation shifted, as it would normally due, to the topic of flipping the bird. These kids, ages 11, 13 and 15, had all flipped their own birds, to be sure. But it was a clumsy, difficult-to-watch display. I feared for their very futures.

I explained to them that a quality “disgusting hand gesture” needs to come fast and freely, with confidence and aplomb. You gotta be able to shoot that guy off instantly and it’s gotta look easy. It’s gotta look casual. Your bird has got to say to it’s intended victim “Hey, I show you disrespect, and maybe even actual venom, but I don’t even break a sweat.”

We ran drills, did some spontaneous flip-offs, worked out some crucial finger muscles that don’t really get action any other time. By the time I headed home I felt that these kids were ready for important next milestones: learning how to drive (one handed, of course, to leave the other hand free for… whatever) and sex.

Of course they’re on their own for that one.

Battle of the Bulge – OK, seriously this time

Look, I know I’ve talked a lot about this bulge battling. And I’ve had moments of great intensity – remember those one or two times where I was winning? (And of course you understand that we’re defining “winning” as “the Queen lost 2 lbs and I lost 2 lbs, 1 ounce. And then I did the classy thing, by dancing around all jiggly and pompous and yelling “in your FACE, your heiny!!!” Good times…) But in all honesty I mostly spent all previous attempts at bulge battles resenting that I could only have 2 fudgicles instead of four. (Because really, what kind of communist world have we come to when a serving of fudgicles is only TWO???)

However, something has happened. Something that I swore. SWORE! Would never happen. Something so wrong, so vile and unspeakable and not at all right, that I shudder to give voice to it here. If any of you reading have children in the room please get them elsewhere. Send them to a neighbor’s house or ask your out-of-town relatives to take them far, FAR AWAY! I want no innocents soiled by this.

Are they gone?

My internets, the worst of the worst has happened: my underwear has started to roll down on me. ROLL DOWN. Rolled not by gravity or some unnatural panty-rolling voodoo curse. OH NO! No, my sad, defenseless underwear have been rolling down under the rolling movement of my very own belly.

Oh the horror! THE HORROR!!

All kidding aside… well ok, SOME kidding aside (because really? Who believes I could even DO that?) this for me is a last-straw kind of thing. It freaked me out the first time I was standing next to someone at work and just felt my waistband surrender to the tummy-pressure and just roll down… I felt like everyone who could see me could TELL what had just happened. Like as it was happening they could hear that slide-whistle noise that clowns make? Like my panties rolled down and went “Peeeeuooop!” as they went. And oh, for any of you who have not experienced this yet let me go ahead and give you the benefit of my sad, SAD experience: there is absolutely NO WAY to roll panties back up to your waistline in public. None that a human being should attempt anyway. (and please, for me: don’t be that guy.)

So this weekend I had a serious talk with my mouth and tummy and the kitchen and explained to them that for the benefit of my work reputation we were going to have to stop eating good things for a while, and we will also be fairly hungry pretty much all the time for the next few months. (with the exception of birthday cake this month. Nobody stands between me and birthday cake, ESPECIALLY when it’s my birthday! They’d be safer putting Baby in the Corner.)

I’m also setting a goal. It’s not a pounds goal (because that would require weighing myself, which we just do not do in this house. I’m not putting “bathroom scale” on my birthday list thank you very much!!) or a size goal or a “feeling less tired and with more energy goal” (because that is all LIES AND FALSEHOODS!!!). My goal is simple: to go a whole week without having to reach down my own pants and return my panties waistband to the waist area of my ample girth.

One.

Whole.

Week.

PS: Does anyone want a 1/2-eaten box of Cap’n Crunch? Cheap? It’s got CRUNCH BERRIES!!

Something very foolish on April Fools Day!

OK, so you know how I'm rockin' the classic nerd awesomeness that is D&D, right? Well, the only frustration that the King and I have had with our nerd-tivity is that our DM (Dungeon Master, for those of you with lives who sometimes feel the soft touch of a woman, etc.) often drops off the face of the earth for a day or more, leaving us behind wallowing in self-doubt and panic because "Hello? Did my Twin Strike smite the damned hobgoblin or NOT??? Should we send the fighter in for another attack even though he's on death's decorative holiday doormat or is the Ogre at last defeated? HELLO???" He explains it with some nonsense about having a job or a family or a life. Whatever, dude...

Faced with the helplessness of a DM that is AWOL WAY too often his Highness was struck by inspiration, and from the fertile soil of his mushy man brain came Most Excellent Adventure Time, or M.E.A.T.!

The way it works is this: he started an adventure, allowed me to set up a couple of adventurers and produce an introductory scenario. From there it's been a literary, improvisational free-for-all! He writes about 1/2 and I write the other (slightly less funny, but every bit as epic) half. Generally I'm in charge of making the decisions for our 2 heroes and he for all the badguys, soldiers, monsters and other assorted danger-thingies; everything else we try to share equitably. It's fun, and I've been told it's also pretty funny.

So I figured why shouldn't you guys enjoy it too?

Starting this week I'll be posting a chapter a week, probably on Wednesdays. This way I get blogging credit for all the crazy boondoggles that suck up the time I really should be using here. (Femtastic = super-genius!) And with this I present to you, both here and over at M.E.A.T., our epilogue:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You will find this similar to D&D only more excellent and with shorter delay times between actions. {for you readers there will be NO delay times between actions. You're welcome} One writer is controlling a pair of adventurers. Please designate their names, genders, and races.

Adventurer #1: Steve! (exclamation point is included please), male half-elf (with 1/4 irish)

Adventurer #2: Gladiola Dangersword the 2nd, female dragonborne

Rulings and other direction from the M.E.A.T. Master will always be red, italic and underlined. Responses and other comments from Femtastic are blue and italic.

Currently they are both level zero. They have no skills. They are nothing. They have no items. There is nothing special about them. (there is always something special about Steve!.) No, there is nothing special about Steve!.

Steve! and Gladiola awaken to find themselves in a very dark room. Neither can see much farther than the hand in front of their face. What would you like to do?

CONTINUED FRIDAY ON M.E.A.T. IN CHAPTER ONE

Why I hate Mondays...

(which I’m writing because I didn’t do ANYTHING on my spring break because I’m a grown-up and I have a stupid job and no kids and whatever, I super hate Mondays.)

I know the idea of hating Mondays is not new. Heck, there are scores and scores of lame bumper stickers and screen savers dedicated just to this idea. But I, too, happen to hate Mondays and here, because I know you’re super-duper with parmesan cheese and garlic crunchy crispy things on top DYING to know, are my reasons:

1. I cannot go to sleep at a reasonable time on Sunday nights. (which I should actually be calling “Monday morning” because even if I went to bed on TIME I’d be crashing at 1am. Because that’s how I roll) There’s this cascading bad time management thing that happens to me on weekends: I stay up pretty dang late (let’s say 2am?) on Fridays. So then I sleep in some on Saturdays (I’d say when, but my friends with kids would mail me fish heads and horse turds, so I’m sticking with “some”), which then means I stay up even LATER on Saturdays (probably safe to assume a 3am bed arrival), thereby leading to sleeping in even more on Sunday (“What time does the NASCAR race start tomorrow? OK, I’ll get up 20 min. before that…”) and so by the time Sunday night (Monday morning) rolls around I’m AWAKE. If I hit the sack by 1:30am I’m so impressed with myself I promise actual breakfast foods for the next day. I rarely get to see actual breakfast foods on Monday morning. What I DO get to see is me all sleepy and tired and not awake. All Monday.

2. My Dungeon Master always seems super-busy at his workplace on Mondays, and so my D&D addiction gets little to no satisfaction. Add to that the fact that the King doesn’t work on Mondays (seriously, don’t get me started on his killer 4/10s work schedule! I’ll swear! And curse! There will be photographs of rude hand gestures! Ugly, I say!) and so I have NOBODY to satisfy my nerd addiction! I sit here, refreshing and re-refreshing (freshing and refreshing?) my google docs and nothing is ever there. I am alone in a sea of nerd sorrow, only my Star Wars lunchbox and my “Mind Flayers do it with imagination!” t-shirt to console me.

3. My boss comes in and does work over the weekend. I understand she feels like there’s too much to do otherwise, and I count my lucky stars (heck, I count the lucky ones and the slightly less lucky ones, and even the plain old, run-of-the-mill stars and even black holes and stuff) that she never asks me to come in to help her get stuff done. HOWEVER it means that most Mondays I come in to this bloody streak of emails from her, sent the day before, asking me to do stuff. Lots of stuff. In other words, by the time I walk into the office at 7:55am on a Monday morning I’m already hideously behind in my work. Already. (and rumor has it you shouldn’t flip your boss the bird. At least not first thing Monday morning. You do that so soon you got nowhere to go later in the week but two-finger eye-jabs and tire slashing!)

4. Saturday is never so far away as on a Monday morning.

…the good news? As of right now it’s almost Tuesday. (which is a whole day closer to Saturday with the sleeping in and the naps and the glorious “doing whatever I want to do” time! Huzzah!)

Be Vewy Kwiet, I'm Hunting Wagons...

So the car hunt continues apace. Last week I talked to people who have piles of money and they have agreed that I can have a bit of a section of a part of a chunk of one of their many, many, many piles of cash, but I have to give it back to them. And in fact I have to start giving it back to them right away, AND they get extra. Whatever. But at least that means that I can now get to shopping with gusto.

I’ve already done some narrowing down the field. I took some test drives last weekend just to figure out what would and wouldn’t make me happy. I took my test drives in cars at dealerships, even though I know I can’t afford dealership prices, because dealerships are very used to test drives. And you don’t have to call ahead and make an appointment to drive a dealership car. But an added bonus benefit? Car salesmen like to flirt.

So I’ve looked at it this way: I check out the cars and, while I’m there, I polish the flirting. I’ll know that I’ve perfected the art when one of them will actually sell me a car for the amount of money that I actually have. (Ka-ching!)

I know two things about what I’m wanting (and now I’m back to talking about cars. And you’re a dirty, dirty girl. You know who you are.): stick shift and station wagon. The station wagon is for continued independence, in that I don’t have to borrow someone else’s car if I need to schlep big stuff. Or go to Costco.

The stick shift is because I love to really DRIVE. Not just steer and brake, but actually be engaged in all parts of motoring around. Call me a snob, because in this I SO AM, but I find driving an automatic to be less driving and more riding, now with extra steering. Both of the cars that I test drove last weekend were 5-speeds, and it was on that day that I realized I’d really, REALLY missed driving a manual transmission.

Now I’ll leave so that you can make all those naughty “stick shift” jokes I know you’ve been stifling. Dirty Girl.

When correctly viewed, everything is lewd.

I miss sex.

(Oops, forgot this part: WARNING! The following blog post could be a little FRANK for some folks. If talk of sex and sex-like-thing-deals makes you squeamish please ABORT! AVERT YOUR EYES! Look AWAY!
AWAY!)

Now, where was I? Oh, right.

I miss sex.

Please to understand first and foremost that my sex experiences are both tiny and remote. Like if you wanted to look at my sex life it would be as standing on the moon and saying “Hey, I can see my house from here!” I’ve only ever had the one partner and that ended (counting. Re-counting, because that CAN’T be right. Shaking head sadly…) 12 years ago last October. I have not had sex in over a dozen years.

I HAVE NOT HAD ANY SEX, NOR KISSING, NOR HEAVY PETTING NOR NOTHING IN OVER 12 YEARS.

Now to my credit most of the time I don’t even think about it. Months can go by without me even thinking a truly dirty thought. I scoff, SCOFF, at those tv sitcoms where people lament the WHOLE 3 MONTHS since the last time they “got some” and say to them that they are pussuahhh*. This is the normal me and my normal thoughts (or lack of same) about “doin’ it.”

But every couple of years I’ll hit a change in season, normally spring or fall, and suddenly it’s all I can danged well think about. Everything is dirty, there’s innuendo (look at that, right there – does that word look dirty to anybody else? No? Just me? I rest my case!) behind every sentence, I blush at the drop of a hat… Ugh. That’s been this spring for me so far.

This time around my stupid, hot and bothered psyche has a new trick: last night I had a sex dream, but not about me. My sex dream was about OTHER people having sex. Apparently my mind has such a hard time imagining me having sex it can’t even picture it in my dreams anymore. Instead my dreams feature my FRIENDS having sex. Smack dab in the middle of a dream that was already turbo-bizarre and vivid, thanks to some kind of vicious food-induced gas, I walk into my friends’ house and there they were in flagrante delicto! And did I step out? Oh no, for I had very not-important things to discuss, so I just stood there, chatting up friend one while friend two stayed on-task. (see, even “on task” sounds dirty to me.)

Also awesome was the fact that I didn’t remember this detail right away when I woke up. No, my evil, EVIL brain held that little detail until I was standing, only half-awake, in the shower. And then suddenly I’m standing there with a brain full of friend-nooky! Gah! Gah!

Needless to say I was very awake then.

I’m very much hoping that this wave of dirty-brain will pass soon. Otherwise I’m going to have to just stop dreaming for fear of what might pop up next. (and that sounds dirty too.)

*pussuahhh: my version of "pussy", akin to the "beotch"ing of "bitch" to make it more usable in common company. Should be pronounced like this: PUS-OOOO-AAAAAAH. Really stretch out the "aaaah" part. Tell your friends.

At First Site

It’s finally happened. I’ve fallen in love.

And it’s so true what they say: it happens when you least expect it! I mean, I just went out for a lark, to have a little fun… I never expected to make this kind of connection! It’s also funny because I totally thought I knew exactly what I was looking for and yet I couldn’t have been farther from what I’ve found. I thought I wanted dependable, simple, modest, safe… But what got me totally hot was flashy! Dramatic! Fast!

And WAY out of my price range! Stupid Mazda Protégé station wagon…

I went out on Sunday to test drive some cars at the lots just to narrow down the field a little, and I thought I totally knew what my first pick was. But that was before I met Suave Salesman Guy and his Mazda Protégé whore Wagon! Sigh. It’s twice what I want to pay for a car but MAN is it a nice ride! I went into the day very sensible: “I can afford this much and I need only these things and I don’t care about bells OR whistles! They cannot sway me! I am strong!” By the end of the day I’m saying things like “What kind of a philostine drives around with a cool ass? Absurd!” or “I can’t believe that I’ve been manually controlling my cruise lo these many years. Like I’m some sort of CAVEMAN!”

The Mazda salesman guy figured out somewhere along the way that my father and I (yes, I took my Dad, and here’s why: he used to be a racecar driver. He LOVES cars. He loves everything about all cars. And so while I’d be good at asking the right questions and checking the acceleration and the brakes and all in the car, he’s going to PUT IT THROUGH IT’S PACES, MY FRIEND.) are car enthusiasts. Armed with this knowledge he took us to meet his car girlfriend, the Mazda 3, speed version. I’m pretty sure he would have French kissed this car if he could have figured out where it’s tongue is. And frankly by the time we were done test-driving it I wanted to feel up its under-carriage a little myself. It’s a real trip to drive a car that is FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAST. Sigh.

None of this changes the fact that I don’t want to borrow a big pile of money from someone. From ANYONE. My big goal the last almost 2 years has been all about getting completely OUT of debt. I accept that I’ll have to get some kind of loan for a replacement set of wheels, but despite what Mr. Suave Salesman Guy would have you believe, it is NOT the same thing to buy a ten year old car for $5000 as to buy a 5 year old car for $9000 as to buy a BRAND NEW CAR (“where you put all the miles on it yourself!”) for $25000.

Tomorrow I go to visit the people in the banks with the boxes of money and see how much of this money they’d be willing to let me hold on to for the next few years. And I need to be strong and not think of that trampy Mazda while I’m negotiating.

My Body, My Self.

I’m tired. All the time I’m tired. Tired at work, tired at home, tired in the in-between times… Today I was driving out to another work location and I dozed off sitting at a red light. (luckily the lovely lady in the car behind me was kind and generous enough to lay on her horn ala NY Times Square to rouse me from my reverie.)

Just now, as I was trying to watch a taped show and write a blog post I fell asleep three or four times. And I hate that because I have to keep rewinding the VCR over and over to watch the same scenes. And also I fell asleep a little bit on the keyboard one time and so my blog post originally started out 333333333333…33333333333333333333.333333333333333333333333333333333333…… 3333333333333333333.333333333333333333333333333.33333333333333.

Now I know my poor friend the Queen would look at the time this post was published and go “oh gosh, why would you be tired at 11:20pm? Weird!” and would then remind me that she hasn’t slept all through the night in like a week because the princesses have been generously sharing some form of plague back and forth between themselves and just today were kind enough to pass it on to the King and then she would suggest that maybe, just maybe I should go to BED and sleep THERE.

But we know that’s crazy talk.

Also the late night thing doesn’t explain the falling asleep at the red light or the evening meeting on Monday or any of the other eleventy-three times I have been sleepy since… um Halloween.

So I’m going to the doctor. And I have theories three and they are:

1. I have a sinus infection and have since the Christmas cold
2. I have a vitamin D deficiency. I need more D. (or shoul I say “I nee more d”)
3. I’m actually part bear and should be hibernating every winter. (this is my favorite theory, although I have concerns about what will be necessary to prove this. I’m afraid there will be shots.)

I really have only one symptom to support the sinus infection theory, and that is green boogers. Since the Christmas cold there has been a steady supply of neon green bats in my nose-caves. I kept waiting for any additional symptoms and nothing’s showed up, but I’m going to the doctor anyway so I figure I’ll ask about the boogers either way.

As for the vitamin D deficiency, it’s apparently THE cool thing of which to be deficient these days. Just ask Oprah. She mentioned it on some little show she does (it must be nice to be leader of the free world) and now all the clinics are being bombarded with calls about people who think they’re dying from a lack of D. You normally get your D from the sun through your skin, but it’s been a little winterish the last few months and that tends to make one bundle up and the sun can’t penetrate the sweaters and coats and hence the deficiency. And I know you’re probably saying to yourself what I said to myself which was “well hell, I’ll just go to the store and get some Vitamin D. They sell the entire vitamin alphabet there, so…” then I found out that if you ARE deficient you have to take 50,000 mg per week. And the vitamins you can get from the store are 1,000 mg capsules. So to self-medicate I’d have to buy and consume an entire bottle of 50 pills each week. And I hate to take pills, so… I’d rather gargle a vase of marbles, ya know?

Where was I? Oh, right – goin’ to the doctor.

I can’t get in until next Friday because someone was crazy enough to let my doctor go on vacation (ridiculous) so I’ll have to try to stay awake for the next week or so. Also will try to resist stealing any pic-a-nic baskets.

The one where my pride doth goeth...

Sometimes work can be great. For instance, last week there was this meeting that I had with the security dept. This was a meeting all about negotiation, about getting what we need for our building w/out giving too much away. I’d talked to some of the security folks on the phone but this was the first time I’d met Mr. Second-In-Command guy, he in all his hotness.

So we’re in this meeting and I’m en FUEGO! I’m all “This is what we need!” and “You’re gonna have to get me the numbers before we can do that” and I’m strong and clever and witty and charming and (by the way) not even a LITTLE bit humble. And I’m also really aware of how Mr. Second-In-Command is really lookin’ at me. His hotness seems to be seeing my hotness. Look at me, totally bringing the hotness to the negotiating table!

I figure he’s sitting there thinking “who IS this woman? How have I never met her before? She’s so STRONG and CONFIDENT! She knows what she wants and she’s gonna get it, and woe be he who tries to stand in HER way!” He’s thinking “how can I get to know this girl more? How can I find out what makes this girl tick? Seriously, I’ve just never been so fascinated…”

All this attention is just spurring me on and by the end of the meeting I’m the TOAST of the security department. I’m wondering which conference room they’ll dedicate to the wonder and awesomeness that IS me. It’s been an entire week of utter crapstorm, with brief flurries of wanting to kill either everyone else or myself, so this meeting is JUST what I needed. Because here I am, getting what we need and making things happen and laying networking pipe and through it all? Hot Mr. Second-In-Command can’t stop staring RIGHT AT ME!

These are the thoughts tra-la-laing through my brain as my partner and I head out to the car. And she’s talking, saying things that are, I’m sure, very important although obviously not as important as the things I was just saying because Hello, did you SEE the hot guy staring at me? But still she’s talking, saying words and things. Things like “that went really well!” (YEAH it did, because I’m a mover and a shaker, baby!) and “It was neat to meet those security people finally” (especially the HOT Second-In-Command guy who, I’m sure you noticed, was FASCINATED by how awesome is me. You noticed that, right?) and “I did think it was kind of funny that nobody asked what happened to your face.”

…I’m sorry, what now?

MY FACE. The frightful, scary and scarry and totally un-not-noticeable full facial laceration right down my face. My face that none of them had ever seen before, so as far as they know I ALWAYS sport a great gashious evil mark down my face-parts. So all this time I’m basking in “I find this woman FASCINATING” when really he was probably thinking “this poor, disfigured girl. Maybe Oprah could help her? Maybe they could give her a make-over or build her a super-fancy house. I really should stop staring at her horrible scar…”

Yeah, sometimes work can be great. I’m crossing my fingers for next week.

An open letter to the coupled friends. from the almost desperate.

Many single people like myself, of a “certain age” or above, have coupled friends and these coupled friends want to see their single friends coupled. This is mostly a nice thought coming from a place of no malice, and most single people know this. Unfortunately this is the way it tends to go:

“Hey, you know how [husband] and I are trying to find a house to buy with a little granny-flat on the back for [friend] to live in? You remember [friend], he’s the drummer in [husband’s] band? He can’t stay where he’s living now and you know how hard it is to find work, and since he’s been out of rehab for like a whole month and a half we really want to help him out… anyway, he’s single and you’re single, so I was thinking I should introduce you guys. I bet you’d love him!”

…Love him. Yeah, I’ll bet I would. Love him like a cavity search from a porcupine or explosive anal leakage. That kind of special love. (also a flail massage or puss soup.)

Don’t get me wrong, I know that from the coupled friend’s perspective this is coming from a place of love or like or at least non-hate, and also there’s the conservation of energy because “hey, if I could hook up one of my single friends with another of my single friends and YAHTZEE! I’d have TWO friends coupled AT ONCE!” Who can argue with such economy of effort? We ARE in a recession here, people – the watch word of the day IS conservation!

Only here’s the thing I will say to you, oh coupled people out there with single friends just flaunting their singleness: though to you it makes perfect sense, here’s what you’re REALLY saying to you single friend:

“Hey, you know how [husband] and I have that totally flaky/damaged/lost/forlorn or possibly radioactive friend who can’t keep his sh*t together enough to even pay rent, because he’s got a super-dependable career like DRUMMER IN A BAND, not to mention the drug problems and the no money? He’s the guy that made us that wind chime from used soda cans and those kidney stones he passed last Thanksgiving, right? Right. Well anyway, I was just thinking that he’s single, and YOU’RE single, and you’ve been single long enough that you might be just desperate enough to go out with even him! Where should I mail the wedding gifts?”

So a quick note for the coupled people out there: single does not automatically mean desperate. Also? A CRAPPY relationship is actually NOT better than no relationship at all. (And nobody is that desperate.)

Beauty Secrets from Femtastic and Ninja cat

Ya know, you really can’t expect someone to take note of you if you’re not making the most of your look, right? I mean I don’t like to be vain, but I’m trying a few new things with my look to stand out from the crowd. I’m gonna dye over my grey strands, I’m putting real thought into my wardrobe, I’ve added a jagged, incredibly violent looking scar from my right eye down across my nose… you know, little things.

Because dudes – they dig scars, right?

Yeah, with much help from my girl kitty (shout-out to Ms Lulu of the razor-sharp claws and the ninja moves) I’m sporting a little something I like to call “full facial laceration.” The “how” isn’t even that good of a story. I’m all “c’mere kitty” and she’s all “ouch, you’re holding me wrong!” and I’m all “dude, stop with the squirming!” and she’s all “what if I… gotta get… how about if I… flip… flipping around…” and then she did this cool, Cirque-du-Kitteh mid-grab flip-thing right around that would have been awesome if she hadn’t had all the claws extended and if some of those extended claws hadn’t streaked right across my face. My soft, squishy, easily-gashed face. Right on the front of my head.

That made it less awesome. And more “Holy crap, my face!!”

So then I’m sitting there holding my face back on w/ my hand and I’m aware of two things: 1) wow, this SUPER hurts!, 2) my hand is filling up with… something. The something was a liquid something, so next I’m running through all of the things that will be different now that I have just the one eye. (Bike might be a little tricky w/out depth of field. Spend ½ as much on eye-shadow. Cool eye patch! Etc.) Once the “something” filled up my hand and started running down on the cat she was all “Eww, eye juice! I’m outta here!”

This is when Dad noticed the face-clutching and asked, in that mellow Dad-tone, “hey, what happened?” And that’s when I said “Cat… got me… in the face…” and I took down my hand and tried to gauge the level of damage based on how horrific his expression was.

The good news is that the stuff filling my hand was tears. (because when you hurt your nose? SMARTIES! Think of how much your eyes water when you pluck a nose hair or pop a nose pimple. Now multiply that by jillions and jillions, and then double that, and then roll a 20-sided die and multiply your previous number by whatever you rolled on that 20-sided die (thereby allowing for your individual threshold for pain) and that’s how much it hurt. Hence the tears.)

(Important clarification: what I’m trying to say here is that I generally don’t cry. That I’m super-macho and stoic and you could show me a picture of bombs being dropped on a house full of orphans and nice little old ladies who just baked double-chocolate-chip brownies JUST FOR ME and I wouldn’t even burble a little bit. But this seriously hurt, yo? Yo.)

(Important additional clarification: now if the picture of the building being bombed contained even one critter? A bear or a puppy or a mouse or even those creepy looking little naked mole things from the zoo or even one little ladybug? Then I would cry. I would cry big, overflowing, splashing down the face tears. Because of the very important Femtastic rule: no critters are ever hurt. Ever.)

…now where was I? Oh, right - hand was full of manly, searing, pain-induced macho and stoic tears of pain, but contained NO BLOOD. OK, well not NO blood, but only a little trace amount of blood. Tears = yes, but blood = mostly no. WHEW! But the expression on the face of Dad was still pretty… startled. So I figured I’d go check the damage.

(Gorgeous, right?)

So now I get to wander around work with people either doing the “it’s HEEEDEOUS!!” face (ala Peter Lorre) or trying to pretend they don’t see my face while looking right at me, which tends to make them look off to the left side of my head. Like my talking to them is actually coming out in “talk bubbles” that they have to read to respond to. “bloop, bloop, bloop: you’re right, it IS cold today, random co-worker person! Say, do you see anything funny on my face?” At some point today when someone finally asks if my cat scratched me I’m going to respond with “no, why?” and then feel my face and go into full-on freak out mode. “Oh my god, what happened to my face? Oh god! The leprosy! It’s back! Don’t look at me, don’t touch me – UNCLEEEEEEN!!!!!” And then run away.

It’s going to be Cirque-du-Ninja-cat awesome.

Little Deuce Crap!

Remember how I was all “dude, I’m totally gonna get all knocked up (which is super-spendy) or become a world traveler (which is also spendy) and just generally rock my world!” and then I made that thumb-pinky hand-shakey thing like I’m a surfer dude? Remember that? And remember how you guys were all thinking “Wow, I so would not tempt fate like that if I were you.” (even though you were too cool to say anything) And how I was all “Naw, it’s cool. I have some extra scratch each month so this will be cool…” And then how you guys just kind of shook your head and sat back to wait for the cosmic spanking that I so richly deserved?

Well, consider me spanked.

It was probably no more than 2 weeks after my bold, manly post that my car said “ummm, die.” And then it died. (actually it was way more dramatic than that. First it did this thing where it wouldn’t go up to the next gear, and then when I went to turn off the radio to see what sounds the engine was making it made a pretty BIG sound! And then there was the terrible, terrible grinding sound it started making in the lowest gear. And in the third gear it would just let go periodically and do that “RrrrrrrrreeeeEEEEEEEE!!!!” sound when the engine just revved maniacally… “died” is much better.)

Here’s what you need to know from my car experience: transmissions are good. They’re important, and really every car should have one. One that works, and shifts the gears. All the gears.

Now that my car has only the “non-working, and probably coming apart each time I try to use it” kind of transmission, and is also 13-14 years old, and ALSO only cost me about $3000 to buy it when I bought it 8 or so years ago, it’s time to move on to a new (used) car.

So now lookit me: I’m Joe “Lookin’ for a car!” Guy!

Here’s what I’m shopping for:

• Not more than a decade old
• Something with sufficient space, preferably a wagon
• Reasonable cost for parts (because no matter what I’ll have mechanic bills. It’s how I roll)
• NOT an SUV
• More than 2 doors. We’d accept 4, 5… but not 2.
• Shiny.
• Goes “boop boo-BEEP!” when I walk away from it. (I admit I’ve been jonsing for a while to get a car that says bye-bye when you walk away. Love the bonding.)
• Little to no blood stains visable on any of the carpeting.
• That it have some carpeting.
• That a Carfax report on this used car doesn’t include the words “flood”, “inferno” or “possessed by Satan”
• Has never been filled with cigarette smoke. Or Pina colada air freshener. (shudder)
• Not white. (its gonna look filthy enough without that.)

Also I don’t know if you guys have heard about this, but apparently the economy is not so good? Yeah. Also people have decided that loaning money is the first step toward wide-spread communism. So there’s that. And maybe I’m a big old financial slacker, but as it turns out I don’t actually HAVE $7000 in any of my jeans pockets. Even the skinny pair I haven’t been able to put on for 4 years. No wads of any cash. (sub-text here: anybody want to mail me $7000 I’ll TOTALLY give up my secret identity! And a key to my house and daily foot washing and the first born of those kids I previously thought I’d try to have!)

I’m gonna go on some test drives of cars tomorrow. Not that I’m ready to buy. But I’m definitely ready to WANT to buy. And that’s really the first step. (or possibly accepting that I have a problem. Which I totally, totally do.)

Super-Dork gets Knolledge!

I'm sure I've covered this at least a little bit, but I don't like math. Math is hard, and math makes me sad and makes my brain hurt.

Right now there is all of this commotion over the economy and how it's bad. Really bad. "Please kill me" bad. In a sh*tstorm of completely and utter badness, now with more "holy crap, this is just so incredibly bad!!" I understand the news (ok, not so much the "news" as Jon Stewart. But still, it's kind of like the news. and also shut up.) enough to get that things are bad, and that the badness involves credit and banks and such things. But in all honesty (and I can be honest with you guys -- if you were going to judge me here the ship would have MORE than sailed already, so...) I haven't really understood it all.

Like, for instance, I keep thinking to myself "so I know that the U.S. no longer has money, and neither does big chunks of Europe, or Canada, or definitely not Iceland. But then where IS all the money that everybody used to had? Did someone burgle us? Couldn't we just go to the land of the burglers and get our stuff back? And while we're there couldn't we punch them super-hard in the shoulder? Anyone? Anyone?"

Oh, and lest you feel the need to point it out, I already know that to ask these questions out loud would have been the equivalent of painting "massive dork!" on my forehead. So instead I just published it. On the world wide web. Where folks can't judge me. (Hmmm, got a smudge on my cape...)

Today someone at work sent me the video below. And NOW. I. GET. IT! This video is the way that everyone should be explaining it! This video is just simple enough for me, but just clever and pithy enough for people who already get it to still be entertained!

Please to enjoy this video and finally understand how the hell we got where we are. When you're done I'm organizing a trip to go visit all the Mortgage Lenders who arranged for the sub-prime loans. So we can punch them super hard in the shoulder head face sexy good-time parts.


The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

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!