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!

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!

I love a man in uniform

For whatever reason there are just a ton of commercials for Emelody on TV right now. Oh, how I hate them. I hate when they say “my friend told me about the caliber of guys she was meeting on there.” Because then I think about the caliber of guys I’M meeting on there, and either this town is full of only crap single guys or I’m just not worthy of high caliber men.

Funny thing is that neither of these thoughts brings me comfort.

I’m not moving to another town. And I’m about as good as I’m gonna get. (not really, but as far as THEY know I am. They don’t know that I’m currently the size of a panzer tank or that I’ve not successfully finished doing my dishes this year or that when left to my own devices I’m pretty much totally unable to resist eating 3-4 bowls of Cap’n Crunch Even after the crunchy crunch bits have poked the crap out of my poor mouth. I’m pretty darn sure that there’s no way they can no that. Probably.)

I read this article on the Emelody site about “What not to say on your profile and it boiled down to 1) be able to spell stuff, 2) don’t tell him about the Cap’n Crunch thing, 3) Love everything, 4) pretend you are alone and aimless and 5) don’t be THAT GUY. None of these help me.

I read another article that was the 5 biggest turn-offs for dudes, and THEY were 1) flakiness, 2) poor communication, 3) Not Playing Fair, 4) Trying to Change Him and 5) Ultimatums. In other words,

But here’s the deal: none of these articles help me, because what I’m not getting is matches. MAAAATCHEEES. I need the magic love-making interweb monkeys at Emelody to bring me guys that I can try not to turn off or who can read my profile and be horrified or WHAT-THE-HELL-EVER. See, Emelody asks all these questions and they use that to pick your matches and when they finish making your profile-thing they give you this report that’s supposed to describe you and my report was (this still makes me vomit in my mouth a little) TOTALLY DEAD ON.

And I get no matches. The me that they have figured out is unmatchable.

Fmeh.

(I hear a box of Cap’n Crunch, with fabulous berries of crunch mixed in, calling my name. Because the Cap’n and me? Oh, that’s a match baby.)

Silly Girl Ranged Attack with +4 Charisma Modifier

A couple of weeks ago I broke one of my cardinal rules of shoe buying and purchased some silly girl shoes. They have all the components of silly girl shoes: They’re oh so pretty, they have a stupidly high heel and no method of attaching themselves firmly to my feet. All looks and no sense = silly girl shoes.

Normally I shun the silly girl shoes because while they’re not comfortable, they are super-expensive. But these were on SALE. REALLY EXCELLENT AND CHEAP SALE. And also? They’re COMFORTABLE. ACTUAL AND FOR TRUE COMFORTABLE TO WEAR. And because of these loopholes I bought these silly, silly girl shoes, big heel and all.

And then today they tried to kill me.

This is the third, only slightly less-significant reason for not buying silly girl shoes: they will, by their very nature, try to break your ankle or, even better, your neck. They do this by being ever so very tall and tippy. Much taller and tippier than things that one straps to their feet should ever be. And these are even tippierer because they don’t strap to the feet at all. They just sit under the feet, not holding on to anything and, in fact, constantly threatening to abandon the feet entirely if they disagree with the feet’s planned route. I’ve had these particular silly girl shoes since right after Christmas and I wore them to a few things, including a couple of days of work, without incident.

But then TODAY? Oh, today it was ON!

Walking down the hallway on my tall, tippy, silly girl shoes I went around a corner and spontaneously decided to try walking on the SIDE of the shoes. And of my feet. Which, of course, required me to bend my ankle at a 90° angle. To the left. Which is a bend my ankles don’t really do. Oh, and also it made a super-dainty “crack-pop!” noise, which I’m sure is a fine noise for ankles to make. They’re very “crack-poppy” joints.

Long-story-short I’m not hobbled and will live to walk again, and I didn’t even throw away the silly girl shoes. But this is just one of the silly girl things I really just don’t do, don’t get, don’t fathom.

Like who are these women who change their purse to match their shoes and outfits? Who DOES this? It’s all I can do to make sure that I’ve got everything I need in the one purse I carry, and I can’t imagine moving things from purse to purse every day. This would make me very, very crazy. (not to mention my shoes rarely match my outfits anyway. The phrase “close enough” is a dear, dear friend of mine when it comes to dressing. Especially the putting on of shoes.)

And also I am utterly baffled by the invention of the clutch purse. This strapless purse is, to me, simply the most efficient way for someone to lose all things important to them in one forgetful moment. And the same people who said “you know what would be awesome? A little, put-downable purse with no strap!” are the same geniuses who said “women don’t need pockets. That’s why we invented purses…”

Also I don’t wear make-up. I gave it up for two reasons: First, I hate the feel of the stuff on my face. No matter what I put where, that’s where I’ll suddenly develop an un-scratchable itch. Second, every minute that I spend putting on make-up in the morning is time I could be sleeping. And sleep vs. make-up? NO CONTEST. (Keeping in mind that for me sleep vs. just about anything is no contest. Sleep vs. double-fudge brownie served on a bed of money stacked on the naked body of Damien Lewis is still NO CONTEST.)

All this to say I guess I’m not much of a girl in the grand scheme of things. But as it turns out I’m a pretty dang good nerd! (As I write this a hobgoblin has fallen under the fierce sting of my longbow!)

Next: all the reasons that my awesome nerd prowess should find me an awesome nerd to love…

You know what? I think maybe we really can!

I don't care who wrote the words. All I know is that today's inaugural speech was the first time in my life that a politician inspired me. Here are the lines that I loved best from today's start of a new day:

each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.

On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.

Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.

Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions - who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short.

What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them - that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply.

do our business in the light of day

As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.

know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more.

They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please.

For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness.

To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society’s ills on the West - know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy.

a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task. This is the price and the promise of citizenship.

...proud again to be a citizen - thanks, chief.

Super-uncomfortable coffee date in 3, 2, 1....

Mr. Carl wants to have coco.

And in all honesty, I don’t want to. Not that I have anything against coco, mind you! I’m a big coco enthusiast! Been drinkin’ it my whole life! Yay for coco! But I have zero interest in meeting Mr. Carl. I mean think about how awkward it is to try to write him a decent email… Now extrapolate that into 45 min. of time sitting across a table, trying to make the art of blowing on my coco seem meaningful and interesting. And secretly hoping that some hunk of vintage space garbage is whizzing through the atmosphere headed straight for the coffee shop to put me mercifully out of my misery.

Good times.

BLEAH. I was really hoping we’d be able to string along these uncomfortable emails for several more weeks before I had to face this. (and that during that time Fernando would become disillusioned with the floozy who currently has his attentions and would go back to his foolishly closed matches and see my snazzy new photo and realize that I am EXACTLY what his fiery latin heart has been searching for all along. Or that I’ll win the lottery and find some pretty trophy boyfriend.)

(note to self: buy lottery ticket.)

I’m tempted to ask for opinions from you, my trusty readership, but since I fell off the blogging wagon for pretty much the entire month of December I think my actual readership right now consists of 3 web-crawling robots, a quadriplegic in British Columbia who’s computer is stuck here and won’t respond to his frantic eye jiggling trying to get back to google and The Queen. And I think if I don’t go meet Mr. Carl she’ll stop reading, and then it will just be me and jiggly eye guy.

So instead of asking if I should meet Mr. Carl, maybe I could ask “any suggestions for making this a less hellish experience?” Or maybe “anyone out there want to wear my handy-dandy Femtastic full-face mask and go in my place?” (Note: Handy-Dandy Femtastic full-face mask will be available for purchase in time for Christmas of 2009. If ever…)

Strategy.

I’ve got a new strategy. I’m going to learn the ways of the lonely, lonely nerd, and then I’m going to travel to where they congregate (someplace like a gaming store or… well pretty much a gaming store) and I’m going to conquer them and become their queen.

Here’s the deal: all my dude friends from childhood, who are very cool now, and who have wives, HOT wives, and kids and actual lives and everything? Well, they all started out as hard-core, 20-sided dice rolling, Car-Wars playing, Star Trek-quoting nerds. And thus began my unavoidable love of the nerd. And even though they’ve left many of their nerd ways behind, they’re still total nerds at heart.

These soft, nerdy inner-core has shown itself recently when they decided to do an email version of D&D. Yes, THAT D&D. Dungeons, and also while they’re at it, Dragons. And in the ULTIMATE nerd compliment, they’ve asked me to adventure with them! And while many a cool and/or popular girl would be unable to prevent themselves from laughing out-loud, I find it to be a great honor and I ALSO am totally jazzed about doing it!

I see it this way: it incorporates many of my favorite things (writing, games, an excuse to wear a cloak and possibly carry a sword, legitimate use of the word “forsooth”) and will mostly be done in the secret inner-sanctum of my home! Oh sure, you guys know about it. But you’ll tell no one. I know you’ll keep my secret. (heck, if you’re gonna tell any of my secrets I’d start with the one about the sex tape!)

Lest you think I’ll wake up tomorrow, put on my skinny jeans (god do I love these jeans – I’ll tell you about them some other time) and fancy shoes and come to my senses I will tell you that I’ve already committed to the quest: I bought a manual. I went into a game store, which was rich with nerdy atmosphere, and asked for a D&D Players Handbook, and was informed that there are many editions (I asked for the shiniest one) and gave him many duccets and left, my head held high! (hidden under the VERY LARGE brim of a floppy hat, of course, but still mostly high…)

I know what you’re thinking: “Oh yeah, when I think of D&D players I think “total chick magnet”. You’re TOTALLY gonna attract someone this way!”

That’s just what I was thinkin’ too.

So I guess now I create my characters (I’m waffling between half-elf narcoleptic hooker or dragonborn accountant with a fear of wool and words that end in “-ogy”) and then we begin our exciting questy quest of adventure and fun! (PS: I’m so going to die a virgin. Even though I’ve had sex.)

Career Planning on a Monday is a BAD idea...

So I think I know what I want to be when I grow up. That would be my “good news.” The “bad news” is that it’s a super-not-easy goal and something I’d have to try to do while having my day job and there’s no guarantee of success and even if I DO succeed at being this thing that I want to be I might still have to keep my day job and did I mention that the thing I want to do is NOT my current day job? Yeah. Well.

I’d really enjoy to be a writer. A professional, published, “hey, would you like my card? My card that says “Writer” in the title?”-type writer. The reasons why I think I want to do this for a living is that it would be something I could do from the comfort of my own home (or heck, if I could finally get a laptop I could do it from my own bed! Or could you imagine writing a novel entirely from your happy little toilet? Awesome…), it would let me use my imagination (currently only utilized in this job when I have to send emails shaming people for their deplorable fridge etiquette) and its something I truly enjoy doing.

So if I’m gonna be this I gotta get going. Rumor has it that writing a book could take a little while. A few days, possibly some weeks, heck maybe even a month or three! (or, you know, the rest of my life…) I’d just LOVE to get started on this, my “change my whole life and give me an actual career and a reason to get up each morning and be the key to my entire happiness” novel (tentatively called “No Pressure, baby!”) but first I have to do the dishes. And clean the kitchen, and the living room, and there are still some Christmas decorations I haven’t figured out how to put away yet, and also the stack of old bills in the office that fill and entire 10-gallon plastic butterfly bin (at least until I file them, which I’m gonna do any day now) and I just started this very cool jigsaw puzzle of spices…

So here’s the plan. (shut up, I do too have a plan. Yes I do, and shut up.) I’m going to take January, and probably 1-2 weeks in February, and get my danged life in order. I’m going to CLEAN that kitchen, and PUT AWAY those Christmas decorations, and FILE those… SHRED those old bills and just generally get on top of the big pile of unmanaged crap that is currently my life! Once that’s done I’ll sit down and start putting word to paper. I make no promises to having a full plot at that point, as right now I have 3 cool ideas, a phrase and a title. How does this grab you: “Mr. Pennywhistle Kills you and your Pope: a love story/cook book”

No fair stealing it for your own “change your whole life and give you an actual career and a reason to get up each morning and be the key to your entire happiness” book.

For those of you who know that I am a dedicated reader of such blogs as Dooce.com and Faster Than Kudzu, and who think that I’m totally copying them and expecting my life to be as killer as theirs are just because I write a book I have one word: TOTALLY. (and I DO SO have a PLAN – SHUUUUUUUT UUUUUUUUUP!!!!!!)

(and I totally meant to write to Mr. Carl this weekend, but I partied at my Dad’s b-day bash until 4:30am on Saturday and then there was the ever-important ‘sleeping in’ on Sunday, followed by some hardcore sitting on the couch thinking that I should really get up and clean something. So who had the time to write?)

Find me a Dude just like the Dude that married dear old Mom!

Today is my Dad’s birthday. He’s something like 68 years old I think? He’s at that point where he’s older than “middle aged” (unless he has plans to live to be 140 which he has not shared with me) but not yet up to “old”. My grandmother who lived to be 96? SHE was old. My grandfather who hit 100 before mortal-coil-shuffling? HE was OLD! But my Dad isn’t there yet. Plus he’s also super-awesome, and that sheds years so…

Anyway, you know how I’m super-single? The singlest person ever? Queen of the singles? Well, I’m also a daddy’s girl which I know comes as a HUGE surprise. (I’m also a mommy’s girl. It’s the problem one has when their parents are equally amazing. But I digress. And you say “Durrrr!!!!”…) So when I meet dudes one of the eventual parts of the process is when I compare them to the best dudes I know, one of which is my Dad. Most dudes fall REALLY SHORT of the mark. There are many things that I appreciate in my Dad and would want to see in any potential partners, and here are the top 10:

1. He’s always happy to see or hear from me. Always. Every. Single. Time. I could talk to Dad on the phone for 20 minutes, hang up and call him right back with something forgotten and he’s just as happy to hear my voice the second time.
2. My Dad could no sooner be “shy” than he could be a female, republican or reptilian.
3. The guy totally understands how most things work. And if he doesn’t get it now let him mess with it for a while – he’ll get it eventually
4. He whistles.
5. Next to my father your pet dog is about as loyal as your pet fish.
6. My dad doesn’t have pet fish. (I’m pretty sure fish are the pet equivalent of performance art.)
7. he likes musicals while simultaneously being not gay. Not that there’s anything wrong with being gay.
8. he’s not gay. (seriously, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with being gay, but I’ll confess I find that a turn-off in men. It’s something I’m working on.)
9. He has no problem with my being a pushy, kick-ass, aggressive chick. In fact, I’m pretty sure he takes credit for all of that.
10. He loves me. (coincidentally, I love him right back)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BEST DAD AND BEST HUSBAND TO MY MOM EVER! (And by the way, way to go Mom!!)

A good investment

So my friendly, polite, sensitive and maybe entirely too nice online boyfriend was not mad at me. In fact the whole point of his latest message to me was “hey, hadn’t heard in a while and wanted to see how your holidays went!” Also there was the subtext of “I’m oh so very nice and would never think to nag someone to answer the LAST damned message that I sent so quickly last time, thereby clearly indicating my interest in getting to know you, you selfish, insensitive BEEEE-OTCH!!!” (obviously.) And so, faced with not one but two nice little messages from the only guy who didn’t reject me 6 seconds after we were matched I did the only reasonable thing! I replied to him right away, and he replied to me, and now we’re madly in love and hoping for a June wedding. The end.

(are all the crazy people who clearly don’t understand my level of “broken” gone?)

No. No, of course not. I did what you already KNOW I did. I wrote him nothing. I didn’t even stop to consider writing him back at all. I closed the browser window and PROBABLY went out to the living room to watch a Bones rerun or something. Priorities. It’s all about priorities.

I am going to reply. As long as he’s still there, and still sending (instantaneous and dripping with inappropriate hope) messages I’ll reply. Eventually. But really it feels like a chore. Like my “to do” list says “dishes, find living room floor, write back to Mr. Carl, de-lint bellybutton, solve economic crisis…” Bleah.

I did update my profile picture, because I think that’s what has been repulsing the few matches that have instantly closed in the last few months. (Oh Fernando, where are you right now? Are you in the throws of fabulous grabby-touchies? Does she love you like I would have? (by which of course I mean with extra toys and such…) Do you ever think of me?... Oh Fernando!) I have convinced myself that I need a more “come hither” picture. And I actually have one! I found a picture an uncle took of me during the trip down to the fiery armpit of California last August! Now the actual look on my face is “take the picture already, and if you even THINK about dropping my beloved camera in the pool I’ll remove each of your internal organs one by one through your left ear.” But it could also be “come hither.” If you don’t know me very well. And also it’s sunny and I’m kind of smiling and neither of these things are true of most pictures I have of me!

I realized that I only have a few weeks left of this membership. I know it’s been SUPER worth the money spent, what with all the awesome contacts I made and all the exciting, stimulating matches and everything. But I think I’ve already decided that I’ll probably re-up, at least for a little longer. Right? Your thoughts?

(OK, so now I’m gonna go reply to Mr. Carl. Or possibly finish off a bag of Pirate’s Booty. It’s a toss-up really.)

Unlikely In Love: The Flashback episode.

So according to The Bloggess (who should know, because HELLO? She has the word “Blog” right in her NAME?) all bloggers are apparently supposed to do a recap of the past year on their blog. But she didn’t know until just now, and I didn’t know until I read it in her blog, and so here I am. Late again.

But the good news is that it gives me ONE MORE THING to blog about, which is awesome!

Also I was totally going to write a post about new years resolutions, as I have some (sort of. I guess more accurately I have some thoughts about the new year which could be called “resolutions” if it weren’t for the fact that I’m primarily “against” new years resolutions.) but that post has become stuck in my brain and won’t come out.

(shudder)

MY POINT is that I have bloggy things to craft and share with you guys (who, by the way, are definitely pissed at me for the lack of blogging, because my little stats report thingie was ALL KINDS of red numbers, which loosely translates as “they’re bailing on you! Fleeing the crappy, non-writing ship like rats who don’t read and who see cheese on that floating bit of wood!” And you have every reason and right to be pissed, and I am definitely groveling and e-pologizing for being SO LAME here in blogland. But I digress…) but some of them are being uncooperative. So for right now I’m going to fall back on classic television solutions to such lack of writing inspiration and share with you guys my “flashback show.” Instead of finding a cohesive plot which explains why I would be thinking about the previous year like this, I’ll just hypothesize about what possibly drew the throngs of readers to that particular post. (hopefully one of them will feature “butt” quite a lot!)

Do me a favor and as you go from old episode to old episode do that wavy-lines thing and make that “doodle-ee-doodle-ee-doodle” noise, ‘kay?

Unlikely In Love’s top 10 most looked at posts:
1. “Femtastic Gets New Glasses” – proof of just how popular antimetropia has become since I broke the news. I’m SO a trend setter!
2. “So Few Words, So Many Syllables” – features such super-handy phrases as “Stinkbutt”, “body parts identification” and “Princess in da house, yo!”
3. “Mouths and Irony and Aluminum Foilishness” – ummmmm, “turkey kielbasa, all spicy and good”?
4. “Femtastic Hates Getting Her New Glasses” – Antimetropia, people – it’s huge!
5. “And Away We Go!...” – there are many things that could be the draw for this, but if I’m being actually honest I’d say it’s probably this sentence: “Ew, I think you have e-cooties!!”
6. “Big Finish!” – AN-TI-MET-RO-PEE-AH, people!! The glasses saga is everything!
7. “This is Me, Testing a Blue Pen” – In this post I coined the phrase “penporium”. I suspect that most of the folks who have visited and re-visited this post are those desperate to take my clever word creation and make millions with it. It’s just that genius.
8. “All the good ones ARE married or gay.” – 50% married readers, 50% gay readers = 100% posty love.
9. “Shuffle, Ball, Step, Whizzz” – Is there anything better than pee humor? No. There is not.
10. “100 Things About Femtastic…” -- All of these hits are me. I keep forgetting what the heck I’ve already told you guys about me!

The one I forgot to title for like 3 days...

I think my imaginary online boyfriend-like-person might be mad at me.

You know how I didn’t write any blog posts for a really long time? And how it was because holidays are super-busy (but also super-awesome, which makes the super-busy part of it totally worth it, but still super-busy)? Well at the same time that I wasn’t writing to you guys I was also simultaneously not writing to Mr. Carl. At all.

Like he’s written me two lovely, albeit boring as watching fish evolve, emails and I’ve written him one response. (I do think, though, that I met the boring requirement. I seem to remember having fallen asleep while writing my reply at least once, so boring was my lame email reply.) It took me at least a week, and probably two, to write the first reply, and then when I finally did “send” it he replied back to me in something like a day. A DAY! Plus, in the reply he told me how he had to run because he was rushing off to the airport to catch a plane and I’m thinking “what in the hell are you doing writing me an email when you have a plane to catch? DID YOU NOT NOTICE THE BORING?!?!” Ugh. So even though I have many busy, busy holiday things I was doing on which I can blame my weeks of not replying to the second instantaneous response from Mr. Carl, it’s really because bleah, I don’t wanna.

But I will, because if I don’t you guys will be fed up with me and The Queen will take away my television!

So it was with that less-than-enthusiastic, but completely obligatory, wave of… something… that I faced eventually taking the 3-6 minutes it takes to craft boring and lame emails to reply to Mr. Carl. Except that TODAY I got an email in my personal email saying that I have a message from Mr. Carl waiting for me in my EMelody account. (which I can’t access from work, as they have blocked EMelody at work because they are apparently not paying me to find the man of my dreamy, dreamy dreams but whatever, I don’t love you either stupid job…) So I have to wait until I get home to see what he wrote.

But when I saw he wrote I had this response: “oh crap! My online non-boyfriend-person is probably mad at me and I’m gonna get in trouble!”

I’m gonna get in trouble. Even though he doesn’t have my last name or my contact info. And even though I’m secretly hoping that there’s some nice, boring single girl out there looking for some boring boy just like Mr. Carl to settle down and like a whole lot, who will relieve me from my obligation to keep sending and receiving boring emails from Mr. Carl. It’s like my EMelody pen pal just assigned me homework!

So I’ll check when I get home. He’s probably just sending the classic “hello? Anyone out there?” email, and I’ll feel like a doofus and have to hide the doofusness in my reply.

My boring, boring, SO BORING reply.