misc.

October 27, 2009 at 11:27 am | In daily ramblings | 5 Comments

I don’t have a lot of time right now for leisurely blogging. So here are a few things:

  • I have a virus. Not me personally, my computer, and it is a dirty dirty bastard of a virus. This happens to me about once a year and I don’t know why, because my internet usage (though heavy) is pretty normal and I don’t download freaky things. It used to be that when I got a virus I would get scared and hide and call my brother. But times have changed. I’m older and wiser. I want to get rid of my own dirty virus. So I’ve been trying every trick I know for the past few days and I’m still working on it. Have I mentioned this virus is filthy dirty? And not even because it gives me perpetual pop-ups from porno.com. Because it’s sneaky and sleazy and has a greasy mustache that it twirls while it cackles, actually I’m now describing the guy down in his dirty dark basement who devised this virus. I hope you enjoy your eternity in hell, dirty virus writing guy.
  • I’ve had a headache for a couple days which means I’ve been snacking on Excedrin, my favorite low-calorie treat, which means that I couldn’t fall asleep last night because of the Wait-how-many-milligrams-of-caffeine-have-I-consumed-today? factor. But really it’s great because it gave me a lot of time to think about the fact that I couldn’t fall asleep, and what I would wear to work the next day, and the fact that I was cold, and that I had an itch on my back, and things like that.
  • Only two more episodes of Mad Men before the dark, bleak, cold months of waiting for Lost to start. I haven’t really written much about Mad Men because so many people already do it better, but if you like to read analysis like I do, I recommend Slate–they have a great Mad Men feature with a few writers who do kind of a group analysis each week. Mad Men is exceptionally good television this season (and every season). The little smile on Betty’s face when she unlocked that drawer…Miss Farrell outside in the car…the look on Joan’s face when her husband whined about his failed dream. SO GOOD.
  • Though I remain as average looking as ever, my inexplicable current interest in cosmetics continued unabated. I feel guilty and wrong for not having passed on this information to any interested woman out there: www.allcosmeticswholesale.com. It’s amazing. Great brands for half price or less. You do have to pay shipping, there’s really no getting around it, but not a big deal considering how much you save. And I really am stopping with this now (soon).
  • So I had a couple days off from work last week. It’s so rare for me to have two days off, that I do this thing where I set these huge expectations for all the things I’m going to do during the days off, so in the end I was just feeling stressed out and frazzled about everything I wasn’t able to get done instead of just enjoying the days off. Aren’t I a treat? It’s just that the aforementioned dirty whore of a virus appeared on Friday, so I spent time working on that, then I spent over an hour driving out to see a house that I knew instantly was not the house we were going to buy, and I guess the glorious day off just felt kind of disappointing. But I did read a book in two days–A Reliable Wife, which was very good and suspenseful–and it was nice to have the time to do that.

That’s all for now. I just lost TEN MINUTES of my crazy workday, I HOPE YOU’RE HAPPY.

presented without comment

October 26, 2009 at 12:16 pm | In tv and movies | 4 Comments

madmen1

my vacation day and i hate wal mart

October 22, 2009 at 11:47 pm | In daily ramblings, grumble grumble rant rant | 8 Comments

M. doesn’t understand how or why I could want to spend my day off cleaning. I don’t know. If you don’t understand why, we’re just different, but it’s ok and we can still be friends. Because people are different, like fingerprints, and snowflakes. It’s late and I’m tired.

I cleaned and I cleaned, and I only managed to clean about half of what I had planned to clean, so halfway through the day I started to panic about how much I wasn’t going to have time to clean, and then I logged on to do some things for work, and pretty much defeated the purpose of having a day off. But not really, because I slept until 8, watched episodes of Gilmore Girls, and wore pajamas all day, all key indicators of a day off. It was also good that I was home to handle the Ladybug Situation, and I know some of you know what I mean. It also happened to be the nicest day ever, with weather so amazing and beautiful I almost can get a tad religious for a sec, because oh my GOD it was beautiful outside. It was the kind of day that is like a happiness drug, a joy cocktail, a Suntini if you will, a weather-vaccination against the swine flu of life. I went for a long walk because I don’t know when there will be a day like this again, probably not for months, and when there is I’ll probably be at work. It think it was my destiny to have today off, and I suspect I’m mixing philosophies and metaphors left and right here.

So then I went to Wal Mart. Now normally I have a strict rule not to go to Wal Mart, because I hate it–I HATE YOU WAL MART–and every time I’ve attempted to go there it’s been an unpleasant experience. The only reason I was there was because I had a bag of clothes to donate and they have a clothing drop box outside. So while I was there, I decided to grab a few things we needed. My main complaint is the perpetual stupidly long lines. But I also hate the entire vibe of the place…there is just something unpleasant about it there, and it’s not even really about the notorious people of wal mart, though frankly they don’t help. And I will support that point in a moment. So I got a basket of stuff and then went up to the register — at 4:00 on a Thursday mind you — and the lines were unfathomably long, so long that it would have taken me a half hour to pay for my little basket of wal mart crap, and don’t suggest the express line because that was by far the longest line of all. The lines were so long that I just put my basket down and left, which is a little rude I know but I just hate you wal mart so much and I had to get the hell out of there.

Then I walked through the parking lot and as I approached my car, the car alarm started going off in the car parked diagonally to mine. When I looked up, I saw a dude very shadily walking away from that car, very slowly but deliberately away, and I saw that the driver’s side window of the car had just been smashed in. Though I didn’t see him do it, I think it’s safe to presume that this dude has just smashed in the window and when the alarm started he started walking away. But this guy was like 5 feet away from me so I just jumped in my car and locked the door and took off, because someone shady enough to bust open someone’s window in a crowded parking lot in broad daylight is not someone I want to be near at all. And the stupidest part of the whole thing is that I didn’t even get to drop off the clothing donation that I went there to do in the first place, because shady guy gave me the creepy stink eye as I pulled away and I just wanted to get out of there.

So I went to Target. Target, my happy place, my friend. Place where I have never witnessed any sort of crime. I enjoyed a cleansing Target visit that washed away all the memories of THAT place.

Then I had a lovely dinner date with M. and am now gearing up for day two of Project: Maximize Vacation Day Productivity.

best laugh of the office

October 22, 2009 at 11:23 pm | In best laugh | Leave a Comment

Michael: “I have a lot of female friends. My mom. Pam’s mom. My aunt–though she just blocked me on IM.”

how i feel at work today

October 21, 2009 at 2:28 pm | In grumble grumble rant rant | 1 Comment

stress-at-work

Except a lot of that paper is metaphorical since my job is relatively paperless. And I wouldn’t wear that outfit.

Ugh.

my job

October 21, 2009 at 12:45 am | In miscellaneous | 3 Comments

is really starting to interfere with my blogging time.

weekend ramblings

October 19, 2009 at 5:00 pm | In daily ramblings | 6 Comments

Let me go ahead and tell you some stuff about my life. If you don’t care, feel free to leave and go google Jon Hamm, as apparently everyone else on the internet does every day.

I did NOT watch Mad Men last night so DON’T TELL ME WHAT HAPPENED. I’ve been carefully avoiding any Mad Men related information all day, and I still managed to accidentally find out something that, if I saw it correctly, is kind of huge. So I’m watching as soon as I get home from work today.

The reason I put off my Mad Men Sunday night viewing pleasure is that I needed the hour to catch up on life. Things have felt hectic lately. This isn’t a complaint. I’ve just been feeling generally behind in life. I know I shouldn’t talk about being busy when some of the people who read this blog actually have children and have much less free time than I do. But, in my world, things have felt busy. Work has gotten very hectic and I’ve been working extra hours and sort of filling my brain with work thoughts, and my free time lately has been taken up with things like updating my resume and cover letter (I applied for a job), finishing a writing project I had committed to and working on the ongoing house search. There are only about four free hours at night, after work, and this stuff takes up hours that might otherwise be spent on things like reading, keeping in touch with friends, making dinner, or cleaning up your messy apartment. So I am very thrilled that I will have this Friday off and I’ve scheduled every minute of my day and I really can not wait.

On Friday night I went out with my lovely sisters-in-law to listen to some music. It’s been a while since I’ve done something like that, and it’s actually been a while since I’ve been in even the vicinity of Boston, even though I only live 40 minutes away. On Saturday I was supposed to go to the BC football game, but I ended up skipping it. In the end this was kind of a life-saver because I had to work and run errands all day on Saturday, but I was a little bummed to cancel. Okay, honestly, watching guys run around and play football to me is pretty much just like watching guys just run around in circles for no reason. I can’t ever even FIND the ball much less appreciate what they are doing with it. Perhaps part of the problem is that I don’t care where the ball is, true, but what can I say? I briefly tried to force myself to like football when I was in seventh grade and was trying to be cool and wore a Syracuse Starter jacket that my friend gave me because my parents would never have spent so much on one, hey remember when everyone had a Starter jacket? Do those still exist? I’m far past such charades now. And we can all tell the difference between girls who actually enjoy football and girls who pretend to enjoy it because they want guys to think they are cool chicks, it is always quite obvious. But I do enjoy good company and doing things I’ve never done before, like going to a college football game, but I’ll have to save it for another day.

On Saturday morning I went early to my town’s annual book sale. You people have NO IDEA. Except for you M., since you were there with me. My town’s annual book sale is awesome. It’s at the VFW, and basically it’s just a big room full of books, but here is the key thing: they are 50 cents or $1, or 25 cents for the children’s books, and there are some good ones in there. It is totally fun, if you enjoy the books, which I do.

I ran a bunch of errands including a trip to Kohl’s that set me back an amount that I can’t say outloud because I’m afraid that will make it true. But I actually got some good stuff there. Mostly gifts, if that makes it any better.

That night I did lots of laundry. Have I ever told you about our basement? Well. It’s a big basement and it’s clear that it houses a vast universe of spiders, probably in a great variety of shapes and sizes. It’s spider mania down there. So how can I bear to go down there every week to do my laundry you ask? It’s simple: the spiders and I have an understanding. We stay out of each other’s way. They live in the basement, and I live upstairs. If they come into my home, that will not be a good day for them. But if I see them in the basement, I leave them alone. I concede the basement. And part of our agreement is that they don’t live in the immediate vicinity of the washer and dryer. It works. When I was in the basement doing my laundry on Saturday night, however, I saw something that was not a spider. It was an insect that I can not identify, probably because science hasn’t even discovered it, but it was the size of a Buick and when I saw it my heart stopped and my insides turned to ice and then I died. I actually didn’t know insects this size existed outside of the rain forest. Fortunately, it was scampering in the direction of AWAY, into the dark recesses of the basement where probably bats and lions live, I don’t know, I don’t go in that direction. So I let it go. If it had been coming towards me I’m not sure what I would have done because how do you smush a Buick anyhow, and is that something you really want to do? What size does a creature have to be before it’s no longer just bug smushing and it qualifies as actual murder? As I told M., if I saw this insect upstairs in our apartment I would have moved out that very day.

Moving on: Sunday was a bachelorette get-together for my fabulous friend Lisa who is getting married in a month. We had a spa day, except most spas aren’t open on Sundays, so we found one that does Sundays by appointment. So they opened just for us and I can report that having a big spa all to yourselves is awesome. I got a pedicure, which I know is a bit of a waste since no one is seeing my feet anytime soon, not even myself, because it is too cold. Have I complained yet about the cold? The skin on my hands is already dry and cracking and even bleeding. You might think, Medium, why don’t you put on some lotion? Let me assure you that I put lotion on day and night, night and day. The heavy duty stuff. Lotion is no match for this kind of winter-induced dry skin situation. And the funny thing is, if you complain about this to anyone else in New England, they will say, “Me too!!” All of us have uncomfortably dry hands. The worst is my mother, who during the winter looks as if she’s in extra rounds of the (petite lightweight) boxing championships. It’s cold and I hate it. But what was I saying? So I had a lovely day of food and drinks and nailpolish and talking with friends. When I drove home, it was snowing in that crazy way where there are big fat swirly flakes and when you drive on the highway, it looks like you’re driving through outer space and the snowflakes look like stars; do you know what I mean? Visibility not good.

Am I rambling? Yes indeed.

ha.

October 15, 2009 at 3:42 pm | In best laugh | 3 Comments

ha

fun times with google

October 15, 2009 at 1:50 pm | In miscellaneous | 11 Comments

I started to google a question that began with the word “What.” I can’t even remember what my question was now. It’s really not important. I only got as far as the word “what” when I was suddenly stopped in mid-type, fascinated by the list of Google search suggestions that appeared. I don’t know if these are the most recent searches beginning with “what,” or the most frequent (please God let it be the most frequent). They are not things that I have searched for, that I know. This is what appeared:

google3

What is love, anyway? And what is Twitter, anyway? Then I thought, Well, if the word ‘what’ brings up such delightful suggestions, I imagine the word ‘why’ should be just as fun!

google3

good reads

October 14, 2009 at 9:33 pm | In favorite things | 8 Comments

I love many things about this piece in the Times magazine by Jonathan Safran Foer. I can relate. And WOW to the accompanying photographs.

junior year.

October 13, 2009 at 11:04 pm | In the diary experiment | 1 Comment

First an addendum on tenth grade: When I picked up my tenth grade journal, my research paper fell out of it…the big research paper we all had to write that year which we talked about in all caps: The Research Paper. Mine is titled “Henry V: Reign of Terror.” Yes, I wrote my research paper on Henry V, and people, I could not at this moment tell you one single thing about Henry V if my life truly depended on it, other than the fact that his reign was apparently not so nice, if my title is to be trusted. I don’t remember ANYTHING about this person. The only memory I have from writing this big research paper is this: We were all in the school library to do research for our papers, from these big, heavy old books they used to have, where you would take the big book off the shelf and look things up in it that were listed alphabetically, and then you would take out a pen and a piece of paper and write out the stuff that was in the big book. It was like copy and paste but much much slower. Anyway, I remember that I was reading about my research paper topic from one of these big books and I came across the word “usurp” and I recall thinking, “USURP? What the %*#@?” And I looked it up, and that is the story of how I learned the word usurp. And that is the only thing I could tell you that is even tangentially related to Henry V.

Moving on! If I have my junior and senior year journals, I’m not really locating them at the moment, but I do have my notebook from my junior year creative writing class in which we did various little exercises and free writing. Let’s check out my “personal monologue”:

I guess my life is pretty typical. I don’t think I’m like anyone else, but I probably seem to be. The focus of my life is, pathetically, high school. But since I spend most of my time here and all of my problems come from here, I guess that has to be the focus.

Grades and homework are the least of my problems. High school is not a safe place. There are a lot of crises around here and we have the most vicious gossip chain I’ve ever encountered. I try not to worry about things. Because if I worried about everything that went wrong, I’d be doing a lot of worrying. But lately I’ve been having a lot more of those days when I feel like smacking someone. I admit it, I’m not always a nice person. I try. But a lot of things bother me. I try to be un-snobby, but fake people really get to me. I just hate seeing someone try their hardest to be someone else. My parents always tell me I have a bad attitude. I’m sorry if I do, but I was a happy person. I’m happy sometimes. It depends who I’m with I guess.

Can you see the Angela Chase?? With a dash of Holden Caulfield? Those were my key influences at the time, along with Billy Corgan. Ok I mock myself because I was such a cliche who didn’t feel at all like a cliche which was the most cliched part! Ha! I think I did become more cheerful during my senior year though. My junior year I mostly remember myself wearing a flannel and Vans and having my hair grow out from this two-toned home dyeing disaster.

I think this next one was just some free writing but I titled it “Not about O.J.” Ha. This isn’t particularly original, but it kind of sums up angsty teenagerdom when you don’t have your license yet but you actually have a really nice family:

There is a certain comfort in being at home with your family. No matter how much you sometimes hate being there and sometimes feel trapped there, there is a safety and familiarity in the place where you grew up, the place where you sleep. Your family is people who see you at your worst and love you anyway. And you’re always welcome and don’t have to knock or feel embarrassed. I hate being stuck home sometimes, but sometimes I don’t feel like going anywhere else.

Hello, Angela Chase!! By the way, if you think I had stopped pining over boys who I was distantly in love with, think again.

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