Moving AGAIN

I left Blogger for TypePad, and then I couldn't deal with TypePad for a variety of reasons, so I have moved AGAIN. I already redirected my domain, so if you go to www.jesussavesispend.com you will arrive at my new blog. For those of you who might have me in your RSS feed, please change the feed you use to: http://jsis.tumblr.com/rss Anne

Gone to TypePad

Gone to TypePad for now ... check me over there for future posts. www.jesussavesispend.com will redirect you. Anne

Branding Initiative

You know the expression "drink the Kool-Aid" ? It means to buy into something wholeheartedly and without reservation or critical thinking. You know where it comes from, right? Members of the cult at the People's Temple in Jonestown, Guyana, drank cyanide-laced imitation fruit juice and committed mass suicide at the urging of psycho leader Jim Jones. Well as it turns out, they didn't use Kool-Aid, they used Fla-Vor-Aid. (Wikipedia cites the History Channel saying that they used both, which may or may not be true but it doesn't affect my point here.) Do you think the Kool-Aid people are pissed that their product gets wrongly linked to the mass cult suicide, while the other product hardly ever gets mentioned? Or do you think they're glad that they became slang in a way that Fla-Vor-Aid never did? It can't be bad to have your product name being mentioned, right?

Two Random Things

1. Clarification: One of my friends called me on something in my last post that I think she misunderstood, so I want to make it clear. "I haven't been married or had children, so my work is the way I'm going to be defined." I absolutely do not mean that women who are mothers can't or shouldn't be recognized for their professional lives! I just mean that, as a single non-mom, I'm never going to be introduced at a party as "so-and-so's wife" or "so-and-so's mom" so people are always likely to revert to my work as means of identifying my place in the world. It's going to be "This is Anne. She's xxxx." (A teacher, a writer, the HR director of Vandalay Industries, whatever.) That singular focus makes me feel more pressured to pick the right thing to do. 2. Oh my goodness, why didn't I ever notice how hot Chow Yun-Fat is?! I watched Anna and the King last night and I had to fan myself a little bit with my church bulletin!

I am not being vetted by the Obama transition team

Seems like all I do these days is whine about being unemployed, but I know that nobody wants to hear me ramble on any more about Hillary Clinton. (Secretary of State? Really. Really?! OK, that's a whole 'nother conversation ...) So here we go. I know, rationally, that I have no immediate worries. I have money put away, I have no debt to speak of and no dependents, and I have supportive family who would do anything for me. I am in a better position than probably 97 percent of the 500,000-or-so other people who filed for unemployment for the first time last week. The last time a job disappeared out from under me I had just signed a mortgage for a house, and that worked out. It worked out in my favor, actually: I got a better-paying job with more stability in only a month or so. (And I made a bunch of kick-ass friends at that job.) Granted, that wasn't in the middle of the biggest economic meltdown since the Great Depression, but still I think it's evidence of the fact that yes, things do usually work out. In a certain way I'm paralyzed by choice: There are probably 15 things I can think of that I could do and would enjoy doing next. If I could do 10 of those things for 2 years each, the next two decades would be a blast! But then the two decades after that -- the ones where I have to support myself in retirement -- probably would suck. I know we're past the days of putting in 35 years at IBM and retiring with a defined-benefit pension, but there has to be some kind of plan. It can't just be seven years here, four years there ... can it? I think what's really giving me the agita -- and I'm not proud to admit this -- is the loss of "status" that comes with being removed from the professional world. I bought a really cool business-card holder when I went to the beach in September, and now I have nothing to put in it. The city where I live is just sooooo status-conscious, and even though the organization that I worked for wasn't the most influential, my title sounded a little bit fancy. I was regularly asked for advice about the direction of the organization, and part of my "social identity" was rooted in my work. So now I've been drummed out of the Corps, so to speak, and I have to create a new thing to be. I haven't been married or had children, so my work is the way I'm going to be defined. I have a fancy, expensive education, which means there are all sorts of expectations about the level at which I should be achieving. And I'm old enough now that there is a sizeable cohort of people younger and more energetic than I am who are magnets for the Latest Interesting Thing. When I look around me, on Facebook or in alumni notes or among friends and colleagues, it seems like everybody is doing something impressive. They're writing books or making movies or starting companies or advising Congress and the incoming administration. It's not enough just to be interested in something and willing to work hard. If you want to be impressive you have to find a way to make your thing famous, turn it into a blog that nobody else is doing yet, monetize it, get on TV to talk about it, etc. Everybody keeps asking me what I'm going to do next, and I sit here and try to figure it out, but the harder I think about it the farther away the answer goes, and the more I can feel the anxiety escalate. Fuck. Too much pressure.

Five Useful Things

Five useful things I have done since becoming officially unemployed: 1. Raked all the leaves into the corner of the yard. Too lazy to actually bag them up, mind you, but at least they're as far away from the patio as they can be so they won't blow back up there and make a mess. 2. Shredded an entire box of old credit card mailings, receipts, etc. so nobody can steal my identity. 3. Checked out Michael Jackson's Off The Wall CD from the library and put it on my iPod. 4. Learned how to Wii bowl with Lumpyhead's parents and the former captain of the Dreher High School bowling team. 5. Went to see Frost/Nixon at the Kennedy Center with some last-minute discount tickets. Loved it!! Must see!

Unemployment Day 1: Fantasy vs. Reality

Unemployment Day 1: Fantasy 6am-8am: wake, dress, eat, blog, e-mail, catch up on RSS feeds 8am-10am: walk dogs, unload dishwasher, plan cooking, list errands for the afternoon Unemployment Day 1: Reality 9:59am: This has been Morning Edition on National Public Radio... 10:07am: Welcome to The Diane Rehm Show...

18,000,000

NYT: "For many of Mrs. Clinton’s supporters she was Everywoman, called on to prove her toughness without wholly abandoning her softness, asked in the end to yield once more to an ambitious, impatient man. Come Tuesday, will these supporters be haunted anew by what might have been? And will they be haunted more by an Obama victory or an Obama defeat?"

Right now I have to say that the answers are yes, and victory. Watching the live coverage of parties at Howard make me think how much I would rather be seeing parties at Wellesley and Smith. (On the other hand, at least I don't have to listen to any bullshit about how proud we should be to see a woman elected vice-president, as if we should be satisfied to break the glass ceiling by walking two steps behind a man.) Look, I know she ran a bad campaign. I'm not stupid. I wish she hadn't been so fucking certain from the very beginning, and I wish she had been humble enough to think past Feb. 5th. And I'm not saying the nation is going to crumble without her. I don't drink Candidate Kool-Aid. I don't like it in any flavor. My mother spent her youth and young adulthood being pigeonholed into a system where she was expected to date lots of boys but never have "too much fun", go to college just long enough to get married, then drop out and start having babies. Oh, and make sure those babies are bathed and on their best behavior at the supper table when dad gets home from work to collect his evening martini. She bucked the system and stayed to graduate, only to enter a work world where she was welcome to be a secretary, a nurse or a teacher. For the next 20-odd years of her life, while she wasn't working admin jobs bored out of her skull with her talents being ignored, she was figuring out what she could do to create a society where her daughter would have more freedom of opportunity than she did. She refused to teach me to iron because she said if I knew how to, I'd end up doing it for some man for the rest of my life. (My dad started sending his shirts out in the mid-1980s…) I like to think of myself as young for my age, what with the YouTube and the Facebook and all that, but I'm old enough to have internalized a lot of strong messages from her and from her peers about the front lines of bra-burning and consciousness-raising and never receiving equal pay IF you could even get the job to begin with. Joan and Peggy on Mad Men? My mother and her friends lived that shit. The idea that she went through that and her daughter could cast a vote for a woman president … fucking amazing. I don't exaggerate when I tell you that it makes me cry thinking about it. So yeah, Obama won. The job went to a man. What a shock. And he's probably going to raise my taxes and redistribute some of my wealth and do some other things that I don't want him to do. On the other hand, he's probably not going to drag us into any more pointless foreign wars or pack the Supreme Court with old men who want the legal right to control my body, and he might make a tiny bit of progress in convincing the rest of the world that Americans aren't ignorant, narrow-minded crackers. So on balance I'll take him. But I wrote in Hillary, and it felt good.

Worship Happiness

I LOVE this! Thanks to AmFam for broadening my musical horizons!

Chicken Parm 2.0

The sandwich wasn't half bad, but it was worth the entire price, including the tip, just to read this message. (Except I think "heat-retaining" should be hyphenated.)

The Blessing of the Animals

GOOFUS: This dog wandered away while being blessed, because something more interesting was happening over there. (Last year he tried to drink from the bowl of blessing water ...) GALLANT: This dog sat quietly while being blessed. Good dog!

The Eastern Media Elite

Shit, y'all, I'm a terrible blogger! I'm not even going to trot out any tired, old excuses for it. But maybe this funny video will make up for it.

Girl, Disappointed

Two nights in a row now I have been profoundly disappointed by the Democrats. They could have given me a strong, Ivy-educated, professionally accomplished woman accepting the nomination to be Leader of the Free World. Instead they gave me a strong, Ivy-educated, professionally accomplished woman who walked out onto the national stage and spent the whole time trying to convince me what a perfect little wife and mother she is. I get it. I know the game. Half of White America thinks she's an Angry Black Woman out to get them, and the other half thinks she's married to a Scary Muslim. The Obama campaign's success hinges on their ability to convince The Average American that they're a "normal" couple. She did what she had to do. But what she had to do was offensive and disappointing, and it makes me even less likely to vote for her husband than I was before. November 4th? Oh, I'm sorry ... I'd love to, but I have to wash my hair.

I'm alive!

My friends From the Mountains pointed out that I put up a really disturbing blog post about impending doom and then ... nothing. Radio silence for, like, a full week. So sorry! I am totally fine! I've just had a big ton of things going on in real life, and I haven't been in front of the computer as much as usual. Two of my friends had babies -- Lumpyhead's Mom and UpstairsNancy -- and so I've been visiting with them. I got some new ice skates, so I've been trying those out, and work has been nine kinds of crazy. Also I've been back at Jazzercise, and going to baby showers, and finding new BBQ places and helping friends move and talking smack about John Edwards. Anyway, sorry if that was too weird. I don't know why I was feeling all ominous and broody, but it's over now and nothing really happened. I predict that there will be some new and interesting things for me to blog about next weekend.

Storm Clouds?

I feel jittery and strange, like something bad is about to happen, or I've forgotten to do something important. Like all these things are happening all around me, and I can't control any of it, but it's going to eventually sweep me up in it all. Does that make sense?

Peppers in Action

Y'all, it was so hard to cut up those peppers! I know I can't just keep them around forever and look at them, but I hated to see them go. It felt like I was destroying something I had worked so hard to create. I think I might be missing the point of gardening... Here are the final results: Sauteed peppers to go in the beans and rice This picture looks blurry because the heat coming off the skillet steamed up the camera lens. Jalapeno peppers in the mango salsa

Tomorrow This Will Be Salsa

Guaranteed salmonella-free!

Update on the Crops

Getting closer to time for harvest.

Chicken Out Shame

I went to Chicken Out for lunch today, and the trivia question (prize is a free drink) was "What is the meaning of the word cartomancy?" Oddly enough, just yesterday at work we had a whole discussion about the word bibliomancy, so I was all cocky about knowing the answer. Because I know word parts, right? I kicked ass on the verbal section of the SAT. Cartomancy must be divination or fortune-telling using maps, right? (cartography ... mapmaking ...) So I cruise up to the register and announce to the dude that I'll just be taking my free drink, thank you, because I know what that word means. Yeah, not so much. Cartomancy is divination or fortune-telling using cards. And the thing is, I don't care at all about the $1.79 for the drink. I'm just mortified that I was all cocky to the Chicken Out guy and then I was wrong!

Is This Her First IVF Baby?

30-second celebrity news commentary: Can we please just say that this baby is Nicole Kidman's third child and her first with Keith Urban? Why do they always have to say that she already has two adopted children?! I'm not adopted, nor do I have any children myself, but for some reason this really bothers me.

I Am a Lame Blogger

I cut into my first little pepper just to see what it looked like, then took a bite, then gulped a bunch of milk because DUH, what kind of a dumbass takes a big bite of jalapeno?! Then I cut the rest up and put it in hummus and ate it, but of course I forgot to take any pictures. I am not a very good blogger.

The Harvest

I picked my first pepper today! It looks like a jalapeno, and it's not incredibly large, but it hasn't gotten bigger in several days so I figured it was done. This picture is a little dark, but when I used the flash it bounced off the shiny pepper skin and washed the whole thing out. There are 12 more baby peppers on the other plants, but most of them are still very tiny.

Pictures of the Dogs

This is an experiment with the PictoBrowser. You should see a collection of dog pictures.

Update on Pepper Project '08

There is an actual pepper on one of my plants! I believe it's a jalapeno. Or at least it's going to be when it gets to full size. Right now it's somewhere between zygote and toddler. I would like it to at least be at quarterlife-crisis before I pick it and celebrate. I cannot stress what a surprise this is. I have, in the past, had what I can only describe as The Black Thumb of Death. I kept a couple of succulents alive all through my junior year of college, but that's just one step up from ch-ch-ch-CHIA. This is an actual ... crop. I can make salsa with something from my patio! Em and the other garden advancelings out there will please forgive my small dance of triumph over something so simple. I honestly thought I had killed all these plants last week by overwatering them. (As an aside: why the hell are the signs of OVERwatering the same as the signs of UNDERwatering?! Hmmm? Mother Nature, I'm talking to you on this one ...) Anyway, I was just going to leave them for dead, never to be blogged about again. Then Monday morning I leaned down to put a leash on a dog and noticed this new development. I still think that all the plants look ridiculously scrawny and raggedy, but I haven't ever actually seen a bell pepper plant before, so maybe this is just the way they are. There are a number of flowers on every one of the plants, so cross your fingers, y'all.

More Yogurt News!

More exciting yogurt news! (God, I'm a loser.) I got my hair cut today, and in the ground floor of their building, where there once was a vitamin shop, there will soon be another Pinkberry-like frozen yogurt place. This one is going to be called ... Mr. Yogato! It's so stupid and funny ... I love it! The '80s are totally and officially BACK. God help us. Other news from today: Before I got my hair cut, I spent the afternoon at the pool. A public pool. A public pool owned and operated by the city. And it wasn't nearly as nasty as I assumed it would be, given how dysfunctional and fucked-up this city is. I mean, It wasn't the country club, but it's free, and I don't think I picked up any diseases while I was there, and nobody sawed the lock off my locker and robbed me while I was swimming. (I am going to try one other public pool that's in a v. fancy neighborhood, just to see if it's even better than this one.) I went there with the intention of swimming some laps, but the lap lanes had people in them, and I'm not a good enough lap-swimmer to share a lane. I weave and flail around too much. It's all I can do to stay inside the floating ropes, let alone to avoid colliding with someone. So I hung out in the deep end and just puttered back and forth across the pool, avoiding others as necessary. Not exactly the tightest workout ever, but it felt good just to be in the water and moving around.

Can You See Me?

Well ... yesterday I accidentally flagged my own blog as "objectionable content" while trying to eat a hamburger and do a blog post on my BlackBerry at the same time. I don't know what happens next ... maybe something goes down on my permanent record, or the Google Stasi comes in the night to take me away, or maybe nothing at all. Somebody comment and tell me if you're still seeing me. What I was trying to blog about was food. Specifically, these three fine developments: 1. ZBurger, newly opened near the most recent place where I went to grad school, is fabulous! Better than Five Guys, if you'll allow me a brief moment of blasphemy. It tastes fresher and less greasy, and they serve onion rings, which I would rather have than fries. I have always felt meh about the Five Guys fries. I'd rather just have a small-sized order of fries that aren't so limp and bendy. The place gave me a flashback, too. They have caffeine-free Diet Coke on their drinks fountain, which made me think about that brief period in college when I gave up caffeine and I used to walk all the way down to the medical school cafeteria because they had caffeine-free D.C. there. Yeah, that lasted about three weeks. ZBurger also has about a million flavors of milkshakes, which I didn't order because ... 2. TangySweet has opened just up the street from Pizza Paradiso! I doubt that any of y'all know about my obsession with plain frozen yogurt. When I was a wee girl they came out with the first frozen yogurt, which was cool and tangy and tasted like plain, real yogurt that was cold. My friend Dineen's hippie mom used to take us all the time to the health-foody place that sold it. (This is the same woman who bought me my first pair of blue jeans after I told her that I didn't have any because "only boys can wear them" -- but that's a whole 'nother story.) Then frozen yogurt got all TCBY and flavored and overly sweet and just turned into fake ice cream. Bleh. Fast forward to my first visit to Bloomingdale's in NYC, where the Forty Carrots Cafe serves real, old-fashioned plain frozen yogurt, and my life becomes that much more complete. Fast forward again, and Pinkberry becomes a big thing out in L.A., and some Pinkberry imitators pop up, and now I have one in-between work and home! I will say this ... the "original" flavor at TangySweet is a tad too lemony for my taste. It's still not as good as Forty Carrots or '70s hippie health food frozen treat. But it's a fine addition to the neighborhood nonetheless. 3. Last weekend, when it was 175 degrees outside, I went to the pick-your-own farm at the hottest part of the day and picked 16.2 pounds of strawberries. No, I was not on drugs. I just really wanted some strawberries! Miraculously, I did not get sunburn or heatstroke, and then I got the added bonus of getting to try out my new vacuum-sealer gadget while packaging them up for the freezer. Life is good.

Not Good Enough

So it turns out that all the bitching and moaning I've been doing lately about my age is warranted after all. In fact I am an older woman ... one of those older white women who was pretty psyched about the idea of electing a female president and who is pretty unexcited about voting for the person who beat her. It's not like I didn't know it was coming, but the disappointment was so much more visceral than I thought it would be when Hillary made her speech today. All that crap about party unity and shared goals? Fuck that. I'm not actually a member of the Democratic Party, and "shared goals" are cold comfort when I've just lost the chance to see someone who looks like me take the oath of office. Sore loser? Hell yes, I am. Having a realistic chance at the first black president might be historical, but it means that my team lost, and that makes me mad. And Obama's comment about how Hillary's campaign "shattered barriers on behalf of [his] daughters and women everywhere" is nothing but a slap in the face to me. Don't give me that condescending shit. I know very well that the people being quoted today about how courageous and groundbreaking she is were the same people who spent the last two months wishing she would go ahead and quit the race. I don't want platitudes. I don't want a bunch of smarmy bullshit from a media that has been gushing-in-love with Obama since day one and from a political establishment that relishes Hillary's defeat because it makes up for the embarrassment that her husband brought on them a decade ago. I don't want to hear about how her historic campaign is going to make things easier for some other woman someday. I want a woman to be president now! Yes, I know all the ways things went wrong. I know she was overconfident -- obnoxiously cocky, really -- in the beginning. I know she didn't have a plan past Super Tuesday. I know there was all sorts of wretched infighting among her campaign staff. I know all that, and it doesn't make me one bit less disappointed and angry and just fucking adament that I am not going to drink the Kool-Aid. (I could give a whole fact-based speech about why I think she's more qualified than Obama for the job, but I guess that's a pointless argument by now.) McCain '08!

More Pots!

Those last three little pepper plants were giving me the stink-eye for leaving them in those tiny pots for so long, but I have not been able to get my act together to go to Lowe's. Luckily, my neighbor has recently had all sorts of landscaping done, and they left about a dozen plastic containers out in the alley by the trash cans -- the pots that their new bushes came out of, I think. So yeah, not the least bit attractive, but they hold dirt and they were free. So yay! Special thanks to both Em and Jess for wanting to send me some of their extras. (By the way, I can definitely tell that all the plants have grown! That's exciting!!)

Oliver is Sticking Out His Tongue At You

Glimpse of the Future

I made my first concession to $4/gallon gas today: I walked to the grocery store with my rolling cart instead of driving. I realize that this should make me feel virtuous, given that I simultaneously "got some exercise" and saved gas/CO2 emissions. In reality, though, I resent it. I want to keep driving my car for convenience, wherever I want and whenever I want, in a way that makes things most easy for me. And I resent the fact that every day seems to move us closer to a world in which I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm just not inherently green. Sacrifice makes me mad. If that means I'm a selfish, Earth-hatin' bitch, then so be it.

Serenade

Just got back from Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull. I knew, but had forgotten until I saw it, that one fun part of it was filmed at my university. There was a motorcycle chase right through the courtyard from which we were all serenaded by a singing group on our first night as college students. Sentimental and cliche though it sounds, that's one of my favorite memories of the place. The movie's good. Not "Lost Ark" good, or even "Short Round" good, but at least as good at the one with Sean Connery, and it's totally worth the ticket price to see it on the big screen. I'll buy you a drink if you spot the Star Wars reference.

Come on Down!

My prom date was on The Price is Right today! This is a childhood friend of mine -- since 7th grade -- who now lives in New Orleans. His dad was one of my dad's banking colleagues, and we were all family friends for a long time. He was even my friend-date to my senior prom. He sent me a cryptic text message a few weeks ago instructing me to watch The Price is Right on May 22nd, so I set the TiVo. So funny!! We ran it back several times so we could fully appreciate his performance. He made it up to the stage on the first try (won a "fold-up boat" in the process, which I still don't completely understand), but then he didn't win on the game or the wheel. But who cares because he got to chat with Drew Carey and shout-out to his sister while the wheel was spinning! He says he hasn't taken possession of the "fold-up boat" yet, because the producers required a social security card for tax ID in order to claim the gift and he didn't have that with him while he was on vacation. He also said he might not even claim the prize because he really has no use for it and he'll have to pay taxes on it. But how could you not take the "fold-up boat" that you won on The Price is Right?! That's too good a conversation piece to pass up ... put that shit in your backyard and grow some flowers in it, dude. In this 21st century wonderland known as the Internet, you can see this very show online. (My guy is in the blue shirt and white shorts. He's the first one to get up onstage.)

Back to Normal

All my computer problems apparently have resolved themselves. I can stop twitching now.

Bad Technology Day

I don't know about y'all, but I've had a bad technology day. Gmail and Google Reader were doing funny all day. I couldn't ever get regular Gmail to load properly, I can only get the "plain" version to work. And I have no e-mails since 11:15 this morning, which I have to say seems highly suspicious to me. Surely somebody sent me an e-mail at some point in the entire afternoon. And now it's 8:30 at night and Facebook seems to be down. This all makes me vaguely unsettled, and I'm a little ashamed to admit that.

Pepper Project 2008

Old Southern women are expected to be able to grow things, so I've decided to start working on that now, just in case it takes me 30 more years to master. Behold ... Pepper Project 2008!

Before:After:find the pug for 10 points

I have two kinds of bell peppers (Big Bertha and Better Belle), Early Jalapeno peppers, Mariachi peppers, one Golden Summer pepper that I picked up by mistake when I thought I was getting a third Mariachi ... and notice the three little "Mucho Nacho Peppers" in the front that are still in their tiny plastic containers. I calculated wrong, and I need to get one more big pot. I'm thinking about scavenging through the alleys, though, because DAMN pots are expensive. The ones I bought are just made of plastic and they were $9 and $12 apiece! Granted, I was at the fancy garden place in the posh suburbs instead of at Lowe's.

What I Have Learned So Far

• Buy two 1-cu.ft. bags of potting soil instead of one 2-cu.ft. bag. It is way too hard to get a 2-cu.ft. bag out of the back of the car.
• Pick up drainage rocks out of the driveway instead of buying a whole bag of them.
• Small dogs will eat dirt if you don't stop them.

There is Hope Yet

Today one of my friends at work described someone as "a really nice older lady ... like, 38 ..." BUT ... there is hope yet. My freshman-year roommate just got engaged.

Things That Are Not A Good Idea

Maybe it's just me, but I would want the people at my shop who handle Sarbanes-Oxley to be ... you know ... smart.

Best Party of the Year!

Last night we threw a surprise party for my dad's 70th birthday! He was really surprised ... he had no clue, even after the near-miss earlier in the day when we went to the English Village Wine Shop and the lady rang up his purchase and looked at the computer screen and said "Oh, somebody bought you a gift the other day!" (What the hell? Loose Lips Sink Ships, bitch!) I stood behind him and shook my head violently and she backtracked, but I was having a heart attack for the next two hours. Anyway, we got him to our friends' house under the pretense that he was going to their 5th-grader's graduation party, and he about fell over when he went out on the patio and saw all the people. I had been able to get hold of a copy of his computer address book (hax0r!) and we had such a wonderful, wide variety of people from his life: a couple of childhood friends, some fraternity brothers, professional friends from his years in the banking world, his trainer and friends from the gym, the ladies who look after him here in town, cousins, relatives ... I was so immensely gratified that so many people took the time to come out and help us celebrate. We are surrounded by good people in this community, and the value of that cannot be overestimated. We got home about 9:00 and sat through all the bad weather and tornado warnings, and he couldn't stop talking about how surprised he was and how much fun he had. Perfect!

We Need to Talk About Kevin

Want to get really creeped out but enjoy it? You should read We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver. It's the story of the fucked-up mother of a fucked-up kid who grows up to be a school shooter. The whole family is dysfunctional and awful, and it will simultaneously make you happy, because you feel superior to them, and make you sad, because you know it's just a matter of time before another one of those kids crops up in real life. Lionel Shriver is actually a woman, and she has made very good use of her deeply grim view of the world. I'm busy trying to find some of her other books now. It's been a long time since I've stayed awake until 2am reading and then, the next morning, reached for the book again before I even got out of bed. This one did it for me. And y'all know that I'm usually so careful about avoiding violence on TV and in the movies ... This book isn't really all that violent, though, it's just psychologically disturbing.

Did Dale Jr. Actually Approve This?

Did they actually focus-group this with NASCAR fans? And if they did, was every single person on the panel a Jimmie Johnson fan?

Tom Friedman News

Brown Daily Herald: Times Columnist Pied in Face by Activist I simply adore the juxtaposition of old-school pie-in-the-face with 21st-century globalization-sizzle the-world-is-flat Tom Friedman!

Stacking Food on Animals

Don't you wish we got Japanese TV on RCN?

In Which I Break My Own Rule

Those of you who know me probably have heard my rant about people who talk about what they eat and don't eat. I'm not talking about "OMG, I had the best risotto EVAR at Bistro Snooty last night" or "Please do not fix me any Pad Thai, for I am allergic to peanuts." I'm talking about women -- and I'm sorry to say, it's almost always women -- who go on and on about net carbs and I don't eat dairy and high fructose corn syrup is the devil and I had three bites of chocolate so now I'm fat and soy only and fish but no chicken and Weight Watchers points and blah blah blah Boca-fishcakes. I despise the fact that society has conditioned us to demonize food and feel guilty about eating as a part of some larger body-image dysfunction that makes average women feel fat and fat women feel worthless! Good food is fabulous, and we should all be enjoying it. Some of us like this, and some of us like that. No worries. Eat what you want, enjoy it, avoid what you don't care for, leave others to their choices, and shut the fuck up about it. Don't feed (har har) society's unhealthy glorification of self-deprivation and the idealization of impossible standards for women's bodies. All that said ... (deep breath) ... I am so "off my feed" and it's driving me crazy. Nothing sounds good. I'm eating, because I know that my body needs fuel, but I can count on one hand the number of times in the past month that I have thought "wow, I really want X." And all but one of those times it was avocado rolls from the sushi place ... yummy, but not quite a complete meal nutritionally. I want to cook fun stuff and enjoy it, but everything I think of just sounds boring and unappetizing. Pasta? Yawn. Chicken again ... yuck. More ground beef tacos? Even when I look through the giant file folder of recipes I've been collecting since The Dawn of Time, nothing interests me. I have Whole Foods, Trader Joe's and Harris Teeter at my disposal, and it's just aisle after aisle of ... meh. Probably twice a week I eat raisin bran for dinner because it's easy and inoffensive and nothing else sounds better. The few times that I do think I want something I go get it, and then it doesn't taste good. I don't think I'm sick, and (sadly) I don't seem to be losing weight. I've just lost interest in food. I really need to figure this out, though, because avocado rolls and raisin bran are only going to take me so far.

Why I Am Cool

Why I Am Cool: After lamenting the fact that I can no longer find my beloved Target yoga pants, which I bought a year ago for $15, and which apparently no longer exist in any of the, like, nineteen Targets that I have looked in recently ... I just got three pairs of Lands End yoga pants for $6 each on super-sale at Sears. Why I Am Not Cool: I am watching The Cutting Edge 2 on ABC Family Channel. Toe pick! (And Ice Castles comes on next ... don't think that doesn't make my Saturday night worthwhile.)

One Chore That I Like

I really like going to the grocery store. Am I crazy? Here's what brought on this observation: I got a Peapod coupon the other day for $20 off an order. Even accounting for the delivery fee, that's still $10-$14 in my wallet! I'm a cheapskate, and that's a lot of money. But I went online and tried putting together an order and it seemed so hollow and unpleasant that I just couldn't seal the deal. I like the orderliness of making a list. And you know I make my list divided by genre -- all produce together, all dairy together, etc. -- and I write it in order of how I encounter things while moving through the store. I pwn the Giant Foods planogram! Then I like the whole process of moving through the store, crossing things off the list, finding things that are 2-for-1 if you have a store card, comparing per-unit cost of things, looking at all the loaves of bread until I find one that doesn't have high fructose corn syrup, things like that. Then I unload my cart onto the checkout line conveyor belt by genre, so all the frozen things go together, all the canned goods, all the soft items, etc. I fully understand that I am Type A psycho, but this whole process feels very psychologically rewarding to me. Peapod's trying to tell me that grocery shopping is so onerous that I need to pay them as much as $10 to bring my food to my home. Maybe if I had kids who had to be dragged along through all this I would feel the same way ... but I do not. But I do wish I had a coupon for $20 off someone to come over here and clean my bathroom. P.S. Ask me about the Bollywood dancing class. Holy shit! Most. Fun. Ever!

I'm Famous, Y'all!

This is so funny ... I was out of town all weekend, but I have just realized that my "Turds" post from Thursday was on DCist and The Express web site. On DCist my link was actually above that kid from Lake Braddock High School who got cussed out by the school official's wife. So apparently my "fifteen minutes" involve poo. I'm calling Andy Warhol ... I want another chance!

Turds

Okay, so I haven't blogged in over a month, because a) I'm lazy, and b) there's more drama going on than I'd ever think about putting on the Internet. But I'm back in the blogosphere tonight because I have a story that can't NOT be told. I rode home on the Metro tonight a bit after 7pm, and as the train was chugging along I came to realize that there were Two. Human. Turds. on the floor across the aisle from me. This nice-looking woman started to sit in the seat there, and another woman nearby hollered and grabbed her arm and stopped her from sitting down. On the floor, where her feet would have gone ... two big poops. One of which had already been stepped in once. Now, I pick up dog poop numerous times a day, and I'm pretty familiar with what that looks like. This was not somebody's seeing eye dog's accident. This was actual human shit. Oddly enough -- and maybe this speaks to the nature of what city life does to you -- neither I nor anyone else in the vicinity got up and changed cars. I rode through 10 stops and then got off and ran up to the front of the train to tell the driver. "Um ... there's ... uh ... excrement on the floor in the back of car two." "Aw man, not again!" ("?!?!") "They do that all the time. They been doin' that a lot on here." "Okay, well ... um ..." "Thank you for letting me know, ma'am. I'm sorry you had to see that. And thank you for riding Metro." So polite! This is wrong on so many levels, but my chief question is this: How does one poop on the Red Line in the middle of rush hour without anyone noticing? I have to assume that the turd wasn't riding around on the train all day, left there un-noticed since a very-early-morning, empty train. I got on the train about 7:20pm, and rush hour effectively starts about 4:30pm, so in that three-hour window did somebody drop trou, turn around backwards in the seat and poop while other people were sitting in the surrounding rows? There just isn't a point in the day when the Red Line is empty enough to do that without someone else being around. And I know that Metro riders have a reputation for being inside their own little iPod/newspaper bubbles, but surely ... please God ... surely someone would notice if the person in the next row up was pooping. Surely someone would report that and they would take that car out of service and turn the lights off and make the people move onto the next car and call some hazmat dudes. I just don't know what to do with any of this.

Things Grad School Didn't Teach Me

I have to upgrade my computer so it will be "vigorous" enough to handle the new "Leopard" operating system. I need more RAM and a bigger hard drive. The RAM was easy ... that just pops right in, no worries. Then I got all cocky and decided to order the new hard drive online and install it myself. Because I'm a smart, modern woman, right? Grrrrrrl Power! I went to graduate school ... surely I can follow some instructions. Um, not so much. Once I opened the box and took a serious look at those instructions I realized that there were, like, 43 separate steps to the process. One particular step involves removing 12 screws -- not all the same size -- and if they don't all go back in order in the right place, you're hosed. So on Monday, when I pick my computer up at the shop, I will consider the installation charge to be insurance against the loss of one of those screws. Sometimes smart, modern women just decide to write a check.

Things That Make Me Laugh Out Loud

I don't know how you, personally, feel about Thomas Friedman. Some of you may think he's a genius, others may think he's a gasbag. Either way, you have to admit that this is pretty hilarious. (It's a five-minute read ... picks up momentum toward the end...)

I Don't Get It ...

So, yes ... clearly it's sad that Sean Taylor from the Redskins got shot and killed in his home near Miami. Any time a 24-year-old person with a small child gets murdered it's tragic. (Or, you know ... any time anybody gets murdered.) I'm sure his family is suffering right now, and I wouldn't wish that on anyone. But I am mystified by all the people who are taking this so very personally, who want to go out to FedEx Field and put some flowers somewhere, or hold up a candle/dixie cup combo at a vigil, or kneel in prayer in front of his parking space (!?). Um, hello? The dude was not your friend. He was a guy who played ball for money (sometimes rudely from what I hear) and he happened to be wearing your colors, but I don't know, maybe if the Cowboys or some other team had ponied up more cash he'd be in a different jersey. Granted, I'm not a football fan. I had never actually heard of this guy before he got shot, and I don't think I could tell you the name of one other member of the team. But even when I think of famous people I do like, I can't imagine taking it so personally. For example, the Indigo Girls probably take up 2 or 3 slots on my Desert Island Discs list, but I don't feel like I have some strong meaningful connection to them. I wouldn't drive down to Atlanta and leave flowers at the Flying Biscuit if Emily Saliers got murdered in a home invasion (God forbid ...). I don't really feel that kind of connection to any public group, whether it's a team or a band or a political party/candidate ... I can't imagine going to a rally and holding up a sign with a candidate's name on it, or waiting at the stage door to get a musician's autograph. I just don't feel the need for that kind of public affirmation of my beliefs or feelings or identity. That makes me either a rugged individualist or a mild sociopath. I hope I don't sound like a heartless bitch about the poor dead guy, but I find this whole phenomenon very curious.

Food and Wine

My dad's visiting me, and I have had more wine in the past three days than I have in the past three months. He can drink me under the table!

I Didn't Run

Okay, so, I didn't run. I got up early on Sunday and re-did my speech in outline form and reviewed it three times while eating lunch. And it turned out fine. The people were nice, the crowd was interested and asked engaging questions. I talked a little too fast, and I wiggled around too much at the podium, but I'd say it was a solid B performance. I think I could get to an A- if I tried two or three more times. (God help me!) It was a very good trip otherwise ... the weather was beautiful the entire time, I had dinner with an old friend that I haven't seen in at least 10 years, and I went to a famous bookstore. Plus, I got a wicked cool bulkhead exit-row seat on the way back, so it was almost like being in first class. But it's always nice to be home -- even in my dingy little abode -- and now I'm in high gear with cleaning for my dad's Thanksgiving visit. Rock on.

When You Know It's Coming and You Can't Stop It

Tomorrow morning I am leaving to go to a Large Western City to give a presentation to a group for work. The group is planning the whole event around me and my presentation, and the public is invited. I have to speak coherently and comprehensibly in front of a bunch of strangers. I am throwing up a little just thinking about it. I just hate public speaking so much. Even though it's on a topic that I know about, even though I know that the people there are nice and want me to succeed, even though it's something I have to do for my job. None of those things make me dread this Sunday even less. All of those people are going to be looking at me! I'll be the center of attention, and every single person there will be waiting for me to make a mistake or thinking about how awful my clothes look or how my hair is too short and makes me look tacky. Aaaaaaaaargh! If I never post again after today you'll know that I gave in to the impulse to run.

Clearly I Am Bad At This

I suppose it's poor form to only post once every two weeks. My bad. Earlier this week the organization that I work for had our big fundraiser in New York at a very fancy, famous restaurant. Huge success ... not too many logistical problems, everyone seemed to have a good time, and there were plenty of checks written at the end of the night. It was much less stressful than last year, when we had a MEGA-celebrity honoree and things were ratcheted up to eleven. After that I spent the entire next day just hanging around in the city on what turned out to be a gorgeous day. I went to Park Slope, which I've always heard about but had never seen, and walked in Prospect Park. Loved it! What a great neighborhood ... I think I would much prefer that to Manhattan, it just seemed so much more accessible and regular. Not that it's any more affordable. I went into a ton of stores, but I didn't buy anything. (yay me! yay self control!) I ate some plain frozen yogurt at Bloomingdale's -- where I overheard a "cougar" explaining to her ESL friend what a booty call is -- and I had dinner with an old friend of mine down by Union Square. Overall, a very good day. Until ... I got back to work the next day and found out that one of my co-workers got hit by a car that same day while visiting with some friends in the Bronx! I still haven't talked to him directly, so I don't know all the details about what happened. He got checked out at the hospital and was released without being admitted, and he's home now and well enough to get around. Still, that is CRAZY.

It's a Boy!

Today I am celebrating to the fullest extreme! One of my oldest friends and his lovely wife, who have been waiting for some time to adopt, got a call yesterday that a baby boy has been born and can come home to them on Monday. There are still some legal hoops to jump through, and it's not final until the court says it is, but things look very likely that these two most wonderful people will have the baby they've been waiting for all this time. It's kind of crazy ... you go through all the processes and you wait and wait and then BOOM, you have a baby in two days! And let me tell you, that is one lucky kid. These people are smart and loving and educated and wise and sensible and open-minded and blessed with lovely extended family on both sides. Please send up a good wish for the three of them as they become a family.

Voting Our Values

I spent all of Friday and Saturday at the Family Research Council "Values Voter Summit" listening to the GOP candidates suck up to the Religious Right. (Friday it was 7:45am to 9pm. I came home and had a spoonful of Nutella and half a bottle of red wine for dinner ... that's the kind of day it was.) Huckabee was the darling of the crowd, and Mitt got a vibrant reception from the crowd, but then when we talked with people one-on-one there seemed to be a fair amount of vague doubt and mistrust. Nobody came right out and said "oh, he's a Mormon so he's not a real Christian" but I wouldn't be surprised if that's what they were thinking. He got a lot of votes in the straw poll, but his results were drastically less impressive if you only count the votes of the people who were actually there (not those who voted online). Rudy tried really hard to woo them, big with the message of "we may not always agree, but I will always be honest with you" and they clapped pretty loudly, but I think he only got about 4 votes in the straw poll. I'm not sure just the evangelical-right is large/generous enough to help Huckabee over his money/momentum problems, so I'm guessing he'll eventually drop out and all but the staunchest of the crowd will chant the phrase "shared values" quietly to themselves and get behind Mitt, given his financial prowess. I know that Dobson's trying to gin up interest in the "principled third party" approach, but that's just handing the election to Hillary. Most "WTF?!" thing I heard all weekend: Huckabee said that if we hadn't had the "holocaust of abortion" over the past 34 years then we wouldn't be having the immigration problems that we have today, because all those babies who would have been born would be here to fill out the workforce and we wouldn't need immigrant labor to get the job done. Seriously. He said that. The entire press area was just looking around at each other going "um ... what?" Second most "WTF?!" thing was a woman going on and on to us about how she SIMPLY. CAN'T. ABIDE. her son learning in school that there's no difference between a rectum and a vagina. Because last time she checked, a rectum is not a vagina, and nobody gets pregnant in the rectum. That's the hardest I've had to work in a long time to keep a straight face. If only the video tape hadn't run out, like, 90 seconds before!!!

El Rey's First Day at Home

So far, so good with the integration of the pack. Everybody's getting along ... no jealousy, no hostility, just a lot of milling around and sniffing. El Rey is very tiny, but he's setting his boundaries with Dog #1 and Dog #2, so that's good. His apparent talents include, but are not limited to: walking on a leash properly, dancing, shaking a paw, and responding to his name most of the time. We're almost certain that he was somebody's dog before. We wonder if El Rey realizes that he has hit the jackpot.

True Story

My colleague took this photo outside a Friendly's not too far from me. A very Friendly's.

Approved!

El Rey is coming home on Wednesday! We will officially be outnumbered ...

Adoption Pending!

Housemate went to visit El Rey today, and he has an "Adoption Pending" sign on his kennel. That's a very good sign!! On an unrelated note, I just stepped out onto my back patio to put down a doormat and I nearly ran right over a HUGE raccoon. It just stared at me, and of course I ran back in the house like a big freak. It meandered all over the yard digging around and poking its nose into the holes, then it climbed the back fence and went away. Dog #1 and Dog #2, who have French doors in their room with plenty of glass at eye-level, didn't even notice.

Getting Our Hopes Up

Dog #1 and Dog #2 might soon have a stepbrother. Housemate is making an adoption application at the local shelter for this precious, scruffy little thing named El Rey. ("The King") Doesn't he look like a wise old soul? If this were the movies, some wizard would come along and un-do the spell and an old man named Morty would pop out and complain about his sciatica. It's not a done deal yet. Still some hoops to jump through, so we're trying not to get our hopes up. But yeah ... we've pretty much already gotten our hopes up. So keep your fingers crossed, will you?

TiVo Update

Now that we've gotten a few weeks into the season it's time for some TiVo adjustments. I'm taking Chuck and Bionic Woman off the list ... just couldn't get into either one of them. I thought I would adore Bionic Woman, since I was such a 7-year-old SuperFan of the original. But this one just isn't happening for me. And Chuck was okay, but ... meh. LOVE Dirty Sexy Money, though. That one's definitely a keeper. I'm still nursing a Peter Krause crush from Six Feet Under. (Narm!) I'm sort of bored with all the real estate shows right now, so they'll have to go on hiatus, but I won't rule out a comeback if the whim strikes me. Oh, and I tried the new Kelsey Grammar/Patricia Heaton show, but it was just a dreadful 22-minute slog through a bunch of obvious jokes (hot woman is a whore, fat man is goofy, sports guy is a lout, etc.) and I require more than that. Anyway, I don't need any more comedy in my lineup if I have The Office and 30 Rock. What am I missing?

Bullet Points, Y'all.

Things that happened last weekend that I didn't blog about:

• I got a $50 ticket for letting my car inspection lapse.
• I got a $100 fine (plus the reinspection fee) on top of the ticket.
• While rushing to the car inspection place, I sideswiped a parked armored car truck in the drive-through of a Burger King. (That's going to be another $1,000 if you're keeping track. I am.)
• Dog #1 was frighteningly sick Saturday evening ... threw up numerous times, paced and trembled for hours throughout the night, and went outside and stretched out in the middle of the backyard at 3am. I spent 30 minutes sitting there with her in the wet grass thinking she was poisoned and was going to die. (She did not.)
• I baked a birthday cake for my cousin from scratch. The frosting alone took 3 sticks of butter.
• I invented a whole new dish with spinach and cheese and crescent rolls -- yummers!

What I am going to blog about instead:

This is my favorite news picture of the week! Roh Moo Hyun looks like he just stepped out of the corner office, and Kim Jong Il looks like George's dad from Seinfeld. (Alternative interpretation: The dutiful younger son takes his retarded older brother out to lunch at Denny's.)

Why My Dad is THE Best

Friday night, as I was getting ready to leave my dad's house early the next morning, he decided that it would be too boring for me to make that long drive all by myself. He packed a bag and bought a one-way return plane ticket and came back with me. And get this: he drove the entire way (all 12 hours and 15 minutes), and he paid for all the gas. Instead of a long, boring ride with only the dogs to talk to, I got a full-day chauffeured ride with good company and conversation, and I still have enough money left to pay for my yoga class this month. I love my daddy for many, many reasons, but this is the one I choose to highlight today.

What Happens When You Try to Be Nice

One of my old, dear friends is an elementary teacher in a very troubled public school here in the city where my dad lives. Knowing that I would be here for a few days, my friend invited me to visit her class and tell them about my job. (My job is only moderately comprehensible/interesting to inner-city fifth-graders, but the point is to expose them to people who have higher education and careers and broad-spectrum lives outside the few-square-miles of their 'hood.) So today she checks with her principal and her principal tells her no, we don't want any visitors. My friend explains to me that this is odd, because similar visits have taken place in the past. For whatever reason, though, my assistance is not wanted. It puts my friend in an awkward position, because she has already invited me, and now she has to uninvite me. But also, the whole thing just rubs me the wrong way. I'm trying to take time out of my vacation to do something civic-minded to help this school, because it takes a village, right? Apparently not. I hope that all the other (relatively) wealthy, educated people who take an interest in this school aren't treated the same way. It's not like I was going to donate a million dollars next week, or magically have the political power to get them the resources they need, or wave a wand and raise their No Child Left Behind test scores. But it's not outside the realm of possibility that I might be in a position to help one day, even if it's only as a tutor or a volunteer. And instead of thinking, "Wow, what a great place to focus my efforts!" I'm going to be thinking "These people have already told me that they don't want my help. I'll go elsewhere." Way to go, Principal Margie. I wish you the best of luck in fixing your fucked-up school.

753 Miles

After a 12.25-hour drive, commencing at a brutal 5:15 a.m., I am sitting at home watching TV with my daddy! I had a BBQ sandwich from my very favorite place for dinner, I'm making plans to see some old friends later in the week, and I'm going to see my grandmother (always maybe for the last time, right?). Plus, my dad's going to pay to get my car detailed. Sweet!

Tim Gunn, You Disappoint Me

An all-white designer outfit for dog-walking? Really? With the matching white leather bag? Tim Gunn, have you ever actually walked a dog?

Plumbing Hates Me

How do I know that plumbing hates me? These are some of the signs:

• Came home today to find water dripping from the kitchen ceiling, where apparently an old pipe leak has re-sprung. The 8" hole in the ceiling, cut to accommodate the previous repair, will now have to be expanded to a 12" hole in order to get rid of waterlogged drywall. So we'll have an even larger classy plastic access panel there.
• The toilet won't stop running, and sometimes there is hot water in the bowl. I am not making that up. Water so warm that it condenses on the inside of the lid and makes the seat all damp (ick!) and you can feel the heat if you put your hand down near the surface of the water. I don't know much about toilets, but I don't think that's right.
• The A/C has been leaking intermittently, making water run into the living room every once in a while. (Thank heavens for cement floors ...)
• The city water department had to rip up our street last week to replace lead pipes with the non-poisonous kind, which also involved cutting a big hole in our wall to change out some pipes that connect the house to the street. (Added value: the first day they started digging they broke a gas line, so I got home from work to find fire trucks and police tape all over my street. Stellar.)

I bet if I had a baby it would fall down a well.

Not Exactly Sam and Toby

Check out the most fabulous-slash-gross article in The Atlantic this month ... Matthew Scully, one of George W. Bush's former speechwriters, eviscerates Michael Gerson, formerly the high-powered Christian wonderkid of the administration's communications shop, currently an op-ed writer for the Washington Post. (Yes, this is all very inside baseball, but my heart wants what it wants.) Gerson's name may sound familiar to you, because you probably read that he was the "moral compass" of the Bush administration who wrote W's post-9/11 greatest hits. He also came up with the phrase "soft bigotry of low expectations"and tweaked David Frum's "axis of hatred" into the more mellifluous "axis of evil" for the 2002 State of the Union. Well, Matthew Scully would beg to differ. Scully and John McConnell were Gerson's colleagues (or staffers, depending on whom you ask), and Scully's diatribe in The Atlantic offers a blow-by-blow of Gerson's efforts to keep his colleagues' names off speeches, claim sole credit for group work in conversations with The Man, and sell the news media on the image of a broody, artistic genius with a legal pad and a uni-ball gel. I certainly won't ever know who wins this argument. Scully claims that White House archives can prove the speeches were a team effort, but Gerson would no doubt answer that his "chief speechwriter" title left him just lofty enough to own his claims. And really, isn't this whole thing unseemly public fighting over glory that traditionally is meant to go to the President himself? By custom, the speechwriter is invisible. (Did Ted Sorenson claim public credit for "Ask not what your country can do for you ..."? Um, no.) You could make the case that Scully's detailed public whining about Gerson's behavior is, itself, just as tacky as the original transgression. But for some reason I just LOVE IT! These men who staff the President, who essentially run the country and by extension The Free World, are petty and jealous and backstabbing, just like the people from my high school. Presidential speechwriting is another version of that annoying group project in 12th grade honors English, where I did 3/4 of the work and a stoner kid named Jimmy got an A out of it. Only I never outed Jimmy in the school newspaper. This knowledge should make me angry and disillusioned and a tiny bit frightened for the future of our country. But for some reason it just makes me laugh. P.S. These random Internet people have a funny Dick Van Dyke show interpretation of the whole thing.

Miss South Carolina Works at Radio Shack!

I went to take back the defective headphones this evening, and the girl behind the counter (probably high school or early college) was asking me for all sorts of information to process the return. She asked for my city, which I told her. Then she asked for my state, which is pretty ridiculous if you think about it, because the name of my "state" is in my city. Then when I repeated it she looked at me blankly and said "Um ... so what do I put on here where it says state?" Oh my. At least I got my money back. (And some $12.99 headphones from CVS that work just fine.)

Things That Suck

Sony MDR-NC6 headphones. That's what sucks. You know how you put the little battery in there, and it's supposed to make a gentle hiss that cancels out the other noise around you so you can hear your music better? Well, Sony has built a special feature into the MDR-NC6. Instead of a gentle hiss, they make a LOUD HOWLING FEEDBACK noise that changes pitch but never stops, and your ears hurt a little when you're done. At least I'm not going to have to wander around for a half hour this time looking for the Radio Shack to return them.

Headphones? check.

2:45 after takeoff: The ding dings to signal that we have reached 10,000 feet. It is now okay to use approved electronic devices. 2:46 after takeoff: One arm of my headphones snaps clean off while I am attempting to call up a podcast of On the Media. 2:47 after takeoff: I decide not to contemplate how dorky I look holding the broken headphones-arm up to my ear, like Granny Clampett making a phone call to Miss Jane over at the bank. Because I have left my book at home, and I am physically incapable of sitting on a plane for even an hour and a half without some kind of distraction. So, upon arrival at Fancy Hotel in Tony Suburb of A Big City, I decide to wander around and get some new headphones. Working in a roughly clockwise direction, I walk up and down the blocks all around the hotel. Expensive boutiquey clothes? check. Ice cream with gummy bears mushed into it? check. Real estate offices? check. Wig shop? check. (wig shop? really?) Headphones? Not so much with the check. Sky turning dark and threatening, wind picking up, Barnes and Noble, Pier One, Potbelly, LA Fitness ... no headphones. Giving up after 30 minutes, going back to the hotel on approach from the other direction, I find a CVS, a Radio Shack and a music store all on the same block, right around the corner from the doorman. I got the Sony noise-cancelling ones, because they were on sale, and they will get their test tomorrow morning on the train.

I Am Not Imelda

While certain people I know are at the beach enjoying themselves (jealous!), I'm going to A Big City tomorrow for a four-day conference of pointy-headed intellectuals who love data-mining. Wheeeeee! The annoying part is that I have to stay far out in the 'burbs and train into downtown every day, because I didn't decide until the very last minute that this trip would be worth my while, and all the conference hotels were full. The cool part is that I Pricelined a way-fancy hotel that normally would be far above my budget for work travel. Go me! For four nights I will get to sleep in a king-size bed with fresh sheets daily and no dog hair. That's huge. And don't even get me started on the fancy tub ... truly a luxury for shower-only-apartment girl. But I have to make a vow that I will not spend any money on shoes this time. During both of my last two long work trips, I've stumbled across massive shoe sales and brought home multiple pairs. (I'm talking about Dansko sandals for 75 percent off and Bjorn wedges for $11! They practically paid me to take them.) So I think I will spend money on deep-dish pizza (yay food per diem) and the obligatory airport Cinnabon, and that's it. Jesus will be proud.

I Might Actually Be a Liar

I always tell people that I don't watch much TV, but there sure are a lot of things on that TiVo list on the bottom right of the page. I might have to re-think either my media consumption or my story.

Ta Da!

Thanks to Em at What Went Wrong for a great title! (An homage to a song by St. Vincent) I am now joining the party. I will stop posting anonymously to Em's blog, and to Lumpyhead and Rocket Garage and Mommy At Work. So, in honor of my clever blog title ... what did I spend on today?

• a 2.75 gallon automatic dog watering system (Le Bistro) so Dog 1 and Dog 2 will stop waking me up in the middle of the night to fill the sad little tupperware that I was using as a bedroom water bowl
• a Michael Graves dustmop to further my vain attempts to control the August shedding problem of Dog 1 and Dog 2
• rawhide roll-ups filled with unspecified shiny pink meat goo
• 5 different kinds of cheese at Whole Foods -- for a party, because I love me some cheese and I want to share with the world
• new boxes of baking soda for the fridge and freezer

What did I not spend on today? Any of the 75 items of clothes I tried on, all of which looked hideous and reminded me why I hate shopping for clothes and wish we could all wear baggy plaid uniforms like I did at the precious girls' school I went to as a child. My next project is to find somebody around here who can sew and get her/him to make me 10 or 15 really simple mix&match outfits that actually fit me well. Then I'm going to get rid of all my other clothes and my "thing" will be that I wear this simple, streamlined wardrobe every day. I bet that would be expensive, and I double bet that it would be worth it.