Snapshots from 'Toga 2005

As you may know from Smelmooo already, every summer we head up to Saratoga for a weekend; we usually arrive on Friday afternoon, have some dinner with whoever else is in town at a reasonable hour that night, and then set out early Saturday for the racetrack, where we spend the day eating and drinking and chatting and occasionally betting and watching the races. It's just a mellow weekend that I always enjoy, and this year was no exception.

Smelmooo and I headed out early on Friday, dropped the Tuck off at the resort, and visited Allison and her and Adam's new baby, who is super-adorable. Smelmooo and I both have been pretty swamped and exhausted from work lately, so we were just so happy to have the day to ourselves, with nothing planned but to make our way to our hotel in Albany at some point. It was a wonderful weekend, as always; here are a few highlights:

-- When we were about 40 minutes from the hotel, driving down the highway, Smelmooo said, "Hey! Isn't that El Salvador Chris?" (who is my oldest friend in the world, who got that nickname at our wedding, where there were at least 6 people named Chris; as of today, though, he's more accurately D.C. Chris, because he's moving, but anyway...). And so it was; he was on his way to a wedding in upstate New York, and was driving right beside us, so we both pulled over and chatted for a few minutes. I love that kind of thing, and I'm never observant enough to notice when someone I know is in the car next to me, so yay Smelmooo and Chris for being better about that kind of thing.


-- We ate dinner with Mike and Nicole at a restaurant called Firkin & Fox, which offered traditional pub fare and $2 "Yanklings" during the Yankee game, as opposed to the $3.50 Yuenglings we had upon our arrival. In addition to fantastic outdoor seating in perfect weather, the restaurant had the cleanest bathrooms I've ever seen in a restaurant (a sign in the restroom said they're committed to having the best Firkin bathrooms around, or something like that), which delighted me, even though it was nearly impossible to get the automatic-sensor paper towel dispenser to work.

-- I bet $5 on my first race, meaning I get to cross another item (specifically, #35) off of my 101 in 1001. Doing so brought me good luck, as I won my biggest race of the day with that bet, clearing $18.75 (I was up about $10 for the whole day, which is fine by me).

-- Every year, the guys in our group drink a cup of Saratoga Spring water, which is rank and sulfuric and just BLECH, and I take their picture; the women drink champagne from plastic cups and have our pictures taken during our toast. This year, Matt's wife Chris transported the champagne (which she for some reason calls "shampoo" -- is this an Aussie thing? I have no idea) in a plastic container, because the racetrack people have gotten to be real sticklers about checking coolers for glass. It looked exactly like urine, which made me not want to drink it, but it was so cold and perfectly yummy that I had three cups of it and was kind of trashed there for a couple of races.

-- Matt's parents were good enough to host us for a post-race barbecue, which they also did last year, so the seven of us who'd been at the track stopped at the grocery store on the way back to the house. We got through with remarkable efficiency, and decided that in additon to burgers and hotdogs and such, we must have a rotisserie chicken and ice cream. We got to the ice cream aisle and were faced with about a hundred options, and I figured it'd take us 20 minutes to make a decision. Matt, however, made a beeline for this giant bucket of vanilla fudge, and we all declared it perfect, and we were out of the store in probably 10 minutes flat, all told.

-- On the way home this morning, we stopped off at the hospital to see our new niece; it was the first time the Smelmooo met her, and I so enjoyed watching them together. He held her like a pro, and she was so content lying there and stretching out her long limbs in his arms.

All in all, a fab weekend; I'm hoping to finish Harry Potter before I head back to reality and work tomorrow.

And baby makes 19

Yesterday afternoon, my brother and sister-in-law welcomed their new daughter, Sophia, into the world. She's a cute little thing, skinny but long, with huge hands and feet and a thatch of dark hair on her head. She has an excellent set of lungs, which she demonstrated eagerly while the doctor poked and prodded her, as we watched through the window of the nursery. The doctor gave us a big thumbs-up, and a nurse put a picture of Sophia's brother and sister into her bassinet.

Sophia's my third niece, and four nephews also preceded her, but each time one of these little people enters the world, I'm just filled with awe and excitement and relief and happiness. Seeing my brother and sister-in-law so overcome with pure joy and exhaustion and gratitude is just amazing. I left the hospital before Sophia's brother and sister arrived to meet her, but I imagine that was a beautiful sight, assuming my four-year-old nephew remembered the "no jumping on mommy for a few days" rule.

Sophia's name hadn't been decided before she was born, first, because they didn't know she would be a girl, and second, because my brother and sister-in-law were divided on which name to pick. When their first daughter was born, she arrived late, and much larger than the doctors had anticipated, so it ended up being an incredibly long, scary, complicated birth. My brother had wanted to name her Lauren; his wife, Julia. And so she was Julia, because after all that my sister-in-law went through, my brother figured the least he could do was let her name the kid.

This time around, it was a scheduled C-section, to prevent the kinds of complications that surrounded Julia's birth, so you'd figure there was a level playing field, and maybe my brother would finally get his Lauren if they had a girl.

Nope. Lost again, and Sophia it is. And he likes the name, as do I, and I think he probably cares less about the name than his wife does, but I can't help feeling a little bad that he keeps getting steamrolled on this. But the other part of me feels like since the kid gets his last name, it's only fair that she get final say on the first name, and I think that the Tangent-Smelmooo household will have to adopt that same rule for any future canine additions.

May you get what you wish for

So I realize that's a grammatically incorrect title, but it's an ancient curse of some sort, so I'm leaving it as is.

Anyway, the other day I found a great pair of pants at the mall, but they weren't available in my size. I went to the same store at another mall, and still no luck. I decided I'd try to find them online, but then stopped myself, because maybe these pants are simply not meant to be.

About a year ago, I enlisted Minnams as my personal shopper as I searched for the perfect wedding rehearsal dress. We started off at Nordstrom, where I, just for fun, tried on this incredibly overpriced dress, just to get it out of my system, because I was sure that I'd hate it on me even though I loved it on the rack.

And of course, it was perfect on me; it was THE dress. It fit beautifully, the color didn't wash me out, it was not quite plain and not quite flashy. But it was still a million dollars, and I simply couldn't justify spending that much on a dress, because I'd already used up my one free "I'm only getting married once; I can overspend on a dress!" rationalization on the actual wedding dress. So back on the rack it went, and of course nothing else the rest of the day measured up to the perfect Tocca dress from Nordstrom's (although a trip to Cold Stone Creamery made the day feel successful nonetheless).

So then Minnams introduced me to the beautiful world of Bluefly, and I checked at least once a week to see whether my rehearsal dress was available at half price, because then I could justify it, and I kept going back to Nordstrom's, hoping for a sale there. No luck.

I finally found another dress by the same designer on Bluefly, one that I ended up really liking, and that I've worn several times since. But just for kicks, about a month after our wedding, I went back on Bluefly and there was my beautiful, meant-to-be rehearsal dress, at deep discount.

And when it arrived on my doorstep a few days later, I was so happy; I tried it on right away, ran to the full-length mirror, and HATED it. The material looked thin and cheap, it gathered funnily in weird places, it was totally unflattering. I am so loathe to return things I've ordered online or from a catalog, because I just find it to be such a hassle, but this went straight back in the box, no turning back.

My sister recently had a longer-standing, bigger dream crushed: for ages, she has been saying that all she wants is an eternal lap pool. Now that she and her husband have finally finished medical school and residencies and have jobs where they're actually paid well to be doctors, they bought a house, and she went to try out an eternal lap pool that they'd add to the new home. And, of course, she hated it. It only worked well if you maintain a constant speed, which she neither can nor wants to do, and the reality of it was just nowhere close to the ideal in her mind. So now they're getting a canoe instead, which I expect is considerably cheaper than a lap pool, but still.

I think that this curse of getting what you wish for is why I've been scared to find a new job; the one I have is pretty darn good (and I'm here for at least another year-ish, anyway, since my new job here is still pretty new, and I'm not quite ready to abandon it), and what if my dream job ends up sucking the life out of me? In my high school yearbook, we did a poll of what jobs people hoped to have in 10 years, and mine was to be a writer for Sesame Street. I actually applied for an internship with them in college, but was told I submitted my application too late and that the position had been filled, but hadn't thought much about it since that time.

Recently, though, I met someone who'd long worked for Sesame, and I told her about my dream deferred. And she said, "Oh, I still know plenty of people there; I'd be glad to send them your resume." And I just froze, because I'd heard her talk about the bureaucracy and the politics of the place, and I just thought I wouldn't be able to stand it if I actually got a job there and it didn't live up to my expectations, which it never could.

I know this is sort of pathological, and luckily I don't -- yet, anyway -- seem to have let this type of thinking affect other kinds of decisions in life, I guess because I'm not generally a head-in-the-clouds, pie-in-the-sky kind of person. Sometimes I think I lean toward cynicism and pessimism, maybe so I'm not disappointed when the perfect dress looks awful, or the dream job sucks.

Although, in reality, it took me a good couple of years before my wide-eyed wonder and enthusiasm about my current job faded, and I still like it even though I've realized it's not perfect. Maybe the trick is just need to modify one's expectations along the way, because it has got to be awfully depressing always thinking that this is as good as it gets, no matter how good it is now.

An open letter to Kate Bosworth

Dear Kate,

I loved you in Blue Crush, and even in Win a Date With Tad Hamilton. You're not a super-star actress, but you are so cute, you have a lovely dog, and I'm sure you'll continue to get decent roles in so-so films. You're going to be Lois Lane! You do not need Orlando.

After months of this on-again, off-again with him, and now this latest "on-again...but he's not so much into you" shot in US Weekly, followed by all kinds of reports that Orlando has been canoodling with greedy-not-grateful Scarlett Johansson, and now is Sienna's boytoy of choice to show she doesn't care about Jude Law anymore, she's moved on: please, please see the light and get over him.

And truly get over him. None of this Orlando-is-my-life, I can't sleep or, more importantly, eat without him, so I will waste away into a wisp of skin and hipbones until he comes back to me. Cut. Him. Off. He's not worth it. He's adorable to look at, but it's just not in the stars for the two of you. Find someone who appreciates your six kinds of smiles, or choose yourself over any man, but please, retain some level of dignity and say goodbye, and then eat a cheeseburger.

Love and kisses,
Tangentwoman

Scenes from a Chicagoland taxicab

So, as I mentioned, I spent some time in Chicago the other day. The ride to my downtown hotel from O'Hare airport was a long one, but I was keeping myself occupied by looking out the window. Usually I'll chitchat with the driver, especially if he's friendly, as this guy was, but I was sharing the cab with two strangers, one of whom was sitting upfront with the driver, and the dynamics were just a little complicated, so I mostly was quiet and just took in the scenery, which included a whole boatload of billboards.

Although I'd never go so far as to do it, I understand the inclination described in "Eats, Shoots and Leaves" to hold up an apostrophe to correct the billboard for the movie "Two Weeks Notice," and I cringe when ads or signs are incorrect. I used to work in an ad agency, so I'm also a little snobbish about ads that are particularly cluttered or unclear. For example, there's a billboard somewhere along Route 1 that I think is to raise awareness about Tourette's Syndrome, but there are so many competing words and images that it's impossible to tell, even sitting in slow-moving traffic, what the heck the "TS" actually stands for.

Anyway, as the cab moved closer to the downtown area, we passed a huge sign announcing "Grand Open - Kohl's" and another touting something -- I can't even remember what -- as "The choice for choosey people." I've never been a big fan of "choosy," but really -- at least spell it correctly if you have to use it.

The best billboard on the trip downtown was one promoting mass transit, I think; these were placed strategically on the overpasses near the most congested areas. Also on the overpasses were remarkably accurate estimates of how badly traffic was backed up; digital signs told us how many minutes it ought to take us to reach the downtown area given the current traffic conditions. For some reason, that information, particularly when it proved accurate, was incredibly reassuring; I wondered if it'd stress me out to think "God, 38 more minutes until we get to the hotel!" but I think the not-knowing is worse. Acting Governor Codey, please look into replicating this idea during the next six months.

The billboard that really got to me, though, was one that featured a giant picture of a woman's smiling face, alongside this copy: "I know nothing calms a stormy night like a friendly voice. That's my promise. That's our way. ConEd."

That is the crappiest promise ever.

"Smelmooo, I know nothing would make you happier than for me to rub your feet every night. That's my promise."

"Boss, I know that nothing would please you more than for me to take care of that report. That's my promise."

"Friend, I know you it would make your bachelorette party much more fun if I were your designated driver that night. That's my promise."

I'm not promising anything! How is expressing my knowledge of something making me in any way accountable? It's absurd. Why should I trust a company that understands that I'd appreciate it if their customer service people weren't total blowholes, but makes no commitment to ensure it happens? Yeesh.

I'd like to call on Dudley Moore, Daryl Hannah and their fellow "Crazy People" for a sequel. Truth in advertising! "Volvos: they're boxy, but they're good. And it's better to be safe than sexy, especially with all those new diseases going around."

See? Just be honest about it, and people like me will respect you for it. "ConEd: our customer service may suck, but you're pretty well stuck with us, so there." That is a billboard I'd appreciate.

Blending in

On Thursday night, my boss gave a big speech, so I went with her to Chicago to be her "body person" -- basically to make sure that she knows who's who and what's what, to handle the follow-up requests that always come from the big line of people who wait around to talk to her after a big speech, and to intervene politely when a particular person in said line is talking her up for too long.

I've played this role for her probably a dozen times during the last few years, so I know the drill pretty well; mostly, I just try to blend in to the background until I'm needed, and then I disappear just as quickly.

I was figuring that that strategy wouldn't work as well the other night, though, as I appeared to be (because you can't tell just by looking) one of about five white people in the crowd of 1,000.

This struck Minnams particularly funny; as she (correctly, really) pointed out, I'm pretty much the whitest white girl around. Honestly, until last night, I had no idea that there's a Negro National Anthem, which was beautiful, but I was the only one in the room who didn't know the words. There was also a round of Kumbaya, literally, which initially struck me funny because I tend to use "singing Kumbaya" as a disparaging figure of speech, but here it felt right -- not forced or phony, just heartfelt.

So although I felt conspicuous in my whiteness, my experience at this meeting was really no different from others where I don't know anyone; my differentness mattered in my own head, but not objectively, I think. The event itself was more boisterous than most of the long boring sessions I sit through, but boy was it loooooong; my boss didn't start speaking until half an hour after the whole session was supposed to have ended, and I was incredibly grateful when I was finally able to escape to my room for some dinner at 9:45. The glamorous life of a body person...

The happy dance

I so desperately do not want to be one of those people who is all about her dog, but I have to express my enormous relief that Tucker has finally been declared worm-free.

This is huge for several reasons: (1) he's healthy, finally; (2) he can get neutered, finally; and (3) Smelmooo and I can stop feeling like terrible pet owners, finally. I literally was sweating and having palpitations as I was dialing the vet's office to get the results, and steeling myself not to cry if it was bad news. I just didn't know what I'd do if he was still sick; it seemed like there was nothing else we could do, and that we'd just have to do another six weeks of treatment.

But it was all good news, and I hung up the phone and said, "Tucker! You're worm-free! Hooray!" and I threw my hands up over my head, as I do when I'm excited and happy about something (you'll see plenty of photos of me doing this, particularly during our honeymoon, when part of the Smelmooo's self-described "genius" often involved, "Hey, honey! Run up the steps of the Acropolis, turn around, and do your 'Yay!' pose while I take your picture.").

And Tucker did the same thing, up on his hind legs, paw up in the air, so we were dancing around the living room together, celebrating his newfound good health.

I called Smelmooo (today he's in D.C., as I was yesterday; we are lately ships passing in the night, sadly), and he cheered along with us, and when I told him Tucker was cheering, too, Smelmooo said, "Yeah, for now. Wait 'til he figures out what they're gonna do to him now that he's healthy enough for the big snip."

An excellent point, but for now we'll just revel in the good news of the day.

Not quite a guest blog

Many of you are familiar with the Smelmooo's guest blogs, written from Tucker's point of view. If you like those, you may also enjoy this piece, My Dog is Tom Cruise, in this week's New Yorker.

An all-consuming weekend

One of my college roommates was always commenting disdainfully on other people's "conspicuous consumption," particularly during the semester we were both taking a sociology course in which we read "The McDonaldization of America," which was a really great book. Anyway, she was one of those people who was completely hypocritical about this kind of thing, one second ranting about how obsessed people are with things and denouncing the evils wreaking havoc on our environment, and then putting on her Ray-Bans and hopping into her Jeep Cherokee to drive a block from our on-campus apartment to her class because she was too lazy to walk.

Anyway. Her voice was in my head a fair amount this weekend, as the Smelmooo and I figured out how to use our new DVR (not TiVo, so I guess we score points for not getting sucked into the brand name) and waited in line at midnight for the new Harry Potter book, and I decided that, after not even six years, it's time for a new car for me.

This last one came about as I was getting ready to leave the ATM yesterday afternoon on my way to Shari's house; the Smelmooo and Mags went to Atlantic City to play poker, and Shari and I had a hot lunch date at Panera, followed by some fabulous bowling. Those of you who've bowled with me know that I'm completely inelegant, doing a little hop as I release the ball, but I must say that the woman in the lane next to us was even quirkier, doing sort of a gymnast's pre-vault-salute-to-the-judges as she prepared to release. Fascinating.

Anyway, I finished up my transaction, rolled up my window and...UUUHHHHRRRRRRRT...nope. Stuck, 3/4 of the way up.

Crap.

Hit "up" again.

WHUURRRRRRRRRRRR. Nothing.

Down?
NO! NO! I DIDN'T MEAN THAT!

WHURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR...CRASH!

FUUUUUUHHHHHHHHH.....

Bye-bye, window. Disappeared. Gone. Trapped between the inside and the outside of my driver's side door.

Oh, look. A giant raincloud, 30 miles from home, on a Sunday afternoon. Fabulous.

This same thing happened two summers ago, to my passenger side window. I had to take it back to the VW dealer THREE TIMES to get it fixed. Bastards.

Anyway, onward to Shari's house, because really, what else was there to do? I called her from around the corner, and I'm sure she expected me to be calling to tell her I was running super-late, rather than to ask how she was fixed for duct tape and Saran Wrap.

Ever the trooper, Shari helped me fashion a shield for the window using a Hefty garbage bag and scotch tape. It held up remarkably well during our afternoon of eating, bowling, and more eating (truly, the weekend was ALL about consumption, from Friday dinner out at a local seafood restaurant to Seth's mad grilling skills and Leslie's phenomenal baking skills on Saturday, to a giant pasta dinner as we watched The Godfather that night, it was all about the eating), keeping my car and its contents both dry and unstolen, but the Hefty bag was not so conducive to the drive home on the highway. So off I went, window hole uncovered, through the patches of thunderstorms and wind, managing to stay relatively dry, and then reaffixing the Hefty bag upon my return, because we have so much crap in our garage that I simply could not be bothered to move it all and park inside.

Miraculously, my car was perfectly dry this morning, and was fixed before I made it home from D.C. this afternoon. Bless my local mechanic. Love him.

Anyway, all of this brings me to a plea, dear readers: I need your help in escaping this toxic relationship I have with my car. No matter how badly it treats me, I just keep going back, remembering the good old days when it was new and everything ran smoothly without any effort at all, convincing myself we can recapture those precious days if only I keep up my routine maintenance and give in to the occasional tantrum. Please, help me break the cycle, and recommend me a good car other than my beloved but bad-for-me Jetta.

Out: SUVs, Mini Coopers, Buicks, Saabs, Lexuses (Lexi?)
On the table: anything else

Tell me what you love and why. Please, help me to continue to be a proud American, a conspicuous consumer.

A child unlike other girls

I heard that the actress who played Vicki the Robot on Small Wonder died of a drug overdose. True? Urban legend, like Cindy Brady dying in a car crash back in the '80s?

That was such an awful show, but every time I think of Edie McClurg I envision her as Mrs. Poole.

WAIT. I've been wrong, all these years. She was Mrs. Poole on the Hogan Family, not on Small Wonder. But it's basically the same character, right? Nosy neighbor with the funny voice? No?

I told you it's not my day.

A happy night and a crappy day

On Wednesday night, some lovely serendipity landed me in Philadelphia at the Khyber with my friend Jenni, her fab boyfriend Matt, and a bunch of their friends, many of whom are members of the band the Red Stanleys, which played at Khyber on Wednesday.

So, less than 2 months after I decided I'm way too old for this, I went out to a bar on a school night and just had a great time; I don't get to see Jenni as often as I'd like, and it's great getting to know Matt better, and to see him and Jenni together, and to get to know their friends (hi, Abby!). Plus, I got to stay the night at Jenni's apartment, since I had to go to a work thing nearby yesterday morning, which is always great because she lives around the corner from a Cosi (and also apparently a great diner, but we've still not made it there for breakfast), which is fantastic the morning after a night out on the town. And it was just fun to be out, having a few beers, listening to some good music and hanging out with fun people who live near enough to each other to hang out on a weeknight, which made me a tiny bit envious, because although Metuchen is home to a restaurant with good music on Wednesday nights, Metuchen and the surrounding towns is not home to many of our friends.

Anyway, I functioned quite well yesterday despite a relative lack of sleep (I woke up early and started reading The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, which I'm really liking, even though I'd just like something totally upbeat and fluffy between this and The Kite Runner; yeesh).

But today? I am crabby, crabby, crabby. My nearly-perfect assistant caught me before I had caffeine in me and I was bitchy and irritable and short with her for no reason and she was afraid to come back to my office for the rest of the morning (and even though I apologized and was later on my best behavior, she's still lying low. Smart, probably). I've dropped the f-bomb about 20 times, largely as a modifier for "idiot" and many worse unladylike terms I normally reserve for Jersey drivers who nearly kill me on the road. I am so desperately looking forward to the weekend, and just the end of the work day, which seems impossibly far away and ripe with potential for more ugly moments.

I'm trying to put all of this into context and learn from the personality assessment I did last night (along with my new job, I get a few sessions with a "leadership coach," whose role is basically to help me become less of a stressed-out control freak and more of a hard-ass when it comes to managing other people), which plopped me firmly in the ISTJ category (which, for those of you not in the know, stands for Introvert-Sensing-Thinking-Judging). And on most of these, I was relatively balanced, exhibiting only slightly stronger tendencies in one area than another. But boy, did I land SQUARELY in the "judging" category. Even higher than Smelmooo did when he took the test with me (he kept saying I'm 80% more Judging, and I trust his math). Anyway, I'm trying to be positive and see the value that Perceivers can bring me in the workplace, and not just become incredibly impatient and wring their freaking necks, but I've only had two sessions with my coach so far, so there's not been too much progress yet.

Decisions, decisions

My senior year of high school, I was forced to take an honors physics class because I was a math nerd taking calculus, and it was either honors physics or AP Biology, and I was not going to dissect a cat, as much as I dislike cats generally. Anyway, our teacher was this squat little man who looked like the Amazing Mumford. He was a really smart guy -- one of a handful of our teachers who was a Ph.D. -- but his key downfall that he was completely intimidated by his roomful of 17-year-old girls, and we all knew it.

I felt horrible for this poor guy, who'd totally cave when someone raised her hand the day before -- or even the day of -- a scheduled quiz or test and said, "You know, I just really don't think we feel prepared for this test; I really think we should delay until we all have a better handle on velocity." And he'd be like, "Welll....okay...we'll go over it again, and have the test next week, if that's what everyone wants." It was awful, truly.

And when my group, with wide-eyed, not-quite-but-a-little-bit-feigned innocence, asked why he objected to our science fair poster on Lithotripsy (a technique to break up kidney stones and gallstones and stuff), subtitled, "It'll shock your rocks off." (ultimately amended to "It'll shock your socks off," which was not nearly as fun).

Anyway, during those endless classes where people weren't really struggling to learn, but instead were just feeling very pleased with themselves for manipulating this inexperienced, socially awkward science teacher, a group of girls sat in the back playing "Would you rather...?" There are numerous names for and variations of this game, but basically, you're faced with two horrendous alternatives, and need to pick which, by a hair, you'd rather endure.

For example, the big stumper for me would be, "Would you rather be lying in a ditch covered with mustard, or locked in a room with an endless loop of that Suzanne Vega song "Times Diner" playing?"

In the movie So I Married an Axe Murderer, which I inexplicably love, there's a scene where they're playing "what's worse?" in which one of the participants totally doesn't understand the game, and Harriet says, "What's worse? Going to your favorite restaurant and finding a scabby used band-aid in your meal....OR....?" and the other person says, "Being struck by lightning?" So there's sort of an art to playing the game well.

Anyway, last night during dinner, the Smelmooo and I were talking about people we like, but could never be married to, which led to a discussion of which of our friends we'd most and least want to marry, which led to the development of a new game, similar to Would You Rather...?, which we dubbed, "Kill, Marry, Hang Out With" (because Smelmooo was squicked out by using the usual categories of this game, which apparently are Kill, Marry, F**K, and I was on board with that). I think that Smelmooo ended up winning the game in about round 5, when he presented me with three who are all so lovely that I simply could not pick one of them for the "kill" category.

Do other people do these kinds of things, or are we just sick in the head and I probably should have kept this one to myself?

Probably you're all saying, "Uh, wow, Tangent Woman's nice and all, and fine in small doses, but god bless Smelmooo, because I could never stomach being married to her." So it's a good thing that he and I found each other, and got engaged two years ago today. A heck of a pseudo-anniversary entry, huh?

Entrapment, or stupidity?

I've recently been listed as a reference for two friends, one who's job-hunting and one who's apartment-hunting. I've never worked with the job-hunting friend, yet the temp agency representative who was checking references insisted on not modifying her standard list of 5-point-scale questions based on that information, which I provided to her over and over again during our conversation.

TA: So, what were the terms under which this person left the job?
Me: Um, actually, I've not worked with him, so I can't answer that question.
TA: Okay, moving on...So, would you hire this person again?

My apartment-hunting friend is someone I work with, and she listed several of us at work as references. And the rental place chick called me yesterday and asked me about her, leading with:

RC: I'm a little concerned because she's only been working there since April.
Me: Well, April of 2004, so more than a year.
RC: Oh, really? I thought it was just a few months. Oh, would you look at that.
April of '04. Okay, thanks."

Today, she called another of our colleagues, and had the EXACT same conversation, with the "only a few months" followed by the "Oh, really? April 2004? Huh!"

So I'm not quite sure about this: are they just playing dumb, trying to trip us up and reveal inadvertently that their applicants are full of lies? Or are they actually dumb, and don't pay attention? I'm kind of leaning toward the latter, which is incredibly depressing, but I think it's closer to the truth.

I should go on hiatus more often

So I haven't posted recently, because I've been sitting in a corner, rocking back and forth in the fetal position, muttering the A-Team theme song, for obvious reasons.

Actually, although that's almost true, my lack of posting is more strongly correlated with my being (a) uninspired and (b) busy running around at home and at work. We hosted some fun barbecues this weekend, and saw a neat production of Miss Saigon at a Plays in the Park production, which you can't beat. If you live in Central Jersey, you must go to one of these; five bucks and a lawn chair, plus three bucks for a giant, perfect hot pretzel, and you're golden.

Anyway, I thought that my lack of updating the blog would go largely unnoticed, but I received an email today from Bowman that made me laugh (as do most things from Bowman) and was just the impetus I needed to get moving. Bowman gave me permission to post his email below:


-----Original Message-----
From: Bowman
Sent: Tuesday, July 12, 2005 3:47 PM
To: tangentwoman
Subject: Why oh why

I sit here dawdling away, growing older as I watch the hours slip away (sometimes immeasurably slowly). My typical day includes making sure 115 children are properly supervised and entertained throughout a camp day which sometimes takes me to places that aren't on my favorites list, such as dealing with ignorant parents and whiny children. Occasionally I get some ray of sunshine which allows me to go to the pool with the groups to lay out in the sun and gawk from behind darkened sunglasses but usually I am stuck in this drab brick and mortar establishment where the on-going construction plays havoc with me by unleashing a variety of inhalents, chemicals and assorted microorganisms to launch an assault on my sinus cavity causing sniffles, sneezes, runny noses, water eyes and the like.

But the one thing that invariably helps me get through my day is reading witty and entertaining blogs on a variety of topics. Smelmooo spoils me with almost daily blogged material, especially the guest blogs and the TFTs. However, I have recently become hooked on the superb blogging of Tangent Woman, or tangentwoman as it may be. I enjoy the high quality of writing and the funny, witty topics as they serve to help break up my day. So that leads me to the conclusion of this long and drawn out email.... WHY, OH WHY, has there been no update since Thursday's marvelous A-team themed blog? Please bring it back as often as possible. When there's no blog, it's like telling the kids that there's no Santa Claus.

Have a good day,
Bowman

Dunh-dunh-dunh-dunh, dunh-dunh-dunh!

For the love of pete, A-Team theme song, get OUT of my head!!!
The Smelmooo has been watching all of the A-Team episodes on DVD (I think and hope he's almost at the end, for now at least), and little ditty is just constantly in my head. It probably doesn't help that we also start speaking to each other like we're in a really bad off-off-Broadway musical, where all of our words match the A-Team theme:

"Tuck-er needs, to go out!"
"O-kay, then! Don't scream and shout!"

It's gonna be a long day.

My misguided attempt at humor

I've been working on this speech for my CEO, who likes to include African proverbs in her remarks. She's talking about redesigning the work environment as a strategy to retain workers, and the proverb I'd originally included in this speech wasn't quite working for me.

So I dutifully searched the web (how the heck did people write speeches before the Internet?!) and stumbled upon this one:

"The cattle is as good as the pasture in which it grazes."

Which, you know, is sort of a good argument if you're trying to get people to think differently about why the work environment matters, but of course my CEO can't call her audience a bunch of COWS, so I'd never actually include that proverb in her speech. I did, however, think one of my co-workers -- who'd just finished writing a different speech for her -- would find it funny, so I sent him an email titled "punchy speechwriting" and told him I'd briefly considered using it.

He called me about 2 minutes later, and said, impossibly diplomatically, "You know, I like the proverb....but I'm just not sure if it works for this audience, you know?"

And I'm not sure he quite believed me when I told him I was joking. Sometimes I just need to keep my weird sense of humor to myself, I think.

Random thoughts after a long weekend

It was such a glorious weekend, with perfect weather and zero work. Heaven. And today, back to the grind, and back to big writing projects, which means procrastination, which means random thoughts documented in my blog. Here we go:

-- I am fascinated that the surrogate mom in Six Feet Under is played by the same actress who was Jan Brady in the Brady Bunch movie. And she is completely playing this surrogate mom character exactly as she portrayed Jan Brady, so much so that I keep expecting her to bust out with the big afro wig, or to have voices in her head saying, "Let's knock over a 7-11!"

-- I think that my peer group has reached a tipping point that I knew would come eventually, but for which I wasn't quite prepared. At our friends' annual Fourth of July barbecue/pool party, there were a million babies and pregnant women, and no one was actually in the pool, and I think there were many more seltzers and waters than beers being consumed. We missed last year's party, which I assume was the transition year, because the 2003 edition (apparently, after we left) included skinny-dipping and other child-inappropriate debauchery, which lasted well into the following day. And I actually think that this year's party was more my speed, but it got me to thinking about the King of Queens episode I saw the other night in Boston, when Doug and Carrie are searching desperately for childless friends.

-- Also from Boston, when my cab pulled up to the hotel on my first night there, a bellhop immediately ran to the car, grabbed my luggage from the trunk, and walked with me to the front desk to check in. On the way, he asked my name so he could tell the front desk person; I gave him my first and last name, and then he asked, "Are you Miss or Mrs.?" And I was sort of stymied, because I'm neither, and although I suppose Mrs. is more correct if I have to pick from one of those two, I'm really a "Ms." So I just said, "Well, I'm married." And he said, "Oh, but you have a different name from your husband's? My wife is the same way. I'm Smith and she's Jones." So why the binary option, if you know there's a third? In any case, I appreciated the door-to-door service, which the Smelmooo tells me is standard, but which I've never, ever experienced before.

-- A final note from Boston: I'd been hoping to meet up with Jenny-from-Africa on Wednesday night, but then my site visit ran long and then her dinner with family ran long, and I had a 6:30 breakfast meeting on Thursday, and we were like half an hour away from each other, so we ended up chucking the idea of getting together. And now she's on a plane back to Africa, which makes me very sad, but I had the good fortune to see her twice while she was in the States, which I hope will tide me over for the next 9 months. Sigh.

-- Yesterday, the Smelmooo and I cashed in a couple of the gift cards we had remaining from when we returned wedding gifts. We were so excited to get these awesome contraptions that are essential for spazzy people like me, who can't balance their drinks and their food during cocktail parties. Sadly, when the Smelmooo tried to present me with a drink and snack before dinner last night, (a) I had finished the box of crackers, so there was actually no food for my plate, and (b) the trays totally did not support our particular wine glasses, so the glass was pitched to the side, basically as it would be if I were balancing it with a traditional tray of food after having had 2 or 3 cocktails, so good thing they were essentially free. More rewarding purchases included our backyard accoutrements to go along with our new patio furniture, including lanterns and citronella tiki torches.

-- Tucker had his last (fingers-crossed!) directly-observed therapy for the worms today, so I'm hoping desperately that his next test -- in two weeks -- will show that he's worm-free. Because we really, really need to get him neutered, which can't happen until the worms are gone. And on that note, it's time to go play with the puppy and the neglected husband.

Before they were stars

Or, at least, before they were the stars they are today.

I got back from Boston last night, and had the day off from work today, which was sooooo nice. The Smelmooodid have to work this morning, so he got up with Tucker and let me sleep in (huge, huge points awarded to the Smelmooo for this one). I planned to go to the gym when I got up, but Tucker was just so snuggly that I felt instead compelled to lie around the house in my pajamas, watching bad TV with the pup at my side.

First we watched part of one of the beach club episodes of Saved by the Bell (in fact, it was the farewell luau of the beach club summer), so we got to see Leah Remini post-Living Dolls and pre-King of Queens (and also pre-defending-Tom-Cruise for his goodheartedness toward other "good people" -- you know, those who don't believe in psychiatry or antidepressants), declaring her love for Zach Morris and sort of mumbling her half-hearted agreement to write him, every day, from her college back East.

But I was more intrigued by Denise Richards's appearance on this particular episode of SBTB. Believe me, I'm no fan of Denise Richards, in this or any other role, but I do sort of admire the way that she's handled her divorce proceedings and the involvement of Charlie Sheen with their kids. Anyway, back to the beach: Denise Richards has an inexplicable crush on Slater, which she can articulate only through anonymous love letters (delivered, for hilarity's sake, on a remote-controlled truck on the beach) and by pretending to drown so he'll rescue her. And it works -- they're totally dates for the luau, and when he calls her "chick" or something and pre-Showgirls-radical-feminist Jesse Spano asks why Denise Richards tolerates such treatment, her big line is, "With dimples like that, he can say whatever he wants." What a disgusting message, Saved by the Bell (and what a wooden performance, Denise Richards).

Anyway, next up was a little bit of Dawson's Creek, and I couldn't help thinking how far from Joey Potter the new "Kate" Holmes now seems. Mopey Joey Potter, who today was feeling particularly angsty about having lied to Dawson about sleeping with Pacey, and then about getting into her dream fictional college but then not having the financial aide and deciding she'd rather forgo the dream than take out a loan, blah blah blah, is all so...plebian compared to riding around on a motorcycle, being seen and not heard as your man puts you in a vise grip to make out with you on the red carpet. smiling fondly as your poor parents back in Toledo wish you'd just stayed with that bland but seemingly decent and stable Chris Klein. The Dawson's Creek episode also reminded me how surprised I am that Michelle Williams is carrying Heath Ledger's baby, and how much more interesting a post-DC acting career she's had than Kat(i)e.

Somewhere in there, the episode of Who's the Boss where Angela's ex-husband gets married and wants custody of Jonathan was on, but really on that one I just kept thinking about how heinous the new wife's wedding dress was, and trying to figure out whether it was supposed to be funny, and then Alyssa Milano started cooing over how beautiful the bride was and I realized that, in fact, in the '80s that was sort of the standard wedding costume, with the poofiness and the million layers of fabric and the giant headgear.

Anyway, finally, we passed -- very quickly -- an episode of Full House, one of the later ones when Jesse and Aunt Becky had their twins, sort of the equivalent of the Cousin Oliver episodes of the Brady Bunch, or those godawful Billy episodes of Who's the Boss, when the youngest kid is no longer young enough to fill the adorable quotient, so they feel compelled to bring in new blood (always, always a bad idea). Anyway, I was trying to figure out whether the Olsen on screen was Mary Kate or Ashley, and then I was wondering if Mary Kate and Ashley ever watch Full House, and whether they're sort of embarrassed by it, but I guess they don't so much sit around watching bad TV with their dogs on their days off. But to me, it was just perfect.