Lonely and stinky

One of my co-workers mentions every few months some study that showed that the strongest indicator of job satisfaction is having a best friend at work. I have never seen the actual study; I have no idea whether it's from a credible source, but my co-worker is a research nerd, and it makes intuitive sense, so I'm gonna go ahead and believe it.

Minnams is for sure my best friend at work, and I think most days I'm hers, but she's not my only friend at work -- there are a handful of people I see socially, and a handful I'm friendly with at work but not outside, and another handful whom I neither see socially or feel particularly close with but who are fun to have lunch with once in a while in a group. All of which is good on days like today, when Minnams isn't in the office.

The problem today, though, is that none of these other tiers of friends are in the office, either, and it's making me a little blue. It's a beautiful Friday and all I want to do is take a little break to take a walk outside, but I have no one to go with, and I feel kind of pathetic going by myself, only because everyone with a window would see me roaming around our little walking paths by myself and know I have no friends, and part of me is still in junior high and just can't abide that. So, boo, and woe is me, and all that kind of stuff.

And while I'm at it, I reek of sulfur. It's really weird, and I haven't found anyone else at work who experiences this problem to the same extent, but nine times out of 10 when I eat the grapes at work, my hands smell like sulfur and I can't get rid of it. I could wash my hands 15 times and it wouldn't go away for several hours. It's bizarre, and distracting, and it probably took me at least five instances of smelling like sulfur to make the connection to the grapes. I know the obvious answer is just to stop eating the grapes, or to eat them with a fork, I guess, but I feel like they're good for me and I already have enough weird eating habits that I don't really want to draw additional negative attention by eating grapes with a fork.

Any other sulfur-sensitive freaks out there with tips for me? Anyone? Anyone....?

Singin' and the rain

Usually twice a year, our town holds a townwide garage sale. Not one where everyone gets dibs on a little space in a community lot or anything; the idea is just that tons of people host sales all over the town on the same day, rain or shine, and it's a big draw for bargain-hunters from all over the area. The Chamber of Commerce makes up a little directory of locations and hands out maps and gives balloons to everyone who signs up (and pays, a modest amount) to hold a sale that day.

So, the spring 2006 sale was on Sunday, and we signed up as participants, largely because my sister and brother-in-law who moved to a new house last summer had tons of crap they wanted to sell. So we planned to have a nice dinner on Saturday night, and do a slumber party and get an early start on Sunday, making some money, schmoozing with some neighbors and enjoying the lovely spring weather.

Mission accomplished, except for the weather, which was pretty much all rain and no shine, all weekend. So we drove to dinner instead of walking -- no biggie, and we had an amazing meal at our favorite little Thai restaurant, and my brother-in-law footed the bill, so even better. And then we came home and the Smelmooo built a fire, which was perfect, and we played board games and drank and ate Easter candy and sang karaoke.

A quick aside on karaoke: Kenny Rogers was on Ellen the other day (he didn't do an interview, just performed, which was a shame, because I wanted them to talk about his crazy plastic surgery), and at the beginning of the show Ellen had the audience members pair up to sing "Islands in the Stream," and it was absolutely hilarious. My new mission is to secure that song on a karaoke CD before our next gathering; that may even merit a second microphone for more compelling duet performances.

Anyway, we were fairly raucous during the karaoke segment of the evening; I was wearing my favorite pink pajama pants and rocking out to pretty much every song. Around 10:30, my sister and I were having a grand old time singing a duet from Grease when....

What? Tell you more, tell you more? Okay, then...the doorbell rang, and we just froze. Could the neighbors hear our singing? Should we be more embarrassed about making too much noise or about our choice of songs or our complete inability to carry a tune?

Now, I'm normally no big fan of assumed traditional gender roles, but we all turned to the Smelmooo for door-opening duty (I was wearing pink pants! I couldn't open the door and be yelled at!). It turned out that our neighbor had noticed that we had a power line down in front of our house that was hanging into the street, in the rain; the guys who did our siding, it turned out, did a lousy job of reattaching the wire when they were done with that part of the house. So not a huge biggie, and the neighbor didn't mention our bad, boisterous singing, but the whole thing was kind of a buzzkill, so we packed it in.

We got up early on Sunday morning to rain, rain, rain. Not thunderstorms or huge downpours, but a steady, bone-chilling kind of heavy drizzle. We put up a little tent, which the Smelmooo had luckily gotten earlier in the week, and lay down a tarp, but we still spent a good portion of the morning trying to bail out the roof of the tent, which we put together a little unevenly, so there were pockets of water pooling up and leaking on our merchandise. It was a little pathetic, really:




We ended up having a fun time, despite being a little soggy; we pulled in an okay amount of money, and my normally reserved brother-in-law was enjoying chatting up the customers and spewing these absurd, over-the-top sales pitches out of nowhere: "Look at those beautiful sunglasses! I think you need them; they have those little shields on the sides that really block out the glare on days like this!" Most of the customers appreciated him, although a few sort of looked at him like he was nuts and hurried away.

Our best sale of the day? The infamous Kiss shirt. Hallelujah!

Random thoughts on...it's only Wednesday?!

-- I was saddened that my local Scoop Shop didn't participate in yesterday's Free Cone Day, an event I always enjoy enormously. The shop right across the street from my office didn't participate this year because the little shopping center they're in isn't doing much business these days, and they didn't think it'd be worth it to do Free Cone Day with so few people around. On the flipside, the Smelmooo was in D.C. yesterday, and the Ben & Jerry's in Union Station and the one by his hotel were both so packed that he didn't bother getting a cone. Somewhere in the land, there must be a happy medium.

-- I think it's weird that last night's Gilmore Girls made a big to-do about Logan being at Columbia-Presbyterian, but the exterior shot of the hospital -- to me, anyway -- looked nothing like Columbia-Presbyterian. I know it's been a couple of years since I was taking classes up there, but last I checked there's not a traffic light right outside, and the building's not that color. Maybe there's a secret entrance somewhere that I don't know about.

-- I'm happy to see the sunshine again, but now that the rain's gone, my allergies are driving me batty.

-- Babies, babies everwhere. Three women at work are pregnant, two women at work have newborns, a good friend of the Smelmooo's and his wife are expecting, Jenny-from-Africa's due any day now, and I just found out that a guy from the dramatic-love-quadrangle-of-my-late-adolescence is a new dad. That last one is very weird, because I think the last time I saw this guy, we were 19 and he was kind of a screw-up, so it's nice to see that he has gotten it together and seems really happy.

-- Speaking of dramatic love-quadrangles, I'm fascinated by this Denise Richards-Richie Sambora hook-up. So scandalous!

-- Back to Jenny-from-Africa, she sent me an orchid plant yesterday, just because. Which is so her, and so not me, just to send a friend a nice gift out of the blue. Or maybe it's just a ninth-month-of-pregnancy-retail-therapy-because-I-can't-do-much-else thing, but either way it was lovely and it made my day, especially because the Smelmooo was gone and I was feeling sorry for myself.

-- I just saw a really cool job opening in Nairobi, which is where Jenny-from-Africa and her family land next. For a split second, I wondered whether the Smelmooo, Tucker and I could pick up and spend the next two years in Africa, but I realize that this isn't a particularly viable option for us. But it's fun to daydream about for a few minutes.

Reading between the lines

So I've recently begun letting a couple of people know that if, you know, something promising came up, I wouldn't be totally opposed to at least, you know, talking to someone about a potential job opportunity. So I've gotten on some people's distribution lists, and most of the openings aren't exactly aligned with what I can or want to do, but I'm always grateful when people think of me.

Especially, as today, when one of the qualities listed as essential to the incumbent is, "Emotionally stable."

Which I'm not sure fits me right now in any case, but to list it as an explicit prerequisite for employment? Makes me think that the person no longer occupying the position had some sort of nervous breakdown, which sort of would not entice me to apply for said position. First, if it really was a personal issue, who wants to be introduced as, "This is Tangent Woman, the new [insert crazy person's name here]"? But, really, isn't it equally likely that the position, or the organization, drove that person to emotional instability?

A couple of years ago, we were looking to fill a position here, and I still have an email from one interviewer's assessment of one of the candidates, who broke down crying in the middle of the interview because she still wasn't over her divorce, and she felt so much pressure and didn't know if she could deal with such a stressful job.

So, of course, emotional stability counts for something; even if it's not an explicit criterion, of course someone who's so on the edge isn't a viable candidate for a position that requires one to multitask and keep it together under pressure. But that's one of those things that the "including but not limited to" clause ought to cover.

Maybe I do need to go work for this organization, because they clearly need some communications help. Although I may not be smart enough, because they noted that the salary would be "commensurate with experience, but not munificent," and I had to look up that last word.

I'm screwed, aren't I, with this job search thing?

Something's in the air

I'm a pretty sensitive person, not necessarily in an emotional or empathetic way, but in that I'm particularly susceptible to sensory overload: loud noises, bright lights, unpleasant odors, extreme temperatures -- they all seem to affect me more intensely than seems normal. So now, with all the damn mulch everywhere, I'm a mess. It's giving me headaches; it's made me lose my appetite and, at home, where the mulch smell is coupled with the aroma of our neighbor's pot smoking and the sounds and smells of home improvement (e.g., hammering, painting, various sawdust-creating activities as they apply our siding), it's even worse.

And yet.

I've been in a better mood the past couple of days than I've been in weeks. I didn't hate coming to work this morning. And, despite being a misanthrope (but not, as Minnams and I debated a couple of weeks ago, a cynic or a curmudgeon) at heart, I had two separate encounters in the span of about 10 minutes yesterday when I decided that maybe people don't suck. Amazing.

Yesterday was school board election day in NJ; the school where we vote is right down the street from our house, so I drove home and then walked over to the school. A couple of houses away from ours, a woman was handing out little flyers about her lost dog, saying he'd been spotted in the area the day before (he's been missing at least two weeks at this point). There were two women out on a walk, plus me, on the sidewalk, and all of us listened and sympathized and pointed out that it was encouraging that he'd at least been spotted, and we promised to keep our eyes peeled and call. And it just felt awfully nice, a handful of strangers expressing kindnesses, because I feel like that doesn't happen so much anymore.

The more superficial "people don't suck" encounter was at the actual polling site, where the woman who signed me in complimented my engagement ring, noting that it's "a very attractive shape." Which is sort of a weird thing to say, I think, and I was taken a little off guard. I've been wearing this ring for almost three years now, and although the phrase, "Yes, it's an asscher cut with trapezoids on the sides," really rolled off my tongue when we first got engaged, not so much, anymore. But it made me happy, because I do love my engagement ring, and now that it's such a part of me that I can go for ages without really noticing it, so it's fun to really look at it again, and feel a little girly and excited about having this sparkly, shiny object to stare at.

Anyway, today at work, people largely continued not to suck (with a couple of notable exceptions, but I'm feeling fairly Zen about it now), and several of my co-workers actually remarked that they've felt in a bit of a funk lately, but that it's lifted in the last day or so.

And several of us have hypothesized that it might somehow be the mulch that's driving all of this positive energy. Which seems like sort of an evil, ironic plot, but I'll take it.

Smoke-free and junk-filled

Two of my favorite things about this weekend:

-- NJ's Smoke-Free Air Act went into effect, which means going to bars and hearing good music without getting all scratchy-throated and itchy-eyed and having to run immediately to the shower after getting home.

-- Lent came to an end, which meant me celebrating the holiest day of the Christian calendar by engaging in absolute gluttony:



Not the best picture, but it's a giant Friendly's Reese's Peanut Butter Cup sundae, which I couldn't even finish when I dug in at midnight on Easter. I had to eat the last third or so for breakfast on Sunday morning, and then followed it up with an ice cream cookie sandwich on the way to my in-laws' yesterday. My body hates me, but it just tasted soooooooooooooo good. And maybe now I won't feel as desperate for ice cream -- the Cherry Garcia pint that I tried to finish before Ash Wednesday is still sitting half-full in our freezer, so maybe I'm leveling out following the abstinence/binge cycle.

Like a continental soldier...

I am loving daylight savings time; despite a few rough mornings while my body adjusted to the time change, it's such a great feeling to be home from work while it's still light outside.

The Smelmooo's at a dinner tonight, so I went for a run/walk on my own after I got home from work. My run/walks sometimes turn out to be a little bit of sprinting, a lot of panting and about a 1:30 ratio of running to walking, but tonight it was actually fairly evenly distributed.

While I was running down a side street, I heard strains of music from an ice cream truck a couple of blocks away. Despite not having had ice cream for 40-something days -- and still craving it every single day -- I enjoyed that there was an ice cream truck in our neighborhood, because it's a sure sign of spring and summer just around the corner. I felt a little sad that, once the truck came into view, there weren't any kids pouring into the streets for an Italian ice or a Bomb Pop or whatever. I wondered if the ice cream man's heyday has passed, what with all of these efforts to curb childhood obesity, not to mention fear that the driver of the truck is a pedophile or at least a pervert.

Particularly when he's playing "Do Your Boobs Hang Low?" as he travels around the neighborhood.

I have no idea if that's actually the name of the song (it may officially be "Do Your Ears Hang Low), but I can still hear my high school friend Kristin singing the less wholesome version: "Do your boobs hang low? Do they wobble to and fro? Can ya tie 'em in a knot? Can ya tie 'em in a bow? Can ya throw 'em over your shoulder, like a Continental soldier? Do your boobs hang low?!"

So that's what's been in my head for the last hour, and I hope I won't be hearing it all summer long. What ever happened to "Row Row Row Your Boat" as the ice cream truck's theme song?

A shout-out to ArtieLange

On Friday night, I accompanied the Smelmooo to another of his work events, which I'm minding less as I get to know more people and actually remember more of their names and personal tidbits. Last year, around the third work event in probably four weeks, I found myself on the verge of giving an, "Oh, really? Tell me more!" to a guy who'd told me two weeks before, in great detail, about his recent visit to Australia and New Zealand, but I'd totally forgotten it was the same guy. I kind of can't believe the Smelmooo will still take me anywhere, for fear I'll make him look bad, but I'm trying to do him proud.

Anyway, the Friday dinner was especially huge, about 250 people, and I was thrilled that some of our actual friends (Tommy D, start a blog so I can link to you, please!) were in attendance, in addition to strict work acquaintances. Among them was ArtieLange, who I think I've only met once in person before, but whose blog I'd been enjoying (and then missing, because he hasn't posted in like a month). So we got to talking, and he told me he wasn't interested in blogging anymore, so I agreed to allow him guest spots here if he ever feels compelled to write.

And I'll make good on that offer if he wants to take me up on it, but I think that I let him off too easily, and that I should somehow convince him to continue his own blog. So tell Artie if you like his writing, and keep the pressure on him.

Otherwise, I have some good blackmail material, provided the Smelmooo kept his voicemail messages from Sunday, so there's still hope.

Threshold questions

The other day at lunch, one of my co-workers was talking about a hugely unsuccessful blind date she'd had the weekend before. The first deal-breaker? The guy asked her what she's "passionate" about, and she thought that was a weird, high-pressure kind of question unsuitable for a first date.

I think that might be a little harsh, but who am I to judge? All of us around the table admitted to having at least a couple of threshold questions and/or qualities for potential mates: wrong answer, and you're out the window.

On a few of these, there was agreement: the women unanimously agreed that long and/or dirty fingernails, as well as dirty ears, would be immediate disqualifiers. Compatible smoking, drinking and drug use attitudes and behaviors are a requirement, and we were fairly consistent that we'd want to date someone who reads books(although the blind date woman pointed out that the response, "I'm more interested in newspapers and magazines, so I can stay current," is also acceptable).

And then came the more detailed, bizarro personal preferences that are probably the reason behind that "there's someone for everybody" logic. I had heard a few minutes of a radio call-in show earlier in the week with this same sort of question; one caller said all he cared about was that a woman be interested in fishing, know how to gut the fish she caught, and not try to change him. Which can be a tall order.

Before I started dating the Smelmooo, I got lots of puzzled looks about my threshold criteria: He has to give blood; he has to vote; he has to appreciate Waiting for Godot.

It turns out, actually, that the Smelmooo does not appreciate Waiting for Godot; he'd never read it before I met him, and I don't think he made it all the way through when I lent him my beat-up copy. But he'd made an effort, and we generally clicked and had the same sensibilities about things, and he knocked it out of the park on the other two criteria, so I got over the Waiting for Godot thing, and I'm so glad I did. And maybe I'd have similarly rationalized political apathy or a fear of needles, but I'm glad I didn't have to.

Anyway, Minnams said she could never date a picky eater, someone who wasn't a foodie. And I turned to her, somewhat wounded, and pointed out that I'm a terribly picky eater, and she said, "I know, honey. I'd never date you."

Which was a little bit crushing for a second, that my straight, happily married female co-worker wouldn't date me, another happily married straight woman. But it's somehow akin to my awareness that my brother and his wife probably wouldn't want to be friends with me if we weren't related, and that even their kids would probably be too cool for me if the family ties didn't bind us.

So there you have it: I'm off the short list of anyone whose threshold questions are designed to rule out neediness and neurosis.

Smorgasbord

I am a huge sucker for a buffet. Give me a salad bar, a sundae bar, a brunch buffet; I'm in heaven. It's sort of weird, given how unsanitary the public buffet is and how much of a germophobe I am, but the beauty of taking exactly what I want and creating my perfect meal/salad/dessert trumps the voice quietly nagging in the back of my head, "Do you know how many people's fingers have touched those tongs? And do you know where those fingers have BEEN?!"

So on Saturday night, the Smelmooo and I, following our first day in recent memory with no official plans, decided to go out to dinner, and the salad bar at Charlie Brown's sang its siren song and lured us in. I have to say, as mid-priced chain restaurants go, Charlie Brown's is pretty darned good, but I was absolutely shocked at how crowded it was, how many others were wooed by the salad bar (and possibly Shrimpfest, which I assume is some sort of all-you-can-eat buffet; it was in another part of the restaurant and I didn't bother looking).

I think part of why I love the make-your-own plate thing is because it brings me back to good memories of childhood. When I was young, before I started school or during the summer or on half-days, I went out to lunch with my mom and my Gammy (her mother) pretty regularly. We usually went to one of two places. The first was The Office, a standard pubby place in Morristown, which was right next door to Epstein's department store with an impressive candy department, where Gammy almost always bought me vanilla fudge or bags of those little pastel pink, green and yellow candies with non-pareils on top, or carob faux-Whoppers because I was allergic to chocolate as a kid.

The other place we visited was Septembers, which I liked because Gammy and I both had September birthdays, so it seemed like a special place (one that later doubled as a strip club at night and was wrapped up in all sorts of scandals, after Gammy died when I was nine). But the best part about Septembers was its sundae bar, where I was first introduced to frozen yogurt, and where the waitresses helpfully pointed out that the sundae would be better if you put some of the topping in first, then the fro-yo, then more topping, so you didn't get to the bottom and have only your sad vanilla fro-yo left. It was, of course, all-you-can-eat, and I'd get like 3 servings, and my mom would cock an eyebrow and Gammy would say, "Oh, Mildred. What's the harm?"

There were other good buffets -- in seventh grade, our academic bowl team (shut up) celebrated our victories at the Sizzler in town, and we thought it was super-fancy. And for probably a year, my parents took my sister Carolyn and me to a remarkably cheap restaurant at the Marriott twice a month after Saturday evening mass; the Marriott had both the all-you-can-eat salad bar and the make-your-own sundae bar, so I was in heaven. And when we were both home in NJ on break from college, Jenny and I would meet up for Sunday brunch at J.B. Winberie's in Summit, and pace ourselves diligently so we'd have room for at least five trips up to the buffet, which included a waffle bar with my beloved fake strawberries, and an omelet station.

Trying to recapture a bit of our history (and to find a kid-friendly place for her two-year-old), a few weeks ago, when Jenny was back from Africa, we met up at the J.B. Winberie's in Princeton for brunch. No omelets and only pre-made waffles, with yummy baked apples on the side, but no fake strawberries in sight. I was modestly disappointed, but still there was the beauty of choosing exactly what I wanted, and as much of it as I wanted.

And I think that's what it boils down to: the memories of buffets past are nice, but it's really about being an impossibly picky eater and a bit of a control freak to boot.

Blah weather, weird dreams and random thoughts

Apparently, I spoke too soon about the glorious spring weather, how this time it'd stick, etc. etc. etc. I'm back to a wool turtleneck sweater today, although I still refuse to wear my winter coat until next year, on principle. But I'm actually happy for the rain, which I hope will help out our dead lawn, and which also reduces my longing to be outside playing instead of inside working.

I don't know what's going on in the universe, but I'm hearing about lots of bizarro dreams, some in excruciating detail. A co-worker -- who felt compelled to describe her dream both in an email to me and in the middle of a meeting yesterday -- had a dream that Nicole Kidman joined our staff, and we were comforting the dreamer with kindness and graham crackers as we helped her look for her lost dog. And my sister described a dream in which she was using contraceptives that she had to administer aurally several times each day, only they were too big for her ear.

I just had run-of-the-mill anxiety dreams all night long: I was on an important telephone call but couldn't find a place to concentrate because everywhere I went there was background noise competing for my attention; I was on a job interview where I was being asked which holidays I like best and, "If you were a component of a salad, what would it be and why?"

Over in the world of (stream of) consciousness:

-- I didn't see Katie Couric's announcement on the Today Show this morning, but I heard the whole segment on the radio. I don't know if it was the broadcast quality or her just being nervous, but her breathing was so weird during the whole thing. She sounded like the contestants in those "Hey, amateurs with no experience! It's your chance to be our next morning DJ!" radio station competitions -- huge gulps of air between her sentences. It was really startling, because I've never heard Katie Couric have that problem.

-- I was so happy that Gilmore Girls was new last night, and I didn't even think it sucked. My expectations aren't particularly high these days, which I think is the key to enjoying the show more.

-- For my birthday (in September), the Smelmooo got us tickets to see David Sedaris this past Monday. I love, love, love hearing David Sedaris read his stuff, and I didn't stop laughing or at least smiling the entire time he was onstage. I wish I'd had a tape recorder or even a notebook so I could've written down my favorite parts, but all I remember was something about "the verbal equivalent of everyday china," which struck me as absolute brilliance. I just loved everything about him: that he showed up early and stayed late to sign books and chat with fans; that he read with pen in hand so he could make changes to works-in-progress; that when he'd made a typo on the draft he couldn't help letting a little "oops!" escape but then just kept right on going; that he's smart and hilarious but not stuck-up. I didn't love the ending of his story in this week's New Yorker, but I still want him to be my boyfriend.

-- After reading the Smelmooo's blog entry on Monday, I was desperate for a burger, so we went to dinner at a place in Princeton where I love the burgers, and the Smelmooo gave me some of his bacon to add to mine(it was my birthday celebration night, after all), and it just made me so happy to be enjoying a bad-for-me meal and having a relaxing night together. Life felt absolutely perfect.

-- We watched 24 when we got home, and I just refuse to believe that Logan's actually the mastermind behind this whole plot. I think the editors are trying to pull a fast one. I can't find a single person who agrees with me on this point, but I feel like I need to throw it out there on the infinitesimal chance that I'm right.

-- Countdown to my Reese's Peanut Butter Cup sundae: 10 days, 13 hours, 54 minutes.

I am old and pathetic

This was a super-hectic whirlwind of a weekend that really kind of kicked my butt. Late nights, early mornings, springing forward an hour...it all took its toll.

Yesterday, the Smelmooo and I were at his parents' house and the two of us took advantage of the good weather and tossed a football around the backyard (and my throwing improved considerably during our session, which was fun, although I still suck at catching. The Smelmooo kept trying to give me good excuses for sucking so bad: "It's okay, honey -- it looks like the sun's in your eyes!"). And then we played HORSE with his brother, using a volleyball instead of a basketball, but same idea. I sucked at that, too, but again, they really took it easy on me, and also let me be the cheerleader once I was knocked out so I still felt like part of the fun.

So not a particularly strenuous afternoon of activity -- it wasn't like the hardcore football of the Smelmooo's Birfday Bashes, and we weren't actually playing a game of basketball. I wasn't even wearing sneakers, for pete's sake, or even remotely breaking a sweat.

But today? I'm aching. My upper arms, my back: I'm like an old lady. So depressing.