Scattered thoughts are all I can muster

I have had lots of fleeting thoughts this week about potential blog topics: how bizarre it is to me that everyone expresses such deep love of my argyle cardigan from Target, not in a Mean Girls way, but with absolute sincerity; how I had no recollection of where I'd been sitting after I got breakfast on the train to D.C. the other day; how uncomfortable it makes me when my co-worker tells me stories that illustrate that she has zero boundaries with her 20-something daughter; how much I enjoyed seeing my nieces and nephews on Sunday but how annoyed I felt by my niece's drama-queen routine when she spotted Tucker and refused to get out of the car until we put him on his leash. But I'm having a little bit of ADD, I think, and can't really pull a coherent entry together. Other random tidbits floating through my brain:

-- I have a ridiculously high tolerance for MTV programming, and always get sucked into watching the Real World/Road Rules Challenges, but this latest one is just too much. I can't stand any of these people, and I am done with them. Finally. This is actually a huge relief.

-- In other "I'm turning into an old lady" news, I decided this morning that above-the-knee skirts are no longer acceptable to me, not because of fashion trends but simply because I feel like I'm too old to wear them. Maybe this will change, or maybe I'll wear them on vacation or on the weekends or whatever, but I just feel like the cute dresses I've worn for years are inappropriate.

-- Movies I watched all or part of on TV last weekend: Cruel Intentions, Save the Last Dance, Never Been Kissed. Bless you, TBS.

-- I am obsessed all over again with the show Felicity; I am always surprised how well it holds up over time, and how much I love almost everything about it. And I was thrilled to learn that people I work with are willing to lend me the DVDs so I can watch the whole thing.

-- I found out yesterday that this incredibly smart, bright, beautiful woman I worked with a few years ago basically up and joined a cult. She's about my age, was married very young to a guy who was pretty much a jerkoff who was just in it for the Greencard, divorced a couple of years ago, and moved out of state to be closer to her mom, but didn't have much of a support system there. She found this "meditation center," changed her name to something like Fluffy Woodcrest (that's actually my stripper name, but you get the idea"), and is now living at the center and is "spiritually married" to its leader. I guess I'm not entirely shocked by this news, but I am incredibly saddened by it.

-- Minnams has been gone all week, in San Francisco, and I've missed her desperately. It's not like I'm rocking in the corner or non-functional or anything, but I am definitely much less happy at work without her here. On the other hand, I got to see my dear friend Jenny in D.C. on Wednesday, along with her new baby, and it made me extraordinarily happy. It's still a little surreal to me that Jenny -- whom I've known since she was a shy, scrawny, boy-phobic 14-year-old -- has a husband and two kids, and is so poised and grown-up and beautiful. I'm just so proud of her and wowed by her, my heart almost bursts.

-- I don't understand why, on the wall next to the drive-up ATM at my bank, is a sign describing the audio technology available on the ATM for those who are visually impaired. I understand the braille on the ATM keypad and even the audio device, I guess -- I'm sure they're probably standard across all ATMs, not separate designs for drive-up vs. walk-up -- but why the sign?

-- Is escalator etiquette (i.e., walk on the left, stand on the right) not universal? I was helping a new intern through his first D.C. Metro experience the other day, giving him a pretty thorough explanation of the drill, I thought: here's where you buy the ticket; here's how you figure out the fare; you need to save the ticket and put it in another machine when we get to Union Station. And then we get on the escalator, and he stands on my left, and I try to explain that he needs to move over or start walking -- it was 5:30 in the afternoon, so fairly crowded -- and he looks at me like I'm speaking Greek. And then, on the next escalator, does it again, although he quickly said, "Oh, yeah, I need to move over." He's a really smart kid, and I just don't understand how he's made it to 21 years old or whatever without knowing this.