Random, weird stuff I observed today

I took the day off from work today, which afforded me the opportunity to:

-- See a big ribbon-cutting ceremony for a Payless shoe store.

-- Hear a man who I can only assume is mentally ill hollering racial epithets at the woman in front of me on the street.

-- Notice that the person who announces the trains at Penn Station sounds EXACTLY like Sylvia Poggioli from NPR.

-- Watch a man feed six, six-inch Portuguese rolls to birds in the Carvel parking lot, less than a block from a duck pond, while his wife sat in the car reading her grocery store receipt for literally seven minutes.

That's all I got.

Ugly coyote

I thought there was a fox outside my window this morning, but it wasn't moving like a fox, and it had a narrower face. It looked a teeny bit like a Graveling from Dead Like Me (which, by the way, is now airing on the SciFi channel, so I started watching the first season the other night, and I love it).

I was on the phone with my mom at the time, and wondered aloud about the weird-looking fox and she said, "Oh, is it kind of mangy-looking? It's a coyote."

She said this with such conviction that I almost just let it go with an, "Oh, okay, a coyote," but I had to ask why she'd drawn that conclusion.

"Oh, your dad's golf club sent around a notice that there are coyotes roaming around the golf course, and they included a picture, and that's exactly what it looks like, a mangy fox."

So who knows, but I think I'm going to think twice about going on the little walking trails out there, because that thing was pretty gross-looking.

On the bus or not

I can be a little bit of a control freak.

I like my routines, to the point of mild obsessive-compulsiveness in certain areas, probably.

So yesterday, I had a meeting in D.C., and a cab was supposed to pick me up at 6a.m. for my 6:36 train. The train station is only about 10 minutes away, but they wanted to allow plenty of time; I didn't feel the need to arrive super-early -- I hate waiting at Metropark station, which always feels dirty and has limited seating on the D.C.-bound side of the station -- so I wasn't too concerned when the cab didn't arrive right on time.

At 6:07, I called, and was told the guy was right around the corner and would be there in one minute.

At 6:17, I was told it'd be two or three minutes.

At 6:24, I told the third person that I was in my car driving myself, and he kept insisting the guy would be right there.

By the time I got to the station, found parking, and paid at one of those little machines (five bucks for 24 hours -- why don't I always just drive myself and park? I'm an idiot; I've lived where I live for two years, and I'm just now figuring this out), it was 6:34, so I started running.

Across the parking lot, under the train tracks, up the stairs to the platform just after the train pulled in. Running, running, running, in my cute little skirt and clompy heels, but I made it.

But I did not make it in time to get a Diet Coke and a New York Times, my staples for my train rides to D.C., or the chocolate-frosted donut that I get when I leave from Metropark (I used to get a Roy Rogers biscuit whenever I left from Trenton in the morning, and I went through a similar feeling of fidgety, lost helplessness when the Roy Rogers closed).

But I got myself some Rice Krispies and a can of Diet Pepsi, and I had my iPod and a good issue of the New Yorker, so the ride was okay, even though it wasn't exactly as I like it; I started wondering if it's more OCD or just being a spoiled brat that I get cranky when my routine goes awry.

Anyway, the rest of the day was fine; good meeting, and I wandered around Dupont for a while before meeting a friend for dinner. We went to Cosi for s'mores afterward, and I totally lost track of the time. My return train was leaving at 8:30, and it was 8:12 when my friend happened to look at his watch and said, "Uh, are you gonna miss your train?"

I got to Union Station at 8:28, and my train wasn't listed on the monitor; there were only three more trains listed for the rest of the night, and only one of them seemed to be going in my general direction. There were a couple of Amtrak employees hovering around Gate B, and a guy in a suit running toward them hollering, "I just changed my ticket!" The attendant said, "If you can catch it before they close the doors, you can hop on."

I tore after him, confirmed it was the 8:30 to New York, and hauled ass down the platform. I felt like Forrest Gump, running, running. I lost my left shoe, which I thought would be my downfall (damn you, clompy heels!), but I managed to make it onboard literally five seconds before the door shut, running the last two-thirds of the way with one shoe on, the other in my hand.

I guess it's good for me to have these moments where I let go, where I'm not Little Ms. Anal Pants, where I get over not having my Diet Coke and my newspaper and my donut, where I get wrapped up in a conversation with a dear friend and care more about that than being first in line to board the train and get the window seat with the power outlet, where everything turns out just fine even if it doesn't go exactly to plan.

Much more of this literal running around, and I may have a heart attack, or at least break an ankle, but maybe I'll strive for more of a happy medium.

My mind, it is in the gutter

For whatever reason, there was a lot of spontaneous singing tonight during our little poker gathering (I nearly doubled up! Very exciting). There were variations on Have Nagila and The Gambler, among others, but pretty much everything going on in the room was fair game for a song.

I suddenly busted out with "Me Lost Me Cookie at the Disco," which my sister and I used to dance around to all the time as kids -- I still have the Sesame Disco album we played on the hi-fi. And, junior year in high school, we were responsible for running freshman orientation, and we made the ninth-graders dress up like Cookie Monster and do a little Saturday Night Fever stroll around the auditorium to "Me Lost Me Cookie..."

Anyway, as I was singing, everyone was sort of staring at me, not only because it was super-random and I have a terrible voice; all of a sudden, I realized that it could be construed as a really dirty song. I'd never, ever thought of that before, but really? Dirty.

When it became clear that I only just discovered the double entendre, everyone made fun of me, and I believe the line of the night was something along the lines of, "Wait'll you really think about 'She-Bop.'"

I lost my marble

So, today was the Olympics again at work, also known as Field Day. I didn't have nearly as much success this year as last, unfortunately.

I did quite well, actually, in the bubble-blowing contest (random, I know), and our team came in second in that event. And I again led off the potato sack race with prowess, and I didn't suck at jump-roping, although there were some tumbles and outright falls by my other team members in those events.

But my most humiliating moment -- perhaps compounded further because everyone was bitching about how disproportionately old our team members were compared to other departments', so there were some expectations on me as the youngest person on the team -- was during the marble race. I'd told our captain -- the new guy at work who sent these incredibly sad, pathetic emails begging people to sign up for events, and for whom I'm a total sucker -- that I'd do a few events, and that I'd certainly suck at the marble race, but that I'd do it if he couldn't find anyone else.

The original idea was that you'd hold a plastic spoon in your mouth and balance a marble in the spoon, run up and down the field and hand off to your teammates. And there was outrage because they had only one spoon per team, and, ew, gross, I don't want to share a spoon with my boss, so they changed it to holding the spoon in your hand. Which wasn't great for me, because I don't have the steadiest hand.

I was the second of five legs in the race. I made it all the way to the other end of the field and about halfway back again when I dropped the marble. Worse, I then lost the marble in the grass. Worse, my boss and like five other people rushed the field to help me comb through the grass. Somehow, we came in second-to-last, because the people next to us had the same issue with the dropping and losing the marble. But it was fairly humiliating, and I think it was the start of our downfall. It was a sad, sad day.

We won the "best team spirit/creativity" award, which pretty much felt like the spirit award I won as the worst player on the JV tennis team in ninth grade, but it was good to get something. But I may have to be out sick or something next year, because I'm not sure I can recover from this one.

An etiquette question

I care deeply about proper workplace bathroom etiquette, but I had a new dilemma today that I think I handled wrong, but I'm not really sure.

Tuesdays are hell days for me at work; I have a gazillion back-to-back meetings and I almost never have a chance to pee, so I'm always running to the bathroom at the absolute last minute before I explode.

So I was dismayed to find, at 2:30, that the first stall I entered had no toilet paper, and the one next to it had disgusting remnants in the toilet. I flushed with my foot (that's one of my pet peeves: when people go into the stall, see the toilet has stuff in it, and move on without flushing. If it's clogged and it'll spill over if you flush, that's one thing, but c'mon, especially if you use your foot, what's the harm in flushing before you find a more pristine stall?) and moved on to the third stall of the four in this bathroom.

Someone else came in and went into the first stall (proper etiquette, leaving an empty stall between us), at which point I realized I should've taken the fourth stall so anyone coming in could go to the functional -- and now poop-free -- second stall. But I hate using the handicapped stall if there are others free, and I wasn't really thinking that far ahead.

Anyway, the person clearly didn't check the toilet paper status when she came in, so she stayed in the first stall. While I was washing my hands, I heard her spinning the empty rolls.

And that was the point where I didn't know what to do. If I'd been at the sink when this person came in, I'd have told her there was no toilet paper in the first stall. But I wasn't, and I didn't, and then I felt like a jerk for not warning her sooner, and I figured that she must've realized there was someone else in the bathroom -- I was running the water and ripping paper towels from the dispenser, and it's not that big a space -- and that she'd ask for TP. I sort of hesitated and lingered for about 30 extra seconds before I left, hoping she'd say something, but she never did, and I felt weird offering it at that point.

I feel like I probably should've offered anyway, because boy does it suck to be in the stall with no toilet paper and have to either (1) reach allllllllll the way under and up the wall of the adjacent stall to reach that roll of paper, assuming it's stocked and affixed to the appropriate side of the stall or (2) make a run for it and hope against all hope that your boss doesn't walk in while you're scurrying to another stall with your underpants around your ankles. These are not fun options, and certainly ones I'd endure only if there were no one else in the bathroom to shove a few squares under the stall. So I guess I figured that if this person today had some sort of issue about asking me for help, she'd really feel weird about my offering it unsolicited.

I know, I know: I don't have time to pee, but I have 10 minutes to agonize over a random person in the bathroom and to write about it? My priorities are all out of whack.

Random thoughts as I stumble around the house

Before they had a kid, our friends used to talk about enjoying nights when they'd just stumble around their apartment drunk on a Tuesday or whatever, because they could. I've taken a page from their book, apparently. I brought home some salmon to grill, and the Smelmooo and Tucker and I had a nice dinner outside with a bottle of white wine, and I stood up to bring my dishes inside and I nearly fell over. So I'm obviously feeling chatty, so here we go:

-- I read on another blog that there's a new technology that can prevent drunk dialing. Boy, would that have come in handy about five years ago! But nothing in the works, it seems, for drunk blogging, sadly.

-- I can't believe I forgot to write about how the Smelmooo and I finally got to eat at our local Red Robin last week! It was a long haul, but I, for one, feel that it was worth the wait. We had delicious burgers and bottomless fries, and I had the yummiest chocolate shake I've had in a while.

-- Pirates Two is getting an awful lot of flak for being inferior to the first installment. I agree it wasn't as good, and I felt a bit let down by the ending, but I enjoyed the ride. It wasn't Shakespeare, but it was a fun time, and I thought that hamster wheel was the coolest thing ever. I agree it was a bit long, and, again, the ending felt a little unsatisfying and cheap, but it was a fun movie. I was surprised by how orange and puffy Keira Knightley's face seemed to look; I generally think of her as fairly pale and completely scrawny all over, so it was odd.

-- In addition to watching my DVD of the first season of Felicity, I'm also watching reruns on the WE network, which runs this ad almost constantly about the many meanings of the word "Hey" on the show. The lead is, "Felicitology 101." But it's the only effing one that they do -- they don't do "amazing" or any other commonly used word; just "hey." If you're gonna do a whole Felicitology campaign, go on with yer bad selves, but if it's just one word? Not so cool.

-- Three years ago this week, the Smelmooo and I got engaged. It's weird, because I just found out about a 25-year-old acquaintance who just got engaged, and my initial reaction was, "My god! She's just a baby -- what's the hurry?!" And then, of course, the Smelmooo and Minnams both pointed out that I, too, was 25 when I got engaged. Almost 26, and I'd just turned 27 when we got married, but still. I don't know if I just recognize that I've always been an old soul or what, but, how quickly I forget.

-- While exfoliating my face in the shower the other day, I discovered that I somehow bruised my left cheekbone. Not in any kind of visible way, but it hurt -- a lot -- when I put pressure on it. It's still hurts to touch it, so I have a near-constant chorus of "My face hurts" / "It's killing me!" dialogue in my head. Even half a bottle of wine doesn't help.

Old, good TV

While the Smelmooo plays in a poker tourney tonight, I'm buckling down with a DVD of the first season of Felicity. I still have trouble with Brian Krakow in his role on this show.

Anyway, I’m currently watching the episode where Ben and Felicity walk in on the burglars in the loft, which also happens to be the first Halloween episode. And at the Halloween party, Ben makes out with this girl who's dressed as the Pink Power Ranger. What makes that funny, of course, is that the actress who actually played the Pink Power Ranger is also on Felicity. I'd totally forgotten that -- not that Amy Jo Johnson was the Pink Power Ranger and also Julie on Felicity, but about that little touch in this episode.

I've never watched Alias, but someone told me recently that the idea came about because J.J. Abrams and co tossed out the idea, "What if Felicity led a double life? Like if she spent her nights as a spy?" And, voila, Hannah from Felicity gets her own show a few years later.

This show makes me so happy. I'm such a dork.

PSA for the day

Following my week in the sun (actually, five days of clouds and interim rain, and only two days or so of consistent sunshine), I visited my dermatologist's office this morning. I hadn't been in about four years or so, but I felt a little irritated that I was no longer in their computer system -- "You must already be on microfilm," the receptionist told me. The last time I was there was for a mysterious red spot on my nose that just as mysteriously disappeared about six months later. (It was diagnosed as a Spider Angiomata, although my Googling of that term turns up a lot of associations with cirrhosis of the liver, which I don't have. Anyway.)

But back I went today, not because of a spot, or because of the disgusting pimples that popped up during my vacation -- probably a combination of pool water, ocean water, tons of sunscreen, and hot, muggy weather -- but for an overall check because, a couple months ago, my sister had a melanoma removed. My sister is obsessive about covering up in the sun and slopping on the sunscreen -- she's even pastier than I am -- so her dermatologist said that we likely have a genetic predisposition, and that all of us oughta get checked out, just to be safe.

So I scheduled my appointment with the physician assistant, whose schedule was much more open than the M.D.'s, and I absolutely loved her. She explained everything she was doing; she asked how my sister’s doing (just fine, by the way – all clear at her follow-up appointment); she gave me a list of the best sunscreens to use, including some that aren’t approved in the U.S. but are available over the internet; she told me to make sure my dentist, gynecologist and even my hairdresser all know about our family history so they can be on alert for anything suspicious.

I got a clean bill of health, although I need to go back every six months or so. I have a couple of spots that I need to keep an eye on, so they took some photos so they can track whether they’re growing or changing.

So here’s my PSA: Go get checked, just in case. And, as Baz Luhrmann’s voice reminded me incessantly in 1999, Always wear sunscreen (preferably with an ingredient called Helioplex, I’m told).

What I learned on my summer vacation: Epilogue

So we're back in NJ, mostly caught up on laundry, all caught up on Entourage, hanging out with a pizza and our puppy. Life is good. A few more things I learned this week:

-- I will never, ever get caught up on all of my New Yorkers, no matter how long my vacation.

-- I like the Outer Banks, but I think that the Jersey Shore will always be my first love, and I think if I'd spent my summers in beach houses as big as this one on the Outer Banks, I'd be even more spoiled than I am now.

-- Having a dog awaiting us at home makes it much less depressing to come back from vacation.

-- My dad will always be completely stressed out and obsessive-compulsive for the 12 or so hours before check-out, but he and my mom are also both smiling ear-to-ear because they feel so happy to have had quality time with their "ducklings."

-- My family is loud, and strange, and quirky, and stubborn, and I'm so glad all 19 of us don't live in the same house 365 days a year. But I wouldn't trade them for a thing, and I'm glad that we had this time together, and I'd even do it again, happily. Not immediately, but someday.

What I learned on my summer vacation: Day Seven

-- Kayaking in shallow water can get very muddy and gross (as the Smelmooo pointed out, it's not nearly as romantic as the rowboat scene in The Notebook).

-- Nothing brings family together like a shared enemy.

-- If it's remotely edible, someone in my family will eat it -- no matter how full they are, or how much else they've eaten -- because better to be gluttonous than wasteful.

-- Law & Order: SVU is totally addictive.

-- Carefully-regulated water balloon fights aren't very exciting.

-- Grown men can turn into 13-year-old boys as soon as you throw an X-Box their way.

-- The last full day of vacation brings with it that same feeling of dreadful anticipation as a Sunday evening before a long, stressful week at work. Only, like, a millionfold.