Some days, I have no problem wasting time: lying around all day on the couch watching crappy movies, eating ice cream out of the carton; stalking people on Friendster and MySpace on a slow day at work; walking around a mall; napping on a beach. I'm okay not packing every minute with productive activity.
But today, I was not a happy camper as I sat and sat and sat and sat in traffic on the way to work through the flooded, flooded streets, and thought about how much work I could've gotten done if I'd just stayed home, getting crankier and crankier as more and more messages came through saying that my meetings were canceled because hardly anyone could get into the office. You know, the meetings that had prompted me to go to the office instead of just working from home. Sigh. Boo, bad weather (and boo, bad call by whoever is responsible for deciding whether our office closes on bad-weather days).
I'd much rather have had time-wasting time to update my blog, in part because I'm tired of the
Smelmooo giving me crap about it, and in part because I actually do like to write here.
Right now, I'm wasting time by watching The Truth About Cats and Dogs. I loved, loved, loved this movie when I first saw it, but there's something so ridiculous about it when I watch it start to finish again. The whole premise is so irritating. I always recognized its absurdity, but this time around I just want to kick Janeane Garafalo's character in the shins for being so spineless and self-loathing. And Uma -- who I find alternately beautiful and funny-looking, both in general and in this movie -- wears these totally ridiculous, frumpy outfits (I know it was 1997, but even so: frumpy), but men are still literally falling all over themselves to get her attention, even when she's sitting down, so they wouldn't know how tall and leggy she is.
So, other highlights from the last three weeks or so (wow, that was a really long hiatus):
-- I missed
Minnams desperately during her ski trip, but now that she's back, I wish she'd suck it up and eat some carbs, already. I say this because I love her, and because I'm intolerant, but also because I secretly fear that
I won't be able to eat carbs in 10 years, and I really believe that I wouldn't be able to enjoy life without carbs (although I do okay enjoying life without ice cream and chocolate during Lent, but that's a defined period of time, and I'm always thrilled when the clock strikes midnight on Easter Sunday. This year we broke our fast with Cold Stone Creamery, and it was heaven, and less shocking to my system than the Friendly's Peanut Butter Cup sundaes of years past). I'm all of a sudden very anxious about turning 30 this year, and the though of having to give up carbs makes me dread it even more.
-- I've been doing a whole boatload of day trips to D.C. -- I have two this week -- and they still sort of kick my butt, but I'm starting to get into the groove. I have a morning routine with a stop at the 7-11 for water, soda and a newspaper before I get on the train, and I've figured out the best place to park at the train station in NJ, which of my shoes will set off the metal detectors in which buildings, how to condense absolutely anything into a work bag plus a laptop bag. Of course, having zero sense of direction, I'm still never sure which building has the hot pretzels and frozen yogurt (I want to say it's Longworth, but I have no idea), which floor I need to be on to take the underground tunnels, which door I need to exit to get a cab. I wonder if this will ever come naturally to me, because it seems to be taking a looooooooooooooooong time, and it sort of undermines my authority as an expert on the Hill if I can't even figure out how to get to a meeting room.
-- I'm sort of obsessed with the Corzine accident, and I'm wondering what the appropriate amount of time/recovery is before seatbelt advocacy groups start running with this.
-- I'm also a little obsessed with the Virginia Tech shooting, especially because the sister of one of my dear friends is a student there. My friend is actually in Egypt right now, and I was a little reluctant to ask him about it, in case he somehow hadn't heard about it and would be freaking out, but I figured that if he had email access, he'd heard, and the Smelmooo pointed out that it's always better to reach out at a time like this. And he was right, of course -- my friend wrote back to say his sister's safe (shaken, of course, and lacking a lot of good information about what's going on) and how much he appreciated everyone's concern. So I'm a little less personally invested now, but it's just so incredibly troubling.
-- On a lighter note, my family almost never celebrates holidays on the actual holiday, so we had Faux Easter yesterday at my sister's. We still get Easter baskets, which is a little ridiculous but much appreciated, and it's hilarious to me that we're all of a sudden eight years old again as soon as the baskets are doled out. "Why did she get pink bunny Peeps and I got yellow chick Peeps?!" "His hard-boiled egg is prettier than mine!" "She got an extra Cadbury egg!" That sort of thing. All of our nieces and nephews -- ages two through 10 -- are a hundred times more mature about their spoils than we are.
-- I got much more choked up at
The Pursuit of Happyness than I expected; I liked but did not love
Volver; I was heartsick over
Children of Men; I very much liked
Blades of Glory; I couldn't even get through
Happy Feet.
-- When I picked up Tucker from doggy day care last week, our obedience instructor happened to be there, and when Tucker came bounding out of the back room and jumped up on her as I tried to lead him out of the building, she sort of smirked, and I said, embarrassed and ashamed, "Yeah, we're still not so good." And she snapped back, "WHO'S not so good,
Mom?" And I sort of wanted to deck her, but just mumbled, "Yeah, I'm not so good," and hustled out with my tail between my legs. Why am I so afraid of this woman, and why do I let her intimidate me? And why do I feel the need to apologize and feel ashamed that my dog is overly exuberant and friendly? It's not like he's biting anyone or doing anything horrible, and I have no interest in having some snobby Stepford show dog. But yeeesh, that woman gets under my skin, and she knows it, and she loves it. Now that I've mastered knitting, I might need to take up voodoo.
