tangentwoman

10 Years Later

2011-09-09T09:35:00.005-04:00

"He doesn't work there anymore. He doesn't work there anymore."

My mother's words were the first indication that something had gone horribly wrong in Lower Manhattan. I was safely at my desk in my office in Princeton, NJ, doing some last-minute prep for a 9 a.m. news release about something that had already been rendered completely irrelevant by the time my phone rang.

"Mom, what are you talking about?"

"Your brother, his office moved, he doesn't work in the World Trade Center anymore."

I still had no idea what she was talking about, and neither did any of us, yet. The first plane had just hit; the facts were slim; my mind didn't leap immediately to terrorist attack, but assumed it was a small plane with an inexperienced pilot who'd gotten off-course and inadvertently flew into a building.

I sent my brother a short e-mail that today still makes me wince; how could I have been so callous and selfish as to write something like, "I'm glad you don't still work at the WTC. Love you." But at that point, I still had no idea. I didn't know that one of his best friends from college, and that friend's brother, worked at Cantor Fitzgerald and would never come home. I had no idea what more there would be to come that day, and in the following weeks, months, and years. It was unfathomable. It's still unfathomable.

I feel exhausted, emotionally, from all the coverage in this week leading up to the 10-year anniversary. Every year, I'm surprised how raw my emotions still are, how quickly I'm transported back to that day, how guilty I feel that I get so upset even though I didn't lose anyone that day, so what right do I have to mourn when I was so personally unaffected, comparatively? I have my brother, still. Thousands of people don't have theirs.

This morning at the gym, I was reading the People magazine coverage of some of the 9-year-old kids whose fathers died on 9/11, before the children were born. And I wept and I wept (it is really hard to exercise when you're crying, but I realized that I just sounded like I was working out really hard, so no one paid me much mind), for those kids who never knew their dads, for their older siblings who HAD known their dads but lost them so young, for their widows and friends. And I wept because I can't help but think again of my brother and his family, of his son who will turn 10 next month, of their older daughter and the younger one who came along four years later. Of how different all our lives would be, and theirs especially, if my brother did still work there on that day.

We don't talk about it, much; my brother's a stoic and a private guy. I know he must feel guilt, along with profound sadness and anger. I know he hugs his family extra tightly on each anniversary. I know he's tried to be there for his friend's family, the ones who weren't so lucky. There are hundreds of those stories: the woman who was late to work because it was her kid's first day of kindergarten; the guy who decided to vote in the primary election before going in to work; the person who played hooky or slept in or stopped for breakfast or worked from home or took the dog to the vet.

Is that part of what's so devastating, still? The chance of it all, the randomness of who lived and who died? There's always that with death, with any accident or incident: "If I hadn't forgotten my keys..." or "If I'd gone on the highway rather than through back roads..." (it seems disrespectful to invoke "Sliding Doors" in such a somber post, but I guess I've gone ahead and done that now). I guess it's simply the overwhelming magnitude of loss.

I don't know that I can handle any more TV specials or articles about 9/11 this week (although someone just told me that the Village Voice took a very different approach, and wrote about some of the 9/11 charities that were pretty much scams; I do actually want to read that, because I think I can handle feeling enraged more than I can handle feeling so sad). But I do know that I'll remember those who were lost and those who they left behind, and that I'll hug my loved ones just a little bit more tightly.

A Friday poll

2011-03-18T12:57:00.002-04:00

I know I have, like, zero readers, but still, I put this out into the universe:

Our real estate agent seems insistent on being in contact with me, and only with me, about all things, often during my work day, often at times when I simply cannot deal with her. She refuses to call the Smelmooo in these situations, and she also almost never leaves any detailed information in her voicemails; it's more, "Hi, it's your agent, please call me back" and it will turn out that she's just calling to remind me that she's working for us. Which is fine, but, geez, just say that.

Anyway, I give that context as part of my full disclosure that I'm already predisposed to be irritated at the agent. However, I've been pleased that she's started to realize that I will almost never answer my phone if she calls me during work, and that I may be more likely to respond to an e-mail if there's actually something urgent that she describes.

But, of course, she refuses to copy the Smelmooo.

Earlier this week, I was at an all-day retreat, and one of the ground rules was that we were not allowed to use our Blackberries during the day, so I didn't get the voicemail or the e-mail from the realtor until the end of the day. She was actually calling about something real: a repair that needed to be dealt with right away, and I was grateful that she raised it, because we didn't realize our contractor hadn't fixed it.

ANYWAY. In my reply, I asked that she please be sure to copy the Smelmooo on future e-mails(she always begins her e-mails, "Hi, Tangent and Smelmooo!" so I wasn't sure if she thought we share an e-mail address or what, but I always copy him when I e-mail her, so I couldn't figure it out).

Today I e-mailed her again (and again copied Smelmooo) to tell her that the repair had been made and that she could open the house up for showings again this weekend. In her reply, just to me, she noted, "I'm sorry, I don't have the Smelmooo's e-mail address." Which is simply not true, not only because, seriously, EVERY. TIME. I've e-mailed her, I've copied him, not to mention that we gave her all of our phone numbers and e-mail addresses when we first started working with her.

So I replied, "Great, thanks. It's smelmooo@smelmooo.com; I copy him on every e-mail I send to you; you can just hit 'reply-all.'"

The Smelmooo thinks this was bitchy of me; I contend that, if she actually did know the "reply-all" trick, she would, in fact, employ it, so I did her a solid and educated her.

So, finally, the question: Bitchy or practical? ("Neither"/"Other" is also an acceptable answer if you explain yourself.

Minor rant

2011-03-07T17:42:00.000-05:00

I took the redeye home on Friday from a conference in Los Angeles (where it was cold and drizzly, until I was en route to the airport home, but where I had delicious wine and some good conversations and ate extraordinarily delicious comfort food at Wolfgang Puck's), which always puts me out of sorts I slept a ton this weekend, but today I've been feeling nauseated and chilly and off, and I'm not sure what's happening, but it's all making me a bit cranky. Mostly, I'm cranky with people who make it harder to do my job, including:

- the consultants who continually suggest improvements to the language we use on our website, to "punch it up." This would normally be a good thing - a firm that takes initiative! - but they keep suggesting we say things that aren't true. And then I have to explain, yes, that sounds great, but above all else I actually care about our credibility more than our web stats, and are we really having this conversation AGAIN?!

- the same firm routinely changes the language on the live site, then asks for feedback (but never actually cops to doing so). Again, really? Again, we're having this conversation?

- I cannot take your line edits seriously when you keep using the word "sentance."

That is all for now, although I will add that I hate the article in today's New York Times telling me about how all the BART trains in San Francisco are crawling with MRSA and other grody bugs, because I can't stop thinking about it, and what might be infecting the public places I frequent.

{Shudder}

More job-hunting tips!

2011-01-03T15:11:00.002-05:00

I finally hired my staff person, who starts in two weeks (hooray, seriously!), so I haven't had too many cranky resume reactions recently, but I did get a doozy of an inquiry today, to which I will respond with an open letter here (and with more of a "thanks-but-no-thanks" e-mail to the actual inquiry):

Dear Parent,

Seriously, you are NOT doing your college-aged kid a favor by inquiring about summer internships on their behalf, particularly when the person on the receiving end of this inquiry is a total stranger to you. Trust me. I'm all for working your connections; I wouldn't have gotten a single one of my summer jobs if it weren't for people my parents knew. Asking a friend, or a colleague, or an acquaintance, or a friend-of-a-friend? Totally cool.

Asking an absolute stranger? Your kid is spending the summer in the couch on the basement.

Seriously, there is no way that I would ever, ever, ever hire your kid, even for a non-paying internship.

I had to performance-manage the hell out of a former employee, and I once had a nightmare that his mother showed up at our office to defend him and to take me to task for not appreciating her perfect little angel. But with you, I think it actually might happen in real life.

So, trust me: you are doing your kid a disservice. I bet he's still home from school on winter break. Let him pound the pavement himself. No more "helping" from you, unless it's with someone you know.

Geez.

Warmly,
Total Stranger Tangent Woman

Good karma

2010-12-23T11:39:00.002-05:00

I'm convinced that the universe rewarded me for helping that lady with directions to Lord & Taylor earlier this week!

Yesterday, the Smelmooo drove me to the train station in the morning, because it was cold and I was running late and he's chivalrous that way. I got out of the car and realized I didn't have my warm winter hat, and figured I'd left it at home in my rush to get out the door.

I realized very quickly that there was no way I was going hatless in yesterday's weather, with a 10-minute walk to and from the office and a 12-minute walk home, so I bought a cheapo hat at the Duane Reade at Penn Station. It was a ridiculous-looking hat: blue-and-white striped, blue pom-pom on top, ear flaps with braided strings dangling down. My sister described it as "artsy pothead" (although it was fleece-lined, which I think makes that description slightly less apt). It was super-warm, but totally ridiculous, and seemed to put me completely over the edge as a fashion DON'T commuter (already in the mix: white-and-yellow sneakers with black tights and a red skirt, plus a plum-colored scarf. As I said, running late yesterday, but in generally I'm dressed for function rather than style for my commute), and I kept feeling grateful that I'm not a celebrity, because surely the Fug Girls would have had a field day with me.

Anyway, I got home last night and realized that my hat was not at home, and not in the car, and was therefore lost. I must have dropped it getting out of the car at the train station. Why, why, why, I walked back to see if the Smelmooo was still in the parking lot but did not think to look down to see whether I'd dropped my hat there is a mystery, but I was kicking myself about it all night. Because that hat was a good hat.

I have a big, oddly-shaped head. Every winter hat I've ever had, I've managed to stretch out in weird ways, eventually resulting in a giant elongated pouf at the top of my head. So two years ago, on a shopping excursion with MinnaRice, I found a perfect-looking hat: charcoal grey, cashmere, a correct fit for my weird head. It was from Neiman Marcus, so a little pricey, but at the outlet it was half-off the extra-ridiculous original price, so I figured it was worth the investment. And it held up! And it kept me warm! And it kept its shape! It reminded me that, sometimes, you can't get something at Target and expect it to last forever; some things are worth more of an investment in quality (see also: name-brand Oreo cookies vs. the store brand).

So I was really mourning the loss of the perfect hat, and all night and all morning I was thinking about whether I could wait until after Christmas to get another perfect hat on sale somewhere, because the artsy-pothead hat is not a viable option on work days, and although the knitted Rutgers hat I wore instead today is relatively warm, it's also quite itchy and falls at a weird spot in the middle of my ears. On my way out the door, I asked the Smelmooo, "What do you think the chances are that my hat's still at the train station?" He said zero; I said one percent.

And, as you may have guessed already: A Christmas Miracle! (or, a day-before-the-night-before-Christmas miracle, anyway) I walked into the station and saw a big pile of stuff (a makeshift lost & found that I'd never noticed before), and there was my perfect hat! It had a couple of leafy bits stuck to the outside, but it didn't seem to have been run over repeatedly in the parking lot or anything. I was babbling about how I couldn't believe someone had returned it, and a guy standing there (who works for the town? who works at the train station? I couldn't tell; I was just sort of talking out loud, not to anyone directly) said, "Well, yeah, we found it, and we put it there." Like, "Duh."

Which was fine. I didn't care. I know I'm disproportionately invested in the hat, and that I could've found another one, and that I'd have been plenty warm today in my itchy Rutgers hat. But it really all did seem bigger than a hat: a sign from the universe that things really do sometimes work out for the best, that there are people who are good and kind, that what's been lost can be recovered.

This and that

2010-12-20T12:21:00.003-05:00

Oh, so much is kicking about in this little brain of mine:

-- First, that sentence just triggered a flashback to my days in high school youth group, during which we'd carry candles and sing, "This Little Light of Mine," which is a catchy ditty and will therefore be stuck in my brain all afternoon. You're welcome.)

-- I just ducked out to do some errands during lunch, and an older woman, clearly doing her Christmas shopping, looked a little bit dazed as I passed her while walking in the same direction down the street. I slowed a bit, and she asked me, sort of sheepishly, "Excuse me, do you know how to get to Lord & Taylor?" Which I did not, but I asked if she had the address, and she dug for a bit in her purse (after I guided her to the edge of the sidewalk so people like me didn't bowl her over because she, like seemingly every other tourist, just STOPPED. RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SIDEWALK.), and said, "38th Street and Fifth Avenue." Hooray! After nearly a full year of working in midtown, I felt confident that I could direct her (from our spot on 37th and Broadway) to her destination. But even better than me (me!) being able to give correct directions was that when I said, "Have a good day, and happy holidays!" she replied, "Oh, thank you so, so much! You just made mine a lot happier!" It's really the little things sometimes, I guess.

-- Speaking of which, while I was at the drugstore looking for last-minute giftcards for a couple of co-workers, a guy came busting through the Duane Reade just cursing his head off. "Motherf-er" this and "f-er" that, at the top of his lungs, seemingly to no one, not even a bluetooth that I could spot, although I was trying hard not to make eye contact. I always struggle with that, wanting to tell people to quit being rude and awful but usually just staying out of the way so I don't get beat up. My mother would probably excuse my not standing up for the little guy in this instance.

-- I know this is old news at this point, but that coach who last week tripped the football player as he was running down the field? I totally get that. I really understand just having a bizarre impulse and acting on it, absolutely without thinking, even knowing that it's the wrong thing to do. I could completely see myself doing the same thing, so I sympathize with the guy. I agree that he should have been reprimanded, as he was, but I really feel for the guy.

-- I am feeling oddly torn about the latest celebrity break-ups, although I think I'm secretly glad about Vanessa and Zac breaking up. Something about her just bugs me. I can't believe I know or care about any of this. But I was sad about Michael C. Hall and Jennifer Carpenter breaking up, especially given that they stuck together through his illness, but I guess sometimes that takes a toll on a relationship in complicated ways. And who knows about Scarlett and Ryan; I have never been a Ryan fan, because I can't get out of my head the awful, awful acting he did as Billy on that Nickelodeon show "Fifteen" back in the late '80s. I realize that all of the actors were kind of horrible, and he was maybe not even the worst (that award might go to "alcholic" Matt, who, you know, had a sip of beer at a party), but he was the most memorable to me.

-- Speaking of random knowledge from long-lost TV shows, at a party this weekend, a bunch of people were swapping stories of working in fast-food joints, a fate I was spared, so my contribution was, "Do you remember when Brenda on 227 worked at the fast food place and was so excited, but then quit after like a week because she always smelled like french fries?" Shockingly, no one did. Fortunately, I was able to pivot nicely to the fact that the Smelmooo's friend was on Jeopardy last week, speaking of random useless knowledge, so phew.

-- In my old job, I traveled to D.C. usually a few times a month, but I hadn't been back in a year until last week. It was actually sort of emotional, pulling into the train station and realizing how much of an outsider I'd become, and how much I missed the people I used to work with there. But I was happy to be back, and I had dinner plans with my oldest friend (or, I guess, with the friend I've known the longest, since we were 10. And it did strike me at dinner how we've both grown grey-haired and wrinkled, but how his face is otherwise exactly the same as it was 23 years ago), so I was excited for the day. Which turned out to be a bit snowy, although that was less of a problem than I've experienced in D.C. in the past. But the bigger problem was that once I was finally on my way home (scheduled to arrive around 11:45 p.m.), there were wires down on the train tracks past Baltimore, so we just sat, and sat, and sat. I got home at 6:15 a.m. Perhaps the universe is giving me a sign that I don't belong back in D.C.?

-- I'm reading "Big Girls Don't Cry," about women in the 2008 election, and I'm just struggling to get through it. I'm not even to the Sarah Palin part yet! I can't figure out why it's such a slog; anyone else read it? Next on my list: "When They Come for Us, We'll be Gone" (I have a longstanding obsession with Jewish literature and culture, despite not having knowningly known anyone who's Jewish until I was, like, 12 years old), probably returning to that theme with "Sarah's Key," but with a break first for "Freedom" (although I'm gazillionth on the waiting list) and the next book in Suzanne Collins's "Hunger Games" series, although MinnaRice keeps telling me that it'll be increasingly troubling for me to make it through those.

-- MinnaRice is coming to visit next week! I can hardly wait. I don't even care what we do. I still can't quite believe she's a West Coaster now.

-- But first, Christmas! I'm excited about our Christmas Eve menu, and having our first Christmas in our new house, and seeing all of our nieces and nephews all excited about presents and hopped up on sugar and adrenaline. It really is the best time of the year.

-- I totally forgot Tucker's birthday, which was Saturday. I know that he's a dog and that he has no idea; it'd be much worse if I forgot to feed him or something, but I couldn't help but feel totally inadequate. I will be making it up to him with excessive treats and tummy rubs at least through New Year's.

Aaaaaand a few more tips

2010-10-26T15:41:00.002-04:00

I'm still getting resumes for my open position, so I'll share a few more tips for job-seekers. Lucky you!!

-- The last five minutes of an hour-long (first-round!!) interview is NOT the time to say, "So, yeah, one more thing: what's the timing of your decision about a candidate? Because I've actually accepted another position, and I'm supposed to start in 10 days. But, I really think this job would be great, and I'd take it if you could make me an offer next week." Thanks, lady, for wasting our time. (Note: this strategy is actually quite effective in the short-short-short term. My colleague and I who were doing the interview immediately started considering whether we could accelerate our interview process and make a decision, because of course we wanted her!! No one else should be able to get her! But then, of course, five minutes later we came to our senses, and realized that we'd felt sort of lukewarm about her anyway, and that we didn't really want to hire someone who'd be so quick to renege on an agreement to take a position.)

-- Unless you are seeking employment as a cartoonist, or maybe a circus clown or something, under no circumstances should your cover e-mail be written in Comic Sans MS font. Seriously?! You are an adult. Snazz up your signature to look like it's written in cursive, if you must, but please, please do not write your entire cover note in anything but a standard font. What's next, wingdings? Yeesh.

-- Don't ignore the process, and don't lie about it when I've caught you doing so. "Hi, I found your direct e-mail address online, and I'm wondering if I should just send you my materials here, because when I sent them to the mailbox you said to, I didn't get a reply, so let me know!" "Uh, yep, no need; did you not get a reply saying we'll be in touch if you're a fit?" "No, I totally didn't get that!" Yes, you did.

-- Don't misspell my name. "Dear Ms. Targent, Did you get my resume that says I pay impeccable attention to detail?! Sincerely, Not So Much."

That is all. I seem to have a few good candidates in the mix now, so I'm hoping that there'll be a real winner in there. Fingers crossed!

Lots of feelings

2010-09-30T18:32:00.003-04:00

I'm in Los Angeles for a conference, and I'm running on very little sleep today. I was feeling no effects yesterday of having woken up at 4:15 a.m. Eastern time and going to bed at 10:30 Pacific. I had a chance to exercise when I got here yesterday afternoon; I caught up with lots of former co-workers who I like a lot; I did an adequate job of schmoozing at the reception. All was well, and I even read a little before falling asleep, whereas normally I feel so dehydrated and exhausted after a cross-country flight that I pass out the second my head hits the pillow.

This morning, I got up around 4:30, trying to stay roughly on East Coast time. I got to the gym before it got completely packed, luckily (when I arrived, there was only one other person in there, using the free weights. 45 minutes later, every machine was taken and there were five people waiting).

But, once I was back in my room, I started feeling queasy and dehydrated (the downside of going to the gym so early: nowhere to buy water so early) and exhausted.

And then, before I went down to breakfast, I turned on the Today Show, and heard about Tyler Clementi, the Rutgers student who killed himself last week. And I cried, and cried, and cried. I couldn't stop. Not only for the loss of this poor kid who held so much promise, and his family, and his friends, but also because the whole story made me think we've completely lost it as a society. It seems much bigger than these three kids in Jersey. I remember one of my professors in grad school obsessively banging the drum that bullying is a public health issue, but in the seven or eight years since I heard her make that case, the world has completely changed, and it's staggering to me how rampant bullying is.

I'm really not someone who believes that technology has led to the downfall of society (although I remember another class in grad school during which, even before Facebook or Twitter existed, we hotly debated whether the Internet has improved or eroded social ties), but it does make it much easier to give in to our worst instincts, present the worst versions of ourselves, very quickly, impulsively, and often irreparably. The best versions of ourselves, too, I guess; it's extraordinary to see the outpouring of support and generosity of people who can send a text message to help people in Haiti or click a few buttons to join a bone marrow registry in response to a plea from a stranger across the country. But this morning, it just all seemed incredibly grim, how callously we treat each other, how easily we can ruin each other, seemingly for no other reason than that we can.

So I was a bit of a mess, and then during one of our sessions this morning, we heard from the guy who wrote the book that was turned into the movie The Soloist, about the Julliard graduate who ended up playing a two-stringed violin on the streets of LA after he developed serious mental illness and the LA Times columnist who befriended him. And the columnist talked about the reaction of his readers after the initial column ran: the packages started pouring in, filled with violin strings, and violins, and a cello. People heard a story that pulled at their hearts; they saw a need and did what they could to meet it; they saw an injustice and did what they could to correct it. And I nearly broke down crying again, because there are also really, really good people in the world, who care about each other, who care about people they've never even met. And I have to believe that there are more of them than there are awful, selfish, thoughtless people. But I'm not sure that I do quite believe that, today.

Rutgers already had in the works a big campaign for civility, and I guess that's a start. But how depressing that we've gotten to the point where we need a two-year campaign by a university to teach us what we all learned, or should have, in kindergarten. And I remember it being reinforced in...second grade, I think? We had a class pledge that we recited every day, or at least every week. The only part I remember clearly was, "Care and share. Respect all others." That's a pretty good guiding principle, right? 25 years later, I'd probably add, "Think carefully before you hit the Send button," but it otherwise holds up. Let's all recommit ourselves to living it.

Some tips for all you job-seekers

2010-09-26T20:11:00.000-04:00

Oh, my, my, my. I'm in the process of hiring a new staff member, and although I posted the position only yesterday, I'm practically drowning in resumes already. On the one hand, it's great that so many people are interested; on the other, the deluge reminds me how sucky the economy still is and how many talented, well-educated, experienced people are out of work.

But trumping every other reaction is: "UGH! What are you doing?!" when I read 90% of the submissions. I don't feel invested enough in these anonymous strangers to give them direct feedback, so let me put it out into the universe for whoever stumbles across my blog:

#1: Follow directions. The posting asks for a one-page personal statement and a resume. I do not want to read a three-page cover letter that repeats the bullets of your resume in prose form. I promise, I don't, and I won't. You are filed immediately in my "No" folder, because I'm not interested in managing someone who can't follow basic directions.

#2: Proofread. Then do it again. Then once more. Seriously, one of the requirements in the job posting is "impeccable editing skills." Start with your own work, please.

#3: Don't try to go over my head. I'm baffled by the number of cover notes that begin, "Dear Mr. CEO:". First of all, if you'd really done your homework, you'd know that he's "Dr." CEO, but that's neither here nor there. The job description makes explicit who this position will support and report to, and it ain't the big boss. It may be overly harsh for me to ding someone for this (and, in fact, if I liked the rest of the materials, I wouldn't NOT include someone in the candidate pool for this one), but it rubs me the wrong way; it makes me think you'll be simultaneously insubordinate and a kiss-ass.

#4: Connect the dots. The description says that the successful candidate will demonstrate a passion for our mission. If you've been doing marketing for Smirnoff for the last three years, why do you suddenly want to work for a health care nonprofit? Maybe it's totally legit, and you had a revelation of some sort, and this is totally your new thing. But from my perspective, it makes no sense unless you tell me why you want to make such a drastic shift in your career. If you've been working freelance for two years, why do you now want to be working full-time for me? If you've been a corporate lawyer, yeah, I'm sure you can write, and project-manage, and work your tail off, but you need to make that connection explicit.

#5: Don't flag your e-mail as high importance. That's pretty much advice I'd give across the board, but especially in this situation. Yeesh.

Dude, unplug.

2010-08-18T13:08:00.002-04:00

So, I was mildly fascinated by this experiment by a bunch of Washington Post reporters to go for a week without e-mail and Internet, and wondering whether I could actually do it. Probably not in the real world, although I'd happily do so during a vacation week. (Seriously, last summer when we were at Crater Lake in Oregon, we had no idea what was going on in the world. Other than being utterly shocked to discover that Ted Kennedy had died while we were off doing our thing, I know I didn't really miss much about being cut off from Facebook or Google or anything else.)

Anyway, I think it'd be a good thing if more people embraced this notion of dialing down the technology. Not just all those people who are texting and driving (which, I admit, I have done, but I think the fear of ending up like Heidi Montag's plastic surgeon has finally cured me of that permanently), but the people who can't walk four blocks without using some sort of digital device.

I just witnessed a guy crossing 37th Street against the light, while talking on his cell phone and holding a Blackberry in his other hand. Which left him no hands (and apparently little attention span) to hang on to his four-year-old son, who tripped and completely face-planted in the middle of the intersection. Where there was a van heading his way.

The driver of the van was paying attention, luckily, so it wasn't as bad as it could've been, but seriously? The dad didn't even hang up his phone -- or interrupt the conversation -- to attend to his screaming, scraped-up kid whose short life probably flashed before his eyes.

Ironic, I guess, that my first blog post in months and months and months is about how technology is killing us, eh?

Man, I am OLD

2010-02-16T16:03:00.004-05:00

Set aside for the moment that a gazillion things have happened since I last wrote, including a job change. I'll get to that, maybe, eventually. In the meantime, an actual conversation as I waited for a staff meeting to get started today:

Co-Worker #1: I got engaged this weekend!

Someone: Who's the lucky guy?

C-W #1: You know, it's all been very "When Harry Met Sally," you know? We kind of dated, we were friends, and all of a sudden we realized we're soulmates, and we're getting married!"

Co-Worker #2: That movie's before my time.

Me, incredulous: What do you mean? That movie came out in, like, the late '80s.

C-W #2: Yeah, I was born in 1987.

Me: [stunned silence, mouth hanging open.] YOU WERE BORN IN NINETEEN EIGHTY-SEVEN????

I am officially old. Better than the alternative, I guess.

This and that after a long hiatus

2009-11-22T20:40:00.001-05:00

So many thoughts, so little inclination to blog, lately. Actually, a few weeks ago, when I was stuck at home with the flu (I assume the Swine, because apparently there aren't any other flu strains active right now. I didn't actually know that, even though I think of myself as a person who's reasonably up-to-speed on health issues), I was desperate to blog, but even reading and watching TV made my head ache, so blogging wasn't really an option.

About a week before I came down with the flu (and, oh, did I try to convince myself I did not have the flu: "There must be something weird with the thermostat in my office! I'll just throw on a sweater and a blanket to chase away the chills."), I was at a dinner for the Smelmooo's work, and one of the other spouses is a nurse. Who was going on, and on, and ON about how she would not be getting the H1N1 vaccine, because she was not interested in being anybody's lab rat (seriously, it could've been quite a drinking game if everyone took even half a sip every time she repeated that statement), how the vaccine wasn't well-tested for safety before they introduced it, and how upsetting she finds it that "all these immigrants who don't speak English can refuse treatment based on religious grounds, but they're trying to tell me that I, as a health care provider, should be vaccinated?"

It's a good thing that my parents raised me to be polite in social situations, because I wanted to yell at this woman; to argue with pretty much every word that came out of her mouth; to tell her she should be ashamed of herself, as a health care professional, for spreading so much misinformation; to tell everyone at the table who was buying her nonsense -- and why not? she's a nurse, she should know, right? -- that the risks associated with the H1N1 vaccine are no greater than those of a seasonal flu shot. But I don't think the people at my table would've trusted my M.P.H. over her R.N., and in general I think it's my job to play the pleasant, demure, supportive spouse at these events: to ask after children and grandchildren, to introduce safe topics like travel and theater and the weather, to engage fully where there are areas of agreement, to steer clear of politics and other areas of disagreement or heated emotion. So I sat by silently, listening to Nurse Lab Rat with a smile pasted on my lips, fighting to keep my eyebrows from revealing what I actually thought of her.

Anyway, I survived her, and I survived the Swine, although I still have an annoying cough that's not quite gone, and it took a good 10 days for me to get my energy back after I got sick. So there was lots and lots of lying around, and lots and lots of bad TV and movies: old 90210s, including the episodes where Kelly nearly gets raped at the Halloween party (where Donna is wearing the stupid mermaid costume, because she didn't learn from that stupid dress she wore at the spring dance) and the one where Scott shoots himself during his birthday party; Marley and Me, which still kind of makes me cry; lots of Game Show Network. I also watched Food Inc., which was really well done but completely horrifying. Watching that in the same week that Jonathan Safran Foer was on Ellen and in which I read a piece on his book in the New Yorker, I was pretty ready to turn vegan, or at least to give up chicken and eggs. I got over that pretty quickly, because my other takeaway from all of this is that, really, going vegan wouldn't be sufficient: I'd pretty much need to be a total locavore to make a real difference, and I don't find that to be a viable option, so I'm pretty much proceeding as usual, just feeling worse about myself for it.

A movie that is a wholly different kind of depressing: Precious. Oh, my gosh, what a hard movie to watch, which I knew going into it, but the Smelmooo and SCo had me convinced that there'd be redemption, and that I'd leave feeling inspired and hopeful. And absent that, I'd convinced myself that I could call up my memories of Mo'Nique as the dean of VH1's Charm School, and of the actress who played Precious dancing on Ellen, and be totally fine.

That totally did not work.

I didn't really need the 12 tissues I brought, but I felt like I'd been punched in the gut, repeatedly, when the movie was finally over. There were a few glimmers of hope in the story, some moments of redemption, but those didn't compare to the awful parts. Not even close. It was well-done, it was well-acted, it felt horrifyingly real and believable. It was a very good movie, but it's not one I need to see again, ever. I think I'm glad I saw it, but oof, it took a lot out of me, and it's really sticking with me. An Education was a much better overall movie experience.

Some more random thoughts:

-- I'm anxious about the health reform bill. I'm excited by last night's Senate vote, but there is still such a looooooooong way to go that I can't help but worry it'll all fall apart, that nothing will get passed (or that what does get passed will be so small and have such a limited impact that it'll scare people from passing stronger reform down the line, because this bill will be so watered-down that opponents can point to it as a colossal failure, so why even try?). Sigh.

-- I'm also fascinated by the controversy over the new studies about cancer screenings for women, in part because I remember having these exact same conversations in my first semester of grad school. At which point we talked about the role of politics and the role of advocates and how often they're at odds with the science. So none of the pushback we're seeing now is surprising, really, but it's troubling to me that the reaction from leaders is, "Okay, it's cool. We'll ignore the research findings and not change anything in terms of formal guidelines, because we can't deal with the ensuing shitstorm." I get it, especially because of the delicate timing with the reform bill pending (seriously, I do have to say that I don't get why the researchers would release their findings right now, although I've worked with enough researchers to know that they often don't really think about these sorts of things), but I still find it troubling.

-- I love, love, love my newest little nephew. I sound just like my mom, who loves all of her grandkids but always has a special affection for the infants (my dad, on the other hand, kind of keeps his distance until they're a little more mobile and vocal), but I love cuddling and just staring at the little guy, who's already seven months old. He won't be a baby much longer, so I'm grateful for the time I have with him at this age.

-- I met up in person with a close high school friend who I hadn't seen since probably my first year of college. We'd reconnected on Facebook, and he was in NYC for a work trip (he lives in the midwest), so we met up at Grand Central for an hour. It was a perfect amount of time; we each did the "Here's what I've been doing the last 14 years," and then we were done. In some ways, it was comforting to realize that he hadn't changed much, but I quickly realized that the things I didn't like about him also hadn't changed, and that there was a reason we didn't stay close after high school. I expect he felt the same way, because I also have changed much. I'm still glad to have caught up with him, but I'm glad we didn't have a leisurely dinner or anything.

-- Comedy clubs are sort of hit-or-miss for me, and sometimes I get very uncomfortable because I'm kind of a prude, but we recently saw Greg Giraldo, and he was freakin' hilarious. Anyone who can work "Hakuna Matata" into his stand-up routine is someone I can appreciate.

-- Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, and I'm for some reason especially looking forward to it this year. We've already celebrated with the Smelmooo's family, because his brother will be traveling this Thursday, so we're just at my folks' for dinner. We'll still be running around a bit this year, because we're doing a 5K run in the morning, kind of far from my parents' house, but I think it'll be fun. We picked up our numbers and our t-shirts and stuff yesterday, and I got a cute pink souvenir shirt for the run. I'm such a dork. Probably I should run more than a 5K to make up for all the food I'm going to eat on Thanksgiving, and that whole weekend (various friends in from out of town = lots of getting together for meals), but at least we're not having two turkey dinners on Thanksgiving proper this year.

-- I think I've been using the word "proper" a lot lately. I wonder if it's because I've been reading British authors recently. I loved Mil Millington's "A Certain Chemistry" (a recommendation from MinnaRice), but didn't end up liking his earlier book, "Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About." The protagonist in Chemistry was kind of a dope, and a bit of a sad sack, but he had redeeming qualities, as did all of the flawed characters in the book. In Argued, I just got bored of the protagonist being a jerk, and a fool, and his girlfriend was horrible, and I couldn't figure out why they'd stay together, and I just didn't enjoy spending time with them, at all. I think I'm going to read Nick Hornby's newest one next.

-- I don't get the Robert Pattinson obsession. I feel bad for him, that he's constantly getting mobbed, but I don't, myself, get the appeal. Is it because I haven't seen Twilight? Maybe I'm just getting old. Probably. I think this entry suggests that I'm old and crotchety.

Sweet little lies

2009-10-04T17:37:00.002-04:00

We saw The Invention of Lying last night (I still want to see The Informant!, in part to see whether I agree with my parents' assessment, which was, essentially: Pbbbbbbbbbbbbbttt!!), which I thought was good, but not great. The premise was much better than the execution; it got a little tedious, but it was a clever movie, with lots of great people in it (I hadn't realized that Edward Norton is in it -- I so enjoy him, for some reason).

I loved that the movie existed basically in today's world; it was intriguing to imagine that Craigslist and Hollywood agents and banks and the real estate market could exist in a world where everyone tells the whole truth, all the time, not necessarily because they're good, but because they don't have the capacity to lie, or a framework for lying. I enjoyed how Ricky Gervais's character struggled with the language of lying; he couldn't say he had told a lie, or hadn't told the truth, or had been dishonest, because those concepts didn't exist. He just said something that...wasn't.

[Minor spoilers ahead (nothing that ruins the ending).]

Where the movie lost its truth, to me, was when Jennifer Garner shows up to Ricky's house, and she basically says she hasn't been touch because she's been really busy and stuff. Which isn't the whole truth, at all. So I thought that that would be like the moment in Pleasantville when some of the characters are starting to see color -- I thought that people were starting to be able to lie to protect each other's feelings, or to make themselves look better. But no, that wasn't it at all. I think it was just a bit of lazy writing, and it didn't fit at all. And yes, obviously, I can suspend my disbelief in general, but when something doesn't make sense because the writers or editors have lost steam, that bothers me much more than when something is just preposterous. And, by that point, I was feeling the movie on the whole was losing steam -- it felt draggy in parts, and it could've been 20 minutes shorter, probably (maybe only 15, but I desperately had to pee with 20 minutes to go, so I'm sticking with 20).

Before the movie, we stopped at Harry & David's for free samples, but I got sucked into buying a package of Caramel Apple Moose Munch. Which was absurdly overpriced, and way too sweet, and gave me a little bit of a stomachache (I went into moderate detox mode after eating entirely too many sweets at the end of the summer through the week after my birthday, so I hadn't had chocolate in about three weeks before the Moose Munch, and had generally eased up on the sugar for the same amount of time, so I think it was a shock to my system, the Moose Munch), but it was still worth it, just to have a few bites. (Geez, I sound like Minnarice. Sorry.)

And, finally, on an unrelated note: it's October, which means it's Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and Down Syndrome Awareness Month, and the Tomato Nation/Donors Choose challenge. Even better? You can donate to projects that help students with Down Syndrome through Donors Choose, so it's a two-fer. Go, please!

Vacation, all I ever wanted

2009-08-30T22:22:00.002-04:00

I'm one of those people who can turn off pretty completely from work during a vacation -- not so much when I take just a day off, but when I'm actually taking a vacation, I shut down pretty much the minute I shut down the computer for the last time before I head out to wherever. This is a beautiful thing.

Usually, the Smelmooo and I take summer vacations that are all about reading and relaxing near some body of water (at the Jersey shore, by a lake in a teensy town in Maine), and doing not much of anything. This year, we switched it up a little and spent about eight days hopping around Oregon, where I had spent a couple of days for work a few summers ago, and which I loved. I remembered Portland as teeming with friendly, outdoorsy people walking their dogs along the river, having a wonderfully efficient, clean public transportation system, and being beautifully sunny and warm, but not hot.

All of that was pretty much the same in Portland, where we spent our first couple of days. This time, I also learned that there is a-maze-ing food in Portland. We had lunch at the culinary institute, which involved four courses for $12. We ate breakfast at a place called Bijou, Cafe, on the recommendation of the Smelmooo's friend who lives in Portland, where they served organic oatmeal topped with blueberries, blackberries, bananas, cherries, peaches, plums, melon, some other kind of tiny berries on a stem, and probably other stuff I'm forgetting. It was extraordinary.

For three hours after breakfast, as we walked along the river and strolled through the outdoor Saturday Market, I moaned, "I am sooooooooo full!" Until we found a little place called Pizza, Schmizza. I didn't have high hopes for pizza in the northwest, but it was also delicious, as were the burritos we had for dinner at Cha Cha Cha! before going to a taping of Live Wire , a local radio show.

Luckily, after all of that eating, we headed out of the city for tons and tons of hiking (although, for the most part, we continued with the excessive eating). On our way to Mount Hood -- where we stayed in a gorgeous lodge in a tiny room with twin beds -- we stopped at Multnomah Falls, and hiked to the top after spending a good long while marveling at the waterfall from the ground. At Mount Hood, we hiked up to the top of the ski hill, and the next day hiked a portion of the Pacific Crest Trail, which goes from Mexico to Canada (we ran into a bunch of people who were about four months into their journey up the entire trail. I am, definitively, not someone who would be into that, but I did enjoy the couple of hours we spent on the trail).

The best part of the trip, I think, was Crater Lake, where we spent two days. The lake itself is just breathtaking in its breadth, in its clarity, in its color. We took a boat tour that included a three-hour visit to Wizard Island, which sits in the middle of the lake; we hiked all around the rim; we had dinner on a veranda overlooking the lake; we listened to rangers giving evening lectures around a campfire and walked back to our cabin underneath a gazillion stars. It was like nothing I'd ever seen, something that the huge photo I'd been seeing for years in my colleague's office did no justice. Our hundreds of photos do it no justice. Seriously, you need to go there. You will leave the world behind -- pretty much no cell service, no internet, no televisions, not even a newspaper that I saw -- and it will be a beautiful thing.

From Crater Lake, we headed to the last leg of our trip, up the coast (more or less -- our GPS had no interest in sending us the coastal route), through Salem (where we stopped at the Capitol building), through a little dairy town (where we stopped at a cheese shop with free samples, delicious ice cream, and a petting zoo out back), up to Cannon Beach, where we stayed in an insanely chichi inn right on the ocean. There was a cookie jar stocked 24/7 with homemade cookies; there were two-and-a-half hours of free drinks (wine in the afternoons, nightcaps in the evenings); there was an insane breakfast buffet that featured more kinds of fruit than were on my oatmeal at the Bijou. We had mostly cold, cloudy, drizzly weather while we were there, but that meant that we actually had a chance to read (much better than I expected: Best Friends Forever, by Jennifer Weiner. Thanks, Jenni and Lori, for the suggestion!) and do nothing. We ran on the beach in the morning (the second day, I could barely see five feet in front of me, it was so foggy), we played cards, we ate and ate and ate.

All in all, a pretty much perfect vacation. And it was good to get home: to our dog, who had stayed with the Smelmooo's sister all week, bless her (the visit did not begin auspiciously -- pretty much the second I brought him inside, he lifted his leg and peed on a living room chair -- but seems to have gone well overall); to our house; to our real life. I feel ready to go back to work tomorrow, after such a solid chunk of time being totally checked out. But now, it's time to plan the next vacation -- it's always good to have something to look forward to, right?

Back to reality

2009-08-30T22:06:00.003-04:00

I didn't hear about Ted Kennedy's death until Thursday evening. It was that kind of a vacation. I didn't even realize how far removed we were from reality, at least for part of the trip -- no phones, no email, no internet, no TV, no newspapers -- until, driving up to our last stop on Thursday, I turned on my Blackberry and scrolled past a "breaking news" from Politico or Roll Call or somewhere telling me where he'd be buried. And I actually said aloud, "Wait, that seems kind of crass, to make and announce that decision now." And then it took me another couple of minutes to process, and to find the earlier breaking news alerts announcing his death.

I knew it was coming, obviously, but the news still made me sad. About a week before Senator Kennedy fell ill last spring, I went with a couple of middle school kids from Massachusetts to meet with him in D.C. He only had a few minutes to spend with us, but he was so kind, gracious and focused; he brought his dogs to meet the kids, and he listened to their stories, and accepted with appreciation a t-shirt they'd made for him. I was back in D.C. the day that Senator Kennedy came back to cast a critical vote on Medicare, and I really believed that he'd be wheeled in on his hospital bed to pass health reform this year, if that was what it took. I don't know what will happen now -- I am still getting caught up post-vacation -- but I hope that the good senator is resting in peace.

I carried a watermelon?!

2009-07-30T08:38:00.001-04:00

The resort where my family spent the weekend reminded me of Kellerman's (the resort that's the setting for Dirty Dancing, of course), although we were in the Poconos and not in the Catskills, and, as far as I know, there was no little old couple stealing wallets. But this was a place in a gorgeous, sprawling setting, one where lots of guests returned summer after summer, where there were tons of family activities (not quite "everyone try on a wig!", but stuff like bingo in the lodge), where we were sort of removed from the real world for a few days.

We played a lot outside; despite some scattered showers throughout the weekend, we mostly had pretty good weather. I went running on both Saturday and Sunday mornings, making my way slowly, slowly, slowly up a ridiculously steep hill that was unavoidable if I wanted to go more than half a mile from our house. The Smelmooo and I went kayaking; we rode in bumper boats equipped with squirt guns; we went down the waterslide into the lake (the Smelmooo even won a medal in a waterslide contest); we attempted to waterski.

That didn't turn out so well; I never actually made it to a standing position, and I pulled a hamstring when my legs splayed out as I tried to get myself upright, so now I'm just hobbling about. It's really annoying, and I feel stupid, and I keep wondering whether I stretched properly after my run on Sunday morning, and whether I could've avoided the injury. But I'm pretty sure I can cross another item off my to-do list, right? I don't know if it's an "accomplished" or strictly a "no longer interested" for waterskiing, but I think I'm done with that list item for quite a while.

So now, it seems like I'm getting this glimpse of what it will be like when I'm old and infirm, and it's sobering. I have to build in extra time to get myself to meetings at work, because I'm moving pretty slowly, still. I haven't been able to exercise properly since Sunday, and it's making me crabby and depressed. I have been trying to stretch and do some Pilates and that sort of stuff, but I still can't quite touch my toes without bending my knees. If I try to sit with my legs in a V, either on the floor or in the air, they make it only to about a 75-degree angle (when I was little, it was easily 180). Last night, the Smelmooo and I were wrestling on the couch, and without thinking, he pushed my leg back, and I howled in pain and dropped an F-bomb. It wasn't pretty.

Maybe this is good for me; maybe it'll teach me patience, with myself and with other people. I was walking into work today, realizing that I normally blow past people on the way from the parking lot to the door and get frustrated with how slowly everyone else walks, and here I was, just ambling along, with everyone else zooming by me. So maybe it's good for me to slow down, smell the roses, blah blah blah. But for now, it's making me insane, and I'm frustrated that it's taking me so long to heal, and I'm simultaneously scared of waiting too long to get back to exercising and worried that I'll injure it worse if I go back too soon.

Anyway, enough about me being a gimp. The weekend on the whole was about what I expected, I guess: some bad behavior from both the adults and the kids, but also a lot of lovely, fun and funny moments.

There was a little too much Fox News for my taste, but I decided not to engage in any discussion of politics, which I think helped to keep the peace. Some huge drama when my four-year-old niece fell and shattered her tooth, so her parents drove her back to their dentist at home, leaving my parents to mind their other two kids for the day. (A dollar from the tooth fairy for the shattered tooth, by the way.) A little bit of heated and sometimes mean-spirited competition during the games and contests.

But also lots and lots of laughter, especially in those goofy bumper boats, and when we played Imaginiff and WhoNu. Lots of chaos -- the good kind, though -- when all of us converged on one house for breakfast each day.

And lots of nice moments: A horribly off-key rendition of "happy birthday" followed by the most random assortment of utensils, dishes and bowls for eating birthday cake, because none of us had thought to bring plasticware. My parents beaming about how they're "such lucky ducks." Highly competitive but good-natured ping-pong tournaments. The kids all eating the chocolate chips intended for the pancakes, then falling down in heaps on the floor, pretending they'd been poisoned (weird, I know, and possibly one of those "you had to be there" experiences, but it was kind of funny, and I just think it's sweet when all the cousins play together, even when they're being dopey).

Kids are weird; families are weird. I was grateful for the peace and quiet when the Smelmooo and I made our way home, and I wouldn't want to spend every weekend away with my huge crazy family. But it's nice, now and again, to spend time with the people who've known you the longest, who always love you even if they don't like you, who may be totally different from you but are still connected to you, because you've shared that history, those ties that bind forever. And, as they sing at Kellerman's, holding hands and hearts and voices, voices, hearts and hands.

Apologies to Seth & Amy...

2009-07-21T12:56:00.002-04:00

Really?!

Once again, it's almost time for the Tangent family summer getaway. Not the full week -- we're on an off-year for that -- but we're going away for a long weekend, because, you know, two weekends in a row of family reunions (dad's side, then mom's) isn't sufficient together-time (although I'll admit I spent very little time with my immediate family members there; that was more about catching up with cousins I never see).

So anyway, I'm not on the whole as bitter as I realize I sound about all of this family time, because I actually like my family, most of the time, and enjoy spending time with them. Once we're in the thick of these getaways, they're for the most part fun and relaxing and nice, and it means a lot to my parents that we get together like this.

BUT. The leading-up-to-it part? Makes me crazy. My mom sends out emails to let everyone know the plan: when we can check in, what we need to bring, where we can get food, that she's cooking for everyone the first night. All of this following, earlier this summer, the distribution of hard-copy literature about the place we're visiting, as well as instructions that the web site is pretty thorough.

So you'd think that, being adults in our thirties and forties, my siblings and I could fend for ourselves, armed with all of that information, right?

Of course not. Immediately, it's a flurry of emails along the lines of, "Hey, mom? Is there a coffee maker?" and "Hey, is there a restaurant nearby?" and "Hey, mom? My GPS isn't recognizing the address -- can you give me directions?"

Really, I know that she never stops being our mom, and maybe there's a bit of learned helplessness among us because she's been so good at telling us 97% of what we need to know about this trip.

But, really? She put the phone number of the place in the email. She is not interested in answering any more of your questions. She doesn't drink coffee; she thinks the restaurant onsite is a rip-off; she's making two tons of ziti and bringing you and your kids a week's worth of chocolate-chip cookies to eat in three days. She's paying for the trip. She is putting the statue of the Virgin Mary in the window to ensure good weather for the weekend. (Really. I know.) She has told you everything she knows. Do not try to take a kilometer when she's offered you a mile. Be a grown-up. Make the call yourself. You don't even have to tell the rest of us what you find out (that'd be nice, but not essential).

Really.

Why is it...

2009-07-16T15:28:00.001-04:00

...that I have in my office an apple, a plum, two bananas and a bag of baby carrots, and all I want is a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup, a chocolate chip cookie, or a Rita's gelati?

Musings

2009-07-14T22:31:00.000-04:00

I wonder:

...what's happened to, "If everyone jumped off a bridge, would you?" I was in Target the other day, and a little boy said to his mother, "But moooooooooooommmmm, alllllll the other kids at camp have one!" And she said, "Well, if everyone else has one, okay. Put it in the cart." If my mother had said that to me, it would have been in a tone dripping with sarcasm (and it would've been preceded, and followed, by a cocked eyebrow that still stops my siblings and me dead in our tracks. You do not want to be on the receiving end of my mom's eyebrow. Ever.).

...whether my siblings and I are going to get the eyebrow when we throw my mom a 70th birthday party this fall. She's explicitly told my dad and my oldest sister that she doesn't want a party, but no one seems fazed by this. So, I guess I'm jumping off the bridge with the rest of those idiots.

...whether I'll reverse myself on my decision to roll with the gas station attendant who insists on calling me "baby." I used to get all huffy about it, but I've recently decided that it's not worth the effort to get so worked up, or to drive two extra blocks to the gas station that's the same price but without the accompanying harassment. Sometimes, when I'm in situations that make my blood boil, I just decide to adopt a different persona, one who's endlessly patient and non-judgmental (i.e., the total opposite of myself), who's earnest and eager to make nice. And 95 percent of the time? It totally works. So far, so good at the gas station (feminist readers, feel free to blast me).

I confess:

...that I think of Edie Falco to motivate myself when I run. I read an interview in which she talked about getting steroids to counteract the effects of chemo when she was being treated for breast cancer, which helped her long-suffering knees improve to the point where she can now run five miles in 40 minutes. Whereas I, a perfectly healthy person almost 15 years younger than she is, am definitely not at the 8-minute-mile mark yet. I just started being really disciplined about running a few months ago, and I'm slowly working my way up to longer and faster runs (the perfect weather has been helping a ton the last couple of weeks), but I'm still usually closer to 42 or 43 minutes to run five miles. But Edie is pushing me along. Is that ridiculous?

...that I am getting bored of the minutiae of the health reform debate. It's my job to know what's going on, and to care deeply about it, and I do care about whether something meaningful actually happens at the end of the day. But: I am so. sick. of the politics, around both health reform and the Sotomayor confirmation. Someone, I think on NPR, said today that maybe a robot couldn't sit on the Supreme Court, but you could pretty much have a computer do the hearing, it's so obvious what everyone's going to say based on their party and their position. Part of me occasionally loves the theater of it all, but it just seems so constant and inescapable, and it's starting to wear thin.

...that I love VH1's Charm School, hosted by Ricki Lake. I used to think of Ricki and Carnie Wilson as somewhat interchangeable, but watching Carnie host the new-new-new-newlywed game? Ricki is way superior. Even more embarrassing confession? It's highly likely that I will watch "Megan Wants a Millionaire," also on VH1. There's something I like about Megan, as awful a person as she seems to be. Maybe it's because she's at least forthright about being an awful, shallow person.

I love:

...my new nephew (who's not really so new anymore -- he's pushing three months!! -- but new since I last posted). My youngest niece is turning four this month, so despite the huuuuuuuuuge baby boom in the last year (I quit counting, but it's at least 20, probably 30) among people I know, even close friends, it's been a while since there's been a tiny baby in the family. Colin is sweet and cuddly and strong and adorable, and his parents are a great team.

...my new (again, new-ish) orange capri pants. They are so not me, these orange pants (which are more burnt orange than pumpkin orange), and the first day I wore them, I was late for work because I was so uncertain about wearing orange pants, especially to work, but I love them. I still am not quite sure what color toenails work best with them.

I'm surprised:

...that I don't miss Diet Coke as much as I thought I would. I had this bizarre health scare at the end of April, where I was convinced I was having a stroke (at a cocktail reception at work, which was especially awesome), so I've spent the last couple of months running around to various doctors, having various scans and tests and whatnot, feeling guilty about being the classic case of overuse of health care, but figuring it's better to be safe than sorry when it comes to my brain. Anyway, everything came back normal (although my brother-in-law, who's a radiologist, read my MRI and pointed out that I have a deviated septum, which I never knew), but the neurologist thinks I'm having some weirdly-manifesting migraines, and suggested I start taking a boatload of vitamins and quitting my daily Diet Coke. I can still drink it in case of emergency, and maybe that's what makes it more bearable to go without on a regular basis, but I thought it would be completely dreadful being off the sauce. But really, not so much. The main downside is that I drink a ton more water, and have to pee constantly.

...that anyone is reading this. I think most of you have given up on me, or keep up on my life via Facebook. I wonder if I need to give Facebook a rest, because it makes me lazy. Why write a thoughtful blog entry when I can tell 100-something people (I'm selective, not unpopular, right? Right? I shouldn't feel self-conscious that my number is so low?) what I'm doing with my day or how I feel about the guy at work who insisted I've lost all the weight I'd gained when I had my kids? It might be my autumnal resolution to write more, but I think updates will still be fairly few and far between for the rest of the summer.

Shades of Grey

2009-03-24T20:56:00.002-04:00

I have no patience for people who see the world in black and white, those who themselves have no patience for nuance.

Is it just because I have a degree in public health, or is it a fairly universal experience to have seen footage of the congressional hearing at which all the tobacco executives are testifying, and they go down the line, each of them saying, "I belive nicotine is not addictive."? It's really striking, the footage of this hearing, but it never really occurred to me that whoever posed the question of the panel -- and I have no idea who that was -- really put those witnesses against the ropes. It's rare that a "yes" or a "no" really gets to the heart of the issue. The point is in the details, in the nuance.

My boss got a little bit railroaded today, also at a congressional hearing, by a punk-ass, frankly, who insisted that all eight witnesses (yes, eight witnesses, plus literally 30 members of the committee -- the hearing was interminable, and I desperately had to pee for at least 2/3 of it) go down the line, giving only yes/no answers to impossible questions. It was such a dick move. Do people not understand that the world is not black and white? That sometimes there are no simple answers? It was ridiculous, and infuriating, and it made me want to leap across the table and smack him, or at least send vibes to my boss saying, "Don't take the bait!! Don't take the bait!!!" But I still think it's crap that members of Congress are able to behave so badly in the first place.

I can't believe it's only Tuesday, and I couldn't be more excited that I'll be back home tomorrow night. This seems like the longest week in history, even though it's somehow only Tuesday. I had a work dinner, so I missed President Obama's press conference, but the coverage I'm watching now suggests that it was fairly boring.

But!! NOT boring! I just flipped to Dancing with the Stars, and somehow, The Woz is not in the bottom two. What the what?! I am a big fan of people who try hard and have fun, even if they suck, but unless Denise Richards gets voted off tonight, I object. Seriously. I don't know why I harbor such hatred for Denise, but there you have it.

Other things I hate:

-- The woman at the gym who chomps her gum like a cow throughout her entire workout, even while she talks on her cell phone as she rides the exercise bike. Seriously. Despite all the signs posted around the gym imploring users to be respectful of other exercisers and to avoid using cell phones in the fitness center, she just yaks and yaks and yaks, and chomps and chomps and chomps. She is the reason I need to be equipped, at all times, with an iPod.

-- Creepy-ass birds. My original hotel room today smelled like old cigarette smoke, halfway covered by some nasty chemical designed to mask the odor, and I could barely breathe when I checked in. I'm not normally That Girl, but I immediately went back to the front desk and requested a room change. They told me that I'd need to wait for another room to open up, so I spent the afternoon at the Cosi near Dupont Circle (and ended up with an equally spacious, lovely room that smells like absolutely nothing. It's heaven), grabbing a late lunch and taking advantage of their free WiFi. But, it was super-crowded inside, and although the weather was pretty nice today here in D.C., I didn't want to be outside because of sunglare. So I took the hybrid option, basically a sunporch that's mostly covered but also includes a spot that's exposed to the outdoors. Lots and lots of birds fly through that spot. So, as I sat trying to eat my lunch and catch up on work, I was constantly worried about the birds flitting around me, chirping and pecking, and potentially pooping on my bag, on my coat, or on my head. Luckily, they pretty much kept to themselves, but ugh, do I hate those wild birds.

-- Reversed emoticons. I didn't start using email until 1995, really, but one of the first things I learned then was that a smiley face is depicted by the following symbol: :)
And yes, I've been known to use that symbol, and my current email system even recognizes the colon-close-parens combination and translates it automatically to a proper smiley face (although it's translated as :J when people look at it through a Blackberry, which is less fun, but whatevs). BUT , I've lately seen a preponderance of dyslexic smiley-faces, to wit: (:

Again, what the what?! That's not the proper symbol of smileyness. Our necks automatically cock to the left to interpret emoticons, not to the right. You're screwing me up, really. Seriously. It's distracting.

That's all I hate right now, really. I am eager to be home, eager to catch up on my sleep, eager to catch up on quality time with my husband and our middle-aged dog, but on the whole, there's not actually much that I hate. Life is pretty darned good, and when all I have to complain about is who gets booted from DWTS (although I'm in fact pretty pleased with the Holly/Denise bottom two -- GO HOME, DENISE RICHARDS!!!) and a few days of excessive workload at a job that I ultimately like a lot, I'm pretty lucky.

Not close to 101 in not close to 1001

2009-03-16T17:22:00.005-04:00

So, I'm more than a year late, but I'm still making some progress on my list. I'm done with the bolding and the note-taking on the actual list, but there are a handful of things that I'm still glad to be pursuing and crossing off, because they're still important to me. And maybe I'll eventually get to making another list. But in the meantime:

15. Run in a 5K or a 10K. No, really. RUN. Preferably for a good cause. It's not done yet, but I'm registered for a 5K on April 25th. I feel like I got a little bamboozled, because I thought I was signing up for a charity run for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, which I why I signed up for this race and not one at a local winery that allows you to run with your dog (that's another blog, a recent attempt to go for a run with Tucker in tow). But it turns out that it's "in partnership with," or something, as opposed to a fundraiser for, the organization. Oh well. I may still do my own personal fundraising, although I think people might think that's sketchy.

57. Sing karaoke in public. Ooooh, I didn't even remember I had this one on my list! But I totally did this! And in front of about 100 of my co-workers and their dates, at our office holiday party last month. I pretty much just bounced around mouthing the words, but I stood up there for two group songs, including "9 to 5," which has more words than you might realize.

81. Track down my friend Jamie and reconnect with him. I just did this in the last couple of weeks, because I discovered that he's a finalist for a White House fellowship, so I was able to track him down through an old email address to congratulate him. Even better, although he's been living in Belgium for several years, he has interviews in the States next week for the fellowship, so we're having dinner on Monday. I'm very excited. I have found plenty of old friends and acquaintances through Facebook, some of whom I am happy to connect with, others who I'm lukewarm about, but when I was going through all of my cards and letters and stuff from high school during the Great Spring Cleaning of 2008, I remembered just how good a friend Jamie had been to me and how much I missed him. So I'm really looking forward to catching up, hearing about his travels abroad and his new fiancee.

99. Donate blood, which I haven't done in ages, despite knowing how important it is and once upon a time being a regular donor. Oh, another one I'd forgotten! I had tried to donate a few times last year, and kept getting turned away because I had low blood pressure. But this weekend, I was a robust 104/70 and finally was able to donate. The Smelmooo and I went together, and you would not believe what a fast bleeder he is. I was totally talking smack as we were getting ready to go in, because back in the day all of the blood drive staff would marvel at how quickly I got rid of my pint, but not this time. He started after me and finished before me; I think it was a total of six minutes for him, start to finish. Extraordinary. I'm still licking my wounds.

Unrelated to the 101 in 1001, I'm feeling more and more like I need to abandon Facebook, preferably in search of a different site that is unknown and unknowable to my parents' friends and to undesirable co-workers. Are any of my five readers on the cutting edge of social media? Can you please hook me up with the next frontier?!

Sad. Angry. Remembering.

2009-02-25T17:29:00.002-05:00

When I was about 11 years old, I spotted my cousin Paul out the window of the school bus as it pulled up to the corner of my street at the end of the day. I was surprised and thrilled to see him there -- I didn't know he'd come for a visit -- and we hugged at the corner, and then he yelled, "Race ya!!" and took off like lightning up the hill to the house.

"Paulie" was my very favorite cousin. He and his seven siblings -- the kids of my mom's oldest brother -- were all much older than me, and they were all built sort of like Mack trucks. They all had easy smiles, mischievous gleams in their eyes, and big, raspy, infectious laughs. The others all had sort of mousy hair, but Paul was the golden boy of the bunch, literally. Like our Pop -- my mom's dad -- he had blond hair and bright, sparkling, clear blue eyes. As one of my friends once said, when we were much older, "Paulie's kind of a fox."

That day back in 1989 or so, it wasn't just a celebration that my favorite cousin had come for a visit; it was that he could actually run. That he could even walk. A couple of years before, while he was working at a summer camp, he learned he had a massive tumor on his spine, which left him paralyzed. He had a miraculous and seemingly full recovery, but a few years later, the tumor was back, and the surgery that time was unsuccessful, and he was paralyzed permanently.

Paulie wallowed for a little while -- he was angry, he was depressed, he was, in his own words, "a miserable bastard" for a while. And then he turned it around. He ran a local foundation (initially founded by his friends in his name to cover his medical expenses) that helped families who were struggling to get by. He was featured as a People magazine "angel." He wheeled himself in the New York marathon, and my sister and I went and cheered him on. He was Pop's most faithful visitor for the last five years of Pop's life.

And he was a wonderful friend to me. We has always had a special place for each other, but during my teens and early 20s, he was a cool, avuncular, overprotective soul, grilling my boyfriends about their intentions, listening to my adolescent angst, reminding me to get over myself and taking me to visit our grandparents' graves, something my parents never did, for some reason. We were thick as thieves for a stretch.

We grew apart a bit as I got older; part of it was me growing up; part of it was him continuing to change, and I think feeling a little less positive as time wore on. I'd invited him to my high school graduation, but he never showed (although we'd made arrangements, when he drove up, he couldn't find a wheelchair-accessible entrance, and just turned around and left -- he was too proud to ask for help, which I understood, and still do, although it saddens me). He didn't come to our wedding. I kind of stopped trying, because that's sometimes what I do.

This Sunday, Paul died.

We all knew it was coming -- the tumor was back, he had another in his brain. He'd been at Hopkins for four months, and there was finally nothing more to be done. He went back home about three weeks ago, everyone knowing the end was near.

I wrote to him while he was in the hospital, but it was for the first time in years. I didn't get any replies, which isn't surprising -- these last months, he was in almost constant, all-consuming pain -- but it's made it harder to come to terms with his death. We asked if we could visit once he was back home, but he didn't want visitors.

In a lot of ways, it's a blessing that he's finally done suffering. His immediate family rallied around him during those last months, and he knew how much he was loved. His siblings took leaves of absence from work; they traded shifts at the hospital -- hours away from all of their homes and families -- so he was never alone. It would have made Pop so proud. (Although I imagine he also is up there saying, "Where were you clowns when I was dying?! Never came to see me once in that godawful home, you ingrates!" Pop was a true curmudgeon.)

But that "he's in a better place" stuff is always a bit hard for me to swallow. I have to believe that that's true, but I also just feel so angry that such a good, bright person, so full of promise, so filled with love, was taken away so soon. That he suffered so much while he was still here.

So I'm trying to remember, to remember the good times. Of all the images that keep flashing through my head, it's the one of us running up the street together that afternoon in the sun. When we both knew how fragile life can be, how quickly the things we take for granted can disappear. And now I'm reminded of it again.

What a weird day

2009-02-13T15:23:00.005-05:00

First, it's a very happy day, because the Paperboy and his lovely wife are proud parents of a baby girl, so huge congrats to them! And to all of the gazillion other people I know who are new and expectant parents. Someone at work the other day described pregnancy as "an epidemic" in our office, which seems a little negative, but perhaps not all that off: of the 15 people occupying the offices in my little wing of the building, no fewer than five are expecting babies. That's a lot.

Anyway, I don't know if it's the Friday the 13th thing, or the nearly-full moon (isn't that over, though?), or that I'm working from home, but there's just been weird stuff happening today:

-- I am now Facebook friends with someone I knew in elementary school, and vaguely in high school, who is a year older than me. And she now has six kids. SIX! How the heck does someone who's basically my age have six kids?! This person also is a member of a Facebook group called something like, "Pray for the conversion of Barack Obama." I'm not sure to what, but I sense that this acquaintance and I don't have much in common.

-- I have trouble self-identifying as a "Communications Professional," but that's basically what my job is. I'm part of one group at work in which I'm the only communications person on the team, and just got an agenda for a meeting next week on which one of the items is "internal and external communications." I thought, "Okay, I can talk about that," and went about my business, but then one of the non-communications people on the team -- I guess in CYA mode, because he'd not asked me about this before the agenda went out -- sent me a note, helpfully explaining that internal communications should be about our own staff know about and understand what's happening, and external communications is about how we talk about it with other audiences. No way! Thank goodness he cleared that up, but now I'm worried that he's after my job. I've drafted about 12 different versions of a smart-ass reply, but have decided that silence will be golden in this case.

-- A very senior person at work sent around this picture:

for...Valentine's Day? I think? It was sent as a slide with some notes that were filled with health-care type puns, but the whole thing was just completely bizarre, and I am still processing what to think about it, and hoping that I wasn't somehow complicit in it.

-- Finally (I hope! I realize the day isn't over yet), my parents are in Australia and New Zealand for three weeks, seemingly having the time of their lives. My mom has been emailing us every couple of days with brief updates about what they're seeing and doing, always with a cute Aussie/Kiwi colloquialism (like "no worries!") as the subject line. But just now, I got an email from my dad, a forward warning me not to boil water in the microwave. Not a hello, nohing about the trip, not even a "g'day!" Just the forward. I guess I get my Communications Professional gene from my mom.

A theory

2009-02-01T13:39:00.003-05:00

In these difficult economic times, people must figure that, if they have paid for a gym membership, they'd better actually use it.

That is the only reason I can think of that the gym is still packed with New Year's Resolutioners on February 1st.

But I did manage to get the last free treadmill, and I had a great run, at least. So now, I will spend the rest of the day sitting on my ass and eating bad-for-me food, because that's the best part of Super Bowl Sunday.

(Next year, I must remember that going grocery shopping the day before Super Bowl Sunday is a terrible idea. Although I enjoyed that another patron, sincerely complimented my shopping cart-maneuvering skills as I navigated the narrow, crowded aisles in Wegman's yesterday.)

Ahhhhhh....vacation....

2009-01-19T16:11:00.002-05:00

A January vacation to a warm, sunny place is pretty much the best thing I can think of, and because of the Smelmooo's job, I get to take one pretty much every year. It's not a real vacation for him, and at first it wasn't so much for me, either -- the schmoozing, the small talk, the feeling that I have to be "on" all the time -- but I've sort of gotten over that. It's pretty much the same core group of people on the trip each year, and I've gotten to feel comfortable with them by now, so it's not really much of an effort to chitchat by the pool or over a delicious meal.

We went to Maui for about six days, and it was just heaven. Perfect weather (just one morning of rain, and no one cared, because it was during the Giants/Eagles game), the most gorgeous ocean, a waterslide at the hotel pool, amaaaaaaazing food (who knew that a super-fancy restaurant would serve complimentary cotton candy for a post-dessert treat?), and a couple of really fun excursions. We went whale-watching on a catamaran, which I loved (really, even if we hadn't seen any whales, I'd have loved just floating around in the sunshine for an afternoon), but my very favorite thing was watching the sunrise over Haleakala volcano and then biking down. Just gorgeous. And I think I'm now officially done with the bike-riding hang-ups that had plagued me for almost 10 years. So yay.

The Smelmooo is now in the thick of another business trip in San Diego, and I tagged along there for a couple of days, and I'm so glad I did. I'm not crazy about eight airplanes in 10 days, but on balance, it was totally worth it. And I don't even mind that I came home to snowy, cold weather (I actually feel pretty lucky -- coming home to low-30s weather is not so bad when it was 9 degrees or something last week). And, as usual, I'm so happy to be reunited with Tucker, who had a blast running around in the snow in the backyard and is now conked out on his pillow, probably for the rest of the day.

I'd been to San Diego as a kid, and I went for a whirlwind business trip a few years ago, but I hadn't done a proper tour. I wish I'd had one more day there, but in my short trip I was able to (1) eat Pinkberry for the first time (yum); (2) hang out in Coronado; (3) visit Balboa Park to see street performers, war protesters, and bible-thumpers, and to sort of climb a tree; (4) without even asking, get hooked up with a free pedicab ride from a total stranger (which I didn't accept, but still); (5) without even asking, get hooked up with a fridge for our hotel room; and (6) without even asking, get hooked up with a noise machine to drown out all the noise in the hotel room.

So all in all, a fantastic trip. I am one of those lucky people who can completely disengage from all things work-related the second I get on the plane for vacation, so that was nice, too. And now, I'm sort of ready to get back to it.

I'm sort of jealous of all the friends and colleagues I have who are going to the inauguration tomorrow, and I can't wait to hear their stories. It would be amazing to be a part of it, but I think I'll be happy to be watching it on TV in relative warmth and comfort. I'm hopeful, and I'm optimistic, and I'm excited for the promise of a new era. Here's hoping.

Oh, my.

2008-12-23T21:31:00.003-05:00

I enjoy Pierce Brosnan, generally, but he is not a singer. Oof.

And oof, overall, to Mamma Mia, but I'm delighted to be home watching a crappy movie, drinking wine, hanging out with muh hubby and our clean, sleepy dog. It'll be back to the grind soon enough, but I'm incredibly happy and grateful for a couple of days off to spend with family, and just to relax a bit.

Happy holidays, all two of my readers!

D.C. in December

2008-12-15T19:48:00.000-05:00

I had had a sizable hiatus from my D.C. travel, for a few weeks because I had a gazillion things going on in the office, then because there wasn't much I could get done post-election, then again because there was too much going on back home. Today, I got back into my usual routine: stop at 7-11 for breakfast, newspapers, drinks; hop on the 5:58 a.m. down; 6:10 p.m. return. Tomorrow I have to go back in the afternoon, for an overnight visit that will also entail six hours on a bus schmoozing with Hill staff. It's going to be a long week.

Anyway, I hadn't been down since the Capitol Visitor Center opened a couple of weeks ago. I don't particularly care about the CVC itself, although I'm sure it's interesting and all that, but I am quite excited that the construction is done, because I now can take a more direct route between the House and the Senate. It's the little things, really.

But today, we tried to walk across the Capitol area, and ended up having to take the long way around, because they're setting up for the inauguration. Which was exciting to see, and is probably the closest I'll come to being at the inauguration. It is just going to be nuts. Part of me would love, love, love to be there; most of me will be much happier watching it on TV. I keep telling my friend who has a one-bedroom apartment in a somewhat shady part of D.C. that he should post an ad on Craigslist to offer someone his couch for a thousand bucks a night, and see if he gets any takers. I bet he would.

It was good to be back on the Hill -- I love being there during December in an election year, when all of the insanely well-orchestrated office moves take place, when people have their chairs and desks and computers and framed photos out in the hallways with giant DO NOT REMOVE!!!!!!! signs taped all over them. I love the holiday cards that members of Congress display in their reception areas; I love the carefully-chosen, locally relevant ornaments they hang on their Christmas trees. I loved how busy and energetic it felt, despite it being the first day of recess in what people initially thought would be a long, quiet lame-duck session. There's excitement in the air.

On my way back to the train station, I again walked past the inauguration site, this time in the dark, and the Christmas tree was all lit up, and the Capitol was all lit up, and it was breathtakingly beautiful. It filled me with hope.

I'm sure I'll soon be back to being cynical; and focusing on how taxing it is to schlep back and forth all the time; and bitching about how I have to half-run to the train station, in the 60-degree weather in the middle of December, carrying my coat and my suit jacket and two work bags; and how I have to change my ticket at the station, which means I don't have time to get dinner, so I end up eating Entenmann's cookies for dinner on the train, and I never got to eat lunch, and now I have a total sugar hangover.

But for now, a positive and hopeful attitude, gratefulness for a job that feels meaningful, and excitement for what lies ahead.

A heavy double-feature

2008-12-13T22:37:00.002-05:00

The Smelmooo and I had an all-too-rare day with no social plans, so, despite my being completely behind on my holiday shopping, we decided to go to the movies. Two movies, in fact, with a quick dinner at Cosi in between. Why do I love Cosi so? We didn't even have time for the S'mores, but there is something about their sandwiches that tastes like heaven to me.

First, we saw Rachel Getting Married, which I'd been wanting to see for ages. I secretly like Anne Hathaway, and even though I didn't realize she'd been nominated for a Golden Globe for her performance, I'd heard good things about her and about the movie itself. Someone at work described it to me as a four-star movie, but acknowledged that he'd have liked it better if it were a three-star movie. I'm not entirely sure I agree with that, but maybe: perhaps if there'd been a few more moments of levity, it'd have been a less perfect, but more enjoyable film. It was heavy and uncomfortable (at one point, the Smelmooo, who has a strict no-talking policy in the movies, leaned over as Anne Hathaway's character started her toast at the rehearsal dinner and whispered, "I don't think I can sit through this part.") and painful; there were parts that felt heartbreakingly real and true.

It felt too long; there were lots of group shots, and it felt like we heard from every single person at the wedding, and I could've done without that. I think it was probably a creative decision to set the mood, to bring the audience in and make us really feel like we were part of this crowd, but it didn't quite work for me. But on the whole, I thought it was really well-acted and a good movie. Debra Winger was barely in it, but she kind of stole it for me, although I understand the love for Anne Hathaway in this role.

After dinner, we went back to the same theater to see Milk. I have had a bizarre pseudo-obsession with Harvey Milk since I took an AIDS class in college. It was one of the best classes I ever took, and it kind of changed my life; I don't think I'd be in the job I'm in today if I hadn't taken it. It was a mix of science and public health and politics and policy and media, and early on we watched a movie about Harvey Milk, and I was completely fascinated by him. So I was excited to hear about the new Milk movie, even though I'm fairly adamantly anti-Sean Penn.

But, boy, was he good in this role. I hope he wins the Golden Globe and the Oscar, even though I have no idea who the competition might be. James Franco, who apparently was nominated for Pineapple Express, which I think is ridiculous, was also quite good here.

Even though I pretty much knew the story, I was riveted during the movie (although I was completely annoyed by the Diego Luna character, who I thought added nothing, and I don't understand why Milk would've put up with him, although the Smelmooo disagrees), and I got completely swept up in it; by turns, my heart soared and my eyes filled up and I felt really, really angry. Not only for what happened in the movie, but because of how much is still the same 30 years later. Some of the rhetoric has shifted, the bigotry is not always as blatant, but here we are with Prop 8 and persistent discrimination and ignorance, and it's troubling.

A few weeks ago, I was listening to a story on NPR about the movie, and they interviewed a bunch of young people who are advocates in the LGBT community, and almost all of them said they sort of knew who Milk was, or they knew the story because of the Twinkie Defense, but that they didn't think that Milk was so relevant today, because there are now plenty of out politicians, and it's not such a big deal. But you watch this movie, and as bad as things still are today, you can imagine how much worse they'd be if it weren't for Harvey Milk.

So, a good night at the movies, but exhausting. I am spent, and enjoying that we're now watching Robot Chicken. I need a break from serious fare.

Logorrhea

2008-12-11T21:01:00.000-05:00

There are times when I should just. stop. talking. But I can't. I sometimes get what Lindsay Lohan describes as "word vomit" in Mean Girls.

Yesterday, for example, I had a doctor's appointment (I finally, finally found a primary care doc who I really, really like, so anyone in the Princeton area who's looking, I'll hook you up), and as she was doing my physical, the doctor was asking me a whole bunch of questions: Do you have joint problems? (No); Is your hearing okay? (What?); Any trouble sleeping? (No); Do you have night sweats?

To this last one, I should have just answered, unequivocally, "No." But, of course, I have to overthink everything, and I'm terrified of inadvertently lying to anyone who's in a position of authority, so I decided it was important to say, "Well, I don't think night sweats, per se, but I sometimes do sort of, I guess, because my husband's really hot in the bed."

And I immediately, of course, became totally flustered and beet red, and then felt compelled to explain, "Oh, wow, that sounded dirty. I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like that."

To which my very kind doctor replied, "Oh, don't worry -- I didn't think of it that way." She totally gave me an out. Which I could. not. take.

"What I meant was, he's kind of like a human space heater. He's just so WARM! So, you know, sometimes, at night, I feel really hot, but...uh...Yeah, I think it doesn't count as night sweats. No. I'm good. No night sweats."

I'm such an idiot, sometimes.

What the what?

2008-11-24T13:40:00.002-05:00

I feel like I'm in a bad sitcom or something today, where I'm oblivious to something about myself that's obvious to everyone else. This could all be pure coincidence, but I'm too paranoid to believe that.

This morning, I ran into a co-worker (one whom I like, but with whom I'm not close) in the hallway, and he said, "Hey, how's married life?" Which sort of surprised me, given that I got married more than four years ago, so married life is just sort of...life, at this point. So I basically said that, and realized that maybe HE'S getting married (which, it turns out, he is, so that explained that), but then he said, "So, no kids any time soon?"

To which I said, "Well, not immediately, anyway," to which he said, "That's probably smart."

Uh, okay.

So, that was all a little weird, but fine, and there is a huge baby boom at work right now (and, it seems, in general, at least among people I know. I think I know, at this point, 25 women who are pregnant -- no exaggeration), so maybe he was trying to see if I'm succumbing to the peer pressure, or drinking the water, or whatever? I have no idea.

Anyway, two hours later, I was getting my lunch, and another co-worker (one whom I don't especially like, and to whom I'm really not close, and who I think is not close to co-worker #1) said, "So, I guess you're not having kids anytime soon, huh?"

And this wasn't even a situation like this morning, when the other co-worker and I were walking down the hallway together and we sort of had to make conversation, and maybe that was the only thing that popped into his head. This woman seemed actually to seek me out to raise this point with me.

I wonder if I'm getting fat. That's the only thing I can think of, that people see me getting a gut and they're whispering and wondering if I'm pregnant, and someone has come out with, "Oh, no, she's totally not ready for kids."

I can't figure it out. And I'll say it again: there are soooooooooo many people who desperately want kids and have trouble conceiving, and it is stressful and taxing and awful and, at times, all-consuming. So, people, knock it off with the bringing up the "When are you going to have a baby?" thing. I was going to add "...with people you don't know that well," but I actually have a fairly hard and fast rule about this topic being off-limits unless the person going through it brings it up first.

Other random thoughts:

-- The Smelmooo and I went to the local mall on Friday night, and it was completely overrun with teenagers. I don't know if it was because of the Twilight movie or if it's more that kids have nothing else to do on a Friday night once it's cold out, but they were just everywhere, hugging and screeching and making out on the railing. And, as I took all of this in, I completely turned into my mother.

-- The store where I bought my wedding dress has been all over the local media lately, because apparently the owner -- who I quite liked, and who was very understanding and comforting when I had a meltdown during my initial fitting -- has been scamming the customers by taking deposits (or full payments) and then never actually placing the orders because she's completely behind on payments for completed orders. I don't think I was a Bridezilla overall, but I also think I would have completely flipped my shit if I found out two weeks before the wedding that the dress I'd paid for was just not coming, and that I had no recourse.

-- I'm really sad that Pushing Daisies was canceled. I thought it'd have a little more time.

-- I like that Hugh Jackman took the Sexiest Man prize, and I enjoyed his account of his wife sitting in the bathroom stall at the Tonys while other women debated whether he's gay. I kind of wonder if his publicist made that story up, but it's a good one, regardless.

-- I am totally geeking out about the potential ripple effects of Henry Waxman beating out Dingell for chair of the Energy & Commerce Committee. I just think it's fascinating, and I can't wait to see how this all plays out. I know almost everyone else has their eyes on what's happening with Cabinet positions and stuff, and I care about those, too, but this is the one that's most grabbed me.

-- My parents are going to Australia and New Zealand this winter, and my sister is going to Alaska this summer, all of which is making me itchy to take a big vacation, maybe to one of those places. In the short-term, though, I am excited for the four-day Thanksgiving weekend ahead of me.

Asked and answered

2008-11-10T13:39:00.002-05:00

I still can't quite comprehend why, throughout my long search for a new primary care physician, the conversation has gone like this, every single time:

me: Hi, are you accepting new patients?

office staff: What's your insurance?

me: Cigna PPO.

office staff: Yes. [click]

Really, I'm not taking a freakin' survey -- I'm trying to establish myself as a new patient! And yes, after having this experience once, or even twice, I should probably work on my opening, but yeesh.

In any case, I finally found someone, and I have an initial consultation on Friday, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that that will go better than the initial phone conversation. Yeesh.

I jinxed myself

2008-10-24T19:56:00.004-04:00

A couple of weeks ago, a friend was telling me he was on call for jury duty the following week, and I noted that I'd never gotten a notice for jury duty. So, of course, my first-ever summons arrived on Monday. Which I'm actually kind of excited about, because I think it'll be fascinating, in addition to it being my civic duty and all. The timing is wildly inconvenient given some stuff I have going on at work the day I'm supposed to show up, but I felt like I couldn't request a postponement; when I thought about what I'd write down on the form, it just seemed like a stupid excuse, which helped to put things in perspective. So many of the things that are such a big deal to me day-to-day are so miniscule in the grand scheme of things.

And I think I used good judgment in not requesting a delay; a co-worker told me that she'd been called to serve on a grand jury right after starting a new job, and tried to get a postponement, which was denied, but the judge knew she'd requested it, and was a right bitch about it. So, I think better to keep my head down and see how it goes.

Speaking of jinxing, I just think "Shhhhhhhhh!!!! Don't say it out loud!!" every time I hear about Obama's double-digit leads in the polls. Part of me is giddy, and wants to sigh with relief, but part of me is really afraid to exhale, because a lot can happen in a week and a half. And I worry that, even if the numbers are reliable today, Obama supporters will think they don't need to vote, if he's so far ahead, and that McCain supporters will come out in droves. So I'm keeping my fingers and toes crossed, and hoping for the best, but I'm not quite comfortable, still.

Separately, I found the Daily Show's segment on all of the candidates' gaffes hilarious, particularly its treatment of McCain's point that "Senator Obama's supporters have been saying some pretty nasty things about Western Pennsylvania lately. And you know, I couldn't agree with them more!...I couldn't disagree with you more!"

Finally, did John Kerry get Botox? I think maybe, and not in a good way.

This and That

2008-10-08T18:21:00.000-04:00

I think I'm blogging less lately in part because I'm writing a ton for work, and uninterested in doing any writing in my free time, but also in part because I'm thinking about life in terms of Facebook status updates. Truly, when I was in Chicago a couple of weeks ago, there were plenty of blog-worthy experiences (although I have still not found the right framing for the story of my co-presenter giving me a sneak-attack hug in the elevator, so you'll just have to trust Minnams and me that it was hilarious and horrifying), but the whole trip, my brain was just thinking:

-- TangentWoman can't believe that her cab driver set up his iPod to play "Hold On" by Wilson Phillips (I actually posted some version of this to Facebook, but wished I'd "held on" --heh-- to that update until later in the playlist, which also included "I'll Never Get Over You Getting Over Me," "Listen to Your Heart" by Roxette, and, finally, "Release Me" by Wilson Phillips. Good times.

-- TW is realizing that she loves Chicago but hates the godawful cab ride from the airport to the Loop.

-- TW is wondering whether Josie Geller would still be at the Chicago Sun-Times today, if she were real.

-- TW likes hearing Ira Glass in person way more than she expected.

-- TW can't believe how hard it is to find a bottle of water that doesn't cost seven dollars.

-- TW is thinking it's pretty cool to run around one side of the lake by the light of the early-morning moon, and back the other way by the light of the sunrise.

-- TW is wishing she'd approached dinner as a marathon, rather than a race.

-- TW hates, hates, hates being stuck in stupid O'Hare on a Friday afternoon, well into the evening, but eating a Chili's baconburger and fries is making it much more tolerable.

And so on.

Last week, the Smelmooo and I both had to be in D.C. for work, which almost never happens, weirdly enough, given that I am generally there once every week or two, and the Smelmooo is there at least a few times a year. Anyway, we had an excellent mix of business and pleasure, catching up with friends for dinner the first night, watching the VP debate in a Georgetown bar with some of my co-workers the following night, that sort of stuff ("TW can't believe she's having a milkshake at Johnny Rocket's at 11 o'clock on a school night!"). From there, we headed down to Shenandoah for an early anniversary trip, to a great spot we've visited twice before.

As I said, I've been writing a ton for work, and have been consumed by a pretty big project that'll stretch out for another month, still. The morning we left D.C. for Virginia, I was frantically trying to finish up and send out a bunch of documents so I could unplug for the rest of the weekend. So I was a little scattered upon check-out, and skipped my usual routine of double- or triple-checking every closet, cabinet, drawer -- every inch of the room, really -- to ensure I haven't left anything behind.

So the Smelmooo and I went on our merry way, stopped at a couple of historic sites along the way, checked into our hotel, and read a little (ooooh, more on that in a second...), and then I, of course took a nap. And awoke with a start, thinking, "CRAP. I totally left my watch in the thing between the beds." I looked through our suitcase, and our car, and our laundry bag, but I knew I'd left it behind, and I was extra-mad at myself because I had been really excited to wear this watch on our hike the next day (because it's awesome and tracks miles and calories and all that good stuff), and mostly because I'd just gotten the watch a month ago as a birthday present from ShariCo (I partly forgot to tell ShariCo about losing the watch when I talked to her last night, but I think I partly was afraid to say anything until I knew for sure that it'd all work out).

Miraculously, someone had turned it in (this is why it's good to tip!!), and the hotel said I just needed to send an email with my name, address and a FedEx account number, and they'd ship it out to me. But I didn't get a response to the email, and I was convinced it was lost forever, but, lo and behold, the watch was awaiting me in my mailbox this afternoon. Bless you, Washington Court Hotel! Never again will I disparage your 16-floor hotel with one functional elevator. I will still probably stay at the George if given the choice, but the Washington Court now has a special place in my heart.

Last thing, because I know this is long and boring and rambling, but if you're still with me: I borrowed the short-story collection "How to Breathe Underwater," by Julie Orringer, to read during our trip, and it is so, so good. I still have a story and a half to go (napping ended up taking priority over reading on several occasions), but particularly the early stories in the book are just so beautifully written, with so many memorable, clever-but-not-cutesy details, and such resonant characters. Reading stories like these makes me want to write more -- like, real stuff, not work stuff or blog stuff or Facebook updates. And reading such good writing makes me realize how lucky I was my senior year of college, when I not only could but HAD to read at least a book a week -- nine times out of 10 a really good book -- in the fall for my Living Writers class (my professor would SO have gotten Julie Orringer to come in, if she'd written this stuff 10 years ago) and in the spring for Hemingway. There's not much, at all, that I miss about college, but I do miss that luxury.

Finally-finally: Rock of Love Charm School starts this weekend! I can hardly wait.

"Excuse me, ma'am?"

2008-10-01T15:33:00.002-04:00

I guess I should be flattered, that I'm fairly consistently the person on the train platform who people ask, "Hey, is this the right track for the train to New York?" or "What does EWR mean on the train schedule?" And that I'm the person on the street who gets asked for directions (although I almost always apologize, in that case, and tell them they're better off asking someone else, because I can't navigate for squat), or in tourist destinations to take people's photo (my mother is this person, too, and she always apologizes, and declines, because she can't take photos for squat).

And just now, on the train, this woman asked me to watch her sleeping child while she (the mother) went to the bathroom ("He won't go anywhere, but could you just keep an eye on him?"). Which, sure, yeah, if he wakes up, I'll say, "Hey, kid, your mom didn't abandon you -- she's just in the bathroom," but beyond that, really? I'm a total stranger -- why would you trust me to look after your kid?

Same thing when seatmates ask me to keep an eye on their stuff while they get a drink in the cafe car. Why trust me? But people do this all the time (I, on the other hand, am an untrusting bundle of anxiety, and I haul my whole freakin' bag with me if I leave my seat on the train).

And pretty much every time, I oblige, but always wondering what, really, I'm committing to do. Because at some point, right, this may come down to more than just a hollow agreement? Like, someone will actually try to snatch a bag I'm watching, or put the sleeping kid's hand in warm water? And then what do I do?

Honestly? I probably just keep me head down and do nothing.

Overheard

2008-09-21T20:53:00.002-04:00

This morning, in the toy aisle at Target, a guy speaks into his cell phone:

"Dude, how old is this kid?....
No, I'm serious....How old?
Really, can you just give me ANY idea of what to get?
....What do I get?...
Come on, seriously.
Seriously, dude, I am so hungover, would you just throw me a bone?
I'm hungover and I CAN'T FEEL MY TOES."

All of this made me feel MUCH better about my last-minute shopping for my nephews' and niece's birthday party; at least I know how old they are, and, despite maybe a little too much wine at my cousin's wedding yesterday, I could feel all of my extremities.

On a separate note: This opening bit to the Emmys might be the worst thing I've ever seen.

Scattered, somewhat crabby thoughts from the train

2008-09-19T17:34:00.001-04:00

I keep starting blogs and not having time to finish them, so I'm going to do a little bit of a brain dump during my train ride back from D.C.:

-- Late Friday afternoon train rides home from D.C. are the worst, and I unfortunately am working on a project right now that requires me to do a ton of Friday day trips between now and November. Perhaps the worst part is that these meetings, located about a 5-minute walk from the train station, end at 3:00, which means I just miss the 3:02 train home, which means I sit around until the 4:05, which doesn't stop at the train station near my house, where my car is parked, so I have to change trains in Trenton, and not make it home until close to 8 o'clock. The one good thing is that getting to the train station so far in advance of my trip makes it more likely that I get a good seat, which I did today. So there's that; yay!

-- The other good thing about getting to the train station early is getting snacks and trashy magazines, so I got an US Weekly and a McDonald's milkshake. I was especially excited about the shake, because so often, I wait in that interminable line, only to be told they're out of ice cream, or the machine's broken, or whatever. Not so today. Unfortunately, though, I took one sip and had to throw the rest away. Which, as Minnams will tell you, is a big deal, because I HATE wasting food, particularly anything ice cream-related. But the shake was just vile; I don't know if the machine was dirty -- or recently cleaned and not rinsed properly? -- or if the mix was rancid or what, but it was vile. So sad. Good thing I still have some ice cream cake in my freezer at home.

-- Last weekend, the Smelmooo went to D.C. overnight for fun, so I had the house -- and the TV -- to myself on Saturday night. I was half doing work, half watching Legally Blonde, followed by Legally Blonde 2. Which is an AWFUL movie. I remember not loving it in the theater, but not having such a strong negative reaction to it as I had last weekend. I think there are two reasons: (1) watching it right after the first installment, which I still think is quite good, it was striking how...there was absolutely NOTHING new about the second one. It followed the exact same formula. I know, I know, go with what works, but it was really kind of insulting. And (2), I now spend a lot of time on Capitol Hill, which I didn't when I first saw the movie. And I sort of understand now why my pediatrician sister can't stand watching ER; it was really, really hard for me to suspend my disbelief about so many elements of the movie (although, really, one doesn't need to spend much time on the Hill to recognize that, when Elle is walking up the steps into the building on her first morning of work, it's ludicrous that EVERY OTHER PERSON in the scene is EXITING the building). Anywho, I love Reese, I love Jennifer Coolidge, I love Regina King. HATE Legally Blonde 2.

-- I for some reason had it in my head that Elle and Emmitt had broken up, and actually looked it up to see if there was a Legally Blonde 3 where that happened, but not so. I think I may have mixed it up with Miss Congeniality 2. Is that right? Or some other sequel to a romantic comedy that ends with a wedding or at least requited love, and then the actor wouldn't agree to do the sequel, so they just switch up the happily-ever-after in the second installment? This is bugging me. Shari will know the answer, I'm sure. (please?)

-- My parents celebrated their 48th wedding anniversary this week. Maybe "had," rather than "celebrated," because when I called that day, my mom informed me that my dad was playing golf, and that they were going to a business dinner that night. They both seemed perfectly happy with this arrangement, and my mom pointed out that, probably, part of why they're so happy after all these years is that they each do their own thing, sometimes.

-- My mom left me a message just now on my work voicemail, and I saw it pop up on my email and panicked immediately, like when my boss comes into my office and shuts the door: I'm sure I'm in trouble. The Smelmooo and I used my parents' place at the beach a couple weeks ago, and today is the first my parents have been there since we left, and I just had a flash that I left the water on, or left something gross in the garbage, or did something else that would merit yelling and tears. In fact, it was a schmoopy message about how she was walking on the beach and thinking of me, and wanted to say hello, and she hoped I'm not working too hard. I have issues.

-- I somehow have more than 2500 emails in my In Box. I can't believe I just admitted that; I am going to get so much crap on that one.

-- My oldest niece turned 10 today, which makes me feel old. My littlest niece is three, and started pre-school this month, which might make me feel even older. And 31 just seems way older than 30, so it's been a banner month.

-- It seems like everyone I know is pregnant.

-- I hate, hate the new machines at our gym. I mean, I guess it's better than having every other treadmill out of service, which was basically where we were before they ordered all the new equipment, but the new layout of the space has the machines so tightly packed that I feel slightly claustrophobic. The ellipticals now have, like, four programs instead of 12; I think the treadmills have four (one of which does not allow me to alter the time of the program) instead of 20, which is not so fun for mixing up my routine, which I like to do fairly regularly. And, finally, the new machines display the miles, calories, time elapsed/remaining, etc. in a place that my magazine does not cover. And when I look at the time or distance, I get frustrated and discouraged and I want to quit.

I feel like I should have anticipated that I would hate the new machines -- just knowing that I'm generally resistant to any kind of change -- and asked what they were doing with the old ones, and tried to buy one for cheap. Oh well.

-- I had dinner last week in D.C. with a dear friend who I've now known for 21 years. That also makes me feel old, but also happy.

-- I also ran into a former colleague last week, with whom I once worked very closely, but who I'd not seen since January (and before that, probably last summer). But as soon as we had a free minute together, she was practically tripping over herself to tell me about some incredibly personal things that had been going on, which was essentially what happened in January, as well. And then she stopped herself and said, "I know, I know, we never see each other anymore, but I just still feel like we're so close, and I can just tell you these things!! We just pick right up." Which is true, and that's sort of a nice feeling, to have that kind of a bond.

-- I'm still searching for a solid Little Black Dress to replace the one I somehow lost after Mike and Renee's wedding, four years ago yesterday (happy belated anniversary, although I don't think either of you reads this!). No luck so far, although I got a super-cute white-and-black Tocca dress that I'm wearing to an awards ceremony on Monday in honor of the Smelmooo and 39 other outstanding New Jerseyans under the age of 40. That one doesn't help me for my cousin's wedding tomorrow, but I am quite excited, both for the dress and the chance to celebrate muh hubby's many accomplishments. Good times!

I'm the new Jan Brady

2008-09-08T20:59:00.002-04:00

I'm so, so sneezy with seasonal allergies right now, but I think that our beloved Tucker is exacerbating the problem. The Smelmooo took me away for a wonderful overnight trip for my birfday this weekend, so we boarded Tucker and arranged for the groomer at the resort to give him a bath on Sunday. And he smells so good, and his fur is sooooooooo soft and nice and clean, but as I sit here on the floor with him, ostensibly working but really paying much more attention to petting the dog and watching Ellen (please, please tell me that Tony is back for good and Stryker is out the door!!), I am extra-extra sneezy. But it's worth it, really.

Irony

2008-09-02T15:47:00.003-04:00

Someone I know was at a wedding this weekend where Julia Stiles was also a guest. I asked if she reenacted her table dance from 10 Things I Hate About You.

[I saw some MTV special or a talk show appearance or something, on which Julia talked about starting Columbia and bumping into another first-year who blurted out, "I have your table-dance as my screensaver!" Which isn't entirely surprising to me, given that, in one of my huge lecture classes my first year of grad school, when Julia was still an undergrad, this whole gaggle of guys was plotting about how they were going to this campus event solely because word around school was that Julia Stiles would be there, and they totally thought they could hook up with her.]

Anyway, my friend responded, "Well, maybe that's what was missing, because she was actually a TERRIBLE dancer!" Which surprised and depressed me (particularly when he started speculating about the use of a body double), because Save the Last Dance is one of my favorite movies (shut up), and I actually thought she had some nice skills there. Minnams suggested that perhaps she just needs someone else to choreograph her moves, which made me feel a little better, but wouldn't you think she could apply some of her moves from Steps and apply them in real life?

Post-vacation ramblings

2008-08-31T22:15:00.001-04:00

I haven't been at work in, like, half a lifetime. Actually, since last Wednesday, but I think this is my longest stretch out of the office since the Smelmooo and I went on our honeymoon. And it is nice. It's one of those stretches that makes me want desperately to win the lottery.

Before we officially kicked off the road trip last Friday, we had some errands to do in our home town: dry cleaners, video store, library, liquor store. We tend to divide and conquer, so while the Smelmooo hit the dry cleaners, I went to the convenience store for drinks for the car ride up (I had secured snacks for the trip earlier in the day, but totally forgot about drinks). And it took FOREVER because this woman who was three people ahead of me in line was buying dozens and dozens of lottery tickets, with very specific numbers. Finally, the clerk told her she'd need to hang on while he waited on his other customers. The other people in line ahead of me were also getting lottery tickets, but taking the random number-generation option. There was some confusion (feigned, I'm fairly sure) about which guy was first, and I kept thinking how, if either of them ended up winning, the other would be kicking himself, either for being so damned pushy in line or for being too much of a pushover and not fighting for his rightful place in line. But I'm guessing none of them won, not even the lady who probably ended up spending a hundred bucks, because I expect that's the sort of thing one hears about fairly quickly in a small town.

[I'm sure you're paying extra-close attention and wondering, if I haven't been to work since Wednesday, and we didn't leave until Friday, what the heck happened on Thursday? I played hooky and went to Great Adventure with Minnams, is what happened, and it was a great treat to enjoy quality time with her AND to ride the roller coasters, although I'm concerned that I'm now too old to ride the roller coasters. Ten years ago, I discovered I couldn't deal with spinny rides, but now I've mostly accepted that roller coasters -- even ones that don't spin OR go upside-down -- make me feel a little hungover. I may not have many more amusement park days left in me. But I was glad to see that some things haven't changed: people still, for some reason, feel inclined to make out while waiting in line for rides, and there are still cheesy couples who wear matching or coordinating t-shirts as they saunter through the park with their hands in each other's back pockets.]

Anyway, we made our way up to our friends' place in Massachusetts, where we crashed on Friday night before heading up to Maine on Saturday. The male half of the couple we visited is an old friend of the Smelmooo's; we'd last seen him and his family -- he and his wife have two boys, six and three, who are adorable and smart and funny -- on our way up to Maine last summer. And it turns out they're having a third kid, in three months, which we didn't know until we showed up. The other thing we hadn't known until fairly late in the game was that our friends had a family party on Friday night, a booze cruise for the birthday of someone we'd never met. And, it was sponsored by a country music radio station. Two words: line dancing. The Smelmooo posted a video to YouTube, so you can see for yourself.

The trip to Maine the following day was fairly uneventful; we stopped in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where I'd not been before, just to walk around, eat ice cream, and kill some time. And then we went to the L.L. Bean outlet, home to myriad fleece products and completely overpriced chocolate novelties (lobster-shaped chocolate popsicles, only four bucks apiece!).

And then, our home for the week, a cottage on a lake, where we stayed last summer, as well. I am really more of a beach person than a lake person (I think mostly because I grew up going to the beach; people who grew up going to lakes think that the ocean is stinky and dirty and gross, I'm sure), but I really like sitting on the dock by the lake, and looking at the lake, even though I don't especially enjoy swimming in it. But we fished (I caught zilch), and read a ton, and napped a ton (mostly me), and ate a ton, and hiked some (Tucker jumped/fell into a puddle at the summit), and relaxed a ton. We went to a country fair and watched some kind of competition involving donkey-training and another involving tractor-pulling by children (and, ha! A little girl kicked all the boys' asses).

When I was a kid, we were not allowed to watch television on vacation, except for the Olympics (and, even that, I think it was only the Los Angeles Olympics that I remember actually watching). I try to adhere to that rule, although I planned on making an exception for the convention, as well. And then, somehow, I only managed to stay awake for Hillary's speech. I watched Michelle's and Kennedy's online, and the Smelmooo kept trying to wake me up for Barack's, but that was one of the nights we drank wine, and I just could not keep my eyes open. And I can't imagine actually watching an hour-long speech online, or even reading the transcript, so there you have it.

We also watched Season 2 of Dexter (so, yeah, it seems that the no-TV rule is fairly arbitrary, after all), which I found incredibly satisfying. I felt relieved that there wasn't a cliffhanger ending to the season (the Smelmooo pointed out that it's never clear whether Showtime shows will get renewed, so they're more inclined to wrap things up fairly neatly at the end of a season), and I could not believe that they made me hate a character way more than I hated Deb in the first season (aka Lila), and that I actually did NOT hate Deb this season. I think it's not only because she's not Lila that I didn't hate her; she seemed actually not just to be a two-dimensional character with a potty mouth this year. Ask the Smelmooo about our experience purchasing the DVD the day it came out. It involved a car chase. Sort of.

So, that was vacation, in a nutshell. And today, I did some back-to-school shopping, even though I'm only going back to school if I win the lottery. But I got a couple of staples for my fall wardrobe, and lamented the lack of decent summer clothes on the sale racks. I finally retired the Target swimsuit I got in the spring of 2001, and I got citronella on the ass of my olive-colored shorts the first day of vacation, so I was hoping to replace both today, in part because I'm looking forward to our next warm-weather trip, to Hawaii in January. But no swimsuits to be found, and the only shorts I could find either fell below the knee or barely covered my girly bits. The only happy medium I could find cost 40 bucks, and I don't wear shorts frequently enough to justify that.

Next weekend: a surprise outing for my birthday, plus some long-overdue time at the Jersey Shore. I think I'll need it after a whole four days in the office next week.

Rules are rules

2008-08-19T11:01:00.002-04:00

First off, I have to say I'm a little unhappy with the New York Times web site this week, their Olympic spoilers screaming at me from the home page. I don't even remember what I was looking for yesterday morning, but I sure wasn't expecting to find out the outcome of the uneven bars competition that didn't air until 11 o'clock last night.

But knowing the outcome didn't keep me from watching the event last night, and glancing at the headline didn't make me understand how the tiebreaker worked, so that part, at least, was news to me.

And as much as it's a flawed system of tiebreaking, and as much talk of scandal there was about the tiebreaker (and about the scoring more broadly, with near-constant lamentations about how the Americans are getting screwed), it's not like the judges or the IOC or whoever made it up on the fly. They had a system in place for just this occurrence, and they followed that system, and despite a tie score, Nastia got the silver. And yeah, that's got to sting, a ton, and maybe she can call up Al Gore and be like, "Dude, I totally get it now," but that's the system, dopey as it may be. Don't take it away from the Chinese gymnast who ended up with the gold medal, and make snarky comments like, "Does she REALLY think she earned the gold, as she stands up there on that podium?" Well, yes, I bet she does, because she, in fact, did earn the gold.

And as much as I enjoy the American gymnasts, as crappy as I think it is that these 12-year-olds are competing (and, here, of course, the Chinese -- or Chineses, if you saw Tropic Thunder -- have circumvented the rules, which I agree is crappy, perhaps LEAST of all because it potentially gives them a competitive advantage), as beautiful as Nastia's routine was last night, as much as I'd have liked her to win gold, I think everyone needs to keep in mind that judging here is inherently subjective. It's not a matter of who touches the side of the pool first, or who crosses the finish line a nose ahead of the next hurdler.

So yes, I thought that Alicia Sacramone's (I am afraid to look up the correct spelling of her name for fear of additional spoilers, so apologies if I got that wrong) got hosed, but I also thought that Nastia's floor routine was better than Shawn Johnson's. That's my opinion; I just thought it was more graceful and beautiful, and although Shawn's was more powerful and athletic, I value that slightly less in a floor routine. My opinion. And even though there are some supposedly hard-and-fast rules here -- a step out of bounds is a one-tenth deduction, a fall is five-tenths, a balance check on the beam is something and a bobble is something else -- whose to say that one judge's balance check isn't another's bobble? There's an art to this stuff; it's subjective. What resonates with me and appeals to me in a routine as an American, and as a long-ago gymnast, is probably different from what appeals to an experienced gymnast from Australia, and what is perfection to Bela Karolyi (whom I love, by the way, which makes me feel conflicted given how awful he seemed to be in his coaching of Nadia) may be just adequate to a Chinese coach. That's just how it goes.

So although I appreciate the patriotism, and the media's and commentators' and fans' support for Team USA, I also feel like we need to dial it down and quit it with the sour grapes. Because even though I long ago outgrew my leotard, I still have this mantra seared in my brain: Gymnasts don't say "can't"; gymnasts don't cry; gymnasts don't whine.

A teensy hypocritical, no?

2008-08-14T15:57:00.002-04:00

So, I'm no big fan of Jennifer Love Hewitt, although I loved, loved, loved Party of Five, and joined a letter-writing campaign to save the show in its early days (I wish the effort to save My So-Called Life had been equally successful...). But by the time JLoHew found her way to her spinoff series, I was more than over both Sarah and her.

But I have also been happy that she seems to be settling down with someone who seems good for her (although I did not enjoy all of those clearly posed "candids" following the engagement, with the parrot and the head on the shoulder and all that nonsense). And I hated that she took so much flak for those vacation photos a few months back, and I was glad that she fought back with the whole "I am perfectly happy and healthy in my body, which by the way is a Size 2, thanks."

And then today, I was in D.C. for work, and, as is my custom, went immediately for the US Weekly for my train ride home. And the cover story is how JLoHew lost 18 pounds in 10 weeks, woo!

And I flipped through the story, and it actually seems like maybe her trainer and her PR person need to get on the same page, or maybe she needs to fire her trainer for flapping her gums. Because, of course, the trainer is quoting JLoHew as saying she wants to get in shape so she looks awesome in a tank top, and the rep is saying the new look is all about getting in shape to run a marathon.

Which it may be. I'm sure she is going to run a marathon, and she'll probably beat Katie Holmes's time, but it just seems like one shouldn't go on and on about how the media is perpetuating girls' issues with body image and then crowing to US Weekly about taking 18 pounds off of her Size 2 body. And maybe she didn't go after it; maybe the trainer was out of line; maybe it's all totally made up (although the revelatory: "She likes cherries!"? You can't make that stuff up!). But I felt a little indignant, seeing that. And maybe that's the point. Maybe indignance, and a somewhat Love-hate (heh) relationship increases sales of trashy magazines.

Pop

2008-08-12T15:46:00.001-04:00

I've written here a little about my grandparents, mostly my mom's parents, who I knew much better than my dad's. My mom's dad, Pop, was loud and politically incorrect and easily exasperated, but he loved my grandmother more than anything in the world, and in between all of his bad behavior, he was sweet and gentle and affectionate. He loved fishing, even though the priest at his funeral got that mixed up and talked about how he loved model cars, or something, which made us all giggle uncontrollable, and helped to lighten the mood considerably.

Anyway, in addition to lying straight to our faces with stories like Gus, Sam and Gregory Peck being the Three Wise Men, Pop enjoyed assigning crazy nicknames to all of my siblings and me. I can't even remember all of them; one of my sisters, I think, was 72 Mack; another was Nutzie Fagan. I was The Baby, up until Pop died when I was 19 years old, but I also was Osceola Guy Lacy.

I had no idea who Osceola Guy Lacy was until today (and, in fact, I always thought of it as Gailaesi, or something), although I had a vague recollection that he was a baseball player. But I discovered today that he was a baseball player who, as one web site put it, "had coffee with" the Indians: he only played for 3 months, in 1926. He had 24 at-bats his entire career in the majors.

So I wish I'd known all that, or at least paid attention, because I am struggling to understand what Pop meant by assigning me that nickname. Maybe nothing at all; it might have been as arbitrary as Gus, Sam and Gregory Peck. Maybe he loved that Osceola got a taste of the big-time and then settled back into a relatively calm, obscure life away from the spotlight and the pressure of MLB. Maybe he thought I was too big for my britches, and needed to be taken down a peg. Maybe he rooted for him the summer he was 24, which may have been the year he married my grandmother.

What I do know is that I'm glad that there was a horse racing this weekend at Saratoga named Osceola Prince, because that's what made me think about all of this and inspired me to do some research. But I also know that I need to quit it with the betting on a horse just because of his name, because as much as I want it to be, that is NOT a valid indicator that he's going to win.

Points for creativity

2008-08-06T16:28:00.002-04:00

I get literally hundreds of spam emails every day; so far today, I've had 2 flagged as carrying viruses, one that made it through my filtering software, and 122 others that the software caught. Once in a blue moon, the software errs in the other direction, and a legitimate email gets detained, so I usually scroll through the junk mail once a day.

My favorite subject line today?:

"GPS-equipped turtle stumbles upon field of marijuana in a D.C. park"

A slippery slope

2008-08-05T18:45:00.002-04:00

So, I learned today that at least one airline is now charging for water (two bucks for a bottle, one of my colleagues reported; at least they aren't -- yet -- charging two bucks for a dinky plastic cup), and another for blankets and pillows. And the rumor is that the next frontier is providing wireless access, at ten bucks a pop or so.

Which, in some ways, would be excellent. I sometimes end up having to work offline on my laptop on a long flight, and then always have a devil of a time getting everything synched up. And it would take Twittering (or, as I've learned it's actually called, Tweeting) to a whole new level: 5:02 -- flying over Lake Tahoe! 5:12 -- flying over the Grand Canyon!

On the other hand, I really like that I am unreachable for five hours on a cross-country flight, and that I currently feel no guilt when I choose to watch the in-flight movie or read a book or even a trashy magazine or three. If there were wireless available, I'd feel compelled to be on it, and others would feel free to pounce on that time. So, overall, meh.

But what REALLY scares me is that cell phone usage on planes will be right around the corner. I can't imagine anything worse: thirsty, hungry, cold, cramped, cranky people shoved into close quarters with no hope of escape, all yammering into their phones. It might be worse than the world depicted in Wall-E (not to be confused with Walley World).

Separately, I just paged through my Brangelina Twins issue of People, and I can't help but think that Knox is getting the shaft. What's up with that? There are hardly any pictures of him in which his face is actually visible and in focus. They seem cute, although I'm not sure what the big whoop is (not that babies aren't a big whoop generally, but...really?). And there is one photo in which I was convinced, for a full 30 seconds or so, that Brad had a long, French-manicured thumbnail, which was completely shocking, until I realized it was actually Knox's white blanket creating an optical illusion. Phew, although I wish the wife-beater shirt were also an optical illusion.

The itchy & scratchy show

2008-08-04T21:26:00.002-04:00

A few weeks ago, there was a piece in The New Yorker called "The Itch," by Atul Gawande (who I think is brilliant and amazing and wonderful, but I'm starting to find his style a little predictable. Could you maybe mix it up just a tiny bit? I'll still love you if you don't).

[Warning!! Do NOT click through to page two of that article if you are squeamish, if you're eating or have just eaten, if you are about to go to bed, or if you have any hope of getting romantic in the foreseeable future.]

Anyway, to summarize, the article is all about why we itch, and why we itch just because we think of something itchy, even though we don't feel hot if we think about holding a finger over a flame.

And it is so true; as I read the article, I was itchy, itchy, itchy. And, about a week after I'd read it, when my brother emailed our whole family to (a) thank us for coming to a birthday party at his house that weekend and (b) inform us that his kids brought home a letter noting that there was a lice epidemic at their summer camp, so everyone please check yourselves, you'd better believe I did not stop scratching the entire day (despite not having lice myself, I promise).

Oooooog. That just squicks me out.

Apparently, though, there are people who are professional lice removers; you pay them a few hundred bucks, I think, and they will patiently and expertly comb through your little girl's foot-long, curly locks and rid it of every last nit. I'm curious how one gets into that line of work, but I guess it's a good gig, and I'm fairly certain that my nieces went to her (my brother just shaved my nephew's head and called it a day, but I imagine that that would not fly with the girls).

I thought to write this blog when I discovered a spidery-looking bug on my forearm. I flicked him off mid-bite, despite believing very strongly that doing so makes the effects of the bite worse: big and malformed and itchy as hell. But it's impossible for me to resist the urge to flick when I spot a bug on me; I can't imagine just waiting it out, figuring that that's a better long-term strategy than interrupting the bug's feast.

Are you itchy, too, now? I am barely noticing my forearm now, because by writing "itch" so many times, I've caused it to spread, to my scalp, and my toes, and my left ear. I am a mess.

When the cat's away...

2008-08-04T17:05:00.002-04:00

So, the Smelmooo was scheduled to be away for a work trip beginning on Saturday. I am always sad when he's gone: the house feels empty, I don't sleep well, Tucker is extra-anxious, I have no one to share the household chores.

But, particularly on the first day I'm flying solo, I have to admit there's a teensy piece of me that enjoys having sole control of the remote (Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants! Save the Last Dance! 90210! All without judgment!), and relishes having some time to do the things that the Smelmooo doesn't enjoy: going shopping, getting a pedicure, making a stir-fry or ordering Indian food for dinner. And when the family reunion I was supposed to attend on Saturday afternoon got rained out, I started getting excited about doing all of those things.

And then, the Smelmooo's flight got canceled (I guess I did the "cancel the family reunion" rain dance a little too fervently, although I didn't intend it as a "ground all the flights out of Newark" dance), and he couldn't get another one out until yesterday. So, all of a sudden, we had an unexpected day together, and we just sort of blinked at each other for a minute, like, "What the heck do we do?!"

The Smelmooo kept joking that I'd need to call my boyfriend to let him know that the husband was staying in town, so once I took care of that, the Smelmooo and I rallied and made the most of our extra time together. We did boring stuff: ate lunch at the diner, stocked up on bulk items at BJs, went to a movie, walked downtown for dinner, played Wii, walked downtown for breakfast with Tucker. All, in the end, much better than shopping and a pedicure.

But I did give myself a pedicure last night, and I have been wearing my retainers practically 'round the clock. I did the laundry and the dishes. I made a stir-fry; I took Tucker for a walk/jog/run this morning (our speed was dictated by a complex formula involving our proximity to garbage trucks, morning commuters, and other dogs). I'm a wild and crazy gal.

And now I'm done. I've had my me-time; you can come home any time, hubby.

Reversing myself

2008-07-15T15:39:00.005-04:00

Back to work today.
Fridge is fixed, but people suck.
Misanthrope, again.

[with apologies to Steakbellie, master of the haiku]

Stir-crazy

2008-07-14T11:27:00.002-04:00

On Friday, I worked at home, which I hardly ever do, and I got tons done, despite the constant din of screeching children at the camp that's held across the street. I swear, these three girls sang that "I'm a Barbie girl, in a Barbie world" song for 30 minutes straight. I am curious what got them started on that song -- didn't it come out before they were born?

Today, I am working at home because I am awaiting a call ("sometime between 8 and 5")from the people coming to look at (and, I hope, to fix) our refrigerator/freezer, which has been on the fritz since probably Thursday. Owing to the gray, drizzly, but blessedly cooler weather, it is remarkably quiet. The grayness and the quiet are making me kind of sleepy, which is not so conducive to the working, but was much appreciated during the two-hour conference call I wrapped up, especially because I don't know how to use the mute function on our phone (thank goodness, I do know how to use speaker, because two hours is a long-ass time to be holding the phone up to one's ear).

Now I am secretly wishing for someone to prank call me with the old, "Hey, is your refrigerator running?" because today, the joke would be on him. "No, in fact, it is not."

How do kids make prank calls these days, now that everyone has Caller ID? I was never big into the prank calling per se, but I remember for some reason my junior high friends and I would call up boys we liked and either (1) hang up (which became dangerous by the time I was 10 or 11, when everyone used *69 to dial the last caller) or (2) stay on the line and ask to speak to [NAME], NAME being the girl among us who liked that particular boy. Somehow, we were certain that, if Mike's mom answered the phone, and we asked for Kristin, and she said, "I'm sorry, there's no Kristin here," Mike would overhear her and think, "You know, there is no Kristin here. But I wish there were. I should totally go out with Kristin."

Anyway, nothing makes me want to go out more than being stuck inside, because of course if I leave for 10 minutes to get a sandwich, the service people will call exactly within those 10 minutes, and then we will have to go through this whole rigmarole again later in the week. Believe me, this happened ALL the time when I worked in customer service for the air conditioning company.

"But I just went to pick up my kid from school!"
"But you weren't there when we called. We told you we'd call to verify that someone would be home."
"But I just left for five minutes!! Send him back!! Can't you send him back?!"
"I'm sorry, ma'am, he's left the area. We'll try to get him back later today, but we may need to reschedule."
"I'm going to come over there and shoot you if you don't send someone here THIS INSTANT."

So I will be staying put.

I'm also learning from the back-to-back work-at-home days that I could not do a job where I worked at home all the time. It's surprising to me, a little bit, but I actually miss the buzz of the office and having people to talk to all day long (even though I'm grateful for uninterrupted work time for specific tasks that I get done much more quickly at home).

And although Tucker is awfully cute, his repertoire is fairly limited, as it turns out: play dead in the living room; play dead in the sunroom; lick self inappropriately; saunter off for some water; plop back down in living room. And although I can make snarky comments to him the way I would to whoever happens to be walking past my office, it's somehow just not the same. So, good to know for my next gig: Opportunity to work at home as needed? Good. Daily work-at-home arrangement with no opportunity for in-person human interaction? No good.

World's biggest dumbass (today, anyway)

2008-07-09T17:39:00.003-04:00

Today started out badly. I have had two successive nights of not being able to sleep -- I fall asleep fine, and sleep fairly soundly at first, but yesterday I woke up at 4:15 and couldn't get back, and today it was 3:11. I had to catch a 5:58 train to D.C. anyway, but not ideal, and when I was asleep I had anxiety dreams about leaving my work bag at home and being totally unprepared for my meetings.

So in real life, I remembered the bag, but literally a minute before my train arrived, I realized I'd left my cell phone in the car in the parking deck, across the tracks, two stories up. Now, I probably leave my cell phone behind every other month or so, and it's usually an annoyance but not a biggie. Today, though, I was staffing not only my big boss, but HER big boss, i.e. the biggest boss, on a packed day of congressional meetings, on a day when there were tons of votes going on and potentially lots of last-minute scheduling changes. So, suffice to say, not a good day to be without a phone.

Luckily, I had a couple of things going in my favor: my work-issued Blackberry does have a phone function, amd I was able to get special dispensation to use that function given the circumstances. And, bless him, the Smelmooo retrieved my real phone from my car and kept an eye on incoming calls, and basically was my secretary for the day, so it all went off without a hitch, and the biggest boss was none the wiser (I was still freaking out a hair when my big boss got on the train at the next station, and I had to come clean to her).

So it all worked out, and it was actually quite a successful day on the whole. And I was feeling quite proud and relieved when I finally got to lose my suit jacket and throw my hair in a ponytail and pee at Union Station before we caught our train home.

And then, I am not making this up, the woman in the stall next to me peed on me. Well, on my shoe and on my pants leg, which I suppose is slightly better than peeing on my skin, but still, vile. I understand not wanting to sit on those grody seats, but if you're gonna squat (which I do), have SOME semblance of aim and respect! I understand a little bit on the seat, maybe, if you're not squatting deeply enough, but really? All over the floor, and so far off-base that a fairly considerable amount splashes into the adjoining stall? Unacceptable, and did I mention just plain GROSS?!

But sort of par for the course today, I guess.

Ouch! And other random thoughts

2008-07-07T22:09:00.000-04:00

So, I was un-friended on Facebook. Props to Facebook, actually, because I have no idea when I was un-friended. It tells me every time someone sneezes, but a high school classmate (who has more than 300 friends and is clearly not discriminating) was able to drop me without my even knowing.

I sort of can't blame her for dumping me; she found me when I first joined Facebook, and she wrote on my Wall, and I never wrote her back because I didn't want her 300 other friends knowing what I was up to, and I hadn't quite figured out that you can just send a private message through the system, so I never got in real touch with her. Which is fine, although if I had, I'd have told her that I found, during my spring cleaning a couple of months ago, a picture of us from our ninth-grade semi-formal. Maybe I will scan and post it, and tag her in the photo, and she'll want to be friends again, if only to get me to take down the photo of her in a dress with puffy, fuschia satin sleeves.

Also on my mind:

-- I have been obsessed with my fiber intake for the last couple of weeks, ever since I rode the morning train to D.C. with a colleague who pointed out that my staple early-morning train breakfast (a single-serving bowl of Special K, a Diet Coke and a water) is insanely low in fiber. I'd of course never considered that before -- come on! the ads tell me Special K is good for my diet! -- but now that my co-worker flagged the issue, I'm reading breakfast-food labels like never before. And now I need to rethink my train routine, which makes me unhappy, especially because the 7-11 doesn't sell single-serving containers of any high-fiber cereals. Hmmm. A dilemma.

-- My fiber obsession triggered a voice in my head from an '80s television show, which I initially attributed to Square One TV, but this morning it hit me that it's, in fact, from Perfect Strangers. I don't remember the exact circumstances, but someone makes an inappropriate poop joke, and some stuffy old lady, all offended huffs, "Well, I never!" And Balki, of course, replies, "Eat more fiber." My brother for some reason went to a taping of Perfect Strangers, and said that Balki seemed to be all coked up. This does not surprise me.

-- Twice in the last week, the Smelmooo and I have gone to dinner parties capped by make-your-own-sundae bars, both of which included freshly-baked brownies. Heaven. There is nothing I like better than a make-your-own-sundae bar.

-- One of my co-workers this morning said, "There's something I need to tell you guys," with a tone that suggested that she had super-big news, like that she was having a baby or something. But, in fact, she wanted to tell me about a wedding she'd gone to that featured what she called Mashed Potato Sundaes during the cocktail hour. Which sounded like one of the grossest things I could imagine, until she explained that it was basically a martini glass filled with mashed potatoes, with a toppings bar featuring bacon and cheese and all kinds of toppings. Which actually sounds kind of yummy, if you call it a fixin's bar or something. But it is not a sundae.

-- My parents' good friends did a family vacation the same week we did, and they actually hired a professional photographer (they did not wear matching shirts). I saw their daughter last week, and we swapped war stories, and I think we came out about even. Their shoot took an hour and a half, which I think would've been worse than our 15 minutes of family fun. But now my mom is hot on getting professional photos done at the Jersey shore this fall. Eh, it'll make her happy, and it won't be the end of the world. But I think I will lobby hard for coordinated, not matching, wardrobes.

-- I normally have an anti-talking policy at the gym, but the other day, I was on the elliptical next to the Smelmooo, catching up on my People, and I could not help exclaiming, "Wow, that's a big blow to US Weekly, losing Joey Bartolomeo to People!" And the Smelmooo looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language. I can't blame him. I tried to backpedal, explaining that she went to Colgate and our alumni newsletter did a little write-up on her, blah blah blah, but he was, quite reasonably, hearing none of it.

-- I'm inexplicably sad for Drew Barrymore and her latest break-up, and very happy for Nicole Kidman, although I'm not so much a fan of "Sunday" as a baby name (perhaps because I know a dog named Sunday?). I am wholly uninterested in the whole A-Rod/Madonna scandal.

-- I secretly enjoy Flavor of Love, and even less secretly enjoy Rock of Love, but I think that I Love Money is too awful even for me. It seems almost worse than the Real World/Road Rules challenge, because these people are actual grown-ups (although at this point many of the RWRR alum are, too). As much as I love Heather and will be rooting for her from afar, I don't think I can stand to watch.

-- The Smelmooo and I watched about a hundred movies this weekend, and I actually enjoyed Definitely, Maybe, which I did not expect. I still don't get what the big deal is about Ryan Reynolds, but I liked him better in this movie than in any other. I'm still skeptical that he and Scarlett will make it, maybe moreso after seeing her in The Other Boleyn Girl. I read one review that suggested Scarlett would've been better cast as Anne, and Natalie Portman as Mary, an idea that made watching the movie more interesting -- I kept thinking how each actress would have approached the other's scene if the roles had been reversed -- but I'm not sure that it would've been a better movie if they'd swapped. It was so icky and preposterous by the end, I wouldn't have enjoyed it regardless of who was playing whom.

-- I just saw a commercial for Starburst Gummi Bursts. Please, please, stop the madness with the unexpected liquid inside of candy and gum. I inadvertently took a piece of Chewles-like gum from Minnams's gum basket the other day, and I was so startled that I yelped and spit it out like a six-year-old. Which I did not do when I was served scallop ceviche at one of the ice-cream-sundae bar dinner parties. I decided I needed to be a grown-up and eat at least some of it, although I briefly debated feigning an allergy or even a pregnancy when I overheard one of the other guests apologizing to our host that, although she loooooooves ceviche, it's a no-no given that she's expecting. But I wanted to be a good guest, so I dug in, even though I hate scallops, and I sort of needed to chase each bite with a big sip of beer to tamp down my gag reflex. Which I thought was stealthy and slick of me, but which the Smelmooo told me was completely obvious, which it probably was, particularly coupled with him taking half of the scallops off my plate. But I get points for trying, right? And I did gobble up my ice cream sundae.

I'm not giving a rose to Doug Benson

2008-07-03T13:34:00.003-04:00

So, I can’t believe I’m actually giving the movie Super High Me ("based on a joke by Doug Benson") a second thought, because my reaction to it was just a hair to the negative side of indifference. There was lots of random footage of DEA agents busting legitimate dispensaries in California, and I didn't feel like that hung together with the rest of the movie, but whatever. And I was sort of fascinated by this contraption called a volcano that basically filled up a giant plastic bag that Doug sucked on for his first hit of the morning.

But the thing that really rubbed me the wrong way was that, during the first half of the movie, in which Doug is doing his 30-day abstinence period (from both pot and alcohol, and it was never clear to me whether he reintroduced alcohol during the 30 days of pot-smoking), there's this weird little scene where his mom breaks her glasses, and he has to send her a check to cover the cost of new glasses. He points out, kind of bitterly, that he pays for pretty much everything for his mom. And, scene. And, never brought up again.

I figured that it would have to come up later, like when he was in the thick of his 30 days of smoking he’d somehow be unable to help her out when she needed it or something (although that would have been off-message for what I think he was trying to demonstrate), or that in one of his therapy sessions something more about his mom would come out. You know, you show a gun in the first act, it has to go off in the second? But no mention at all, and it makes me think Doug Benson -- who I love on Best Week Ever, particularly when he does rose ceremonies -- is kind of a jerk. Why make that public, your mom's financial troubles and the fact that she depends on you, if it's wholly unrelated to anything else in the storyline?

The ties that bind

2008-06-29T17:02:00.000-04:00

So, to catch you up: I survived the work stress, in large part because Minnams is a saint and a rock star rolled up into one, and because of her, I didn't have to skip my family vacation this week. Which made my mother very happy.

Two years ago, I tracked daily lessons from our 19-person family vacation in North Carolina. I sort of wish I'd read those before we took off again a week ago, because I'd forgotten some of what I'd learned two years ago. Although part of me wonders why I'm ever surprised by anything about my family, because any time you throw us all under one roof, we all regress, and it's like we're children again, like we've never left our parents' house.

We did remember enough about the last trip to leave the karaoke machine at home, and to bring two good games, Apples to Apples and Whoonu, that were huge hits with the grown-ups and the kids alike. We also had better weather this time around, so we took long walks or runs on the beach almost every morning, swam in both the ocean and the pool every day, and had several rousing games of wiffle ball on the beach after dinner (my two favorite moments there: (1) my parents standing in the outfield, hugging each other, grinning ear to ear and looking so proud and happy to have gathered their whole brood; and (2) imploring my six-year-old nephew, "Cover your base!" and him responding by kneeling in the sand and burying the neon pool toy that was serving as the marker for second base).

There were other lovely moments: My littlest nephew, who's five, is uber-cuddly right now (although he grew less so as the trip wore on) and as I lay on the couch reading before dinner one night, he padded over and climbed up next to me and snuggled into the crook of my arm; he was practically asleep, but couldn't quite get comfortable, so he flopped around for like 15 minutes, not even opening his eyes, and wound up crossways on my torso, holding my hand, until it was time for dinner. I am so sad as I realize that, next time we do this trip, he will likely not be so interested in snuggling with me.

Last night, after we'd packed away Apples to Apples and Whoonu in preparation for our 5:45 a.m. departure this morning, we played what my sister calls The Sentence Game, although it's really The Sentence, Picture, Sentence Game. Basically, it's a variation on "telephone" or "whisper down the lane": everyone around the table writes a sentence at the top of a piece of paper and passes it to the right. Then everyone has to draw a picture to illustrate the sentence, folds over the sentence so the next person can't see it, and then the next person has to write a sentence describing the picture. At the end, you see how close -- or not -- the last sentence is to what you started off with.

My oldest sister's husband, somehow, did not get the concept, at all, so he was screwing everything up, writing sentences beneath sentences and drawing pictures beneath pictures, or sometimes doing sort of a rebus (snaps to the Smelmooo for being the first to use that term). He insisted the instructions were not clear; we quickly but relatively politely pointed out that every other person at the table, including his 10-year-old son, understood. Anyway, it made for some ludicrous interpretations, including my "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" becoming something like, "I find it thrilling, rather than scary, to skateboard on the highway."

But the most memorable part of the trip, by far, was the family photo. Oh, it gives me a knot in my stomach even to think about it, and I'm not sure I can even do it justice. We didn't do a family picture at my dad's 70th birthday party, which we probably should have, but we thought it'd be nice, in theory at least, to have a family photo at the beach.

I think it was for my mom's 60th birthday, in 1999, that we hired a photographer to come to our parents' house and do a family photo, everyone dressed in denim and white. It was sort of cheesy, but it worked, and turned out pretty nicely. Then, there were more grandkids, and the Smelmooo joined the crew, so we did another photo the summer we got engaged, that time with white shirts and khakis (this works less well, especially given that we are a fairly pasty lot), and with my brother-in-law's camera set up with the timer. I've never been crazy about those shots, but at least we're all together. Except for my youngest niece, who was born two years later, so we had exactly zero pictures with our whole family.

So anyway, everyone together at the beach, great weather, deck with an oceanfront view that would be perfect. My mom went into town and got everyone Duck (as in Duck, North Carolina, but also with little ducks on them) t-shirts to wear for the occasion. [I do not for a second understand why we always need to wear a uniform for the family photo, but it's my mom, so I roll with it, and I think it's sweet.] The plan was to take the photo after dinner one night, around sunset.

And then, there were all kinds of delays with dinner, and our littlest niece was sleeping, and my oldest sister's husband -- owner of the camera with the timer -- started freaking out about losing the light, despite the fact that it was not quite 6 o'clock, on the third-longest-day of the year, and there was lots of confusion and sniping and shirt-changing and "I think I need a glass of wine"-ing.

I fully expected that there would be little pieces of paper taped to the deck, or at least some sort of chart, to show us where to stand, because there was a clear plan in my oldest sister's head. "NO SUNGLASSES!" she barked at our one sister, who responded with a "Kiss my ass," and a staunch refusal to remove the sunglasses.

"Okay, siblings, and mom and dad!"

Followed by "Spouses, too!"

Followed by "Kids and whole family tomorrow!"

At which point my brother woke his sleeping youngest, who fussed and screamed and refused to put on the Duck shirt, which I thought would be a deal-breaker for my sister, but there was clearly no way that we were all getting back on that deck, in those shirts, the following night, so we took just one shot of the whole family, and were done. And, of course, not everyone's looking at the camera, and my littlest niece's face is tear-stained, and my sister's wearing her sunglasses, but overall it's not so bad for a one-shot deal.

I sort of wish I had taken control and sucked it up and shelled out what would surely have been a ridiculous sum of money to get a professional photographer to come to the beach house, because it would be nice to have a photo that's better than "not so bad," and it might be a little less agita if we hired someone to be in charge. Maybe that is the important lesson for me to remember for our next family gathering: hire a professional.

Although, really, it almost wouldn't matter, because it's suddenly coming back to me that my oldest sister sort of bossed around our wedding photographer. And I think I'll remember the circumstances surrounding this one much more vividly than the professional shot at my parents' house nine years ago, and every time I look at it, I'm sure I'll smirk and chuckle and roll my eyes, in a good way.

A giant bundle of stress

2008-06-19T21:30:00.002-04:00

I burst into tears in the parking lot of our newly-reopened favorite pizza place tonight, not because I was happy they've rebuilt (although that's true), but because I thought I'd left my wallet at the office. And I got home, and burst into hysterical sobs as soon as I got out of the car.

It's been one of those weeks.

I won't go into it, because it's boring and also work-related, and since Minnams has shared her blog with a boatload of people at work I suspect that work people have found me through archived comments there and read my blog, too, in secret.

But the upshot is that today was my only day in the office this week, and I'm out all next week, which is always somewhat stressful, but today the work just kept piling on and piling on and piling on, and all of it was last-minute and high-priority and separately all of it would've been manageable, but taken together, it just put me over the edge.

And the wallet was what I call an "I broke a bowl" moment. I don't even remember the details anymore, but when I was a teenager, I was having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, and decided to make cookies to make myself feel better, but when I put the two sticks of butter in a bowl to melt in the microwave, I guess I squished them in too tightly, and the bowl broke. And I lost it, completely, sobbing in a heap on the floor, gasping and crying, and, when my sister came in to see what was wrong, all I could do was moan, "I broke a bowl! I broke a bowl!"

Anyway. I walked inside, and the Smelmooo was incredibly patient with me, and gave me huge hugs, and let me snot all over him, and we ate delicious pizza, and there's a lull in the work so we're going to watch My Boys, and all will be well. Right?

Identity crisis

2008-06-16T21:33:00.002-04:00

So, I just took a grammar quiz and got only half of the questions right, five out of of 10!!! In my head, I'm right about two additional questions (the scoring system suggests I'm being overly rigid on those two points, but that's just absurd. Me? Rigid?!), but regardless, I have to admit that stung a little.

How about you? Give it a whirl and let me know how you do.

Separately, I'm all out of whack because my People magazine did not arrive on Friday as it should have, nor did it arrive on Saturday. It finally showed up today, thwarting my theory that the universe was conspiring against me because it's the issue with Elizabeth Smart on the cover, and I suggested years ago that she was not, in fact, legitimately kidnapped, but that she was pregnant and sent into hiding for a few months. Anyway, its late arrival still screwed me up, because I had nothing to read in the hotel fitness center this morning, and I forgot headphones, and it was super-boring to watch CNN with no sound and no closed-captioning on the elliptical, and awful to listen to nothing but the sound of myself gasping for air.

I need to get myself back to Pilates, because missing my classes for the last month or so has really screwed up my endurance, I think. That, or there's something seriously wrong with me, but before I get too hypochondriacal, I'll just give Pilates another go.

I've got spirit, yes I do!

2008-06-13T21:20:00.002-04:00

I'm not generally much for school spirit, but I've apparently become susceptible to the public relations campaign from my alma mater to celebrate Friday the 13th. You see, Colgate was founded by 13 men with 13 prayers and 13 dollars, which any good tour guide would tell you right off the bat, and every Colgate student knows that 13 is the school's lucky number. What I do not remember from my college days was that Friday the 13th holds a special place of honor as "Colgate Day," which sort of makes me think that someone introduced that idea pretty recently.

Anyway, earlier this week, the school sent out an email reminding alumni about Colgate Day coming up, encouraging us to wear Colgate gear to work today, and informing us that 13 Colgate alums would be ringing the bell to open the New York Stock Exchange this morning, which I thought was pretty cool.

My co-worker in the office next to mine also is a Colgate alum, and we agreed we'd celebrate together. She ended up work from home today, so it sort of fell flat, but I did wear my Colgate t-shirt (which I normally wear only at the gym) to work today, hidden under a button-down.

And I kept it on tonight, without the button-down, when the Smelmooo, Tucker and I walked downtown for ice cream after dinner. Our town was hopping, both because it's a beautiful night, and also because there was a well-publicized (albeit poorly executed) arts festival. And suddenly, as I walked out of the ice cream shop, this woman on the sidewalk raised her arms over head and whooped, "Woooooooooo!! ColGATE! Friday the 13th!! Wooooo!" Which completely startled me, until I realized that she works at the gym, and she'd seen me in the shirt before and told me her daughter also went there. But still, a little unsettling.

As we walked home, a 20-something guy yelled out the window of a car. Again: "Woooooooooo! ColGATE!" I had no idea there were so many fans in our little town.

As much as I haven't kept up with my college friends, as much as I sometimes hated my college experience, as much as I ignore the emails and postcards encouraging me to support the Raiders when they play New Jersey schools in sports or to join a local alumnae book club, I do feel somewhat connected to the place, and my stupid shirt made me feel like a part of something tonight.

Sort of like the Smelmooo belongs to our actual community; he seemed to know 80% of the people we passed tonight. Whereas I recognized exactly three, and knew only two of their names, because I'm pretty much a civically disengaged misanthrope.

Out of ideas

2008-06-12T20:34:00.002-04:00

I heard this morning that Shrek is getting turned into a musical. I recognize the business sense of doing so, given how successful other animated-feature-turned-Broadway-shows have been (although I sort of think The Little Mermaid tanked), but really? Have we reached a total saturation point where there is nothing new under the sun? It seems like every play and every movie is based on something else, or is a sequel, or a spin-off.

Not that I've had any brilliant ideas for a book or a show or a movie, but it'd be sort of nice if someone did.

Denied

2008-06-07T14:38:00.002-04:00

I remember a discussion in one of my medical anthropology classes in grad school about blood drives, and the introduction of the bar-coded "Use my blood" and "Don't use my blood" stickers that a donor can place on his or her vial. Because, you know, if your workplace has a blood drive, and you've checked the "Yes, I've traded sex for drugs in the last 12 months" box, in many cases it could be easier to donate the pint of blood and have them dump it than to try to explain to your co-workers why you're being a selfish bastard and not participating in the blood drive.

I actually remember how much of a production a former boss made out of the fact that he couldn't donate at an onsite blood drive, because he'd just spent time in Costa Rica. He probably told every single one of the 200 people working in the organization why he was denied.

And today, I sort of understand why he felt so compelled to do so. There's a blood drive at our YMCA today, and I hopped over to renew our membership and donate a pint, which I hadn't done in ages, largely because it's sort of inconvenient. But really, right across the street, so no excuses. I filled out my questionnaire, got my temperature taken, had my finger pricked and my pulse checked, made small talk with the nurse, who has three dogs and no kids and is happy as a clam. Then she took my blood pressure, furrowed her brow, and tried again. And then she called someone else over to try AGAIN.

"Low?" she said.
"I don't know; sometimes it's a little low."
"No, I remember you, it's low." I have no idea why she'd remember me; I've never donated at this site before, even in this county, but okay, maybe. I wasn't gonna argue.

I tried to think about work, about global warming, anything I could to stress myself out, but there it was: 88 over 55. No go. I had to sign a form saying I understood why I was denied, and off I went, no bright-colored tourniquet on my arm, no "I gave blood today!" sticker, no Lorna Doones and apple juice.

And I felt like telling everyone I passed on my way out, even though none of them gave me even a passing glance: "Low blood pressure! I swear! No sex for drugs, really, I promise."

Ah, family

2008-06-06T13:24:00.002-04:00

I love my parents, so much, and I actually like spending time with them. And even when they drive me bonkers, I have to smile and just shake my head, because at 70 and 68, they're not changing (and, frankly, at pushing 31, neither am I). To wit:

The Smelmooo is out of town tonight, making good on his Survivor bet, and it's supposed to be a beautiful weekend, but I had a crazy-busy week at work, so I wasn't sure if I'd feel like doing much tonight. But I wanted to feel out my options, so I called my dad yesterday to find out (1) if he and my mom would be at their place at the beach tonight (yes), (2) if so, whether they had dinner plans (no) and (3) whether they'd be amenable to having Tucker and me come for a visit overnight (yes, although I could hear in his voice that he was envisioning Tucker wrecking their stuff while we went out to dinner, which is exactly what I'd have been thinking before we actually got our dog, who pretty much will run around sniffing everything for 10 minutes, sigh, and curl into a ball and sleep for the rest of the night).

I must have told my dad six times that I was only checking to see if it'd be a possibility, because I didn't know what would be going on at work, and because I have a friend visiting from out of town on Saturday afternoon, so I'd wing it and call to let them know whether I'd be coming down.

But of course, a few hours later, I had an email from my mom telling me how excited she was that Tucker and I were coming to visit, and she couldn't wait to see us, exclamation point, exclamation point, exclamation point. And I truly believe that she was happy to have me visit, and glad that I'd be getting to the beach, and not consciously throwing a guilt trip on me, but regardless of her motivation, I acknowledged that her email meant I was going to the beach tonight.

And I got a little stressed out this morning about whether I'd be able to wrap up work and get home and on the road again in time to beat shore traffic, and I felt guilty about the spinach in our fridge that'd probably go bad if we left it uneaten for a couple more days, and I had to convince myself that my friend won't care if the house is a little messy when he visits. But I figured that I'd make it all work, because it'd make my mom happy.

So of course, my mom calls me at work this morning and says: "Hi, honey. I'm dumping you for dinner, is the upshot." Friends from out of state happen to be visiting family nearby, and they're having dinner with them, instead. "You could come, but we're going to plan our trip to Australia, soo.... But I really want you to come down and stay over!"

Which actually works out, because I can go home and eat my spinach and take my time, head down after the rush-hour crawl to the shore, get some ice cream or something with my parents tonight, go for a run on the boardwalk in the morning, maybe grab a couple of hours on the beach tomorrow. With my somewhat nutty family.

If Rory Gilmore were real...

2008-06-04T19:55:00.003-04:00

..can you imagine what an amazing year she'd have had, covering the Obama campaign? Really, I never, ever would have believed that he'd be the nominee. In fact, I remember posting something about the campaign sometime last year (maybe about John Edwards staying in despite Elizabeth's cancer? About which I was overly judgmental at the time, for sure), and Mara posted a comment to keep an eye on Obama, and in my head I was like, "Pffft...I like Obama, and maybe one day, but he's way too green to be a viable candidate."

But here we are, and I'm pretty psyched. I am terrified that he'll choose Hillary as a running mate, in part because I worry a little that she would pull a Tonya Harding, and in part because I agree with Jimmy Carter that that pairing would potentially turn off more people than it'd bring in. Yes, Obama needs a running mate who'll appeal to the same types of voters that Hillary was able to attract in the primary, voters among whom he was weaker. But why Hillary herself? And I'm still not entirely convinced that she could stand being Barack's number two. Maybe another high-level position in the administration, but I just don't see VP as a viable option.

Although my track record is clearly not so good in predicting political outcomes, so who knows. However it plays out, I'm excited for November (although I'm sort of dreading the next five months, with the mud-slinging and the posturing and what not), excited about the possibilities that lie ahead.

Me time

2008-06-01T18:09:00.000-04:00

The Smelmooo is off on a semi-annual guys' trip today, so I'm flying solo at home. My sister invited me to spend the day with her at the shore, and I had just a brief pang of regret about declining as this beautifully warm, sunny day unfolded before me. But I am feeling ridiculously content at the tail end of a lovely weekend.

I've watched snippets of movies that I can't helping watching as I flip past: Sixteen Candles, The Devil Wears Prada, Dave, An American Tail, 13 Going on 30. And this morning, a late-era 90210 where Donna gets attacked by a serial rapist, Andrea is whoring it up even though she's married to Jesse, and the Flaming Lips performed at the Peach Pit After Dark. I had totally blocked all of this out; I was much more enthusiastic about the Brenda years.

Yesterday, I got a pedicure, which was a huge, huge treat, especially because my feet were completely ripped up when I got there, owing to my serious lack of judgment earlier in the week, when I went on a 40-minute walking meeting while wearing inappropriate footwear. I realized that I tend to make this mistake during National Spelling Bee season. Anyway, even though I still have some yucky blister remnants on my toes, the bottoms of my feet are smooth and happy, and my toenails are beautifully cut and polished in a color called Thigh High. Which was almost identical to a shade called I'm Not a Waitress, but I resonated more with Thigh High.

It was my first pedicure in three-and-a-half years (I got three the year I got married, and that'd been it for my lifetime), but now I may be hooked, especially because the place where S and I went had these awesome massaging chairs where we sat while our toes dried; they reclined all the way back, and I nearly fell asleep, I was so comfy and relaxed.

The other thing I had not done in forever, probably in seven or eight years, was buy new sports bras, and the girls were aching for me to get some new ones. I was startled to discover yesterday that they no longer seem to make my preferred bras, which I thought were fairly standard cotton numbers. But nooooooooooooo, now it's all about the wicking material, and I've discovered that I am not a fan. It's not nearly as comfortable as cotton, and it was just as sweat-soaked after my run this morning. Blech. Suggestions welcome if anyone has recommendations here.

And, to round out the conspicuous consumption for the weekend, I got new running shoes today, Mizuno Wave Riders, which are possible identical to Minnams's running shoes, but I don't really care because we never exercise together. As the Smelmooo can attest, I hate, hate, hate buying sneakers, because I generally think they're really ugly, and sometimes I just make up my mind that every option in the store is ugly, and then I'm just done -- there is no appeasing me. But I was excited about the Mizunos, because I am convinced -- we'll see whether correctly or not -- that they'll be better for my feet and shins and knees and back than my Asics or New Balances; I completely -- fairly or not -- blame my Asics for my recent foot problems. Because, you know, clearly it can't have anything to with me.

So, soon enough, the beach, because we seem to have skipped spring altogether, except for a week or so in early April that led right back to wintry weather, and to be be in the thick of summer already.

And, wow. Holy crap. I just realized it's June 1st, which means I have been working at the same organization for nine years. Nine. That's a whole nother blog entry. Yeesh.

What's wrong with this picture?

2008-06-01T17:45:00.003-04:00

I know it's a little hard to see here, but our office just began stocking these cups on Friday. I always use a mug from the probably-defunct pretzel stand Hot Sam for my water at lunch, and a big plastic turquoise cup from the dollar store for my Diet Coke, so I tend not to use the disposable cups. But on Friday, I was sitting across from Minnams at lunch, at a fairly large table, and became singularly focused on this stupid cup as the conversation swirled around me. As Minnams pointed out, it's like a switch I can't turn off, the grammar nerd thing. And, really, I like and support what the cup is trying to tell me, but what it actually tells me makes my teeth itch.

Rub-a-dub-dub, thanks for the grub

2008-05-28T22:03:00.001-04:00

Four years ago, I vowed that, even if it's the only thing left on the registry, I will not ever again give sheets as a bridal shower or wedding gift, because I discovered after my own bridal shower that the thank-you-note-writing is terribly awkward there. I generally like to give money for the wedding and fun gifts for the shower, especially if the couple's registered for things that I own and love, like an ice cream maker.

I was at a shower earlier this year at which one guest gave a cookie jar, and said that's her signature shower gift, always, for friends with even a bit of a sweet tooth. For a few days, I was enamored of the idea of having a cookie jar, and then quickly reversed myself on that, because we have enough crap in our kitchen, both kitchenware and junk food, without another non-necessity cluttering it up more and making us fatter.

Anyway, I'm missing my cousin's bridal shower next month because we're heading back to the Outer Banks (I know you're all excited for the return of daily vacation blogs!), but I was just looking at her registry online, and was delighted to see that she's asking for a waffle iron, and that it's still available.

But I kept scrolling, just to see what else was on the list, and discovered that they have also registered for a bathroom scale. If we were closer (I have tons of cousins, and she and her brother are pretty much the only ones even remotely close to me in age, but I think in part because we have such a huge immediate family, we just never spent much time with extended family), I think I'd want to get it for her as a jokey gift, just because I'd enjoy the thank-you note:

Dear Cousin Tangent,

Thank you so much for the thoughtful shower gift. Fiance and I are doing tons of emotional eating as we deal with all of the stress of wedding planning, and we'll be sitting on our asses and drinking a ton on our honeymoon, so the scale will come in super-handy to help us get back into shape when we return. So nice of you to think of us and our expanding waistlines!

We missed you at the shower; hope to see you and the Smelmooo at the wedding!

xoxo
Cousin Bride

Oh, also

2008-05-27T22:53:00.002-04:00

The fake, forced chumminess of the Enterprise staff in Denver? Clearly a company-wide practice. Although at least the Enterprise folks this time around did not force me to "go shopping" for my car; they just told me what I'd be getting, and where it was located, and sent me on my way. But still, I think I need to get myself back to Avis.

Stuck

2008-05-27T21:49:00.002-04:00

And I don't mean that metaphorically (which actually makes me feel a little better).

But I am stuck in St. Louis for the night, when I should be home by now. I've only been gone since Sunday, but it feels like weeks, and I practically cried when I found out I couldn't get a flight out tonight owing to bad whether back home. So here I am, in another Hampton Inn (a good chain! I just left one yesterday morning, and there is impressive consistency across different hotels), grateful that at least I'm a little obsessive and always pack extra underwear when I travel, just in case something like this happens.

And, really, I should be grateful that my trip to Iowa didn't coincide with the tornado, and that, even if it had, I was far enough outside of the affected area that I probably wouldn't have even noticed (that reality, of course, did not keep me from waking up repeatedly last night in my hotel in Cedar Rapids, certain that I was hearing evacuation sirens and certain that I was completely screwed, being on the twelfth floor).

[quick tangent: my TV seems to have gremlins causing the channel to change all on its own, and it's just switched to CNN, and although I'm not sure why Scott McClellan's new book is considered "breaking news," I am startled anew by how alike he and Mark McClellan look. I just had to double-check that they are not twins (they are not).]

And I was grateful that the first half of my travels went so smoothly: The Smelmooo and I hit almost no traffic during our drive down to Virginia for J and M's wedding on Sunday, and had a lovely stay there. I had an easy ride to the airport yesterday, with a lovely shuttle driver from Cairo, who told me about his family, including two small kids, who are still in Egypt until he can make enough money to bring them over to the States (I think that was not a ploy to get a bigger tip out of me, but if it was, it worked), and who talked passionately about the U.S. presidential campaign. I was able to catch earlier flights out of both Dulles and St. Louis yesterday to get me to Iowa in time for dinner and a movie (Recount on HBO, which I thought was "eh" despite some pretty good reviews). And even though I was a few days early for Brett Michaels' stop in Iowa (tickets still available, although the show will be sold out! I was reminded by every one of the 20 or so television and radio ads I caught during my 12 or so waking hours in Iowa), and even though I opted not to visit the real-life Field of Dreams because it seemed too far away, especially when I didn't have my camera, my time in Iowa overall was really good.

And even the flight cancellation wasn't nearly as bad as it could've been. The airline didn't delay it and delay it and delay it until the wee hours; they called it around 7:30, and were pretty helpful in sharing information with those of us who were stuck. The only hiccup was a jerky cab driver on the way from the airport, but otherwise it's been a surprisingly good trip. Except that I was really, really ready to call it a day, and even if I were spending the night at the Ritz, I would still be feeling a little wistful that I'm not at home.

The only thing more exciting than going home? An all-new season of The Mole!!! I'm so sad that my boyfriend Anderson Cooper isn't hosting, and it may suck, but I'm really enjoying the anticipation, at least.

Things I learned in Denver

2008-05-13T08:04:00.003-04:00

This is my first time in Denver, except for a layover in the airport years ago, en route to New Mexico, and at that time all I learned was that (1) Denver is really cold in December, and you'll likely have to wait around while they de-ice your plane if you're flying out at night and (2) I hate, hate, hate flying in those little 12-person puddle-jumper planes, especially when I'm sitting on one for an hour, in the dark, while it gets de-iced.

This time, I've mostly just been inside the hotel, but nevertheless, a few things I've discovered on this trip:

-- It sucks not being Elite. I know, I know, carbon footprint, blah blah blah; for a lot of reasons, it's good that I don't fly as much as I used to for work (I have not checked out Amtrak's contribution to global warming, though), but it means I lose my preferred status, which means longer security lines, and a seat closer to the rear of the plane. Which mostly doesn't bother me, especially if there's a rear exit door, but yesterday, I realized a huge disadvantage of being in the back: I could not get to the bathroom.

The plane I was on had only two restrooms in coach, both at the back of the plane. I was four rows from the back, so everyone was queuing up next to my seat, sometimes leaning on my armrest or headrest. Which was annoying, but there was no one in the middle seat, so not awful. But then I realized that every time there was a line of more than four people -- and that was probably the case for about 50% of the flight time when the seatbelt sign was off -- I could not get myself in that line. Every time I seemed to have an opportunity, someone else came staggering down the aisle, and I couldn't squeeze my way through.

-- Climate change is real. I didn't actually check the weather before coming out here; I listed to a colleague who told me it was supposed to be 70 and sunny. And then, the guy at the rental car place asked if I was ready for the snow. I sort of laughed in a "yeah, you're hilarious. Ha, ha" kind of way, because it was, in fact, in the high 70s when I landed. And then, as the day wore on, it turned out that there really was rain and snow.

-- Enterprise Rental Car, at least at the Denver airport location, is not my type. I'm sure that there's some kind of research that suggests that their (figurative, thank goodness) song and dance routine is appealing to a broad swath of customers, but it was just not my cup of tea. Really, after a long, turbulent flight, and a schlep through the airport to the rental car shuttle site, and the five-mile ride on the shuttle, I don't need to shake hands with an overly bubbly agent, and I don't need to be brought "shopping." I know some people care deeply about the type of rental car they drive, and I'm sure that plenty of people enjoy the opportunity to pick out the specific car they'll drive, within the category they've signed up for. But when I tell you, more than once, that I'm only driving to and from the hotel, and that I don't care what kind of car I get, please quit it with the charade of browsing all the possible rides. Especially when, just to get it over with, I say, "Yes, great, I want that Mazda," you realize suddenly that the Mazda is in fact not available, and then, as we approach my second-choice car, it's clear that someone else is making a beeline for it and are going to claim it first. Really, I just want to get out of the blazing sun, into my car, and over to my hotel. Why make it so complicated?

-- I think I'm going to get sucked in to seeing Sex and the City. I think it will not be a great movie, but I'm starting to feel like there's some inevitability there. I've been surprised how many women have confided in me that they've hatched plans to cut out of work early and see an afternoon show, either on their own or with girlfriends from work.

-- Two out of three room service customers were watching Dancing With the Stars last night, according to the guy who delivered my undercooked-but-still-delicious burger (I felt a kinship with Minnams, who also had a raw-burger problem with room service recently -- what's up with that?) and perfect fries. I skipped the yummy-looking dessert selection because I'd eaten chocolate-covered strawberries at my work reception earlier in the evening. But I was starving when I got back to my room, because I had to make remarks at the reception, and the even organizer was adamant, for some reason, that I not eat or drink before I spoke. I did not want to cross this woman -- I saw her checklists for this event, and she was not messing around -- so I obeyed, but I'd not eaten since the cornflakes on the plane, and I was famished. So probably wise of her to forbid a glass of wine before my remarks, but I'm still not sure why a couple of forkfuls of tortellini or beef wellington would have been a problem.

-- "Business casual" is the new "no gifts, please." Almost everyone at this meeting was in a suit yesterday, despite the consistent message about it being business casual. I wore a suit yesterday, too, because I had to do remarks, so at least I fit in for one day. But today, I'm definitely rocking the business casual, even more than I'd planned; because of the SNOW, I had to scrap my cute summery top for a sweater.

-- I'd rather be home. Yeah, yeah, I know. This is a given, and I say this pretty much every time I travel, enough already. But I guess it's a good thing, that I consistently feel this pang when I'm away from home, that it crops up every time I'm away. Tonight, fortunately, it's back home to my guys, one of whom is stuck in his Elizabethan collar with an eye injury. Which has been stressful for all three of us, so I'm especially glad to get back home, and trying not to think too much about the fact that tomorrow I take off again.

Black and white and read all over

2008-05-08T21:43:00.000-04:00

I'm saddened, truly, by the demise of newspapers across the country. Yes, I definitely use the web to get news and information -- like when I'm obsessively tracking election returns and superdelegates -- but I love actually sitting down with the newspaper spread out in front of me on the couch or the breakfast table or the train. And I hate that, because print is now somewhat passé, good reporters have to jump ship, or -- if they are lucky enough to stay on -- to cover 27 different beats instead of one or two. I work with a handful of former journalists, and I interview a whole lot of candidates who are former journalists (the puker is not among them), and they reminisce about the halcyon days at the papers, the liquid lunches, the curmudgeonly editors who always make me think of Garry Marshall in Never Been Kissed. And it seems like there's nowhere to go but down. And yes, bloggers have their place, and newspapers are businesses, but it's troubling to have fewer and fewer actual journalists writing smart, thoughtful, unbiased pieces.

Somehow, though, our local weekly newspaper keeps on chugging, and it doesn't seem that the star reporters leaving more prestigious papers are flocking there. For example, the weekly's political reporter consistently gets congressional committees' names wrong, and subcommittee chairs' titles wrong (she almost always makes our local congressman chair of the full committee, rather than the health subcommittee, although I doubt that he or any of his staff are rushing to correct her on that). Part of it is sloppy reporting; part of it is sloppy editing. I can overlook the occasional typo or grammatical error (well, okay, I can't overlook it -- I grew up spending every weekend morning taking turns with my dad to read aloud clips from the local daily, outraged by how many egregious mistakes went unchecked in every edition -- but I can forgive it), and there are half a dozen corrections of fact in reputable papers every day (hey, even People sometimes gets it wrong!). It happens.

But I think that our local paper's editor has just totally given up. If I may make another How I Met Your Mother reference, it's like when Robin kept saying wildly inappropriate things in her local TV news stories and got away with it because no one paid attention. Here, I'm not sure if the editor is lazy, or making some kind of protest statement, but the opinion page is kind of out of control.

A recent letter-- not in the April Fool's edition -- implored our state's lawmakers to change Middlesex County's name to Middle County, on account of the "sex" part being dirty. I wish I were making this up.

And this week, there's a screed about no-bid contracts, but the author's panties are mostly in a bunch because he doesn't agree with the successful applicant on a project that was, in fact, put out for bid. He twice uses the term "collusion-like," concluding: "The governor needs to be removed from office for his most secretive and collusion-like of administrations that this state has ever seen."

I don't know; maybe the editor just feels worn down by the volume of idiotic letters, and he figures, "Hey, why not? I'll just run this one verbatim, because no one sane has written this week, and I need to fill the page." I actually get that instinct, if that's really what's behind all the madness on the opinion page. But I fear that it's not, and it might make me even more depressed about the state of journalism, and of my little neighborhood, which seems increasingly filled with illiterate crazy-heads.

ROTFLMAO

2008-05-06T11:27:00.002-04:00

If you haven't watched How I Met Your Mother, you should start doing so, and not because of Britney, whose performance elicited the following reaction from me: [shrug].

It took a while to get going, and partway through the DVDs of the first season, I was almost ready to give up, but I had caught some snippets of later episodes and knew it would eventually pay off if I stuck with it.

So, to any fans, I say, simply: "Their meat...is...delicious..."

Truly, I have not laughed out loud that hard at a sitcom in a very, very long time (although the Sandwich Day episode of 30 Rock last week was also quite funny). I heard someone on the radio yesterday positing that shows have gone way downhill in the wake of the writers' strike, but I don't think I agree, at least based on the shows I watch pretty regularly. I'll give you Earl and the whole coma arc, but otherwise I've been pretty consistently impressed with the shows I liked pre-strike.

More memories in unexpected places

2008-05-05T15:35:00.000-04:00

So, lots of blasts from the past yesterday, including one that I forgot to mention: the slideshow my sister put together included a beautiful shot from my parents' wedding day, in which my parents are flanked by both of their parents. I think somehow, in all the time we spent with our photographer on our wedding day, and the extensive shot-list we developed in advance to make sure we got every imaginable permutation of people, the Smelmooo and I did not get such a photo. I regretted that yesterday, because seeing the six of them all lined up together -- my mom and dad, young and radiant, alongside their parents, still relatively young themselves, and healthy -- struck an incredibly emotional chord for me.

I never met my dad's dad, and I lost my last remaining grandparent, my mom's dad, 12 years ago. I was closer with my mom's parents -- both her mom and her dad lived with us, separately, Gammie when I was in fourth grade and Pop when I was in high school and the very beginning of college. Pop was very much a curmudgeon, but Gammy was the sweetest, most gentle person I've ever met, and I have incredibly strong and precious memories of her, despite having had only a few years with her, until the spring before I turned 10.

I get a couple of things from Gammy. I definitely don't have her patience, but my mom tells me I have her hair. And, oddly, the weird tic where I absently bite the right side of my left index finger when I'm anxious? Identical to my grandmother's. I don't have a conscious memory of her doing that, but I do remember her hands, strong and sure when I was very young, and frail, thin-skinned and ropy as she got older. I remember being incredibly upset by that change in her hands, even at eight or nine. She still had the spark in her eyes, the brightness in her smile; the limp she developed, she and I could pretend was a temporary injury, but her hands we couldn't fake.

When I went through all the boxes of cards and letters during our spring cleaning, I found birthday cards from her and my Pop-Pop, all addressed to "Our Irish Beauty." That gave me a huge lump in my throat, along with a bittersweet feeling that I was incredibly lucky to have had them in my life, and so sorry not to have had them for longer.

But they stay with me, in odd ways. I think of my grandfather whenever we have ice cream cake at family gatherings, because, at his 90th birthday party, Pop so enjoyed his ice cream cake that he literally licked his plate clean. I think of him around Christmas, when I hear the Nativity story, because Pop had convinced all of us that the Three Wise Men were named Gus, Sam and Gregory Peck (fortunately, it was one of my sisters, and not me, who whipped herself into an indignant frenzy when one of her elementary school teachers told her otherwise).

And I just realized, after thinking, "I must have written before about Gammy," that I have, in fact, written about this briefly, but one of the things that reminds me of her are those pastel-colored candies, covered with non-pareils, that seem to be called Misty Mints:

At lunch today, there was a huge chocolate cake covered in mini-Misty Mints, which made me think even more about Gammy. It also puzzled me, because every other menu item in our cafeteria was consistent with a Cinco de Mayo theme, which these do not seem to be. But whatever. I'll take happy memories, and chocolate frosting, whenever I can get 'em.

This and that

2008-05-04T21:54:00.001-04:00

So much going on, so few opportunities to blog. So, some quick snippets:

Wheeeeeeee! -- The Smelmooo has a great story about his experience purchasing our Wii, and I'll leave that one to him. But I have enjoyed playing the Wii, even though I suck at pretty much everything but bowling. Tennis, baseball, and golf: not so much (although I somehow got lucky on the last hole and ended up tying the Smelmooo in our golf game, much to his dismay). I'm quite skilled at the bowling, though. And for those of you who've seen me bowl in real life, no, I don't do my signature hop with Wii bowling. I do, however, stand on my tiptoes.

Schmoozing and boozing -- Every year, I join the Smelmooo on a work trip outside of Atlantic City for a weekend in May. Two years ago, I got very, very drunk at this event. Like, "Hey, Smelmooo's board member! We need a self-portrait together!! Cheeeeeee-eeeeeessse!!!" drunk. I have since been much more temperate with this crowd, and I had just one glass of wine on Friday night. But I woke up on Saturday feeling like I'd drunk an entire bottle, I was so parched and headachy. I often feel dehydrated in hotels, even if I haven't been on an airplane, even if I'm not drinking. Someone suggested that it's because we ate too salty a meal too late at night; I don't know. I do know that 8:30 dinner reservations, especially on a Friday, are way too late for me at a fancy place. We didn't get our salads until like 10 o'clock, and by then, it's almost beside the point, and I'd rather just skip it all and go to bed.

Love, late in life -- In the room adjacent to our Friday night dinner was a wedding reception for an older couple. Like, maybe the woman was in her late 40s or early 50s; the guy was probably late 60s. And I was shocked by how many people around our table were making snarky comments about the couple. I think if they'd been a bit older -- or even if just she were a bit older, if they were both truly in their golden years, there would've been more of an "Awwww....!" reaction. But instead I think it struck everyone as a little silly and sad, this middle-aged woman in her veil, seeming pleased as punch, hugging and laughing with her friends and family, but almost never at the side of her drunk, drunk new husband. I never think that bodes well, when the bride and groom spend the reception apart from each other.

Surprise! -- Today was my dad's birthday party (and not a moment too soon for my poor mother, who remarked to me earlier this week that she doesn't understand how people have affairs, just logistically, because it was so stressful and awful lying to my dad about his surprise party). It was a lovely afternoon with family, and friends who feel like family, and I think my dad was, in fact surprised. But possibly not as surprised as I was when, as I went in search of scissors as we were setting up in our party room at the restaurant, I found myself face-to-face with Old Boyfriend. Ah, yes, the ex-boyfriend, who I'd not seen in seven-and-a-half years, whose niece's First Communion party was at the same restaurant as my dad's birthday party. It was super-bizarre, seeing him, but not as awful or awkward as I'd have thought. We both just sort of startled, visibly double-taking, exchanged "hi"s and "Wow, I haven't seen you in a while"s, explained our reasons for being there, and gave a "Okay, then, take care."

I ran into his sister in the bathroom later, with her four-year-old daughter in tow. This sister was always super-sweet to me, and I was reminded during our massive spring-cleaning effort that she and I kept in touch with cards even after the break-up. So it was nice to see her, but so odd. It's always weird to see someone you knew super-well, for a long time, after not having seen that person for a long time, and being reduced to two minutes of, "What's new?" and "Not much..." even though, of course, a whole lot happens in seven years. In her case, new job, new house, two kids. In mine, house, husband, dog (I somehow knew about the kids; she somehow knew about the husband).

And there was a lot of that, this weekend, small talk with people I see every few months, or once a year, or every few years (many of the people at the party today, I'd not seen since the Smelmooo and I got married, and it was weird to have so many of the "how's married life?" questions). It's a little exhausting for me, the being social thing, so I'm happy now to be at home, watching the dreadful, dreadful 27 Dresses, of which Judy Greer is the only good part. I think her TV show probably got canceled, but she is freakin' awesome.

Good karma; waiting for it to bite me

2008-04-25T14:52:00.003-04:00

Oh, what a week. I did a two-day eventin D.C. with a bunch of middle-school students, and I had to be a good role model for clean living and healthy eating (somehow, chocolate chip cookies made their way into the boxed lunches the first day, and people got seriously bent out of shape about it; they are super hard-core). So, no Diet Coke in public, and I had to sneak up to my hotel room every couple of hours to get a fix. I felt as guilty as if I were sneaking out for a cigarette break, or a nip of whiskey in the middle of the day.

To reward myself for a job well done, I got Ben & Jerry's before hopping on the train back home, and was lamenting to the cashier that the Ben & Jerry's across the street from my office closed, so I wouldn't be able to get a free cone next week. And he said, "Oh, I wish you'd told me before I rang you up; I'd have given you that for free!" Which was awfully nice in and of itself, but then he dug up a coupon for a free ice cream, handed it over and said, "There you go! Free cone, right in your bag, any time you want!" A nice cap to a long first half of the week.

So I got home at like 11:30 Tuesday night, then returned to D.C. first thing yesterday morning for a half-day meeting. The earliest return train I could make didn't stop in Metropark, but I couldn't bear the thought of being in D.C. any longer, so I took Amtrak to Trenton, and hopped on New Jersey Transit to my car in Metropark. Only I realized, with a fairly audible "Oh, shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhiiihhh-iiihhh-hittttt!" that I had inadvertently gotten a ticket to Metuchen, which is one stop closer to Trenton, and the place I most wanted to be in the world, but not without my car. Rather than buy another ticket, I decided just to chance it and hope it'd be one of those trips when the conductor doesn't walk through the car at every station stop.

I just looked it up online, and it turns out that the ticket price is exactly the same, so probably no one would have cared about my mistake, but I got all worked up about it, wondering whether the conductor would think I was trying to put one over on him by playing the dumb, ditzy girl. As opposed to, you know, actually being the dumb, ditzy girl that I've been for the better part of this week.

But anyway, karma was on my side, I guess, because the conductor did not come through before the Metuchen stop, and I stood waiting by the door pretty much as soon as we left that station, so when he finally did walk through before Metropark, and sized me up, trying to figure out whether he needed to take a ticket from me, I just said, "Oh, I got on in Trenton, and I'm getting off at the next stop." All of which was true. Phew.

Funnily -- to me, anyway -- I ran into some colleagues in Trenton right after I'd gotten the wrong ticket, and they were like, "Ha! Hope you get busted." I emailed them to say I'd gotten away with it, and it turned out they got on the train to Pittsburgh instead of the train to D.C. So, ha!

That does make me wonder, though, when my own luck's going to turn. My fingers are crossed that it doesn't happen this weekend at the Bodies exhibit, because that could be pretty gross.

Stress eating

2008-04-18T15:30:00.002-04:00

I can't remember if Minnams blogged about this, or if we've just talked about it extensively, so apologies if she's already got this one covered. But we were talking about how some people must be secret eaters, because in the lunch room they make healthy food choices and exercise portion control, and you may even see them in the gym or running outside. But somehow, they gain weight, and you wonder whether they secretly go home and devour an entire pint of Ben & Jerry's every night.

I'm not quite that bad, although I do love my ice cream (and anyway, more often than not, a cookie, and/or something fried and/or something with heaps of carbs makes its way to my lunch tray). But I've realized in the last month or so that I am a ridiculous stress-eater at work.

Right now, the cabinet over my computer is stocked with a tub of orange slices and a bag of Twizzlers that was full this morning. Actually, the bag of Twizzlers is now sitting right next to my computer, clipped shut with a mini binder clip, because I ate about 10 of them in a five-minute period without even thinking about it. And the link is dramatic: Read aggravating email, open cabinet, remove tub of orange slices, eat four, respond to email. Or, today, hang up the phone after person on the other end yells at me, on a day when I was already fairly close to the brink, dissolve into a puddle of tears, pull myself together, open bag of Twizzlers, eat 10, blog.

What's that about? I know I'm not hungry; I know that I'm eating in response to stress; I know I will look at the bag and be horrified by my behavior.

I don't abuse the emergency granola bar that lives in my work bag for those times when I'm legitimately hungry and cranky. Most days, I get a banana at breakfast time that I like to eat around 3 in the afternoon, but I rarely turn to that when I'm stressed out. I don't even abuse the Peeps.

I don't know what's up with me. I think I just need to enforce a zero-tolerance policy on the chewy, sugary things in my office, and I'll be all good. Starting on Wednesday.

Playing hooky, kinda

2008-04-16T22:32:00.001-04:00

Even though it's one of the busiest times I've had at work in recent memory, I took a half-day today for an annual doctor's appointment that managed to slip to 14 months (sort of like my haircut, which I should get probably every two months, but I can't even remember the last time I had a cut -- I don't know why I don't just consistently make my next appointment as I'm leaving the salon). So I worked at home in the morning, and headed up to the doctor's office around noon. I should probably find a doctor closer to home, or even to work, but I've been going to this guy since I was 19, and there's something comforting about having some consistency with the person doing your annual exam. He has soothing pictures on the ceiling, and always makes excuses for me when I've gained a pound or two over the course of the year, and he always asks how my mom's doing, so I'm sticking with him (although I'm sort of concerned about his respect for HIPPA -- I could totally overhear everything he and the woman ahead of me said).

The other bonus of going to the doctor closer to where I grew up is that our family jeweler is around the corner, so I can go get my ring cleaned and browse all of the pretty, sparkly, shiny things in their display cases. And, I stop by my parents' house on the way home, which today was especially nice.

It was a beautiful day, the first day that's really felt like spring, a perfect day to be out of the office. I had some lunch, a sandwich adorned with the pickles that our local grocery store no longer seems to carry (Dear Stop & Shop: The Bread & Butter sandwich slices suck; please restock the Hearty Garlic. Love, Tangent"), and then went for a walk with my parents. Suddenly, a car was honking, and my sister -- who lives in the same town -- pulled up next to us, her three kids in tow. Which was a lovely surprise, and my littlest nephew, who just turned five, invited me to his first t-ball game tonight, and how could I turn that down? So I went back to my parents', took a little nap in the sun room, and woke up in time for dinner before the game.

What is it about my mom's cooking? Seriously, she made meatballs and spaghetti, with fresh Italian bread, and that was it, but it was heaven. I don't even like spaghetti, and I'm pretty certain that the sauce was straight out of the Ragu jar, but it tasted divine. And even before I could say that out loud, my mom mused, "Do you really enjoy eating here with us? Because I remember going home to your Gammy's house and even the simplest things just tasted better."

And it was true with my grandmother, too, my mom's mom, Gammy. She would make me scrambled eggs that were buttery and fluffy and perfect -- I always ate them with a cocktail fork, for some reason -- and she let me drink 7Up from the cans she kept in the fridge, and even the 7Up tasted better at her house. My mom's special thing for her grandkids -- and her kids, and her husband, and herself, really -- is that her freezer is always stocked with homemade chocolate chip cookies.

Following the food nostalgia: softball nostalgia. I remember my sisters coming to my games when I was in second and third grades, huddled under a huge comforter; it was freezing during those early-morning games, especially at the beginning of the season. Tonight, despite the beautiful, warm day, by the time 6 o'clock rolled around and the sun was starting to dip, it was quite chilly at the t-ball field. But we rallied for the three-inning game, which was the most hilarious thing I've seen in a long time. And also the sweetest: the kids were just running around gleefully, not a care in the world, and the coaches, half a dozen dads, had endless reserves of patience. Whenever there was a hit, at least four kids in the field would run toward the ball, piling themselves in a heap. About half of the kids at bat would forget to run after they got a hit; they seemed sort of shocked that they'd actually hit the ball, and were so focused on watching it, they forgot about the running part.

And no one cared; none of the players laughed (although I might have, a little) or booed when the kids whiffed a swing, or forgot to run, or got beaned in the head with the ball because they were looking at bumblebees instead of paying attention to the game.

I know that in a couple of years, these kids will be playing competitively, and some will excel -- you could already see that some of these kids are natural athletes, and that they'll be really good at baseball -- and they'll start keeping score; they'll start groaning when the weaker players are up at bat, or make the wrong play in the field. And I think that's good; I hate this trend where there are no winners and losers, so no one's ego gets bruised. But for today, it was pretty great to see these five year olds, exuberant just to be outside, to be wearing their oversized baseball caps, to have the chance to run around with their friends and be rewarded with juice boxes and snacks at the end of the hour.

Tomorrow, back to the rat race, but once in a while, it's good to run around aimlessly, to bask in the warm glow of sunshine and nostalgia.

Happy Monday!

2008-04-07T10:24:00.003-04:00

So, it's already no fun to be on either end of a 9 a.m. job interview on a dreary Monday morning, right?

Let me tell you, when the candidate pukes in your office, it's even less fun.

But I guess it was way worse for her than for me.

Yeesh.

Today, I...

2008-04-04T21:34:00.003-04:00

...got completely discombobulated at the 7-11 when I realized that they were out of The New York Times.

...got drenched by the rain, and got my finger pinched in the dispenser, when I got the newspaper out of the machine at the train station instead.

...enjoyed 90% of my job, and decided I'm really good at 90% of my job (there's roughly an 80% overlap between the two).

...realized that an 8lb., 11oz. baby is reeeaaaaaaaaaaalllly big for someone as teensy as M.

...slipped on the floor of a public bathroom, skidded into the wall, and banged the hell out of my knee.

...ate a scrumptious soft pretzel.

...couldn't help smiling at the guy next to me on the train, who was laughing aloud fairly regularly as he read a Harry Potter book.

...realized that if you look really tired and are wearing a business suit, or if you have ginormous breasts and are wearing a really tight, low-cut top, you are less likely to get carded at the liquor store, no matter how young you look.

...wondered if maybe I've finally really started looking old, and can't blame it on the tired eyes and the suit.

...felt, and am feeling, remarkably happy and grateful to be home, in my jammies, eating Thai food and watching mindless television with my little family.

Black flies in my chardonnay

2008-04-02T12:14:00.000-04:00

I'm feeling generally fairly happy today: even though it was freezing this morning, the sun has now peeked out, so it looks like spring out my window, at least. And I had a meeting-free morning, which is a rare treat, so I actually plowed through a ton of tasks that have been sitting, ignored, on my to-do list for days or even weeks. But still, I can't help finding reasons to be cranky, including:

-- The woman who checks me in at the gym, who at one point was insanely friendly toward me, and who I think still loves the Smelmooo, but who has been absolutely icy to me since I've returned from my injury-related hiatus. She barely acknowledges me these days, despite my best efforts to be chipper and pleasant no matter how draggy I feel. Today, I offered a pretty sunny, "Good morning!" to which she said, "We open at 5:30 now." In a tone that made me feel like she was scolding me for not showing up until 6:15, as though I were late for an appointment and had kept her waiting without calling first or offering any explanation. I am fairly certain that wasn't her intention, but it totally came off as judgment, rather than information.

-- Chronic misuse of the word "everyday" when the user means something other than "ordinary." I think I have a heightened sensitivity to this one ever since reading a Harper's story about it years ago (an excerpt, at least, is here, although I recall the exchange going on way longer in the actual magazine), and I feel vaguely annoyed whenever I see it on my shampoo bottle in the morning. And I have been a right bitch about this with my team at work, and I know they think I'm an insane person for getting so worked up about it, but I think that if I take the time when I'm editing a document to insert a comment specifically explaining why something is wrong, that I should not see that mistake cropping up repeatedly. It's not like it's a complex grammar rule.

-- My secret admirer. I guess this isn't a true pet peeve, but I am puzzled and curious. I arrived at work on Monday to find on my chair (1) US magazine, which I knew immediately was from Minnams (yay, Reese and Jake! Love you!) and (2) a package of Peeps, which I assumed were also from Minnams. But no luck. And I've now asked five other people at work if they're behind the Peeps, and no one is owning up to it. Very puzzling. But also not the worst thing in the world; regardless of the source, there are certainly worse things I could stumble upon in my office on a Monday morning.

-- Meredith Vieira.

Spring Cleaning

2008-03-29T16:53:00.004-04:00

Confession: I am a pack rat.
Unfortunately for him, I am married to a man who values order and tidiness. I don't know how he puts up with me sometimes.

This week, it's seems, he'd had enough, and he christened this the weekend for spring cleaning (ostensibly because we're having a yard sale in a few weeks, which is true, but I think really it's more about getting rid of all my useless crap).

The Smelmooo presented me with a list before I went to work yesterday, so I could think about what we might need to add. We went out to dinner last night, to a terrific new Portuguese place in town, and partway through dinner, out came the list, again, so we could divvy up the tasks. And then, oddly, I started getting excited about a weekend of cleaning and crossing things off the list.

There were some sitcom moments (I somehow ended up with a big smudge of grease on my cheek while I was cleaning the grill); some finally moments (I painted around our new thermostat, which is considerably smaller than our last one, and which has been surrounded by a two-inch patch of white on our green wall for about three months); and many, many nostalgic moments (I found a sixth-grade essay I wrote about my brother, which I wish I'd dug up a month ago, in advance of his 40th birthday party).

But the bulk of the nostalgia came from an activity that wasn't even on the list (where did I read recently that someone's pet peeve is "Doing things that aren't on my to-do list, so I can't get the satisfaction of crossing them off when I've done them"?): it seemed in the spirit of things to go through all of my old mix tapes, write up the song lists and make playlists or CDs of my favorites.

If you went to an all-girls' high school in the early-to-mid-'90s, you have some idea of what an undertaking this was.

I'm still only about halfway through, and I'm laughing and cringeing and gasping as I find songs I'd totally forgotten about. Here are some of the things, both predictable and surprising, that I've surfaced thus far during this walk down memory lane:

-- Practically every mix from 11th or 12th grade includes "These are Days" by 10,000 Maniacs.

-- An inexplicable number of tapes, including ones made by my guy friends, include songs from Disney movies, particularly The Little Mermaid and The Lion King (also prevalent: Muppets and Sesame Street songs).

-- I put this awesome Kermit the Frog song called "If I Were..." on a mix for my sister, and I had totally forgotten about it until I saw it today, at which point the entire thing came back to me in about 10 seconds, and I sang it all the way through.

-- I made another mix for my sister, called "Mi Hermana, Mi Amiga," but the title is the only thing that's legible on the cover; the ink has totally faded, the tape isn't in the case, and I have no idea what's on it. I'm hoping she has a copy, because it seems like it'd be a nice, mushy mix.

-- I had a weird obsession with the song "Labour of Love" by Frente.

-- I have the cassingle of "1, 2, 3, 4" by Coolio. I didn't even know they still made cassingles when that song came out, but I loved it.

-- Perhaps the most revealing self-made mix was my "Cheesy/Homey" mix; Side A featured '80s-hair-band-ballads; Side B included stuff like "Tootsie Roll" and "O.P.P."

-- To the Smelmooo's question, "Are there a bunch of mixes from old boyfriends in there?" I did discover a couple. But the most cringe-worthy is the two-volume set by a non-boyfriend, titled the "Mike [Heart] Tangent Mix," beginning with "Hold me Now" and closing with "Blue Eyes (Tangent's Song)," even though my eyes are actually not blue. Shari is rolling around on the floor laughing right now, by the way.

I wonder if, 10 or 15 years from now, I will be going through my collection of CDs, or my antiquated iPod play list, and experience this same emotional tug. My first thought was that I wouldn't, because in many ways I think my life will be very much the same 10 years from now. It seems unlikely that I'll listen to "Forever in Blue Jeans," our wedding song, and hear it with the same nostalgia that today accompanies my prom theme. But even as I typed that, I thought of how, every time I hear "Crazy in Love," I think of J and J rocking out at our wedding, and every time I hear "Hey Ya," I think of Minnams and her misinterpretation of the lyrics as "Shake it like a pony boy preacher."

Tomorrow, in addition to cataloguing the rest of the tapes, it's on to cleaning out the library, the basement and the attic. I'm thinking that all of my college and grad school papers won't evoke the same emotions and memories that the elementary school papers and the mix tapes did today, but with me, you never know what will have been place absent-mindedly in a box of school notebooks. I'm hoping I'll finally find that dress I haven't seen since September 2004.

Because blogging is sometimes easier than Googling...

2008-03-28T16:01:00.002-04:00

When one is returning from Asia to the East Coast of the United States, does one tend to be up at 3 in the morning, or want to sleep until noon? I'm trying to determine whether it's wise to set up a 9 a.m. meeting with my CEO the day after she gets back from Japan.

I recognize that this is one of the many things about me that makes the Smelmooo smack himself on the forehead and say, "You have a master's degree from an Ivy League university. Really? You really can't figure this out?"

I don't know; I strive every day to prove that book-smarts do not equal common sense.

Happy people don't kill their husbands!

2008-03-25T21:23:00.000-04:00

Last Wednesday, while I was walking from my office to get my lunch, my right foot totally seized up, and I nearly threw up and fell over, I was in so much pain. Out of absolutely nowhere; I hadn't gone running that morning, wasn't wearing uncomfortable shoes, had pretty much been sitting at my desk editing all morning. Totally bizarre and scary; I'd never experienced anything like it.

The general consensus -- I think I've polled pretty much everyone who reads my blog -- is that I have a spot of Plantar fasciitis. And I've had good treatment recommendations that have been pretty effective: rolling a golf ball under my foot; rolling a cold soda can under my foot; stretching my foot using an exercise band; getting orthotics for my shoes. But I'm still not 100%, and by yesterday I still was afraid to exercise and put any kind of extra strain on my foot, for fear of screwing it up even worse. And, boy, did I feel it, as did pretty much everyone around me.

I've discovered anew that I am cranky when I don't exercise. I'm tired and cranky and irritable, and it's absolutely no good. By yesterday afternoon, I was an absolute bear. So I decided to screw it; I left work early and rode the bike at the gym, which seemed less bad than the elliptical or, certainly, the treadmill (not as good as the pool, but we have sucky hours for swimming, and I'm totally intimidated by the regular swimmers, anyway). And, voila: Improved mood, almost immediately after I was home and showered, and the good effects are persisting. It's really extraordinary. I swear, if I were in charge, and if it were legal, I would require all of my employees -- hell, everyone, everywhere -- to get regular exercise.

The other reason it was great to leave work early yesterday? I found out on my way home that Yosh on ER was Long Duk Dong!! The Smelmooo said he'd known that all along, but I had no idea. I am such a geek, but this is part of the reason I love NPR, the random stuff they throw in along with the topical and hard news stories.

Best lowbrow culture moment of the week thus far? Heather's return on Rock of Love, particularly the instant-classic line, "That's all I need to know. I gotta pee."

Her awesomeness made the lackluster appearance by Saaphyri and Buckwild on Flavor of Love even more disappointing by comparison.

Grammar queen, stumped

2008-03-20T16:39:00.002-04:00

Even though I'm a shrew about grammar and usage, there are a few rules that I can never get my head around.

[And some rules that I know but disregard. For example, I know that that first sentence was grammatically inferior; I should properly have written "rules around which I can never get my head," but that sounds dumb, so I can make an exception to the rule that one shouldn't end a sentence with a preposition. Likewise, I know that the correct pronunciation of "forte" is one syllable, but no one knows what the hell you're talking about if you say "fort," so I generally go with "for-tay," or just avoid using that word altogether.]

Anyway. I never understand the rules about "bring" versus "take," no matter how many times the Smelmooo and his brother explain it to me. Total mental block.

The other one I struggle with is "heads up," because I overthink it. I just sent an email to alert a co-worker about a potential problem, and started the subject line (because my other pet peeve is having blank email subject lines) with "Heads up..." and then stopped and looked at it for like 30 seconds. Because I was just alerting one person, one who does not have multiple heads, but I also knew that "Head up" would not sound right. "Head's up," suggesting "head is up," to direct her where I wanted her head to be?

I think I did the right thing, sticking with "Heads up," because it's an expression, and it's not like it was a formal piece of correspondence, and really, who else but me cares about this stuff? Certainly not the recipient of the email, who employs quotation marks in the most bizarre way I've ever seen. ("Aha!" Minnams is saying, because she knows exactly who and what I'm talking about....er, exactly about whom and what I'm writing.)

Okay, enough about grammar...time to get my free Rita's water ice! Happy Spring! And happy last-day-of-being-a-reasonable-weight, because (1) Lent ends at midnight on Saturday into Sunday, meaning I reintroduce chocolate and ice cream into my diet; and (2) there is now a Rita's directly on my drive home from work. Scary.

Judgy McGrudgy

2008-03-20T11:24:00.000-04:00

It's long been instilled in me that one should be as pleasant and respectful to the guy in the mail room as to the CEO, not only in the spirit of the Golden Rule, but because you never know where the guy in the mail room will end up one day.

Back in 2000, I wasn't quite working in the mail room, but I was in a much more junior position than I am today, although I had some significant responsibilities, some occasionally smart ideas, and a hell of a work ethic. And this one woman I had to work with on a project that summer -- not someone from my organization, but a senior-level person who was one of our partners on this project -- pretty much only deigned to acknowledge me when she wanted me to go and fetch her something. She was supercilious and snotty and entitled and just awful, unless you were someone important, in which case she would totally kiss your ass.

Anyone who knows me knows that I have a looooooooooong memory for this sort of nonsense. I do not forget, and I do not easily let go of a grudge.

Anyway, fast-forward nearly eight years, I'm still at the same organization, but have climbed up several rungs, and now this person needs something from me. Not a coffee or a water or another staff member; something substantive. And you know what? She's still talking to me like I'm her bitch. With no context for any legitimate urgency, her email asks for me to make time for her today. Which, of course, I will not do, because I'm just that petty. Just that petty -- I will actually reply to her today, and I will actually help her.

But I won't be able to avoid doing so with a somewhat exasperated tone, and I won't do more than the absolute minimum required of me to be helpful, because I am exactly like my mother: sweet and accommodating and pleasant until you're not. And once you're not, we're done, and there's no going back.

Which is rigid and unfair and not very Christian, but if I were perfect, I'd be even more boring than I am already.

The road not taken

2008-03-16T17:32:00.001-04:00

Minnams has written before on the subject of near misses, and I sometimes play this game in my own head, too: what if I'd stayed at school that weekend instead of going home; what if I'd answered the door instead of ignoring the knock; what if I'd not gone to England. I enjoyed seeing this notion of near-misses play out in both The Post-Birthday World and Sliding Doors (shut up, it's not a bad movie!).

Anyway, I forgot to mention that, while we were in Vegas, we participated in one of those market research things where you watch a TV show and share your opinions, ostensibly for great prizes, but in reality for a couple of crappy food court coupons that we didn't even use. Anyway, the show we watched was Welcome to the Captain, which apparently has been airing since February. I had vaguely heard about the show, but had no idea that it had already been on TV, and it strikes me as odd that they're doing viewer-testing of the pilot after the fact, but who knows. Maybe they're looking to make some tweaks? I don't actually know that it's salvageable, to tell the truth. I love Jeffrey Tambor to pieces, but I think even he cannot save a show that features Chris Klein.

Chris Klein just annoys the crap out of me. He is like a less talented, less attractive, more wooden Keanu (and I am no big fan of Keanu, either, but he at least was Ted Theodore Logan, and I can't think of anything that Klein's done that I love). He's oily and smarmy without being edgy or sexy or ironic; he seems to aim for surfer-chill without being cool enough to pull it off.

And I wonder whether Katie Holmes has watched this dopey show, whether she thinks about her near-miss with Chris Klein, whether she wonders about how her life would have gone had she married him instead of Tom. I suspect she wouldn't be friends with Posh; she likely would have been sort of a B-list actress who got the occasional nod from People magazine when her former co-stars got married or when she came out with a new movie. I think she's not quite as talented as Keri Russell, but I imagine that they'd get about the same level of attention if Katie had stuck with Chris instead of building this life -- or scam, depending on your perspective -- with Tom. I think Suri is super-cute, and Katie clearly adores her, so I expect that she's for that alone pretty pleased with her choice, but does she ever think longingly about what life would be like if she'd chosen differently?

[I was about to make a comparison to Joey choosing Pacey over Dawson, but I think that gives Tom too much credit and, if I'm honest, Chris Klein not enough.]

And what about Ginnifer Goodwin? Does she watch this TV show and think, "What a tool! I can do so much better! Whither my Scientologist in shining armor?!" Or does she feel grateful that it didn't work out, the way I feel grateful that it didn't work out between the Smelmooo and his ex? Because despite being annoying as an actor, Klein could be a totally nice person, a perfect boyfriend.

I just had this flashback to a shot in People or US or some other goofy magazine of Katie Holmes and Chris Klein getting ready to cross the street, and the caption was something like, "C'mon, Katie! Chris wants to hold your hand!" because he's reaching out to her and she's turned in the opposite direction and not paying any attention. Which I'm sure was included as evidence of their impending demise if anyone bothered with a body-language post mortem of their relationship. But remembering that makes me think slightly more of him as a person, or at least feel for him a little, and hope that he's a good guy for Ginnifer.

Hey, is Kirsten Dunst out of rehab yet? I feel like she's been totally under the radar since going in. I am happy about that; maybe it means she's getting better, for real, and not just that I'm out of the celebrity gossip loop.

Breaking the rules

2008-03-16T16:32:00.000-04:00

What happened in Vegas isn't staying in Vegas, which in and of itself, I suppose, suggests that I'm not a Vegas kind of gal.

This was my first time in Vegas, except for a brief stint in the airport during a layover on the way back from Los Angeles a few years ago (during which I won about 30 bucks on a slot machine). I didn't gamble in the airport this time, but I did win a little bit of money playing low-stakes poker. And that was plenty for me; although I'll hang out and watch while the Smelmooo plays Let it Ride or Roulette or whatever, I'm generally too cheap to gamble myself.

Speaking of too cheap, I was shocked at how expensive pretty much everything was in Vegas. The Smelmooo and I walked probably an extra three-quarters of a mile on our way back to the hotel on Thursday night so I could buy water at a convenience store rather than at one of the hotel shops. It's one thing to splurge on a fancy dinner or a show or something, but paying eight bucks for a banana is something I just can't stomach, on principle.

And generally, even the fancy dinners are wasted on me, because I'm both an incredibly picky eater and an incredibly plain eater. I am just as happy with a salad or a sandwich as a hundred-dollar meal. Nevertheless, I super-enjoyed the fancy meal we had at Picasso. I would never in a million years have chosen this restaurant, or eaten there if I had to pay for myself, but it really was extraordinary, from the food and wine to the real Picassos hanging everywhere to the view of the Bellagio fountains from our table. And, even though I was completely stuffed when I left, I couldn't turn down the gift-boxed cinnamon rolls that they offered the women in our group on the way out the door (one of many examples of the sexism in Vegas, although certainly not the most egregious).

I thought the Second City show we saw was okay, but not as good as the performance I caught a few years back in Chicago. I super-enjoyed the Penn & Teller show, and was particularly relieved when a woman two seats down from me was pulled up onstage, and not me (who knew that the eighth row or so back wouldn't be a safe zone?!). And I liked seeing all of the hotels and casinos, all the cheesiness and gluttony of the strip. But it was a little bit of sensory overload for me, and by the last night I was tired of all the cigarette smoke, the ads for "Hot Babes: direct to you in 20 minutes!" and the general hedonism and debauchery.

More my speed was the trip to the Grand Canyon, which also included quick stops at both the Hoover Dam and a chocolate factory. We didn't ride a donkey down to the bottom of the Canyon, a la the Brady Bunch, but we did venture out onto the west rim Skywalk, which was pretty amazing. I think I'd like to go back to visit the other side, to the National Park, where you can explore the bottom of the Canyon.

For now, I'm just happy to be home, although it occurs to me that it's quite a stretch between now and my next vacation at the end of June. I know, I know, I'm totally spoiled, but that's, as they say in Vegas, how I roll.

Party pooper

2008-03-10T18:36:00.002-04:00

I went to a bridal shower this weekend for my friend J (Hi, J! See, I'm blogging again, just for you!), who did two brilliant things: (1) knew about her bridal shower in advance so she didn't spend the whole time trying to calm down and get over the near-coronary she experienced on walking through the door; and (2) had a say in the location of the shower, a restaurant with a bountiful salad bar. I love me a good salad bar, even though I know they're not especially sanitary, and I think my love of salad bar's will not transfer to the Vegas buffets that I encounter later this week.

Anyway, one of the gifts that I gave was a duplicate. I still don't understand why there are inevitably problems with gift registries; it seems like it should be fairly straightforward. And I secretly think it's a good thing to have duplicates, because although it's annoying to have to schlep returns to the store, it's fun to have free money for housewares (or a rifle).

So my gift was one of the few duplicates at this shower, which is starting to be a trend with me. Last month, for M's baby shower, I gave one of four baby monitors. And, you know, with the second one, you can pull the, "Oh, no problem, one for grandma's house!" And even the third: "The other grandparents' house!" But four is ridiculous.

At M's shower, I had actually attached the gift receipt, and told her so; at J's, I hadn't included it but did keep it, and told her so. And both of them responded identically: "Oh, no -- I'm going to keep yours and return the other."

I don't know why that strikes me funny; I appreciate that they're being polite, and that that's their knee-jerk response. But, really, I already know that you like the gift I gave you; you picked it out. So I don't actually feel bad, at all, if it's mine you're returning, rather than someone else's. Buy yourself something else fun, or buy yourself some bedding if it's a bridal shower, and some nursing equipment if it's a baby shower, because those are the most uncomfortable thank-you notes to write, so sometimes better to buy them for yourself.

The other trend that I need to disclose to J: at the last two bachelorette parties I attended, the bride-to-be became violently ill. Not enough of a track record, I don't think, to exclude me from the list, but definitely enough not to plan around me, and to hope secretly that I'm not able to make it, just in case.

No worms, but what IS inside Tucker?

2008-03-09T13:11:00.008-04:00

The Smelmooo and I took Tucker to the vet yesterday for his annual check-up and immunizations, and were all three doing the happy dance when we learned that Tucker is worm-free (and otherwise healthy, as well). Hooray!

Our vet, who almost never remembers us or Tucker -- which is fine with me, because we fortunately see him only once or twice a year -- again asked us whether Tucker's a rescue dog (yes), and whether he himself had neutered Tucker (yes). And then he said, "Well, that's great that you rescued him, and you're taking good care of him. Do you know there's now genetic testing available so you can figure out what kind of mix he is?"

And, as an avid reader of People magazine, of course I knew about it, and when I was reading the article on the treadmill a couple of months back, or whatever it was, I thought, "Huh, interesting," and then went on to read about Eddie Murphy's marriage and/or divorce without giving it another thought.

And even though I'd heard of it, I was surprised that the vet was offering this up as a legitimate option (and it struck me, of course, that this a problem with the human health care system, too, though certainly not the only one, and probably not the biggest).

[By the way: On ABC Family right now: Sixteen Candles, followed by Better Off Dead. I may not get off the couch today. I haven't seen Sixteen Candles in a really long time, but I caught it just as the chaos is really setting in at the party, and Jake keeps calling Sam's grandparents and hanging up on them. It's also funny to me the editing on ABC Family vs. stations like TBS, which I think have less strict definitions of adult language and content. I still don't understand how CBS is airing Dexter, but one of my co-workers who never saw the Showtime version is enjoying it.]

So anyway, the vet assistant brought in a little pamphlet, and the vet started looking at us expectantly. "Uhhhh...so, is there any legitimate reason for doing this? Other than, you know, out of curiosity?"

"Well, it's just a blood test, and it's only, like, $180. And if there's some breed in him that's particularly susceptible to certain conditions, it can help you figure out the best way to care for him."

To me, it seems like a total scam, and I actually sort of like the mystery of what dogs might have come together over the years to result in a funny-looking, long-bodied, short-legged, sweet-faced, floppy-eared black dog with a couple of splashes of white. But who knows, maybe I'm missing something.

Should we see what this little guy's made of?

more at twiigs.com...

Party time, excellent!

2008-03-05T07:30:00.005-05:00

My dad is big into his birthday, every year, but he get especially excited about his milestone birthdays. As far as I know, he's never explicitly said, "I expect a party every decade," but it's an operating assumption for our family. So as he approaches 70 this spring, the family is in planning mode for a surprise party.

(It should go without saying that my dad probably has no idea what a blog is, never mind that I have one, so I think I'm safe to write about it in this space. Although, even if he did know about my blog, he probably knows we're planning a party anyway, so it's sort of moot.)

I was only a baby when my mom threw dad a 40th birthday party, and I was just home from college for his 60th, so I had little to do with the planning of either of those. We actually had to cancel his 50th because of the death of my oldest sister's husband, which was a terrible time all around, and my brother's wife really just put her foot in her mouth last weekend when she mused aloud, "Was it dad's 50th or 60th when mom had about a year's supply of chicken in the freezer afterward?" and we all sort of looked anywhere but at each other and awkwardly mumbled, "Uh, 50th, we had to cancel..."

Anyway, back to the point(ish): I really wanted to be a part of the planning for the 70th, so I took on invitations. Which was a lot of fun, especially the part when my worse-control-freak-than-I-am oldest sister, bless her, looked at a mock-up and started criticizing everything about the language ("I think you need to say 'PROMPTLY' in there somewhere. Or add a line that says 'Don't be late; it's a surprise!'"), and our mom basically told her to stuff it, because the guests are all adults and understand the general operating principles of a surprise party.

But I did have fun with the invitations; we put three pictures of my dad (as a baby, in his early 20s, and finally in his late 60s) on the front, and people have been exclaming in their RSVPs how much they enjoyed the photos.

The other nice thing about getting the RSVPs is hearing how much people love my dad, and to see him through the eyes of his friends and colleagues in a way that I really haven't before. One of his former partners from the accounting firm sent a lovely note saying that my dad was like a brother to him, actually closer than a brother; another woman who's an old friend wrote, "I can't wait to give your dad a big hug; he and your mom are so special to me!"

[side note: I'm on the train to D.C. as I write this, and some guy a couple of rows back just made a phone call that started, "Yes, good morning, I just wanted to [muffle, muffle] police activity in the area..." and I just saw all of the heads around me, in unison, inch up just a bit, then turn slightly toward the guy, eyes wide and eyebrows raised. I think the guy saw it too, because he then lowered his voice considerably and hurried off the phone. I think we're all on somewhat heightened alert because the conductors keep mentioning over the PA system, and then actually enforcing, the random ID check that they almost never seem to do.]

I don't know yet whether we'll have some sort of forum at the party where people will make toasts, or if the guests will just express their affection and admiration privately to my dad, but it feels like a real gift to have this peek into a whole other side of my dad's life and self, where I've danced at the edges but hadn't fully understood. It's a nice gift, to me, for my dad's birthday.

Putting a toe back in the water

2008-02-28T16:17:00.002-05:00

I know, I know...all of you adoring fans miss me desperately. I've let many of you down. I'll try to do better, but I just haven't been feeling it. I've had moments of good intentions:

"How awesome is it that this woman at the gym is wearing a Donna Martin Graduates! shirt? I should blog about that!"

"I should totally solicit my friends' six-word memoirs through my blog!"

"How much do I hate Rachel Bilson's new bangs?! I should blog about them."

The last two days, it's been, "Does EVERYONE have the Matt Damon song running through their head all day long? Is it especially persistent during staff meetings, or is that just me?"

Today, though, I had to get back on the wagon if only for this conversation, with a very important person for work, who I really, really needed to help me out:

VIP: "Well, we thought this was fairly simple, but the Be Free call last week really through a monkey wrench in our plans."

Me: "Oh, right, uh-huh." [frantically searching my brain for what the hell Be Free might be]

VIP: "So, yeah, now we've pretty much had to change focus entirely, and scramble to pull everything together by Tuesday."

Me: "Uh, yeah, I see that you're in a tough position, too. Give me 15 minutes and I'll have a solution for you."

I normally will ask the clarifying question, but my mind was spinning with a hundred other things, and I needed this person (with whom I've had no contact before today, ever) to trust that I know my stuff. and I simply could not bring myself to ask her.

So we hung up, and I went scurrying to my neighbor's office, and we talked for like five minutes before she finally said, "Wait, the beef recall? Is that what she's talking about?!"

And of course, that was it. Duh.

In other news, my 1001 days are up; check out how abysmally I ultimately did with my list. Maybe my next one will include "blog every day, or at least every week." We'll see.

Lonely, but super-amused

2007-11-28T21:55:00.000-05:00

The Smelmooo is in Miami, and I was in D.C. all day, so we had to board Tucker while we're both gone. So now that I'm home, I'm feeling way weird. I hate it when the Smelmooo isn't home at night anyway, but generally I have Tucker for company, at least. I super-hate flying totally solo, and it turns me into a huge baby: I jump at every noise, I can't sleep, and if I drop food on the floor, I actually have to pick it up and throw it out rather than leave it to the canine garbage disposal.

So I was feeling a little cranky the second I walked into the dark, empty house, and immediately turned on the TV for company. I normally blow through Ellen's "wonderful world of web videos" on Wednesdays, but today I let them all play through, and I'm so glad I did, because I found this to be absolutely awesome.

I would never have done it myself, but I enjoy and admire this couple's gumption. Although I cannot get on board with a bride exposing that much cleavage. I know, I know: I'm no fun.

Ineptitude (mine)

2007-11-20T19:19:00.000-05:00

I complain, a lot, about other people's ineptitude. In fact, I was just totally busted today at work as a colleague and I were bitching about another co-worker's shortcomings (I was SO POSITIVE that she had left for the day and that we didn't need to keep our voices down. Never assume.).

But once in a while, I'll admit to my own ineptitude. And in the last 24 hours, I've demonstrated plenty of it, not only in my failure to be discreet when engaging in office gossip, but also in my attempts to operate pretty much any type of machinery.

I had done a ton of prep work for the Smelmooo's birthday dinner on Sunday, so all I had to do when I got home from work last night was assemble and bake the chicken pot pie and make the raspberry sauce for the chocolate cake I baked on Sunday (from scratch!). All that the sauce required was to pulse raspberries, powdered sugar and cognac in the food processor, and then throw it on the cake. Done.

Except, after I poured all of the ingredients into the food processor, it would. not. work. I twisted it, disassembled its various parts, unplugged it and plugged it back in a dozen times. Nothing. And after literally 20 minutes, I called the Smelmooo over in desperation, resigned to the fact that I'd probably have to pour the mixture into a regular bowl and use a potato masher on it. And then, of course, the Smelmooo pointed out that I'd put the processor onto its base incorrectly, facing the wrong direction. He turned it around, and, wham! Done.

Tonight, the Smelmooo is out at a class, so I decided to catch up on Ugly Betty and Ellen. We normally tape Ugly Betty on the VCR in our office because our DVR is full at that time, but I was all bundled up on the couch and didn't feel like getting the tape from the office, so I tried to watch the latest episode online. Unsuccessfully, about six different times. I think somehow that the web folks at the networks are on a pseudo-strike, ensuring that the webisodes won't work until the writers are compensated for them.

I finally turned the TV on to watch the tape, and on the screen was a language menu -- highlighting "Francais" --that I could not get to disappear no matter how many buttons I pressed. I spent literally 10 minutes trying to figure it out, turning the TV on and off, pushing every single button, repeatedly. I finally had a flash of clarity that the menu wasn't related to the TV itself, but to the VCR, which had turned on when I pushed the tape in. But when I turned it off and turned it back on, the option had disappeared, so now all of the display text is en francais. Which is kind of fun. I like that it says "Arret" when I stop the tape.

And I like that it's been worth it so far to watch Ugly Betty, which includes a cameo by Monique in a funny exchange with Henry:

"Sugar, where you been all my life?"
"Uh...math camp."

And Wilhelmina saying, "Balls" when she's disappointed. Which is awesome, and what I need to start saying when I encounter my next gadget-inspired fit of frustration and rage.

I think I was just unintentionally racist

2007-11-19T13:43:00.000-05:00

A few years ago, one of my colleagues went into a tailspin because she was worried she'd misused the word "linchpin" and that it somehow had a connection to lynching. Which it does not.

But I just was talking to another colleague, who asked why a particular call was scheduled with an outside group:

"Are they in trouble?"
"Not really...they've just sort of gone off the plantation, and we need to get them back in line."

What I meant to say was "off the reservation," but when I stumbled over "plantation" and thought about both of those phrases, I think probably both are rooted in some kind of racial or ethnic intolerance. I don't really know, and my colleague didn't seem offended by my idiocy generally, but I still feel as though I ought to excise both of those terms from my vocabulary.

Tagged by the Birfday Boy

2007-11-19T07:09:00.000-05:00

My hubby likes it when I blog, and I like to make him happy, especially on his birthday. So, happy birfday, dear Smelmooo. Here's my response to your Ocho Tag (although it's weird to me that there are only seven categories. If I were Adrian Monk, I'd be super-freaking out):

8 passions in my life:
The Smelmooo
Ice cream
Family
Celebrity gossip
Tucker
Good grammar
Good hygiene
Long walks by the ocean

8 things to do before I die:
Visit Alaska
Visit Australia
Have diamond earrings
Spend a whole week without watching TV or movies (thank you, writers' strike!)
Have a beach house
Road trip across the country
Write something non-work-related that gets published somewhere other than the Internet
Go skydiving

8 things I often say:
Tucker, wanna go out?
Are you effing kidding me?!
Love you.
Good morning!
Oh, for GOD'S SAKE, will you DRIVE?!
I don't know. Let's think.
I'm sorry.
Goodbyyyyeeeeeee!

8 Books I read recently:
Eat, Pray, Love -- Elizabeth Gilbert
The Sea of Tears -- Noni Power
The Unthinkable Thoughts of Jacob Green -- Joshua Braff (Zach's brother, I found out!)
Kafka on the Shore -- Haruki Murakami
The Man of My Dreams -- Curtis Sittenfeld
The Post-Birthday World -- Lionel Shriver
Better -- Atul Gawande
Television Without Pity -- Sarah Bunting and Tara Ariano

8 songs that mean something to me:
Forever in Blue Jeans -- Neil Diamond
I'm Too Sexy -- Right Said Fred
Good Morning -- Steve Poltz
Send Me on My Way -- Rusted Root
I Will Survive -- Gloria Gaynor
If I Had $1,000,000 -- Barenaked Ladies
Feel Us Shakin' -- The Samples
When a Child is Born -- Kenny Rogers

8 Qualities I look for in a friend:
Tolerance
Sense of humor
Common sense
Intellectual curiosity
Kindness
Edginess
Dorkiness
Reliability

8 people who I'm passing this on to:
Slim pickin's, since I don't know too many people with blogs who haven't been tagged. So some of these people who I think read my blog and are tagged for the comments section if they don't have public blogs:

Shari on your MySpace
Mara on your blog that you actually update but that I haven't really read but now I will
Kelli
Leslie
Jenni
SZG
That person in Utah who reads my blog

I will leave it at seven.

Decisions, decisions

2007-10-31T21:25:00.000-04:00

Oh, how I love trashy TV, particularly when I'm enjoying a room service burger and ice cream sundae.

Decision House might be the most awesome show ever:

Therapist: Talk to each other about why you might want a divorce.
Aaron: I want to divorce you because you trapped me into having a baby.
Ruth: I want to divorce you because you drink and stay out until five in the morning with those hos.
Aaron: I want to divorce you because YOU'RE CRAZY!

Therapist #2: What might you use against each other if you go to divorce court?
Aaron: Well, you know, she's CRAZY. She's just mentally unstable.

I mean, if it's really real (which it sort of seems to be), then it's sad and horrifying. But boy, is it riveting and boy, does it make me feel lucky. And sort of superior. Perfect reality TV.

Irony

2007-10-31T17:47:00.000-04:00

For my trip this week to D.C. (I'm en route now, sadly missing Halloween with the Smelmooo and Hot DogTucker, but happily having run into HYB in the Trenton train station!), I was able to get a loaner broadband wireless card from work for my laptop.

And although I'm not even in Delaware yet, I've been booted half a dozen times (nope, wait - 7). And each time I reconnect, up pops the little Verizon window, reminding me, "We never stop working for you."

Ready or not...

2007-09-05T10:17:00.000-04:00

Most of my friends are in their 30s. My life insurance policy has considered me to be 30 for almost six months. I've been telling the treadmill and the elliptical that I'm 30 for the last couple of months, just because it seems more honest (and, really, it probably doesn't matter anyway, because as Minnams pointed out to me a couple of weeks ago, the elliptical is a huge liar when it's spitting out stats). Although this morning, I called myself 29 on the treadmill, just because it's the last day it's actually true. Fourteen hours left of my 20s, and I'm feeling a little weird about it.

Which doesn't make a ton of sense, I guess; it's not like I've done nothing with my life and all of a sudden I'm 30 and crap, I have to be a grown-up now. I sometimes feel like I was born a grown-up (although I certainly had my share of indiscretions and childishness and ridiculous behavior in my 20s) and that I'm finally catching up chronologically.

But I sort of think that's the issue: I've always been mature for my age, I've always been the youngest one at my job. But it's expected that someone in her 30s should be in a position like mine; the things that in my younger days made me a superstar now just make me average. And that's a weird place to be. So, to some extent, I'm experiencing the same slap in the face now that I did when I got to college and realized I was no longer the smartest kid in the class, and that I'd in fact probably peaked around eighth grade. And, probably because in my youth it had all come so easily to me, I'd never really learned how to be disciplined about school or to develop good study habits, and now I was just mediocre. I finally figured it out and got my act together, although probably not really until my junior semester abroad (10 years ago! God, I really am old).

But anyway, maybe it's not the worst thing that I'm no longer a stand-out. I don't think I actually have the ambition or the stamina to sustain rock star status professionally. And it's not like I'm hitting 30 with any mountainous regrets, or with anything undone that I really wanted to have done by this point in my life.

So, okay. I'm ready now. Bring it on.

I almost had big news

2007-07-18T15:09:00.000-04:00

I was in D.C. last week, in a moderately sketchy hotel (nice lobby area, good location, but when I walked into my room, it felt like I was going into an attic that'd been closed up all summer, and I didn't quite want to shower without flip-flops), when I noticed two little bumps on my right wrist. They didn't really itch, they were just sort of weird-looking, and I figured there were bugs or something in the room, and I didn't think too much about them.

And they stayed pretty much the same through the weekend, and then yesterday I woke up and the bumps had spread, into a little red line that wrapped around to the side of my wrist, ending in an especially large bump protruding from the side of my arm, pulling my skin into sort of a shallow teepee shape.

One of my co-workers told me I must have a staph infection, which completely freaked me out. Then I asked one of my other co-workers who's a non-practicing physician, and he said he was pretty sure it was not a staph infection, and not life-threatening, but that it was likely a parasite and I should definitely go to a real doctor and get it looked at.

Yeah, a parasite. Like, something crawling around inside my body, like my worst spider fear coming true.

So I went to the dermatologist today, who diagnosed me with: poison ivy. Which is way better than a parasite, obviously, although much less interesting. I'm still not clear how I picked up poison ivy, and the dermatologist pointed out that there's always a chance there's a parasite, but that she'd be pretty shocked if something came crawling out of me. But assured me that if it does, I should come back in, and she'd put it in a jar. Oh, dermatology humor.

9021Old

2007-06-20T20:02:00.000-04:00

When I get back from the gym on the weekends, I often like to stretch/cool down in the living room while half-watching 90210 on SoapNet. I know. A couple of weeks ago, the Smelmooo came in and said, "Who's that guy?" and I identified him as Noah, but that was pretty much all I knew, because it was near the end of the show's run, and I pretty much had stopped watching it by then.

But the early days -- The Brenda Years, if you will -- I watched religiously, often while on the phone with my friend Erin (kids today must IM during shows, which to me would be too much multitasking), and I remember eagerly anticipating the show when I saw the ads for the pilot, where Mrs. Walsh asks Kelly what her curfew is, and Kelly cocks her head and says, "Excuse me?" like Cindy's speaking Greek.

Anyway, I saw that the pilot was going to be aired on SoapNet last weekend, and I taped it, and watched it tonight. And much of it I'd forgotten:

-- There was valet parking at West Beverly, at least in the pilot. Does anyone remember if they kept that up throughout? I sort of think they dropped it.

-- Kelly says "bitch" when she first meets Brenda (about a class, not about Brenda, although that would have been funny), which I didn't realize you could say on TV in 1990.

-- It is so ridiculous to me that the hostess of the party would have a lipstick on her person when she meets Brandon and gives him her phone number. Equally ridiculous: she seems to be wearing a long-sleeved velvet dress at a pool party.

-- Steve said "bitch" too! About Kelly!

-- Kelly is wearing spandex bike shorts over spandex leggings, under slouchy socks.

-- I had totally forgotten about the guy that Brenda meets at the club at the end of the episode. He is such a sleazeball that I can't imagine that even stupid, lonely, abandoned Brenda would fall for him.

-- When I looked up the sleazeball, I discovered that he was on the show Monsters, which people don't believe existed, but which I enjoyed tremendously. I even visited the set once, which was super-cool. And for some unknown reason, my sister and I sometimes quote one episode (which, bless you, IMDB, I just discovered was called "Holly's House") that includes the line, "Maybe Mr. Mike would like a nice piece of bird-day cake!"

-- I kind of can't believe that I continued watching 90210 after the pilot, because it was kind of awful. But I guess I can sort of understand why it might have appealed to my 13-year-old self, even in the pre-Dylan McKay era.

Two things I learned today

2007-06-14T22:23:00.000-04:00

(1) Apparently, you can't say "screwed" on the ABC Family Channel. Which seems sort of outrageous, because I think two-thirds of what happens on 7th Heaven reruns is way more offensive than thw word "screwed."

(2) No matter how many times I watch "Never Been Kissed," and how well I try to steel myself, I tear up at the end of the movie. It's completely embarrassing.

I also learned the origin of the word "lobbyist," but I've already forgotten it. But whatever I heard dispelled the myth that it was first used in the lobby of the Willard Hotel in D.C., so I guess I learned two-and-a-half things today.

Do as I say, not as I do

2007-05-31T21:27:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago, the Smelmooo overheard me leading a conference call for work, which involved me briefing a bunch of people about how to prepare for their visits to Capitol Hill. One of my talking points, which the Smelmooo finds hilarious and ridiculous (I think Minnams agrees, too, and I actually always feel stupid having to emphasize it to grown-ups), is advising everyone to wear comfortable shoes.

So, of course, today I decided it'd be a brilliant idea to wear my $7 Payless thong sandals around the Hill, and my feet are hating, hating, hating me. The space in between my big toe and my second toe (would that be my index toe?) is rubbed raw on both feet, and I have pseudo-blisters on both heels. I'm so not smart.

I am hugely tempted to limp over to the Grand Hyatt and see if I can sneak into the National Spelling Bee in person, because, yes, I'm that much of a geek.

Spaghetti arms!

2007-05-02T21:24:00.001-04:00

I've been taking a lot of heat for this, but last night, I thoroughly enjoyed seeing Dirty Dancing on the big screen, in celebration of the movie's 20th anniversary. And, really, if I weren' t in D.C. tonight drinking wine with a former colleague, I'd have gone again tonight (and, if I could've worked it out, I really would've gone to the free drive-in event last week at the Tribeca Film Festival).

I am a huge fan of the movie; I've watched the E! True Hollywood Story and whatnot more times than is probably healthy; I've watched the extras on the two-DVD set that the Smelmooo gave me; I keep it on every time I stumble across it when I'm channel-surfing. But I haven't watched the whole movie from start-to-finish in probably 10 years, and I was surprised yesterday by how funny certain characters (Baby's mom, as played by Kelly Bishop; the smarmy Neil Kellerman, played by Lonny Price, who seems not to have acted in a decade), and how good my beloved Jerry Orbach was in this role (particularly juxtaposed with Swayze's not-so-great acting -- that scene on the log where he explains how he became a dancer is still totally cringe-inducing -- but on his own merit, Orbach really delivered a nice, nuanced performance here). It was fun to be part of a crowd that all giggled in anticipation of, "I carried a watermelon?!" and who all whooped and cheered at, "Nobody puts Baby in a corner!"

There was a 20-minute behind-the-scenes special before the actual movie aired, which was okay but not great -- the E! True Hollywood Story is much better -- but it did spend a lot of time talking about the stage version of the movie, which seems to track the film script almost exactly, as far as I can tell. I sort of think that I'd be disappointed, though; I just can't imagine that it could live up to the movie (on a somewhat related note, I have no idea how they've made Legally Blonde a musical, and I wonder how long that one will last). And, really, there's only one Baby, and now that she has her fancy nose, she's disappeared, and I don't think the magic can be recreated.

Save the date now for the 30th anniversary! Who's in for May 2017?

Happy Earth Day

2007-04-22T20:33:00.000-04:00

Or, as Amy Poehler put it on last night's Weekend Update: "Suck it, Neptune!"
Which cracked me up.

We celebrated today by going to the beach with Tucker, and now watching "Planet Earth" on the Discovery Channel. A guy I work with had been raving about it, but this is the first I've watched it, and I'm totally fascinated. Anyone else watching it?

Hang on a second

2007-04-17T11:00:00.000-04:00

"Your call is very important to us."

I have been on hold for 21 minutes, and have been told 21 times that my call is very important to the online pharmacy company, with which I placed a prescription order almost two weeks ago. The status of said order is still listed on their web site as "Received, Verifying."

"Did you know that you can check the status of your order online?!"

Yes, I did know that; what I want to know is why it's been two weeks and you haven't even shipped my prescription yet, when in the past it's been a one-day turnaround, four days at the most if I place my order on a Friday. And I want to know whether I'll actually get my refill once my current prescription runs out, which is tomorrow. And I want to know, if you're not going to get me my refill by Thursday (which I'm thinking is highly unlikely), how I can get it at my local pharmacy without looking like I'm trying to work the system and shop my prescription around for multiple refills for nefarious purposes.

And, ideally, I'd just call my doctor and explain the situation and have him call me in a prescription at the local pharmacy, and maybe I'll end up having to do that anyway (as my emails to the online pharmacy have gone unanswered, and today is the first time all week the phone system has even allowed me to be placed in its queue for customer service, they're so backed up), but then I figure I'll have to jump through hoops with my insurance company if the online pharmacy has already processed the order. Stupid fragmented health care system.

Woohoo -- 28 minutes!:

"Hmmmm....yeah, we don't seem to have an active prescription on file. I don't really know what happened there, but, uh, yeah, you're outta luck. Sorry 'bout that; we've been a little backed up."

Maybe loop that one into your hold music, instead.