Christmastime = No One Can Hang Out

I took three days off work this year, between Christmas and New Year's, giving us a total of 11 days off (in a row!) Today is day 3, the first evening available to socialize, and.... naught. The only text response received was from my roommate from LA, who is home also. And while I love Margaret more and more the longer we live together... isn't it a little sad that the only response was from the girl I see every day in the hell-hole?

HOWEVER: We did get to go to Emanuella's lovely wedding, which was so nice and so reminiscent of mine own (our own. whatever). Potluck style! Only her wedding dress was much more elegant than mine (apropo), and her guests were much more... something. Old? Outdoorsy? Wearing funny clothes? - I mention this because her father wore a full suit in emerald green wool. Though my own grandfather did show up in a Microsoft Windows Blue sport coat.

We drove all the way down to the Bay Area, with the previous discussion with my old friend Robin that we should totally meet up, as well as a discussion with our old friend Samuel David Ayers III that we should totally meet up because he was going to play nerd with Robin and our other other old friend Matthew. Guess who didn't get to hang out in San Franscisco because no one would contact us? Myself and my husband, who fell asleep in the car ANYWAY so how could he have sat through a game of DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS????

Speaking of the aforementioned devil (I digress out of self-pity): On the drive back to Northern California, I felt I should drive because darling husband drove the whole way there and back last time, but I'm no good over the Grapevine. BUT, I didn't end up driving until after the first 5 hours because I refused to both drive and listen to the podcast of a RECORDED DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS GAME. Instead, I had to sit with the laptop on my lap (imagine that) while Jesse listened and giggled like a 4th grade boy who just discovered cooties aren't real. I feel like it was an OK trade. I like not driving, but I don't like podcasts of 4 nerds sitting in a room cursing about their magic missiles and setting dwarves on fire. Oh the torture!! But it was better than driving.

So, we were ignored by our friends today. That was the point. We arrived home and discovered parental desertion as well - Jesse's were inexpicable not here, and mine own decided they'd rather go camping than hang out. TRUE LOVE IS CAMPING. In a trailer.

P.S. Emanuella's wedding was great. In the words of Washington Irving in "Rip Van Winkle," and later Dr. Spock and various other Vulcans, they should "live long and prosper."

Talk About Oddballs

Previously described was my full-company Christmas bash, complete with drunkennes, karaoke, and bowling. And all-you-can-eat fried things. That was a hip, young, modern company at its prime.

Today was our departmental Christmas lunch... not quite so hip, but amusing in the oddity of it all.

I walked the 1/4 mile to the other building of our company, where all the raw materials go, with one other girl to set up the tables.. which were already set up in all their folding glory, covering in shimmering 100% silk. Which is viable as scrap, where I work. I put up our $0.99 tabletop Christmas trees, purchased by my boss this morning on her whirlwind trip to "I forgot Christmas decorations?" before work. We also got door covers and poinsettias.

I set up a buffets worth of Christmas cheer in the form of.... delivery Chinese food.

I sat at a table full of six females, on a decorative wooden patio bench. I was the only white chick.

My table was surrounded by 4 tables of Mexican men, snarfing the Chinese food and warm cola.

The tables were placed in the center of a 48,000 square foot warehouse with open doors, in 55 degree weather, with trains rumbling by at regular intervals.

To summarize: 20 Mexican men, 6 chicks, $300 of Chinese food and Trader Joe's truffles in a Warehouse bigger than the bulk-foods section of Costco in a winter coat with Christmas music twinkling in the background. Amalgam.

We had expensive cupcakes from Sprinkles Cupcakes for dessert. w00t!

Corporate Bribery

HO MAN! They sent out a letter this year at the work asking suppliers and contractors to please restrain their Christmastime giving (AKA bribery). Apparently, in past years it has gotten a little out-of-hand, and the company doesn't want to seem like they are corrupt or taking bribery to favor anyone, even though THAT IS THE POINT OF CORPORATE CHRISTMAS PRESENTS. It's not like our Turkish vendors are actually celebrating Jesus' birthday. They are celebrating the time of year when your bribes are more likely to be accepted and hit home.

People in the past have received Louis Vuitton handbags and wallets (thousands of dollars!!!), gifts of many dollars, tickets to sporting and theater events... the list could go on and on, I'm sure. Now, after the letter of "please restrain yourselves", we receive... FOOD. Food, food food. Chocolates, cookies, cheezy nips, more chocolates, and some apples. Damn you, vendors, for thinking that setting a box of Godiva chocolates at the end of my desk is going to make me LIKE YOU MORE. No. It's breaking my hard-earned self-discipline in the chocolate arena, as well as the crunchy salty things arena and the general "don't forage" arena. I would have rather had a handbag. Maybe.

My Mom and the Bomb

Also: My Mom is the Bomb

This was the story over Thanksgiving dinner. Imagine as well my mother, a 57-year-old innocent who once bought me a hookah because she thought it was an interesting objet d'art, and who was born a 3rd-grade-teacher and was never corrupted beyond that point. Here's a photo for reference:


So cute. P.S. This story is not entirely accurate, because I only heard in the once, and everyone was hollering too much to ask for more clarification. Anyway. My brother was driving his best bud and my mom up the long and winding road from the college to Paradise where they live. Along the way, the car driving in front of them flies off the road and runs into the ditch on the cliff-face side of the road. So my family + Brad, being good Samaritans all, pull over to help him. The guy sort of stumbles around mumbling about how tired he is, and hops in the back with Mommy-O - I guess just assuming he was welcome to get a ride. So they drive to Paradise with the guy zonked out in the back, not really knowing where to go except the name of a large and long street with many offshoots. Finally, after driving up and down the street, Sleepy puts his hand on my mom's leg and tells her "I need to get out of the car." I think this is after more location confusion.

So he gets out of the car and curls up on the curb with his head between his knees. After his moment, he stands up and takes a step and falls flat on his face. Like "timber!" style. At this point (why not sooner?), the fam decides to involve the authorities, though by the time said authorities arrived, the man was knocking on strangers doors trying to find out if they were his friends houses or something. After arguing with the police for sometime about the orientation of the planet, they decide to book him. Asking my mom if there were any weapons in the car, if the dude brought anything with him and getting negatives, they all went their merry ways.

As they drive home, Mom sees Brad hand Brian back a wicked little knife and starts freaking out because they told the cops there were no weapons.!. Brad mumbles "Well, Brian told me to stab him in the hand if he kept touching you." SO CUTE, even if it involves implicating minors in a crime. SO CUTE.

This is the best part: When they pull into the driveway, my mom finds a little velvet "pillow" where the guy had had his feet, and wonders aloud what it is. Brad takes it and looks at it and opens the bag and says "DUDE. IT'S A BONG." And my mother, innocent as she is, runs screaming out of the car telling the boys to "GET OUT GET OUT!!! IT'S A BOMB!!! IT'S GOING TO BLOW UP!!!" My mom has never heard of a bong before.

Needless to say, Bradley later proclaimed that this day was the best day in his whole life.

Who Says Celebrating Christmas has to Actually Involve Christmas?

We had our annual work-sponsored Christmas celebration today - meaning we got to get off early in order to make asses of ourselves, all on the company dollar.

P.S. Despite all their anal planning and 400,000 e-mails about parking regulations and driving, even THEY couldn't figure out how to circumvent the LAPD closing off one of the roads in their direction. I find myself eternally prideful of actually arriving at the correct location without getting mugged and/or ending up in Compton.

Christmas for the company comes in the form of BOWLING. Bowling and gourmet pizza and build-your-own-burgers on crappy buns, with a constant stream of onion rings and fries and chick-o-sticks supplied by the hottie mini-skirt waitresses that only exist so you believe in Tila Tequila. Unfortunately, our team bowled in the second round, so everyone was already tipsy by the time they got to their lanes and didn't care about bowling anymore. Myself included.

However, this was the best bowling in the whole world. Who can forget my boss, a keenly intelligent woman with the voice of Capt. Janeway, talking crap about everyone with sailor mouth, and then proceeding to hurl herself down the bowling lane head first and sliding on her belly halfway, then crawling back up on her hands and knees and getting up to re-start dancing to Michael Jackson pumping through the speakers, still hurling epithets. Or her dancing in front of ALL the lanes with her little fish-wiggle dance, only to come back and still not hit a pin.

Or the tiny tiny gay man who sang Shania Twain's "Damn, I Feel Like a Woman" at the karaoke machine? Or the Director of Production running around like a 21 year-old on her birthday, dancing and shaking her "groove thing(s)" at everything with my best work friend, who was wearing a pink tutu and striped 70's knee socks. Good times, good times.

It's just too bad I didn't win a raffle prize. They raffled a 32" LCD flat screen TV. That would have been SWEET!! I consumed many alcohol and still didn't get very tipsy - alcohol tolerance be damned, I'd rather be a cheap date any day. I though about karaoke-ing but was too late due to the second round of bowling. I screamed so much that I feel like I just smoked a cigarette all for the low low price of free. Not a bad Christmas party - the only appearance of Christmas, as hinted by the title, was the raffles were called out by a hairy balding man in a santa suit, with a sexy Mrs. Santa handing them out.

Future Bees

Note: Not known babies. Internet babies.

Jesse's been talking about babies ever since we went home for thanksgiving and got to see my excellent baby neice, who (TWILIGHT REFERENCE) seems to captivate everyone who lays eyes upon her (but not suck blood). I agree that she is pretty much the greatest baby to have ever been popped upon to the earth - how many babies laugh in unhuman glee when they get smacked in the face by a high-velocity dog tail? Not that many, I think. She's still in the running = toppling-forwards-but just-barely-catching-yourself-with-your-legs phase, and that is hilarious in and of itself. I could go on and on and on about her fabulousness, but I digress from my title topic.

Jesse has been talking about bees, and what our bees will be like when we accidentally become preggers, and I thought I was OK with the idea of being a mom. But when I think about the non-June-Cleaver version, the one with the morning sickness and post-partum depression and the vomit and the cranberry diapers and the wailing at every hour of the morning and the lack of being able to sit down and read a book, I'm still just really not sure.

I mean - I'm already crazy. What will happen when you add 4 billion more hormones, more pain, and fatness? MORE CRAZY. I can't even look at birth control without flying into a hormone-induced fit of crazy. "Why doesn't anyone love me!?! Why does no one want me around!?! What have I ever done to anyone to make them hate me so much?!?" This excerpt taken from an actual birth-control induced craziness. I am not kidding.

What happens when, instead of getting home from work after a 10 hour day and doing the dishes and cleaning the tub and doing laundry and then reading a book, I have to get home from work and do the aforementioned and then TAKE CARE OF SOMEONE ELSE WITH MY WHOLE ATTENTION? I think I might be too selfish for a baby. I like baths so deep a baby would drown. I like books. I like coffee. These are not baby-friendly.

Sigh. This isn't even going to happen for years, and yet... I needed to blog about it. I'm AWESOME.

General Education is so.... General

I've spent the morning on the local city college's website, debating my future. Do I choose a Business degree, and take classes in boringness until I die of boring along with every single other undecided undergraduate since a B.A. in Business became the new B.A. in Liberal Arts? And be miserable while squinting over Business Law books, but with the whisper of a promising future to be had, a future involving this symbol "$", but not in red? OR, do I pursue my undergrad in Art, focusing on Applied Design, which includes classes such as "Applied Crafts" and "Jewelry/Metalsmithing"? This DOES include the future whispers of ($$$), but it also includes almost as much non-misery as the college course offering "Introduction to Chocolate".

After the morning of staring my course plan paperwork down like it was a leprechaun, I think I've decided on the Art coursework requirements. I mean, I've finished almost all of my GE in the last 6 years of misery, half-heartedness, and class-dropping (with a 3.5 average anyway), so all that's left is the stuff that actually teaches you something about what you're studying... i.e. Business or Art. I'm leaving the Business Law behind with a squeal of relief in favor of messiness and glee, and possible bragging about my nerdiness to complete strangers. w00t!

This is a big decision. I mean, I've been steadily hacking away, one or two classes at a time, for seemingly EVER. Now there is a finite number set before me. The end is drawing near.

P.S. All this drama is for an AA

I am a Fiction Whore

I had some time off this week - due to the belly-achin' and having nothing to do at work, which coincided nicely with Jesse knocking an entire shelf's worth of books off of the shelf (how? I have NO idea). In the ensuing melee, he also found the copy of Twilight that I'd purchased a month ago and haven't been able find since because it was hidden behind all the other one million books I own. I have the book collection of a permanently single, 40 year old Creative Writing major that also has 4 cats.

ANYWAY - so I started reading Twilight. DAMN. That was the most romantic book I had ever read in my whole life, and I've been reading trashy romance novels with feet-sweeping and heaving bosoms for years. I, of course, bought the next book. And finished it in a day, leaving an empty void where the protagonists should have been. So I went and bought the next two, even though we barely have enough dollars for food. These were more important than food. They were life-sustaining. So I finished the last two Friday and yesterday, even forgoing dancing and hanging out with Jesse at the coffee shop, which he did VOLUNTARILY, so I'm sure I'll never ever hear the end of that, ever. I'll ask him if he'll go with me, and this is what he'll say: Hm. Look who wants to go to the coffeeshop NOW, would ya? Now that you don't have your vampires to keep you company anymore, you'll settle for your darling, loving husband? AND, he will be correct.

Now that I've finished all four of them, the last with skepticism and a burning dislike for the female protagonist in human form because she was a stupid whore.... I feel like that was one of the best series I've read in a long time. NOT ONLY did she NOT pull the whole "oh, but it's better to remain human, for humanity is the saving grace of the world" bullshit that so many fantasy authors seem to pull because they're not creative enough to imagine the whole life of another species (p.s. I HATE IT when authors know you want the man and the woman be together forever, but they won't let them), she also pretty much tied up all the loose end and didn't leave you to wonder, which is another thing I hate about some writers. They leave the "what if" on purpose. It drives me crazy. I wouldn't have read the book if I didn't want to know the damn ending. But I digress. Best series ever. I will be reading them until the bindings fall off, and then I will buy them again because I want Stephenie whatever to prosper and flourish.

Obviously, I am passionate about these books, which leads me to my last point. After reading these, I noticed last night at Borders that I felt more like myself than I have felt at ANY point since moving to Los Angeles. I have been concentrating so hard on how much I dislike it here and want to get out, but all that was forgotten with the introduction of Bella and Edward. I was on home turf, loving something excitedly, going to a bookstore to get out of the cold outside and buying a small soy mocha. Looking for my handsome husband to come find me and roll his eyeball at me. I was happy, and I have not been for a year. THAT, my friends, is why the Twilight series is the best thing in the whole damned world.

Belly-Achin'

I don't know what it was about last night, but apparently Monday night was the night doomed for Fail. What with failing at coffee shop availability, failing at not being harassed by the Long Beach mafia, and failing at staying alive after consuming Greek food, it turned out to be pretty much eternal fail. If eternity is for one day plus.

Coffee shop fail was just failure at finding an available table at which to sit and write the letter I've been trying to finish for over a week.

Mafia fail. OH MAN. As I bypassed the coffee shop for want of a place to sit, I formulated my following plan, that of going to George's Greek Cafe, to have me some deliciousness and table space with a candle, which I promptly received. I also received the unwanted attentions of this little short balding man named JR who mobbled on over from his spot at the bar on 1/2 price wine night to tell me how attractive I was just sitting by myself. Then he double-checked my age... you know, just to make sure. Those teenagers sure can look old these days. After I politely declined his invitations to sit with him and his four similarly aged (50) "buddies" at the bar because I am MARRIED, he merely returned to his assigned seat and continued leering at me and shrugging suggestively for several more minutes. Until the rest rest of his cronies arrived, with their shiny shoes and black suits with the pointy collars and the cigars and the cursing at each other as prolifically as possible, until the bartendress had to holler at them by name, much like a mother would to her rowdy children that she secretly blames for the loss of her acting career.

They continued sniggering and pointedly glancing, even asking if I had to go home to my husband. Well. Yes. I married him. I like him better than 55 year old balding men with nothing better to do than hang out with a gaggle of other men and slap each others "backs" while cursing at the television. I left.

My food however, was delicious, at the expense of sending me home from work early today with complaints of stomach clenching. HOWEVER: she sent me home after I asked without first finding out why. Slow? Yes.

But I am home early today, sleeping off the Greek poison, posting blogs, falling asleep while posting blogs (which are done while sitting on a balance ball, so that is interesting), and generally doing what I do when I don't feel good. Also eating oatmeal with peanut butter in it.

And the Monster Appeareth

I am SO lucky I married a patient man - one with sisters, and thusly with experience in the areas of raging hormones. Because my hormones, and me right along with them, they rage.

This weekend was a doozy, as far as the raging. Remember my statement about being possessed? This time, not by crafty urges, but by all the emotions of a recently caught wildebeest being auctioned off for use as farm labor. I was angry, I was worried, I was angry, I was hurt, but really mostly full of rage(ing hormones).

And Jesse put up with it. He was even nice to me, which is remarkable - especially because I was so ingracious and full of rage at his being nice to me. "You want to take me to my favorite coffee place (inflection of anger - imagine the tone of voice as 'you want me to cut off my own chin with an oatmeal spoon?')? FINE!" And so he did. And it was closed, which was like a gentle slap in the face to remind that he still tried to make me happy, even though it was fail. We wandered around the very interesting 4th street area, chock full of shops of oddness and quirk, which I was too cranky to go in - but he took me anyway, even though he would MUCH rather have been home dominating the world on his laptop.

In repayment, I continued to rage. Until yesterday morning, at which point all my rage dissipated like someone reached in and massaged it out of the knot in my gut, or pushed it down to my belly so that it could transform itself into muscle cramps. Better cramps than useless rage and anxiety, I always say.

He also made corned beef and cabbage. Which I don't really like, but MAN, that is a lot of effort for a fatty lump of flesh. I appreciate the effort of that particular dish - especially because I will prolly never make it. Because I love my husband.

I Can't Believe it's not Gutter

Our company Christmas party is coming up in a few weeks, and we have to start assembling bowling teams. I of course, want a clever name and chill people - mad skillz do not matter, because our team will pretty much automatically lose because I'm on the team. So chill people are, of course, imperative. Anyone with over an ounce of competitive spirit would see me as a liability and as the obstacle to the WIN. Which is true.

It seems like the team will be very diverse... myself, a tall strapping young black dude, a philippina hippie, a mexican guy, and a 45-year-old version of myself if I were to become an executive, thus far. We need at least 6 people... who knows what the last few will be like.

It's going to prove difficult to find a name that will please all folks involved. I really like the title name, or Gutter Humiliation... the latter would mean we would have to actually WIN though, and that is unlikely. The strapping young man keeps thinking of fairly unoriginal names, and I am saddened. I do not want to be on The Alley Cats, because then I would already be a loser without even picking up a bowling ball.

This looks to be entertaining. I will keep you posted. Obviously.

In This Aspect, I am Like a Dude

Or, like my Dad.

Just under a week ago, I invested my $6.97 in the low-model, wire and discard wood wire loom and have since been looming like a woman possessed. Well, not so much like a woman possessed - I AM the woman possessed.

And now my low-end, late 90's Saturn of built-for-kids! bead loom is not enough. Who can be limited to 33 rows!? NO! Currently, the correct answer to that question is: You are, Jenny. You are. I want bigger, better, more rows wide and much longer. You can't bead POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS in a 6" space. I need the Mazerati of bead looms. Though, that's not entirely true. I think I would want it and then become overwhelmed. I want the Mercedes of bead looms, only not in that ultimately boring, specially Mercedes shade of pasty beigepink.

I can't justify this purchase yet - we have NO DOLLARS, and I just bought the starter model. I feel like more than a week is warranted before I spend $50.00 on a souped up double-wide.

AND. Christmas is coming.

I don't know if I can wait that long.

Hours at work: 7.75. Hours of work done: 1.25

It's come to the point where I want to saw off my chin with my oatmeal spoon. I have never felt BAD about getting paid, but srsly. I've been sitting at my cubicle for many hours, and I have yet to have something assigned to me that I can't finish in 10 minutes. Not to say I'll ALWAYS be so damned efficient, but I just get so excited to have something to do that I pounce all over like a cat to the 'nip. Note: I don't rub my face in my work and act high. I wait until I get home and do that to my making-stuff supplies.

I cross-referenced THREAD today. That's what I'm down to. Though, I did get assigned more future responsibilities, should the future ever arrive. I've already prepared myself for these future assignments by making spreadsheets that will assist me in organizing my future responsibilities. I'm sure that in 3 weeks, I'll look at this post and want to spit in my own hair. Until that point, let the chin-sawing begin.

**Though. I do get to daydream a lot, and I've been daydreaming about beads and things I can do with beads. I dream of beads. I think of beads when Jesse's trying to get frisky, until I have to remind myself that beads do not relate to sex. I'm thinking of setting up shop on Etsy, but I need to look into it a little bit more first. Maybe I'll do that looking tonight when I get home. Or tomorrow when I still have nothing to do during the day.

I Promise Someday I'll Make Something More Elegant

But right now I'm making Pac-Man bracelets.

What Happens when Nerds and Crafts Merge

I spent my last night and during-Jesse-making-dinner hours crafting - I believe I've mentioned how the crafting bug has recently bitten again, and I just feel the urge to sit really hunched over with tiny things in my hands. I was so bitten, I actually drove to the store after I got off work to get the tool I needed, instead of waiting 1 more day to go there and not have to contend with idiot drivers during rush-hour traffic on the poorly regulated stop-light roads of Lakewood. You have no idea how hardcore that is, unless of course you drive in Lakewood at 6:00 on a Thursday fairly often.

I was smitten with a blurb from CRAFT magazine that showed this blogger who cross-stitches old pixelated video-game sprites, because pixels are square and cross-stitches are square - easy things to combing. My thoughts were well... beads are almost square, and certainly can look like pixels. So I downloaded the patterns and sprites for unknown hundreds of old video game characters, a few of which I have never even heard of, and nearly all of which I have never played or even seen first-hand. But I'm friends with geeks, and they'll know. I've even gotten some suggestions for things I never ever would have heard of, like "A Boy and His Blob." Would have slipped straight through the cracks - it still might, because the only pictures out there are very tiny and unsuitable for stealing and converting to glass.

I also happened upon a website for peeps who make leather jewelry from low-res pictures of actual jewelry. So Cool!

Anyway, the fruits of my experimental labor Note how lumpy the generic craft-store beads for untalented children are yielded the following:


Do not ask what I am going to do with a square piece of Megaman. I do not know.

Post-Election / Midterm Restart

I've been not writing because a) I was watching election coverage all last night, and b) I had a midterm in Macroeconomics last night before I got to watch any election coverage. Who cares about the duties of the FOMC if you've got Obamarama going on?! I finished my exam way first. This either means that a) I am WAY more brilliant than any of my whiskey tango fellow students, or b) I totally blew it but am too pompous to realize that I was wrong on any of the questions. I lean toward the former.

The most inspiring thing about the election last night (out of many inspiring things, including tears on Jesse Jackson's face, who I didn't know was a GIANT and Oprah is a MIDGET), was when Margaret and I went out walking at 9:15 to get her free Starbucks dammit, we stopped on the sidewalk in front of the local sports bar with the million TVs, and so did everyone else. The restaurant was at capacity - no one else was allowed in or else they would all die if the restaurant caught on fire from all the love and unity. But really, it was like the whole nation - no, probably the whole WORLD had stopped, and was watching CNN live and not giving a damn about petty things like going through the green light at the intersection. It was an awe-ful experience, full of awe, and MAN, THAT GUY IS A GOOD SPEAKER. His speech writer should be paid a million dollars.

I was disappointed in the Republican celebration/defeat whatever party in Arizona. I mean, the guy is trying to GRACIOUSLY congratulate his new president, his opponent nonetheless, and the 'tards in the crowd totally disrespected their own man while trying to disrespect the other. I thought it was a show of tacky.

I also haven't been writing because whenever I get upset, I get WAY less clever and funny, and I didn't want to burden anyone reading with the boring shlog I come up with when I'm angry or frustrated or . I'm still that, but bouyed by the 'Bama, so you get a short blurb of w00t, but only for a moment.

P.S. The time stamp on this post is correct...

I REALLY Have Got to be More Creative

We went to Lindygroove last night, and there was a costume contest for work today, and my Marilyn Monroe outfit just did not cut it. Though, a couple people did not realize it was me because lipstick is a good disguise. Sure, she's hott, and wears a cool dress, but is it creative to be Marilyn Monroe? Shnopes. Not when compared with the likes of:

• Rainbow Brite
• WWII Hobos (camped around a fire for three hours)
• Bender
• A Mercedes Benz (he had a grill!)
• Jack (from the box)
• A jellyfish
• The ghost from The Grudge
• Audrey Hepburn

There was a costume contest at my work, and aside from being highly embarrassing as we each had to strut our stuff in front of the ENTIRE COMPANY, it was the best day ever. Everyone was happy and cheery, they catered Carl's Jr. for lunch, they hired a DJ, and my boss who is awesome was pulled up by one of the little Mexican guys and danced to Thriller in front of everyone without being embarrassed at all. She is the definition of AWESOME. Especially because she dances like a white girl. The winners of the costume contest were: Rock Band (who break-danced in the middle of the floor with his little guitar), Art (someone dressed up as a very highly accurate version of our graphic designer), and Frieda Kahlo. I twirled my skirt for nothing.

I guess not absolutely nothing. After all was announced and done (like letting us off work early), I did get a line of 6 or 7 short Hispanic men who asked if they could please have their picture taken with me. Flattering? I'm not really sure. I'm definitely not wearing cleavage to work again, though.

The Ramifications of Being Nasty

About 2 months after I started recepting at the company, we added a column to our list of extensions that indicated to future receptionists the relative goodness of each person. Most people are blank, because you don't need to call them. The rest is a system of "*" for helpful if need be, "**" for downright friendly and/or excessively helpful, and "-" for DO NOT CALL THIS PERSON FOR ANY REASON IF YOU VALUE YOUR SELF-ESTEEM. I am not joking on the caps, either.

When we started the list, there were 7 such "-" people, all of whom, now that I think about it, were women. It has GREATLY restored my faith in large corporations, though mostly mine, to find that in the span of just 4 months, that list has been reduced to just 2. 3, if you count the one returning from maternity leave eventually, but her underlings are just praying she'll love her new baby too much and never come back. Fat chance, because what type of personality earns a "-" in the first place? Not the kind that loves babies.

I just thought it was interesting how whatever powers that be have reduced specifically the bitch population of a company IN THE FASHION INDUSTRY. I had always thought that was kind of a prerequisite for getting a good job there. Thankfully, I have been proved wrong. There are only two meanies left, though they are of the meaniest sort that take joy in putting other people down while subsequently trying to make themselves look more powerful, but only succeed in making people a) cower, and b) talk crap about them behind their backs and spread vicious rumors, which I hear every now and again wafting through the workplace.

Win for the nice people!!!

It Wasn't Stolen / Halloween Picture (already? Yes.)

It had fallen down the side of one of my many jewelry parts containers boxes of crap. But! This is it.

Also, because I loved Jesse's costume SO MUCH, I had to post a picture of him wearing it even though it's not halloween yet - we went to Do Something Blue on Friday, and he was the best costume there. Though - there were a LOT of good ones. Not this good:

P.S. His costume would only make sense if you were a dancer and had witnessed the original fake tattoo sleeve in person.

Yar be no More Complaining about Government Class

Because I finished, and I won.

I have a 78% percent, without having the points added yet for my mostly excellent paper that reduced me to tears because of the DAMNED BIBLIOGRAPHY, nor the points for my fair rate of class participation, each of which is 10% of my grade. 78% + 8% + 9% = 95%. There is no way I do not win at this class.

This leaves only Macroeconomics, which is wholly unremarkable except for the trashy girl in the back who is finally getting TOLD by the teacher, and there is a guy named Fazika.

Leaving me to be jewel-queen:

I was going to post a picture right here of this fabulous bracelet that took me hours and hours to weave, but I went and first couldn't find the camera (it was under the couch cushion Jesse sits on all evenings), and then, and still, tragically... I can't find the bracelet. I was doubly upset, which is to say, twice as upset as I usually become when I can't find something I JUST HAD TWO DAYS AGO. I'm convinced it has been stolen.

Sexy Doodle-Heck

You know our little old lady? The one that says "what the doodle-heck" all the time? She is a secretly dirty-minded little old lady that is in love with my husband. The entirety of the previous sentence is perfectly acceptable to me. I mean, if I love him so much, it would make sense that other people would as well, and especially the lonely-like old soltera who he whisks away like a knight in shining Dodge Magnum to Trader Joe's or Michael's to get sequins for the Christmas balls she makes all day every day. Guess what we're getting for Christmas? Balls.

I know she's a little dirty, but she's so sneaky and she knows she can get away with it because she's 83. For instance, she constantly CONSTANTLY is telling Jesse just how sexy he is. LOL!!!! Literally. She clings to his arm (she has a cane, but why use a cane when you can drape yourself on a handsome 24 year old chiropractor?!) and looks wistfully up into his eyes and tells him how much she appreciates his helping her. The wistfulness is so batty-eyed as to be funny. He'll start walking into the store and she'll say "after you, sexy," which is to say, "walk in front of me so I can stare at your ass." Then she'll lean over to me and whisper "now isn't he sexy?" I'm thinking "I guess I've got competition now."

Also that when she checks out of the grocery store and the young checker asks if he can help her out, she'll calmly state "not unless you want to go home with me" and he chuckles like she means she needs help getting the groceries out of the car. If she weren't 83 and 200 pounds, he might think past that, but as aforementioned... she knows she can get away with anything, and she's so right. I can't wait until I'm 83.

Craptop a Deux

To finish the story of the B.O.U.S., we decided after much much deliberation that it was probably time he got a new laptop, since that is pretty much all he does all day every day of his life. I am not joking. He is playing on his laptop now. He watched TV on his laptop for 8 hours this weekend. He plays facebook risk on it every day to satisfy his need for dominating the world in a non-dominational manner. He even uses it to do his homework, which is a mind-boggling task that I'm happy I'm not a part of. If we was concurrently in massage school, however, I would be more than happy to be part of his homework.

So we went to Circuit City, where everything was pretty much bobo except the one open-box item that he was iffy about because he is excessively obsessively particular about the highest screen resolution made by the world. The only reason being that he likes his fonts to be tiny (no joke, again - apparently squinting harder means you're better at life). It all means nothing to me, so all I can do is be like "whatever?" Circuit City = bobo + loud + incognizant "sales" staff.

Bobo means go to Best Buy, which we did, and after seemingly hours (maybe one), Jesse is the proud debtor of one excessively featured laptop that has orange trim, because real gamers think orange is cool. Or manly. Or something other than lame. It doesn't matter what color it is anyway, because you're so busy squinting to read the teeny tiny word in the bottom left corner that ordinarily is a "Start" button that you forget to look at the supernatural orange trim surrounding the keyboard. He also bought headphones, which, P.S., HALLELUJAH.

He also also bought Spore, which I have played but I'm a pretty lame player because all I want to do is play with the creature creator and make cows with 5 eyes and duck bills, which is not really the whole point of having bought the game Spore, but my name is on the bill, so I can make spherical cows if I want.

Craptop

So Jesse bought this laptop off of craigslist in February or so, not long after his previous laptop got stolen while we were asleep in his car on our HONEYMOON. If you can call it that.

It was a reincarnation of aforementioned stolen laptop, only real laptop reincarnations are supposed to be identical - I don't think HP goes out and makes them all just a lil' different for excitement's sake. Except this laptop was not identical. It had been owned by a GIRL. And a sissy one, apparently, though I never met her because the whole transaction was done in a dark parking lot. Wait.

To make a long story shorter than it could be, the reincarnation was crap. The hard drive clicked and buzzed and made general noises of agony. And then last week, the fan started being like "OH NOES! I'm not a fan. I am a Bumblebee of Unusual Size!" It drove me insane. Imagine trying to do your government class reading assignment about economic policy, which is hard enough to pay attention to as is, while this thing in the corner of the room is going "zzzzzzzzzkkkkzzzzzzzzzzzzzzkkkkzzzzzzzzzzzzkkkKKKKKkkkzzz." Distracting. Jesse's temporary solution was to take the computer apart, which did indeed stop the noises because all the laptop's guts were on the coffee table. After he put it back together, not only was it still buzzing like an angry hornet, there were also two screws left over. Hmm.... GJ. Second solution: stick a screwdriver into the fan socket. It magically stopped buzzing... but the computer would have overheated and then melted, and I do not want to clean up liquid laptop from white carpet.

I was going to tell you about what we did next, but I find that I'm tired of typing, as I just finished my last US Government final, which is an essay test of 10 questions that takes at least 1.5 hours to complete because you are expected to be able to explain why the Social Security system is going to fail in the next 10 years, and explain it without exploding. I feel like the laptop now. Two screws loose.

17.5 Pounds in 5 Weeks!

I still lost to the girl who has won three times in a row by eating only cabbage soup so she can get the dollars. I feel cheated. I least I practiced some self control in the face of temptations.

I lost by 0.23%. Lame.

However, one must think that at least I didn't eat cabbage soup for 3 whole weeks straight. Also, doesn't she notice when she crows "I've lost 63 pounds in these contests!" that she did not start at 233 pounds at the start of the first Big Loser? Nono. She started at the same weight at the weigh-in of each contest.

I'm trying to make myself feel better about losing $600 by pointing at her not playing fair, but I still did not win $600 that we sorely could have used for, I don't know, rent.

I celebrated by quesadilla, which has sat in my stomach (not intestines) like a rock for 24 full hours. I don't think I'm supposed to eat that much cheez ever again in my life. And I didn't enjoy it that much, either.

Take that, fake winner! I no longer enjoy quesadillas!

Humph.

Should the Federal Welfare System be Abolished?

I wrote a paper stating that I don't think it should be, but that it could be betterly administrated. My paper consisted of many quotes and "research", and absolutely no original content. I did not care about the question. I might care more about the question if I did not have to write a 5 page, double-spaced paper with one-inch margins using Times New Roman and following generally the Chicago Manual of Style format for endnotes and reference pages. What is Chicago Manual of Style anyway? Why the hell do they keep coming out with new "standards" of reference styles so that you have to buy all the f***ing books so you know what your stupid professor wants to look at when he's giving you a grade based on how your references look, not on how your damn paper reads anyway? Paper writing makes me SO angry. Obviously. It's mostly the bibliography, though. They have always been frustrating.

Also that my roommate interrupted me at 10:30 when my paper was due at 11:00 to tell me that he'd unloaded the dishwasher enough this week and that the kitchen was a wreck so it's my turn to do something about it. I was like (in my head) "DUDE. I HAVE TO FINISH THIS PAPER NOW OR ELSE I'M GOING TO BLOW SOMEONE'S HEAD OFF. PLEASE LEAVE ME ALONE WHILE I FIGURE OUT HOW TO REFER TO THE INTERNET AS A VALID SOURCE OF INFORMATION"

However. My paper is done. Life can almost resume back to normal - just one week left of U.S. Government on the internets, and then I can go back to being boring in the evenings, but less boring than a 26 year old reading about how the judiciary is elected. It still makes me angry to think about that damned paper.

**Note. Even if I only get 50/100 points, I'll still prolly get an A in the class. I'm that good at multiple choice.

Food, Glorious Food, Glorious Foooooooood

Yesterday was my first and only "cheat day" on my diet - a day where instead of eating powdered foods plus chicken n fish, I could eat whatever I felt like. I felt like Chili's, where the chips never end and the food is predictable. I did not want to try for possible greatness. I wanted something that came with french fries.

P.S. I feel like 15 pounds in 4 weeks warrants some tasty goodness.

I had chips and salsa. I decided that chips in and of themselves are mostly just vehicles for salt. They do not actually taste that good, though the crunchiness is highly desirable.

I had french fries. Also - vehicles for salt and ketchup. This is my main complaint about this diet - there is nothing that you can use ketchup on, and if it isn't obvious by now, I would like some lycopene and vinegar in my diet please. Potatoes aren't exactly flavorful foodstuffs. Just starchy vehicles for salt and ketchup, and sometimes other condiments as well.

I had a hamburger, but I couldn't eat the whole thing. It was salty and meaty and delicious. I didn't really want the bread, but then I would be even more of a mess than I ordinarily am while eating, so it's kind of a necessity. I especially enjoyed the mustard, the pickles, and the ketchup flavorings.

I came to the conclusion that all I would really need to be satisfied on this diet is crunchy things that I could put condiments on. Everything else is tasty, easy to prepare, and easy to eat. And easy to lose weight. I mean, like, DAMN it's easy. Unless you use food as a vehicle for your emotional outlet, which I sometimes did, but can't anymore because ....

As I was just typing this, I was trying to say "xx is not a good comfort food." Then I realized that I bet the reason this is so successful is because they have provided you with only comfort foods that you can have every two hours and feel thusly comforted. Milkshakes? Chicken Noodle Soup? Hot Chocolate? Nutritious candy bars? Soy cheese crisps? Pudding? Oatmeal? They are all in some way comfort foods, though oatmeal is questionable. It is warm, though.

Hm.

Creativity Unthwarted

Not really, though. I made these earring months and months ago to match a dress I have, because I am that much of a dweeb and have to have matching earrings (though it is a fairly fabulous orange dress).

What I'm actually excited about, besides the fact that I got to take them off at the end of the day because they are heavy like hanging a slice of an apple off of your earlobes, is the fact that one of the ladies at work noticed them and wants me to make her a pair and not for free. She asked me if I had a website where she could look at things I've made (I like how she assumed the plural of thingS). I do not have a website, unless this is it, and it's not a very good advertisement for professionalism and mad skills. Except spelling skills.

These are the make-my-earring-holes-look-like-vertical-mouths earrings I made:

Creativity as Thwarted by U.S. Government

Note how I didn't add the word "the" to the title. Something I did just have to add, though, was the word "didn't" to the blogger.com dictionary. Que?

I've had a recent explosion of crafty creativity inspirations, to the point where I almost have to pull off to the side of the road while driving so that I can jot them down so as not to forget my moment of pure genius. I pulled out my jewelry bits and set them up and took my roommate on a wild(ish) goose chase of a bead-store hunt so I could find exactly the parts to complete my masterpiece. Of course, they didn't have said parts because what jewelry store can pre-cognitiviley know what I am dreaming of on my ride home from work? But I found bits that will work. I was all self-congratulatory genius for actually getting something done that I wanted to get done. But then I realized that this weekend was the 27th and 28th. And I have a midterm on 5 chapters of U.S. Government on the 30th. And I have only read two of the chapters. DAMMIT.

So instead of completing my piece - I went dancing in Santa Monica with Jesse. It was my first time at the Cock and Bull Pub, and I enjoyed myself, although my football stitches are placed right where a gentleman's hand should be, which I think I've mentioned due to the stress of having a hole in my flesh right where people need to touch me.

I have, however, completed my (not my masterpiece, sigh) homework and requisite chapter quizzes for the upcoming 2.5 hour online essay test, but now I realize that the 30th is Tuesday. I do not know why I did not just look at a calendar where the little number 30 is right next to the little TUE, but just this morning did I realize that 30 = Tuesday, and Tuesday = my only other class, Macroeconomics, from right after work until right about bedtime. DAMMIT AGAIN. My tomorrow does not look fun.

And yet, I just wrote a blog.

Why Must the Lats be Taped?

Again. I mean really. Having my lats taped together with a bandaid for a week was bad enough the first time. As previously stated, just that little 3/4" x 3" piece of putty-colored tape is enough to keep you from tying your shoes (like I own any that tie), reaching the last piece of chives that blew on the floor after you tried to throw them away with the fan on, and shave the bottom portion of your calves.

Now I have to tape them together for three whole weeks. The self-same spot that required biopsy on my spine (an obvious high UVA/UVB area) below my bra strap was "abnormal", and thusly had to be all the way removed. "Below my bra strap" translates into "right where the dude puts his hand when he swings you out" while dancing. My deviant dot was removed on Tuesday, and man am I a weenie when it comes to coping for a full day. After the initial shock of the fact that I had had a piece of skin the size of a fingernail torn from my back after a SHOT, all I wanted was cuddles and attention. All I got was a meeting at work. But I milked it anyway.

After keeping the gauze on for the recommended 24 hours and claiming that as my reason for sleeping in and not showering the next morning (it's good to have a valid excuse for laziness), I needed to switch from mega-lat-tape to plain bandaid lat-tape, so I cringed and gave Jesse the puppy-dog please eyes even though he has to do it because it's on the middle of my back and also because he's my husband. So he took it off and was like "oh." I was expecting much more of a sympathetically dramatic reaction, but all I got was "oh?" So I turned around and looked at it in the mirror, and I was like "oh." I always remembered past experiences with stitches as being a row of little knots tying the halves of your recently separated flesh together like zip ties on a tarp. These are average stitches, right? I know they are because I looked up "stitches" on google images and there were pictures of those very kind of stitches.

My stitches, on the other hand, look like they were done by my grandmother, who was a very handy stitcher indeed. Or my grandfather, who may have been even better. It's like this little tiny line that looks like a mini version of a football seam - only one piece of thread with a little knot at the end. No need to worry about catching knots in bandaid adhesive, or one of them coming undone. I feel the need to get a henna football tattoed on my spine. It would look just like this:


I guess this means I can't do sit-ups. Damn.

Living in Los Ogles

That's one major difference I've definitely noticed down here: ogling. Lascivious leering, blatant eyeballing, being looked up and down and commented upon like someone else's prized Pomeranian. This pretty much never happened up North, and it sure ain't like I suddenly got hotter once I moved here. I gained weight and got scowlier. And I don't exactly work or live with Chinese Crested Terriers or anything, either. There are plenty of things to look at that might classify as "really really hot" to my own "like your little sister with a big butt."

In Long Beach, it's walking down the street to the grocery store or the coffee shop. It's the guy that runs the boxing studio that hollers across the street, "Hey, those are nice pants!" Thanks. "You fill 'em out pretty good, too!" Head down, keep walking. The little hispanic dude who's like "Hey! Hey! Is a nice body, yeah. Ver'nice. Is lookie good."

At work. Ohell. The ugliest ogle I have ever experienced. A little swarthy fellow who closely resembles a pug. Like, buggy eyes with the pupil not quite in the center of the eyeball. Heavily pronounced underbite, with the leetle kinda pointy teeth. The face creases that run from nose down around the corners of the mouth. The slicked-back helmet of hair that shines like a beetle. Just whoa. And as I walked by on my 0.2 mile walk from parking place to front door, he waited for a bit, slowly rolling his googly eyes up and down, and then followed me the rest of the way. Triple Ew.

Or the guys that slow down their cars/semis to look and yell. What do they think is going to happen when they holler incoherently from the passenger side of their car? Am I suddenly going to jump in and say "take me now?" No. They want to get a rise out of me. Cassie, my favorite cohort in crazy, turns into this little mexican jumping bean of rage, middle fingers flying and feet lifting off the ground in emphasis.. exactly what they want from a tiny little hottentot like her. I pretty much walk. **One time, a guy asked me for my number while driving his SUV next to mine. I was thinking, "are you sure you want the kind of girl who says yes to that?" I was also thinking that his vehicle was probably full of syphilis. You can fit a lot of syphilis into a Yukon.

I guess that the big difference is that in a smaller town, there's a good chance that the heckler might actually see you again. Face to face, all confrontation style. And then... well, they DEFINITELY wouldn't have a chance, where as if they hadn't hollered about your hotness from their Subaru, they might at least get eye contact.

May I never see pug-ogle again.

I am So Suzy Homemaker I do it in a Strapless Bra

We made a plan today that we would actually exit this house before we settled down to long day of nothing, which is what weekends usually end up being. Jesse usually plays internet Risk and pwns the world while at the same time watching Star Trek and playing around with his Facebook, and I do something. Or nothing. I've never really figured out what I do on Saturdays, in retrospect.

We did exit the house. The plan was, walk to Border's, buy the new Eragon book because my husband is a middle-school aged boy with good reading taste and an interest in dragons, and then maybe walk home. Not particularly ambitious. We ended up going to Wal*Mart instead because he wanted an energy drink, and they had the book there so he got it. Our plan was ruined. NOW what are we supposed to do - I guess we could have walked home on our hands, but we didn't do that.

Instead we went to George's Greek Cafe, which is THE BEST PLACE IN THE WORLD. When I get to heaven, it will be George's Greek Cafe. Blue check tablecloths and little tan men that hug you to infinity. On a cloud. Because in my mind, everything in heaven is on a cloud. Anyway - George's makes me happier than anything I have encountered in the Los Angeles area at all since we moved here. It might be the only thing that makes me happy besides Jesse, and George's has a higher success rate per instance than Jesse does. 100%. P.S. Kefthetes are little bites of heaven in a heaven-like setting.

After we got home, my plan was to get all those stupid chores started and/or done. I've been meaning to clean up the house a little bit this whole week. I even wrote myself a detailed list to remind myself of what needed to be done. First on this list was "Do your damned homework." Then came "headlight, clean tubottom, get spit off mirror, mail pants, floor = yuck." So, to start my day of work off when we got home, I immediately did not do my homework but completed almost everything on my list while wearing a 100% silk shirt and a strapless bra, trying to convince myself that next I would actually do my homework. Shnopes. It's 9:00 and I'm writing a blog. But my laundry is done, my linens are clean, and my bathroom is sparkling, all without a single slippage or thought of the United States Government, Chapters 12 and 13.

Speaking of Pigeons.

Guess what happened here?

The Coolest Thing on the Road

So I'm not a huge fan of driving, much less driving on the freeway, much less driving on the freeway to work in the morning. It's a wall of gray, with cargo trucks lumbering from the port to the railroad tracks (why are all the railroad tracks not connected to the port?), and sleepy people lumbering to their jobs with their radios turned up and their conscious turned down. Much as car makers try to spice up the color options we have today, driving, all I see is dirt on boring.

I was driving to work this week, in not-my-normal lane (second to left), when I noticed that regardless of all the open space in front of him, the speedy car in the far right lane was not speeding up. This is HIGHLY UNUSUAL. Speeding up when you can is law, and will get you honked at for not abiding. I wondered to myself "I wonder what he's doing?" And then I saw this THING in front of his car - it looked like the proverbial carrot in front of the rabbit, or the rabbit in front of the racing greyhound. Only the proverbial carrot-rabbit was grey (like everything else) and it was going exactly 50 miles per hour and it had wings.

It was a PIGEON. I know pigeons don't exactly have the best reputations, but I for one have always had a pigeon fondness. Which has been exponentially increased by the fact that this pigeon was flying in a straight line at FIFTY MILES AN HOUR, not swerving erratically, following the traffic lane, and not losing speed. My jaw literally dropped. If not for the herd of cargo-bearing trucks surrounding me, I would have looked that sports car driver in the eye and mouthed the words "WHAT THE HELL IS HE DOING?", and for the first time in the history of freeways it would not have been about some non-normal driver.

Did you KNOW that pigeons could fly at 50 miles per hour?!?! I did not know this - I assumed they spent their days bobbing gently on sidewalks, descending on dirty wings from the rafters of unoccupied buildings, and generally being like I want to be when I retire, only with more disease and creepier-looking eyes. This pigeon was obviously a high-achiever. I just witnessed the Michael Phelps of pigeondom on my drive to work in the morning. My morning drive will never ever be as good.

Wasting away... sigh

I started a diet on Monday. Not like a vague "I'll stop the Cheetos-munching and beer-swilling" kind of diet, but the kind of diet that forced me to SAY NO TO CHIPS AND SALSA at lunch today. Truly tragic. One of my last pre-diet-start "meals" was endless chips and salsa at Chili's, where the chips are so wafer-thin that they feel like crunchy little fried paper in your mouth, only significantly tastier. And you wonder why I feel the need to go on a diet.

Conveniently, on the day I started my diet, they also started a "Biggest Loser" contest at work, where everyone who enters pays $25 and whoever loses the highest percentage of body weight gets everyone's $25, thus providing monetary impetus to lose weight. You can also go in for $50 if you're in it to win it. I AM IN IT TO WIN IT.

I'm sure people who know me will ABSOLUTELY NOT believe me, and they are TOTALLY accurate. For when have I stuck with anything besides my marriage? Answer: only when forced to by extenuating circumstances or contracts containing my signature and a feeling of guilt if I were to not stick with it. Also Verizon Wireless.

I'm supposed to be taking "before" pictures to compare with some "after" pictures, but getting up the guts to make myself look fat is not the same kind of easy as drinking five bottles of water before weigh-in to make yourself look heavier. The water is out after you race your equal-agua coworkers to the limited restrooms, but the fat pictures are only until your husband forgets them when he becomes senile.

I'm also supposed to be taking measurements so that I can report how many inches I've lost... I always have found it odd when people report that they've lost inches. It's like what the hell kind of osteoporosis did you get on that diet? I'll probably measure my arms and legs and booty, and then never decide if it's time to re-measure, so I'll only have those initial figures to aspire to when I'm pregnant.

So I've been eating quite a bit less on this program for three days now. Two and a half, actually. I nearly nodded off from hunger on my notebook in Econ last night. I was trying to write sentences to keep myself awake, and they were like "It was probably not the wisest idea to start my idea on the night of my class, because now I am class and sentence not working" Not able to maintain coherent thoughts, obviously. I stuck it out, though, with the wily use of soy crisps snarfed during the break between GDP and CPI. I felt much better after that, though Jesse had the nerve to ask when I got home and almost ripped the cupboard door off on my way to nutritious soup if I was "really that hungry." I was like "do you know how much I have not eaten today!?! If you value your life, get ye not between me and my soups!" What I actually said, though, was "Dude, I have only eaten like 600 calories today (this was a lie), how could I NOT BE HUNGRY." And then I said "No smooches until I eat my soup."

Pro - Motion

It has to be better than an antimotion, because that's pretty much what I had been feeling like I was doing for the last few weeks because my coworker is so good at her job.

I started at the new position on Tuesday, and it was like a mind-warp from "ooh, this is an interesting and complex company run by the uber-hip" to "OMFG-how-the-hell-does-this-place-keep-running-if-they-depend-solely-on-people-like-me-to-do-stuffffffff?!?" I found that the department I transferred to consists solely of two women, the manager and the girl, and that this department of two is responsible FOR EVERYTHING WORKING. I was thinking... why does that other department over there have forty million design school graduates walking around making music videos in their spare time, and this department only has two, and they graduated from ordinary school?

THEN I found out that the girl, she who enters the data that makes the denim world go 'round, is leaving for Italy for TWO WEEKS. On Friday morning. So I have to learn how she does all these things that she does by rote, and I'm thinking to myself "I'd totally be OK with being fired as soon as she gets back because I just cause a major disruption in the supply chain". And I totally would be OK with that.

Friday rolls around, and I started receiving e-mails that were purportedly relevant to what I'm supposed to be doing, only the thing is, I don't really have a clear picture of what exactly I'm supposed to be doing. I have pages and pages of disjointed notes that are like "hit F7", only I was in such a jotting hurry that now F7 is the most daunting step in my succession of keys. F7 could either do something like accept date entry or it could be the self-destruct key. I forgot to write that part down. So I'll hit F7 and duck as if shards of monitor are about to be embedded in my skull, and then the DOS-based program (green screen!) will beep like an Apple IIe when you shot a buffalo on Oregon Trail because I didn't move my cursor off the screen and then hit F7, so the cycle of fear begins again.

I will keep posting as I continue floundering in the quicksand of too much unrelated information in my e-mail inbox. Luckily, the girl that used to work in the department called and said "I feel REALLY sorry for you because you have no idea what's going on at all. I'll stop by on Monday and see how I can help you." Thank God for her. Apparently the whole company knows that I must and do feel like a uncultured white girl from a hick town set down smack in the middle of Los Angeles. Oh wait.

What the Doodle-Heck?

As I have written about before, Jesse and I have a little old lady. Truth be known, she is not exactly little, but she is indeed an old lady. One who made Cabbage Rolls when she used to entertain during the Great Depression. And whose lifetime achievement was traveling to Europe during her early adulthood with the Whittier Women's Choir - not an uncool achievement to have under your belt, truth be known. Unless you were a male in the choir. Then it would be very not cool to have toured Europe with the Whittier Women's Choir, especially during the 50's.

Unfortunately, I have had little opportunity to spend time with her - she is at her best during the day, dwindling in energy towards the evening and probably sitting in a chair mowing down vegetable chips (which are really potato chips in disguise, just like tri-color pasta) on her living room recliner while watching The Price is Right on the TV. I don't know anything about the latter portion of that sentence - it's just what I always imagine persons over 75 who stay home all day doing. That's what my grandparents did - it was just them, Bob Barker, Alex Trebec, and Pat Sajak. And Vanna White, but she was only there to smile and turn the letters over. But I digress... I don't get the opportunity to go there after work much because Jesse can take care of her after his school gets out at noon on Monday and Friday. Though it does save me a lot of dollars on gas.

One of my favorite things about her, besides the fact that every visit she tells Jesse he's "so beautiful, it's almost feminine," is her key phrase. You know how some people just have a phrase they repeat so often it becomes a key point in their personality, something to describe them by? For me, I know I say "exactly" a whole lot in conversation. Our dear lady says "Doodle-Heck" nearly as often as the area code 90210 says "like". "I'll just get the doodle-heck in the car and we can drive to the store, but I forgot what the doodle-heck I wanted so we can just walk around until I find what the doodle-heck it is." How awesome of a phrase is that?

It is a VERY AWESOME phrase.

Exactly.

Self-Importance Never Wins (especially if you're a courier)

"Priveleged" That was the name of the show. The only TV show ever in the whole world. Ever.

This homey driver (courier, in fancier terms) shows up at work demanding his shipment for the the WARdrobe designer. The only. He has a drop-off, and he needs his package for the WARdrobe designer. There is no package with me for him. In fact, the woman who creates such packages filled with wonder is not even in town at the moment. He becomes agitated, as if this is somehow someone's fault.

Keep in mind, this driver is pushing fifty and has the stretch marks in his faded salmon Hanes Beefy-T pointing towards the center of his belly, which protrudes like the top of my grandmother's rising extra-yeasty bread. His fade orange mustache is reminiscent of that of a male walrus, while his baseball cap shows signs of never having been washed ever. He is wearing faded and bleach-spotted (not on purpose, like the 80's) Lee jeans, and his flip-flops are wearing ever closer to being just flops.

And yet, he is looking disdainfully down upon me in my $2,000 secretary's chair, with my $300 flower arrangement next to me, surrounded by the tens of millions of dollars this company has spent on putting up a good show of competence, as if it is somehow my own doing that his package is not waiting for him to whisk off to his WARdrobe designer.

Let me tell you, speaking down to someone in this company does not win you any favors. Not that I even really care, but he's distracting me from completing my 375th game of FreeCell. Also, the fact that packages have nothing to do with me. So I call the assistant from the PR Department - not the nice, soft-spoken one, but the one who knows how to say things exactly so the target knows he or she is in error.

Homey delivery man continues blustering, especially when I say he needs something for the wardrobe "department," not the designer. He interrupts my message delivery to correct my obviously HORRID error. Luckily, the Marketing Assistant hears this and comes out to speak with him. I sit blithely by as they discuss the issue at hand, namely, that he's obviously not important enough to have package waiting for him at the front reception desk of the wealthiest denim designer in the world. But he thinks he is. Even Vietnamese guys named Kevin Costner have packages waiting for them at this particular front desk. In the end, he is unable to find the package that we obviously hid from him (it was in my pants!), and huffs off like a seventeen year old pageant contestant who has had her prize stolen from her by someone who could find the US on a map.


Priveleged, my booty.

Entertainment Tonight: The Geriatric Hula

Every weekend, the City of Long Beach hosts some sort of entertainment throughout downtown. There are bands on street corners, and bands or entertainment at the little "theater," or sitting area really, down at the pier in Shoreline Village. Jesse had been jonesing for some Yardhouse french fries, so we walked down to get some.

The wait was 45 minutes. No french fries are worth that, though the Yardhouse fries might be worth a 20 minute wait. 45 is just asking too much. So we wandered down the rest of the pier (I don't know if it's actually a pier, it just sticks out over the harbor and there be boats, so pier it is now. As we wandered by the nightly entertainment area, this is what we encountered:



Aren't they the cutest things ever? I hope upon hope that I still have the wherewithal at age wrinkly to be doing the long-dress and boa hula, and that Jesse will still be thin enough to wiggle hisself like that. I don't count on either of those things, but a girl's got to have dreams, right?

Act of God. We are Doing the Right Thing.

Dude! So, while still living in Chico and working at Kirk's Jewelry, yet with the knowledge that Jesse was going to be a Chiropractor, a gentleman and his wife by the name of Dave and Lori B came into the store as friends of Kirk's in search of a ring. I helped them out with their search, and in chatting got around to Dave being Dr. David B, D.C. He is Kirk's old friend yes, but also the most prominent chiropractor in Chico. He is also the chiropractor for the entire Olympic team of Sierra Leone, not a small qualification. He told me to urge Jesse in the LACC (Jesse's school) direction, which Jesse obviously did. Dave gave me his info and told Jesse to call him if he ever had any questions or anything.

So Jesse's been thinking of visiting Dr B when he goes back to Chico at the end of the next term, just to kind of get his own foot in the door there - Dr. B is just the type of chiropractor that Jesse wants to be (successful). Jesse has to do an internship for the last term or two of his schooling, and he's hoping to do it with Dr B.

For a little more back story - I've been really having a hard time of it down here, and have been doubting the correctness of this choice. Maybe Jesse shouldn't be a Chiropractor - I mean, he doesn't really love school, and he wants to help old people, and he also wants to get his nurse-practitioner license as well. So I'm a little bit urging him to think about maybe going to medical school instead - I feel like as a medical doctor or N.P., you can have more sway in geriatric care. Also because the schools are closer to home... I could and would and want to go back in a heartbeat.

Then, and here comes the act-of-God part, I get a random phone call in the middle of my work day on my cell. Having a couple minutes, I actually answer it - and it is Dr. David B from Chico. He wanted to know if indeed my boyfriend ever made it to LACC and if we now live down in the LA area. As we do live here, he went on to tell us how his mother lives in Whittier (where Jesse's school is) and she's getting on in age. They're getting a little worried about having her live alone now, but she's not really ready for a home yet - just some assistance every day. He said he knows that there are services he could hire to help her out, but since he wouldn't know them or have a chance to meet them, he'd prefer asking someone he knows first. And since he knows me a little and Kirk trusts me implicitly, and Jesse is going to be a colleague of his someday soon, he would like to ask us to do it.

So... Chiropractor Jesse admires and wants to create a relationship with asks Jesse to help him with his geriatric mother, which is Jesse's area of interest anyway, as well as having a year of experience in the assisted living field anyway, near Jesse's school. Crazy, huh?!

This Will Only Make Sense to People who Have Been to the Naked Lounge with Me

This at first glance may just seem like an awkward picture of my roommate and friend Margaret holding my niece Samantha at the Aquarium of the Pacific here in Long Beach. It is, indeed, that. But it is SO much more than that.

Many of my friends from Chico have spent many an hour with me at the Naked Lounge, the best coffee shop in town and probably all of Northern California. It is filled with couches, atmosphere, the scent of good coffee, and eclectics. Many of them know the long history of myself and a certain eclectic man. I invite these friends to take a closer look at the gentleman in the upper left corner of this photo. I shall zoom in for clarity:


OH MY @!#$% IS THAT JEWISH MARK??? WHAT THE HELL IS HE DOING IN LONG BEACH?? HOW ON EARTH DID HE TRAVEL OUTSIDE OF CHICO?

**For those of you not knowing the history, Jewish Mark has been someone who has talked at me extensively throughout my days in Chico - since I was 19. It is difficult to avoid conversation with Mark, regardless of whether you are alone or with a group, walking or talking, drinking coffee or reading a book. Not to say that conversation is a bad thing, you know... but I am selfish with my coffee time. The fact that he may have shown up in Long Beach, CA, is similar to the appearance of Moby Dick in the same location, tooting one of those little party wooters and wearing a Mickey Mouse hat.

This is bizarre. This is surreal. This had better just be a doppelganger.

Write about Rabbits

I started at LBCC Tuesday night. Turns out I registered for MACROECONOMICS instead of Micro. Shoot.

This was my first foray onto the LBCC main campus - I had no idea what to expect. I did not expect to become a stalker within my first 10 minutes of arrival. Not like "every vow you break, every smile you fake" stalker, because I really don't like anyone that much, except for maybe Jesse when I was overtly stalking him. More like "every move you make, every step you take" towards your car. So that I can weasel my way into your parking place. SERIOUSLY. It was worse than parking near my house on street-cleaning night, worse than any other college I've been to, worse even than the MALL at CHRISTMAS. Dude. I followed some girl all the way from one end of the parking lot to the other, a centipede of cars behind me wishing my doom so that they could park there instead. I could feel the bad vibes emanating from the cars behind me.

After I finally beat the other parking gladiators, I found myself victoriously with an hour to spend. So I wandered the campus wondering WHY THE HELL ARE THERE SO MANY RABBITS HERE. I mean, the first little snip of lawn I came to, the size of the ones outside of your average KFC, had 15 rabbits on it. FIFTEEN RABBITS. Just chilling, nibbling the grass. Every lawn, the same. Sleeping bunnies. Frolicking ones. Mostly just eating. I wanted to take a picture, but I didn't want to be that girl, at age 26, ogling the bunnies on her first day of school with fervor and excitement and a camera.

I bet they NEVER have to mow the lawn.

MACROeconomics is going to be just fine. The teacher is a cute young man who looks exactly like you would think someone who really likes economics would look. Beard, jeans, hair the same length as his beard (short), brown shoes, earnest eyes. What I'm not excited about is Business Law. The first class took all THREE HOURS. The man makes Ben Stein look like an auctioneer. He does have a sense of humor, but having a sense of humor about civil suits and a genuine excitment about the OJ Simpson case does not an exciting class make. Whether or not I stick around for it all depends on whether I win the book for real cheap on eBay. If I get it, I'm stuck with a Business Law book and I might as well take the class. If I don't win, then obviously I'm not meant to take that intensive of a course my first semester back, and I will re-enroll later. I am determining my educational FATE using e-bay. Maybe though, I am not determining it - I'm leaving it up to the power that be to determine it for me.

There is also a crazy rabbit lady - she has folding chairs and bags of lettuce and carrots. WHOA.

Rocket Shoes

Jesse just bought hisself some new shoes. Ah, the draw of Nordstrom's Rack right around the corner. Not only did his last pair of "running" shoes pretty much disintegrate, his current shoe selection includes not one, but THREE PAIRS OF WOMEN'S SHOES. One of them is a pair of flip-flops, so they don't count, but the other two are TWO pairs of the same women's sneaker-type shoes in two colors. Oh heavens.

Also, because we are gaining weight as fast as the ice caps are losing them, I am supportive of his buying shoes that he can exercise in, hoping he will coerce/accompany me. I have my own running shoes that I put my new orthotics in and make my toe not hurt, so perhaps I'll move my jiggly bits around as well. **Note: highly unlikely

To me, running shoes generally have a certain aesthetic. Utilitarian, though sometimes those Nike ones have the little spring-looking thing that I invented at the fourth-grade mandatory science fair but now Nike did it so it wins (not like me). They are white or gray or black, and have a swoosh and involve both fake leather and mesh, and generally don't draw attention to the foot. That's what I think of for the running shoes. I do not think of ROCKETS. Jesse bought ROCKETS for his feet. ROCKETS WITH PUMAS ON THEM. In case the ROCKETS weren't fast enough and you needed to add puma-power to your stride as well. Also, they do not have springs under the heel. That is Nike's domain. They have SIMULATED CORRUGATED CARDBOARD, made of ROCKET PLASTIC. If he is not fast on these things, all of the ROCKET SCIENCE that went into them will be for naught. Here are the rocket shoes. They do not match anything in his wardrobe. Thank Heaven.

Shcizool

SO I've finally decided to go back to school... after years and years of wafting in the wind and working what I could (the jewelry store was pretty good, though), I looked at my future and was like "what representable skills do I have?" Not so many. I consider myself a fairly smart person, yet my resume at age 26 looks like the extended version of a just-barely-graduated Liberal Arts major with out the B.A. on it. And I'm tired of working just "jobs."

I applied to Long Beach City College and was accepted (MIRACLE.. oh wait. They accept everyone). I registered for classes. I borrowed dollars from my mom to pay for them. I start TOMORROW. I am nervous o nervous. I haven't been to class in many years. I don't even know where the campus is. I don't know where the parking lot is. I don't know how I'm supposed to know what books to buy, much less afford. But I'm doing it.

This semester will include THREE classes after work (well, TWO, because one is on the internet) - Business Law, MicroEconomics, and US Government. Sounds Awesome, right? Not right. But these are things I must get done in order to pursue a Business Degree of any sort, which is what I'm thinking of. And, if I just take night classes at this point, I will probably be done with my transfer degree right about the time Jesse is ready to transfer his booty back out of the city. I could transfer at that point to any state college we might land near.

I'm also thinking of trying for my Graduate Gemologist certification, which would put the letters G.G. after my title. Ms. Jennifer Crist, G.G., or Mrs. Jennifer Smith, G.G. I know that a G.G. from the Gemological Institute of America means very little to anyone reading this, but just know that those two letters are the diamonds equivalent of having a Massage Therapist, M.T., or just a back rub-er with experience. It would help my credibility in the future of jewelry, those two letters. Those two letters, however, are worth FIFTEEN THOUSAND DOLLARS. Oy. So there's a huge mental debate over whether I should get my G.G. at all, or just swing on having my business degree to start.

** So, business school?, you ask skeptically, and with reason. My thought process is this: Upon graduation, both of myself and Jesse, we will hopefully be moving back to Chico, and truthfully, I would love to move back to Kirk's Jewelry. Kirk has occasional bouts of disillusion with his jewelry business, and has often contemplated selling it or closing it because he likes real estate development so much better at this point. So, if it's still operational in three years and I have the credentials and training to entirely run his business, I'd like to get my foot in the management door, and perhaps eventually, upon his becoming too old and disillusioned, there might be a possibility of my taking it over for him. And even if not, I really feel like I have the mad skills, only to be enhanced by education, to have my own jewelry business in the future. Hence the necessary management training, though I'll hate it while I'm there. And, I'll actually have a degree. Whoa

Kevin Costner, Tom Cruise, Jackie Chan, and a guy named Sunny.

My workday is filled with drivers for various contractors signing in, delivering, mooching the free coffee, and chatting me up. Some of the drivers are silent, signing their names and completing their assigned tasks without so much as an hola. Some of them are Hola and that's it. Some of them try to chat me up in various languages. Some of them are RUDE. And SOME of them are Kevin Costner.

Kevin Costner, on the right, is a middle-aged Vietnamese man with one tooth. He speaks Vietnamese, French, and English, though I half the time he's speaking in English it's like some cryptic code that I have no idea how to break. My first day, he told me his name was Kevin, and Kevin Costner was his brother. I asked him, logically enough, why his parents named both their children the same name. He changed his story to that his own name, actually now that he thinks of it, is Kevin Costner. So we've called him that ever since. The really cool thing is that it has stuck and spread. Just the other day he brought in an invoice from an incorrect delivery from another company, and the sticky note on it said "Kevin Costner - please deliver to 7FAM" YESSSSS

Being a movie star, Kevin Costner has found his joy in the new receptionist's names. I, personally, am Janet Jackson, and later I have become Dr. Janet. I don't really even know who I am, to be honest. Jaclyn, the newest receptionist, is one Mrs. Jackie Chan, and he insists on speaking to her mainly in what little Chinese he does know. She's constantly like WHAT THE HELL KEVIN COSTNER. Jackie Chan is of Hispanic heritage, FYI. Additionally, I now work with Tom Cruise... also Mexican, about 5'2", with a fauxhawk and a lip piercing. I KNOW MOVIE STARS!

The only person to remain seemingly unscathed is Kevin Costner's brotha from anotha motha, an older Korean dude with one fake tooth and a sense of humor to rival my own (pictured on the left above). Last time he came in to pick up his check and was all "You see my broda? You punch him, OK? Just go punch him, and me pick up his check too." Deal, Sunny, deal. One day after not seeing Kevin Costner at all (I usually see him 3-4 times a day), I asked Sunny where he was. Sunny was like "Oh Kebin? I deport him to Hong Kong" and then walked out the door. How do I love them? A million ways! They are the joy of my days at work.