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So fucked up Holidailies, it’s not funny

Thursday, December 27, 2007

So, I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned this or not, but I have had arthritis ever since I was a wee child and most of the time, it’s just in my knees and every now and then, in my shoulder (the one that got dislocated… jeez, I’m a fucking wreck), but recently, it’s been acting up in my hands and fingers (oh look at that, I did make a link for that and it HURT… enough of that shit, stupid CNTL-C action). And for the last week, I’ve been fighting the aching tide of a major bout in my left hand, which is my favored hand for everything except holding a pen (the previous link explains that favoring as well DO NOT MAKE ME LINK AGAIN. Gah, Internet, you’re so demanding) but when Esteban opened his present from me, which was a Wii and also that guitar game, I knew that if I had to take action. I bought one of those 12-hour heaty wrap glove things and have been wearing one solid for the last 24 hours and hey, they work pretty well! Well enough that I can play the guitar game without pain and can type this here post, but the downside is that it looks remarkably like a cast. So much so that when I went to lunch with the boys today, three of them separately asked what I did to my hand (the entire end of the table recited the answer back to the third guy) and then when we went to dinner at my favorite little Café, Mario came out and asked what I did to injure myself. When I explained that I had arthritis and it was just a heat pack, the Italian said “Oh yes, in this awful cold place, this is how it is during the winter. These are the things you must do here!” and then Esteban and I both laughed because these? These are the things you must do.

Anyway, if you’d like a lot of unusual attention, wear a heat wrap and everyone will be all up in your grill! It’s very fun at parties.

I still have a sloppy windshield on the car. Apparently the new winter blades don’t bend or something. Blah blah blah geometry.

In other paperwork, the workshop for my story went well (Professor Dreamy called the story “ethereal” but in my opinion, it totally needs a major rewrite). Final grades for the semester are in and I got an A in my class, am back on the Dean’s list and my GPA is starting its slow crawl toward recovering from the damage done by the grade for the SciFi class. I know, I know, I make a big deal about it, but seriously, it grates me to no end.

I had a bunch of stuff to say about Christmas and my trip to LA and Mo‘s shindig (which truly was the best party I’ve ever attended in my life, arthritic hands down) and familial drama and craziness at work and whatnot, but meh. I’m trying to look forward, angel, etc.

I was chatting with Jake recently, about how had I known when I was 17 what I know now, I would have tried to get into Harvard, because I could have done a free ride given my golden standing as an impoverished youth with excellent potential, but at the time, I assumed it was out of my reach. Jake’s thought is that we never would have become friends because a Harvard graduate wouldn’t have had a Chubby Tink on her online diary on a free hosting site. I disagreed, stating that my entire intent when I started this page back in 2000 was to not take myself or writing so seriously and Chubby Tink was a reminder of that fact. At the time, I was so blocked and freaked out by the blank page that it was mostly impossible to even construct a sentence. Sometimes I’d just fill entire pages with repeated nonsense phrases, just trying to work my head over the wall, but it just wasn’t happening. And so I tried the Diaryland thing and then people started reading it and gradually, the stuff started leaking out of my head, which is awesome and great and I totally credit this page and all of you for breaking me out of the Fortress of Solitude bullshit that I was doing. And so next semester, when (if) I finish my master’s, in a large part, it’s because of this page and because of this community and because of you. And so thank you for that and for everything.

And then I think of all of the positive things in my life that have happened because of this community. The Minicons, the bffs, the Holiday Card Exchange, the causes we’ve helped, the people who have met and hung out together and become friends, possibly effects that have sprung out of this ridiculous little writing experiment. It is truly a fantastic thing.

My goal in the next year is to honor that more often, with my stupid little tales of commuting and cubicle life and ridiculous travelogues and silly drunken foolishness and also to remind myself, yet again, not to take myself so seriously. Here’s to 2008!

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Rejuvenation

Monday, December 10, 2007

This year, we’ve been working on turning the dining room into a den. We ripped out the carpeting and Esteban painted it (four coats, he has not let me forget) while I was on a trip (which gave the sloppy edges an extra level of bitter) and then we had new carpeting put in. We had the crown molding selected, purchased, sanded, painted and whatnot (and by “We” I mean Esteban and Ward and June did all the work, I just picked colors and paid for stuff) and then everything got stuck with the inability to put it up. Ward tried a few things and then used this bracing system, which worked great! Until it came to the corners, which were, well, impossible. The crown came back off and there it sat for months, looking exactly like this.

Stuck

I originally wasn’t going to do any fancy stuff with the crown molding, because I like clean lines and Esteban was already annoyed that it was going to look too Victorian. But since coping the corners of the molding together was apparently turning everything into a nightmare, I compromised and suggested these finial things in the corners, to the relief of everyone. Then they had to be sanded, painted, blessed, annointed, etc.

Enter the corners

On Saturday, the parents stopped by and tried it out. Our house was built in 1948, so there’s not a perfect 90 degree angle in the place, so the corners took some tweaking.

it will look like this

dad with compressor

While Dad sanded and tried to fit the puzzle pieces into the room, Mom walked around fixing the Esteban’s very sloppy paint job. Five minutes after I took this picture, I leaned on that very same doorframe and ruined a pair of jeans AND a shirt.

mom on detail

That’s my office in the background. I took this next one as a process picture, but damn, they are so cute! I love my in-laws so much!

parents on the case

And finally, the project that was supposed to be a short little quick deal but took all of 2007? Mostly finished. This was taken leaning by leaning back in my desk chair and looking toward the kitchen. Don’t judge me for my messy microwave cart or the hibernating orchid.

Finished product

Esteban just needs to replace all of the switches and outlets, our custom light fixture has to arrive and be installed, and then we must fill the thing with furniture. However, we predict this will greatly upset one resident of Casa Bix, as Tilly has decided that not only is this her room but that she’s weirdly territorial about it, to the point that she’d sit in the room watching Ward, even though he was using the air compressor and making a LOT of noise. We suspect there’s going to be a beat down of our asses when we try to hang out in there.

Ah well.
tilly exhausted

Esteban announced yesterday that he expects to have his office moved to the smallest room in the house by March so that we can move our bedroom into the second biggest room in the house and then prepare to rip the ever-loving shit out of the largest room in the house, our bedroom. Tear out all six sides of the cube, put in hardwood, dry wall, plaster, paint, build some new walls, put in some more electrical outlets and cable outlets and then move everything back into the room. He thinks this will be done during the month of April. Oh, you optimistic and adorable boy.

I’m horrified, because it’s receiving the same treatment as my office and that took, oh, forfuckingever. But at the same time, it will mean that we’re adding turning the entire end of one side of the room into an 11 foot wide closet and I swear to god, that makes me a little hot in my pants.

Seriously, though, the more things we do to this house, the more I love it. What happens when we finish renovating? We don’t plan on staying here and are just hanging out because the economy is so fucked up (Thanks W!) but what if I fix everything I hate the most about this house and don’t want to move?

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Rapid Fire Challenge

Thursday, December 6, 2007

Some really quick bites:

*If you didn’t already know about an incredible positive body image site called Big Fat Deal, it’s time you got your fine ass over there and checked it out. Cool thing: a screen shot of the site was just featured on some morning show on CBS. Weird thing: it was about weight loss sites, which BFD most strikingly is not. Still, it’s pretty cool! Also, the site was also featured in this month’s Women’s Health and Bust (in an awesome article written by my online diary crush Wendy McClure).

*Hey, continuity: MC Wendy is coming to Green Bay this January for our little annual shindig and bringing her man Chip (whose name is not Chip, this is just the name I’ve decided he should have). See, the hottest people come out to play at the Minicon. So what’s your excuse again?

*I know, I know, the holidays, blah blah blah. You know how much you hate January. Give yourself something to look forward to! Pineapple Fluff! Gorgeous people! Laughter! Sleigh rides! Peppermint schnapps! You know you are going to be kicking yourself if you miss this.

*Today when I walked out the door for work, my nose told me that it was insanely cold outside. I guessed around 4 degrees, and the car informed that I was close: it was 5. I do not approve of the fact that I am apparently gaining wisdom about how disgustingly cold it is outside. At least it was my nose telling me this and not my gout or something.

*My sister is now officially dating my friend Eric. They were just “hanging out” before but now she’s calling him “my boyfriend” which apparently means something else. You know what it means? It means that I can no longer enjoy taking huffs off of his good smellingness, that’s what it means. But it also now means that I have stacked the social engagements with Steve’s band of geeks and their wives and now will have someone to talk to who isn’t Eric, Scott or Jason. For the first time since Mo left, I’m not dreading the upcoming Christmas dealy at Joel’s.

*This morning, I was sitting in an unbelievable line at Starbucks (see previous bullet point) and called some coworkers to see if they wanted me to bring them anything (I’m trying to be a better person). They did, so I ended up with a bunch of hot, tasty bevs and then realized that I had just fucked myself because it was super cold and I was now going to have to walk in from a very distant parking spot due to my lateness. However, when I pulled around the back, right by the door, there was a beautiful open spot in Rock Star Row up against the building. Maybe 100 steps total to my desk. Karma is not bullshit, people. Screw Santa, the mofo universe is watching.

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Can I clean your windshield for you, miss?

Wednesday, December 5, 2007

So far this week, I made soup, got sick and also, had a crazy meeting, and have threatened to go into hiding, perhaps in the Yukon. Which I’m not sure if I know where that is but it sounds really good. Alaska, right? I hope so.

I finished my story for class and also, can’t believe the semester is almost over. In fact, this Tuesday was the last time the class would meet in our classroom, since next week, we’re meeting at Professor McDreamy’s house, to workshop said story and also one more and also, drink of the wines. Well, they will be, I’ll be drinking of the mineral water, as I will, as ever, have a 90 minute drive home.

However, in cool news, the boat story was plucked by the program and submitted to a national thingy/competition/whosits, which was pretty awesome, because I didn’t have a clue that it was being considered. Of course, I have this problem where I’m freaked out by attention and performance anxiety when it comes to my prose, but I also just wanted to find Dr. Frank and be like “Not a good fit!? Denied acceptance three years in a row? Suck it, bizatch!” but I am a very serious artiste and above such childishness. Of course.

Still, I hope he’s sucking it. Just a little.

The thing that pisses me off the most in this world these days seems to be a sloppy windshield on my car. It makes me irate, as evidenced by my near panic while trying to find the Pope Hilarius cafeteria. For some reason, the factory-installed wiper on the Murano has always been ghetto, but I lived with it during the summer. However, now that it’s winter, we need to bring out the heavy guns. Esteban went down to the auto parts store and, against his better judgment, took the recommendation of the parts guy and bought some sort of cheapish blades, which of course, were an absolute disaster in the recent snowfall (although markedly better than the Nissan branded blades). I think my ideal windshield wiper would be a razor blade that scraped the windshield dry with every pass. None of those channels of smearing! Precision, people! I demand nothing less than perfection when it comes to my vision.

I called him and complained about the smearing and he sighed and said that he’d research the Murano message boards, which just boggles my mind. First of all, my way would have been to drive to the dealer, point at the streaking, shout “UNACCEPTABLE!” and then tap my foot until an appropriate blade was produced, perhaps by gloved footmen wearing white powdered wigs. However, Esteban derives strange levels of satisfaction when it comes to maintaining the cars. I didn’t even KNOW there were such a thing as Murano message boards, but apparently Esteban has researched this and frequents them. Wow, is all I can say to that. Just wow. The gloved footmen at the dealer can rest easy that Esteban is on the case.

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A very snowy night and a Major Award

Monday, December 3, 2007

I would like to have just one day. Just one day (!) where I do not have to thump on someone’s parade at work. Seriously, today it was a conference call for what was my big hairy project for 2006 that is now thisclose to being finished (and has been handed off to my replacement in my former role, although I sit in on the meetings as an advisor/ consultant/ Yoda figure) and when one of the users pointed out a serious design flaw in the app’s logic, the developer just confirmed that yup, yep, that’s how it works, yep, you nailed it and was just going to steamroll over the issue until I took myself off of mute and basically cried “Oh hells no” except in project coordinator-ese and then a very sullen and dejected developer scurried back to their corner. I’m pretty sure that they didn’t want to deal with it because the issue seems like it’s cosmetic, but in actuality, I suspect it speaks to a flaw in the internal logic of the app and oh my god, I just read how boring this shit is and please forgive me and I’ll try to be funnier. Fart cookies!

So, when last we left, I was heading out to the BFE suburb to meet up with Mary Kaye in the party suite she had for the occasion. I decided to take the highway, because while the city is pretty half-assed during a snowstorm, the county normally has their shit together and the beltline is their highest priority. And I was right, the roads were fine, but visibility was unbelievably awful and my windshield wipers were icing over constantly. Fucking winter!

Mary Kaye looked seriously drop dead gorgeous in an absolute perfect Gwyneth Paltrow-type gown and antique rhinestone cuff bracelet. Seriously, it was like being in the company of an Oscar winner. I was going to wear one of my collection of Igigi wrap dresses, but given the fact that the weather outside was frightful, I opted instead for dress slacks and a Kiyonna wrap top (with, as Esteban called it, a Judo belt) and the little black shrug sweater (purchased on a whim from Torrid but should have purchased twenty because I wear it almost everywhere) with heeled but stable black pumps. I was the first to arrive due to the roads, but soon we were joined by her cadre of supporters and then it was time to head to the college across the river. I figured I’d meet them there, since I already planned to cut out early, because I was worried about the level of accumulation and my 15 mile drive back home. Mary Kaye asks if I know where Pope Hilarius’ cafeteria was, and I say Yes, and off we all go.

Except that when I get there, the cafeteria is deserted and the lights are turned off. Given that the dinner was at 5:30 and it was, at that moment, 5:25, clearly I was in the wrong spot. Plus, there were no cars pulling up, no fancy people getting out, nothing. I drove around, looking for the rest of the party, but the snowstorm had gotten worse and it was difficult to identify even the color of passing cars. I finally parked and tried calling Mary Kaye’s cell, but apparently I didn’t have a correct cell phone number for her. I tried searching my Gmail through my phone. Nothing. Then I called the house and asked Esteban to search through our caller id for a long distance area code that he didn’t recognize, which he could only do if he was not on the phone. Great. He called back and had nothing. I drove around some more, but the snow was so bad that you couldn’t even see where roads were and where parking lots ended. I drove up at least three curbs trying to find places to turn around. I called Esteban back and asked him to log into Pope Hilarius’ website and find the cafeteria. He found nothing, just names of halls and references to the cafeteria (and student’s favorite dishes there) but no mention of where the cafeteria actually was. I flagged down a kid struggling to drag his trombone through the snow and asked him where the cafeteria was, and he gestured back in the general area of everything in the world. Helpful, thanks! But I could understand his dismay, because the weather? It was a shit bag.

Then a car passed me, turned around, honked, and then slowly passed me, as though urging me to follow it. Aha! This must be one of the party, sent out to fetch me! I followed it through the campus until it parked and then someone got out looking pissed, someone who was not part of Mary Kaye’s support committee. I wanted to cry. How could this happen when all we did was cross the bridge! If it hadn’t been thick as peanut butter outside, I would have been able to actually see the hotel from where I was! WTMFF!

At this point, it was 6:15 and I had had it. The speeches were either mostly or already done and I could think of nothing else to do, so I went home (which took another 45 minutes), put on my pajamas and demanded that Esteban watch Shrek 3 with me.

Yesterday, Mary Kaye called to find out what happened. It turned out that she didn’t have my cell phone number in her phone and apparently when you walked into the deserted cafeteria, there was a sign telling you to go somewhere else, and I didn’t see anyone because they had to park three blocks away and walk through buildings to get there. So yeah, the whole thing was fubar and I was very disappointed to have missed Mary Kaye’s big night and speech and all of her recognition for being the first person in the history of Pope Hilarius to come out publicly but also pioneering the awareness of GLBT issues and leaving a lasting legacy on a very conservative Catholic campus. Ten years ago, I was so afraid that when she came out, they were going to expel her for some bogus reason, but instead, they gave her a Major Award and a big shindig in her honor. Clearly sometimes I don’t give this town enough credit, but it just makes the surprise and delight that much more enjoyable.

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Why my life is stressed, volume 4032

Sunday, December 2, 2007

I’m supposed to be working on a short story but realized that already it is December 2 and already I am behind on Holidailies. There is shame. Shame and also a very delicious bit of cake on the desk beside me as I work. The cake wins. This should be no surprise. Cake always wins over shame. Wow, who needs psychoanalysis, I pretty much just summed up my world in five tiny words.

Yesterday, I woke up super early and felt extraordinarily well-rested, as has been happening more frequently now that I have a sleep snorkel and was full of boundless energy to jump out of bed, which aggrieves Esteban to no end as he would rather spend roughly five hours lounging in bed, procrastinating the need to put on socks. And while I do give in to his need for pillow time on occasion, I was way too hyper and bouncy to do anything of the kind. Esteban was doing his homebrew stuff with Scotty Boom Boom anyway (if you’re coming to Meatacon, you get try some of their creation on the sleigh ride) and I had, like, a major To Do list. I really have to do something about my To Do lists, because in my head, I planned to finish my short story that’s due on Tuesday, start on my Holiday cards, do at least half of my freelance projects, finish the laundry, go grocery shopping, make soup, buy furniture for the new den (still empty, thank you very much, but the floorboards are up, at least), clean my bedroom, clean the breezeway, buy some cedar boughs for the front porch and breezeway door, dig the wreaths out of the basement and also figure out what to wear for an event honoring my friend Mary Kaye, who in 1997 started the very first GLBT Awareness group at Pope Hilarius (yes, the uber conservative college where Mopie worked when she lived here). Oh, and it was supposed to snow. A lot.

This really didn’t concern me too much, other than the fact that it was a serious mistake to try to go to both the warehouse place (for CDs for the Holiday Card exchange) on a Saturday morning and then the grocery store on a day when the weather forecast was making television meteorologists surreptitiously rub their crotches up against the teleprompter because their erection was driving them to distraction. It took almost an hour at the warehouse place, mostly spent trying to get out of the building after paying for my shit (seriously, why the old lady with the highlighter checking everyone out? They never actually look at the stuff and it just makes a huge logjam of people trying to flee what is usually a horrendous shopping experience in a really dismal place and makes you question the value of buying 178 frozen chicken shumai dumplings for $8 and whether your life has room for that many dumplings in it.

I don’t know why I go to Sam’s, quite honestly, since I hate it so much that I put off going until it’s absolutely necessary and they never have what I want (why don’t they sell Chinese food take out boxes, for instance? Isn’t the entire premise of the warehouse club? That it’s there for small business owners, and not people who feel more satisfied if they have a 12-pack of space toothbrushes stowed in their bathroom cupboard?) and yet the minute I let my membership expire (why do I pay them to let me buy things from them? So many questions!) then I need padded CD mailers and Office Max sells them for three times the cost plus they never have as many as I need, plus they just started carrying 2004 Coppola Claret for $14 a bottle, which is pretty much my favorite winter wine ever, so I guess I’m fucked either way. Sam’s Club, you suck, even though your frosted blue eyeshadow wearing cashier carded me for the wine and said that I didn’t look a day over 26. Bah. Let’s move on.

Then I went to the grocery store, which was packed to the freaking gills, but then it started snowing while I was in the store and I actually witnessed the elevation in hysteria from the shoppers.

I made it out alive, hating people, by noon. Which meant that the furniture buying, soup making, (fucking) laundry doing and other grandiose ideas were pretty much screwed, since I had to meet Mary Kaye at 4 pm. By the time I made it back home, it was already getting sloppy and hard to see, and while I unloaded the Murano’s boot (which is the Not Trunk area that Esteban accuses me of trying to Anglo-ify but I ask you, what else do you call it? “Cargo area” sounds way too self-important and also, I don’t have cargo, I have groceries and usually my school satchel (Anglo-ified!) and all of my reusable grocery sacks. It’s not like I’m touting industrial components around back there. Therefore, “the boot” actually makes more sense inside my head, and also, it sounds much better. Ok, more British. Shut up) the snow had already started to accumulate on the driveway. I spent an hour putting shit away and picking up the million little pieces of garbage that Esteban leaves all over the kitchen (You see, when you open the film wrapper off of a tub of (Mo, shield your eyes) cottage cheese (Ok, Mo, done) then it’s very difficult to walk an extra 12 to 18 inches to deposit said wrapper into the garbage (rubbish bin), therefore the stove becomes the staging area for said garbage until such a time that someone comes home and has nowhere to put a bag of groceries because everything’s covered in used paper towels and vaguely scummy ephemera. AGH!

I only had a few hours before I had to leave so I kicked it into high gear with my short story. By which I mean that I wrote three more paragraphs and played Desktop Defense whenever I got stuck. Creative process, people!

If I had only had some kind of Greek chorus to warn me of the impending cluster fuck when I left for Mary Kaye’s shindig, I would have just saved myself the pain and frustration and stayed home, but sadly, no Greek chorus, no saving of frustration. But that will have to wait until later, as I must get back to the school work.

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Why my life is stressed, volume 4032

Sunday, December 2, 2007

I’m supposed to be working on a short story but realized that already it is December 2 and already I am behind on Holidailies. There is shame. Shame and also a very delicious bit of cake on the desk beside me as I work. The cake wins. This should be no surprise. Cake always wins over shame. Wow, who needs psychoanalysis, I pretty much just summed up my world in five tiny words.

Yesterday, I woke up super early and felt extraordinarily well-rested, as has been happening more frequently now that I have a sleep snorkel and was full of boundless energy to jump out of bed, which aggrieves Esteban to no end as he would rather spend roughly five hours lounging in bed, procrastinating the need to put on socks. And while I do give in to his need for pillow time on occasion, I was way too hyper and bouncy to do anything of the kind. Esteban was doing his homebrew stuff with Scotty Boom Boom anyway (if you’re coming to Meatacon, you get try some of their creation on the sleigh ride) and I had, like, a major To Do list. I really have to do something about my To Do lists, because in my head, I planned to finish my short story that’s due on Tuesday, start on my Holiday cards, do at least half of my freelance projects, finish the laundry, go grocery shopping, make soup, buy furniture for the new den (still empty, thank you very much, but the floorboards are up, at least), clean my bedroom, clean the breezeway, buy some cedar boughs for the front porch and breezeway door, dig the wreaths out of the basement and also figure out what to wear for an event honoring my friend Mary Kaye, who in 1997 started the very first GLBT Awareness group at Pope Hilarius (yes, the uber conservative college where Mopie worked when she lived here). Oh, and it was supposed to snow. A lot.

This really didn’t concern me too much, other than the fact that it was a serious mistake to try to go to both the warehouse place (for CDs for the Holiday Card exchange) on a Saturday morning and then the grocery store on a day when the weather forecast was making television meteorologists surreptitiously rub their crotches up against the teleprompter because their erection was driving them to distraction. It took almost an hour at the warehouse place, mostly spent trying to get out of the building after paying for my shit (seriously, why the old lady with the highlighter checking everyone out? They never actually look at the stuff and it just makes a huge logjam of people trying to flee what is usually a horrendous shopping experience in a really dismal place and makes you question the value of buying 178 frozen chicken shumai dumplings for $8 and whether your life has room for that many dumplings in it.

I don’t know why I go to Sam’s, quite honestly, since I hate it so much that I put off going until it’s absolutely necessary and they never have what I want (why don’t they sell Chinese food take out boxes, for instance? Isn’t the entire premise of the warehouse club? That it’s there for small business owners, and not people who feel more satisfied if they have a 12-pack of space toothbrushes stowed in their bathroom cupboard?) and yet the minute I let my membership expire (why do I pay them to let me buy things from them? So many questions!) then I need padded CD mailers and Office Max sells them for three times the cost plus they never have as many as I need, plus they just started carrying 2004 Coppola Claret for $14 a bottle, which is pretty much my favorite winter wine ever, so I guess I’m fucked either way. Sam’s Club, you suck, even though your frosted blue eyeshadow wearing cashier carded me for the wine and said that I didn’t look a day over 26. Bah. Let’s move on.

Then I went to the grocery store, which was packed to the freaking gills, but then it started snowing while I was in the store and I actually witnessed the elevation in hysteria from the shoppers.

I made it out alive, hating people, by noon. Which meant that the furniture buying, soup making, (fucking) laundry doing and other grandiose ideas were pretty much screwed, since I had to meet Mary Kaye at 4 pm. By the time I made it back home, it was already getting sloppy and hard to see, and while I unloaded the Murano’s boot (which is the Not Trunk area that Esteban accuses me of trying to Anglo-ify but I ask you, what else do you call it? “Cargo area” sounds way too self-important and also, I don’t have cargo, I have groceries and usually my school satchel (Anglo-ified!) and all of my reusable grocery sacks. It’s not like I’m touting industrial components around back there. Therefore, “the boot” actually makes more sense inside my head, and also, it sounds much better. Ok, more British. Shut up) the snow had already started to accumulate on the driveway. I spent an hour putting shit away and picking up the million little pieces of garbage that Esteban leaves all over the kitchen (You see, when you open the film wrapper off of a tub of (Mo, shield your eyes) cottage cheese (Ok, Mo, done) then it’s very difficult to walk an extra 12 to 18 inches to deposit said wrapper into the garbage (rubbish bin), therefore the stove becomes the staging area for said garbage until such a time that someone comes home and has nowhere to put a bag of groceries because everything’s covered in used paper towels and vaguely scummy ephemera. AGH!

I only had a few hours before I had to leave so I kicked it into high gear with my short story. By which I mean that I wrote three more paragraphs and played Desktop Defense whenever I got stuck. Creative process, people!

If I had only had some kind of Greek chorus to warn me of the impending cluster fuck when I left for Mary Kaye’s shindig, I would have just saved myself the pain and frustration and stayed home, but sadly, no Greek chorus, no saving of frustration. But that will have to wait until later, as I must get back to the school work.

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Cache, or Lack Thereof

Monday, November 26, 2007

Apparently this year’s Holiday Card Exchange has been fraught with mishaps and elvish mischief, because a lot of people are reporting that they haven’t received the preliminary list that went out over the weekend, and when I check the list, I never received their email asking to sign up. So if you sent me something and haven’t heard from me yet, please check in on the comments with your email address (only I can see it) and I will send you an email that you can reply to, which will hopefull evade Gmail’s overprotective spam filter.

Also, in other Holiday related stuff, I have signed up for Holidailies in effort to get back into the swing of posting/writing regularly. Yes, I know, December is crizazy, with struggling to finish my work project by New Year’s Eve (when my budget turns into a pumpkin, spent or not), finals, general domestic craziness and doing the prep work for the Minicon (although really, most of that is done and the rest can’t be done until January and also, already 24 of the hottest people on the planet have signed up, leaving a mere 10 spots remaining) but as my new writing mentor, Dr. O. Henry, says: “you must make time for writing. The laundry will get done, the bills paid, the baby fed, regardless of whether you spend an hour a day writing or not, so put writing first, otherwise you’ll never get to it.” So expect many bursts of short but sweet entries throughout December, rather than my normal 2500 word essays and treatises. Ok, I’m giving myself way too much credit, but still. Holidailies! Yay!

This weekend, I took the advice of my freelance editor and actually did pretty much nothing all weekend. I spent a lot of it watching a marathon of Anne of Green Gables and it occurred to me that when I met Esteban, he looked a hell of a lot like Gilbert Blythe, so much so that watching the marathon, I was getting a little freaked out by the resemblance. How have I never noticed this before? Also, I’m struck by how truly awful an actor Megan Follows and Schuyler Grant are. I had only seen the non-LM Montgomery sequel to the sequel, the one where suddenly Anne is traipsing through WWI with someone else’s baby, searching for Gilbert, smuggling diamonds and also possibly a spy, to which I can give a hearty WTF because it is so very abyssmal that I think Kevin Sullivan might just have been smoking crack. Also, wow, Megan must have taken up smoking in the years between projects because her voice had dropped at least an octave. Although, really, my own voice is very low and I don’t touch cigarettes, so I shouldn’t be so judgey.

Fuck it, I enjoy the judgey.

Speaking of judging, today, I am enrolling in classes for what is my final semester as a Master’s student. Which means that next semester, I have to sit in a room and have my academic progress judged by three professors who will decide whether or not I can a) receive my Master’s Degree and b) continue on for the PhD. I haven’t decided whether or not I will go for that, but will still aim for it, since it would be nice to have the option. Right now, after last semester, I am heartily sick of academia and as Betty points out, I really can’t see myself teaching in a university setting. I have been ruined by the real world at this point and get frustrated by those sheltered from it. Also, the paychecks are wee and I enjoy shiny pretty things too much.

If you listen to the Podcast (and really, you should be because my fellow casters of the pod are hilarious and also, very fucking sexy) on Embarrassment, you heard me tell a story about paying someone $5 at class for a silly reason and then sitting through the entire class, just waiting for the anecdote to get blabbed to everyone. But it didn’t, and I was so very relieved. I shouldn’t have relaxed, because not TWO MINUTES into the very next class, one of the parties who got mildly inconvenienced in the $5 incident blurted it out to the world and I believe not only was there a raised voice, but also finger pointing. I stood proud, refusing to be ashamed for what some might call bribery, but what I consider simply following through on saying something stupid so that those witnessing the exchange wouldn’t think that my mouth wrote checks that my ass couldn’t cash (my ass can’t cash a lot of checks, mind you, but $5 checks don’t even require a second form of identification) and now it has become the new classroom joke. Don’t want to do something? I’ll pay you $5. Don’t like my story? What if I pay you $5? My writing workshop has turned into a strip club, requiring wads of bills in small denominations. And all of my cache I had built up for being wry and clever and the cool girl? Gone. Presuming that there was any cache in the first place. I am woefully lacking in cache.

This is why I am shy around new people, right here. Because I don’t want them to know how stupid I am right off the bat. I’d rather allow my stupidity to unfold slowly, like the petals of a flower.

A big old stupid flower.

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Tinysculptedgenitalsonfacialhair.com

Saturday, November 24, 2007

Esteban : December can’t get here soon enough. I am looking forward to trimming the Beard of Justice.
Weetabix : Is everyone going to take a picture? Of all the justice?
Esteban : Yes. Actually, you are going to help me with that. There are no Self Portraits of Justice.
Weetabix : You could do a MySpace angle.
Esteban : I don’t know how I feel about that. Is that… um… like genitalia or something?
Weetabix : MySpace angles just mean the photo is taken from above so that you don’t have a double chin and your eyes get all big due to the shift in perspect—nevermind, boring photography dork stuff. Although…your beard is starting to look a little pubic.
Esteban : My pubes don’t have all this grey. Wait, do they?
Weetabix : Maybe we could sculpt you a little penis figure to stick out of the thatch. Like, make it out of stuffed pantyhose or something.
Esteban : A penis on my chin? I don’t want guys to think I’m making a suggestion or anything.
Weetabix : No, it wouldn’t be something that looked suggestive. It would have to be very small so that it didn’t look weird. Like, a quarter-sized penis and balls.
Esteban : I would have thought you’d suggest a vagina. It would be so much easier to do on a face.
Weetabix : Oh, you’re right! We could do that with Femo! Maybe your mom could help. She’s good at sculpting.
Esteban : We are not going to call my mom and ask her to help us sculpt tiny genitals to place on my Beard of Justice!
Weetabix : Maybe you could have both kinds? One on either side! Oh my god, this is totally a craft project. I wonder if you could do the veins with the stuffed pantyhose, though? Maybe that would have to be Femo too.
Esteban : You will not make the Beard of Justice a hermaphrodite.
Weetabix : Come on, we never get to do craft projects together! It could be like StuffOnmycat.com, except it would be Junkonmybeard.com. Actually, I’ll totally bet that hermaphroditicbeard.com hasn’t been registered yet!
Esteban : One can only guess.

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No Exit

Monday, November 19, 2007

It occurred to me yesterday that I really don’t like Modest Mouse. I thought I did, and quite honestly, “Float On” is a great song. It is. It’s not you, “Float On”, it’s me. However, I continue to write the names of the members of Stars in my spiral bound notebooks, and then draw hearts around the name, and then also sometimes when no one is looking, I write “Ms. Weetabix Stars”.

I actually possess no spiral bound notebook. Moleskine, then. (Oh god, I’m one of those)

Yes, I know, I need to post pictures of my bangs. I fully believed that I would have a very cute picture of myself in said bangs while in Las Vegas, perhaps with my faithful travel companion, but sadly, no pictures, no Vegas. My battery died in the first 18 hours and I never could be arsed to dig through my 18 changes of clothes to find the charger. So I suck. But there’s this, taken ten minutes before I walked out of work this afternoon (thus extra exasperation) on my camera phone, which I’ve finally figured out how to work and send pictures.
No Exit

It’s like I’ve just discovered the digital age. I’ve so far taken pictures of Esteban’s tongue, most of the weird things on my cubicle and also, my work neighbor looking like she’s absolutely humoring me and hating life.

Vegas was, well, Vegas. I got about halfway through the story I’m working on, which is awesome, and I would have probably finished it if, er, we hadn’t been in Vegas and only a few very long Vegas blocks from the single hottest dance club in all the land, complete with male GoGo dancers and lots of luscious boys who call me sweetie and gorgeous and also adore my rack the way only gay men can. I chalked it up to being a writer, an homage to dead drunk white guys, but holy fuck, how did these guys write with such killer hangovers? We were out until what was 6:30 am in Wisconsin and then I spent the remainder of the day breathing through my mouth and trying to soak up the gut death with In ‘N’Out burger. Stupid vodka.

Stupid Vegas.

To be clear, the parts where I wasn’t hating bottle service? Those were divine, and being there in November, I can almost get why people live in Las Vegas. But then the tourists remind me why I could never live there, and the general stupidity of said tourists nearly caused me to miss my flight (90 minutes in the security line, got off the tram to the D concourse just as they were announcing final boarding for my flight and had to sprint the terminal, which is particularly cruel at 6:45 in the morning). But then I landed in GB without a coat on and had to walk through the parking lot to find the car (Esteban had flown out that morning (and had a connection in Las Vegas four hours after I left) in yet another cruel trick of fate during our busy schedules) and it was really really fucking cold without a jacket and revised my opinion yet again.

I did end up also revising the body image/Alzheimer’s story I abandoned a year ago and also finishing the draft to the boat story (I don’t know if I talked about it here (do I ever talk about anything here anymore (wait, don’t answer that)?) but the first story I wrote for this semester is about a boat and was inspired by the Booze Cruise this August, except that the King Of Nothing does not make an appearance. A tragedy) and actually submitted it to a contest (that it won’t win, but it was a gesture to symbolize inside my head that the story was finished and also, holy shit, when did I get parenthetical happy again? Apparently right now) and am now engaged in the sleeping story. Last week, I walked back to the parking garage with one of my classmates (how much do I love that? Seriously, if you want to be close to my heart, nothing makes me happier than having someone to talk to while I walk between the library and the music building. If someone ever were playing the timpanis while we were chatting about literary theory or gossiping about classmates? I think my head would explode) we talked about how our professor (who is dreamy (this is not what we talked about, but rather a statement of fact that I feel the need to mentioned at every juncture)) made rules in the beginning of the class and they were this: don’t kill your characters, no pets and no dreams. I killed people in the boat story, I’m writing about dreams in the second (oh stop rolling your eyes, it’s not a fucking deus ex machina, sheesh (ok, I would also be rolling my eyes, but trust me)) and he’s killing a pet in his story. And then we high fived. I want more high fiving in my life. Not fake corporate high fiving, but rather the high five for the joy of high fivery. That is all I’m trying to say. That and the fact that my professor is dreamy.

In other news, there’s a few days left to get in on the Holiday Card exchange (and there’s still room), so send me e-mail if you’re interested, because I need to know by midnight on Wednesday (the list is going out on Thursday for verification (damn Thanksgiving is early this year). Also, there are still some spots for the Green Bay Minicon. If you’ve always thought about going but are freaked out that you won’t know anyone (or that we’re going to be an albino freak named Phineas who wants to eat your liver) send me an e-mail or talk about it on the Product Anarchy forums, which is where all the cool kids hang out these days, now that they’ve recalled Aqua Dots.

In other news, my big project is, like, going into 7:05 am this morning, waiting in Starbucks drive thruUser Acceptance testing, which is just unbelievable and weird, because I’ve named the thing (a stupid name that happened at the very end of a conference call when no one could come up with anything, and we just figured that we’d go with it, but now it’s on a logo and there’s no going back and THIS is how that shit happens, people. Think about that, learn from my mistake, and next time don’t open your mouth because you just want to get off the fucking phone because you have to pee, because flash forward three months and you’re going to have to stand in front of a room full of people and look at the name on a Powerpoint slide and want to punch someone in the nuts, and you can’t because you don’t have any nuts. Aaaaagh!) and now I’ve got to do like roll out stuff and holy crap, wild and crazy stuff. Plus, the company is going through all sorts of upheaval, so things are, well, it’s a good time to be an opinionated ballbuster who apparently coerces people to abide my will. And that’s a paraphrased quote.

I’ve never felt so feminine.

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