That's My Bix!

I’ve been suffering from what longtime readers will recognize as my quarterly episode of flutter tummy. I like the idea of food, sort of, but the actual eating of said food’ not so much. I’m not taking any Prednisone right now (a notorious cause of my picky eater syndrome) so it’s a mystery. I haven’t been hungry since Tuesday, when I went out to lunch with Penny and Carissa and finished my taco salad despite the fact that I was already overfull. I should know better. Even when I do regain my appetite, I don’t think I’ll be able to eat refried beans for awhile.

I think if I knew why I mysteriously find myself afflicted with flutter tummy, I would abuse the knowledge until I lost six dress sizes. It has always been my theory of denial that fate has decided that I should be fat for some reason that has yet to play out. Like Owen Meany’s size and voice being divine intervention. Or perhaps Citibank doesn’t want me to get within fighting range of designer sizes, because oy vey’ the sudden irrational purchases I would be convinced to make. Lane Bryant is great, but it’s not like I can go in there and break the bank buying a pair of jeans and a shirt, as I could if say, Dolce and Gabbana started making up to size 26.

Somewhere in Italy, two very gay men are fanning themselves and trembling.

I decided that with the exhaustive heat, maybe I was just dehydrated. After all, with the shoe challenge, I haven’t been drinking enough water. How are the two connected? Well, you see, I’m usually wearing a pair of unreasonable shoes which are uncomfortable, and therefore, I don’t want to be running to the cafeteria for 16 ounce bottles of water (which last about an hour on my desk) or the subsequent run to the bathroom that follows this regime. Never timed appropriately, of course. So I’d rather sit there like a camel and implore my ass to give up some of its camel’s hump instead. So, in other words, I decided that my shoes were making me sick.

(By the way, I’ve been doing a lousy job of updating my Flickr group, but for those who are keeping track, today marked the 25th day of the shoe challenge. Three people have dropped out, with two more predicted next week. I could keep going, but man, I’m starting to dread the walk in from the parking lot in heels. Plus, I’ve worn two pair of flip flops so far and honestly, I’d be more comfortable in my pumps. I don’t know how everyone wears them all the time, with the big prongy thing between your toes and the way they make noise all the time? Yech.)

Yesterday morning, instead of my standard breakfast of a piece of whole grain toast smeared with peanut butter eaten while checking my e-mail, followed by two Babybels eaten while driving, I decided instead to get some iced tea at Starbucks and concentrate on rehydrating all day. I was planning to go golfing with Penny and Carissa so had worn my New Balance trainers (I had been saving them as something to keep my spirits high during the strappy spike heel days) and therefore my hydration plan would be a breeze. Brilliant!

Except that I had gotten onto the highway and was a few gulps into my tea when suddenly’ not good. In fact, not good at all. Flutter tummy had decided to have a Norma Rae moment right there on the fricking freeway. I powered through it, making promises to God and also the Pixies playing on the iPod. I somehow managed to power through the crisis and retain control of my faculties. It’s amazing how the body’s emergency systems can be overridden by sheer force of will.

The fact that I can manage to talk myself out of vomiting while Esteban cannot seem to control his flatulence clearly points to the superiority of the female physical state. I mean, as if you needed more proof than the whole affair that involves dilating and afterbirth.

(I am not pregnant. No. No I am not. If you even suggest it, comments section, I will roll my eyes at you for being predictable.)

However, I then decided that what I really needed was a Hardee’s biscuit with grape jelly on it. The fact that I decided to counter ‘almost urping’ with ‘greasy fast food biscuit’ clearly points to the inferiority of this particular female’s mental process. I zipped through a drive-through and went to work. There, I ate the top half of the biscuit. That’s when my flutter tummy picked up a her bullhorn and said ‘Look at this dumb muthfucka we got here.’

Norma Rae as portrayed by Samuel L. Jackson.

I then spent the better half of the morning crouched at my desk, rocking slightly and wishing instead I had just gone the banana and peanut butter route that had been breakfast/lunch on Wednesday. Because a banana smeared with peanut butter never hated anyone. A banana smeared with peanut butter is your friend. A greasy biscuit with a clot of shiny grape jelly? It’s a stranger offering you candy from a van.

About halfway through the day, it became obvious that my decision to save my running shoes for a special day had been a sound one. It was definitely the day for swift feet.

I ended up piking on golf with Carissa and Penny and went home to pout. Strangely enough, I was starting to hear that voice inside my head. Everyone’s heard that voice. It’s the same one that tells you that yes, you’re going to be throwing up in roughly thirteen seconds, and then it will be better. You know that the voice speaks the absolute truth and therefore you take that voice very seriously.

Except in this case, rather than being an early warning system, the voice was telling me that Norma Rae was ready to negotiate. Indeed, flutter tummy was demanding some bland chicken and potatoes. Flutter tummy was serious this time and would otherwise stage a walkout by midnight. This voice stipulated that our agreement was for a white potato that was either mashed or baked with butter and maybe a little salt but no sour cream, no cheese, no French fries, no fancy Food Network shit. The chicken could be baked or grilled, but it had to be basic and plain. Also, the voice stipulated that the contract had some riders and a few non-negotiables (‘No curry’) and then Norma Rae and I would be able to shake on it and go back to our corners with a mutually equitable solution.

It seems to have been a good plan, as I made it through dinner without incident, and then went to bed after watching Project Runway a day late. As of this morning, I wasn’t interested in anything again, but by lunch, I decided that I needed some organic blue corn chips and queso dip, which is still sitting like lead in my stomach six hours later. But at least it’s staying there.

Honestly, I think it might be the heat. It was 100 degrees today, but I was wearing a hoodie and jeans (because the hoodie matched the red slides I was wearing for the challenge and also because it’s cold as fuck in my office) so it doesn’t exactly inspire one to feel full and uncomfortable. I can only think that if I lived in California, I’d be a size 10. Yeah. That’s right, Weetabix. If you can’t blame your fat ass on fate, then blame Wisconsin.

Which reminds me: if you’re not already subscribed to the 3 Fast 3 Furious podcast on iTunes, the new one is up, and not only does it feature the cutest girls in all of San Francisco (and also me), we talk about cheese and sex and being scrappy and prostitutes and extreme temperatures and also, for the first time ever in multi-media: Esteban. That’s right, the man makes a guest appearance. At one point, there are three girls crawling all over him at once, while I sit by and watch helplessly. Yeah. It’s hot.

Go. Listen. Fill your’ you know what.

I’ve mentioned earlier that half the reason I haven’t been updating a lot is due to my project at work. Lo, behold, it is at a very critical stage right now, the motherfucking project. At this point, it is starting to feel as though I have actually pushed it through a birthing canal, a fourteen-pound giant-headed Powerpoint deck that will bite your fingers off if you so much as look at it funny. You should see the graphs, people! The charts! Oh, the butt ugly default colors that we have to use! I tried to make them in shades of pastels, but then it clashed with our corporate logo, which is SO first year design school.

Can you tell that Project Runway started? (By the way, I want to hurt the No Wire Hangers guy, and not in the way that he probably enjoys.)

Anyway, the project. It’s out of my hands at the moment, the Schoolhouse Rock version of going to committee while I hope that it gets made into a bill. It will, though, because otherwise, I’m going to shiv someone in the ladies bathroom. And I might even have to fly to India. Which would sort of be awesome. But first, the waiting and the seeing. And then more of the waiting.

Pennylicious almost got to help me with the project, which would have been really cool, since we’ve worked for the same company for five years, but never actually touched what the other does. But we have now officially had a meeting, during which we did not discuss shoes or lunch plans or doing naughty things to boys. Except that I’m lying about the shoes, but it wasn’t my fault that I was wearing a particularly cute but impractical pair that day.

On a different meeting, I had to deal with a particularly odious person who doesn’t have a lot of power, but cherishes the tiny bit of power that she does have. And after said meeting, I was absolutely seething.

I never meant to become one of those people who mince words. Really, I can swear up a blue streak as well as your average sailor (my mother’s drunken escapades were probably where I first understood the power of a well-turned colorful phrase) and for proof of this, I direct you to the 3 Fast 3 Furious podcasts, where I am trying very hard to behave and still manage to drop the F-bomb at least once a week (although on the last one and I think the one that comes out this Thursday, I have increased my average significantly).

Imagine, this from the same girl who chose not to say ‘hell’ when reciting bible passages in parochial school. The devil came from a quiet place that had no name and was veiled in secrecy.

Words have power. There’s no denying that.

And I suppose that it is from this well-spring that I have issues with a few words. I’ve detailed this before, but to sum up: I cannot stand gender-centric slang, particularly those words regarding female genitalia.

After this meeting, I just sat at my desk and fumed about how stupid she had been, how completely self-serving and pointless, how she was not taking the company’s best interest to heart just to serve her own ego and for the first time in my adult life, I actually wished that I could break my own rule and use one of the Verboten Words. The worst one, actually.

Yes, that one.

I just wanted to use it in my own head, to assuage my shock and dismay. My poor tragic brain scrambled. Even though she had very much been a jerk, it wasn’t fair to womankind to use that word, not even in the silence of my own brain. I finally settled on ‘Dumb Bitch’ which still makes me feel ashamed for signifying that as a woman she should have acted differently, but man, it still felt good to say it.

I hope that this means that my internal censors are strong enough to resist the use of those words permanently. Because I can only hold those around me to the constraints I follow myself, and if I start using the evil words, then I can no longer restrict their use in my presence. Which would really chafe my vagina.

From: Esteban
Subject: When you next go to Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods…
Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2006 8: 16 am
To: Weetabix

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000CQ01JW/trikuarestudi-20/104-0773512-3860763
Can you get me some of that?

From: Weetabix
Subject: Re: When you next go to Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods…
Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2006 9:42
To: Esteban

They have that in the Snooty Grocery’s natural foods section. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen it there. If not, they have it at the Mega Mart. I had no idea that you liked Annie’s?

From: Esteban
Subject: Re: When you next go to Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods…
Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2006 10:01
To: Weetabix

I don’t have any idea either. But we will find out!!

S

From: Esteban
Subject: Re: When you next go to Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods…
Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2006 10:02
To: Weetabix

Okay, perhaps two exclamation points at the end of that last message was a bit much. Sorry.

S

One of my ‘Must Do Before I Die’ things is to spend Halloween in San Francisco’s Castro neighborhood, and this year, even though Halloween falls on a godforsaken TUESDAY, it’s on. Plane tickets have been acquired. Costume ideas are afoot. Castro Bitches, you hear that? Bring IT.

Right now, I’m torn between my prescribed costume (Ursula the Sea Witch, which would require a meaty upper arm expos’, not to mention, a gallon of lavender body paint) and something that is so twee and belies my secret shame that I hardly dare utter it, but it involves a pink dress, three inch long fake eyelashes, marabou and probably some very cute whiskers.

The problem here is that since I plan to be in the Castro almost every night, it seems silly to stay at my favorite Hotel on the Hill. And unfortunately, aside from one frightening budgety dorm-style hotel (Um, no), there aren’t a lot of hotel options in the area. I’ve been researching vacation rentals and have some e-mails out, but in the process of my search, I realized that I had been ignoring a gold mine of opportunities.

The Gay/Lesbian travel industry.

I am sort of stupid. I mean, I’ve even done some writing for a GLBT magazine, you’d think that I would realize that of course there are more places to stay in the Castro than are listed on Travelocity. If there has ever been one belief I hold dear, it is in the idea of capitalism and of course a free market wouldn’t let me down.

So I looked, and oddly enough, the things that are important to me (location, nice sheets) are also important to the gay boys. And cheap! The B&B’s are totally affordable and darling!

There is a catch, though. There’s always a catch. Specifically, some of them stipulate that they are specifically accommodations for GLBTs.

Neither I nor my travel companion fit any letter of that acronym. Disappointed, I continued to look for the perfect vacation rental, but those affordable B&B’s haunted me.

And then I thought: I wonder if I could pass? I mean, I certainly don’t have any issues with the lifestyle whatsoever, and I get a little giddy that we live in a time when men can kiss each other on the street without being sent to prison ala Oscar Wilde. And I don’t think the recommendations are being exclusionary or discriminatory, but rather making it clear that any guests are going to be exposed to a lot of alternative lifestyles. And goodness knows, the ladies who love ladies? Love Bix. As do the boys who love boys, but that is a bit more of a mystery. Maybe I make them look thin.

And it’s not like they’re going to have a quiz, right? I discussed this with Esteban and he conjectured ‘You would be good in the written portion of a test, but probably not so much on the oral’ and then could no longer be reached for comment because he was laughing too hard at his own joke.

This is a bit of a moral dilemma. I hate to be dishonest, even if by omission with a Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy. And the idea of being in the Straight closet all weekend is very humorous. And the location! Perfection! Absolute perfection! And I love the Castro, with its gorgeous men making out everywhere. The dogs wearing outfits! The Starbois! The safest neighborhood in the entire city!

Actually, you know what bothers me the most? The fact that my life would be imitating a Horatio Sans movie.

Shudder.

Some things I forgot to mention about the Bon Voyage Times Two Party (Now With Extra Llama Face):

Hausfrau drove up especially for the party, but because there was some kind of biker convention in town, she couldn’t get her normal room at the nice hotel and had to stay in a gritty hotel. WTF, Bikers? Isn’t the gritty hotel thing sort of your deal? She also called my cell phone while we were in the emergency room. Scotty answered it, identified himself as Scotty Boom Boom and then had a delightful conversation with her instead, since ‘Weet’s, uh, busy right now.’ Yeah, getting a tetanus shot in one arm and some kind of comedian PA trying to get me to wager on how many stitches we’d need. (He said ‘we’ like it was a special moment we were all sharing.)

(Which reminds me, one of the ways we spend the time in the emergency room, waiting for them to stop being worried that I’d faint when I stood up: talking about what it kind of injuries would result in an injury to the penis that would result in stitches but not Bobbiting. Scotty refused to play this game of Let’s Pretend with me, however. The boy has no sense of imagination.)

We played karaoke revolution for most of the night, and just about everyone sang. Someone made the funniest joke when saying goodbye to Mo Pie: ‘Just remember, I beat you at poker and then beat you at Karaoke Revolution too.’ Which is hilarious since the speaker has never won a hand of poker yet and had stuck to quietly wimpering out the easiest one notes songs offered by the game. And distinctly did not come in first, while Mo and I were just singing the tougher songs for fun, changing lyrics and having a good time. Honestly, we had to remind ourselves to tone it down, because if we put our minds to it, Mopie and I will wipe up the mofo floor with just about everyone on that game. It has become my new catch phrase though, for everything. I was originally changing it up to include cars and income brackets and intelligence, but now I’ve just gone to shorthand with ‘Just remember, I’m better than you. In everything.’

I really hate people sometimes.

Remember, I said that I left after 2 am? When I went back to Scotty’s the next morning to clean up, people were still there. Apparently the party went on until dawn. That’s some dedicated partying. Or dedicated something.

I brought home about six pounds of June’s pineapple fluff. After a week, I reluctantly threw out about two pounds, and only then because something started smelling funky in the fridge and I was worried about the funk somehow permeating it and then I couldn’t even eat anything else in the refrigerator and threw everything away but for the wine. I am completely without guilt about having blown through at least three pounds of pineapple fluff. At my last physical, I was diagnosed with low cholesterol and aside from the pineapple, that sums up the ‘fluff’ part of the pineapple fluff equation. And also pineapple is a fruit. And not just a rum drink garnish, as I would have been led to believe during the first third of my life.

The other thing: I went to Milwaukee and also Chicago. It was damned hot in Milwaukee and Too Damned Hot on the third floor of the Eagles Club but it was especially Are You Fucking Kidding Me? Hot when wedged up between a thousand teenage emo kids who apparently think that the only way they can suffer as upper-middle class wannabes is to refrain from wearing deodorant. I would mock them for wearing jeans, but damn, we were wearing jeans too. I almost wore a hoodie and a camisole, but then opted at the last minute for a micro-fiber wrap shirt, and it’s a damned good thing that I did, because otherwise I would have broken Weetabix Cardinal Fashion Rule #1: The Meaty Grandma Arms Will Be Covered At All Times. Yeah, the hoodie would have been abandoned the second it hit 130 degrees in there.

Jake flew into Chicago and then drove up to Milwaukee to attend the concert with me, and I felt bad because it’s been a very cool summer for the most part and then suddenly, on the day he arrives from the stifling desert, it goes Amazonian with eleventy hundred percent humidity. And what indoor concert venue isn’t air conditioned? At $40 a ticket, with no chairs? The kind that charges $3 for a plastic glass filled with ice and tap water. Dude. DUDE! I am so in the wrong line of business.

Before Angels & Airwaves even got on, we were all just soaked with our own sweat, swatting elbows out of our faces. I had the great pleasure to stand behind BO Guy, who had apparently been training for the concert on a diet of bologna, chili and many pounds of asiago cheese. How I love living in the Dairy state.

When Delonge and the boys came on, we faced a tidal surge of 19-year-old bony bodies, pushing us forward into the 19-year-old bony bodies in front of us. I’ve always felt a healthy connection between my body and solid ground, so it was very scary to have had both feet firmly planted one minute and then be swept several feet forward the next, crushing into the sodden back of the guy in front of us. I walked back, out of the mosh zone and into the area closer to sanity, which was wonderful. And still fucking hot. We could only see glimpses through the bodies and the body surfing but it was a delightful freakshow nonetheless.

After the A&A set, we surged forward with the sea of bodies toward the bar, slammed two waters, half of one went directly down my shirt because have I mentioned the unbelievable heat? My jeans were so damp that they were actually heavy. We checked the clock and realized that we had about an hour to make it to the All-American Rejects set at Summerfest, so we skipped the headliner, Taking Back Sunday and caught a cab back, which upon exiting, I immediately got a hamstring cramp of the magnitude I normally only achieve by bending myself into ridiculous positions in pursuit of’ um, yoga? Yeah. Bikram yoga.

We scouted out the All-American Rejects stage, but the Summerfest open venues are set up stupidly, in that there are picnic tables that people stand upon, which means that unless you’re on a picnic table, you can’t see through the forest of asses and thighs. And then it started to rain. Jake and I were a little jumpy being in a crowd because my god, they did not understand their own strength. We stuck around for a few songs, then decided that some fair food and then sleep would be more fun than standing around looking at the back pockets of hundreds of pairs of manpris. We split a funnel cake, then walked back to the car through light rain, and we didn’t even hurry because we were already soaked with sweat so the rain was, if anything, helping the situation. Back at the hotel rooms, we realized that I had forgotten my key and Jake’s room was locked from the inside, so we had to wait for a night manager to let us in. By the time we got into our respective rooms, we both groaned something about showers and then once I was out of my shower, I was so exhausted that it was all I could do to crawl into bed. Dehydration is a bitch.

In the morning, we decamped from the Russian Cosmonaut Dormitories and hit the road in our separate cars. Since my air conditioning was acting up, we decided to stick with Jake’s rental for the remainder of the weekend, so I dumped my car at my employer’s Shermer office parking garage, then we headed downtown. We were still pretty early, so we parked and went shopping at 900 N. Michigan, where we spent a couple of hours in Bloomingdales shopping for Jake, then when it was my turn, I decided that I was too tired and needed to eat. We headed up to Ed Debevics, where Rizzo hit us on the head with the best phrase of the weekend ‘You don’t know what I got.’ Ed’s is pretty touristy but mmm’. Velveeta on the hamburgers. Love that.

We then checked into The James, which is’ well, words do not describe. They can try, those words, but they will fail. My new boyfriend’s name is James and you know what? Not only does James walk tall and proud, he also talks the talk, baby. Jake had the uber suite, with the big bathroom and the sofa, and I had a standard room, which was lovely and fulfilled my need for MTV and then exceeded it with VH1 and a full-frontal cable channel docket for its widescreen plasma. What’s that? You don’t want to watch TV? Why don’t you just hook up the iPod to the stereo and groove out and spit on the tourists walking on Ontario? The plan was to quickly get changed and then hit the uber-cool lounge for pre-evening cocktails, but after making a few wardrobe changes (I had planned to buy clothes to wear to the ultra lounge, but it didn’t happen, since we pack way too many expectations into our rock star weekends), I made the mistake of sitting on the bed to untangle my necklace.

Oh James. James, you naughty naughty boy. How do you know exactly what I like?

At that point, I just wanted to tank the entire evening. In fact, after we were situated in the lounge with our cocktails (after one of the doormen clones unapologetically checked out my rack’ thanks Keegan, I was feeling very unattractive until that moment. The second time in front of a witness was just icing), I was whining about how the bed, oh god, the bed was calling, and while I really wanted to go out dancing, oh the bed, it was so good and do we have to be rock stars on both nights? Can’t we just be lazy sods and party like the geriatric, enjoy the sweet nothings whispered by James on the second night? We decided to have the best of both worlds: if fellow club girl Poppy didn’t want to stay out too late on a Sunday night or if the club was lame, we’d just catch a cab and go back to the hotel to watch tv.

After we heard the signal from Poppy, we caught a cab to our Lincoln Park club, but it wouldn’t be open for another half hour. We hung out at a Starbucks, where I bolstered my wimpy bed longings with a venti iced mocha. Smart move.

We met Poppy outside of the club and walked in together, to find the club completely deserted at 10:30 pm. Not a good sign. We clearly didn’t need my previously arranged VIP reservation, since not a table was occupied, but we were bolstered by the fact that the music was decent, the spaces were plenty and the light show was fun. And then our girl Jenny (who squealed when she saw my ID because she too is from GB) showed us the vodka menu and the temptation to have a private bar at your own table, with an ice tub and a bottle of ridiculously overpriced vodka? Too much for this girl to resist. Poppy took the high road with Clicquot, while Jake and I toasted the proletariat with a delightful offering from the Netherlands.

This is when things got a little blurry. TV? The James? Who what now?

There were limes and fellating the bottle of Cliquot (sorry Poppy, I have all the manners of a debutante at midnight on her sweet sixteen party) and strange primordial White Guy dancing. There was racial profiling and a shot of Strawberry Shortcake Gone Hookerfied and drunk texting and the cutest shoes known to womankind. There was more, so much more, but mostly there was vodka and vodka and vodka and vodka and then there was a motherfucking walk off.

And then there was White Castle, which yes, I think may have saved our lives. All hail the mighty White Castle.

Note to self: do not wear that fucking black dress when it is very likely that you will be drunk. Don’t you ever learn?

Apparently not.

After a few drunk dials, we made it back to my boyfriend James’ house, where the cabbie called me pretty lady and told me to be careful,then after leaving my keys in my hotel room yet again, I finally managed to get into that magnificent king-sized bed and sleep.

The next morning, Jake called a few minutes after I woke up and we made arrangements for breakfast, for which I was very late (I kept making excuses for lying languidly across the bed). We called the valet, loaded up the car and went to Lou Mitchell’s for a crazily crowded Monday morning breakfast (seriously, Chicago, don’t you have to work on a Monday?) and then out to Shermer for some mall time. We went to the mall and checked out a few stores, not really having time to check into anything, although I did manage to end up with a few things that I liked, during which time Jake scored eight million things on uber clearance at the store across the way. Then Jake dropped me off at my car and another fine rock star weekend had come to a close. And this time, without any dramatic last minute dashes to O’Hare or accidental trips to Aurora, Illinois, so go us.

I like to think we learn a little bit more on each of these trips. For instance, normally we are massively under-hydrated, so this time I came with a full case of Glaceau’s Smart Water in the trunk of my car, every bottle of which was either downed mid-trip or finished in transit on the way home. With the exception of the inhumane conditions at the A&A concert, we did pretty well on the water aspect.

Next time, we’re going to focus on other necessities of life, such as eating more often.

It’s good to have goals.

heels Over the past two weekends in a row, a parent of a friend has passed away. I’ve spent the last two Tuesdays in a row at funerals. I hate to be superstitious because I always think of swarthy women with hairy moles, wearing burlap scarves and giving people the evil eye, and I can appreciate science and all that it has done for us (iPods are a great invention, after all, as is laser hair removal) but man, I admit that I’m approaching the upcoming weekend with a little trepidation.

This week’s funeral was for a truly incredible man who was heavily involved in local activism. I think I’ve remarked before that I feel like I really get my friend CC because she and I had very similar hippy childhoods, and so at her father’s funeral, I kept seeing glimmers of the aged faces of my own adolescence, one filled with hemp and Greenpeace and peace rallies. I was eight when I got my first sliver from a picket sign. They were always made from the shittiest wood around, usually stolen from construction sites and road markers. That particular sign protested violence against women. If you don’t think that marks a kid, you’re wrong.

I sometimes wonder if Generation X isn’t too jaded to get involved, to support a cause we know is impossible. I wonder if our hippy parents had any idea of what they were creating when they sent us off to school with sprouted hummus sandwiches and carob chip guerrilla cookies. Except that we figured the cookies were named for large apes, not men wearing bandannas and Che Guevara t-shirts.

Afterward, I was talking to another activist that I had known when I worked for the homeless shelter. She asked what I was doing now and I explained that I worked in the private sector rather than for a charity. She told me about how much everything has changed at the homeless shelter since I left and then she said ‘You should go back! It hasn’t been the same since you left.’

It was like looking into the headlight of an oncoming car. I think I actually gulped as though I were in a comic strip, with a little word bubble hanging above my head. While it was a great job for the resume and for the soul, the pay was laughable (according to my Social Security report, I made $9K in 1996, working 20 hours a week as well as weekends as a weekend retreat coordinator at a summer camp) and the only benefit was a free tuberculosis test and first pick at the unusable donations (which is where I got my first edition copy of Catcher in the Rye). I did my four years for the good of mankind. Let a fresh-faced college sophomore coast on their job title while they worry about being stalked in the parking lot by their community service assignees. And maybe I am jaded. Or maybe I just have no desire to witness another person crapping their pants.

Lest you think I’m overreacting on that point, it happened multiple times.

After five years of wearing headphones to listen to music while on the computer, I once again have speakers. Esteban wouldn’t let me hook up the speakers while my pc was in his office, since it was supposed to be temporary, and then he forgot that they were for my pc and sold them to someone. When I asked about them, he said that he had a set of speakers but I wouldn’t want them because they were white (my desk accoutrements are black), so he offered to get me new ones. Esteban lives to shop for electronics, I suspect. That and cars. He embraces both with the same strange vigor I hold for planning travel itineraries. And he found an awesome set of surround sound speakers, all sleek and mod and, of course, black. He didn’t tell me, just led me into the office yesterday and showed me the coolness. Four speakers and one that attaches to the bottom of the monitor. And a subwoofer. I have a subwoofer!

It’s so weird to be able to listen to music from iTunes while I’m not chained to a cord or alienating all other sounds in the house (my headphones are noise-canceling studio cans). I feel like I’m thirteen and just got my own stereo. I now have iTunes playing constantly. It’s a whole new world. A world in which I just realized that The Doors’ ‘Backdoor Man’ is, you know, not what I thought it was about. Not at all.

When I moved into a different pod at work, I lost my awesome semi-private cubicle suite and exchanged it for one that sits directly in the center of the department. I am now on display. And, more importantly, my wardrobe choices are as well. And, as women tend to do, when people walk by, they apprise what I’m wearing. A very sweet and delightful coworker started complimenting me on my shoes. And then started noting that I had a lot of cute shoes. And then that I had a lot of shoes in general. Yesterday, a few coworkers posited that if I went through my shoe collection, wearing a different pair every day, I would probably make it to the end of summer with no repeats. Now, frankly, that’s not likely, because of one simple fact: I have one half of a four foot wide closet. That’s it. And every season, I have to swap out all of my clothing, refold everything and stashing it under my bed, in a cedar chest and in a few Rubbermaid containers in the linen closet. During that process, I fill a bag of stuff that needs to go to Goodwill, including shoes. While yes, I do buy a lot of shoes, I also give away a lot of shoes too. I work with pack rats who own shoes that are fifteen years old, kept in case they buy a dress that happens to match it. Granted, I have a few blindspots of my own: for instance, I’d never give away my vintage beaded sweater, even though it has a rust stain that the cleaners can’t get off. And I’ll probably never give away my mother’s vintage sable, even after Tilly’s done using it as a very luxurious kitty bed. But shoes you don’t love but keep because they might be good at some point? Shoes that only went with a skirt you can’t fit into or a business suit of metallic hot pink with linebacker shoulder pads? Why bother?

I explained this, but they wouldn’t believe it, because I do rotate my shoes through my wardrobe and while I do wear my old floppy Birks and Doc Martens more frequently than the rest, I probably cycle through most of my shoes in the stretch of a month. So I threw the challenge right back at them. And they accepted.

We did make rules, of course. If you had to be out of the office, your shoes on that day would not be counted, and weekends and holidays are not recorded. Also, speciality shoes were off the table, as amusing as it would have been to see people tromping around the workspace in soccer cleats and fishing waders. I included a caveat that the shoes needed to fit within our office’s dress code, but since it’s a very casual office and people wear flip flops every day of the week, that’s not saying much. I can’t really imagine what would be inappropriate, honestly, unless it’s maybe stripper shoes.

My Norwegian coworker is playing along too, although he claims to only have four pairs of shoes. This seems incomprehensible to me, but then again, Esteban would be on the sidelines after a week too. And there’s at least one lady on the team who claims that she too only has four pairs of shoes. Maybe I’m the weird one.

Ok, it’s a bit like spirit days in high school, where everyone had to wear a certain color or come to school with their clothes on inside-out, but I am sort of curious to see how creative this is going to get. I mean, I have work shoes, and then I have’ non-work shoes. Like the 4.0 shoes. Do you pair such delights with a button down and black trousers and look vaguely misguided, or do you just throw caution to the wind and wear it with jeans and a black t-shirt and not give a damn? It’s perplexing, to say the least.

I told Esteban about the competition and he replied, ‘My god, you actually have voluntarily become a Dilbert cartoon.’ I tried to explain that it wasn’t about that, it was about their perception that I have somehow got more shoes than they do. It’s about who has the most toys, in a weird reverse way. He misunderstood, thinking that I wanted to win.

I don’t want to win. I want to come in second.

And I do have the bizarre need to catalogue this endeavor on the internet.

It’s very difficult to take a picture of shoes while you’re in them. How does one find the most flattering angle for one’s own feet and still adequately display the footwear? Impossible. The best solution seemed to be to hold the camera out and blindly shoot. Well, not really an answer, but it worked.

So, yeah, this is probably a sickness. I’m just glad that they didn’t want to do purses or nail polish, because then the true depths of my depravity would be out there for everyone. I hope this doesn’t mean that I’m starting to go through menopause or something because this behavior makes no sense even to me. At least it makes good internet. The ongoing saga will be on my Flickr page, if you want to play along at home.

This week’s ‘3 Fast, 3 Furious’ podcast might be the funniest yet. The theme is Pet Peeves and it’s available on both iTunes and is also available here. I’m glad that La Wade mentioned the cigarette butt issue, because that actually bugs me much more than insufficient personal support. I’d take on an army of flapping drooping boobies if we could just stop idiots from flicking their cigarette butts out of the car windows as though it’s somehow OK. I live in constant fear that one of those lane hogs will flick a cigarette butt out their window, because my head might explode. Literally.

The comments want to know what your pet peeve is.

Chauffi here.

Today is Weetabix’s Birthday! On this day (if I put a number here I would be killed. Painfully, and probably by people mixing plaids and stripes) XX years ago a force was unleashed on this world. A force for evil? good? Who is to say? Only we, the citizens of the internet will be able to make that call. Regardless, I’m grateful it happened.

She probably was not going to tell you all because she’s like that. And she probably would not want you to deluge her with gifts (at least in the part of her mind that she talks to the world with, but deep down inside, we all want nice things) even though I’d really like you all to fill up her house so she has to move.

There’s a reason they are called Starter Homes, Weet. Starter Homes.

So, anyway, the comments section would love to have your birthday wishes.