rice, roomies, and randomness

I hereby deem Saturday's potluck dinner a success. We ended up with four sets of roommates and a lot of rice dishes. Those of you who scuttled out early missed the fun of the G-man's girlfriend breaking out her new video camera. (She tried to point the lens at us. Then it was our turn to do the breaking.) You also missed out on the G-man trying to sit-ups on my Yoga ball. Oh, and me giving everyone a surprise beating playing Acquire. I am the Queen. All bow to me. Maniacal laugh.

Maybe the G-man’s right and some of Big-Bold-D’s Jewish luck is rubbing off on me. Then again what’s with this Jewish luck thing? I have the same question about the Luck o’ the Irish, too. I recently heard “The Luck of the Irish” on the radio and the chorus is as follows:

If you had the luck of the Irish
You'd be sorry and wish you were dead
You should have the luck of the Irish
And you'd wish you was English instead!

Google’s showing me that John Lennon sang the song, but I heard some Irish band with beautifully thick accents singing it (making it all the more depressing). Surprisingly, it looks like Shonen Knife did a cover of it, too. It’s odd because they’re the perky J-pop duo that sings, “Cycling is Fun” to me at least once a week through my iTunes. What’s with the morbid Irish song? Now I need to hear it. Must e-mail co-worker to find out if he has it.

One minute and eight seconds later:
He has it and put a copy in my folder on the server. Starting up iTunes. I hear John Lennon singing. He stops. Shonen Knife starts in with their cute not-quite-English pronunciations. Now John's singing. Oh, Shonen Knife again. Now they're finishing up together. Oh my. Oh my, that's all I can say. I think the girls should stick with serious topics like the fun of bicycle riding.

On to another thread: Maybe in the future I should call the G-man's girlfriend "H-woman." Then again, maybe that's a bit premature; I mean the boy hasn't even given her a drawer yet. Can she really be the H-woman without possession of the G-man's drawers? OK, by that I mean a dresser drawer, naughty readers. Hmm, maybe it’s just a naughty me.

Drawers side note: I'm wearing boy's boxers today and enjoying the roomyness. Guys get all the comfy stuff. On the other hand, I'm not willing to give up my high-heeled black boots with the silver buttons. I just look to gosh darn cute in them.

Hmm, enough rambling, back to work. The editing piles are beginning to grow.

potluck

Dinner. My place. Saturday at 6 p.m. Bring yourself and a dish.
Note: If the dish is your girlfriend, bring two dishes. One must be a food item in your hand. The other can be a hottie on your arm.
For those that come, you will be met by friendly faces and more food! (The G-Man's making brownies!) Who could resist? I know I couldn't. We'll maybe those of you who read this and are far from KC have no choice but resist. Sorry. It's mean of me to taunt you with delicious food and my wonderful company.

word of the day: pangram

pangram n. A sentence tha uses all the letters of the alphabet.
An example of a pangram is, the quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog.

"Perfect" pangrams (just 26 letters, no waste here):
Mr. Jock, TV quiz PhD, bags few lynx.
Cwm fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz.
Blowzy night-frumps vex'd Jack Q.
Squdgy fez, blank jimp crwth vox!
TV quiz drag nymphs blew JFK cox.
Q-kelt vug dwarf combs jynx phiz.

No point, just avoiding my work.

edit this

One of my co-workers (not an editor) e-mailed this to me. I've seen it before, but I didn't have a blog back then, now did I?

I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdgnieg The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid. Aodccrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dnsoe't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the hmuan mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azmanig huh?

Yaeh and I awlyas tghuoht slpeling was ipmorantt

Spelling isn't all that important. That can be fixed with a run through the spellchecker. Here's what's driving me batty about this text: It's missing two periods, one sentence is a fragment, there are unneeded words, and don’t even get me started about the comma.

OK, back to work.

phantom

My roomie and I went to see Phantom of the Opera over the weekend. They did a good job adapting it for the screen. It would have been good if they had gotten a Phantom who's voice was as good as Christine's though.

Before the movie, we waited in the cold-ass, long-ass line outside. There stood a girl in a long-sleeved green top, jeans, and flip-flops! Maybe she's dyslexic and thought it was 81 degrees out side instead of 18.

hospital visit

I went to visit my grandma in the hospital again this Sunday. They're still trying to figure out what's causing the pain in her side. I took her the baby blanket I just finished and the baby bootie. She showed everyone who came in to the room. "Look what my granddaughter crocheted," she'd command from her bed. The person would look, and ohh, and ahh. Then said person would as me how long I'd been crocheting. "My grandma taught me about four weeks ago," I'd reply. My grandma beamed.

Later, my dad walked me around the floor, showing me all his toys. (FYI: My dad is a biomedical technician at the hospital.) He showed me the dialysis filters and the wireless transmitters that send the monitor signals from the patients' rooms to the nurses station. He took me to the server room for the fourth, fifth, and sixth floors. "These are the hospital servers, and this is my off-network server," he pointed proudly. I asked about the hospital’s IT staff. They had a lot to take care of. “They do,” he replied, “But they don’t touch these. These are mine.” He was beaming.

It was cool. I hadn’t been to my dad’s work since I was a kid.

P.S. Don't tell my grandma, but when I finished the other bootie last night, it turned out slightly larger. I guess I still need to work on my consistency.

P.P.S. Don't tell your friends, "I did a baby bootie last night." They'll think you're sick and disgusting.

character cocktail

My friend, YellowDancer, added some story-writing craziness to her Web site.
Guys, I can't stop laughing. We need to do this again sometime.

big news!

I'm a freelancer! I have an actually freelance job. Some one, somewhere will pay me to write a story for her.
It's all very exciting, and I'm very nervous. Giddy dance.

My topic: Getting rid of gifts without the guilt.
My thanks go to my roomie who inspired the idea. I just have no idea how to answer it.

a dress up day

My office is supposed to be business casual. But we're really a jeans casual office except for days when the bigwigs come in. Shhh! Don't tell. So I rolled out of be 10 minutes before I'm supposed to leave, and I remember, today is a bigwig day. Time for the closet challenge. I managed to pull together a semi-professional outfit, considering I don't own a suit. I'm even almost wearing hose. OK, they're thigh-high tights, but that's about as far as I'll bother this morning.

I got my annual review back from my manager yesterday.

Every time I think I'm succeeding in showing her my value, she changes I'm being evaluated on. Yesterday, everything turned upside down. "It's not your tasks," she said. My edits, my writing, my ideas, my work, all acceptable, even good. Wow. I knew they were, but I didn't know that she knew it. What I need to work on, she says, is my skills. Huh? I guessed that time management was among those skills, but I asked, "What skills are you referring to." Her answer surprised me: "Interpersonal skills, relating to others, knowing yourself, understanding how you relate and affect others and this process."

My response: I stare at her blankly, dumbfounded for what seems to be an eternity.

A side note: An article I edited a few months back was the best read in the September issue. It got 90 percent readership, which is just a ridiculous, crazy-high number.

deoderant go down the hole

Remember Tiny Toon Adventures? There was one episode where a Baby Plucky (the duck character) kept saying, "Water go down the hole." In "The Potty Years," Baby Plucky repeats the line over and over. The water did go down the hole until he clogged the toilet with everything he was trying to dump down it.



I had a Baby Plucky moment on New Year's Eve: I flushed my deodorant down the hole.

"You did what?!" and "How did you do that?!" were the two common responses from my friends.
My neighbors and long-time friends from across the hall were having a great party and so everyone was there to hear my embarrassing problem. Did I mention I'd had a couple to drink?

See, both of the bathrooms were occupied. And I really had to pee. (I was about to start sinning the Homestar Runner song: I really got, I really gotta pee pee, I really got, I really gotta pee!) My apartment is just across the hall, so I made a mad dash for my own commode. I did my business, pushed the little lever, and washed my hands (Mom would be so proud!). As I made a grab for the towel, my arm brushed over my deodorant stick and PLOP it dropped into the swirling water.

My response: No way! I didn't just do that. I stare at it. That won't fit down the hole—will it? GLUP. The toilet swallows my deodorant. Shit! (I wish it had been at this point.)

The next day I got to call my apartment manager. "Uh, hi, um this isn't an emergency, but it is kinda important. See, I kinda accidentally flushed my deodorant down the toilet, and I think it's probably stuck in the pipes." I then proceeded to give her a physical description of the flushed item, and she said Dustin would be around to look at it on Monday.

I came home from work on Monday to a note: "Don't touch caulk for 24 hours." Dustin, our maintenance guy, had to completely remove the toilet to fix my flushing error. I wonder if I'd be less embarrassed if Dustin was less cute?

Mommy made it all okay. "Don't worry about it," she said. "When dad and I were at that hotel in Tulsa last month, I flushed a washcloth by accident."

Like mother, like daughter?

wilt

My Angel Petite Fittonia hangs limp over the edge of its pot. I don't think it will recover from my week of inattention. The cuttings I took from it a month or so ago look to be in good form though, so perhaps I'll be able to repopulate it.

That plant requires too much from me. I water it. I even spritz it with water from a spray bottle. I leave my cubicle for the weekend and return to find the plant deflated, leaves hanging. My other cubilce plants can be left alone for days and still hold themselves together. Okay, a week away from work was a bit long, but did it have to just give up and die like that?

ice and down comforters

I slept well last night in my warm little cocoon, my feather bed cradling me, my two down comforters protecting me from the cold. Outside the ice built up on the tree limbs and created a thick plating that covered my car.
I woke at 7 a.m. and called my voicemail at work. I had a message from my boss. Yay! She's going to say the weather's bad; don't come to work today. My smile faded. "Take your time, but work starts at 9," she said.
I pulled on the handle to my car door. Nothing. Frozen shut. I tried the other three—nothing. I chipped and scraped but it wouldn't budge. On to Plan B.
I poured a cup full of water along the edge of the door. The car finally relented and opened to me. Defrost on. Heater on.
I began scraping a half an hour later. Easy, quick work, though I forgot my side mirrors.

and so it begins

Got to work 10 minutes late. Just checked my e-mail. Only 421 messages to sift through before I can start doing real work.
Happy New Year!