Let me get this straight.

Happy New Year

2010-01-01T11:57:00.004-06:00

Izzy is psyched.

Did you?

2008-11-04T12:04:00.002-06:00

Happy Halloween. Love, Photoshop. (Volume 2)

2008-10-31T01:07:00.010-05:00

GenV: "I hate you in a hundred different ways."

Izzy: "I really don't see the problem here. How can you possibly not feel like a rock star right now?"

GenV: "First of all, you made me into an even lamer sidekick than last year. Who recognizes Little John? Who stops Little John on the street and goes, 'Hey, you're totally that guy! Will you sign my tunic?' Nobody."

Izzy: "That is clearly the public's loss."

GenV: "Do you know how many times I've been stopped today and mistaken for an Ewok?"

Izzy: "I think you're overreacting."

GenV: "You should just be thankful I don't have thumbs, because I'm surrounded by pointy things and I'm not particularly attached to you."

Izzy: "You were perfectly welcome to choose our—"

GenV: "I CHOSE! I chose to remain costumeless!"

Izzy: "And so you obviously forfitted your vote."

GenV: "..."

Izzy: "Who wants candy?"

GenV: "You're like a nightmare that I can't wake from."

Praying or preying?

2008-09-23T22:41:00.002-05:00

I haven’t seen a praying mantis since I was very young, and even then, I think it was in an aquarium in biology class. I knew precisely three facts about the mantis: a) it can change color like a chameleon, b) the female will bite the head off the male after mating, and c) a gigantic one ate an entire Eskimo village in a movie once, and could totally kick the collective asses of all those ants in Them!

In later life, I’d also heard that a mantis is a symbol of something or other (good luck, probably), but by that point it had been a long time since biology class and I sort of forgot they existed.

Until recently.

At the barn last weekend, I arrived to discover a praying mantis sitting quietly on my white saddle pad, as if it had been there since the beginning of time. I won’t lie: I jumped gracelessly backward about four feet when I saw it, since it resembled a tiny alien that I could only imagine wanted to crawl inside my ear and eat my brain. A couple of deep breaths reminded me that mantises exist, and (unless you’re Mr. Mantis) they’re not particularly aggressive. Since my saddle pad was a rather integral part of that day’s plans, I gently scooted the grey bug onto a nearby bush and watched in fascination as it turned a perfect shade of green. Immediately, I fought back the impulse to go grab a plaid saddle pad and determine the true potential of the bug’s color-changing abilities.

It was fascinating to be reminded of such a unique species that I hadn’t seen in fifteen years, but by the time I finished my ride, the experience was long forgotten.

This evening, I left my yoga class and approached my car in the dark, rainy parking lot. I had just shuffled my keys out of my purse and opened the driver’s side door when I realized that I was directly eye-level with another praying mantis. No, holy jumping Jesus, there were TWO of them! And they were large, easily twice the size of last week’s visitor. They sat—still as ever—on the roof of my car amidst the beads of rain, approximately eight inches from my face. Looking at me.

I froze and looked back at them, wondering if they were calculating the best moment to fly directly at my eyeballs. Where did they come from? The dance studio where I take my yoga class is in the middle of a busy intersection, nowhere near an abundance of trees or even a grassy median. My car was in the middle of a whole row of other cars, and I could not see, to the best of my ability, any other vehicles covered in gigantic insects. The two mantises did not appear to be interacting with one another at all, so that somewhat allayed my fears that there was about to be a passionate beheading on the roof of my Camry. They simply sat. And watched.

There were still a couple of other girls waiting nearby under the dance studio’s overhang, and I thought it might look strange if I just stood there, staring at the roof of my car for very much longer. I didn’t really know what to do about the bugs, so I opted to do nothing. I lowered myself quickly into the driver’s seat and shut the door, desperately hoping one of my new friends hadn’t stepped off the edge of the roof and into my hair on my way in. I guessed I would just start to drive, and see if the mantises stayed with me or not.

During the drive home, I pondered the significance of the creatures. I knew a visit from a praying mantis was supposed to mean something, symbolically, but I had no idea what. After fifteen years of nothing at all, what had I done to deserve three visits all of a sudden? It’s a strange, unsteady time in my life right now (I’ve been laid off from my job, am trying to figure out where to live, and am preparing funeral travel for the sudden death of my uncle this week), but does that mean I have had spiritual insects dispatched to deliver me some sort of message? Because, with all apologies to the dispatcher, I have no earthly idea what that message is. I am not fluent in bug. I never even made it past Spanish 2. And really, the dispatcher should probably know that I am a little bit insect-phobic and have seen far too many horror movies to be all that receptive to a creature that looks like this:

(You're welcome.)

There is, of course, the possibility that mantises are simply infesting the greater Omaha area like a plague of locusts, but I prefer to not to pursue that train of thought.

At any rate, by the time I got home this evening, one mantis remained on the rainy roof of my car while the other one presumably experienced the biggest and scariest water slide ever. The remaining mantis is currently enjoying a very dry evening in my garage. I didn’t stop to think about how it would get out of my garage, but I will be interested to see where it is (or isn’t) tomorrow morning.

When I got home, I googled the symbolism of the mantis, and came up with this:

The praying mantis is the oldest symbol of God: the African Bushman’s manifestation of God come to Earth, “the voice of the infinite in the small,” a divine messenger. When one is seen, diviners try to determine the current message. In this culture they are also associated with restoring life into the dead. “Mantis” is the Greek word for “prophet” or “seer,” a being with spiritual or mystical powers.

The praying mantis shows the way. In the Arabic and Turkish cultures a mantis points pilgrims to Mecca, the holiest site in the Islamic world. In Africa it helps find lost sheep and goats. In France, it's believed that if you are lost the mantis points the way home.

"Follow Mantis" means putting that core aspect of yourself, your foundation of Spirit, at the helm and let it direct your intellect and ultimately your life.

The mantis comes to us when we need peace, quiet and calm in our lives. Usually the mantis makes an appearance when we've flooded our lives with so much business, activity, or chaos that we can no longer hear the still small voice within us because of the external din we've created.

After observing this creature for any length of time you can see why the symbolism of the praying mantis deals with stillness and patience. The mantis takes her time, and lives her life at her own silent pace.

These traits have lead the mantis to be a symbol of meditation and contemplation. In fact, in China, the mantis has long been honored for her mindful movements.

The mantis never makes a move unless she is 100% positive it is the right thing for her to do. This is a message to us to contemplate and be sure our minds and souls all agree together about the choices we are making in our lives.

Overwhelmingly in most cultures the mantis is a symbol of stillness. As such, she is an ambassador from the animal kingdom giving testimony to the benefits of meditation, and calming our minds.

An appearance from the mantis is a message to be still, go within, meditate, get quite and reach a place of calm. It may also a sign for you to be more mindful of the choices you are making and confirm that these choices are congruent.

What do I do now?

2008-09-09T17:58:00.005-05:00

I lost my job three weeks ago.

Immediately afterward, I had exactly one question on my mind, so I did the only reasonable thing a person of my generation, resources, and sense of irony could think of. I Googled, "What do I do now?"

The fact that the first search result I clicked on yielded an "Access Denied" page was neither encouraging nor unexpected, but it made me smile and I felt like that was the right answer. I didn't click on any other results.

Even the internet, it seems, wants me to figure it out my own damn self.

***

When I started at my job nearly three years ago, I was excited. I didn't know much about insurance (by which I mean I knew absolutely nothing at all, and bordered on knowing negative amounts of information), but it didn't really matter. I had a job that didn't require me to wear my name on my shirt. I had a career path. A beginning. Fancy pants and all.

It didn't take long for me to pick up the intricacies of the insurance industry, and it took a coincidentally similar amount of time for me to learn to despise it. That industry is no place for a creative person.

By the time the executives made the decision last month to institute company-wide lay-offs, I was looking for a release—and at least half of me was hoping this would be it. My job gave me too many headaches, and I had already injured my jaw from unconsciously grinding my teeth. I couldn’t think of a single thing that I liked about my job (except for a precious few coworkers) (and perhaps my shiny, shiny MacBook Pro—may it rest in peace, Amen). When my alarm would go off every morning, I’d get a very cold feeling somewhere in my stomach that even my favorite Starbucks baristas couldn’t make go away.

Still, no matter how much you’re ready for it—no matter how much you’re hoping you’ll be let off the hook with a little bit of severance to smooth things over, no matter how glad you will be to leave your little cube-shaped prison and go frolic in the sunshine on a Wednesday afternoon—it kind of hurts to not be wanted anymore.

It was a little bit of a punch to the gut. Only the punch was cruelly drawn out, like a slow motion fight scene in a Tarantino movie. I was called by my Des Moines-based boss at 9:30 in the morning and asked to be in a meeting at 12:30. In HR. Oh.

I had three hours to stare at my computer and process the 99.9% probability that by the end of that meeting, I would have absolutely no idea what my future held. I don’t know if that time helped calm my nerves or just tied them into a French braid inside my ribcage, but by the time I got to the meeting I had run out of things to think about.

I made very poor small talk with my HR representative as we waited for my boss and my boss’s boss (my Grandboss?) to phone in on a conference call. I think she asked me about the weather. There was a lot of awkward silence.

The phone call itself was a soulless recitation of whatever formalities my Grandboss had drafted earlier. Downsizing, reorganization, position eliminated, etc. Presumably, he had been reading this same speech to several people that day, one after the other, substituting names and job titles where appropriate. All I heard was an overview of a predictably laughable severance package and the words, “go home for the afternoon and come back tomorrow morning.” My own boss was silent throughout the call.

I was fine, or would have been if my damn HR rep had not looked so unbelievably pitying. I blame her for my having to fight back tears on the walk back to my cubicle. Thanks a lot, HR.

Though my last official day of employment was not for another two weeks, I was only required to work another two days and wrap things up. I packed up my cubicle in a couple of very stereotypical paper boxes, wiped everything off my computer (may it rest in peace, Amen), and wrote a couple of goodbye emails. I got a lot of astonished visits to my cubicle from well-meaning coworkers and spent exhausting hours placating people who were scandalized by my termination. I hugged people I never quite imagined hugging before.

On my last day, my boss came in from Des Moines to take me to lunch, say kind things about me, and confiscate my MacBook Pro (rest, peace, etc). I half-joked about keeping it as a gesture of goodwill and she half-joked about looking into it. I think her half was bigger than my half.

A couple of days were all I needed to get over the little bit of hurt. By the time I walked out the door of my office building for the last time, all conflicting traces of gut-punch were gone. I really was glad to be leaving. I practically skipped to my car.

What has surprised me maybe more than anything in the wake of this event has been how easy it has been to let my schedule and discipline fall away. In a perfect world, I had always said, when I wouldn’t have to work all day, I would have the time to accomplish all the things that need accomplishing. I always scoffed at those people who would find themselves unemployed, sitting in a slovenly room eating Twinkies and watching TV on the couch all day. But, wow. That’s a really easy place to find oneself.

It snuck up on me, too. My first free day, I had no idea what to do. I looked around my apartment and couldn’t figure out which things should keep me busy. I was normally at work, and it felt strange not to be there. I spent a lot of time on the phone with well-wishers. I started many things and then stopped them. I started this blog entry, in fact. The first line was: “I lost my job yesterday.”

Then I just stopped doing things. I didn’t answer emails. I slept in. I watched whole seasons of television shows on DVD that I had been meaning to watch. I read more books than I have had time to read in three years. Periodically, I’d go over to my computer and alter the always-open Word document that was supposed to be my blog entry. I changed the first line to: “I lost my job three days ago.” Then “a week ago.” Then “two weeks ago.” And now here we are.

At first it was because I told myself that I was entitled to some “me” time. I still think that’s true. I went to Lincoln every single day of my first “me” week and rode my horse until I couldn’t think of any reason to be unhappy ever again. That was undoubtedly the right thing for me.

But I had always intended to pull myself back into productivity by the second week, and get going on the whole resume-job-search-find-a-way-to-pay-the-rent thing. I didn’t expect that the second week (and third!) would be so lethargic and…depressed. I had so many things on my To Do list, and dispiritedly ignored almost all of them. I let my blog entry Word doc sit untouched. I put off responding to friends’ emails until “tomorrow,” always tomorrow. I kept stepping around a giant stain on my kitchen floor that I meant to clean up whenever I got around to cleaning my apartment. I was that person I used to scoff at.

I’ve begun to come out of my stupor, though, I think. I’ve made a conscious effort to do one thing at a time until I’m suddenly doing things again. First I scrubbed my kitchen floor, and then things started fall into place. I took care of some documents for HR. I filed for unemployment. I wrote this blog entry. I wrapped up some freelance things. I took an outplacement course. I updated my resume. I do get waylaid by TiVo or a good book now and then, but I’m getting back into the swing.

I still have a lot to do, but at least I have new question now. Instead of “What do I do?” it has become “What’s around the corner?” I find that I’m rather looking forward to the answer.

Booty camp.

2008-08-19T11:47:00.003-05:00

I walked into the office today feeling kind of great. The woman behind me in line at Starbucks this morning complimented me on my hair, using phrases like "perfect haircut" and "sits beautifully." She may have wanted to touch it. I gave all the credit to my hairdresser of almost ten years, grabbed my coffee, and strode into my building feeling kind of rockin'.

Coworker #1: "What up, M-skillet?"

Me: "Morning!"

Coworker #2: "Stop right there. Have you been losing weight?"

M: "Pardon?"

C2: "Have you been losing weight?"

M: "Sorry, I just wanted to hear you say it again. Not to my knowledge, but thank you for saying so!"

C2: "Are you sure?" To C1: "Doesn't she look awesome?"

C1: (nods) "Awesome."

M: "I like you guys more and more every day."

C2: "Are you trying to lose weight? Because I think you're skinnier."

M: "Not until next week. But thank you for the preemptive ego boost."

C2: "Well, I think you look fabulous."

M: "I think I must owe you money or something. But you're very kind."

***

I guess I woke up on the right side of the bed today—and stepped into a good-hair, slimming-outfit, perfect-accessories day. Go me (and the new outfit I bought this weekend, which apparently makes people hallucinate about my overall size)!

I was serious about turning over a new leaf next week, though. It's time to re-approach my diet and exercise, and I'm ready for another shot at a healthy lifestyle. I've done it before; I know I can do it again. After I graduated from college and my sister presented me with a congratulatory trip to Mexico, I slimmed down and got into the best shape of my adult life. My habits were good, and I stayed that way for some time. Then my parents got sick, and family members started dying. I kind of gave my life away for a little while, and I never really took it back.

My parents are fine now, and it's time to work on me.

The grande skinny caramel latte I was enjoying this morning (with an extra shot of self esteem) was one of the last three or four Starbucks products I will be enjoying for the next little while. And yes, my eyes are watering as I type those words. But I am adamant about giving myself a few stern rules while I go into nutritional rehab, at least until I get my habits back in order.

Meldraw's Four Habit-Building Rules for a Non-Cheesecake-Driven Lifestyle:

Follow the Weight Watchers general POINTS system to regulate daily diet.

I did this before I went to Mexico, with huge success. The POINTS system works for me because I have complete control over what I eat, and I make my own decisions about how to distribute my resources. It leaves me room to splurge when necessary without falling of the wagon, and it encourages me to eat lots of "free" foods like veggies. It's very balanced, and easy to track. It's also easy to follow on my own, without having to actually pay for a membership or buy pre-packaged food. Most importantly, however, it gets me thinking about what I am consuming, and it gets me into the habit of making good decisions about my portion sizes and food choices.

This does not mean, however, that I will be attending Weight Watchers meetings anytime soon. If there is one thing I dislike more than paying someone to put me on a damn scale, it's getting together in a room with a lot of other hungry people to share my feelings about food. That's not how I roll.

No more Starbucks.

Even if my Starbucks wasn't closing its doors forever on what will prove to be a very sad and dark September 12, I would probably still institute this rule for myself. No more lattes first thing in the morning. No more scones for breakfast. No more frappuccinos on a hot afternoon. No more beverages sprinkled with caramel or chocolate or whipped cream. These are unnecessary calories, tasty though they may be. They're also extremely expensive calories, and I didn't exactly barter for that magically slimming outfit this weekend.

Instead, I will make coffee at home. It will be cheaper, healthier, and will encourage me to use my very favorite coffee-maker in the whole wide world. Not only does it grind the beans and percolate the coffee in one easy step, but it's also got a timer so that it's ready for me when I wake up in the morning. Bonus: the grinder is loud enough to act as a second (okay, third, shut up) alarm to get my ass out of bed in the morning. I may actually get to work on time.

Don't keep soda in the house.

If you've spent any time at all with me, you are probably well aware that my blood is about 75% Diet Dr Pepper (and another 10% Diet Coke). My fridge is always well-stocked with cans, and I drink it with just about anything. And while it doesn't have any calories or sugar, it does have an awful lot of carbonation, aspartame, sodium, and caffeine. I could probably use less of all of those things. I'm not going to swear off soda altogether, because I know that would just set me up for failure and I don't really believe in completely giving up the things you like, but I will stop keeping it in my apartment. It will encourage me to drink more water, something I'll definitely need to aid me in my next rule...

Get some sort of physical work-out every day.

I'm not joining that gym again, where Leah the Fitness Nazi tried to kill me so many times before. For one thing, I have a free Fitness Room in my apartment complex. Free! It's a grand total of 25 steps from my back door. For another thing, Leah makes my life hurt. So I'm going to make use of the free Fitness Room and its elliptical machine, weights center, and treadmill. I'm not limiting my definition of "work-out" to a stifling gym, though. I might go to the gym one day, go swimming the next day, take my bike out on a nearby trail another day. I also go horseback riding every Saturday (sometimes more), and that totally counts. I can already feel how much my endurance has improved since I've started riding again.

Tonight, for example, even though I haven't technically started my boot camp yet, I am attending my first ever yoga class. A friend of mine is a yoga instructor and I've been meaning to attend one of her classes for over a year. So, here I go. Since this class is "Yoga for Deep Relaxation," and she assures me that everybody has to start somewhere, I'm hoping she won't totally kick my ass. We'll see.

So, that's it. Those are my four rules. They officially go into effect this coming Sunday, when I will kick off Week One of Taking Back My Life. I'm trying to gradually introduce some of those rules even now—I won't restock my refrigerator when the Diet DP runs out, and I'm looking forward to my yoga class this evening.

The Starbucks thing...well, I'll worry about that on Sunday.

What I Did on My (Unintentional) Summer Vacation

2008-08-06T13:01:00.003-05:00

Gah! What happened to me?

Where have I been? What happened to all the hilarity I was going to write? I really did have big plans and ideas for the blog; I took mental notes on all the interesting things that were happening to me. I was inspired to write whole paragraphs in my head. I just…seem to have dropped all the words somewhere between my brain and my computer. I’m sorry, you guys: I took an unintended summer vacation.

Please allow me to catch up, briefly:

I went to New York in June and was waylaid by a massive failure on the part of Continental’s computer system, pairing me in line for two hours with a sarcastic businessman from New York and a surprisingly uppity nun on her way to Rome (the latter of whom confided to me that she thought she had “a touch of the ESP” and who asked her ticketing representative if the refund policy had any stipulations for An Act of—wait for it—the Devil). I kid you not. God dropped a biblical episode of "Three’s Company" into my lap, and somehow I still failed to blog. There was a figurative ball, and I dropped it.

I meant to update you on my decision about how to approach Shawshank’s apology, and to thank you each for your contributions and suggestions. I had trouble figuring out how to say exactly the right thing, so I ultimately decided to let him bask in my biting, witty silence. But since I kind of forgot to come back in here and tell you that, I was unintentionally letting you all bask in it, too.

I came home from a business trip one weekend to find that my bathroom’s plumbing had exploded in all sorts of interesting ways, and there ensued a round-the-clock comedy of errors that involved three plumbers, a walking paper cut of a maintenance man, and one apartment tenant whose sense of humor gets a little mean when she doesn’t sleep or shower for 32 hours.

I went to Texas to visit friends for the Fourth of July and I discovered the key to Wii yoga: a bottle of wine and a lot of trash talking. Also, there is nothing more amusing than watching someone do Wii hula-hooping while mildly intoxicated.

I’ve been working more hours than the FDA’s recommended daily allowance. But even though my pupils have morphed into little computer screens, I’m feeling good about what I’ve accomplished. I haven’t really slept for three months, but…accomplishy!

I’ve been spending a lot of time with horses this summer, which is a long-awaited return to form for me. I had (not entirely intentionally) taken a bit of a break from the horse world right about the time I started this blog, remaining a part of my horse community but considerably decreasing my involvement, which is why I haven’t mentioned it here very much. I’m happy to say that I’m back in the saddle again, and there is a new horse in my life that can loosely be termed “mine.” This is fantastic, but all this riding has reminded me how out of shape I am. I consistently come home from the barn with melty muscles and every intention to hire a live-in masseuse. By the time enough feeling has returned to my extremities to operate light machinery, I am usually too drained to blog. I’m sure you can see where this is going: I’m about to be inspired by my semi-annual desire to get back into diet and exercise, which will inevitably result in more posts like these. God willing.

I’ve recently found out that “my” Starbucks is closing. Whatever your feelings on this caffeinated corporate colossus, I can assure you that there are not nearly as many Starbucks per square mile in Omaha as there are in the rest of this country, and so the closing of my very favorite location has hit me hard. My Sbux, as I affectionately (and irritatingly, pretentiously, or possibly hipster-ishly) call it, is exactly one block from my workplace. The proximity has resulted in fairly regular visits from my coworkers and me. And by “fairly regularly,” I mean, “they know us by name and start preparing our drinks when they see us approach the building.” When the location’s manager broke the news to us, we crumbled like the delicate flowers we are. There was the clutching of pearls, the rending of garments, and talk of a sit-in. As soon as I find out the exact date of closure, I will make preparations for sitting shiva.

My only sister in the whole wide world is about to have her first child. OMG. OMG OMG OMG. I’m going to be an Auntie! I plan to be the cool aunt who listens to hip music and tries not to swear too much. For now, I am ignoring the fact that my future niece/nephew’s parents listen to hipper music than I do, and one of my favorite exclamations is, “Mother of pearl!”

You’re probably tiring of reading posts from me that apologize for my absence and then get your hopes up about my plans to blog more often. So I’m not going to promise that this time. Conveniently, this is not only amazingly considerate and kindhearted of me, but it also lets me off the hook for when I forget to blog again for three months.

Maybe he's dying.

2008-05-07T16:25:00.002-05:00

Life still sometimes surprises me. As a product of my generation, I'm legally obligated to disdainfully point out life's general predictability and then feel vaguely supercilious while I jump into a swimming pool of iPods and Wii video game systems. But very occasionally, life surprises the crap out of me.

Such was the case a couple of days ago, when I opened my email inbox to see a message from Shawshank. That Shawshank.

I KNOW!

Despite the unforgettable nature of Shawshank's actions last August, it took me a few moments to recognize the email address. After all, time makes everything better (except milk), and I hadn't given him much of a second thought since fall, save the occasional punchline in my blog. Plus, I kind of thought he was either dead or afraid of me.

The email was an apology, of sorts, and it started with the words, "You probably don't remember me."

I don't know if he truly believed that sentence, or if it was just a poor attempt to downplay the unkindness of what he'd done. If I didn't remember him, he could take comfort in the knowledge that he musn't have been that damaging. I hate to burst his bubblewrap, but I'm not the only one who remembers him with assured clarity. I told a few of my friends that I had heard from him, and these were a couple of their responses:

Wow. Maybe he's dying.
(Snugs)

Maybe he found himself on the other side of the prison bars, and called you as soon as he got out?
(Lucia)

What if Shawshank has been in AA for the last eight months? And now he's reached Step Whatever where he has to make amends with everyone he hurt.
(Elen)

Maybe "he" was actually his own evil twin, and is really a nice guy.
(Miss M)

Maybe he has really bad short term memory problems, and you finally moved into long term memory.
(Artemis)

I vote alien abduction. Maybe now he has superpowers!
(MIQ)

I vote for a small scale zombie apocalypse which he heroically and singlehandedly derailed.
(Dumb Brunette)

I could go on (and on), but I think I've made my point. I've also almost immediately forgotten what that point was, but I think it had to do with how nobody has forgotten Shawshank, and also how much I enjoy my friends.

The rest of his apology follows:

You probably don't remember me. It's [Shawshank]/Department of Corrections/Lincoln/long time ago/guy who you were supposed to meet. I can't believe that this much time has passed since we last talked and I really don't know what to say at this point without sounding awkward and like an asshole...but first thing is first. I know that we tried soooo many times to meet and that it seems as if I always had something going on...which I did. That being said, I did NOT intentionally stand you up...nor would I ever do that to ANYONE. It has kind of actually taken me this long to find the balls to tell you this, even though I barely know you. That night I was told in a mandatory fashion, that I would be staying at work for the entire night. And due to the nature of my job, I'm basically shut off from the outside world while I'm at work. When I got home at six in the morning, I noticed that you'd made several phone calls and texts...and I could tell that you were really hurt and disapointed when I didn't respond. And since we'd made and cancelled several plans, I figured that you'd just grown tired of waiting on me.

I guess I just need to tell you that I'm really, really sorry for everything. I hope that you've found a guy that's completely awesome to you. This has been eating at my conscience for about 8 months at least and I just needed to get this off my chest. I'm sorry. Best of luck, [Meldraw].

[Shawshank]

Since I'm momentarily speechless, I'd like to allow my friends a chance to speak for me once again:

Dude, the PRISONERS get a phone call each. You don't get a state mandated fifteen minute break somewhere in there? You can't say, "Well, shit, boss, I had to meet this girl tonight, so I'd better call her and tell her what's happened." Because you know what your boss will say to THAT? He'll say, "Yes, I guess you'd better!" and hand you the goddamn phone so what. is. the. issue. here?
(JenEx)

"This has been eating at my conscience for about 8 months at least and I just needed to get this off my chest." Because, you know, it is all about YOU. What an asshat! It must have really been weighing on his conscience for him to respond EIGHT FREAKING MONTHS LATER. Plus, learn how to use a spell check, please. And where does he get off blaming YOU for his not calling you: "And since we'd made and cancelled several plans, I figured that you'd just grown tired of waiting on me." I figured you were tired of waiting on my sorry ass, so I decided to wait at least 8 months to apologize. Just to clear my conshunz. And I love the "Best of luck, [Meldraw]." Hey, now I feel better. Best of luck. What an idiot.
(Duck)

I hope he’s found a nice inmate to keep him company. And I also hope he drops the soap. I wouldn’t even bother writing him back. But if you do, wait at least 10 months.
(iGirl)

Having now gathered my thoughts, I don't think my reaction is quite as vehement as my friends' (bless them), but I'm certainly not feeling especially forgiving. I have a hard time believing that there was no possible way to find a telephone at some point that evening...or any of the other 225 or so evenings that followed. I also think that the entire email was laced with excuses and blame-deflection, to say nothing of the obvious desire to take his job to Vegas and marry it. I'm not going to get all nitpicky about how I didn't text him at all and I only left two messages on the night to make sure he wasn't dead in a ditch somewhere, but whatever.

Still. He did apologize. I do think he feels bad, and it's obviously been bothering him enough that he's still thinking about it, eight months later. The flimsiest definition of courtesy dictates that he absolutely should have contacted me much sooner than this—about eight months sooner—but at this point, he really didn't need to write at all. So, I have to give him that. I guess.

And now I have a dilemma. How do I respond, if at all? I feel like I should at least acknowledge his effort, but part of me wants to say something a little bit biting. I don't plan to berate him or anything (I think he may be doing that all on his own), but can I really just say, "Oh, it's okay, all is forgiven, la la la, flowers puppies rainbows!"? What can I say that underlines the fact that what he did was not okay, but not be a jerk about it? Or do I even bother? Help me, commenters. Comment.

I'll tell you one thing: whatever I decide to say, I'm taking my sweet time about it.

True love.

2008-04-11T23:22:00.016-05:00

I am a Scorpio, and that could be to blame.

There's an aspect of my personality that some people describe as "passionate," "enthusiastic," "addictive," or "oddly thorough." My mother says I go through "phases." Most of my family and friends will vouch for my tendency to fall swiftly and completely in love with a person, place, or thing.

If I find an actor, television show, author, musician, hobby, or product that I love? Then I loooove him / her / it / them / those instances.

100%. The whole pie chart.

Once properly enthralled, I go back and find everything they ever did / wrote / believed / sang / participated in / existed as. I absorb it all, and congratulate myself on enjoying what I like to think of as a "full experience."

(I would like to state for the record that I don't mean "full experience" in a stalker-ish kind of way. More like a "How do you know that trivia without some sort of spiral-bound reference manual?" kind of way.)

I don’t love just anyone or anything. My standards are fairly high, if decipherable only to myself. I could fill pages and pages of this blog with things I like, but there are relatively few things that have me captivated. I am choosy—but when I find something that clicks, I am completely lost to it.

My infatuations, honest as they are, are not always sustainable. Sometimes I will be spellbound only briefly, and the flame will go out as quickly as it ignited. Other times I'm a lifer. I can't say why, or predict the condition. Sometimes a breakup might be my fault (I'm sorry, Sudoku. I still love you, but it's more of a friend-love, you know?), and sometimes it might not (Chris Carter, COME ON. We had a good thing with The X-Files for, like, eight solid years. WTF, man? This next movie better bring me flowers and open doors for me). Sometimes there's someone else (Conan, I know. You didn't ask for this. But Craig makes me feel different, and I needed a change). Sometimes I think I've fallen out of love, only to rediscover some feelings that never really went away, and they come roaring back with a comeback concert (Garth) or a summer visit (Hawaii).

It’s nice when other people love the things I love, but it's not required. I don't mind if my particular loves don't click with you, but in case they happen to do so, I'm always pleased to say, "You're welcome," or more often, "See?!"

So in that spirit, I'd like to share some of my loves with you today. The internets are very handy for that sort of thing. After much consideration, I've narrowed the scope of this entry to a few specific loves that are embodied by entertainers...who sort of accidentally all happen to be male.

Here is where my love lies right now.

1. Equal parts brilliant musician and pleasantly tweaked comedian: Tim Minchin.

The following is a list of things that immediately appeal to me about men, the possession of which will almost guarantee my full attention:

Intelligence
Humor
Musical ability
Eyeliner (Okay, not always.) (But seriously.)
Non-American accent, attributable to non-American origins

It was no surprise to me, then, that my initial discovery of Australian comic Tim Minchin resulted in a pleasant evening of YouTube viewing, wherein I watched pretty much every one of his musical acts. Help yourselves to a similar evening, but if you're short on time at this precise moment, feel free to start with this:

(Warning: Minchin's humor may not appeal to especially delicate viewers.)

(Mom.)

(By that token, the following video may be very slightly Not Safe For Work, depending on your colleagues.)

(Of course, I watched this with several of my coworkers AND my boss crowded around my computer, so, you know. Your mileage may vary.)

If you want to see more, I highly recommend "Rock 'N Roll Nerd," "Canvas Bags,"and "Peace Anthem for Palestine," among others. And while less overtly humorous, I think I may have found my life's song in the resonant "Not Perfect." Enjoy.

2. Disenfranchised geek hero of a pop-cult generation: Simon Pegg.

After one viewing of Shaun of the Dead, I was hooked. Of course I watched it several more times, just to be sure.

Most people are familiar with Pegg from 2004's Shaun or 2007's Hot Fuzz, and while these are both worthy headings on his resumé (Shaun is one of my favorite movies of all time), you would be remiss to miss the 1999-2001 British sitcom "Spaced," which helped launch the writing, acting, and directing styles of Pegg and Company—which includes the indispensable sidekick Nick Frost and writer/director Edgar Wright.

(You have my permission to skip the recent Run, Fat Boy, Run, because nobody should be subjected to a movie directed by David Schwimmer.)

If there's one success that Pegg, Frost, and Wright can claim, it's their unexpected rescue of the homage movie—something entirely different and more genuine than a "spoof" movie. They've somehow pulled off the trick of making intelligent, hilarious observations about a given genre like "zombie movie" or "big budget buddy cop action flick," while still honoring and admiring said genre and making a movie that stands on its own merits. Tricky.

Here's a now-classic scene from the beginning-ish of Shaun, for your enjoyment:

"The Batman soundtrack?"
"Throw it."

3. The greater works of British-Goof-Turned-American-Drama-Star: Hugh Laurie.

Like most Americans, I was first introduced to Hugh Laurie via "House," where I came to know him as an acerbic, bitingly funny doctor with a black hole of bedside manner. But since "House" and its star fell swiftly into the category of things I loooooove, I naturally looked into Laurie's past projects. You know, for the full experience.

His successful history as a British comedian provided a lot of new things for me to love, including but not limited to several seasons of Rowan Atkinson's "Blackadder" series, the whimsically enjoyable "Jeeves and Wooster" series, and a proliferation of off-the-wall sketches in the incomparable 80s sketch show, "A Bit of Fry & Laurie." Pleasantly, many of these projects also involved Laurie's friend and comedy partner, Stephen Fry, who himself isn't too far down my list of entertainers.

I had a lot of trouble trying to decide what video to put here. I narrowed the overwhelming choices down to two excerpts from ABoF&L, and couldn't go any farther. So you get them both:

You're welcome.

4. Impossibly gentle life-giving star of the enchanting "Pushing Daisies": Lee Pace.

Um, yeah. I have a crush.

This bullet point, however, is as much about the show "Pushing Daisies" (and its excellent supporting cast) as it is about its unreasonably adorable leading man. After a strike-truncated season, "Daisies" was sent into early hiatus. Thankfully, though some people find the over-styled sweetness of the show a bit too precious for their tastes, it found enough of an audience in its first nine episodes to be guaranteed a spot at the TV table next fall.

Pace plays a pie-maker (say that five times fast) named Ned who can bring dead things back to life with a single touch, and then send them back to death with a second touch. But if the dead thing stays alive for more than a minute, something else nearby will die to take its place. This is the most delightfully buoyant show about death I have ever seen.

"Daisies" isn't Pace's first acclaimed work. A friend of mine kindly lent me the DVDs of the short-lived (but fantastic) television series "Wonderfalls"—created by the same folks that make "Daisies"—about a cynical slacker chick working in a gift shop at Niagara Falls when God begins talking to her through the tchotchkes. Pace plays the sarcastic smart-ass brother.

In heavier fare, I haven't yet seen Pace's transgendered tour de force in Soldier's Girl, though it is in my queue. His recent role in Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day was fun, but he didn't have much to do (aside from trying out a British accent, because apparently he heard that's how I like it). A meatier role is on the horizon with a new collaboration from David Fincher and Spike Jonez (for reals!) directed by Tarsem Singh. Of course, Tarsem brought us the visually stunning but universally awful The Cell, so, hmmm. The new movie is called The Fall, and took four years and thousands of cast members to shoot. The trailer is here, and I...don't quite know what to make of it. Curiosity's peaked, I guess.

In the meantime, I'm loving Pace as the unassuming pie-maker, Ned, who giveth life and taketh away. Please enjoy the following scene from the pilot, when Ned brings back his childhood sweetheart, Chuck, and totally forgot his egg timer:

"That's not weird. It's symmetrical."

5. America's favorite crazy uncle: Christopher Walken.

According to IMDB, Christopher Walken has 110 acting credits, plus an additional 46 appearances as himself. He's hosted "Saturday Night Live" seven times, and probably has had more iconic sketches go down in history than any other non-alum host. The man will do anything, and he'll give it all the Walken he's got. That's what makes him fantastic.

Walken is so much a part of our zeitgeist that there's no need for me to go into a detailed account of his past work. He's got everything covered: Drama! Comedy! Horror! Indy! Blockbuster! Film! Television! Broadway! Music videos! Singing! Dancing! Accents! You could populate an entire city with Walkens in every single walk(en) of life, and he would not look out of place anywhere.

I've always been a fan; my friends will happily tell you all about that time in college when I turned Movie Night into a multi-night consecutive viewing of all three (at the time) Prophecy movies, mostly because of Walken's freaking awesome portrayal of the terrifying and hilarious Archangel Gabriel.

These days Walken tends more toward quirky comedy than drama, probably because he's become such a meta institution that everything he does is intrinsically funny.

In 2000, when Fatboy Slim released their Spike Jonez-directed music video for "Weapon of Choice," featuring a little Walken soft shoe, it was an instant classic. It was bizarre, unexpected, simple...and somehow exactly right. The video has topped countless "Best Music Video of All Time" lists, including those at MTV, VH1, and the BBC.

Most of you have seen it. Even so, who doesn't want to watch it again?

See?!

I believe...

2008-03-31T19:32:00.004-05:00

I believe string cheese should be marketed in pairs, like Pop Tarts or Twix.

I believe there is such a thing as a stupid question. The fact that one is usually paired with a stupid questioner is rarely coincidental.

I believe the neti pot is man’s most frightening, uncomfortable, revolting non-nuclear creation—and also the most unexpectedly gratifying. Fellow neti pot users will agree that the temptation to carry one on your person at all times can be worryingly strong.

I believe in collecting skills the way my father believes in collecting coins. (Or guns. Just saying, Shawshank.) You never know when you’ll be kidnapped and need to know how to drive a stick, shoot a gun, ride a horse, speak a foreign language, or tie a sailor’s knot. It occurs to me that I may have watched too much MacGyver.

I believe everybody should dance to at least one song per day with embarrassing abandon, for mental health.
- (Rumor has it that Flo Rida’s “Low” can be especially suited to this activity.)
- (Rumor also warns readers that aforementioned song could wriggle its way to the top of your play rotation inexplicably often, no matter how vehemently you declare your contempt for rap.)
- (Rumor is also quietly tickled at the name Flo Rida, since the state of Florida is not exactly known for its posturing hip hop stars, but rumor does not bring this up very often, lest a cap gets popped in rumor’s ass.)

I believe Ashley Judd and Charlize Theron may be the same person.

I believe that life should have camera angles and a soundtrack. That way, when you walk into the bathroom to find that your cat is LICKING YOUR TOOTHBRUSH OH MY GOD HOW LONG HAS THIS BEEN GOING ON?, it would be accompanied by the appropriate sudden zoom and frantic violins.

I believe cobblers (occupational, not pastry) are underrated and underutilized in today’s society. My cobbler (who repeatedly tries to get me to call him a shoe repairman, and fails) is one of many people in my life who I wish wore arm garters and spoke with a Cockney accent.

I believe my family is under some sort of ancient voodoo health curse. It is the only scientific explanation for the last two years. In other news, there are approximately 44 ceiling tiles per the average hospital room in Omaha. I’ve counted.

I believe Las Vegas is what south Detroit would look like if Lite Brite ate it.

What do you believe?

Poof.

2008-02-25T19:48:00.005-06:00

Let Me Get This Straight will get back to your regularly scheduled (and embarrassingly long-winded) content soon, but I felt compelled to share one of my new favorite places on the interweb.

Q: What happens when you take Garfield out of the Garfield comic strips?

A: Existential comedy gold.

(It's easy to post drive-bys when you have visual aids.)

Caucus-blocked.

2008-02-12T10:39:00.000-06:00

I caucused on Saturday. I went to a caucus, proceeded to caucus, and when I was done caucusing, I went home.

I really wanted to open this blog entry with a good caucus joke. Something classic, preferably of the “So a man walks into a caucus and says…” variety. But after searching the web for caucus jokes, I have discovered that there are no caucus jokes, provided you discount the actual caucuses themselves. I did, however, accidentally stumble onto this legitimate headline: “Vegas Strippers Seek Right to Caucus in the Workplace.” I laughed for ten minutes, until I remembered that I’m not 12 anymore.

So instead, I’ll have to take comfort in the knowledge that the word “caucus” is pretty funny all by itself, and that will have to do.

(But seriously folks, if you have a caucus joke, I will be your BFF if you leave it in the comments section.)

This is the first year Nebraska has ever had a caucus. In the past, we’ve been resigned to a (mostly ineffectual) primary in May, occasionally bogarting the Iowa caucuses if we felt especially daring. This year, however, Nebraska Democrats decided that May was forever away and chose this February to implement the first caucus in the state’s history. Meanwhile, Nebraska Republicans shook their heads and turned back to the football game.

Like most Americans, I had no real idea what a caucus was. I had the vague idea that it was a bit like musical chairs, but without music. Or chairs. For those of you who are similarly confused, here are the basics:

Any registered member of the party (in this case, Democratic) may participate in the caucus, provided you show up on time. Once the doors are closed, you’re in or you’re out.

Once inside the caucus room, participants choose to stand in groups representing their favorite candidate. (In this case, Hillary supporters stand on one side of the room, Obama supporters stand on the other. Both groups refrain from snapping their fingers in rhythm and approaching each other with dance choreography.) A group may be formed for “undecided” voters.

The people in each group are counted.

If there is a group that contains less than 15% of the total number of participants, that group is considered “not viable.” This may include a group of supporters for a less-popular candidate (i.e. Ron Paul’s mother and his college roommate, if this were the Republican caucus), or more often, the group of undecided participants.

Any “not viable” groups MUST either choose another group to stand in, or leave. This reshuffling of groups is called “realignment.”

During the realignment, groups may try to persuade any now-groupless participants (or anyone else, for that matter) to join them. Groups usually select a group leader to speak on behalf of their candidate. At the end of the realignment period, all stray participants must have chosen a side (or abstained).

The people in each group are counted again.

The final number of people in each group is used to determine how many of that state’s delegates will be awarded to each candidate.

The caucus system differs from the primary election system in that there is no such thing as anonymous voting, and there is more interaction between voters as they try to align themselves with each other to support a common goal. Theoretically, it weeds out “wasted votes” and provides a stronger base for the main candidates. Ideally, it promotes a sense of community and opens a dialogue for political thinking among everyday Americans.

That’s the idea, anyway.

I researched the above caucus procedures pretty well before attending the caucus, and refreshed my already fairly well-researched opinion of the Democratic candidates before attending my caucus Saturday morning. I wondered how many people would be there, and if I would be very alone in my corner for Obama. I had no idea what to expect, since I wasn’t sure I had ever even met another Nebraskan Democrat before.

The caucus location for my district (there were 15 other caucus locations for other districts in Omaha) was an elementary school in my neighborhood. As I approached my car in the 34-degree weather on Saturday morning, I thought to myself, “Man. If it weren’t February, I could just walk to the caucus.”

I had just pulled out of the parking lot of my apartment complex when I realized that traffic from the elementary school was backed up all the way to my street, and people were parking and walking, essentially from my building. A quick spin around the block confirmed that there were insane amounts of Democrats wandering around my neighborhood, and the closest parking spot to the school was the one next to my own garage. I put my car back in my garage and walked.

The line to get into the elementary school (just to sign in!) wrapped around the block. I stood in line for 20 minutes (until I discovered that I could skip to the front since I had thought to bring my voter registration card) and even though the line was moving fast, it only got longer as more people arrived. Scrambling caucus organizers looked a bit panicked as they realized that they had only planned for the 12 known Democrats in the state.

By the time I squeezed into the school’s gymnasium, it was clear that all those people outside would never fit into one room, certainly not one designed for pint-sized basketball games and talent shows. A big pile of Hillary signs were piled in a corner by a respectable group of Hillary supporters. The other two-thirds of the room was filled with Obama supporters. They ran out of signs and stickers.

When the gymnasium had about reached capacity, a nice lady with a microphone informed us that due to the unprecedented number of participants, we would have to hold the caucus outside on the front lawn. We were ushered out through the double-doors, and we milled around until someone near the street stood on a chair and began yelling something. That microphone from the gymnasium would have been helpful.

As the crowd started to gather as close to the yelling man as possible, a necessary game of telephone ensued. Man On A Chair would yell something to the crowd. Someone near the front would turn around and relay the message back in his own yell. Someone near the middle would do the same. And so on. This was how we were instructed to separate into groups: “Obama supporters over here, Hillary supporters over there!”

A great wave of people began filing over to the Obama side, spilling across the street. It was kind of like when the gates open at Disney World, and the human sea flows into Main Street, U.S.A. while you try to keep a firm grip on your camera. And to think, I was afraid I would be conspicuous in my Obama corner.

People were excited. As much as we disliked the apparent disorganization of the caucus crew, we were pleased that the source of chaos was too many people. We felt like we were a part of something, something especially different in this part of the country. Sure, we weren’t wild about standing in the cold on the icy, snowy lawn. But the bite of the weather was mitigated by the feeling that we were standing out there together—not unlike those penguins Morgan Freeman was talking about.

When there was a clear delineation between groups, it was time to count. The process was simple: raise your right hand, and count off. Don’t lower your hand until you’ve called out your number. That, of course, is really only ideal when in groups of about 25. After that, you lose feeling in your arm and raise the other one. You lose feeling in that arm and try the right one again. Eventually, both your arms have no feeling and you feel unpleasantly like a T-Rex. I was relatively lucky: I was #154…out of 936.

Those 936 right hands were raised for Obama. Hillary had 185. 27 were undecided.

Caucus leaders did a little quick math. Hillary’s group was “just barely viable.” The undecided group was not viable. It was time to win them over. We were given three minutes.

I described the caucus process earlier to be an opportunity for interaction and debate. That was assuming there was a microphone, or even a speaker.

Imagine the largest game of Red Rover you’ve ever seen. Except, instead of saying, “Red Rover, Red Rover, let [assorted individuals in the undecided caucus group] come over!” you all just said, “WOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!”

I have no idea where the undecideds ended up. I couldn’t see past the crowds, and I couldn’t hear anything beyond the Obama chants that surrounded me. At some point we were quieted long enough to be informed that the realignment was over, and we were going to be counted again. Having learned from the first round, they split the Obama camp into several groups this time to expedite the counting. Once we were counted and had turned in our preference cards, we were free to go. I walked home after being counted as #18 in my group. I felt good. It wasn’t remotely perfect, but it was positive.

This was just my little district. The rest of the caucuses for other districts in Douglas county (the largest county in the state, containing the entirety of Omaha) were similarly overrun, with turnout exceeding all expectations and terrifying caucus leaders everywhere. The caucus for Sarpy county (the third largest county in the state, and encompassing several towns neighboring Omaha) was even more poorly planned, providing ONE caucus location for all of the 28,000 registered Democrats it houses, plus the record number of Republicans and Independents that were re-registering as Democrats on-site. They had to shut down the Interstate due to traffic. Many voters in Sarpy county either left, were turned away, or had to vote absentee, completely missing the caucus process and turning the event into something of a mutant primary.

Still, Nebraska voters (including myself) aren’t completely committed to their annoyance. The caucus leaders were enormously unprepared, yes, and no one will argue that they completely screwed up the state’s first caucus experience. But, man. We broke the system with our enthusiasm. And that’s a good sign.

Final results:

With 1,664 caucus sites reporting [statewide], Obama had 67.5% of the vote compared to Clinton's 32.2%, with 26,126 total votes compared to Clinton's 12,445. Ninety-nine voters (0.3%) were undecided.

Nebraska was to award a total of 24 delegates in the primary, with the delegates awarded proportionally to each candidate. Obama will get 16 of the state's delegates while Clinton will get eight.

More than 38,500 voters turned out across the state, more than 10% of registered Democrats.

With 14,119 participating in the Democratic caucus in Douglas County [Douglas County is Omaha], Illinois Sen. Barack Obama received 77% of the votes to New York Sen. Hillary Clinton's 23%.

And since I just rediscovered these photos on my camera phone (apologies for the crappy quality) while fishing out the caucus photos, please enjoy the following rare moment of bipartisanship. Izzy and GenV have never before been (and will likely never again be) this close to one another without some sort of harness being involved. Ever.

I like things to be story-shaped.

2008-02-06T11:11:00.000-06:00

“You’re aware you haven’t updated your blog since December, right?”

“I was disappointed to see today that your blog remains quiet and kind of sad-looking.”

“We're w-w-a-a-a-i-i-i-t-t-t-i-i-n-n-n-g-g-g!!!!!!”

“What's up with you? Have you fallen off the face of the earth? Are you trapped under something heavy?”

“Hope things are ok, and your conspicuous absence is due to some super hot guy who wants to marry you and then employ you as his graphic designer/web girl/travel writer while the two of you travel around the world making millions while feeding the starving and saving the planet from greenhouse gasses.”

“Dude. Blog. WTF?”

***

Hello, teeming masses.

I have not fallen off the face of the earth. I have not been trapped under something heavy. I have not been whisked away by a super-hot but slightly inappropriate traveling employer. I've just…misplaced myself temporarily.

I’ve actually been meaning (and trying) to update my blog for several weeks now. But I feel like I have nothing to say. I feel uninspired to write. Or, rather, I feel uninspired to write anything I consider worthy of the esteem of my readers. Neil Gaiman once wrote, “I like things to be story-shaped.” I feel the same way, and if my thoughts don’t mold nicely into a pleasant and refreshing literary arc, I consider it sub-par. Delete.

Which, okay, hold up. It’s a blog, for crying out loud. A BLOG. The very purpose of a blog is to be a place for people to dump themselves unceremoniously when they don’t want to be judged by people like editors and teachers and bosses. If Perez Hilton (who I am NOT going to link to because I think he’s probably eight of the top ten things wrong with this country) can throw illegally obtained snapshots of tenuous celebrities up on his website every 15 minutes and draw inappropriate scribbles on them in Microsoft Paint, then I can certainly bring myself to write a slightly boring entry about my cat’s kleptomania, right? Right.

But that’s where my [admittedly ironic] hang-up comes in, and it could be one of many things that differentiate me from Perez Hilton. I don’t like to publish anything that represents myself in a way I consider less than perfect, or as perfect as I can manage at that particular moment. This is why my professional website has been “under construction” for three years. I had no living room furniture for three and a half years because I couldn’t figure out which color scheme would really represent myself the way I wanted. I routinely sabotage myself by wanting to be fabulous. If I can’t be fabulous, well, then I just won’t play with you.

This is a childish, paralyzing sort of perfectionism. I can see that. Admitting you have a problem is the first step.

I don’t really know what the rest of the steps are, but I think one of them is, “Get the f*** over yourself.” So, that’s what I’m trying to do.

I've been keeping a list of things to write about, for when I can once again sit down at a blank computer screen and write something before getting distracted by something shiny:

I think I may quit the Yahoo Personals thing. It’s making me kind of exasperated with mankind.

I’m dieting again. Except I’m taking this week off. (And last week, too.)

I just celebrated my two-year anniversary working for an insurance company in the Midwest, and I’m still a Democrat.

I'd like to take a look at my goals for 2008, and a look back at 2007, minus all the funerals.

I’m riding horses routinely again. Good exercise, if you ignore the sub-freezing temperatures and the tendency toward injury.

You would not believe some of the search criteria that lead people to my blog.

Part of my inability to write is the fact that there are so many other blogs on the internet I can busy myself with reading. If I ever get myself organized, I’ll put them all together for you in a neat little package that might be a little more inclusive than the blogroll to your right. But if you have your own blog to write, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Additional suggestions for blog topics (or just general encouragement) are always appreciated. I’m trying to be better. I promise.

Retail therapy.

2007-12-07T18:19:00.000-06:00

I went home to my apartment during my lunch break on Wednesday. The luxury of living within an eight-minute commute to my workplace is that I have the opportunity to make the most of that midday hour—I get a lot done during lunch without having to spend a lot of time in the car. Most days, I go home to grab a bite to eat, check my mail, scratch my cats behind the ears, and maybe watch a little TV. Often, I run errands at the nearby bank, grocery store, or shopping mall. It’s not unusual for me to run to Westroads Mall during lunch to grab a cup of coffee and make a quick stop at the Clinique make-up counter in Younkers or, yes, Von Maur.

I am thankful I did not choose to run that particular errand on Wednesday.

I drove back to work from my apartment at 1:30 pm, entirely focused on the work that was waiting for me. My drive places me about one block north of Westroads Mall. At 1:42 pm, the incident began.

There’s very little I can say about the Westroads tragedy that hasn’t already been said by every news station in the country, except that I never imagined every new station in the country would be saying such things. Things like this just don’t happen in Omaha.

The last time I was in Von Maur, I was frantically preparing for a last-minute trip to Alabama to attend my grandmother’s funeral. While packing, I realized I had run out of foundation make-up: it was a Beige Alert. I hopped in the car and raced the few short minutes to Westroads, trying to make it before they closed. I went first to Younkers, but they were all out of my color, naturally. Trying not to sprint, I power-walked the length of the mall to try Von Maur instead. The young lady behind the counter kindly ignored my vaguely unsettling rapid breathing as she found my color and rang it up for me. She took the time to ask me about my situation, and sounded genuinely sympathetic as she wished me the best for the funeral. She was really sweet, and I wish I remembered her face a little better. I don’t know if she’s still alive.

People talk about how scary it is when things “really hit close to home” for them. I don’t think I ever understood that phrase until this week, not really. I’ve watched events like this unfold on the news before; I remember watching the Columbine, World Trade Center, and Virginia Tech tragedies on television, rapt for details that would help me understand such a thing. But this time as I watch the news crews recounting the incident, describing every step and detail, drawing diagrams and computer-synthesized models of the store, I see it differently. In my mind, I don’t see the diagram they’re showing—I see the smooth metal handles on the door as I walk into the store, and I hear the Christmas music playing overhead. I see the always-inviting couches at the foot of the escalator in an attractive lounge area I never have time to sit in. I see myself walking along the third floor, running my hand along the banister of the atrium, and then taking it away again when I get a static shock. I can look down in my mind and see the giant Christmas tree two floors below (where the piano player often sits in his elegant suit). This was the exact view Robert Hawkins had before he pulled the trigger on an unsuspecting shopper a floor below, who was only looking up to see what the commotion was.

It does not compute.

Omaha is reeling, but it is a town with far stronger community ties than any place I have ever lived before. This week is no exception, and I’m taking comfort in that small-town mentality. We never thought this would happen to us, not here, but that thought sort of unites us. We’re horrified and shaken, but we’ll get better.

The Westroads victims and their families are no doubt at the front of everyone’s minds, and they deserve all the support and compassion we can muster. But they are not the only ones affected by this tragedy: every business in Westroads Mall is suffering today. Forced to close, these businesses (many of them mom & pop operations) are losing money at the most crucial time of the year and may have trouble paying their employees (who are also losing work), who in turn depend on their jobs to support their families. Meanwhile, many Omahans are afraid to go back to the mall, declining to shop there even when it reopens. If business at Westroads does not get back on track, people will lose their jobs at what may be the worst possible time.

My East Coaster best friend asked me if I will ever shop at Westroads again. And my answer is, “Yes. Absolutely.” In fact, I feel very strongly that every member of this community should make a concerted effort to go shop at Westroads when it reopens tomorrow, Saturday, December 8th. We need to support our businesses and our community.

Omahans, I’m talking to you now. As an onlooker to a tragedy like this, it feels like there’s nothing you can do, no way to help. But there is. Go shop at Westroads tomorrow. You need to do your Christmas shopping anyway (you know you’re not done with it yet, don’t even play). You may as well do it in a way that can give back to the people who need it the most. Pay your respects to the victims while you’re there, and respect them by not hiding. Von Maur is still closed indefinitely, but let’s try to make the mall a welcoming environment when it reopens its doors.

As for me, I’ll be spending the day there with my mom as we shop for the holiday season. Stop by and see me, and we’ll sit and have a cup of coffee together.

Party on, Garth.

2007-11-28T22:40:00.000-06:00

GB Management
ATTN: Garth Brooks
1111 17th Ave. South
Nashville, TN 37212

Dear Mr. Brooks,

I am a reasonably well-adjusted adult, and I respect the boundaries between celebrity and real life. I don’t make a habit of writing letters to strangers (unless I’ve hit their car in the parking lot) and certainly not in the genre of “fan mail,” which, while well-intentioned, generally does not carry much of a point. (I did once write a letter to Superman informing him of my intent to marry him in thirteen years, but I blame that on youth and spandex.) So I respectfully ask that you not consider this a fan letter, but rather a polite—if lengthy—thank-you note.

Approximately 12 years ago, I was sitting on the torn vinyl seat of a school bus during my first high school field trip. I barely knew the people that surrounded me, and was largely convinced that high school was going to be as awful as middle school. But as we laughed and sang those insufferable bus-songs that we don’t grow to hate until later in life, I began to think high school might just work out. There were a few people here and there who sang gamely along to “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall,” but scattered conversations kept most of the bus riders occupied within their own little groups.

It wasn’t until someone in the back of the bus called out, “Blame it all on my roots…!” that everyone stopped talking and looked toward the source of the outburst. I had utterly no idea what that phrase meant, so when the majority of the bus suddenly sang back, “I showed up in boots!” I wondered in mute surprise if I hadn’t missed a rather important memo. Nobody in my family listened to country music…I had never heard of anyone named Garth Brooks, and I had certainly never heard this song before. I sat quietly while everyone around me belted out their very best rendition of “Friends In Low Places,” wishing I could sing along, and made a mental note to investigate this song—a song that seemingly had the power to unite notoriously un-unitable high schoolers.

A friend of mine (and fellow bus rider) kindly lent me her No Fences album so I could hear the song for myself, with the advisement to “also check out Track Six [‘Unanswered Prayers’]. Trust me.” Track Six was like nothing I’d ever heard before, and I immediately dragged my mother into my room so that she could hear it for herself. She agreed it was lovely, and we sat together and listened to the entire album. For the next high school field trip, I was ready.

No Fences was the first country music CD I ever owned, though I maintained a steadfast declaration that I did not listen to country music. At this point, Garth (may I call you Garth?), I would like to apologize for my teenagerly diss on the country genre as a whole. At that age, I also thought zucchini was for nerds and I wouldn’t wear a t-shirt unless it was four sizes too big for me, so I can only claim general teenagerness. You understand.

When I started seeing my first boyfriend, who was a cowboy, I magically changed my mind about country music.

There began an on-again, off-again relationship with that particular music genre over the years, but I never wavered from my Garth Brooks CDs. Whether or not I currently liked country music didn’t matter; “Garth” was something else entirely. Even as other bands, singers, and genres helped to soundtrack my life, your music was always there. And with it playing in the background, I survived high school.

My mother continued to share my appreciation for your music; she and I would blast my albums and sing along at full volume on our numerous road trips across America. No matter where we lived (and we lived in many places), it was our “thing”—something nobody else in the family shared—and we loved it. While watching one of your televised concerts one Thanksgiving after your retirement, we promised each other that if you ever had another live tour, we would totally be there.

I went off to college in 1999, and moving away from my family was the most terrifying thing I’d faced in my short life. I was a thousand miles from home, living with a stranger, learning to be an adult, figuring out who I was and who I wanted to be…and I missed my mommy.

Not long after my roommate and I met, we discovered that we had something in common: she liked Garth Brooks, too. This simple commonality was an instant relief, and suddenly we weren’t strangers anymore. She owned the Double Live album, which blasted from our room often and loudly. We sang along with a determined commitment to learn every word, and as it brought me a little closer to my new roommate, I felt like maybe my mother wasn’t quite so far away, either.

With your music once again playing in the background, I survived college.

In 2006, my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. It was a rough year, filled with doctors and test results and surgeries and recuperations. On November 12, 2006, my 25th birthday, I sat next to my mom’s hospital bed as she recovered from a bilateral mastectomy to remove the tumors that had luckily been detected early. I didn’t know how many more birthdays I would have with her, much less whether or not we’d ever get a chance to make good on our promise to see you perform live. That also happened to be the day we found out that my father had moderately aggressive prostate cancer, and would be requiring surgery of his own. It wasn’t my best birthday.

Exactly one year later, my birthday found me in Kansas City, standing alongside my (now officially cancer-free) mother at the Sprint Center as we both sang with you at the very top of our lungs, much like our many cross-country road trips. It was every bit as fantastic we imagined it would be back when we made our promise—with an added poignancy I could never have predicted at the time. With my arm around my mom, we sang every word to “Unanswered Prayers” (Track Six!), and I decided that this was my favorite birthday.

At some point during the concert that night, you said “Happy Birthday!” to someone in the audience. It wasn’t me. But it sort of was.

Thank you for helping me through high school, college, boyfriends, road trips, and cancer. Thank you for giving me and my mom something that belongs only to us. Thank you for wrapping your latest CD in pink to benefit the Susan G. Komen Foundation. But mostly, thank you for coming out of retirement in such a spectacular fashion, however temporary it may be, to make my birthday so special.

So far, 26 has been a very good year.

Still singing on the bus,
[Meldraw]

Happy Halloween. Love, Photoshop.

2007-10-31T03:58:00.002-05:00

GenV: “Are you kidding me?”

Izzy: “We look awesome!”

GenV: “I am never letting you choose costumes again.”

Izzy: “Come on. We are killing with this.”

GenV: “Robin? Seriously? You made me your gay sidekick?”

Izzy: “Well, you got all pissy when I suggested we go as Donny and Marie, so this is what you get.”

GenV: “1972 called. They want their topical references back.”

Izzy: “Marie Osmond is totally in right now. Your reluctance to watch Dancing With the Stars is not my problem.”

GenV: “You made me your sidekick!”

Izzy: “Primary colors look good on you!”

GenV: “…”

Izzy: “…”

GenV: “This is so the last time we ever speak.”

Have a happy holiday!

2007-10-25T19:57:00.001-05:00

If there is one thing that defines America as a country, it is our ability to commercialize. (Well, and also our obsession with home improvement shows, but I fault Paige Davis for that.) We can take any aspect of the human condition and make a production out of it, making it into a reality show or a t-shirt or a holiday or an appreciation month. We are inventors of the inane, masters of the kitsch. And we will make cupcakes for anything. (see National Punctuation Day, below)

According to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (and the other 187 websites I used to research this blog post), there are 10 nationally celebrated federal holidays this year, eight of which honor dead people. Beyond these days, on which we are all legally obligated to sleep in and watch marathons on the USA network, there are 28 federal observance days (designated by Congress, but which do not warrant a day off work), 9 federal observance weeks (including, I kid you not, “Safe Boating Week”), and 10 federal observance months. Additionally, there are 38 state holidays, roughly 30 generally accepted “Hallmark Holidays,” and an ambiguous number of “locally recognized holidays.”

Still, that’s not enough. Citizens demand more things to write in their Day Timers, if only to make it look like they lead interesting and jam-packed lives.

Luckily, there is a whole host of “unofficial” holidays and observances to fill this need. Some of them are clever (Ditch New Year’s Resolution Day – January 17), some of them are strange (Northern Hemisphere Hoodie Hoo Day – February 20), some of them are a little scary (National Male Watcher’s Day – January 8), and some of them are unusually specific (National Strawberry Sundae Day – July 7).

Some are certainly more well-known than others. You probably know about International Talk Like a Pirate Day (September 19). If you ever took a high school math class, you’ve probably celebrated Pi Day (3/14, naturally) with baked goods and a calculator, whether you wanted to or not. If you’re especially creepy, you may even have heard of National Star Wars Day (May 4, “May the Fourth be with you!”), though I would not recommend making that public knowledge. But did you know about Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day (last Monday in January), National Flossing Day (the day after Thanksgiving), or Singing Telegram Day (July 28)?

In fact, just today (October 25), we should be celebrating Punk For a Day Day, World Pasta Day, Say “Hey” Day, and Picasso Day.

Tomorrow (October 26) is National Mincemeat Day and Mule Day. Please excuse me while I die laughing from the juxtaposition of those celebrations.

As if my birthday (November 12) were not enough of a reason to celebrate, it is also a time to celebrate Happy Hour Day, Pizza With No Anchovies Day (not to be confused with Cheese Pizza Day, which is September 5), and Chicken Soup For the Soul Day. I know. Please contain your enthusiasm.

The wealth of sort-of-holidays in this country is staggering. According to my meticulous research, we’ll celebrate anything. We embrace the positive (Positive Thinking Day – September 13), the negative (Humbug Day – December 21), and the neutral (No News Is Good News Day – September 11). We aim to align our actions, urging everyone to do the same thing on the same day, for better (World Gratitude Day – September 21) or for worse (International Panic Day – June 18). We both empower (I Am In Control Day – March 30) and condemn (Work Like a Dog Day – August 5), sometimes on the same day (Make up Your Mind Day and Unlucky Day – December 31)!

I get the feeling there’s a rather big holiday coming up at the end of the month, but I can’t remember what it could be. Something having to do with the supernatural? Oh, right! I remember now: Increase Your Psychic Powers Day (October 31)! But you already knew that.

In conclusion, I would like to leave you with a photograph of some cupcakes my sister (an editor at a New York publishing house) made for National Punctuation Day (September 24) this year, because they are awesome:

(I think I sprained my linker.)

Garth Brooks, cancer, and illegal U-turns.

2007-10-09T00:18:00.000-05:00

I'm sending out a general S.O.S. on the off-chance that some of you might NOT make fun of me for this.

I want to go see Garth Brooks.

Alright, please, go ahead and get it out of your system: "Dude, she likes...Garth...Brooks? Seriously?" Yes, I do, and so does my mom. Many years ago, she and I promised each other that if Garth ever "came out of retirement" to do another live show, she and I would go together. We've sung his songs extremely loudly and off-key on many family road trips, and it's kind of a thing for us. Nobody can belt out "Callin' Baton Rouge" while making an illegal U-turn like the [-Draw Family] ladies.

So now that Garth has suddenly decided to do eight shows in Kansas City next month (one's on my birthday!!), I want in. Naturally, tickets sold out in about a second. I'm not a fan of scalpers and I have moral objections to paying enormous sums of money for the tickets that are floating around the internet, so...

Does anyone have two extra tickets (together) that they'd like to sell me for face value or thereabouts? I have preferred dates, but if I can get reasonable tickets, I'll rearrange my schedule.

I really don't want to have to pay a scalper (illegal!) or write to Ellen DeGeneres and tell her that my cancer-victim mother wants to go see this once-in-a-lifetime show while she still has some time left on this planet with her daughter (true, but morally ambiguous!). That last one was her idea, I swear.*

Anyone?

*It might have been my idea.

My very own Prince Carming.

2007-09-27T00:28:00.000-05:00

In this episode of "Real people, real profiles". . .

I recently changed the default photo on my Yahoo Personals listing to the reflect the most current photo I have. I took the photo because it shows off the new third-year-art-student highlights I put in my hair. It's apparently a very good photo, since my average daily profile views and messages have quadrupled.

Tonight I received an Icebreaker message from a guy who, if I am judging his photo correctly, models for cologne ads.

Here is what his profile had to say, verbatim:

My name is [removed in everyone's best interest]. I am 34 years old. I am currently seperated. I love sports, movies, music, all sorts of other activites. I love to cook and I am really good at it. I am easy to talk with as long as you are not rude or ignorant to me. I like talking about anything I am even open minded about talking about issues woman have in general. I am great listener and I give really excellent advise. I am searching for a woman that is romantic, honest, carming, caring. I like a woman that enjoys being sexual, glamourous, and that is not afraid to try new things. I am looking for a woman who also dresses nice, likes to wear jewelry. I have 2 stipulations about a woman that I must have with a woman before I will consider dating her 1st is she must wear make-up and enjoy wearing make-up. 2nd She must not be more than 75 pounds heavier then me and I weight 156.

When I say a woman must wear make-up and enjoy wearing make-up that means she must wear foundation, eyeshadow, eyeliner,mascara, blush, and lipstick! Lipliner, brow liner, and powder is optional. Now the reason for my attraction with make-up on a woman is strickly because I find it extremely attractive to see a woman completely made up and always looking her best and when woman do not wear make-up they just appear to plaine to me and I am not at all attracted to plaine woman. If you have an issue with what I am asking for then no hard feelings. I know that this is a alot different then what most men want in a woman. But I am looking for that one special woman to treat like a princess for the rest of her life. So I do not think asking a woman to wear make-up is asking for to much.

I hope to hear from you if your interested just drop me an ice braker or an email

I don't even know what to say.

Wait, yes I do. But first, you'll have to excuse me while I go throw up for ten years.

I am so impressed by his sage "advise" about the proper usage of make-up, and am truly grateful that he has given me options regarding my use of lip and brow liner. That kind of generosity is rare. Since I fall within the acceptable weight ratio required for this particular amusement park ride, I am looking forward to talking to him about my general woman issues. Perhaps if I play my cards right (and am not "to plaine"), he may find me "carming" enough to cook for. I hope so, because he's really good at it.

I'm so excited to have finally found someone who wants to get to know the real me, the woman who wakes up every morning camera-ready and wearing bling. Back off ladies, he's mine.

Things that suck.

2007-09-24T23:53:00.000-05:00

Do you ever get into that strange sort of funk where you're in no mood to be pleasant? Where you're just tired and inspirationless and would prefer to avoid other human beings for awhile? Where things are not going your way and the world has been kind of mean? Where the sunshine seems too bright, the sound of children laughing in the neighborhood is a bit nauseating, and you find it enormously easier to complain about things than to give them the benefit of the doubt?

I get that way, too, sometimes.

Things that suck:

That unfortunate combination of insomnia and OCD (obsessive cleaning disorder) that runs in my family.

Such a combination is the only cause I can determine for finding oneself scrubbing the kitchen floor while wiggle-dancing to “I’m Too Sexy” at 4:00 in the morning while one’s cats look on, somehow both mortified and unimpressed.

Partial albums on iTunes.

Okay, seriously, Steve Jobs? This is why you have not yet managed a completely successful takeover of the world. I have been waiting for Elvis Costello’s cover of “Beautiful” since it first aired on House two years ago, and now that the show’s soundtrack has finally been released, all I get is one Jon Cleary song, a couple of easy listening tracks and a little bit of Band From TV? Come on. I can’t believe I have to go buy a disc somewhere. I’ll probably have to play it on my giant stone turntable powered by a couple of tiny, purple pterodactyls.

Shawshank (no relation to Tim Robbins).

I never heard from him after he stood me up. Not once. Not even a half-assed excuse via email. I even checked the newspaper for any news of deadly prison riots, but sadly there were none. On the upside, I can now commit fully to being self-righteous and offended. I hope he finds a hair in his pasta.

Leafy green plants.

Alright, look. I’ve admitted that I’m notsogreat at cultivating plants. I know my limitations, and so I keep a very small number of living things in my apartment that cannot find their own way to the food dish. (I do have one Dorian Gray bamboo plant on my desk at work that is virtually impossible to kill, and I did have a very successful ivy plant at home, but then I adopted a serial killer.) It sucks because I really like the cheerfulness plants bring to a room, and I am happy to have them around. Once in awhile a new plant follows me home, but every time I try to show it a loving family environment, it dies within two weeks. I water it correctly! I give it appropriate light! I research and take notes about its genus and species and I go out of my way to make this one different from all the others! (Did I mention I got an enthusiastic A in horticulture class? Because I did, I swear.) But they always die. The only ones I can keep alive are succulents, but if I get one more cactus, I’m going to be required by law to hang a sombrero on my wall.

“Egregious” overuse of “quotation marks” (see related: cruel—and unusual—punishment of the m-dash, and inconsistent treatment of its brother – the n-dash).

Such punctuation offenses make me want to stick pencils in my ears, and then form a non-profit organization called Citizens Against Irresponsible Punctuation, For the Love of God, where we sponsor PSAs with celebrities talking gravely about their private battles with punctuation while violin music plays in a minor key and the camera angles go all sketchy and poignant.

Mysterious nocturnal spider bites.

They don’t even hurt that much. But when you look down to find yourself absently scratching a spider bite that was definitely not there went you went to bed last night, you know: while you were sleeping, one found you. One cocky little spider sat around and waited for you to fall asleep (probably on a dare), then crawled onto your arm or foot or shoulder or FACE, OH MY GOD, with all of his crawly, spidery little legs, wandered around, scouting the real estate until he found the perfect place to break ground, sank his creepy little teeth into you, unprovoked, chewed on your skin cells for a little while, released some spidery itching toxins for good measure, and then wandered away, presumably into the folds of your bed linens for a nice nap. There’s virtually no upside for you, the victim, because the chances that the spider was a radioactive science experiment capable of passing on a talent for webslinging and an affinity for color-coordinated bodysuits are unfairly low.

Lame fortune cookies.

A fortune cookie is not supposed to be an exercise in Stuart Smalley’s daily affirmations. After scarfing part of a #32, some of a #55, and two-thirds of a #60 (I order a week’s worth of Chinese food for the leftovers—for the leftovers!), all I want to do is sink slowly into my own guilt. The last thing I want is to crack open my fortune cookie, the one thing about my meal that can restore me to a comfortable sense of self-satisfied irony, and have it say, “Other people view you as a genuine person with many redeeming qualities” or “You enjoy competitive sports.” That’s not why I eat those things. Nobody eats fortune cookies for a list of self-esteem exercises, and they certainly don’t eat them for the taste. They eat them because no other foodstuff will remind you, in all seriousness, that “Life is not a struggle. It’s a wiggle.” Further, “Buy many dream boxes; ask a friend to select one,” and “Do not kiss an elephant on the lips today.” Those are helpful fortunes, my friend. Anything else is a waste of carbs.

Health Insurance companies (it's really a pity I work for one).

They're heartless and sneaky and make me feel like I should be defending my right to be healthy. Somehow, when I get on the phone to a customer service representative with my health insurance company, they magically make me sound confrontational and demanding, which I don't think is an accurate representation of my personality. They probably think I'm one of those "unruly problem customers" because I actually double-check their work, and then I ask for clarification when they talk in circles. (If they just spent a little time with me—maybe a movie night at my place or a trip to the zoo?—they would see that I'm actually kind of enjoyable and easy to get along with. I'll even share my popcorn.) They tout their "easy online access" to all my claims information, and yet they code everything in such a way that nobody will ever be able to decipher it without locking themselves in a room with John Nash. Their code is, in fact, so vague and nonsensical that they can manipulate the system to manufacture almost any reason at all not to pay my claim. "Your procedure was done in a hospital instead of a clinic, you say? No coverage for you!" "You only have recommendations from two doctors, a surgeon, an oncologist, and thirteen nurses? Not enough!" "The hospital's billing department did not dot their i’s with hearts and highlight the total amount in pink? I'm sorry, that just won't do!" I want to move far, far away and send the customer service department weekly postcards highlighting various Canadian landmarks.

Izzy keeps stealing my keys.

Ever since she got tall enough to stand on her hind legs and reach the top shelf of my computer desk, where I keep my keys, she has delighted in swiping her paw around up there until she hooks the keyring. While writing this post alone, for example, I have bodily removed her from the desk four times as she’s tried to take my keys. The latest removal was accompanied by a rather loud “What the EFF is your problem? You cannot borrow the car!” She’s sulking now.

The kind of pudding you have to cook.

I'm sorry. Maybe I'm showing my generation gap here, but Jello instant pudding TROUNCES cooked pudding any day. I made some of that fancy cooked pudding the other day and there were about ten reasons it made me want to throw up. High on the list were: consistency, smell, taste, color, and that creepy film that forms on the top that looks like jaundiced elephant skin, which takes four hours and a lot of Dawn to scrub off the bowl. I should have known: always trust Bill Cosby. Always.

These are just a few of the things that can make my days less fun than they should be. What are the things that suck in your daily life? Do you hate it when gum loses its flavor 45 seconds after it leaves the wrapper? Does it make you absolutely insane when your eyelid won’t stop twitching? Does your ass fall asleep when you sit cross-legged on the floor? “Pins and needles! Pins and needles!”

I’d like to hear about it. Tawk amongst yourselves.

How many times do you have to get stood up in a month before you get a punchcard?

2007-08-29T16:09:00.000-05:00

Last I left you, I had high hopes for Shawshank and was really looking forward to our first date. That was about a month ago, and we never made it to that date. (Or rather, one of us never made it, but more on that later.) We’ve had numerous email and phone conversations, all of them intelligent and easy and fun. We’ve tried to go out several times, but the universe hasn’t exactly been subtle with us.

Attempt #1:

Several weeks ago, we scheduled our first date. Our schedules are difficult to coordinate, since he works extremely odd hours at the State Pen. His weekends are in the middle of the week, and his shifts are late in the day, whereas I work a typical 8-to-5 job. With the added complication of his living an hour away from me, there were only one or two times during the week (Tuesdays and Wednesdays) when we could possibly have crossed paths, so we picked one and decided to go for it. We didn’t have firm plans, but we had a date and time in mind, and I was looking forward to hearing what type of outing Shawshank came up with. A couple of days before we were to go out, he promised to email or call with specifics. I was looking forward to it.

When I didn’t hear from him by Tuesday, the day of our supposed first date, I scratched him out of my Day-Timer.

Attempt #2:

The next day I got an apologetic email from him (later followed by a phone call) telling me that he had been in Oregon the last few days, because his great-grandmother had suddenly died—as suddenly as can be expected for a 99-yr old woman. This, I decided, was an absolutely reasonable excuse, and he did sound genuinely sorry. Had I thought about it a little harder, or had I liked him a little less, I might have questioned why he couldn’t have dropped me a quick email to tell me where he was before Tuesday, but I didn’t. It was a death in the family, after all. How do you argue with that?

We tentatively rescheduled for the next week. Tuesday, we both said, sounded fine.

I got a call from him that Sunday. Tuesday was going to be difficult, he told me, because it was his son’s first birthday. (Did I mention he’s divorced with two small children? Sorry, I was too busy willfully beating away the red flags to mention it earlier.) Of course I understood, I told him, that’s quite a milestone! And Wednesday he would have his kids, he told me, so maybe we could try for next week? Next week was a plan, I told him. “Though I have to wonder if your son’s birthday has changed since last week, when we made these plans,” I did not tell him.

Attempt #3:

I was, believe it or not, still looking forward to our date this time. We continued to talk on the phone and generally enjoy each other’s (somewhat detached) company. I did feel that Shawshank was still as invested in this as I was, and that our issues up until now had been nothing more than a scheduling conflict. Tuesday was going to be great.

Monday, he called.

He sounded a bit wrecked. He was going to be required to work Tuesday night, and there was no way he could get out of it. There was a thing, with a guy, at that place. You know? But, he pleaded, couldn’t we try for the next night, Wednesday? If you have to work, you have to work, said I. Wednesday it is.

Attempt #4:

He called on Tuesday.

“So where are we going for dinner tomorrow?” I asked him, my voice smiling.

“Well…” He sounded like he was bracing for something. “That’s kind of what I wanted to talk about.”

“No. Come on. [Shawshank]…”

“I’m sorry.” I think he really was, too.

“You’re kidding me, right?”

“I have to work.”

“Again? What are you, their only employee?”

There launched something of a sob story involving Shawshank’s lieutenant (his superior that asked him to work), who I guess is also a friend. The lieutenant had recently lost his son to suicide, and was not dealing with it well. Shawshank and his peers have been going out of their way to help this guy out, as any decent human being would probably do in that position. So, said Shawshank, while he didn’t exactly have to work, he really wants to be there for his friend.

I had no leg to stand on. I certainly did not like hearing that he had made the choice to skip out on me, but how do you argue with the family of a suicide victim without sounding like Anne Coulter? I was profoundly disappointed, but I had difficulty getting angry.

When I didn’t immediately tell him to go to hell, as I think he expected I would, Shawshank said that he didn’t want to wait any more than I did. Instead of waiting a whole week again, he decided that he would try to come to Omaha for a quick date before he had to go to work on Sunday. This would mean brunch, or an early lunch. Still disappointed, but not entirely willing to give up yet, I agreed.

“Of course, since I’ll be going straight to work afterward,” said Shawshank, “I’ll have to wear my uniform.”

“So everyone will assume that I am a dangerous convict you are escorting around? That’ll be swell.”

“No, not unless you’re in handcuffs, which I promise to leave in the car.”

“I should wear an orange jumpsuit. Or stripes.”

“…”

“I’m glad you don’t carry a gun.”

Attempt #5:

He called me Saturday night. I sort of expected it.

This time, he had a flat tire. It apparently happened before he had to go to work on Saturday, which means he didn’t have time to replace the donut he had installed before Sunday. He couldn’t drive to Omaha on the donut, he told me, and since I have no experience with cars that doesn’t involve exorcism, I have to suppose that’s true. His plan was to get it fixed in the morning. I tried to explain to him that he wasn’t likely to find a tire shop open early enough on a Sunday morning for him to get his tire changed, drive to Omaha, have lunch with me, and then drive back to Lincoln in time to get to work. He sounded optimistic though, and promised to call me in the morning and let me know how it went. I offered to drive to Lincoln to meet him, but he wouldn’t hear of it. Which was good, because I didn’t want to drive to Lincoln and was just trying to be polite.

When he called Sunday morning, of course it was bad news.

At this point, I was sick and tired of these iron-clad excuses. It wasn’t fair. None of the ruinous events thus far had been things I could justifiably get angry about. This wasn’t like Triathlete. This wasn’t an easy “Oh, no you di’int!” issue for me. It was a completely different kind of frustration…because I really wanted to be angry and I wasn’t sure I was allowed.

This was the last time I would reschedule with him. We made very firm plans at a specific restaurant at 7:00 Tuesday night. I wrote it down immediately, so there would be no confusion. I told him this was it: “If it doesn’t happen on Tuesday, it doesn’t happen at all.” He agreed. “You will not be working that night.” He assured me he would not allow it.

Attempt #6, for crying out loud:

I was very ready Tuesday. I had not received any cancellation phone calls, which I took as a good sign. It was a beautiful, sunny day…until about T minus two hours, when the sky folded in on itself and everything went dark as it started to storm. I wondered if someone was trying to tell me something.

As I drove toward the restaurant, my windshield wipers were barely able to scrape the cats and dogs off my windshield. Visibility was low, and the lightning was menacing. But I was determined to do this thing, and I was sure that once the date got started, the rain would seem very far away.

On my way, I gave Shawshank a call on his cell phone. No answer. I left a message that said, “Hey, I just wanted to make sure you weren’t stuck in the nasty storms we’re having. See you soon.” It was 6:50 pm. Our date was scheduled for 7:00 sharp. (I double-super-checked.)

My umbrella and I walked into the restaurant at 7:01. The lobby was empty. I checked with the host to see if anyone was waiting for the rest of their party.

“Are you Karen?” I shook my head as he looked back at his list. “Rose? Chris? Kristen? Jen?”

“I am none of those people.”

“Well, feel free to look around the first floor for your party, or you can wait in the lobby.”

I didn’t know how to explain to the host that I probably wouldn’t recognize my party if I hit him with my car, so I took a seat in the lobby. I took the opportunity to smooth my hair and calm my nerves as I watched couples and groups file in through the big double doors.

At 7:15, I wondered if I had somehow gotten the time wrong. After all, I’d been here before. What if we said 7:30? I gave Shawshank’s cell phone a ring again, but again I got his voicemail. I did not leave a message.

I continued to watch people come and go, trying to determine if any of them belonged to me. It was pretty clear that they did not…the few single people that walked in showed no response when I caught their eye, and they soon disappeared as the host led them to the rest of their party. Meanwhile, the host kept one eye on me for 15…30…45 minutes as I sat alone, watching him clean menus.

Finally, at 7:50, I got up and told the host, “If a guy named [Shawshank] shows up, please tell him I’m at the bar.” I needed a drink.

As I ordered my vodka & tonic with a lime twist, I kept an eye on the door and thought about my predicament. I had really wanted this to work. I can’t explain why I gave him six chances when I only gave Triathlete one, except to say that I liked this boy, and I thought we were on the same page. I guess we were reading different books.

When there was nothing left of my drink but ice and a sad little lime, I grabbed my umbrella and went home in the rain. It was 8:15 when I left the restaurant, and I called Shawshank one more time. Again, I got his voicemail. I left him an even-tempered but sufficiently guilt-trippy message that told him where I was, what time it was, and that I was going home.

I have not heard back.

It would take quite a lot to engender a Shawshank Redemption at this point. I’m done; I have to be. Whatever excuse he has is not going to cut it (if he even bothers to contact me), unless it involves him lying unconscious at the scene of an accident with a bouquet of flowers clutched in his hands as “I Will Always Love You” plays over the barely-functioning, rain-soaked radio or something. And even if he does have an excuse that makes some sort of sense, I don’t think there’s any way I can convince myself that this isn’t terribly indicative of things to come.

Dammit.

I am reminded of my own words: “Who makes a date, sets the time and place, and then doesn’t go out of their way to keep said date?”

It’s not all that uncommon a practice, it turns out.

Octopussy 2: the Cutening.

2007-08-22T21:33:00.001-05:00

Yes, I know: I'm behind schedule. I got your comments. And emails. And voicemails. And IMs. I owe you all a nice, big blog entry, plus interest.

But hold that thought, because I'm not really here. This is a drive-by posting, courtesy of a guy named Chris and a guy named Craig.

This is Chris:

This is Craig:

Now tell me you don't think Craig and his cat, Tommy, are the perfect James Bond villains. Tommy has murder in his eyes and world domination in his heart. He will Take. You. Out. And then he'll disappear with his twin brother, Craig, in a cloud of leave-in conditioner.

Watch yo'self.

Stand-Up Guy.

2007-08-02T23:12:00.000-05:00

Here’s what I think: if you make a date with a girl and then don’t show up, you do NOT get a “do-over” for Saturday night. I’m pretty sure that’s written in stone somewhere.

Triathlete’s stock just plummeted, in case you were wondering.

We had a coffee date for 7:00 Thursday night. This led me to believe that if I arrived at the coffee shop at 7:00 on Thursday night, looking kind of fabulous, there would be someone there waiting to have coffee with me. By 7:40, I ran out of coffee and text messages, and went home.

I had a message waiting for me on my machine from Triathlete. (There’s a long story in here about why he didn’t have my cell phone number, but it’s not enough to exonerate him, so I’m not going to get into it.) The message was time-stamped at 7:34. Here is what it said:

“Hey, [Meldraw], it’s [Triathlete]. I think I said we would meet at 7:30 tonight. I’m running behind, though, so I was wondering if we could make it 8:00 or 8:30 instead? Give me a call.”

I had two immediate reactions to this message:

Oh, HELLS no. You said 7:00, dawg. I wrote it down.

Who makes a date, sets the time and place, and then doesn’t go out of their way to keep said date? And then when they know they’re going to be late, who waits until four minutes after they’re technically late (or 34 minutes, depending on who you ask) to call and reschedule? And who expects their disrespected date to jump on the chance to rearrange her schedule to cater to his beck and call? On the first date? With no apology? Who does that?

So of course I called him back, and here’s what was said (and what was really meant):

Triathlete: Hello?

Meldraw: Hello, [Triathlete]?

T: Yeah, hi!

M: How are you?
(Dead? Maimed? Otherwise incapacitated?)

T: Good.
(Um.)

M: So…
(Here’s your chance. Use it wisely.)

T: So, I know we said 7:30—
(Because if I say it enough times, it eventually becomes true.)

M: —um, actually…I thought we said 7:00.
(I’m being deliberately generous. I know it was 7:00. And I’m not going to go all Jennifer Flowers on you here, but that’s only because I don’t think my phone has a “record” feature.)

T: Ohhh, no, I said…I’m pretty sure I said 7:30.
(Even though it is now 8:00.)

M: (Long pause) Well, I could have misunderstood. (Even though I didn’t.) I got there at 7:00.
(Alone.)

T: Oh…
(Oh, s***.)

M: And I left at 7:40.
(Alone.)

T: Ohhhhh.
(Uh-oh.)

M: …
(I’ll give you a minute to think about that.)

T: I'm...sorry.
(I guess.)

M: Also, I've made other plans for tonight, since I thought you were MIA, so I can't get together with you later.
(You missed your chance, dude.)

T: So what are you doing Saturday?
(When in doubt, go for the gold.)

M: Actually, I have plans Saturday.
(I plan to NOT go out with you.)

T: Oh.
(And Sunday?)

M: Look, I’m in kind of an awkward position here.
(And by “awkward,” I mean “completely out of your league.”)

T: Oh?

M: I’ve recently started seeing someone else.
(23 “someone else”s, in fact. Would you like to see my inbox?) (I’m willing to bet at least 75% of them are more punctual and respectful than you are.) (And I know six of them are weight-lifters, at least one of them is a bouncer, and one kicks the crap out of prison inmates for a living. In case you’d like me to introduce you.)

T: I see.
(So, is this a “no” for Sunday?)

M: So if you don’t mind, I think I’m going to have to bow out here.
(Though, please understand that I don’t really care if you mind.)

T: Ah, okay.
(Yeah, that’s a “no.”)

M: I don’t mean to be rude…
(Like you.)

T: No, I understand.
(I sense I might have lost this one.)

M: Alright, well, I’m sorry it didn’t work out.
(And also a little grateful that I was never that invested in you.)

T: Okay. Bye.
(Oops.)

M: Bye.
(Good luck with finding a doormat.)

Opinion Polls & Market Research

Progress Report #2

2007-07-31T00:05:00.000-05:00

First phone call with Triathlete:

Length: 2 minutes, 30 seconds
Awkward pauses: 3
Dates arranged: 1

First phone call with Shawshank:

Length: 1 hour, 25 minutes
Awkward pauses: 0
Dates arranged: sort of still working on that, but if things work out, we've settled on at least 7 things we wouldn't mind doing together.

First phone call with Military Man:

Oh, shoot, I need to call him.

Progress Report #1

2007-07-26T09:51:00.000-05:00

First, thank you all for your support (vicarious or otherwise) of my online dating experiment. I’ve rounded out Weeks Two and Three with messages from 18 different people in my inbox, and somewhere around 60 profile views.

Of the 18 people I’ve had contact with, most of them approached me, although I did send “Icebreakers” to 6 of them. Here’s how Yahoo works: with a free account, you can set up a profile and photo(s), browse other people’s profiles, and search for matches. What sets you apart from your full-price counterparts, however, is your limitations for contacting people. With a free account, you cannot send emails in your own words. You can send “Icebreakers” and “Quick Replies,” which are prewritten one-liners that can be unintentionally hilarious (“Tell me more about your kids!”), but they’re generally useless unless the other person is a subscriber and can write back in their own words, or provide information on how to contact each other outside of Yahoo.

A couple of the people who contacted me were subscribers, and they were forward-thinking enough to provide me an email address or a messenger ID (cleverly coded, since Yahoo will automatically censor email addresses if the recipient is not a subscriber…touché, Yahoo), but for the most part, my communications were going nowhere. I got especially frustrated when the more promising candidates hit a dead end. After debating with myself about the principle of paying for something like this (and finding a free seven-day trial coupon code on the internet), I decided to go ahead and fork over the fee for one month (plus the free seven days). If nothing comes of it, I’m out 25 bucks, but in the meantime, I think I have a better chance for success if I’m allowed to form my own sentences.

Candidates thus far have been varied and enlightening. I appear to have been laboring under the false impression that most adults can write at a 7th grade level or above. My mistake.

One of the first people I talked to was that guy that told me my profile rendered him “speachless [sic].” You remember, the guy who thought he was Tobey Maguire? Tobey appears to be reasonably cute from his photograph, but if I were the type to make snap judgments based on a single IM conversation, I would place his IQ roughly equal to that of a tetherball. It turns out I am that type.

It was the most boring and stilted IM conversation since the creation of the internet. Aside from the lapses in substance, there was also a conspicuous lack of pronouns and I kept waiting for him to tell me the story of how he lost his shift key. He used some variation of “u” (instead of “you”) at least 8 times in the space of 20 minutes, and that includes the rather creative use of “urs” (in place of “yours”). Somewhere in the world, a grammar teacher cried out in her sleep.

I can look past poor writing skills, though, if the person is interesting or easy to talk to. Sadly for Tobey Maguire, he is neither interesting nor easy to talk to. We had never spoken to each other before, so it caught me off guard when he said, “anything new with you?” Since when? The beginning of time? We’ve never met. I wouldn’t have been so hard on him for this, but he then pulled out that gem TWO MORE TIMES during that same conversation, and I ran out of ways to answer without sounding like I was making fun of him.

At one point, the conversation teetered on interesting, but the poor guy kept inexplicably misplacing his momentum:

Tobey Maguire: “well, lets see born in germany and moved around alot, father was in the army”
Meldraw: “Germany, no kidding! How long were you there?”
TM: “for 2 years then another 6”

[pause]

M: “So…8 years?”
TM: “thats about it”

[pause]

M: “Ah.”

Later, I tried to wrestle the conversation into something—anything—that Tobey Maguire might like to expound on with more than four words:

M: “So what other things do you like?”
TM: “walking, swimming, hanging out with friends – if they ever show up, chatting, walking”
M: “If they ever show up?”
TM: “they say they will come and then never show up”

[pause]

TM: “I know great friends”
M: “I guess!”
TM: “howabout u”
M: “My friends usually come when I ask them.”

Too soon? He seemed to get the joke, but it’s hard to tell with him. If you can imagine. Meanwhile, he really likes walking.

In other news, I know some of you were rooting for Mushroom Guy. Unfortunately, he’s probably not a viable candidate. His mushroom-revolution message was kind, but he is older than I’m looking for and is a widower with three kids. I just…can’t go there right now.

Coal Miner’s Cleaner (another commenter favorite) is also not particularly appealing to me, mostly because his tone was arrogant and abrasive. Also, his profile says (among other things): “Nothing is more relaxing than your friends laughing at you because I know that it will come back on them real quick.” Which, if I can parse that sentence, makes him sound a little like a sociopath.

Then there was Chatspeak Guy. As it turns out, his chatspeak was not intentionally ironic, so when I said he was either really funny or kind of an ass, I was only half right.

His unremarkable email took a dicey turn when it became a rant about women who lie about their weight or post old pictures of themselves on their profiles. He went on to describe in great detail a date he went on where he was surprised to see that the woman who answered the door ended up being 300 pounds and not as cute as her picture. He used the words “sooo gross” and I immediately felt offended. I mean, I hate it too, when people lie on their profiles or are intentionally deceiving, but that didn’t seem like his point. The way he talked about her weight and appearance as if it somehow made her less of a person completely put me off. Plus, who talks about things like that in their FIRST EMAIL EVER? He should know by now that you can’t impress a woman by talking derisively about another woman’s weight. We’re hardwired to cut you when you bring up weight. My favorite line was this: “So me being a nice guy I didn't just run and still took her out.” What a gentleman. Somebody knight this prick.

Finally, after waxing not-so-poetic about people who post old pictures on their profiles? He says, “I'd luv to hear from ya again and since I was complaining about outdated pics...mine on yahoo is a lil old. I've got some recent pics on myspace if you use that. just search for [Chatspeak Guy].” So I did. And according to his picture on mySpace, he is both older and fatter than his picture on Yahoo would lead me to believe. Hypocrisy? Table for one?

He emailed me yesterday (after not hearing from me for five days) and asked if he offended me. I don’t really know what to say.

For all of those poor candidates, though, there are also a few promising ones. I’m speaking to one Military Man, an aeronautics engineer who seems normal enough and is returning from Guam on Monday. There’s also Triathlete, who is both literate and kind, and assures me that his closet is completely empty of skeletons. (I hope I didn’t scare him when, after he told me he’s an electrical applications engineer, I asked what that meant by saying, “Please tell me you build robots.”) Emails to Military Man and Triathlete are still in progress.

My hopes lie with two strong front-runners, though:

A funny, smart, and grammatically pristine guy from Lincoln has wholly caught my interest. He contacted me a couple of days ago, and we’ve already traded witty and impressive emails. His profile sparked my interest (“I'm tired of being used for my massive biceps, endless pocketbook and my seasons one, two, and three DVD box set of the Gilmore Girls. Alright, I was trying to sound too cool. I don't have any of those things”), but when his first email opened with the general agreement that chatspeak should be illegal over the age of 12 (“…no, 10”) and that one of his biggest pet peeves is the use of bad grammar, my heart sang a little.

His first email to me was engrossing and fun and filled with all the right things. He was enthusiastic but not stalker-ish, and he not only appreciated my sense of humor, but shared it. He seemed both interesting and interested. Rock! Then he informed me of his profession: Correctional Officer at the Nebraska State Penitentiary.

I am not even f***ing kidding.

And he loves it. That’s scary, right? He seems totally normal and level-headed about it, though, so I am going to proceed with the benefit of the doubt. And so, I dub him Shawshank.

My other strong candidate, Easily Impressible Guy, contacted me last night for the first time, so I have little to go on at the moment. But he, too, seems funny and smart and writes pretty sentences. He’s playing a clever flattery card: he started his message by saying that I’m the one who inspired him to subscribe, and he was apparently blown away by my “midnight in the park” thing. That bit of sycophancy aside, he does seem to be creative and interesting, so we’ll see what happens there.

I appear to have a full plate. Which…was unexpected.

Getting Personal

2007-07-17T11:48:00.000-05:00

I really never thought I’d find myself here.

I blame peer pressure. More specifically, I blame my friend JKeg, and I blame her hard. She managed to wrangle me into something that others have tried and failed to get me into for a long time: online dating.

The idea of online dating is not appealing to me. I guess the concept is an old one, since personal ads have been appearing in newspapers for decades. But my generation grew up watching after-school specials (and later, Lifetime movies) that made it very clear: the interweb is populated entirely with nasty, middle-aged, greasily mulleted, psychopathic men with handlebar mustaches pretending to be young kids so that they can scam their way into an assault charge.

Those ominous warnings about revealing any personal information on the internet have stuck with me; I don’t attach my real name or email to this blog partly because I want to remain a woman of mystery and intrigue, but mostly because I don’t want to be chopped up and put in somebody’s freezer. It’s a superficial sort of wariness, though, because I know perfectly well how easy it is to attain information on the web, and if someone wanted to find me, it would be a rather short distance from A to B.

I’m also aware that the use of the internet is now so widespread and ingrained in our culture that the audience has been diluted: more often than not, people are here for legitimate reasons. Not always, but odds are better than they used to be. (Unless you are Dateline, NBC.) Online communities are huge these days; I’ve met some extremely close friends on the internet (as weird as that still is for me to wrap my head around), and if you’re smart about it, you can usually avoid the sharks in the water.

All of this is to say that I recognize the problems inherent in online dating. There are creeps. There are nerds. There’s potential for murder. More importantly, however, opting to find a date through an online service makes me feel desperate. It makes me look around at my social life and say, “It’s come to this?”

Oddly, while I’m looking around at said social life, I realize with a shock that a lot of my friends are taking the same action, seemingly without a trace of desperation. I didn’t realize how many of my friends’ dates had been arranged through eHarmony or Yahoo! Personals or Match.com. It’s become a legitimate branch of the dating community, like going to a bar or fixing up a friend on a blind date.

It was JKeg that finally pushed me past my hesitation, though. We had gone to the movies for a Girls’ Night, and then stopped at a diner for some dessert and a heart-to-heart. She systematically weakened my resolve with pie and stories of how she met her fiancé on Yahoo Personals, and then when I was at my weakest she demanded that we return to my apartment that very minute and get me signed up for Yahoo. It was free, she said, and would be totally great! She ambushed me.

We did go back to my apartment, and we did set up a shiny new profile. I let JKeg steer me through the questionnaires, looking at her uncertainly every time I had to arbitrarily choose the features of my “ideal match.” This was online shopping at its most surreal. I felt like I was ordering shoes. Does anyone seriously have a preference for their date’s eye color?

When it was done, I had a profile and a picture (which I assume will be printed on my box if I am ever sold as an action figure), and we sat back and looked at each other. JKeg declared her work to be done and went home to her fiancé. I looked at my computer screen and wondered what I was doing. Then I clicked on the tempting little button that said “See Your Matches!” and was rewarded with a Sears-Roebuck catalogue of single people in Omaha smiling back at me. As I flipped through their profiles, I smiled.

Why not?

I’ve decided to shelve my pride and give it a shot. I have a couple of motivations: First, my dating record sucks. I can only go upward. Second, even if things don’t work out, it’s possible I’ll end up with a few extra friends that I wouldn’t have met otherwise. Third, if things really go badly, I’ll have a lot of blog material. This could be my Odyssey. My Journey to the Center of the Earth. My Men Are From Mars.

So, readers, you’re in this with me. You’re my justification for having nothing to lose. I’ll keep you updated if you allow me to fall back on the delusion that I’m a plucky undercover journalist when things don’t go well. Deal?

The Beginning:

The following is from my profile—the part where Yahoo told me to describe “Me and My Ideal Match” in 200 words or less:

Me:
I am a photographer, designer, and sometimes-writer. I train horses and own two cats who both need shrinks. I’m not scared of rats or snakes, but I could do without bees or drive-thru bank tellers. I value humor, intelligence, honesty, and selflessness. My movie tastes are fairly broad: I get a little antsy with war films and I can’t really get behind the Scary Movie franchise, but otherwise I could spend three weeks in a movie theater surviving on nothing but popcorn and Diet Dr Pepper. I am a limited cook and kill plants easily, but otherwise am very competent. I spend a little too much time with my TiVo and not enough time with my paycheck.

You:
You don’t write in “chat speak” or substitute numbers for words. You listen to and appreciate the opinions of others. You don’t mind that I hate mushrooms. You’re clean, and you’re patient, and you haven’t lied on your profile. You think it’s romantic to meet at midnight in the park. (In the classically romantic way, not the Jack The Ripper way.) (Also, not the “bring me $1,000,000 in unmarked bills” way.)

Also, you laugh at my jokes.

It has been posted for a week and Yahoo tells me that it has been viewed by 27 men. I have received 9 messages. Assuming this is an accurate sample, that means that roughly 1/3 of single Omahans would like to buy me dinner, or at least start up a conversation. I have no reason to doubt my math.

I haven’t responded to anybody yet, but I intend to do so tonight or tomorrow. A couple of the messages have been laughable, a couple have been interesting, and a couple I’m on the fence about. At least one is from a widower, and I’d be lying if I said that didn’t freak me out a little. One man declared himself “speachless [sic]” upon reading my profile. Of course, this man also said in his own profile that he has “been called Tobey Maguire a few times,” so he may just be confused. I don’t really see the resemblance in his photo.

One especially intriguing message opened with “I work for a company that cleans burnt coal from power plants,” and proceeded to enlighten me on the company’s busy times of year, the hazards of working with water in subzero climates, and the state of his salary.

One guy with a very nice picture sent me a message filled with chatspeak (“Hi [Meldraw], I thought u were cute so I just thought I’d drop ya a line. I’d luv to get to know ya if ur interested…”). He didn’t appear to have written that way throughout his profile, just in my message, so I can’t tell if he was doing it intentionally as a response to my chatspeak admonition. If he was, then he’s either really funny, or kind of an ass. If he wasn’t, well, he writes in chatspeak.

Two guys who sent messages are weight-lifters (seriously?), another one has “I’ll Tell You Later” listed as his marital status, and one is rejoicing that there is another mushroom-hater in the world. One guy accidentally misinterpreted my profile and thinks I am a yoooge fan of war films and I don’t quite know how to burst his bubble.

So I have a lot of homework. I haven’t decided who I will and won’t respond to, but I need to make a decision soon. I also should probably contact a couple of people of my own accord. For now, though, I’m kind of enjoying being a semi-invisible online shopper.

It’s the follow-through that’s going to be tough.

...and by "guidance," we mean "smackdown."

2007-07-08T11:49:00.000-05:00

Apparently, my blog is rated PG (Parental Guidance Suggested). This rating was based on the presence of the word “dead,” appearing exactly one time in the space of whatever writing sample they examined.

Huh.

I’m pretty sure I’ve said worse things on this blog than that. Did I get this rating because lately I’ve started using asterisks (***) in place of real, live swear words, because of that one time my mother totally canned me for using inappropriate language?

Oooooooh. That’s what they mean by “parental guidance.”

Meldraw’s Five Tips for Daily Living

2007-07-06T14:40:00.000-05:00

1. Never go to the Humane Society on your lunch break.
No good can come of it. At best, you come away liking the human race a whole lot less. At worst, you wind up falling frantically in love with an irresistible face still filled with fuzzy innocence despite exposure to the worst of humanity. Finding yourself in this heartbreaking position presents you with only two choices: a) look into those sad eyes, pleading at you with diminishing hope from a tiny glass prison, and walk away with a new guilt complex; or b) take him home, cat lady.

Let’s say you just want to donate some stuff. Maybe you have some milk replacement formula for kittens (from when your youngest cat adopted you, still a little bit too young) and an assortment of birdcage equipment (from when you tried desperately to keep your grandmother’s canary alive after your grandmother died, and failed). My advice to you is to just drop these things off at the donations desk and WALK OUT. If you see a few cute kittens in the window and notice that you have a few minutes left to kill on your lunch break, GO THE OTHER WAY.

2. It’s 2007. Speak like it.
The English language is in an admittedly precarious state right now. UrbanDictionary.com informs us that words are being reused, recycled, and repurposed for all sorts of dubious reasons—sometimes we should embrace them, sometimes we should not. (I’m greatly amused by the term “iPerbole,” for example, to describe the inexplicable hype surrounding new Apple products, and I continue to use the term “yoink” to mean “a transference of ownership from one person to another,” even though I know it’s a ridiculous word, because I simply cannot find a more concise way to describe a “delightfully light-hearted theft.”) English is a fairly elastic language; one might effectively create one’s own words or play with grammatical format for comic effect or to simply pinpoint an exact feeling that doesn’t quite have a label yet.

But while vernacular evolution is to be expected and even encouraged, we generally do not pull antiquated turns of phrase back into the mainstream. Retro is one thing—medieval role-playing is another. It’s annoying and unnecessary, and truthfully, a little geeky. The contractions “ ‘Twas” and “ ‘tis” are so over. “Methinks,” while occasionally successful as an ironic aside, should not be used in daily conversation unless you are an Elizabethan playwright or a pirate. A good rule of thumb is: if you can’t speak the phrase aloud in a sentence without the aid of full period dress, find a thesaurus.

3. When lighting a propane grill, start the flame on your lighter before you turn on the gas.
Otherwise, during the five seconds it takes you to realize that your lighter won’t start when it’s being smothered by gas, pull the lighter out, light it, and shove it back in there, a small but kickin’ gas cloud will have collected, which will then become a fireball, which will then remove all of your arm hair.

4. Guys, if you want to buy a girl a drink, make sure the bartender is paying attention.
Bartenders work fast, and it may be that he has already taken her debit card from her. He may be only half-listening when you tell him to put her drink on your tab, and then he may disappear with her debit card, without taking your own. When he comes back with a bill for her, she may find herself paying not only for her own frozen margarita, but also your Bloody Mary with your side of potstickers, and you may find yourself with no cash, and…awkward.

This might, however, be an excellent opportunity for you to offer to take her out later to “make up for it.” My advice to you would be to go ahead and make that offer, instead of leaving her feeling like the First National Bank. A First National Bank without a date.

5. A lab coat does not give a person medical authority.
Witness: the Clinique counter. If you know you are allergic to Benzoil Peroxide, do not let these ladies in white coats tell you otherwise. They work on commission, and they prey on insecurities. They’ve mastered that careful study of your face as they inspect your skin, followed by a perfectly calibrated “huh” that makes three things very clear: a) they think you’re very brave for having walked around with your features all your life, b) they’re trying to be polite about how to break your flaws to you, and c) they know exactly how to fix you, and may they show you some revolutionary new products?

Now, they may actually be able to help you, because Clinique products are pretty good. But you should draw the line at letting them convince you that there is “so little” Benzoil Peroxide in a particular cream that your allergy will magically disappear. It won’t. And you’ll just have spent $36 investing in a way to make yourself miserable the next day, when you’ll want go all Face/Off and leave your skin in the freezer for the afternoon.

Luckily, the lab coats do bring a 100% satisfaction guarantee, so you can return the stuff and get your money back. Just be careful going back to that counter, because they’re going to look very closely at you again.

This is what I see when I wake up every morning.

2007-06-25T18:31:00.001-05:00

Unnerving, isn't it?

Just like riding a bike.

2007-06-18T15:34:00.000-05:00

I’m not a sporty person. I enjoy the feel of nature and love being outside, but I’m usually happiest when I smell nice, so I prefer to be still-ish. There are a few high-octane activities that I will willingly hit my target heart rate for, but generally they involve horses or attackers. I’m not a couch potato, but I am sort of girly sometimes.

That being said, I’ve made a decision recently to be more proactive about my health. I go through this every once in awhile, with the dieting and the determination and the questionable allies in exercise counsel. But this time I’m approaching my goals in a more general sense, with two simple aims: sensible eating and increased daily activity.

It’s this latter aim that nearly killed me twice in one afternoon.

Looking for a way to increase my daily cardio without involving anyone wearing spandex and a clip-on microphone, I decided to rescue my old bicycle from the depths of my parents’ basement. It was a good bike, but I hadn’t really ridden it since high school and so it had fallen into a minor state of disrepair. I would refurbish it, I decided, and use it to explore Omaha. This would be fun! I gathered up the old bike, my dad’s old bike rack, and some big plans.

The local bike shop worked magic on my old Trek hybrid. I authorized a full overhaul, complete with new tires and new brakes and new grips and new bearings and a few other new things that may or may not have been made up on the spot, I can’t tell. At any rate, when I picked my bike up a week later, it sure was pretty. It looked new again, all shiny and calibrated. I also picked up a new helmet and an Omaha Bike Trail map. I was ready. I took the bike out for its inaugural spin around the neighborhood. Whee!

"Whee?" Yeah, no. More like "HOLY HELL, WHAT AM I DOING? I SEE A WHITE LIGHT!" I completely kicked my own ass in ten minutes.

I haven't seriously ridden a bike in many, many years (except for that time CJ and I rented bikes at Cape Cod, which was fun, but caused us to go back to our campsite and sleep for two hours immediately following). I neglected to acknowledge the fact that a refurbished bike does not equal a refurbished biker. I also kind of forgot that my neighborhood had so many hills.

I started out fine, gently getting the hang of the thing again, when I turned my first corner and promptly went down a hill. It might have been a mountain. Possibly a cliff. Before I knew what was happening, I was gaining speed. And gaining speed. And gaining speed. And gaining…Jesus Christ, I was going to die. Those new tires sure were speedy. I didn't want to completely ruin my new brakes so I tried not to use them too much but then I was suddenly going faster than a locomotive and the hill just wouldn't end and I kept gaining speed and I started to look like the colorfully blurred-out Superman when they show him zipping around in the movies and I thought, "Well, it's a good thing I'm wearing my new helmet because if I hit a bump I am going to go sailing into somebody's house at 95 miles an hour and won't have had a chance to say goodbye to my family."

Finally I had no choice but to lay on the brakes. I don’t know if it was a product of my speed, or the new brakes, or the new tires, or just God trying to make me a nerd, but the brakes started to squeal. Loudly. Children stopped playing catch and looked in my direction. All the dogs in the neighborhood started barking. And somehow, I didn’t feel like I was slowing much. Now I was a colorful, ear-piercing blur, racing down the street.

I eventually screeched to a slightly slower pace at the bottom of the hill (oh, thank you Jesus, the bottom of the hill!) just in time to barely make a turn at the T in the road. Gravity once again on my side, I rode along slowly, gathering my heart up to stuff it back down into my chest. Bike-riding was not as fun as I remembered. I wanted to go home. I turned the corner, aiming back toward my apartment complex.

Which, of course, was up that hill.

F***.

I got halfway up before I started placing bets on which would explode first: my heart or my muscles. The answer, as it turns out, is both at the same time. I was so winded that my teeth hurt, right down into the very roots. That can't have been healthy. I really didn’t want to be a punk and walk my bike up the hill, so I turned around decided to try to find a gentler route home.

I wandered, red-faced, around the rest of my neighborhood for about two hours (in reality, it was only fifteen minutes, but it seemed longer), and finally went home, almost making it up the hill before I had to actually get off and walk my bike home. Like a sucker. I went back to my apartment and collapsed on the floor for several minutes while Izzy attacked my hair and I let the blood return to my limbs.

That was three weeks ago. I haven’t touched the bike since. I’m not giving up, I just need to stop being mad at gravity. I plan to take the bike out again, and often, but it’s going to be someplace flat. Very, very flat.

Where in the world...?

2007-06-05T22:30:00.000-05:00

I know. I know! I completely missed May, and most of April. But I’m back now, so let me try to catch up a little:

I’ve been in Hawaii.

My pin-up girl tan is the result of spending nearly two weeks lying on a beach. Most of my vacation was spent in a much-needed state of relaxation, lying in the sand or floating in the ocean. There were a couple of breaks for meals and…well, pretty much just meals.

When I was young, my family lived in Hawaii for five years. These were my formative years, so I grew up straddling two cultures—the Hawaiian language, habits, and sensibilities were part of my daily life, and I’d forgotten how much I missed it all until I went back.

This trip saw my mother, father, sister and me reunited (with the addition of my new brother-in-law) and revisiting our old home, Oahu. Not only did we stay on the same island, but we stayed on the same beach in the same cabins we regularly rented twenty years ago on weekends and holidays. Not much has changed, with the possible exception of a new internet kiosk and more bugs than I remember. The laid-back “aloha” spirit is still the business model for most operations, and nobody wears closed-toed shoes. Flowers adorn every surface, indoors and out. The rules of English grammar are mostly just guidelines, and the speed limits can just as easily be applied to bicycles and Hoverounds as to cars.

In the twelve straight days I spent with my family on a tropical island, I counted four (4) arguments about how to properly dispose of insects, at least eight (8) rousing rounds of Catchphrase that resulted in inappropriate misunderstandings of the English language, two (2) insinuations by my mother that my father keeps company with ladies of the evening in the Philippines, and exactly one (1) discussion about work.

Other figures of interest:

Leis received, between us: 16

Fruity drinks consumed in hollowed-out pineapples: 4

Fruity drinks consumed in normal glasses, with an orchid on the top for good measure: 29

Varieties of foodstuffs consumed that featured, contained, or consisted entirely of macadamia nuts: at least 15

Bottles of sunblock depleted and filled with a salt-water/sand paste: 4½

Postcards mailed: 23

Centipede attacks: 1

Resulting trips to the ER: 1

Vicodin pills prescribed by the ER doctor to ease my mother’s pain from the FREAKING POISONOUS CENTIPEDE: 8

Vicodin pills the pharmacist actually gave her: 60, I swear to God

Centipedes killed in the name of humanity before we finally asked to be relocated to another cabin: 4

Stings from a Portuguese man-of-war: 2

Portuguese man-of-war killed by a stick in the retaliating beachfront massacre: upwards of 50

Times the phrase “f***ing nature” was muttered under someone’s breath: 3, that I know of

Rainbows: 4

Flowers picked and worn behind ear: 4

Minutes spent on the internet: 26

Minutes spent on the beach which might have otherwise been spent on the internet back home: 4,860

Photos taken of large men in grass skirts with no sense of irony: 24

Unread back issues of Entertainment Weekly caught up on: 12

Pairs of flip-flops lining the wall by the door of our cabin: 9

Mornings I woke up and took a walk on the beach before breakfast: 5

Evenings I took a walk on the beach under the moon: 6

Mornings I was able to wake myself up in time to see the sun rise over the ocean: 0

Times my brother-in-law had to ask my family what we were saying in Hawaiian: 17

Times my brother-in-law tried, with little or no success, to pronounce “Kalanianaole”: 24

Successful attempts: 1

“Aloha”s and “Mahalo”s: countless

Days spent in Hawaii before my father caved and made reservations for next year: 9

Hours spent in planes or airports: 30

Non-spam email messages waiting for me when I returned: 91

Kisses bestowed upon Izzy and GenV immediately after walking back into my apartment: thousands

Items displaced by Izzy in my apartment: 10, plus about 30 laundry quarters

So I’m back now, like it or not, and I apologize for not climbing back into my blogspace sooner. I’m still on Island Time. Mahalo for your patience.

Come here, go away.

2007-04-07T22:53:00.000-05:00

I’m borrowing the concept of “Come here, go away” from Sars. I believe she invented this handy blog structure shortcut, but I can’t be sure. “Come here” is for things in my life I enjoy so much that if it were feasible, I would clutch them to my person very tightly until they could no longer breathe. “Go away” is for things I would like to see on the business end of a Quentin Tarantino movie. Thanks for not suing me for copyright infringement, Sars.

Come here, shiny, shiny Camry. You are my sunshine. You are sexy, reliable, roomy, and in no way possessed of evil spirits. You’ve got my back in bad weather, you help me find you in crowded parking lots, and you’ve even coached me to get over my irrational fear of drive-through car washes. I apologize for not having named you yet, but if it makes you feel any better, the VenJetta didn’t get its name until after I’d had it for several years. (Well, it did go by “Diablo” for a little while when I first got it, but that was more a reflection of my own skills learning to drive a stick than the car’s actual personality.)

Go away, whoever dinged my f***ing door in the parking lot. If you hadn’t done such a stellar parking job in the first place, maybe you would have had enough room to get out of your vehicle without muscling your way past mine. If I ever find you, you’re going to give me a first-hand report on the roominess of my trunk.

Come here, Hot Fuzz. I’m on the edge of my seat over here, waiting for you to arrive in America. If you are half as awesome as Spaced or Shaun of the Dead, you and I are going to be braiding each other’s hair long into the night.

Go away, inconsiderate moviegoers. You do not get to provide a running commentary during the movie. You do not get to say, “Oh, my gosh, what’s he going to do now?” LET’S FIND OUT TOGETHER, SHALL WE? You do not get to sing along to the soundtrack unless you are in the movie. You do not get to make sound effects, even if they are disturbingly convincing. You do not get to bring your four-year-old to an R movie and then act all shocked when he starts to cry. You do not get to text your BFF on your cell phone every 30 seconds because even if the sound is off, the glow from your screen is so distracting that all I want to do is take the phone away from you and hide it in my Diet Coke. This is not your living room. Also, if you had arrived at the theater on time, you would have heard the singing frog tell you all of these guidelines already, and my blood pressure would be normal.

Come here, Hawaii. The mere thought of you is all that is going to get me through the next three weeks at work. I know we haven’t seen each other in a long time, but I still have feelings for you, and I hope you recognize me when I return. I’m a little older, a little larger, and a lot paler, but I still know my way around a luau, and now I have the added benefit of being old enough to drink. If you play your cards right, I may never leave you, and we can live happily ever after with the cast of Lost.

Go away, cubicle neighbor who has all the daily drama of a fourteen-year-old girl. Take your personal phone calls elsewhere, or limit yourself to ten per day. My iPod’s volume only goes up so loud, and I’m concerned that if you don’t go away, I’m going to get fired before I get a chance to use my Hawaii vacation time.

Come here, Izzy. You are soft and cuddly, and I can’t be tense when you are purring. Your daily kisses on my nose and cheek are sometimes painful, but mostly adorable. Thank you for letting me be your best friend, and please don’t get very much bigger.

Go away, Izzy, at three o’clock in the morning AND EVERY OTHER MINUTE OF THE DAY when you will not give up on your life’s mission to destroy the very expensive Easter flower arrangement that my mother sent me. No, I do NOT see the irony in your quest to choke yourself on pussywillows and I am totally not interested in your baby’s breath mustache. If you die from munching on some exotic flower, it will be with a sad, sad heart that I say, “I told you so,” but don’t think I won’t say it anyway, because you know you are not supposed to jump up on the table and it is absolutely not charming when you sneak behind my back to do it on tiptoes so I can’t hear you.

Come here, Jim Halpert. Let me take you away with me.

Go away, Sanjaya. No, seriously. GO AWAY. I don’t even watch American Idol and I’m sick of you. I want to vote you off my memory.

Come here, Mika, and bring your single, “Grace Kelly,” with you. It makes me want to break out every Queen album I own, which is a lot, and dance badly. I can only play this song about 13 more times before I overdose, but until then I am thoroughly rocking out to your Freddie Mercury vocals. I honestly hope you are not a one-trick pony, and that you have something more original up your sleeve.

Go away, Daniel Powter, for the love of God. I thought I was rid of that musically revolting, perpetually stuck-in-the-head, whiny-ass “Bad Day” song last year, but every once in awhile it pops up on the radio and I want to surgically remove my eardrums with my car keys.

And I don’t want to get blood on my Camry, because, shiny.

Evil never dies.

2007-03-19T18:23:00.000-05:00

These are the things I think of when I see the phrase “Evil never dies”:

Halloween: Resurrection, starring Jamie Lee Curtis and, inexplicably, Busta Rhymes.
Wishmaster 2: Evil Never Dies, starring pretty much nobody at all.
Amityville Dollhouse, the eighth installment of the Amityville Horror saga. No, really. (Incidentally, I cannot believe they went through eight movies before falling back on this trusty tagline.)
Christine, starring the VenJetta.

I thought I was done writing about the VenJetta in my blog. I’d closed that chapter in my life, mourned the loss of some reluctantly great writing material, and breathed my first sigh of vehicular relief in five years.

Unfortunately, I forgot that evil never dies. It only moves around, finding new makeshift hosts to carry out its rancor in imaginative ways. This, at least, is the only explanation I can find for the startling upheaval in all of my home appliances.

It started with my computer. My PC began crashing with some regularity several months ago. Sometimes it would magically fix itself overnight (I’d wake up to find the Blue Screen of Death had been replaced with my Giant Izzy wallpaper, and I would even be logged into my Instant Messenger; the computer was all but whistling nonchalantly), and sometimes I would need the help of my friend, Kevin (Indian name: Dances With CPUs), to piece things back together with rescue discs and DOS commands. I backed up my important stuff and continued to work with it, crossing my fingers. Metaphorically, of course.

Then my hairdryer died, and I had to buy a new one. I wasn’t too broken up about this, because that hairdryer was always a little wonky anyway. It didn’t smell like something was burning, but it did set off the smoke alarm my very first morning in my apartment. For the past four years, I’ve had to dry my hair with the bathroom door shut, so that no one evacuated my building.

Shortly thereafter, my TiVo became frozen and unresponsive. Unlike the hairdryer, this was like a knife in my stomach. Fortunately, a simple unplug and re-plug got us back on track.

Last week, over the course of three days, five light bulbs (in various lamps) blew out in my apartment. I would like to remind you that I live in a one-bedroom, not Aisle Five of LampsUSA.

On Friday, my computer crashed again, and this time there was no coming back. No amount of computer-whispering from Kevin or recovery procedures from me would make Windows start, and I was sick of it. It was the VenJetta all over again, a petulant and unprovoked piece of machinery, and I had had it.

Maybe it was the empowerment of my recent conquest over the VenJetta itself; maybe it was the intoxicating feeling of exorcising all the problem children in my life; maybe it was years of pent-up frustration with Microsoft’s finicky infrastructure and an utter exhaustion at trying to defend it; maybe it was a closeted crush on the sleek designs of Apple’s latest products and a convenient call-to-action; I don’t know. But whatever it was, I think I blacked out somewhere and I woke up with this:

I bought an iMac. Isn’t it pretty?

I think I am slowly but surely cutting off all avenues of attack for the VenJetta’s evil spirit. Soon I will live a normal life again, like Jamie Lee Curtis. In the meantime, I am taking the advice of my friend Jay T and not standing too close to the oven.

P.S. I do believe Macs and PCs can peacefully coexist in this world, and if you try to start a flame-war in here, I will send my toaster after you. Don’t think I won’t.

Based on a true story.

2007-03-16T09:18:00.000-05:00

I was all set to write a blog entry today that detailed the tragic, autobiographical Lifetime-movie account of a suicidal computer that had flirted with death and the devoted owner who wrestled it back from the brink in a tear-jerking and inspiring display of personal strength. It was filled with suspense, determination, heartbreak, and hope. When all seemed lost, the stoic owner pulled together threads of ingenuity and fortitude from every dark corner of her body and used them to MacGyver her despairing computer back into working condition, with some help from her charmingly techy-yet-accessible friends, and the intellectually dashing computer paramedic who made housecalls. There were some laughs along the way (she wrote a blog entry by hand!), some tears (she was about to lose everything!), and some nail-biting action scenes (her freelance projects threatened to come crashing down around her!), but ultimately it was a story about perseverance, and it ended with smiles of relief and a nice crane shot of a happy household surrounded by trees and birds.

That was my plan. But then I woke up this morning to see a black DOS screen and an Error Message of Death. Again.

I should have known that every successful Lifetime movie has a sequel. Well, and Nancy McKeon.

Technology bytes.

2007-03-05T14:47:00.000-06:00

Post-script:

Executive decision.

2007-03-01T08:22:00.000-06:00

Dear Corporate Employers,

Looking out my window, I see that when the snow is not falling in actual solid plates, it's moving in an angrily horizontal way. I can't see the building 30 feet away, partly because of the white-out conditions and partly because someone appears to have spackled over my windows. Al Roker tells me there's going to be 10" more on the ground by this afternoon, and although I don't put a whole lot of stock in his meteorological expertise, he seems to be backed up by Respected Weather King of the Greater Omaha Area, Jim Flowers.

Every school is closed and every news station is telling me to absolutely stay off the roads unless it's an emergency, because crews are sick of hauling our asses out of ditches. News anchors are showing CityCam shots of nothing but white while plugging the Today Show’s upcoming segment on “Fun Things to do on a Snow Day!” because obviously, they say, no non-essential personnel should be at work today. Then they laugh superciliously at the thought of any employment establishments that would be foolish enough to disagree.

I bring this all up to you because I have called the Corporate Weather Line approximately 38 times this morning. 39, if you count the time I accidentally misdialed and got Pizza Hut. And every time (with the exception of the Pizza Hut call), I got the same message: “All offices and systems are open for normal business hours.”

With all due respect, Sirs: whatever. I'm calling a Snow Day. You cannot convince me that I am essential personnel. If you consider me essential personnel, then I think we should be discussing an entirely different pay bracket. Also, I'm willing to bet you will not pay for my damage when some idiot hits my shiny, shiny new car because they think that all SUVs are actually Hummers, or the resulting damage to their own vehicle when I go all Anger Management on their Jeep Liberty.

If you have any questions regarding my decision, you are more than welcome to come over for cinnamon buns and coffee, and we will discuss the matter under some quilts.

Best,
Meldraw

Wait, don't go away!

2007-02-26T14:42:00.000-06:00

Don't worry; you're in the right spot. Let Me Get This Straight has just had a little work done.

I've had this blog for over a year now, and it was time for a nip/tuck. I grew tired of the old Blogger template with the orange star in the corner that looked like it belonged on an athletic shoe and the giant 897 watermark that wasn't code for anything. Typographically, there were things about the template I liked and it served me well enough, but it was beginning to feel worn. Since I couldn't find a template that expressed my individuality, or one that I even liked, I decided to make my own.

Also, I think if one is being paid to be a "Multimedia Specialist," one really has no room to complain about a cookie-cutter template, and she should perhaps take some initiative already.

So, I set about learning how to write my own blog template. Surprisingly, I found it a little more difficult than writing regular webpages or even entire sites. This is partly because I only ever taught myself HTML, CSS, and Javascript from scratch; I never had a class and only briefly referred to books. Mostly, I prefer to dissect things that already work—break a web page apart and change things one by one, observing reactions until I make it all crash. (Reason #53 why I would make a terrible doctor.) (But I'd have my own television show.)

When I was eight years old, my mother bought me a maze-like computer adventure game for our state-of-the-art, DOS-based, green-screen Compaq. I defeated the game but didn't lose interest in it, and I discovered that you could construct your own game with your own mazes and your own adventures. My mother still laughs over the time she walked into the computer room one day to find eight-year-old-me sitting in front of the computer with the manual in my lap, looking first at the book, then at the DOS prompt on the screen, then at the book again, amusing myself by determining the best way to amuse myself.

It was eight-year-old-me that kept swimming to the surface as I sat in front of my computer at 4:00 this morning, having been up all night deconstructing Blogger's own coding language. In the end, it's not really that hard at all, but I say that with the ease of a person who has learned it. It was trial and error all night long, and I finally went to bed with it 90% solved. The other 10% came in an epiphany as I woke up two hours later to go to work. I'm a little sleepy today, but I blame it on eight-year-old-me never wanting to go to bed either.

I'm still un-kinking a few things, so if you are running into formatting problems, please let me know. Also, if my blog implodes, I apologize, and I'll get on that.

Regime change.

2007-02-21T14:56:00.000-06:00

I’ve been meaning to write this blog entry for awhile now, so this may not be news to some of you. But even though it happened two weeks ago, the glowy feeling inside probably won’t leave me for at least a couple of months.

::deep breath::

The VenJetta is finished. I won.

It started several weeks ago. The driver’s side window wouldn’t go down (again), and I brought the car to the shop to be fixed. Having already replaced the motor on every other window in the car, I expected to pay a couple hundred dollars and be on my way. Naturally, I was wrong. An inspection of the VenJetta’s inner workings revealed that there was over $1,000 worth of other things that needed to be fixed, or else I would die on the side of the road in the very near future. I asked them to fix only the absolutely necessary items, and brought the bill down to $860, which I paid for with my slowly accumulating (and constantly deferred) New Car Fund. I briefly wondered why I was not more upset by this development, and then I realized: the VenJetta has made me dead inside. I put “Buy a new car” on my To Do list and bought some Consumer Reports literature.

That week, a pervasive burning smell began to appear whenever the car was warmed up.

The next weekend, I was driving roughly 65 miles an hour on a rural highway when I felt a very subtle shift in pressure on the VenJetta’s accelerator. I didn’t think much of it until I tried to slow down for my turn, and that proved more difficult than usual. The car seemed to be getting too much gas, as if the accelerator or fuel-line injection system was stuck, and whenever I put it in neutral or depressed the clutch, the engine revved up to dangerous levels. I shoved it into various gears just to control the engine, but this was not right, and I wondered what would happen when I came to a stop. Then…just as I pulled into my destination parking lot, all the revving stopped and the VenJetta was back to normal. I looked around for Rod Serling and said mean things under my breath.

The following week, the dashboard would periodically start beeping, and then abruptly stop. There were no accompanying warning lights and, according to my owner’s manual, the car should not have known how to beep at all.

It was at about this point that I moved “Buy a new car” up to the tippy top of my To Do list.

Finally, sitting at a stoplight shortly thereafter, the VenJetta just stopped. The engine dwindled away, and I reflexively began fishing for my well-worn AAA card. I continued to try to restart the car with no luck and made one final, defeated call to my father before I called AAA. While on the phone with him, I gave the ignition one last turn and…it started. Oh, okay. Also: What the f***? I drove home, simultaneously grateful and irate, and tried not to feel like a battered wife.

The next day I took the car to the shop (again) where they spent three days trying to diagnose the problem. This process was hindered by the fact that they could not get the car to stall for them, primarily because the VenJetta is a LYING LIAR WHO LIES. Finally, they diagnosed a bad throttle body, and billed me at another $1000. I decided against that repair, because NO.

Two days later, I went car shopping.

That day did not begin well. I had tried to be discreet about the car-shopping thing, but I think the VenJetta found out anyway, and it was not happy. It staged one last stand, not about to go down without a fight.

On my way to meet my dad to start our shopping day, the VenJetta hit an invisible patch of ice from the previous night's snow and lost all traction. This was a surprising development, because I am a good winter driver and I was not turning, braking, or going fast. The VenJetta and I flew off the road and into a ditch at 35 mph, but (thankfully) I was able to gain enough control of the skid that I avoided street signs and cars and managed not to actually hit the embankment on the other side. So, no collision, but it took about five to ten minutes of creative wiggling to get out of the snowy ditch. Also, I think I may have swallowed my heart once or twice.

Now, I’d just like to make it clear here: the VenJetta actually tried to kill me. Not with its usual passive-aggressive psychological assault, but for REAL. Like, with gravity and physics. It was only 8:00 am, and I was already exhausted. I proceeded to my parents’ house and shook for awhile.

When my dad and I left to begin car-shopping, we walked out to the driveway and discovered that my off-roading adventure had caused the VenJetta to lose a hubcap and flatten a tire. The timing was impeccable, and I took a moment calculate how much of my trade-in value would be eaten up by a missing hubcap. Then I took another moment to let the wave of resentment pass, and consoled myself with the thought that my trade-in was probably shot anyway, what with the car being borne of Hellfire and all.

We stopped at a service station and filled the tire with air, then stopped at an auto parts store to buy new hubcaps (a full set of generic hubcaps is apparently one third of the price of a single replacement hubcap at a dealership). I am the only person I know who buys an entire set of new hubcaps and doesn't even keep them for 24 hours. After a car wash and a short blessing, the car was ready to be assessed.

There followed many hours of financing, test driving, haggling, relocating, more test driving, waiting, number-crunching, and perfecting our poker faces. Twelve hours of headache later, we engineered a good deal on a silver 2004 Toyota Camry LE in excellent condition. They paid me more than they should have for the VenJetta, because they did not look closely enough and nobody checked for Crazy. After all the paperwork was done and I no longer recognized my own signature, my dad and I sat in my shiny, shiny Camry and silently watched them take the VenJetta out back. Presumably to shoot it.

I’m experiencing a strange mix of emotions regarding the VenJetta’s demise. Immediately, of course, there is that sort of exhausted elation you only understand when a threat on your life has been lifted. There is vindication—a triumph of spirit born of years of oppression and psychological abuse. There’s the excitement of a shiny new car with fancy dials and a quietly powerful engine and electric everything. But buried slightly below the celebratory feelings is a vague…disquiet? Nostalgia? Guilt?

It’s weird, is all. It might be a touch of Stockholm or BWS, but there’s a little part of me that’s sad to see the VenJetta go. “Sad” may not be exactly the right word, because sweet Jesus, am I glad that car is gone. But the VenJetta was my car. We were so closely associated that I once received the following email from a branch coworker that was visiting on an out-of-state business trip:

Hey, [Meldraw], great meeting today. I really think we’re making headway on the new marketing plan.

As we were leaving the Omaha office today, we saw you driving off to lunch. We wanted to get close enough to wave, but we’re afraid of the VenJetta. We hope you’re still alive.

Talk to you next week.

There was no question that the VenJetta belonged to me, and I belonged to the VenJetta. It inspired frequent blog entries, dinner table discussions, and laughs. I mean, in addition to the tears and frustration and the bills and the mortal fear for one’s own life. No matter what my personal feelings toward the VenJetta were, I had to admit: it had personality, and I knew that personality inside and out.

Surprisingly often, I find myself wondering where the VenJetta is right now. I know it “went to auction” (the dealer could not sell it because its odometer was incorrect as a result of an entire instrument cluster replacement that cost the equivalent of two and a half black-market babies), but I don’t really know how those auction cars end up. Is it being driven around by some poor, unsuspecting soul? Has it been dismantled for parts, and is its living spirit now contaminating the bodies of poor, unsuspecting cars? Had it been dismantled for parts, but then said parts willed themselves back together with an evil determination not-of-this-world, like Christine, and now it’s coming after poor, unsuspecting me? Or is it just sitting all by itself in an empty lot somewhere, lifeless now that there is nobody to give it life? That last one makes me a little sad—yes, sad—because as much as I hated the VenJetta, it was somebody.

So, R.I.P. VenJetta. Or burn in Hell, whichever.

Year in Review

2007-02-05T22:54:00.000-06:00

Last week, on January 31, I celebrated my one-year anniversary working for The Man.

It’s hard to believe an entire year has flown since my first week on the job. When I was first offered a full-time job, I was delighted by the thought that I would no longer have to collect couch cushion coins in order to pay my rent anymore. My brain immediately began tallying all the loose ends I could finally take care of with a salary and some insurance, and you might remember I made a handy list to keep it all straight.

So what became of those goals?

Going to the eye doctor:

What I Said Then:
It would be nice to wear reading glasses whose lenses do not routinely throw themselves from the frames. One of the arms actually dangles when you pick the glasses up, and I’m pretty sure that you’re supposed to have two of those little padded feet on the bridge. I guess the actual prescription is sort of important, too, and fewer ocular migraines would really lower my Advil budget.

...And Now:
I did go to the eye doctor. I spent the majority of my FSA on an eye exam which told me that my eyes hadn’t changed much in the last five years, and that my prescription is roughly like looking through Saran wrap. But since the Saran wrap has a slight wrinkle on one side, I need reading/computer/driving-at-night-without-terrifying-my-sister-with-my-inability-to-read-giant-streetsigns glasses to keep the migraines away. After trying on every single pair of frames in the place (and then again, with my hair up) (and then again, squinting hard because my eyes were so dilated I asked a pillar if these frames made my face look fat), I spent the rest of my FSA on some wicked cute frames.

Getting high speed internet:

What I Said Then:
I am on the internet all the time. It’s a requirement of my business, sure, but let’s be honest. iTunes is the boss of me, and in a fair and just world, it should not take 55 minutes to download “Baba O’Riley.” My current dial-up dinosaur ties up my land line, and since my crappy cell phone plan only gives me about twelve and a half daytime minutes per month, my land line is how people usually try to get in touch with me. For the last month or so, all anyone ever gets from me is a busy signal. Several people have expressed concern that I might be unconscious on my kitchen floor with the half-dialed phone in one hand and a bloody spatula in the other, entangled in the cord of a rampantly misbehaving electric beater, while my cat licks the blood from my head wounds. This is not the case.

...And Now:
Buying a high speed internet connection was the very first thing I did when I got a job. It was not an easy process. But even though CoxCommunicationsCustomerService makes me want to watch John Grisham adaptations over and over again until I find a legitimate loophole in this country’s judicial approach to homicide, I am ultimately pleased with the experience. And by “pleased,” I mean “so addicted that my hands started to shake when I spent the weekend at a farm.” I read somewhere that the average American spends 14 hours online per week. In other news, I am Rhode Island.

Cell phones:

What I Said Then:
Twelve and half daytime minutes per month really doesn’t cut it. I need a new cell phone plan, desperately, and I prefer to find one that is giving away free phones. My current cell phone is from about 1998, and is the size of a toaster oven. It has also lost the ability to hold a charge, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to buy yet another battery for it. I’m not even sure they make batteries for this model anymore. I would have to find it in the antique district of upstate New York, and I’m not up for that kind of travel. The only redeeming feature of the phone is its army-style camouflage faceplate, which I like because it has more than a passing resemblance to a tank. Still, an amusing self-referential visual witticism does not a proper communications device make, so it’s time to move on.

...And Now:
The new cell phone was the second purchase I made. That was a romp. Fortunately, all activation issues aside, my cell phone is now satisfyingly trendy. What I find interesting is that I deliberately got a phone with the least number of bells and whistles available; it was free with my plan. I don’t need much from a phone...just the ability to speak to people in complete sentences (“so I walked over to him and—hello? You still with me? Okay—so I was trying to be all—can you hear me?—I was trying to be calm and collected and—what?—Calm. CALM! I WAS TRYING TO BE CALM!—hello?—HELLO?—I think I’m in a bad area—I’LL CALL YOU BACK—NO, I SAID—NO, DON’T CALL ME—I’M IN A BAD AREA! I’LL CALL YOU BACK!!”) and to have a ringer that has more options than “Soft,” “Loud,” and “Mexican Hat Dance.” But even my no-frills phone has a camera and flips and can connect to the internet, and I find myself playing Tetris in odd places. It’s very handy for when you find yourself waiting for someone in a public place and you want to look busy, like you’re dialing the longest phone number ever.

Going to the dentist:

What I Said Then:
I’m not a big fan of having strange men stick their giant, latex-clad hands into my mouth and root around with sharp objects, especially when their distinguishing facial features are conveniently obscured by a mask that prevents me from picking them out of a line-up later on, but actually paying for this “service?” That’s just wrong.

...And Now:
Memo to self: Call the dentist.

On health insurance:

What I Said Then:
On the outside chance that I really do have a violent confrontation with my kitchen appliances, it would be nice to know that I can see a medical professional. I haven’t had health insurance since the military finally realized that a 23-year old woman who had graduated from college and moved out of her parents’ house was not really considered a “dependent” anymore.

...And Now:
Not only do I finally have health insurance (holla!), I also market it every day for a living...which only serves to enlighten me about how crappy my insurance really is. Still, with my quickly ballooning family medical history, I feel much better knowing that I can afford to see someone who will fix me if I break.

On car insurance:

What I Said Then:
The VenJetta is a nasty beast of mythical proportions, and I would be insane not to insure myself against its sense of humor. You never know when it is going to intentionally plant itself in the middle of an intersection and cause an accident. My father still graciously has my back on this one, but it’s about time for me to take responsibility. (And with that sentence, I guarantee you I just made my parents’ hearts stop.)

...And Now:
While I quickly took over my own car insurance early in the year, and felt very responsible doing so, I think I really missed the mark with this goal. Trying to protect oneself from the VenJetta with car insurance is just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. I’ve spent over $2000 in assorted repairs on that vehicle in the last year, all money that was meant for a new car. In fact, just yesterday the VenJetta broke down (again) while I was sitting at a stoplight, minding my own business. I. Have. Had it. We’re done with this. I’m sick of pouring money into a contraption that is clearly only malfunctioning out of spite now. I’m tired of being afraid that I’m going to run out of warm air when I break down on the side of the road in single-digit-weather. This is the end of my battered-wife relationship with a car that has hated me from Day One. The VenJetta is going back into the shop early tomorrow morning, but only because it needs to be at least functioning if I’m going to get anything for a trade-in. On Friday, I’m car shopping. And I’m taking my dignity back.

Fetch me my horse.

2007-01-23T01:25:00.000-06:00

I have no excuse.

Actually, no, that's not at all true. I have several excellent excuses for why I've blogged only once in the last five months, and I'm surprised to say that none of them are "No news here, move along." But most of those excuses boil down to the fact that finding a way to fit my life's happenings into coherent, non-despairing little boxes with tidy little literary arcs has moved way, way down on my priority list.

I think this has been a mistake.

The past several months have held a lot of ups and downs for me, the downs often traveling in packs, and I didn't feel much like putting a "Let Me Get This Straight" spin on most of it. Lack of time, lack of inspiration, lack of energy—whatever the reason, I could not find the blog posts in me. Looking back, I wonder if I shouldn't have tried a little harder. Reading over some old posts helped me remember that my particular brand of blogging is sometimes also my particular brand of coping; it's my way of taking my life and breaking it down, looking at it, laughing at it, and rubbing a little shine back into it with my shirtsleeve. It helps me sort out my cobwebs.

Luckily for me, I have a good back-up system for those cobwebs when I forget that tool. I have friends and family that refuse to let me feel stranded. I am so proud to have KB and Lisa, who keep me sane every single day. I have my brilliant Kate, who is the most spectacularly funny lawyer I know. (“I’m the only lawyer you know.”) I have my best friend, Christine, forever (thank God). My sister, who I want to be when I grow up, still. My hilarious brother-in-law. My giftedly intelligent father. And my mother—my incomparable mother.

The band is playing me off the stage, but my point here is that there are a lot of people (more, even, than those listed) who keep me going every day of every week of every month. This fabulousness doesn’t just happen all by itself. Because of that, it has been relatively easy for me to forget Let Me Get This Straight and focus on “more important” things. It’s easy to forget that LMGTS is actually pretty important to me, therapeutically and artistically, and that I am doing myself a disservice by not giving it the attention it deserves.

So. I should get back on the horse.

I’m going to try to get back to a regular blogging routine. Don’t get your hopes up for daily blogs or anything (they’re cobwebs, not cotton fields), but I’d like the posts to come more often than quarterly. If you see that they’re not, be a dear and bug the hell out of me, would you?

A lot’s happened. I got a new couch. Both of my parents seem to have exhausted the manufacturer’s warranties on their bodies: they developed their own respective cancers at the same time, have undergone six surgeries in three months between the two of them, and have either broken, damaged, or herniated essentially every part of themselves. I’ve done a lot of nursing. I got a new coffee table. I dressed like a punk for Halloween and lived the secret dream of every insurance person I work with. TiVo is my new best friend. (Sorry, Christine.) Two of my very closest friends have called “dibs” on significant others. My sister met the (surprisingly stealthy) business end of a When Christmas Trees Attack! episode. Citizens are toppling statues of the VenJetta in the streets as I shop for a new car. I got a new bed. My family was stalked by a wild turkey on New Year’s Eve in the middle of the suburbs. Izzy is growing up, and yet somehow not growing up at all, the holy terror.

So, I have no shortage of things to talk about. Make sure I do that, m’kay?

V for VenJetta

2006-10-02T23:35:00.000-05:00

(You have interesting timing with your comments, EntertainedinIN. And an eerie sort of sixth sense, since I was composing this entry at the very moment I received your comment. Have you considered having that looked at? Or perhaps you’re not psychic at all, but merely stalking me, in which case, would you mind picking up my dry-cleaning while you’re out there? Many hands, and all.)

(Apologies for my recent absence. I’ve had my hands full. Charity work, orphans, baby seals. Forgive me? Excellent, moving on…)

Those of you versed in the varying vagaries of the vexatious VenJetta will be unsurprised to learn that the vehemently venomous vituperation of verbiage you thought you heard vented in the echoing vapors of the atmosphere Friday night was just me, fervidly cursing my vehicle again.

(If you haven’t seen V for Vendetta, you’re only getting half the joke. View this vital video vignette for reference. I’ll vait.)

***

I just wanted to stay home.

I was looking forward to a quiet evening at home Friday night. I vetoed an invitation out with the girls because I had a groove going. I was cozy in my apartment, unwinding from the long week, cranking out some freelance work, and enjoying the fact that I was not at the office. By the time I finished enough work to feel a vague sense of vocational victory, I was ready to vacation on the couch with various videos, including Viggo’s latest vehicle. (No, not really. But Viggo was sort of perfect for that sentence. And I hate Vin Diesel. So.)

I was prepared to veg hardcore. And as everyone knows, you can’t properly veg without Chinese take-out. Voluminous amounts of Chinese take-out. Seriously, vats of it.

I’m relieved I chose not to venture to the Chinese vendor in my PJs, because no sooner had I collected my week’s worth of victuals and returned to my vehicle (I wasn’t in there longer than five minutes!), than the VenJetta had a tantrum.

I turned the ignition key four times to verify the veracity of the vibe I was getting. The VenJetta was vegetative, because it because it had once again confused humor with irony. There was no starter, no engine noises, no (dare I say it?) vroom at all. It was utterly quiet. Then, quite suddenly (as if the VenJetta wanted to make this behavioral vicissitude absolutely apparent), it started to wig out.

The hazard lights went on. Headlights started blinking. The clock started to turn backward. The dome light started to buzz. Strange clicking noises vibrated from beneath the dashboard veneer. I was entirely certain this was the end of my life and silently apologized to all the vulnerable patrons in the Chinese restaurant that were going to be killed in the explosion. I had visions of them opening their fortune cookies and seeing STOP, DROP, AND ROLL! in large letters, just above their lucky numbers.

When the explosion didn’t come, I started to push things. When I hit the brake, the dome light stopped buzzing. When I popped the clutch, the dashboard ceased clicking. Eventually, and with some experimentation, I was able to silence the vociferous vehicle.

Taking stock of its vacillating vital signs, I diagnosed the VenJetta with yet another electrical problem, the side effects of which were demonic possession.

A phone call to my second family at AAA assured me that a service vehicle would be along eventually to salvage my very last nerve that the VenJetta was so jovially vellicating. “Eventually” turned out to be sometime between “now” and “two hours from now.” Luckily, I had plenty of food.

Over the next hour or so, I sat in my vehicle and gave my cell phone a workout, calling and text messaging the entirety of my address book with...well, with vigor. Periodically, I would pop into the Chinese place for plasticware or napkins or a drink, and the waitstaff voiced their best wishes for my volatile vehicle. (Their best wishes were apparently not sincere enough for them to comp me on the beverage, but whatever.)

When Vic (yes, really) from AAA arrived, I scoffed at his attempts to jump the battery, since clearly this was a much more serious state of affairs, and certainly one that required a priest or something.

When the engine revved to live a few jumped volts later, Vic was very kind about avoiding any “I told you so” about the battery. He kindly voiced his voltage verdict and directed me home to meet with the Battery Guy, who apparently roams the streets of Omaha in the middle of the night, vending car batteries from underneath his trench coat.

Now that the VenJetta was moving again of its own volition, I didn’t much care if Battery Guy had hot Rolexes under the van’s visor. I voluntarily rendezvoused with him in the well-lit parking lot of my apartment complex, where he treated the VenJetta with whatever Battery Guys do and charged me a bunch of money. I did not complain; I did it all with a vivacious smile and volitive gratitude. I was just glad I didn’t have to go the dealer, and that Volkswagen wasn’t vying for my vehicular dollars again. That never ends well.

Alright, so what if it was just a void of voltage in the end, and not the electrical apocalypse I thought it was? I still blame the VenJetta’s vendetta. How else do you explain the Christine-like wig-out? The whole endeavor was just a thinly veiled volley for vantage the vehicle cleverly launched at my sanity. It thinks it has me under its control, all smug in its vehicular virtue. One might argue that it even seems to have monopolized my thoughts and energies, and that its savvy actions have been solely responsible for more than a few hours spent writing about its virtues and thinking up v-words.

But whatever your view of my vapid verbosity, please know that I was the victim in this vicious and vengeful vehicular violation, and the vilification of the VenJetta is neither vacuous nor in vain; it is only via vigilant valuation of the villainous vein that vibrates the very viscera of the vehicle that I can remain validly prepared for the inevitable vertex in the advancement of our relationship: the VenJetta will go one step too far, and I’ll have no other option but to violently beat the vehicle with virtually every blunt object I can lay my little hands on, feeling vindicated with every vigorous blow.

Verily. With...vim.

Love means never having to put your cat in the microwave.

2006-08-19T08:32:00.000-05:00

Selected excerpts from recent phone calls, emails, and discussions with various friends regarding my kitten, Isabelle:

Izzy is fabulous. She’s adorable and sweet and perfect. She kind of gets the crazies sometimes, but she’s cute enough that she has a sort of built-in Get Out of Jail Free card. Kind of like Britney.

She and I have a new game. I drag a popsicle stick around in mad little circles on the carpet, and she attacks it like Denmark. Then I toss the stick away, about 7 feet. She bounds after it and makes it her mission in life to pick the thing up in her mouth and bring it back to me immediately for more mad dragging. Circles. Toss. Retrieve. Circles. Toss. Retrieve. 25 times. It's especially funny when I toss the stick onto the linoleum, because it's very difficult to pick up a popsicle stick from linoleum when all you have to work with are several tiny teeth and a conspicuous lack of thumbs. She gets So! Intense! when she thinks she's not going to be able to get the thing off the tile. At one point she got so carried away, she broke the stick in half. She looked at me like, "Um?"

I think she might be a puppy with a hormone imbalance.

How’s Izzy? Oh, she’s peachy. She has an extraordinary overabundance of energy, and has recently taken up a new hobby involving unrolling all the toilet paper in the house. I am not amused. She is.

Izzy, for reasons unknown to God and man, launched herself at full speed through the air at the toilet today while the cover was up, and I actually caught her in mid-air before she landed in the bowl. It was a very, very close call, and I attribute it to my cat-like reflexes. And my spidy sense.

I came home for lunch today, and there are leaves everywhere. Izzy is growing up to be a plant-killer. I thought it was funny when I returned from Kansas a few weeks ago (when my mom was taking care of Isabelle) and Mom had put her normally-next-to-the-fireplace plant up on the kitchen counter. Now I understand why.

Izzy is a terror. Have I mentioned this? Honestly. She's discovered the kitchen counters (and is now big enough to jump onto them) and so I am constantly following her around with a squirt bottle. She also keeps jumping up onto an end table and launching herself bodily into a hanging plant, grabbing hold of a vine, and sliding down like a little kitty fire fighter. Not cool.

The other day I found her on top of a door. On top. Of a door. Near the ceiling. She was pacing precariously on a 2 inch wide surface 8 feet in the air. I just looked up at her, like, "Good luck with that." I’m not sure how she got up there; it’s possible she can fly. Do you want a cat?

She makes up for it, though, by coming over and sitting next to me on the desk and leaning on me, like, "Don't go anywhere, 'kay?" and then gives me kisses. Her favorite thing is giving kisses. Well, and string.

And plants.

[Re: “I want to marry your kitten. You could do our wedding photos!”]

Oh, I've done weddings and they're hell, even under normal circumstances. And in the case of you marrying Izzy, I would have to deal with the bride constantly disappearing into the refrigerator and yanking on my camera strap and chewing on the centerpieces and skinning the plants and balancing on the tops of doors and licking the wedding guests' noses and ears and cheeks and eyebrows.

And it would be hard to keep track of the cat, too.

Seriously. When is she going to grow out of the phase where she wakes me up by standing on my face? Every. Morning. "MRAWR?"

Isabelle is driving me insane. I love her (don’t I?), but she's trying my patience. I came home today to devastation and plant carcass scattered about the room. I just cleaned up her leaves AT LUNCH. And I'm getting tired of refilling my squirt bottle, which really now needs a sniper scope.

And she won't quit climbing on the damn door. This time, she jumped all the way to the ground from there. As I type this, she is jumping up there AGAIN. Why? There's nothing up there? Nothing has been put up there since the last time you got up there? And you're just going to meow for ten minutes like you're stuck in a tree until you decide to jump to the ground again and risk shattering your teeny little bones and WHY DO YOU MAKE ME WORRY?

I am so apologizing to my mother later. For everything. Ever.

I don't know if she's very smart, or very stupid. She won't stop swinging from the plant vines like Kitty Freaking Tarzan.

In the past five minutes, I have sprayed her with the squirt bottle 47 times, yelling each time. The yelling is kind of amusing, because it started out normally: "STOP!" "DON'T!" "NO!" "BAD!" and the usual. But I got so bored with that, that to keep myself amused, I've started saying things like, "GAH!" "BLOO!" "GRAAAH!" "NOINK!" "ALPACA!" and "I SWEAR TO GOD I'M GOING TO FEED YOU TO THE WASHING MACHINE AAAAGGHHH!"

Everything in my house is wet. Including the cat, who is soaked, and does not seem to mind. I think this is a new game for her. I point the squirt bottle at her, and does she run away? NO. She runs toward it. Like a moron. And she gets wet. And then she runs around the room like a pinball and launches herself into the plant again, all "YEE-HAAAAW!" And again with the squirting.

She is having such a good time. I'm about to have an aneurism.

I've significantly pruned and transplanted the majority of the kitten plant, until the lowest tendrils hang more than four feet off the ground. It has not stopped her. Happily, she has become distracted with a strangely focused attack plan for GenV. (Happily for me and my plant, not for GenV.)

Izzy: (looking innocent) "What?"

GenV: "Go away."

Izzy: "Play first!"

GenV: "No."

Izzy: "C'mon, pleeease?"

GenV: "No."

Izzy: "You know you wanna. RRRAWR! FEAR ME!"

GenV: "Whatever."

Izzy: "I don't think you're putting your heart into this."

GenV: "Please die."

Izzy: "Okay, but I WANNA PLAY FIRST!"

GenV: "I like how you're still pretending I care."

Izzy: "Don't make me step on your head."

GenV: "..."

Izzy: "I will."

GenV: "..."

Izzy: "Fine." (pounces) "HaHA!"

GenV: "I'm going to go sit in the closet for awhile. If you come after me, I will remove your whiskers and use them to sew your ears shut. Do you understand me?"

Izzy: "You're no fun at--OOH! LINT!!" (bounds away)

My best friend and her boyfriend were in town for the weekend, and they brought their cat, Zoe. Zoe spent two and a half days on top of my fridge, GenV will be in the closet until Labor Day, and Izzy spent the weekend pretending to be very, very large. She's perfected her growl, which is an uncanny likeness of a vibrating cell phone. Don't tell her I said that.

I was beginning to think the spray bottle technique was working with Izzy, but now I'm not so sure. I don't think she really interprets it as a form of punishment, because she doesn't get that distressed about it. She just sort of wanders off to lick her coat for a half a minute before resuming whatever Bad Thing she was doing. Maybe she just thinks it rains a lot in my apartment.

My plant is now one third the size it used to be. The kitchen counters are not safe. Nor is the stove, kitchen table, or trashcan. She doesn't believe me when I tell her I'm going to put her in the microwave.

Just now, the Terror tried to jump up on the kitchen counter (again), and I went to spray her. From here. The stream did not reach far enough, so she looked at me and ran directly toward me so that it would reach. It is so difficult get mad at her.

Also, Izzy left me a nice big pile of severed plant parts for me when I got home. There were more branches on the floor than are left on the plant.

God**** cat.

I am not having a good day. I tried to drown my sorrows in a bowl of carbs by making pasta for dinner. I had just begun eating it quietly, minding my own **** business, when Isabelle comes FLYING through the air (out of nowhere! how does she do this?) and Lands. On. My. Pasta. She flipped the whole **** bowl over so it goes flying end over end and my pasta goes everywhere. In my keyboard, in my afghan that I had wrapped around myself in a self-pitying manner, under my desk, over my desk, into the carpet, EVERYWHERE. The bowl flips over and over in slow motion like a **** football in January.

FYI, you can curse at the top of your lungs until you are blue in the face, and this cat will not flinch, go away, or look otherwise humble.

I am aware of the hilariousness of the scene, and that is why I have not broken down completely.

Thank you for your self-restrained non-laughter. I have accepted that it's funny, so you may laugh if you want to. I haven't laughed yet (actually I just finished a very Woody-Allen-meets-Chandler-Bing-like rant at Izzy wherein I listed all the ways she makes me crazy, and something about not being able to tell up from down because the craziness has permeated my inner ear, and then I realized I was wasting my breathe because she didn't understand a word of it and was probably thinking about feathers and bubbles while I went on and on), but I will eventually.

It's non-stop with Izzy right now. This morning she tried so hard to catch all the falling bits of water she found in the bathroom today that she fell into the bathtub with me while I was taking a shower. (The water thing is clearly not the way to go with training techniques. She just does not care.) That one made me laugh.

Then she climbed onto my bedroom desk and attacked the bulletin board, where she promptly removed all the pushpins one by one and then jumped on a large pile of stuff, knocked it over in its entirety with a great deafening crash, and sent a box of additional pushpins flying everywhere. This, of course, was like Christmas for her as she launched into the pushpin fray in order to capture, torture, and destroy each and every one of them until they gave up the location of their pushpin leader. Somehow she managed not to end up looking like a Chia Pet with pushpins instead of grass, and I had to eventually grab her by the scruff and lock her out of the room in order to find all the pins without her attacks. That one did not make me laugh.

I have carpet cleaners coming today while I'm at work. I moved all my furniture into the kitchen. I don't even want to know what she's doing with that jungle gym.

I came home today and was delighted to see NO severed plant limbs on the floor. I was so proud of her! I even picked her up and kissed her and gave her scritches behind her ears and told her she was a good girl.

A half hour later, I discovered that she is now simply storing the plant parts behind the couch.

I went shopping today and—GET OFF THE DAMN COUNTER, YOU LITTLE TURKEY!

You want a pet, right? Would you like mine?

Do you hear that? She’s purring. She’s sleeping on my shoulder, and wakes up every once in awhile to lick my cheek and lean into me. I love her so much.

Get a load of this.

2006-08-01T18:23:00.000-05:00

Look. I understand if it was an accident. You had a load in the dryer when I put mine in the washer. I left my basket in there without its nametag or collar. It's not hard to imagine a situation in which you might have inadvertently mistaken my laundry basket for your own, and used it to bring your freshly dried clothes back to your apartment. It happens. We're human; we err.

I'm going to assume it was a mistake. I'd prefer not to think about the possibility that you might have seen my basket sitting there by itself, noticed its clean lines and sturdy handles and thought to yourself, "Hey! Check out this warp-resistant core! What convenient, ergonomic shaping! What glorious venting!" and made a conscious decision to basket-nap. After all, how intelligent of a crime is that, anyway? We have five people in this building; odds are that you're not the 80-year old woman with a bad hip who lives above me, and you're probably not me, so we're really down to three. And even if you tried to continue living a life of lies with your stolen basket, chances are great that we will run into each other in the laundry room one day and have a very awkward conversation.

You couldn't have known, really, that this particular basket was once an Easter basket—filled with various homey supplies (a gift from my mother when I got my very first apartment) all wrapped up in festive cellophane, far prettier than any laundry basket should be, figuring greatly into nostalgic memories of growing up and moving out and standing on one's own two feet—or that its disappearance would cause so much strife to its owner, because who develops emotional attachments to domestic janitorial supplies anyway? You probably had no idea that this laundry basket was selected especially by its owner's mother because of its beautifully sturdy construction, after said owner had had devastating results with lesser models. To you, it was probably just a laundry basket—your own, even!—$9.99 in the housewares section of your local department store. Easily replaceable. It didn't even have laundry in it.

But it still was not yours to take, and so I would appreciate it if you could return it to me at your earliest convenience. My laundry is heartbreakingly uncontained, and not nearly as mobile as it used to be. I miss my basket. Please.

Best,
Meldraw

That time with the legs.

2006-07-22T11:26:00.000-05:00

Every family has those stories. You know, those ones that people tell over and over again because they are unique and bizarre and charmingly characteristic of the people involved? They’re the stories you constantly find yourself pulling out at cocktail parties and reunions, like that time the dog came into the living room wearing Grandma’s dentures, or the time you accidentally found yourself marching in a parade in an evening gown and tennis shoes while trying to cross the street, or that one summer in Italy when a spectacular communication breakdown nearly resulted in a whirlwind marriage to a foreign stranger, or the time your mom almost burned down the house with a board game, or – oh! – remember when you couldn’t get a sitter, so you had to bring your toddler to your meeting with that NARC?

Or, you know. Similar stories.

So, my family has a lot of those. I grew up hearing them so often that I’d tend to forget how great they are, and sometimes I’d tune out at the familiar sound of, “Hey, remember that time I peed with Hillary Clinton?”

Recently, I realized there was one staple anecdote that various members of my family often refer to in passing as “that time with the legs,” but I couldn’t recall what that meant, exactly. The few details I did remember from the story were so disjointed and bizarre that I was certain I was misremembering. Curiosity peaked, I dialed my mother.

“Mom, tell me the story about the legs.”

“The legs?”

“Don’t you have a story about some legs?”

“Oh, the legs.”

“Yes.”

“You don’t know this story?”

“I just realized I sort of don’t. What happened?”

“Well, I got caught on the side of the road with a pair of prosthetic legs in my trunk.”

“...”

“They weren’t mine.”

“Yeah, you’re going to have to start at the beginning.”

Nearly thirty years ago, my mother was living in Connecticut with her second husband. Her father-in-law at the time was a World War Two veteran, and a double-amputee. Improper pressurization in the war planes had caused severe circulation problems that resulted in amputation of both of his legs up to the knee. He had two prosthetic legs, which were always dressed in argyle socks and brown shoes.

After her father-in-law passed away, Mama Meldraw was approached at the funeral by her distraught mother-in-law, who pleaded with my mother to get rid of the legs.

My mother was taken aback. “What am I going to do with George’s legs?”

“I don’t know. But I want you take them away.”

Pause. “Okay.” Mama Meldraw took the plastic legs, argyle socks and all, and threw them in the trunk of her car.

It was my mother’s intention to find a charitable organization that would accept the legs as a donation, because there always seems to be an organization for that sort of thing. But she didn’t really know where to look, and once the legs were in the trunk, they were out of sight and out of mind. Months passed.

“Wait, Mom, hold on. What took you so long to find a home for the legs?”

“Well, Good Will wouldn’t take them. And it’s not like argyle goes with everything.”

“Good point. Go on.”

During this time, Mama Meldraw was driving a ramshackle car that rivaled the VenJetta. It was a 1960 faded blue Ford Fairlane whose undercarriage was so rusted out that you could see the painted white street lines passing below your feet in the front seat. It came as no surprise, then, when she got a flat tire on her way to New Haven.

She pulled over to the side of the road and set about retrieving her spare tire from beneath a pile of prosthetic limbs and expletives. In order to access the tire and jack, she had to remove the legs from the trunk and get them out of the way. Not wanting to place the legs down on the road in plain view of the passing motorists, she set them down on the off-side of the car. Standing up. With the socks and old-man shoes still in place.

Mama Meldraw was just pulling the tire jack out of the trunk when another car pulled over behind her. A very large, very kind black man stepped out of the driver’s seat.

“Can I give you a hand?”

Grateful, Mama Meldraw accepted the man’s offer and directed him toward the trunk, where he hauled out the spare tire and moved to place it on the ground beside the car, chatting amiably. As he rounded the back end of the car and approached the off-side, his eyes came to rest on the legs, which were standing perfectly and silently together in all their argyle glory.

He stopped very suddenly.

“You should have seen it. He actually jumped. And I swear he got pale. I could see white all around his eyes.”

“What did he say?”

“Not a damn word.”

The tire-changing became a NASCAR event. The jack went up. The wheel went on. The screws went in. The jack was down. The man was gone. Mama Meldraw offered to pay him for his service, but even as she spoke, he was already in his car and pulling away. He did not wave goodbye, and he did not look back.

Before Mama Meldraw took the flat into the shop to be repaired, she removed the legs from the trunk.

“You know, Mom, most families tell stories about toddlers saying inappropriate words or grandparents falling asleep in public places. Normal things.”

“Yeah.”

“Our family doesn’t do that much.”

“No.”

“Do you think we can get a script deal for a sitcom?”

“Nobody’d believe it.”

Well, alright then.

2006-07-11T21:55:00.000-05:00

CharliesAngel513 (8:07:24 PM): I hate to be a nag, but I'd like to point out that, from now on (until two weeks from today, which, crap, I thought it was three) I have to study 12 hours a day.

Auto Response from Meldraw (8:07:25 PM): You're trying to communicate with me, I know it.

CharliesAngel513 (8:07:43 PM): So... all I'm saying is that you haven't updated your blog yet this month.

CharliesAngel513 (8:07:55 PM): even Gigglesnacks has you beat in updates.

CharliesAngel513 (8:08:22 PM): I mean...you could post pictures of your feet, and I'll be happy, so long as you do it more often, is all I'm sayin'.

CharliesAngel513 (8:08:24 PM): :-)

You know this is why “real writers” mourn the unsupervised popularity and accessibility of the blogosphere, right?

WILFOAK #112

2006-06-28T22:16:00.000-05:00

What I've learned from owning a kitten, #112:

It is entirely possible for a creature without thumbs to break three glasses in three seperate incidents, yet all in the same day.

Relatedly, it is highly likely that said creature has an unexpectedly thorough mastery of Rube Goldberg's principles of cause and effect, which might explain how it's possible to be five feet away from a full water glass, and still be able to send it flying off of a very high surface, tumbling end over end at a rather impressive rate of speed, soaking no less than nine surfaces, some of which are above you, and two of which include exposed wires. Shame is not a necessary component of this ability.

WILFOAK #104

2006-06-27T16:11:00.000-05:00

What I've learned from owning a kitten, #104:

Either remain clothed in heavy-duty jeans and burlap shirts while in the kitten's presence, or invest some time in drafting a reasonable response to all the people who wonder why you look like you tried to commit suicide with a thumbtack.

WILFOAK #87

2006-06-20T19:14:00.000-05:00

What I've learned from owning a kitten, #87:

That scene in The Lion King, where they hold up the new cub prince in a shaft of sunlight and the African chanting swells, and the animals all bow down to their future King? They took some serious artistic liberties there. A real kitten would be squirming and contorting and otherwise trying to dislocate a limb trying to get down. And humming African chants totally doesn't help keep them still.

So I hear.

The people have spoken.

2006-06-16T06:24:00.000-05:00

Meet Isabelle. "Izzy" to her friends, which include pretty much everyone.

And thus ends the slowest pet-naming process in recorded history, which has resulted in me calling her "Kid," "Girlfriend," and "Dawg" a lot, which is going to be a hard habit to break.

Thanks for your help!

Kitten smitten.

2006-06-12T21:07:00.000-05:00

Oh, yes. She IS that cute.

There’s a new addition to the Meldraw household, and she is happiness embodied. I have a kitten.

She is very small and very soft. She can jump the kitten equivalent of the Empire State Building, and she weighs less than my television remote control. Her little “mew” sounds like the tiniest jingle bell in existence, and her favorite thing is EVERYTHING. She arrived in the wee hours of Saturday morning, and by Sunday afternoon, she had decided I was hers forever and ever Amen.

The kitten was born on a friend’s farm in Kansas, part of a litter born to a wild stray cat that sought solace in the farmhouse basement. The entire litter was gregarious from birth, and my little one had already left her mother and was eating dry food by six weeks old. She is now seven weeks old, and has decided she is a puppy.

She made the four-hour drive to my place with my kitty courier friend without a single complaint. She sat on the dash of an extraordinarily loud diesel truck, and watched the world go by, unfazed. When she arrived in Omaha, I said hello for the very first time and set her down in the middle of the floor. I let her go explore while I carried in the kitty courier’s belongings, and she immediately began following me from room to room, bounding after my feet like a tiny, friendly antelope. She had no fear, and wanted to be friends, ASAP.

My other cat, Genevieve (GenV), reacted better than I expected. She looked at the kitten with a hilarious “…the hell?” expression, and followed her around to determine what she was. There was a small amount of half-hearted hissing and a great deal of pupil-dilating, but she didn’t attack and she didn’t run away, and that’s a middle-ground I can live with.

That first night, I expected the kitten to explore the place, and maybe curl up on the couch with my courier friend, who smelled like home. But as soon as I turned out my bedroom light and crawled into bed, I felt a very dainty tug at the sheets and a small “mew!” as the kitten clambered up into bed with me. She immediately marched right up to my pillow, climbed on top of it, and settled down, squooshed up against my face and purring as if to say, “Do you mind if I—zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.” She slept there the entire night. I couldn’t sleep, I was smiling so hard. Plus I had a cat on my face.

The days are filled with playing and napping. She plays so hard she puts herself into a little catnap coma, rests up, and then comes back for more. She is especially adept at climbing and jumping, often both at the same time since she has learned how to take a flying leap toward a person’s lap and use her little claws as exceptionally small, needle-like grappling hooks. While everything in my apartment is a toy (including other living beings, much to GenV’s dismay), some things amuse her more than others: shoelaces, table legs, lint. I have a black filing box that sits on the floor, and it is just shiny enough for the kitten to see her reflection in it. She demands that her new friend be let out of the box, and has run head-first into the side of it without ever slowing down. Twice.

My computer desk has a pull-out tray for the keyboard, and when it is retracted into the body of the desk, makes for an enticing little cubby hole. Twice now, I have come home to find the kitten inside the tray, lying on the keyboard. Yesterday she wrote half an email to my Blockbuster Online account, and today she dialed into the Adobe Help and Support Center. Sometimes, when I am typing on the half-pulled-out tray, she will be behind the keyboard, and I will occasionally see a tiny little paw reach out and swipe at my typing fingers from the depths of the desk. I’ve lost count of the number of &s and %s I’ve deleted in this post alone.

When playtime is over, and she gets to feeling cuddly, she is beyond affectionate. She climbs up onto my chest, licking my nose and face and mewing softly. Then she shimmies up onto my shoulder and perches there like the fuzziest parrot ever, rubbing up against my cheek with hers. She eventually settles into a little rumbling, purring ball on my shoulder and falls asleep, occasionally stirring to lick my ear until I can’t stand it anymore. I think about how I have the sweetest little cutie patootie ever, and then she wakes up with a second wind and launches herself into my ponytail, claws first.

GenV is keeping herself slightly more scarce than usual, but is surprisingly tolerant, in general. Last night, at bedtime, she jumped into bed with me and parked herself determinedly on my pillow, next to my chest. The kitten tried to follow suit, and GenV gave her a look that clearly said, “Um, NO. Mine. Deal with it.” The kitten looked at GenV, and looked at me, and settled down gingerly next to the both of us. The three of us slept together like that all night, with no bloodshed. I think this may work. I also think I need a bigger bed. Or at least more pillows.

My kitten is perfect, except...she doesn’t have a name.

I need help. I want an interesting name, but one that suits her. I’m considering all sorts of avenues: literary and historical figures, artists, movie stars, abstract forms of punctuation. I like things that are clever in total, but can be shortened to a cute nickname. I’d like to choose something that is interesting and unique, and maybe even clever. I am not opposed to irony.

As a result of polling everyone I know, and several people I don’t, I’ve had lots of suggestions, but I’m still fishing for just a few more before I make this life-altering decision. What better podium for solicitation than an audience of international readers? So I’m calling upon you, my trusted friends, and people I’ve never met, to Name My Cat. I know you have an opinion, and I want to hear it. Vote! Write-in nominations are more than welcome in the form of a Comment.

Now, please excuse me. The darling sleeping bundle has awoken, and is trying to fit her entire head into a half-full (half-empty?) water glass. GenV is imploring me not to keep her from drowning, but I think I had better.

I think there's a hotline for this.

2006-06-07T12:09:00.000-05:00

There’s a thing that happens to a person in an abusive relationship. While the abuse is taking place, she can clearly see the injustice; she wants to get out. She’s taken her last hit. She packs her bags and gives the cat to a neighbor and makes arrangements to stay with her mother for awhile. But then the abuser comes home with a bunch of flowers and a cubic zirconium necklace and an apologetic smile and tells her how much he needs her and how his feelings for her just overwhelm him sometimes. And she believes he wants to change, and she puts her bags down and admires the Sparkly. She convinces herself that the mistreatments are probably temporary, and may even be a necessary sacrifice for those times she thinks she’s truly happy.

I have an abusive relationship with Cox Communications. Specifically: customer support.

You may recall that when I got a grown-up job, I had a List of Things to Get Now That I’m Gainfully Employed. One of the things on that list was high-speed internet, which is not only beneficial for my web-based small business, but also a basic human need, like water, or Tivo.

Living in an apartment complex affords little variety when it comes to utilities, so I called the only company I was allowed: Cox Communications. I ordered a cable modem, installation, and high speed service, and was pleased to note that there was even a special running where I would receive a free web cam and a discount on my first three months of service. I was excited.

While placing my order (the monetary total of which could finance a land war in Asia), they gave me the option of supplying either my credit card number or my social security number to “hold” the appointment. Not a big fan of identity theft, I supplied my credit card number. I later received a notice from Cox saying that because I chose not to provide my SSN “for a proper credit check,” (what?) I would be charged an additional $75, which would be refunded after I had continued service for a year. Thanks for making that clear when I signed up, Cox. Strike one.

I scheduled an installation appointment for a Friday afternoon. They changed it to 8:00 Saturday morning, without asking me. I wanted to be irked, but I decided not to be bothered by this; I was willing to sacrifice my weekend sleep-in for what promised to be a happy addition to my household. My spirits were still up.

The very polite cable installation guy showed up on time and went to work immediately. I ignored the fact that he typed with only his pointer fingers.

I spent the majority of Saturday playing with my speedy new internet connection and changing my forty thousand online accounts to my new email address. I also spent the day perfecting the art of restarting my computer every 30 minutes, because the internet connection would inexplicably disappear, and would right itself only once I restarted the machine. I suspected this was not normal, and decided to make my first call to Cox Customer Service.

I had only barely dialed the customer support number when I got a recording that told me it couldn’t find my information in the system. This didn’t surprise me, since I hadn’t pressed any buttons yet, but whatever. I pressed “1” a whole bunch of times until I was connected with a human voice in Tech Support.

I explained my problem to Tech Support, who asked me questions like, “Is your computer on?” before transferring me to the next level of techies.

The next guy I talked to was able to solve my problem instantly, and was very keen to tell me that my cable service was fine; it was my firewall that was wonky. His solution was simple: call somebody else.

(There’s a whole other story in here about trying to call the firewall’s Tech Support people and them demanding $3.99 per minute to talk to a real person, and me laughing at that until I hurt myself, and deciding instead to try their online support, which was a questionable course of action since the problem at hand was a lack of internet connectivity, and a resulting instant message conversation with a techie in Bolivia who had misplaced most of his verbs, and me giving up on Tech Support altogether and eventually figuring out the problem my own damn self. But that story raises my blood pressure, so let’s leave it.)

That first weekend of connectivity issues aside, my new high speed internet was marvelous. To a Gen X web designer who has been slogging by with dial-up for the last 10 years, this was like Christmas. Data streams were flying, bandwidth was racing, and the internet was that much shinier for it.

My new cable modem was installed in late April. By late May, I hadn’t received a bill yet. I also couldn’t log into my online Cox account to check the status of my bill, because it required an account number...which was on my first bill. Which I hadn’t received yet.

I also had realized that I never got that free web cam they promised me when I signed up. I had been so distracted by the sparkly new internet, as if somebody had just put a mirror in my cage, that it had completely slipped my mind.

I took a deep breath and decided to call up Cox Customer Service again, with my list of questions.

And I thought Verizon was bad.

After dialing the 1-800 service number, I got that same message about not being able to find my account information. Whatever. The first person I spoke to was a woman from Billing.

“WelcometoCoxCommunicationsCustomerServicehowcanIhelpyoutoday?”

“Hi. I just had high speed internet installed, and I was wondering when I would receive my first bill.”

“Do I have permission to access your account?”

“Yes.”

“When did you have the service installed?”

“Four weeks ago.”

“Oooh. You should have gotten a bill by now.”

“I didn’t.”

“Well, you should have.”

“Alright. But I didn’t. And I can’t get into my online account to even check to see how much I owe.”

There was much clicking and “hmm”ing as she took my information and looked things up on her computer. “It looks like they didn’t put your initial charges on your first month’s bill. So, they just didn’t send you one. I don’t know why.”

“Ah. Okay.”

“...”

“So, when can I expect the next bill?”

“At the end of the next billing cycle.”

Helpful, this one. “And that would be...?”

“Sometime this month.”

Oh, for the love. I give up. “Okay, well, can I at least have help getting into my online account so that I can review my bill?”

“I’m sorry, I’m not able to help you with that. I’ll have to transfer you to Technical Support.” She did not sound sorry at all.

“Oh. Alright.”

Before I had even finished my sentence, there was a loud click as she put me on hold. The patented Your-Call-Is-Important-To-Us elevator music was so quiet that I was actually leaning into the phone, pressing it hard into my ear. I didn’t want to miss any information prompts; this was my internet, my lifeline. This was important. My ear was turning white.

After nearly five minutes on hold, a guy in Tech Support picked up.

“WelcometoCoxCommunicationsTechnicalSupporthowmayIhelpyoutoday?”

“I was just transferred from Billing. I’m having trouble getting into my online account information. I get an error message when I try to log in.”

“Do I have permission to access your account?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have access to the internet right now?”

“Yes.”

“I want you to do the following for me, please.” He was speaking very slowly. He was clearly a talker-downer, used to dealing with people who tried to get HBO on their microwaves. There were several minutes of “please type the following into your web browser: w-w-w-dot-omaha-dot-cox-dot-net,” and the like. Christ. This was going to take forever.

After a lot of “Yes, I see the little man in the corner” and “yes, I typed that,” and “yes, I’ve done that,” and “no, it still doesn’t work,” and “well, yes, that’s the error message I told you about at the beginning of this call,” he had apparently reached the end of his knowledge base. It was not a very big base.

“I’m going to go ahead and transfer you to the next level of Tech Support.”

“By all means.”

Click. This hold music was not as soft as the first time around. In fact, this hold music could be heard by the little old lady with a hearing aid who lives in the apartment above me.

“Welcome to Tech Support! I am Carlos! How ARE you?!”

“I...I’m fine. I’m having trouble logging into my online account, though. Another Tech Support guy transferred me to you.”

“Do I have permission to access your account?”

“Yes, please do.”

“What kind of problems are you having?”

“I get an error message when I try to log in.”

“I don’t really know why they transferred you to me. This is not the kind of thing I usually handle. I’m going to transfer you to Customer Care.”

“Uh, okay.”

“Have you talked to more than two people?”

“Ever?”

“Today.”

“You are the third person I’ve spoken to on this call.”

“Oh, I’m sorry about that, ma’am.”

“That’s okay.” (It really was okay. I had no idea at that point that I was only through 30% of the support people I would be speaking with on this phone call.)

Click. More hold music. This porridge was juuuust right.

“WelcometoCoxCommunicationsCustomerCarehowmayIhelpyou?”

“I’m trying to get into my online account. It’s not working. I get an error message.”

“Do I have permission to access your account?”

“Yes.” I wonder if anybody ever says “no.”

“Did you set up your online account?”

“What do you mean?”

“You have to sign up for the online account before it becomes active.”

“Well, how do I do that?”

“First, you have to log in.”

“Here’s the thing about the error message: it’s an error message. It doesn’t let me log in.”

“You need to use the account number from your first bill to set up the initial account.”

“I haven’t received my first bill yet. That’s sort of why I want to get into my account. So I can see how much I owe.”

“How long ago did you have the service activated?”

“Four weeks.”

“And you haven’t gotten a bill yet?”

Sigh. “No. But Billing is working on that.”

“Well, you need that account number in order to activate your account.”

“Can you just give me that number?”

“I don’t have that authorization. Let me transfer you to someone who can get that for you.”

“Sure, why not?”

Click. I had stopped paying attention to the hold music. I was also beginning to lose track of time. It’s kind of like sensory deprivation that way. My ears were starting to go numb.

Suddenly, a very young-sounding man’s voice caught my attention.

“Hellooooo?”

“Um. Is this Cox Customer Service?”

“Yeah.” Is he high?

“Er…alright. I was just transferred to you from someone else. I’m having a problem getting into my online account.”

“Well, that’s what I’m here for. I am here to take care of you.” He sounded like he was sidling up to me in a bar.

“Right. Well, you see, I had the internet installed in April, and I haven’t gotten my first bill yet—”

“You haven’t?”

“Well, no. But somebody is taking care of that. In the meantime, though, I want to access my online account. But I don’t have an account number since I don’t have my bill. Can you give me that number?”

“I am going to help you access your account by giving you your account number.”

“Er. Good.”

“Do I have permission to access your account?”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

He instructed me to a special webpage and gave me a number to input into the system. I asked him to hold on while I filled out the rest of the boxes.

“I am all yours… I am here to help you. You take your time. It’s what I’m here for. I am at your disposal. My resources are your resources.”

“You’re kind of creeping me out.”

“...”

“So, I’m getting an error message.”

“I need to transfer you to Tech Support.”

“But I just talked to them! They said—”

“Sorry, that’s all I can do for you here.”

“What about your resources?”

“Please hold.” Click.

I was on hold for another five minutes while I contemplated, not for the first time, the inner workings of the Hold Music industry. Finally, a woman picked up the phone who sounded as if she just swallowed a bug, and was very angry about it.

“CoxCommunicationsmayIhelpyou?”

“Hi. I’m having trouble getting into my online account.”

“Do I have permission to access—”

“Yes.”

Pause.

“Are you in Tulsa or Oklahoma City?”

“Pardon?” Didn’t she have access to my account?

“Are. You. In. Tulsa. Or. Oklahoma. City?” Apparently, she thought I was a retarded child, which I am not. I refrained from explaining this to her.

“Neither. I’m in Omaha.”

“Is that near Tulsa?” I choked a little.

“No. It’s in Nebraska.”

“Well, I’m in Oklahoma City.”

“Okay.”

Pause.

“So you need to talk to someone else.”

“This is where I was transferred to.”

“Please hold.” Click. I dropped my forehead onto my desk with an ungraceful thump.

I was on hold for another eight minutes. I was transferred to Customer Service in the Omaha office. Again. I explained my problem, granted permission for them access my account, and said, “Yes, please transfer me. That would be so awesome,” all without lifting my head from the desk. Twice.

When Tech Support finally picked up again, I didn’t even let the guy finish his “CoxCommunicationshowmayI—” before I started talking. There was no anger in my voice—just utter, utter sadness.

“Help me. Please. You are the ninth person I’ve talked to on this phone call. I have been transferred to people who didn’t know what I was talking about, and people who didn’t want to talk to me. I think I was even transferred to people who don’t work for Cox Communications. I can’t get into my online account. I’m getting an error message. I’m giving you permission to access my account. I’m even giving you permission to access my cell phone, legal, and medical records if it will help you make this problem go away. No, I haven’t gotten my first bill yet. No, I don’t know why. Yes, somebody is working on this. All I want to do now is get into my online account to make sure that I don’t owe so many back fees that when people run a credit check on me in the future, all that pops up onto their screens is a skull and crossbones. I will do anything you want me to in order to make this issue go away. Because if I have to be put on hold one more time, or re-explain myself to one more service representative, I’m going to have to set fire to my home office, and I don’t have renter’s insurance.”

There was a pause.

“Let’s see if we can’t solve this problem for you, ma’am.”

“Let’s.”

From there he asked me several questions, tried several solutions, asked several colleague’s opinions, and finally got my online account to work properly. He did not put me on hold once.

“You are my favorite person today,” I told him. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Is there anything else we can do for you today at CoxCommunicationsTechnicalSupport?”

I thought about the still-missing web cam. “No, I think that’s all I can handle for today.” I never wanted a web cam anyway.

Flowers and a cubic zirconium necklace, on the other hand...

Not dead yet.

2006-06-04T03:24:00.000-05:00

Dear loyal readers of Let me get this straight,

I’m sorry.

Please accept my sincerest apologies for the dearth of bloggage lately. It’s become apparent through an onslaught of inquiries, scoldings, complaints, and offers of bribery via baked goods that I am (once again) not posting enough, and have left you feeling discarded and ignored. I don’t have a particularly good excuse for my absence, except to say that I’ve been feeling awfully busy, even though I know I’m not. I could detail for you exactly what’s going on in my world, but it’s likely far less interesting than the stories you have probably already invented for yourselves to justify my scarcity, which may or may not include the following:

I’ve been kidnapped. Not true.

I am completely wrapped up with my work, which I’ve begun to take home with me, slowly allowing severe workaholism to corrupt and devour my personal life. Also not true; I cleverly have no personal life.

Leah finally killed me. Almost sadly not true, mostly because I’ve stopped seeing her. In fact, I’ve been extremely negligent of my workout routine, and have begun slipping back into a comfortably couch-potatoian existence. Leah doesn’t know, and if you tell her I will kill you myself. As soon as my stories are over.

The VenJetta finally killed me. This one is very barely not true, THANK GOD. There was a rather unsettling experience on the highway a couple of weeks ago that involved a momentary hiccup in the transmission, a sudden glaring flash of the Check Engine light, and about 60 mph of sheer dread, but it resolved itself as quickly as it appeared. I think it was mostly the VenJetta saying, “Dear Melissa: PSYCH!”

I’m saving all my good stories for my new book deal, which was offered to me by a Big-Name Publishing House and will almost certainly guarantee me a spot on the New York Times’ Best Sellers list, cementing my reputation as an accessible and quirky “funny girl” with impeccable punctuation and the audacity to create new words and experiment with run-on sentences. Also not true. But I’d like to send a little shout-out to any Big-Name Publishing House employees who might be reading this, who are not related to me: call me. We’ll tawk.

“So, Melissa,” you might say. “If you haven’t been sidelined by any of these things, where have you been?”

The answer is: here. I’ve been here, doing extremely mundane things in a regular pattern of unexciting schlep. I go to work everyday, try not to get fired, come home and do a lot of little nothings. I deal with things like broken laundry machines, new neighbors that look like they’re still in high school, back injuries obtained at the grocery store (because, apparently, I’m 80), scratched DVD rentals, the sadness of the end of the primetime television season, and the realization that my life has both forward momentum and an utter stillness, and I try not to think about that. I also forget that I can write about these little nothings and put them in a blog for other people to deal with for awhile.

I’m making a mental note to do that more often.

Car Talk

2006-05-19T07:15:00.000-05:00

I’m sitting in the VenJetta at the Sonic Drive-In the other day. (Don’t judge me. When you need a tater tot, you need a tater tot. I know it’s not healthy; leave me alone.)

It’s a beautiful summer evening, and I have my windows down as I sit in the carport, waiting for my chicken sandwich. There are a few tables set up outside the restaurant, and a family of five is dining near me. (Well, the parents are dining, and the children are climbing on all manner of things, which, I assume, is why the family is not eating in their car.) Suddenly, I notice one of the children keeps glancing in my direction. He’s a small boy, maybe seven years old.

Staring at me, he wanders away from his family and stands directly in front of my car. He looks studiously down at the grill, and stands there for about two minutes. His family does not appear to notice his absence; one parent is fetching some runaway sandwich wrappers, and the other parent is valiantly trying to keep a pair of tater tots from becoming lodged in a two-year-old’s nose. I watch the young boy as he leans in to inspect the hood of my car, and I meet his gaze with raised eyebrows when he finally sees me behind the wheel.

Instead of becoming shy and self-conscious when he sees me watching him, as so many children do, he gets a rather resolved look on his face and marches up to my open driver’s-side window. I look at him sideways. He is exactly as tall as my rear-view mirror.

“That’s a nice-looking Volkswagen you have there.”

There’s something unsettling about a seven-year old with the language skills and demeanor of a 40-year old State Patrolman.

“Thank you.”

“What is it called?” he asks me, leaning in slightly to look at the steering wheel.

“It’s a Jetta.” I don’t think he would grasp the delightful nuance of the name “VenJetta,” so I don’t bring it up.

“Volks…wagen…Jetta.” He turns the phrase over in his mouth like a fine grape juice as his gaze sweeps the inside of the vehicle. Then he looks me square in the face. “And who are you?”

I pause, and look around for his mother. Not seeing her, and wondering if she had ever taught this kid not to talk to strangers, and worrying at how easily I could probably kidnap him, and changing my mind and deciding he could probably take me in a fight, I say, “My name is Melissa. Who are you?”

“Joseph.”

“Nice to meet you, Jose—” He’s not looking at me anymore, and is instead leaning in through my window, trying to get a closer look at God-only-knows-what. I am momentarily speechless, my eyebrows crawling right up over my sunglasses and making their way into my hairline.

“Joseph!” Finally, his mother seems to have noticed that her oldest child is crawling bodily through a stranger’s car window, and she comes to retrieve him. She is an amusing combination of surprised and so obviously not.

I smile wanly at her as she extracts her child from the VenJetta and shepherds him off with an apologetic “Guess who’s a car buff” tossed in my direction. Had she left him here long enough, I would have warned him against the Jetta’s tendency toward electric malfunction and demonic possession, and perhaps suggested other vehicles in the same class that he might be interested in, referencing Consumer Reports and making a bar graph out of French Fries. But the mother is already busy steering Joseph away from the Explorer two stalls over, and my chicken sandwich has arrived, so I point my car toward home and hope the VenJetta doesn’t let all this attention go to its head.

Leave that periodical depository where you found it!

2006-05-06T14:57:00.000-05:00

Everybody has that one friend that always has a story to tell. The stories are fascinating and bizarre, often hilarious, and utterly unbelievable. Everyone knows that one friend should really grow up to be a sitcom screenwriter or a comedic fiction bestseller, but the friend never does. She is happy to be a mild-mannered professor in Jersey, with a really colorful past and a lot of chalk.

I have that friend, and her name is BeowulfGirl. Since I’ve known her, I’ve been treated to countless jaw-dropping narratives involving society’s most astounding characters that seem to be drawn to her like an ADD child to a drum set. Perhaps sensing that I felt unfairly privileged to be the only audience to her anecdotes, she has decided to start a blog of her own to recount her adventures with some of the more fascinating people to come out of western civilization.

(And by “fascinating people,” I mean fascinating in the way that you are fascinated when you turn on the Discovery Channel and learn that there really are species of animals in this world that can remove and replace their stomachs at will, or that have rectangular pupils, or that can sleep for three years. You had no idea you wanted to know those things, but now that you do, you can’t really imagine not knowing them.)

In an effort to encourage blog traffic, BeowulfGirl has provided me with a “sneak preview” story to share with my viewers. The following is true, though the names have been changed or omitted to protect the innocent (and the people who should have been innocent, but really, really aren’t).

Enjoy!

While I was attending high school and college in New Jersey, I lived one town over from a well-known movie actor--trust me, you would know him. Although I never saw him around town, I did know where his house was. It was a very nice house, in the mountains, with a long, winding driveway and lots of maple trees.

During this time, I was good friends with a guy named Charlie, a wildly histrionic, neurotic gay man who was actually a member of a rival Repertory Theatre that worked near me. Despite our competition and his insanity, Charlie and I managed to become close and have wonderful adventures together.

One day, Charlie came over to my house with his camera, and begged me to take him to the actor's house so he could take pictures of it. It was a nice day, so we got in the car and we drove to the house, where we idled outside his mansion and Charlie took pictures of the house.

Then he got all weird and insisted that I take a picture of him posing by the actor's mailbox, which was a completely normal looking, gray aluminum mailbox (with his last name on it in those gold and black letters). So I did this, and Charlie was absurdly happy.

Everything was fine for a few weeks. When I got the film developed (yes, this was in the days before digital cameras), I sent Charlie pictures and he was delirious over his portrait with the mailbox.

Charlie steadily got more and more obsessed with the mailbox. He started to tell me that he was going to STEAL IT, just to have a memoir of his parasocial relationship with the poor actor, who knew nothing of this.

I honestly didn't expect he was serious. Charlie had a history of announcing that he was going to do things that he never ended up doing (including a four-year suicide threat, which usually only ended in fainting and anxiety attacks until he smartened up and entered therapy).

Several more weeks went by, and in mid-July, my birthday arrived. Charlie showed up gleefully at my house with a huge and cumbersome wrapped package. It was heavy and made a strange noise when I shook it. He was actually cackling with glee.

I opened the package and saw, to my utter horror, that it was, in fact, the well-known actor's mailbox.

I just stared at it, and Charlie beamed at me from across the couch.

However, the biggest problem was not, as you might think, that Charlie had stolen the actor's mailbox.

The biggest problem, of course, was that it contained the actor's mail.

The mail itself was no great shakes. There were a couple of utility bills, a mail-order catalog from an expensive department store, some junk mail, and what appeared to be a greeting card. Still, I sifted through it with a terror as if it were body parts.

Terrified, I tried to explain to the gushing Charlie that he had now committed a federal crime. I didn't think that either of us would do well in a penitentiary. He didn't have any problem with it, insisting that the victim of his thievery could simply purchase a new mailbox. Horrified, I insisted that we take the mailbox back IMMEDIATELY, hopefully not running into the burgled thespian on the way. (I kept envisioning him standing outside his house in a red smoking jacket, saying: "Will you kindly get your hands off of my postal receptacle, and leave that periodical depository where you found it!")

Nervously, before the FBI agents came to take us to Leavenworth, we drove the five miles or so to the actor's home and parked down the block. We both wore sunglasses. I made Charlie carry the mailbox and we approached the lonely-looking post which until recently had housed it. A cursory glance told me that there was no hope of reattaching the mailbox without the help of power tools, and we would have to just set it out there in front of his house and pray that he would chalk it up to vandals.

Unceremoniously, we dumped the mailbox on the lawn, and some of the mail spilled out. It made an enormous crashing sound, and I suddenly had visions of the actor lurking behind a tree with binoculars, hoping to catch whichever evil person had done this to him.

I panicked. "Run!" I screamed. "Run!"

Charlie and I took off like bats out of hell and dove into my car. We sped away, praying to God that we hadn't been spotted. Considering that neither of us was arrested for mail tampering, we assumed we hadn't.

An interesting footnote to this adventure is that, years later, I met the niece of this same well-known actor at a school function. She was very nice and friendly to me, so I never told her that a friend of mine had vandalized her uncle's mailbox, years before. I'm afraid of karma.

For more shenanigans, visit BeowulfGirl here, and show your support by leaving a comment or two.

Things I should probably not be doing at work.

2006-04-25T14:05:00.000-05:00

Making pushpin “art” on my cubicle wall.

Checking my personal email every five seconds, even though it’s only filled with Gap ads and bookstore coupons, and I don’t check it anywhere near this obsessively when I’m at home.

Playing Allister’s “Fraggle Rawk” on my iPod twelve times in a row and daring myself to head-bang.

Binding my printed ad designs with matching colored paperclips, and placing them on my desk just at the edge of my peripheral vision in a carefully fanned-out manner, so that I can glance over at them occasionally and admire their matchingness, and then claim I'm not completely lost to OCD.

Trying to rearrange the magnets on my metal bookshelf so that they don't look inappropriately suggestive, which is utterly impossible.

Informing my coworker that she owes me a drink for every time she calls me “Michelle,” which is not my name, for crying out loud.

Silently reading all my ridiculous interdepartmental memos with a really bad Serbian accent, just to pass the time: “Crrreating a high-poorformance ehnvironmehnt takes both time and conteeeenuous effort to eensure ze strrrong foundation foor a unified enterprrrise. Therefoor, we hev to be especially deeligent about the use of eenterdepartmental ehnvehlopes…”

Perfecting the art of the “screen toggle” so that it doesn’t look like I’m earning my salary by writing meaningless and meta blog entries.

Late to the party. (By about 24 hours.)

2006-04-20T12:22:00.000-05:00

I’m pretty pop-culturally savvy. My mother will vouch for my encyclopedic knowledge of television, movies, and music. (Of course, my mother thinks The Matrix was about mathematicians, so it’s possible that judgment may be relative.) I’m familiar with most of the popular films and TV shows, I know more than I should about the IMDB profiles of most working actors, and I am more likely to recognize a celebrity’s voice on a commercial than I am to recognize my own car in a parking lot.

Still, over the last five years, there was a huge cultural phenomenon to which I never paid much attention: the television show, 24.

I knew the show was good – smart people had told me so – but when it first started, I never had time to catch it. Its distinguishing gimmick is that every episode takes place in real time; each hour on my television is an hour out of Agent Jack Bauer’s day, and 24 episodes in a season constitutes one day in his life. Interesting. But by the time the show started gaining recognition and praise, it was far enough along that I didn’t feel I could catch up properly, and I hate feeling like I’ve missed something. I’m a little OCD that way. So I ignored it.

Well, until this week.

DVDs have been a technological godsend to television shows in general, especially the sequential ones, but never has a television show been more exquisitely suited to a technological format than this one. I get to start from the beginning! The very thing that kept me from 24 in the first place – the utterly dependent chronology and mythology, and its inaccessibility in network broadcast schedules – is now an enticing draw, a crack-like temptation to just watch one more episode, because I’m almost done with this disc anyway, and couldn’t I just round it out to an even episode number, and if I don’t find out what happens to Kiefer’s daughter in that van, I’m going to dream about it tonight.

Oh, have I not mentioned Kiefer Sutherland yet?

The Kief has been stealing scenes in movies since I was born, and has quite a following of devoted Brat Packers and Young Gunners fanning themselves with their copies of Lost Boys and Stand By Me. While I’ve always appreciated the guy’s acting chops, I’ve never really inducted him into my harem, because I just don’t see it, and his voice has always creeped me out.

Lately, though, as I’ve watched him tear around L.A. in various states of distress that never seem to muss his flawlessly frosted hair, perfecting his “I’m just a family man!” look of anguish that morphs into quiet rage that becomes bitter determination that evolves into a delicately brow-furrowing expression of ache, somehow managing to find a way to change clothes about 13 times in the space of 24 hours, it suddenly occurs to me: “Huh. What do you know? He’s a MUSILL.” So I think I’ll allow Kiefer onto my Boyfriend Bus, but he might have to sit in the back for awhile.

Watching an episode that takes place in real time is neat, but it makes me feel like the laziest sloth that ever sprawled out on her couch. In the space of fifteen minutes, Kiefer has managed to meet a guy, size him up, get suspicious, distract him with a well-presented bluff, find a tranquilizer gun, MacGyver himself a little tranquilizer gun carrying case out of a three-ring binder, weigh the consequences, shoot the hell out of this guy’s leg, and somehow conceal the unconscious body in an office made entirely of glass. Meanwhile, in exactly the same amount of time, I have managed to stare blankly at a glowing box for awhile, find the perfect fulcrum point for balancing my remote control on my hip, and develop a craving for Cheez-its.

By the time an entire episode is over, the Kief has usually managed to unearth four conspiracies, discover two secret identities, kill or maim a couple of people (which, of course, he feels just terrible about, because he’s kind of a swell guy), nearly die at least twice, give the batshit-crazy eyes to roughly half the population of L.A., and set a new record for the number of times one person can say, “If you touch my family, I will hunt you down and kill you,” and still sound like he’s so not kidding about that.

Honestly, I’m exhausted just watching him. I need more Cheez-its, just to sustain myself.

I am currently nearly halfway through Season One. This puts our characters at a point in their day just approaching lunchtime, and while they’ve had several conspiracies, at least three explosions, countless murders, one suicide, six kidnappings, and a terrorist coup, I have pretty much toasted a bagel and wondered about the molecular structure of bubble bath.

Luckily, my disinterest in the show before now has kept me from paying any attention to talk of significant plot points in any of the previous seasons, so I have no idea what’s going to happen, and my suspense is pretty genuine (although I totally called that twist about Alan York right from the beginning of Episode 1). Yes, I am aware that there are new episodes of the show airing every week, and no, I do not plan to watch any of them because weren’t you listening before when I talked about my OCD?

So, fellow 24ers, here I am, late to the party, but no less enthusiastic. Please do not talk to me about plot points from seasons past or present, because if you ruin this for me I will come over there and break all your pencil tips in a malicious manner. Now, if you don’t mind, I have an online rental queue to fill. I am so behind.

For Easter.

2006-04-15T10:22:00.000-05:00

There are three bunnies playing together on the lawn outside my sliding glass door. And when I say "playing together," I don't mean that they're just milling around in the same general vicinity, because I know that humans often amuse themselves by anthropomorphizing any group of more than one member of a species as having some sort of endearingly playful societal relationship, and that's not what I'm doing here.

No, they are balls-out, gloves-off playing a game, and it has rules I don't fully understand. (Although my cat, GenV, really wants to get out there and referee.)

The bunnies set themselves up facing each other, about four feet apart, locked in a Jets-versus-Sharks-gangsta-stare-down. They are intensely still, save the occasional whisker twitch or narrowing of the eyes. Then, just when you wish they had opposable thumbs so that they could start slowly snapping their fingers and approach each other in dangerously rhythmic steps, one of them will suddenly run straight at the other, like a little bunny piledriver. And right at the point when you think Bunny #1 is going to totally take out Bunny #2 in what can only result in a situation that will require a little bunny stretcher, Bunny #2 jumps straight up into the air as Bunny #1 zooms right underneath him.

By the time Bunny #2 lands back in the same spot, Bunny #1 is drawing to a stop halfway across the lawn, all "whaaa?" as he looks around for his missed target. Then Bunny #2 becomes the charger and runs, hell-bent, at Bunny #3, who was kind of minding his own business over there, munching on a tasty piece of grass, when he looked up and saw crazy-ass Bunny #2 steamrolling toward him. So, of course, he jumps straight up in the air and lets Bunny #2 go flying by underneath him, and lands facing Bunny #1, who has wandered back over to watch and take notes. The three of them keep charging at each other, and popcorning into the air to avoid being hit, charging and hopping, charging and hopping.

It's exactly the kind of game I would play if I were a bunny.

As I looked away from their game to write this, something clearly went down. Somebody either fouled somebody else or took the trash-talking too far, because now there are only two bunnies, and they are sitting, stock-still, with their backs to each other. They look like really pissed-off bookends, and are obviously no longer speaking, except for the occasional “Oh, whatever, you knew I wasn’t ready.”

Alright, so I may have anthropomorphized a little bit.

A healthy appetite.

2006-04-13T13:24:00.000-05:00

It’s nice that my gym has eight or ten televisions hanging from the ceiling. Each one is tuned to a different channel, with an audio box attached to every exercise machine where I can plug in my headphones and tune in to whatever channel I’m interested in. That’s convenient, and gives me one less reason to stay home and make a big Meldraw-shaped dent in my couch that too often fills up with pennies and rubber bands and stale kernels of popcorn that I never discover until I lose the TV remote.

I’m appreciative of the wide selection of television programming available to me while I’m on the StairMaster. (And I’m talking about the machine with the little pedals, not the giant half-of-a-down-escalator monstrosity that I refuse to climb because it makes me feel like I’m trapped in a freaky, acid-trippy M.C. Escher painting that I will never, ever get out of, so help me God. It also brings back my childhood fears of getting a shoelace caught in the escalator at the mall and being pulled to my death via the gears under the escalator belt while my mother yelled after me, “I told you not to run up the down escalator! See what you get?”) Anyway, I’ve noticed that such a wide programming selection means that at any given time, at least three televisions will be showing commercials, and chances are likely that one of those commercials is for food. Occasionally, one of the televisions is even tuned to the Food Network.

Which, come on. What punk puts the food channel on at the gym?

I can’t watch those food commercials when I’m working out because it makes me ravenous. All I want to do is stop and eat, and suddenly when I look over at the person on the machine next to me, they’ve turned into a giant taco in running shoes. But I also can’t close my eyes because my balance on that machine is precarious at best, and by the time I’ve climbed what equates to about 45,000 flights of steps, let’s be honest: I’m pretty much relying on visual cues to stay upright. So, at the first sign of that Applebee’s commercial with the Gilligan’s Island parody that I irrationally love, I avert my gaze and start counting the number of times I see people making mean faces at their personal trainers behind their backs.

By the time I get back to my apartment and retrieve my mail, finding two sheets of pizza place coupons and an ad for what promises to be the best barbecue in town, my self-restraint has taken an enormous beating.

On the days when I work with Leah, it is especially difficult to find the energy to argue with myself over dinner plans. I’m always tired and sore, because Leah has beaten me up and taken my lunch money again, and I sit down on my couch and realize that I can’t move. Not even a little bit. I’m usually too tired to even think about glancing in the general direction of the kitchen, which is probably empty anyway, because I go grocery shopping about as often as I get my oil changed.

Then I start to fantasize about delivery, because Pizza Hut could bring me my dinner, and I wouldn’t even have to get up off the couch. I could just yell for them to come in when they ring the bell, and they could set the pizza box down on my lap and pluck the money from my limp hand. And I bet if I tipped them well enough, I could even get them to turn on the television and place the remote beneath my fingers before they leave.

But then some small part of me remembers that I think I saw a pork chop in the fridge a few days ago, and I bet there was some rice in there, too, and I heard somewhere that having protein after you work out is a good idea. And even though I can practically taste the greasy pepperoni and melty, cheesy garlic bread that has already been delivered to my imagination, the logical part of my brain is offended by the idea of sabotaging my health habits after I just busted my ass at the gym.

Inevitably, I also realize that reheating the pork chop is faster, and impatience trumps laziness any day of the week.

Gesundheit.

2006-04-07T12:11:00.000-05:00

I’ve got this coworker who looks eerily like Tim Robbins. (In fact, I’ve never seen the two of them in the same room together, so take that as you will.) He’s an extremely nice man, very even-tempered, and goes out of his way to speak kindly to everyone. But he sneezes like a damn grenade.

Seriously. It comes out of nowhere, and is so loud and forceful that you are momentarily thrown back against your cubicle wall as little bits of debris fall from the ceiling tiles and car alarms go off in the parking lot outside. It’s terrifying. It sounds kind of like “AHA!” as if he’s just discovered some life-changing revelation, and he’s so excited about it that an uncontainable exclamation bursts forth from his chest like so much Alien animatronics. Our department consists of four cubicles crammed into a room the size of a smallish walk-in closet, and Tim “Sneezey” Robbins has the cubicle next to mine. I wondered why I found shooting range style earmuffs in my desk drawer when I first started; now I know.

There’s never any preamble, like in cartoons where Bugs Bunny starts to take little gasping breaths just before he sneezes, which would totally give his location away to Elmer Fudd, and then Daffy Duck puts one finger under Bugs’ nose and the whole problem’s solved and everybody breathes a big sigh of relief before Bugs’ sneeze catches up with him and outs them anyway, and Fudd comes tearing around the corner, slipping and sliding as he fumbles with his shotgun and starts shooting holes in everything that moves, the very posterchild of PETA and the NRA all rolled into one, until eventually the wily animals lead him off a cliff, where he hovers in midair for a few minutes, all smug that he’s caught up with his defenseless prey and is about to blow their brains out in front of an impressionably young audience of children and twenty-something graphic designers, and then he suddenly realizes where he is, and he cautiously feels around with his toe for a minute to see if there’s something more substantial than air supporting his weight and then, and only then, is gravity allowed to snatch him from the scene, leaving nothing but a little white cloud and maybe a small sign that says “Oh, dwat,” depending on whether or not Chuck Jones directed this one.

My point here is that Tim Robbins doesn’t make those gaspy little breaths beforehand, so I have no opportunity to run over to his cubicle and hold one finger under his nose to thwart the oncoming sneeze. (I’d be afraid to do that anyway, because I’ve heard that under normal circumstances, it is unhealthy to hold in a sneeze, and in Tim Robbins’ case, it might cause an aneurism.) I pretty much live in fear every day, not knowing when the tranquil, headphoned, Jack Johnson-infused serenity of my cubicle will be shattered by what is clearly a mutation of that man’s lungs.

It keeps me on my toes, I guess, in what is an otherwise painfully dull atmosphere. Also, it helps me hit my target heart rate for the day, so I guess that’s a silver lining.

A Mind-Boggling Holiday (or Why Parker Brothers Products Should Have More Comprehensive Warning Labels)

2006-04-02T21:03:00.000-05:00

It’s the day before Thanksgiving, and I am 12 years old. We have a couple of not-terribly-distant relatives in town for the holiday, and my mother is planning a feast. Today, however, she decides to make a simple meal of burgers and homemade fries. She breaks out the oil-fryer and goes to work making dinner.

Meanwhile, I have decided to play a board game with my rarely-in-town cousin. We settle on Boggle, which has the benefit of being both studiously quiet (during play) and uproariously loud (during the shake-up of letter die). We set up on the floor in the living room, which is attached openly to the kitchen, where Mama Meldraw is making dinner. My mother has an undiagnosed addiction to word games, and so when she hears the deafening tumble of letter die, followed by exclamations of “I don’t know how anyone finds any words with these letters!” she is drawn to it like an Olsen twin to a bathroom stall.

Mama Meldraw begins by simply peering over our shoulders during play, nonchalantly trying to point out words to her children. Soon she is on all fours, scribbling madly onto her own score sheet, now thoroughly involved in the game. She is winning, of course.

I look up during a particularly intense period of word-finding silence, and it is brought to my immediate attention that the oil in the fryer has caught fire, having been left unattended and gotten too hot.

“Mom!”

“Shh. We have ten seconds left.”

“Your kitchen is on fire.”

With surprising speed, Mama Meldraw springs to her feet and tries to remove the pan from the hot burner, which currently has smallish flames licking the lid of the pan. As she tries to move the pan to a cooler burner, the jostling of the oil causes it to ignite further, and she has to place it back down…very, very quickly. Now the pan is engulfed in large-ish flames.

Meanwhile, the rest of us are on our feet and starting to panic. My father is not home from work yet, so my sister and I turn to the only authority figure in the room that is not waving oven mitts around like a very strange air traffic controller: my cousin. He warns us not to pour water over the thing, and thinks he may have heard something about using salt to put out grease fires. My mother hilariously empties a very small salt shaker onto the lidded pot, to no avail.

My cousin has suddenly unearthed our ancient fire extinguisher and looks rather the hero as he tells my mother to step back. He takes aim with the extinguisher and dramatically pulls the lever, or the trigger, or whatever one pulls to make use of a fire extinguisher. Nothing happens. It would appear that the fire extinguisher has dried up, or expired, or ruptured, or evaporated, because it is older than I am.

At this point, I am convinced our house is burning down, and I am desperate to find my cats. My mother is yelling at us to all go out onto the front lawn, because the fire seems to be growing. I call the cats’ names over and over again, finally find one of them, grab her by the scruff, and am forced to run out the door as the fire department is called.

Suddenly, at the top of the stairs appears my 78-year old grandmother, whom everyone had forgotten was upstairs. She had been reading a book and looked up to find her room a little smoky, and wandered out to see what the commotion was. We holler at her to get herself outside before the house burns down and we all die, and she does so, though she will never, ever let us forget about the time we almost let her die while we tried to save our damn cats.

Once the lot of us are standing outside on our lawn, clutching at least one terrified feline, the fire trucks roll up and suited men with large hats go about trying to rescue our French fries. They easily extinguish the fire with some significant damage to the kitchen, but no structural harm. While we stand on our lawn, bathed in flashing lights and the curious looks of far too many neighbors, my father arrives home with impeccable timing. The sight that greets him makes him think seriously about turning around and checking that he’s on the right street.

And that, kids, is why Boggle is a fire hazard.

Clowning Around

2006-03-30T18:14:00.000-06:00

Every office has a clown. Generally a person earns this label by putting plastic fish in the water cooler or removing the ink cartridges from all of the pens in the office. Less often does the person in question actually dress in multi-colored polka-dots, sporting KISS make-up and disproportionately large shoes.

My office has that kind of clown.

There's this guy, Norm. Norm works in Compliance, which mostly means that he has very little sense of humor. I mean, even less than normal insurance people, whose best attempts at hilarity involve one too many “So a salesman, an actuary, and an adjuster walk into a bar…” jokes. (Seriously. I was in a meeting the other day, and the speaker made another one of those jokes, and everybody laughed like they were watching an anti-drug PSA by Barry Bonds, and I just looked around and said to myself, “Where am I?”)

At any rate, Norm is a strikingly surly and sarcastic man. He's ornery. He is not a person whose sense of humor makes other people comfortable. A simple “Good morning, Norm,” will earn you a rather biting, “Who says?” and if you try to shake this off with a wan and slightly uncomfortable smile, you’ll get, “What are you smiling at? Don’t you have work to do?” followed by an excruciatingly long pause before you turn back to your work.

Once I tried to head him off at the pass by thinking ahead:

“Morning, Norm.”

“Who says?”

“Who says what?”

“Who says it’s a good morning? Nothing I’ve seen today qualifies this morning as ‘good.’”

“I didn’t say ‘good morning.’”

“…”

“I said ‘Morning, Norm.’”

“…”

“It is still morning, isn’t it?”

“Are you new?”

My plan didn’t give me the last laugh so much as the last lingering moment of awkwardness, so I decided from now on I would just not talk to Norm until after noon. My point is that Norm is not exactly swimming in rainbows and puppies, so I was quite taken aback to learn that he is a professional clown.

Yep, Norm the Clown. He went to Clown School to get clownified, presumably received a clownish degree in Clownism or Clownology or some such thing, and does clowny things on weekends. At the office, he doesn't wear the get-up, which (since I've been scared of clowns ever since I was a child and my parents hung a terrifying painting of a manic-looking clown on my wall that made me forever suspicious of people with red hair and white skin, sabotaging several friendships with Irish people) is really best for everyone. I’ve seen pictures of him from the circus, and he is almost as intimidating there as he is at the office.

His clown name is “Haystack.” Sometimes he answers the phone in his clown voice, and he just…won’t…drop it. It freaks me out, and never fails to make me look around for hidden cameras.

He's also really short. I wonder if there are height regulations for clowns, in order to fit as many as possible into a small car. I'd really like to know that ratio.

On one of his benevolent days, I asked Norm his professional opinion on why so many people are afraid of clowns. He said, quite decisively, and without hesitation: "The make-up." I guess this begs the question, why continue to wear the scary make-up? But I’m scared enough of Norm without his make-up, so I’ll leave someone else to broach the subject.

Also, he said, when Stephen King's It was made into a movie, it dashed the reputations of clowns everywhere. The profound disappointment in his voice was funnier than any clownish thing I've heard him say. I wonder, when he approaches small children or twenty-something graphic designers at the circus and they run screaming to their mothers, if he turns his face to the sky and shakes his fist, yelling, “Damn you, Mr. King! Damn you…!”

Ball bearings.

2006-03-21T22:07:00.000-06:00

I’ve had some (concerned) inquiries about the continuing saga of Leah the Fitness Nazi, and my interesting combination of sadomasochistic and homicidal gymnastic tendencies.

Leah herself is just fine, I’m sure you’re relieved to hear, and has not been entered into the Fitness Protection Program as of yet. Partly contributing to my softening feelings toward her is the fact that over the last month, my workouts seem to be a little less suicidal than when they first began. They haven’t gotten easier (in fact, they’ve gotten progressively more advanced), but my body has grown more accustomed to its new routine, and I’m quite a bit stronger. While I’m still pushing myself to exhausting limits, the next day I no longer feel as though I wandered into an Iron Maiden that was two sizes too small. I daresay that I look forward to my workouts while I’m sitting behind my desk at work, and days that I can’t get to the gym make me a little stir-crazy.

So you could say that my new fitness routine is starting to agree with me. I don’t know if having a personal trainer is absolutely essential to such a drastic lifestyle change, but I do know that it somehow causes some part of your brain to regress in such a way that you always want to please your trainer, like a puppy. It’s a little embarrassing how pleased I felt when I was able to tell Leah that I had increased some of the weights on my own when I felt they were getting too easy. That good feeling dissipated a bit when she looked at me and smiled as if she were mentally patting me on the head while plotting new ways to bring me to my knees in pain, since the weights clearly weren’t accomplishing that anymore. I practically saw the moment when her pupils turned into little exercise balls and a light bulb appeared over her head.

Exercise balls are really an all-over workout. They can be used for any number of “looks easy, doesn’t it?” exercises, with the added benefit of keeping you so distracted at the thought of losing your precarious balance that you spend your entire set imagining a Rube Goldberg-esque chain of events that starts with the ball suddenly flying out from under your weight and sailing toward a display of Power Bars and ends with several broken windows and a really pissed off Spinning class.

Leah had me spend some quality time with one of those balls today. The exercise involved a sort of push-up with my hands on the ball, and my feet out behind me. I thought this was fine. She asked me to keep the ball out in front of me, rather than directly beneath my shoulders. I thought this was a nice challenge. She asked me to make sure and keep my hands (and weight) on the top of the ball, rather than angled toward the front. I thought this might be harder than I anticipated. She asked me to raise one leg off the ground while doing it. I thought I heard angels crying. She asked me to do three sets of ten of these. I became suddenly positive about the angels, and I think I may have actually seen one or two.

I saw this really terrible horror movie once where a basketball would roll into a room all by itself, accompanied by ominous music, and when it had cornered a person up against a wall, it would be hurled with unseen hands toward the person’s head, smashing it like a pumpkin on Halloween. I’m pretty sure that role was originally written for an exercise ball, but the exercise ball had a better agent.

So yeah, I hurt again tonight, but I’m comforted by the fact that today marked my almost-one-month anniversary with Leah. She took my measurements again, and smilingly informed me that I’m losing inches all over the damned place, and that I had lowered my Body Fat Index by four percentage points. “You should put this on your fridge,” she said as she handed me the printout. I wondered briefly if any of her clients ever actually hit her, and then scolded myself for thinking such thoughts, mostly because I’m pretty sure she can read minds.

What I’m most pleased about, however, is the knowledge that I’ve moved up a little on the ass-kickage pyramid. I’m stronger than I give myself credit for, and feeling stronger every day. I’m a long way from being able to take Leah in a fight, but I’m pretty sure I can handle that chick on Treadmill #5 who always wears those ridiculously long, dangly earrings during her workout, because she apparently got distracted on the way to her cotillion.

I would love to see what Leah could do with that girl.

A message from the management.

2006-03-21T22:05:00.000-06:00

Dear frustrated blog commenters:

I’m sorry Blogger is retarded. Keep trying.

Kisses,
Meldraw

Hey, Captain Demando: Shut it.

2006-03-14T22:11:00.000-06:00

I’ve been told my time between blog posts is too long.

In the last week, I’ve gotten several emails, IMs, and the odd (ahem, Kevin) blog comment from people who seem to have a more than a passing interest in the goings on of my life, and frankly, it’s a little creepy. An inordinate number of people want to know the latest on my job, my car, my health, and my hobbies. I’m flattered, of course, that people actually go out of their way to care about these things, but I’m also beginning to wonder KEVIN if these people have lives of their own to care about KEVIN and I am impressed that said people would be so demanding of a person to contribute to a blog more often when they themselves do not put forth a similar effort KEVIN. Especially when such people KEVIN do not leave a single comment on my blog, ever, KEVIN until they suddenly decide that the comedy factory’s not hitting its hilarity quota and get all bratty and insistent about it KEVIN without even saying, “Hey, I like your blog. I read it regularly. Good work and all,” and skip straight to being a demanding demander with comments like, “Get with the funny.” Hey, Captain Demando: Shut it.

My less-than-delicate response to such comments appears to have guilted said commenters into creating their own blog, wherein apparently the first order of business is to issue me a Blog Challenge Smack-Down. (Well, and also to strive desperately to be as cool and funny as me, and fail.) I don’t really know what that means, except that I think I’m supposed to post more often.

In all honesty, I’ve just been busy. And also a little too lazy to mold my most recent experiences into a cohesive comedic structure, but mostly busy. I know I’ve neglected the blog a bit, and I owe my faithful readers a more regular blogging schedule. I promise I’ve got heaps of interesting things to talk to you about, but they haven’t quite made their way into my word processor yet. Patience, children.

For the teeming masses who are on the edges of their seats wondering about my life and its every little detail, I offer you a quick glimpse at my daily morning routine, and hope it is enough to stave off the gnawing hunger for more morsels from Meldraw Land:

4:30 am: Groggily open eyes to see a giant cat face, two inches from my nose. Shut eyes tight, hoping cat will go away. Hear an extremely loud MROWR in left ear. Push cat off the side of bed and smile after hearing the resulting thud. Go back to sleep.

5:50 am: Radio alarm goes off. Do not wake up, but instead begin to dream about the morning deejays laughing self-importantly at their own jokes while riding a carousel and knitting a scarf made out of onions.

6:00 am: Cell phone alarm goes off, in the kitchen. Must drag ass out of bed to shut it off. Know own tendencies well enough to know that I will soon need to install a third alarm elsewhere in the apartment.

6:05 am: Shuffle over to coffee maker, eyes still closed. Push lots of buttons, hoping caffeine will come out somewhere, and stumble blindly into the shower.

6:20 am: Stand in front of closet. Wonder what to wear.

6:25 am: Continue to stand. Continue to wonder. Look down at cat, who meows loudly for no reason. You have plenty of food. Go away.

6:30 am: Stare into closet without really seeing. Begin to ponder the effects of synthetic dyes on the cotton industry. Blink. Give up on clothes and go back to the kitchen to set up caffeine IV drip. Ignore meowing feline.

6:35 am: Retreat to bathroom for hair-drying and make-upping. Cast half-hearted glance into closet. Wonder how it’s possible to not have anything to wear, and yet consistently run out of hangers.

6:50 am: Look at clock suddenly, in a panic. Throw an English muffin into the toaster and peer into empty refrigerator, looking for lunchy foods to bring to work. Wonder if half a flour tortilla, four baby carrots, and a box of baking soda constitutes a well-balanced meal. Shoot a warning look to the Cat That Won’t Shut The Hell Up.

7:00 am: Turn on the Today Show and putter around the apartment, still unwilling to commit to an outfit. Glance at clock and finally settle on something—anything—because my workplace has a strict No Shirt, No Shoes, No Insurance policy. Decide that enough caffeine has not been consumed in order to deal with Katie Couric. Turn off Today Show.

7:10 am: Write the phone number for the Humane Society in large red letters on a Post-It note and stick it to the cat’s food dish.

7:15 am: Grab work bag, gym bag, travel mug, wool coat, long scarf, purse, keys, and cell phone. Momentarily consider life as a Sherpa. See cat staring pathetically. Sigh, drop bags, and give cat a very squeezy hug and kiss. Spit out cat hair. Leave.

7:20 am: Drive to work. Shiver the whole way.

7:30 am: Arrive at office. Wonder how the travel mug could be empty already. Make a beeline for the lounge’s coffee maker and hope nobody speaks to me until Friday.

Killing me softly. (And by "softly," I mean "Holy Mother of God.")

2006-03-01T17:10:00.000-06:00

I walked into the 24-Hour Fitness gym next to my office last Thursday with the intension to grab a membership price list, take a quick look around, and perhaps consider the remote possibility that I may one day convince myself to willingly raise my heart rate.

I walked out with a membership, five sessions with a personal trainer, a box of intriguingly disgusting meal supplements, and a vague sense of unease. I was nearly $400 poorer, and I had no idea what just happened.

How they managed to sell me a new lifestyle in kit form, I’m not exactly sure. My memory after I walked through the gym’s freakishly heavy doors is a little fuzzy, but I do recall something about a suspiciously charming “Fitness Counselor” named Travis. It’s possible that I handed over my credit card for the sole purpose of seeing Travis put on a ridiculously adorable pair of glasses as he input my membership information into the computer, but I can’t be sure.

Regardless of the grounds for my sudden fitness gusto, I was determined to see this thing through. I scheduled my first personal training session for that Friday. My new trainer’s name was Leah, and I foolishly thought we could be friends.

Leah is, as I found out on Friday when we met for our first session, extremely nice. She’s petite, unassuming, and generally agreeable. When she asks you to perform an exercise, it sounds like a reasonable request, and it’s not until later that you realize you can never, ever be friends. Friends don’t make other friends want to remove large portions of muscle and place them in a bathtub filled with Novocain for six hours.

Leah started me out with some very simple strength exercises. Those of you unacquainted with the experience of weight training under instruction might be interested to learn a scientific fact about the process. Just at the point when you’re nearing the end of your set, and the pain in your muscles has begun to scream its arrival, and you fantasize about how nice it would feel to be suddenly struck by a falling piano, something strange happens to your trainer’s voice. Somewhere between the words “doing great” and “just three more,” the trainer’s voice lowers about four octaves, much like when you slow down the playback of an audio tape to resemble a person in the throes of demonic possession. Coincidentally, you can also hear a deep, maniacal laugh, and you suddenly notice for the first time that the trainer’s eyes are glowing red. This is universal, and applies to all trainers.

After our little get-together on Friday, I realized that I had misplaced all of my major muscle groups. Where there was once living tissue, there was now only warm whipped cream. Walking down the four steps that descend into my apartment, I developed an unhealthy attachment to the railing, and felt ashamed for taking it for granted all these years. It wasn’t really pain that I felt, but an utter lack of supportive tissue.

The pain came the next day, of course, when every last bit of whipped cream was replaced with a delightful assortment of thumbtacks and caltrops. The muscles were back, and with a blinding vengeance. I had promised Leah that I would return to the gym the next day to get in a cardio workout, and since the gym scans my ID card every time I walk through the door, she would know if I lied to her.

Therein lies the real value of having a personal trainer: it is an excellent incentive to exercise. It helps to know that despite her petite and amiable exterior, she can soundly kick my ass in a myriad of different ways, and is licensed to do so in 48 states. At the very least, I often want to run away from her at a swift pace, toppling children and handicapped people in my haste, and that’s good cardio.

So, Saturday found me back at the gym, clinging for dear life to the cross-training machine, fearful of the wrath of Leah. I was afraid my body would mutiny at another day’s exposure to the gym so soon, but I was pleasantly surprised. Comparatively, after the previous day’s session with the weights, my cardio workout felt rather like jumping into a sea of chocolate and frolicking around a bit.

I took Sunday off, and spent the day recuperating and fantasizing about intramuscular narcotic injections.

I managed to bring myself back to the gym Monday after work (I even walked! In heels!) for some more cardio. I began to feel like I could get the hang of this regular workout thing.

Then, there was Tuesday.

Tuesday, yesterday, was Session #2 with Leah, and was the first time I noticed my homicidal feelings toward her. My second weight training workout was significantly more difficult; she gave me more movements to do, increasing the number of exercises from four to fifteen. Each exercise is done in two sets of fifteen reps, sometimes for each leg/arm, which, according to my calculations, results in about 900 reps in all.

900. Nine hundred. Nine-zero-zero.

I learned several things yesterday. Chief among them:

I have way, way more muscles than I thought I did, in places I never knew existed. And every single one of them will eventually give out if I piss it off enough.

“Okay, let’s work on your core” is trainer-speak for “have you ever wondered what it felt like to be shot in the stomach? Then follow me.”

Exercise balls are not toys.

There are days when even my new favorite railing that lines those four steps to my apartment will do me absolutely no good. And there are days when I will not be able to control the speed or grace with which I descend those stairs.

I hurt today. I suspect I will hurt everyday for the rest of my life, or at least until I finally murder Leah. But even as my arms ache and my quads cry silent tears, I am getting ready to walk over to the gym for some quality time with the elliptical machine. I don’t know what keeps me returning: some secret masochistic tendency? A genuine desire to embrace my health? An honest fear of a small, chipper girl in Adidas?

I wonder if Travis is working today.

Hot and Coldplay

2006-02-21T20:11:00.000-06:00

There are two kinds of people in this world: People who love Coldplay, and people who wish Chris Martin would stick a sharp pencil in his ear and wiggle it around for a half an hour.

Actually, there’s a third group of people who have never heard of Coldplay, but chances are they don’t have a particularly good internet connection in their cave, and so they’re probably not reading this right now.

I happen to belong to Group #1, which is why Monday night found me perched on the edge of an awfully steep stadium balcony, watching a very tiny Chris Martin-shaped dot coax powerful sounds from a slightly larger, piano-shaped dot. Even in the face of Coldplay’s monstrous rise to fame, and consequential overexposure, I continue to like Martin. It helps if I ignore his current Napoleon Dynamite haircut and the fact that he’s married to (and has one and a half babies with) Gwyneth “I call him ANTony Hopkins” Paltrow.

When Chris Martin speaks, the lilting British accent you forgot he had surprises you, and you suddenly remember that this world famous English band has no business popping up in the middle of Nowhere, Nebraska. Still, he was gracious with the Omaha flattery (“We can’t believe we’ve never been here before! This is like Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, where the lovers finally get together at the end, but they should have been together all along. That’s how we feel about Omaha.”) And 16,000 Omahans flattered him, with a deafening roar every twelve seconds and enough t-shirt sales to finance the launch of four small countries. Several times, he cried, “Thanks for giving us your Monday!” which I misheard consistently as, “Thanks for giving us your money!”

The band engaged the audience with a contagious excitement and visual charm. During the song “Yellow,” several giant yellow balloons fell from the sky for the audience to play with, tossing them around like enormous beach balls. When the balloons popped, they were filled with yellow and gold glitter that sprinkled down on the uplifted faces of eager fans. Said glitter probably presented a choking hazard to a few sing-along fans that had their mouths open, mid-croon, as they turned their faces upward in delight, but it looked pretty, and I couldn’t hear them choke from my seat in the rafters, so I didn’t mind.

During the ballads, I was fascinated to notice that a twinkling, sparkling sea of illuminated cell phone and digital camera screens has replaced the traditional cigarette lighters of yesteryear. At first I was mortified, and a little saddened at the intrusion of the 21st century, until I realized it was really rather beautiful, and 65% less likely to cause lung cancer.

The music was amazing. This is music I have been listening to for years and years, since before “Yellow” caused radio deejays to predict the band a one-hit-wonder, and far before “X & Y” caused Chris Martin to predict himself the next Bono. It’s also music that holds intricate memory associations from very important moments in my life. When I first went away to college to deal with the terrifying and invigorating freedom of Life After Home, confronted with the crazy stresses of academic exhilaration, I used to hole up in the campus’ Print Shop very late at night to work on my art. The little workshop would be empty of people, but filled with the overpowering smells of ink and copper and alcohol and mineral spirits. I would be elbow-deep in oils, with my hair piled messily on top of my head, more colors on my apron than my prints. I would have five deadlines the next day, and three more the day after that, and I’d have unfinished papers back at my room and a test I wasn’t ready for the next week. But when I got into that shop, I would toss Coldplay’s “Parachutes” into the sad little CD player, and I would take a deep breath and just…create.

During those college years, anytime I needed to relax and forget about the batty roommates and the masochistic professors, Coldplay calmed me down. It was always there, utterly reliable, and five years later, in another school, in another state, as I drove to my college graduation and pondered the meaning of Life After School, I popped “Parachutes” into the car’s CD player to stave off hyperventilation and keep myself from aspirating my tassel.

All of this is to say that musically, Chris Martin and his boys had a very high standard to live up to in my mind last night. And to my sheer, giddy delight, they surpassed all expectations. The music was intensely beautiful, and the show was engaging. And even though I was high enough in the nosebleed section to wonder briefly about the ratio of oxygen to air particles, I couldn’t have been closer to the music if the stage were in my sinuses.

That was a good show.

666!

2006-02-18T21:48:00.000-06:00

If you’re new to my blog and haven’t been properly introduced to my 1999 VenJetta, then you might consider going back and catching up on our adventures before reading this post. But if you’re short on time, all you really need to know is that 1999, if you turn it upside down, is pretty much 666, with an exclamation point.

Let’s press on, shall we?

Things have been going well for me, in general. I have a new job, a reasonably priced cat, and a mild-mannered apartment. My days have been mostly enjoyable with a 40% chance of idyllic, and my mood has been generally merry. Lately, I’d even let my feelings toward the VenJetta teeter on tolerable, and I began to think she felt the same way.

Now, looking back, I suspect this delusion was probably my first mistake, because the VenJetta can smell complacency the way sharks can smell blood and children can smell quiet.

Friday morning dawned at roughly two degrees below zero, the coldest it’s been all winter. I wasn’t aware of it at the time, but the VenJetta awoke to the cold with the sort of mischievous determination that only comes with a rare opportunity to land a devastating blow to your greatest enemy. In the early morning chill, the car planned her day while I puttered about my apartment, getting ready for work, oblivious to what was in store.

The drive to work was uneventful. The car was quiet. It was thinking, plotting, smiling.

I have half-days every Friday (I know you hate me, stop sending emails), so when I left work at 12:30, I was in good spirits. As I drove to my salon for a hair appointment, I was even humming a little bit. My tune stopped abruptly in my throat when I realized I had no power steering or brakes.

A couple of things happen when you realize you’re encased in several thousand pounds of glass and metal, traveling forward at an alarming velocity, and all options you may have once had to change the trajectory or speed of your travel have suddenly been taken away. First, you regret having ever taken those options for granted. Second, you analyze the situation with a lengthy inner monologue.

In my case, my thoughts did not begin with, “Oh, no! What could possibly be wrong with my vehicle?” No, my thoughts were: “Well, that’s it. Things have been too good. She doesn’t like seeing me this happy, with my life coming together. The ornery bitch has decided it’s time to put me in my place, and remind me who wears the Turtle Wax in this relationship. I hope that Explorer in front of me turns, because I’m young, and I haven’t climbed Mt. Everest yet.”

Putting both hands and all my weight on the wheel, I wrestled the Nasty Beast of Passive Aggressive Vehicular Manslaughter to the side of the road, and eventually was able to coast into a parking lot. The dashboard warning lights were blinking in an exasperatingly cheerful rhythm. I put both feet on the brake pedal and pushed as hard as I could, barely stopping the car’s forward momentum before the engine’s whine dwindled into pathetic silence. As I sat there, I looked around and took stock of the situation. I was sitting in front of a bank, blocking their driveway, utterly immobile. The VenJetta was now incapable of starting, turning, or stopping, and so had become a very large paperweight with no heat and an unfortunate sense of humor. The cold started to seep in almost immediately, and I began to hate life.

Coincidentally, my mother happened to be in town, and a quick phone call to her assured my rescue before my fingers froze to the steering wheel and broke off. Another phone call to AAA (who should really be receiving Christmas cards from me by now, and perhaps a nice cheese log) decided the fate of the car, which was towed somewhere. Anywhere. I don't care where, but it would be a nice bonus if it employs a compactor. I wasn’t as angry or upset as you might imagine. I was resigned, and a little tired, because the car has destroyed my soul.

I’ve decided the VenJetta does not need a mechanical overhaul, or even a stern talking-to. It needs a priest. Preferably one whose resume includes several qualified exorcisms and a fluency in German. An exorcism, while dramatic and initially terrifying, might just free the vehicle from whatever demon calls itself Car-ma. The procedure will take place in a darkened garage, with several hooded clergymen holding bibles and tire irons. Holy water will be poured into the radiator, a crucifix and a clove of garlic will be hung from the rear-view mirror, and several “Got Jesus?” bumper stickers will be slapped onto the fender while I sit in the corner and cry, “There must be another way!” A sudden wind will howl through the garage, the VenJetta’s rear-view mirror will start spinning around, the muffler will spew pea soup, and coolant will bleed from the walls. The car alarm will go off, but it will sound disturbingly low-pitched. Several well-meaning priests will not make it, but in the end, the howling wind will subside, and the Check Engine light will finally—finally!—turn off.

Still, I don’t hold out much hope, because if there’s one thing Stephen King has taught me, it’s that the car always wins. Well, that and never trust a clown, but I already knew that.

Welcome to Corporate America.

2006-02-05T17:32:00.000-06:00

Well, I did it. I survived my first whole week of life in Corporate America.

It was not entirely without incident, but then, I’m incapable of doing anything in my life entirely without incident. At the very least, none of this week’s events had any lasting damage on my state of employment, so I expect I’ll go back for at least another week.

The week began mercifully free of any doorway-related trauma, and after a short visit with Human Resources, I found my way to my cubicle. After being momentarily frozen by the sight of my name engraved (engraved!) in a nameplate on my cube wall, I suddenly noticed an adorable little bamboo plant on my desk, with a welcome card signed by everyone in my department. It was artfully arranged alongside my brand new business cards and several random objects with the company logo on them. It was a very sweet welcome. I was touched, and instead of mentioning that I am to plants what Jack the Ripper was to London streetwalkers, I simply thanked my coworkers and wrote “WATER ME” on a Post-It note and stuck it to the plant.

My first three days were packed with meetings. The meetings consisted mostly of several very smart people talking about very smart things while I smiled and nodded and tried to pretend I had a degree in something other than art. I suddenly had an overwhelming feeling as if it was Take Your Daughter to Work Day and I had misplaced my mother. And somehow, everyone in the office expected me to do her job.

People in insurance companies have a special way of talking that requires only acronyms, and I am often left wondering which storage closet holds all the vowels. I was fairly certain that the bombardment of foreign terms was going in one ear and out the other, but something must have stuck, because I recognized several words by Thursday, and was even able to offer a somewhat positive-sounding “Mm-hmm” in one of the meetings.

In the few minutes between meetings, I tried to go over the several volumes of administrative information HR had given me. Nowhere in my employee handbook did I find information on how to record a voicemail message without sounding like a complete tool. (It did, however, offer an interesting section about Diversity Training, accompanied by an unintentionally hilarious graphic of several white people sitting at a conference table, all looking at the one black dude in the room. If I thought insurance people had a sense of humor, I would think that cartoon was satirical.)

On my second day, I met with the Vice President of the company. Alone. Now, I have heard people describe me as several things, many of them complimentary, but “executive” is not one of them. So when I went up the Stairs of Labor Class Division and entered the VP’s fancy corner office with his fancy leather sofa and his fancy coffee maker and talked about mergers and bottom lines and the transfer of millions and millions of dollars, I felt a little out of place. Somehow I managed to keep what I imagined was a calm, cool exterior, and I just prayed that the VP couldn’t pick up on my inner monologue, which involved a regular rotation of the words, “terrified,” “intimidating,” “Holy Hell, what am I doing here,” and “Mommy.”

The week wouldn’t be complete, however, without a little profound embarrassment on my part. It was only a matter of time before I made a complete and utter fool of myself, so I’m almost glad I got it out of the way on my SECOND DAY. While attempting to move from a sitting position into a standing position in the lunchroom on Tuesday, I seemed to have skipped several crucial steps in the standing process, and ended up twisting my ankle and falling on my ass. As is required in these situations, my boss and coworkers were right there to witness the episode in its entirety. Their sincere concern for my well-being was probably meant to be kind, but it really just made me feel like a graceless moron. As I picked myself up from the floor and took a mental inventory of all my limbs, I managed to make a joke about being really anxious to take advantage of my Short Term Disability plan.

I felt pretty good about my witty recovery from such an appalling incident (dude, I made an insurance joke!), right up until the next day, when I did it AGAIN. Luckily, this time there was only one witness to my clumsiness, and she had not been present at the previous day’s display. Also luckily, I did not actually fall on my posterior this time, and instead was able to catch myself on said witness’ cubicle wall. I have to wonder at the reaction of the person in the cubicle next door, who probably saw his fabric wall bulge ominously with my weight. I imagine he saw my handprint pressing forth from the wall, Frighteners-style, and decided he had been in the insurance business too damn long as he dug around in his briefcase for his flask.

I never thought I was a particularly clumsy person, but I’m really starting to wonder at my sudden incapability of operating my limbs. I wonder if, at this company, you have to accrue motor skills over time, like PTO. By the end of the year, I should be able to walk a tightrope blindfolded. But seriously? If I don’t stop falling over at work, they’re going to make me take a drug test.

Maybe I’ll pencil that in for next week.

A sudden breeze about the ankle.

2006-01-30T23:20:00.000-06:00

According to a lightly engraved brass nameplate and several small (but official-looking) bits of white embossed cardstock, I am now employed. Fancy pants and all.

My first day of work at the new job was ten kinds of exhausting, six varieties of fairly pleasant, and three distinct types of terrifying. The terrifying really started yesterday, because the agonizing prologue to this kind of event is a snowball of nervous energy, not the least bit hampered by the logical knowledge that they probably wouldn’t have hired you if they didn’t think you were competent. Or at least trainable.

That kind of confident awareness is fine and dandy when you first accept the job offer, and it even allows you to quit your old retail monstrosity with an air of satisfying self-validation, but it’s another thing altogether when it’s suddenly 11:00 the evening before your first day, and for some reason you can’t shake the visual image of walking face first into the glass lobby door while the receptionist at the front desk phones your supervisor to ask if he had any back-ups for that new girl that was supposed to start today as she watches you get loaded into the back of an ambulance.

This particular fear of entryway-related humiliation, in addition to various other strands of professional uncertainty, is what sent me into an uncharacteristic panic attack yesterday. Luckily, my very good friend Kate was there to talk me down from the ledge:

Kate: Take deep breaths. Have a glass of water.

Meldraw: What if they fire me before noon?

Kate: They won’t. They’ll love you! Seriously, you probably won’t even have your computer set up by noon. You’ll spend all morning getting your photo ID taken, and filling out forms for HR, and talking to IT to set up your voicemail, email and various and sundry passwords.

Meldraw: I’m going to make an ass of myself. And for the rest of ever, everybody’s going to be all, “Hey, there goes that girl who made an ass of herself.”

Kate: You won’t.

Meldraw: And this isn’t just a job. This is a career move. Lord, starting tomorrow, I’m basically an adult. With an adulty job.

Kate: I hate to say it, but you’ve been an adult since you starting paying for your own utilities.

Meldraw: But this sort of cements it, doesn’t it? I mean, there’s no going back. I can’t be a kid again. Ever.

Kate: Would you want to be a kid again? I wouldn’t.

Meldraw: I don’t know. I never really wanted to be an adult.

Kate: I didn’t either, but just today I was reminded that, as a child who couldn’t ice skate, I was left on the ice by my sister. In front of the Zamboni. This is why I don’t ice skate.

Meldraw: Er…so. What you’re saying is…as a kid, you are almost entirely at the mercy of others.

Kate: Yes. And think of middle school.

Meldraw: I hated middle school.

Kate: And then high school! And who wants the pressure of trying to get into college again?

Meldraw: I guess getting through middle school and high school, and getting into college, getting through college, and getting OUT of college…those were all accomplishments.

Kate: I’d much rather be older and have more choices than be younger and not have a clue.

Meldraw: I’m just torn between wanting so badly to take control of my own life and be my own person and live up to my own expectations, and being scared of the responsibility that entails.

Kate: I understand, but I still maintain that it’s better to be an adult. If for no other reason than you’ll be an adult for a lot longer than you were a kid. With luck, I mean.

Meldraw: You have a point.

Kate: Yes.

Meldraw: The thing I really, truly miss as a kid is absolute comfort. The kind of comfort that comes from being absolved of responsibility…placing all your faith in someone outside yourself, like your parents. That feeling of security? That’s not something I think I’ll ever have again. People with religion have that feeling. I don’t.

Kate: But you have to realize that some things are certain.

Meldraw: Like what?

Kate: Like that your parents and your sister will always care about you, no matter what you do, and you know that’s true.

Meldraw: Well, yes.

Kate: And that the really good things in life can’t be bought and are not dependent on finances. Also, there are a lot of things you have now that cannot be taken away from you: an education, skills, knowledge…intangibles.

Meldraw: Awareness.

Kate: Yes. It’s like this: I was shopping a couple weeks ago in this store where they clearly make their employees wear their ridiculous trendy clothes. There was this girl working there wearing plaid pants and a teeny t-shirt. With the bad teenage posture, she was just so sad looking. And I thought, well, I may have put on about twenty pounds since I was sixteen, but I will never be as uncomfortable about myself as I was then.

Meldraw: I suppose that’s true. I will never again be forced to wear trendy clothes to satisfy some socio-psychological requirement. But are you ever really completely comfortable with yourself?

Kate: No. But I’m way better off than that girl, and me at her age.

Meldraw: Yeah.

Kate: I will never have to wear something that anyone will refer to as “ass khakis,” which I did then. I admit it.

Meldraw: Well, yes…you’re right. I’m in a much better place than I was as a teenager.

Kate: Yes!

Meldraw: It sneaks up on me, but…I’m definitely a lot more comfortable with myself than I used to be. I feel like my own person.

Kate: That’s because you ARE your own person. You have a fancy pants job! It’s cool, isn’t it?

Meldraw: Yeah, it is, come to think of it.

Kate: That’s right.

Meldraw: Thanks, Kate.

Kate: So, wohoo! This is the Eve of Excitement! I’m excited for you!

Meldraw: Thank you. If you’re excited for me, then I can be too!

Kate: This is me, sitting here doing that I’m-so-excited-I’m-shaking thing!

Meldraw: Aw! You rock.

Kate: No, you! You rock. YOU ROCK MY SOCKS OFF!

Meldraw: Yeah. I rock socks like nobody’s damn business.

Kate: Truth.

Meldraw: I’m a sock-rocker.

Kate: No one rocks socks like you do.

Meldraw: That’s right!

Kate: Damn skippy it is.

Meldraw: I hope those people tomorrow are Velcro-ing their socks to their shoes, because I’m going to rock them right off.

Kate: It’ll be like Miami Vice in that joint! All loafer, no sock.

Meldraw: Everyone in the building will suddenly feel a breeze about the ankle.

Kate: The place will be filled with confused Midwestern insurance types, all standing around barefoot, with shoes on, while a conga line of socks snakes its way around the building.

Meldraw: So jaunty!

Kate: Totally jaunty! I hope everyone wears the good socks, with no holes.

Meldraw: I feel so much better.

Kate: I’m so glad.

Meldraw: Kate, you’re the best evah.

And with that, Kate armed me with a new and improved visual to replace the head-meets-glass ambulatory scenario from earlier. You can’t NOT smile while picturing a multi-colored conga line of mismatched socks dancing merrily through a maze of cubicles, led by myself, the Pied Piper of Sock-Rockage. It’s simply not possible.

Kate also armed me with the reassurance that it didn’t really matter what happened my first day, because there isn’t much I could have done that would have made them fire me. Even if I somehow managed to spill coffee on the VP (which I didn’t), or destroy an expensive computer system (which I don’t think I did), or inadvertently call my boss the son of a motherless goat in Lebanese (I’m almost entirely certain that was not Lebanese), and even if they DID fire me, it still doesn’t really matter, because there are intangibles that can’t be taken away from me. And my favorite intangible right now just made the best Miami Vice joke I’ve heard in ten years.

Can you hear me now?

2006-01-20T22:28:00.000-06:00

Dude. This new phone is all kinds of awesome. It has a camera! I can totally realize my lifelong dream of being a secret agent. This could only be better if my shoe was a phone and my cufflinks were blow-darts.

I should test my phone. Who can I call and bug at this thoughtlessly late hour? Ah, my parents. Of course.

[beep beep beep beep beep beep beep. SEND] “Hello. You are being connected to the Verizon Wireless Roaming Plus network.”

Wait, what? That can’t be right.

“Please have your credit card ready.”

WHAT?!

“If you are a Verizon Wireless customer, please hang up and dial *711.”

[click] Alright. You’re the boss.

[beep beep beep beep. SEND] “Thank you—calling—Verizon Wireless. For—calls—please—hang—dial—now.”

Crap! Where’s the signal? Quick! Get near a window! Dammit, it’s not working! Wait, now the signal’s better…no, lost it again…wait! There it is! I just have to stand here with my nose four inches from the refrigerator, on tip-toes, without breathing. What did I miss?

“Para español—”

Shit. Maybe I should just press 1. 1 always means English.

[BEEP]

“Please hold.”

I wonder what option I chose. (I hope it wasn’t “To make a toll call to Paraguay, press 1.”)

“Hello. You are being connected to the Verizon Wireless Roaming Plus Network. Please have your credit card ready. If you are a Verizon Wireless customer, please hang up and dial *711.”

But…I just…isn’t that what I…? This is going to be a long night, I can already tell.

Maybe I should look in the manual. Okay…page 3…Getting Started. Step One: Install the Battery. Okay, check. Step Two: Charge the Battery. Done. Step Three: Power the phone on. Right-o. Step Four: Placing and Receiving Calls…aha! To place a call, use the keypad to enter the number. Oh, well, excellent, because I wasn’t sure about all those little shiny buttons with the Arabic numerals on them. Good to know. Press SEND to make the call. When you are finished with your conversation, press END.

Right. Well, that was helpful. If you’re Amish.

Where is my invoice? Maybe I skipped a step in the activation process. Ah, here we are. Nope, I did everything on this list. Twice. Maybe I should go online and look at the website, since it’s in bold print here.

[click click click click click. Beeeeeeeeeep MMMrrrrooooooooorrrrrgggggghhhhhhh.] (I have dial-up.)

Hmm…online FAQs. Here we are: “I keep getting a recording when I try to make an outgoing call.” Call customer service. Okay, but the not being able to make outgoing calls thing might be bit of a roadblock there. Now I have to find my home phone (which I lost somewhere in my apartment about a week ago), and get offline, because I am the only person left in the Northern Hemisphere who still has dial-up. And if DSL is going to be as hard to set up as this damn phone, I will have dial-up until 2017.

Where is my home phone? Oh, hey, this is why we have that “page” feature on the handset base. I guess you just press this button, and—oh HAHAHAHA! I just scared the crap out of my cat, who was sleeping on the pile of laundry in which my phone was hiding, until the laundry started ringing. For a split second, she got that “Holy Jumping Jesus” look on her face, with her ears facing all the wrong directions, before she flew across the room and into the closet. She is going to be so paranoid about clothes from now on.

Good times.

Alright, where’s that customer service number? [beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep] “Thank you for calling Verizon Wireless customer service.” You’re welcome. “Please enter your ten-digit mobile telephone number.” Alright. “Please enter your seven-digit Location Code.” My what? “Please enter your seventeen-digit Order Number.” Holy cow. That’s a lot of…oh, CRAP. I messed up. “That is not a valid Order Number.” Really? Because I thought we were allowed to just make up those number combinations. Do I have that wrong? “Please enter the last four digits of your social security number.” Fine. “Please enter your ten-digit mobile telephone number.” This isn’t really a recording, is it? This is somebody that’s bored in the service department, talking like a machine and then giggling maniacally into a pillow.

“Please hold.” Thank God.

Wow, that’s some jaunty elevator music. I wonder how you get what must be the most soul-crushing job in the world: composing jaunty elevator remixes of really terrible cell phone jingles. Do you go to school for that? What kind of thesis do you complete? I bet somebody takes it really seriously. I wonder if they get irritated when they have to place a recording of someone saying, “Thank you for holding, your call is important to us!” right in the middle, because it interrupts the flow, and they storm out of the sound booth while adjusting their beret and gesticulating wildly about the death of modern sound.

“HellomynameisSomethingSomething, thank you for calling Verizon Wireless customer support. Do you mind if this phone call is tape recorded for our use so that we may better serve you in the future?”

“Suit yourself. But you should know I sound very different on tape than in real life. I’m not that nasal, I swear.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“That’s fine. Go ahead.”

“What can I do for you today?”

“I’m trying to figure out how to activate my new phone.”

“I’d be happy to help you today.”

“Well, good. Okay.”

(Silence.)

“So, okay, well…I did everything it told me to on the invoice, but it’s not letting me make any calls.”

“May I have your mobile phone number, please?” (I gave it to him.)

“Do you have a Motorola V276 phone?”

“Er, well…it is a Motorola. I don’t know exactly what the model is. It’s, um, silver and black. And it looks a little like a UFO. Does that help?”

“My computer is telling me the phone is not activated.”

“Okay, well. Can you activate it?”

“Um, well…let me bring this up on another computer. May I have your mobile phone number again, please?” (I gave it to him. Again.)

(Silence.)

“It’s telling me the phone is not activated yet.”

“Well, at least it’s consistent.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Can you fix it?”

“It doesn’t seem to be going through. Let me get my supervisor. Can you hold?”

“Nothing would make me happier.” I wonder if it’s SomethingSomething’s first day.

[click] I think beret guy might be on to something, here. This music really is the death of modern sound. You’d think they could at least invest in a Time Life boxed CD set or something.

“Hello, this is La Shaaaaaawnda. THANK you for calling Verizon Wireless customer support. Thank you SO much for holding. I would LOVE to help you today.”

“Um, okay. I can’t seem to get my new phone activated.”

“Well, that’s what I’d really LOVE to help you with today.”

“Alright.”

(Silence.)

“Have at it.”

“May I please have your mobile phone number?”

At this point, I’ll have my new number memorized in no time.

“May I ask, are you calling from the mobile phone in question?”

“Well, no. The phone won’t let me make any outgoing calls, what with it not being activated and all.”

“Can I just say, THANK YOU so MUCH for not calling from the phone in question.”

Is she making fun of me?

“Um…you’re welcome.”

“So MANY people try to call from the phone in question. This is just MUCH easier for me.”

“Any time.”

“I’d like you to dial *22890 and hit send, if you would do so please, THANK YOU, and that should begin the programming process for your phone.”

“You want me to stay on the line while I do this?”

“Yes, THANK YOU, if you wouldn’t mind.”

Wow. Girlfriend either has a really outstanding lack of awareness of how condescending she sounds, or she’s been yelled at by her boss one too many times for not saying “thank you” enough. I bet she has a big sign in her cubicle that says THANK YOU in red letters so she doesn’t forget. I bet it’s got darts in it.

“Is the mobile phone connected to the service? Do you hear music?”

“Well, yes, actually. It’s more than a little jaunty.”

“Oh, GOOD. Please let me know when the phone is finished programming.”

“Will do.”

(Silence.)

“Has it finished programming yet?”

“No. Still jaunty.”

“Hm. You should have gotten a message by now.”

“No, I’m still rocking out to the death of the modern—wait, there it goes. It says, ‘Commit OK’ on the screen, and I have no idea what that means. Does my phone have commitment issues?”

“No, it should be all set now.”

“Alright, thank you for your—”

“Now call someone.”

“Pardon me?”

“Make a call from your mobile phone, if you would BE so kind, THANK YOU, so that I can make sure your calls are going through properly.”

“Oh, alright.” Hm, it’s late. I can’t call my own house, because I’m tying up my own phone line with the customer service rep. I guess I’ll call Mom. Sorry, Dad, I know it’s past your bedtime, but I don’t have a choice.

[beep beep beep beep beep beep beep. SEND] It’s ringing.

“It’s ringing.”

“Hello?” (Mom.)

“Hi, Mom.”

“Did the call go through?” (Verizon Lady.)

“Yes, the call went through.”

“What?” (Mom.)

“Oh, good, now hang up on the other party.” (Verizon Lady.)

“Oh! Sorry, Mom, I gotta go. Can I call you back?”

“No, your father is sleeping. What’s going on?”

“Oh, well, then can you call me back?”

“What? What are you doing?”

“Please hang up on the other party, so that I can call your phone and make sure you can receive calls properly.” (Verizon Nazi.)

“I’m trying to set up my cell phone.” (To Mom, slightly panicked.)

“Please hang up on the—” (Verizon Nazi.) For crying out loud.

“Mom! I have to go! Can you call me back?”

“On your cell phone?”

“Wait, my old cell phone or my new cell phone? What? No, never mind. Call me at home.” Why is the Verizon Nazi laughing at me?

“When?” (Mom, bless her.)

“I…I don’t know…in ten minutes? IhavetogonowBYE.” This conversation is stressing me out.

“Okay, bye.” [click] My poor mother.

“Alright,” (to the Verizon Nazi), “I’ve hung up with the other—” Aaah! The new cell phone is ringing, LOUDLY, and oh my God, I think it’s playing a Ricky Martin song.

“Is that you calling my phone?”

“Yes, that’s me.” (Verizon Nazi.) “Your phone should be functioning now.”

“Boy, is it ever.” How the hell do you shut this thing off? Memo to self: investigate volume control and Latin Pop exorcism.

“Well, I would just like to THANK YOU so much for calling Verizon Wireless customer service, and ENJOY your new mobile phone and thank you SO much for becoming a new Verizon customer, because we just LOVE and appreciate your business.”

Why do I still feel like she’s making fun of me?

“Um, yes. Thank you for your help.” [click]

I don’t want to be a secret agent anymore. This is stressing me out. I don’t even want to think about what customer service is like for the cufflink blow-darts.

The Golden Globes (And no, I'm not referring to Scarlett Johansson's breasts.)

2006-01-19T13:24:00.000-06:00

I got sucked into the Sparkly again.

I could go on and on about the misconception of awards shows as some sort of quantification of merit, rather than the Hollywood Political Olympics that they really are, but I think I already did that once, so I’ll spare you. More often than not, the Emmys and the Oscars make me roll my eyes with a vague sense of entitled disgruntlement as the overexposed studio productions and Nielsen-whore television monstrosities take home 1,017 awards, while my indie favorites and understated actors get snubbed again.

But sometimes, they get it right, at least a little bit.

The Golden Globes were fun this year. Somehow the winners were justifiable, for the most part, the speeches were a little less comatose than usual, and most people avoided shopping at Career Suicide Couture. The red carpet media was appropriately garish and provided a lot of material for those of us with an overdeveloped sense of snark. For whatever reason, the Globes were unusually enjoyable, but that could have had something to do with the hideous glass of Dr. Pepper and vodka I was drinking.

I made a conscious decision at the beginning of the evening to abandon any pretense of intellectual activity, hang my shame at the door, and splash about the shallow end of the pool with my ghetto drink for a couple of hours. I happened to run into a few extra-snarky friends online who were also watching the show, and we had a glorious virtual Globes party. (Kate? You rock.)

Over on the E! channel, Isaac Mizrahi started things off by admirably throwing himself into the fray with such voracious dedication to being as appalling as possible, that he may well be my new favorite red carpet maven. Only Mizrahi could be so appealing to me while I’m strolling the aisles at Target, but so atrocious while I’m watching him squeeze Scarlett Johansson’s breasts prior to the awards broadcast. I had no idea that the most important question of the evening would be “Are you wearing underwear?”

The stars themselves were in fine form, dressed to the nines (sometimes even the tens), and looking generally superior to everybody else. There were fewer mishaps than usual, I think, although I’d like to send out a friendly PSA to Drew Barrymore: I’d like to support you, dear, and I’d hold up a big perky sign proclaiming my love for you, because I know you carry the weight of your family name and your battle with drugs must have dragged you down, but I have just one word for you, sweetie: brazier. Google it. It’s really hard for me to concentrate on my Dr. Pepper mixer when your nips are winking (sadly) at me in Hi Def.

The ceremony was speckled with equal parts predictable and un-, but I was generally pleased with the winners of the major categories. Most notably: Best Actor in a Television Drama Series, Hugh Laurie, and Best Television Drama Series, Lost. It’s worth mentioning that Hugh Laurie, toward whom I may be biased because he is my TV boyfriend, was finally recognized for his stellar work on House after being snubbed by Emmys last year. I’m happy to see the Hollywood Foreign Press recognizing the depth Laurie brings to the character that has most critics doing nothing more than dog-earing the page for “caustic” in their thesauruses. Of course, that statement might mislead you into thinking the Hollywood Foreign Press actually has a purpose in this world, and it doesn’t really, so take that for what you will. I’m also happy for Lost, both because the show is original, engrossing, and intelligent, and also because I think the Desperate Housewives are incapable of being desperate when they hoard nominations like nuts in winter.

Several of the night’s acceptance speeches were fantastic departures from the laundry list of gratitude that usually weighs down these events. Geena Davis launched into a touching tale of wonder involving a little girl in her first party dress who tugged on Geena’s skirt and thanked her for inspiring her to want to become the first female President of the United States, before confessing that it “didn’t actually happen. But it could have.” Hugh Laurie, in his adorably British way, wrote the names of the 172 people that deserved to be thanked on little slips of paper, put them in his pocket, and drew out three at random. He ended up thanking the script supervisor, the hair stylist, and his agent, though he noticed that last one was not written in his handwriting. The man who co-wrote the screenplay for Brokeback Mountain thanked his typewriter. Steve Carrell read an acceptance speech he said was written by his wife, which was peppered with high praise for her, and concluded by thanking “Nancy, my precious wife, who put her career on hold in support of mine and who sometimes wishes I would let her know when I'm going to be home late, so she can schedule her life, which is no less important than mine.”

I like it when celebrities have personalities.

I confess that after about the first hour of the broadcast, my recollection of it starts to get a little fuzzy. It’s entirely possible that American Idol won for Best Documentary or Six Feet Under won for Best Comedy; I don’t really know, because by that time the vodka had reached the memory section of my brain, and my remembrance consists mostly of “Damn, Harrison Ford looks OLD,” “I see somebody left Patricia Arquette an anonymous reference to a hair dresser after the Emmys last year,” and “How can I not have any popcorn in my apartment?”

In all, I had a great time Monday night, because I was in good company with friends who are just as hypocritically shallow as I am. It’s probably for the best that they were not actually in the room with me, because I suspect my little victory wiggle dance over Hugh Laurie’s win would earn me a hearty helping of mockery that would last at least until the Oscars.