Yeah, Blame the Weather
I am so @#$%^ tired of hearing newscasters say for the last three days that more ridiculously inflated gas prices are the fault of Hurricane Katrina.
For heaven's sake, the chimp is BFF with the Saudi royal family -- the richest oil nation in the WORLD, and he has sacrificed the youth of our country to occupy the second richest.
Wake up, America. The weather is not the problem. It's Bush's grandiose gestures to the oil companies who already have the lowest tax rates in the country (that is, if they even bother to have their headquarters here instead of a PO Box in the Cayman Islands). They are reaping unprecedented profits on our backs and we just suck it up and drive.
It currently costs me about $150 dollars a month for gas for my car. Do you know what that is doing to me??? I don't exactly drive a Hummer, you know.
Let's place the blame where it so rightly belongs--along with the blame for most of the ills in our country right now (say, increased poverty, the dissolution of the middle class, record job losses, the anti-American attitude around the world...)--on the shoulders of GWBush and Co.
Yet Another Reason to Laugh at Me
So last night, after my ice skating class (yes, ice skating class--it was fun! I graduated last night. I got a little purple ribbon from Fullerton parks & rec and everything), my legs hurt and I was tired. I was sitting at the kitchen table with my right leg tucked underneath me, as I am wont to do.
The Boy put his hands out for me to grab so that he could help me off my chair. Because of my sore legs, I sort of rocked on the chair. The next thing I knew, there was an almighty CRAAAAAACK and I was sitting on the floor with my right leg twisted underneath me--or, more specifically, my right ankle. My poor chair will never be the same again. Needless to say, I was in a little bit of shock for a few minutes.
I do feel that I should mention in my defense that my dining set came from K-MART (or as my grandma used to say, 'Kame-Apart') 8 years ago and a couple of the chairs have been wobbly from the beginning (no doubt because I built them).
So I was totally embarrassed, and today I have a sore ankle and a boatload of humiliation to help me remember the event. No swelling, but man does it hurt. Especially with all the blood rushing down to it while it's under the desk at work. If only my cube were big enough for me to put my leg up. [sigh]
You're welcome for the laugh, by the way.
It is Still a Man's World!
Do you know how I know this? Because of pants. You read that right. Freakin' pants.
I went shopping this weekend to buy new pants for The Boy to wear to the hospital for his current nursing rotation in psych. (Evidently beige is out. This consequently means that The Boy has no pants since he owns about 57 pairs of beige pants and little else.) And do you know what I found? Why I now know for certain that the most powerful designers are men and that they lavish all of their special attention on men's clothing?
Many pairs of men's pants now have a specially inserted elastic band on the inside of the pants around the waist. In fact, there is one on each side. But these are not ugly polyester-old-man-pants with an elastic waist all around. No. These are the nice new Dockers and other types of chinos. They have zips and buttons. AND they have the elastic panels. And do you know why they have the elastic panels?
So that a man can actually wear pants that are 4" smaller around his waist than he actually is. The waist on his pants can extend an additional 4". So a man with a 40" waist (for example), could tell people he has a 36" waist (if they asked, or even cared). All of this, while women's sizes are shrinking.
In a world where women's sizes 12s and 14s are now considered plus sizes (despite the fact that these are the most common sizes for American women), MEN's pants are the ones with the forgiving waistband. Makes perfect sense.
Drowning
I'm just posting to tell you that I don't really have time to post for the rest of the week. I must go work on a zillion projects, all due next week.
Concurrently, of course, I am plagued by "lady troubles" -- if you can call aching body, crankiness, insatiable hunger and raging misplaced anger by something as mundane as 'trouble'. I want to kill, er...I mean severely hurt several people I work with. It's that hormonal thing, I guess.
Sorry guys, I should have warned you up front that this was a chick post.
Theme Me, Seymour!
(Um, yeah, okay, that title is a little lame)
Okay, so here's the deal. I'm getting married next year (as you no doubt know by now) and I have no theme for my wedding. According to that bible of wedding dos and don'ts Martha Stewart Weddings, a theme is crucial. Critical. Really, really important. And apparently, cheap-but-nice, simple and elegant-on-a-budet is not a theme. Who knew?
So MS* says that I need a theme. Her latest issue showed some examples with a seaside theme, or a schoolhouse theme, moon and stars, etc. And they were beautiful without being obnoxiously overdone--hard to believe with her, I know! Heck, my sister Heather had a Barbie themed headtable with barbies purchased to look like the bride and bridesmaids, and dresses made to match our real dresses (there were also Barbie-sized Star Wars characters to represent the guys). But I don't have a theme. Is my wedding destined to be a failure?!
So I'm opening my wedding planning up to comments and suggestions from the peanut gallery. What should my wedding theme be??**
Unlike the Beatle Invasion of the '60s, Ain't Nobody Happy 'Bout the Spider Invasion of '05
For some reason at work we are being swarmed by spiders. And if you know me at all, you know that Stephi don't play that.
It all started with this one very determined spider (let's call him Jack) outside the door that leads into the building where my office is. In the bushes to the left of the door, Jack started a small web one day. The next day Jack's web was about 3' across. I kid you not. Then someone knocked it down. Oh, poor Jack, lost his home. But was he defeated? Oh no! The very next day there was a new 3' web even closer to the office door. And big, fat, striped Jack was kickin' it in the middle of the web. Chillin' as spiders are wont to do.
The next day Jack was adding on to the back of his web. Expanding his house, so to speak. He managed a ginormous extension to his crib that extended a good 4' to the eaves behind his main web. So someone knocked Jack down, feeling that he was getting a leeetle too comfortable there. The VERY NEXT DAY there was an even BIGGER web, even CLOSER to the door. And there was a new, smaller spider (who I will call Tom) with a web built across the window, behind the 'extension' to Jack's web.
The next day, Jack and Tom were still there and accounted for, when I noticed that we had two NEW spiders building these gigantic webs in the bushes to the left of the office door (thankfully they were actually building them from tree to bush and were further from the door than Jack). Dean and Frank had impressive webs and were crashed in the center, probably resting after all that hard work. Then a group of people from my office went to get coffee. This is when Jack et.al's little world came crashing down.
On their way back from grabbing their joe, one of the guys from our office, a rather tall fellow, felt something on him, looked down at his shirt and realized that he'd just walked into a spider dangling on the beginning of a web. He started to do the world-famous spider dance, and got the heck outta Dodge, leaving our new friend Pete just hanging off of that tree. None of us had the nerve to face this sudden influx of mutant spiders, so we all huddled against the window and simply watched the spiders (we probably looked insane). Finally the other guy in our office decided that something needed to be done. Armed with a can of Ant & Roach killer, he took out Pete and Jack. Mysteriously, today the other spiders are missing. Did they hide in the jungle of bushes outside our building in fear? Did the maintenance people finally do something about them? I don't know.
What I do know, though, is that we now have three more spiders building new webs much higher up in the trees and the walkway on our path to get to our building--the only path. Revenge? Perhaps.
In response
No, Brandy, liking soccer does not make you a dork. Soccer is the #1 sport in the world (even if they do call it football). Golf, on the other hand, is the #1 sport of the over-50-crowd-decked-out-in-their-short-plaid-pants. Which one of us do you think is more pathetic?
***
*And speaking of MS, my mom doesn't have it! We have been worried for awhile now that Multiple Sclerosis might be the answer to her myriad health issues, but her MRI was negative for MS. Woohoo! Now if only we knew what WAS wrong!
**And no hoedowns or S&M themes. Don't think I don't know how you people think!
Reason #456,234 Why I'm A Dork
(As if I needed another one)
I Like GolfYes, you read that right. I don't know that I want to get out there and start putting myself, but I've now voluntarily watched it 3x on TV and
enjoyed it.
[sigh] There goes my street cred, I guess.
Where am I? What am I doing?
I actually know the answers to these questions. This post is for you, people. I am going to (attempt to) condense as much information as possible into this post to make up for the fact that I have not blogged anything of substance in eleventy years. I will use my favorite communication tool--the list--to make things easier. For me, obviously. You probably don't care if it's a list or paragraphs or morse code.
1) Holy Mother of Mama's! I'm getting married in less than a year! Because The Boy is a good sort, and actually wants to be involved in some of the planning of his own wedding, we've been trying to get all the big stuff out of the way before he starts school again next week. So we've been researching DJs, photographers, florists, etc., setting up interviews, and--heaven help us!--trying to scrape together the money for deposits. My parents are being absolutely wonderful and helping us out with the wedding, but we don't want to take advantage of them (after all, they have 3 little kids and a mortgage), so we're trying to do what we can on our own. Yesterday The Boy figured out that not counting the reception, our wedding is going to cost us around five grand. That's not too bad, you say? I guess not, until you add to that the nearly $7,000 price tag for the reception. Oh, and then there's that whole pesky dress thing. HY.PER.VEN.TI.LATE! This is right about when the drive-thru Elvis wedding chapel in Vegas starts to sound like a good idea.
2) Did you know that some workplaces require you to work the whole time you're there?? Me neither! Seriously, dude, I work all the time. I barely have time to skim my friends' blogs, let alone to write to my own on anything nearing a regular basis.
3) Other than this gross injustice, I like my job. Working with Engineering is fun and challenging. The days and weeks go by quickly. Did you know it's already August? I started my job in April, and we're already working on September/October/November. What the hell season is it??
4) I have rejoined Weight Watchers. Partly because of #1 and my connected fear of wedding dress shopping. Partly for my health. Sadly health comes in second against wedding. Tonight's my first weigh in. God help me.
5) I have also rejoined the gym. I loathe exercise. Which probably explains the need for #3, actually. I hate working out. I hate sweating. I hate the bopping, hopping, straining, groaning of the whole thing. And I really hate the small talk of my nice little women's-only gym. But I will go 2-3x a week because I need to. And I will dread and resent every moment of it. Be forewarned.
6) My two current favorite bands that I listen to constantly are The Killers and Franz Ferdinand. Yeah, I know, way to be at the cutting edge of music, but that's me, what can I say? I just listen to them on repeat constantly. Especially Franz Ferdinand. Never gets old with the radio in the car turned up loud and pulsating as I drive (read: limp along) the 405 freeway during rush hour.
7) Yeah. The drive. Hate it. So very much.
8) My friend and I started taking beginner's ice skating lessons on Wednesday nights. I'm not very good, but it's fun and different. And boy howdy is it a workout! I even got The Boy on the ice on Saturday night when we went skating for fun and practice: me and The Boy, my friend and Her Boy, and some of Her Boy's former students (he's a teacher). It was a blast. They have this cool 9:45-11:45pm slot for adults only, so there's no worry about a) squishing little kids (a very real fear of mine) or b) being shown up by little kids (happens far too often), or dealing with eleventy really, really good skaters who are just plain annoyed by slow, wobbly newbies, as happens in the free skate period after our class on Wednesdays.
9) Eleventy is my new favorite made-up #. Bet you couldn't tell. It can represent any horrendous amount of anything. Nice and flexible like that.
10) I recently taught a children's knitting class. I'm not sure I'll be asked back. I screwed up the cast on (teaching the kids how to get started) since there are about...um...eleventy different methods for casting on. I *thought* I was showing them the easiest one. I was apparently wrong. That and the fact that a grandmother stayed through the whole class, showing her granddaughter how to knit using a) different size needles than everyone else, b) a different cast on than everyone else, c) a different knitting technique than everyone else. I would try to get around to all the kids in the class but she kept her cute little granddaughter occupied. This made me feel totally useless and pointless. I asked her why she didn't just teach the little girl herself instead of paying me to do it. She said that she didn't know if she would have enough patience. If she'd known how easy it would be, she would have. Hmm, was that a slam at me and the difficulties I was having since SOME people would not go away??
11) Today is my sister Heather's 27th birthday. Oh how I wish I had some embarrassing childhood picture of her that I could post here to embarrass her. Instead I just have this one (with she and her husband at Disney's California Adventure), where she looks cute. I hate it when she does that.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY HEATHER! Welcome to the wrong side of 25 when you start to lose control of the brakes on the hill and start zooming toward 30. Believe me, I know.
Well, I think 11 is a good number for now to catch you up a bit--more than 10, not quite a dozen. Maybe I'll do this again because it's not too bad in this format.
I hope you're happy! Geesh!
