look, it really happened!

Now that I've been married for two whole days, here are some LOVELY pictures (provided by my cousin - she had a neat perspective during the ceremony, right smack behind my mom and dad)...having never seen my dashing husband in anything but tee-shirts and cargos for the last year and a half, I was nothing short of FLOORED by how nicely the man cleans up - HAHT, I tell ya. I'd say we make a fine-lookin couple!

I can't gush enough about how PERFECTLY the entire day turned out (I'll add to these pictures as I get some more...my sister stood around while I frantically tried to finish the hair and makeup with half an hour to go and snapped some pictures of the "before." ) I dare say, it looked and felt and sounded just like a REAL WEDDING! There's no place more beautiful than this beach, and everyone we've talked with since Saturday agrees it was a terrific, fun, low-key, happy wedding (favorite quote came from my mom as we were setting things up a few hours before: "Heather, your wedding is cooler than mine was!")

I can't omit huge thanks to Grandma and Grandpa - Grandma for making the lovely dress (and spending sunny days at the beach inside, sewing, sewing, sewing until it fit just right) and Grandpa for performing the perfectly short, sweet, beautifully articulated ceremony (the very same ceremony he wrote for his own wedding 57 years ago!)

I've got the BEST set of parents out there (not up for discussion) - and not to make this entire run-on post sound like an Oscar acceptance speech, but without them stepping in whenever I needed it and lending a hand, the day wouldn't have been as perfect as it ended up...it was that much fun (the Mister and I joked yesterday that we should "get married again" because it was just a NEAT day).

Also - I'll brand-name-drop long enough to rave about my sister's shockingly, amazingly over-the-top liquid gifts of Dom and Don and the most beautiful roses I've ever seen scattered all over our 1-nite honeymoon suite ("unity candles" yet unlit, B). And when this is all said and done, I'll reread this and count the number of times I use superlatives like "great, fun, incredible, neat," ETC.

Retrospectively (yes, 48 hours counts as retrospect!) I wish the day could have lasted much longer...for all of the preparation and energy invested in getting everyone in one place, at one time (still humbled by how many people made the HOURS-long drive for the day), it absolutely flew by...I wish I could have held everyone captive in the sunshine for several more days. The pizza idea worked out well...sunshine, beach, patio, ocean view, pizza and a claw-footed bathtub full of beer make for a GREAT time...

View from the lawn before our heels made swiss-cheese out of the pretty white runner...
Just after I'd been given away by daddy...

That's dad's arm around mom in the foreground...

After exchanging rings...

Grandpa's face is priceless...

The general pre-formal-photo chaos ("where do we stand? for how long? next to whom? why? ouch! my shoe's stuck in the boardwalk...")


Showing off the ring hand-made by my sweetie...
The Ladies (and I don't ordinarily look that tall...hmmmm)
Perplexed, with the parents...

Stay tuned as more pictures come in from different people...ceremony performed by Grandpa...

almost time to do the puyallup!

I love fairs. Carnivals, amusement parks, Saturday markets...any excuse to spend money on things sold out of tents and devour my own weight in fried anything. By my estimation, my local Washington state fair beats 'em all (and has the distinction of owning www.thefair.com).

Yep, with the Puyallup fast approaching, (that's pew-AL-up to out-of-towners) I'm getting excited, once again, to see my name on a grain of rice, eat an entire onion blossom (as big as my head! Drenched in mystery white sauce! Pipin hot!), drink lemonade out of a keepsake cup shaped like the Space Needle, stop by the radio station booth for a bumper sticker, buy bootleg cell phone accessories and try, yet again, to come up with a really good reason to buy a spa...or a fireplace...or new vinyl windows...or a VitaMix...

For years, a day at the fair has been the grown up equivalent to a "Mommy-and-Me" play day. Mom and I make the drive down south, enjoy a loud, karaoke style cd sing-a-long during the ride, pay exorbitant rates to part ridiculously long distances from the entrance, and enjoy a full day of grange-gazing, jewelry-buying, mushroom burger-eating, ferris wheel-riding, sheep-petting and - the best part - PEOPLE WATCHING.

There's something about a fair (at least a fair in area code 253) that brings out the strangest blend of people this side of Nascar country...I didn't realize we had so many hicks, hillbillies and knuckle-dragging types living up here in the "Iced-grande-half-caf-no-whip-soy-caramel-macciato-sipping, wi-fi-cruising, SLK hard top-driving, craftsman style home-remodeling, tennis club/kayak club/bike club/hair club membership-flaunting and 32-foot Beneteau-sailing" greater Seattle area. Apparently, they keep to themselves until The Fair comes through town (dragging Hilary Duff with it year after year after year). Mom and I will find a spot in the sun with a caramel apple and fruit smoothie and watch people walk past for hours at a time.

We watch mismatched couples argue (our favorite), watch angry parents drag strollers, watch tired kids beg for a fried Twinkie, old ladies in wheelchairs with oxygen tanks sleep in the shade ("I may be dying but I don't want to miss Herman's Hermits at the grandstand..."), droves of long-legged, skinny-hipped, big-footed 13 year-old girls in halter tops tug at their jeans and their hair and cruise for hunky 16 year-old guys with bad hair...we could do it all day.

Traditionally, we end the day with an elephant ear and a big bottle of milk...it's dark, they're trying to get rid of every body, the bathrooms are ridiculously crowded, no one can remember where they parked...it's great.

Maybe I'm jumping the gun since the fair doesn't get rollin for another month, but I can't help it...all of those miracle brooms and hydrosonic jewelry cleaners to browse!

i'm off!

Takin off for the 8 hour drive to the beach - comin back the little wife on Sunday!!!!!

i'm lazy, stressed and tired. so you get a picture-cop-out.

Instead of coming up with anything legitimate to whine about, I'll make this post one giant asterisk...an asterisk that says *Hey, this wedding in 2.5 days is wearing me out. I'm working 10 hour days, and I'm supposed to find time to make BOUQUETS and party favors? Are you flippin KIDDING me????"

Haven't had much time to check in with all of my favorite blogs, haven't left but a comment or two in the past week, and I'm running on a teeeeeeeeeny, tiny few hours of sleep. SO - while I hate for this to turn wedding-centric, I figure it's a pretty realistic reflection of what's goin on right now (and short of posting pictures of my DESK at work, which would be a massive conversation stimulator, I'm sure, it's pretty much what I'm stuck thinking about until Saturday rolls around)

So here we have it: Heatheradair's Lazy, Stressed and Tired Photo Cop-Out. Hey, at least I bothered with captions...(UPDATE: This should have taken me 5 minutes, but - of course - blogger-b*tch is making things difficult.)

front o' the dress (in the early stages)

back o' the dress

ooh, look what I made that didn't photograph well...FLOWERS TO HOLD.

Aunts and cousins and moms and grandmas at the shower...there's me in the frou-frou green shirt in the middle...

View from the reception site...!

The sort of sunsets we get in Bandon...hoping for one this pretty on Saturday evening...a good reason to love the west coast beaches...

The really important part.

Now, back to the regularly scheduled work agony (because apparently major life events like marriage aren't QUITE enough to warrant TWO days off work...so things are ridiculously busy and I'm ridiculously low-energy.

Whine, whine, whine, kiddo.

Fine, I'll dig up something on Nicole Richie for tomorrow...for now, it's pictures of shoes and sunsets...

guess i missed "how to address an envelope" day in school?

Since it's quiet on the celebrity gossip front today (unless you count Lionel Richie pimping his pending cd by exploiting his daughter's eating disorder), I'll share an interesting anecdote from my "I'm in the wrong line of work" files.

I generally vow to "leave work out of it" because I like being employed and fed and clothed pretty well at this point and generally try to keep myself that way, but an incident yesterday was such ridiculous, unadulterated LUNACY I'm temporarily breaking my cardinal rule:

I was mildly "reprimanded" for the way I addressed my outgoing mail. There were several problems:

• I dared affix a standard, rectangular mailing label ATOP our special, hoity-toity, colorful, off-sized return-address labels. (if that sounds like it doesn't make any sense, you can imagine the trouble the "messenger" sent to inform me of my sins had explaining what I'd done wrong: "You can't put this on this. This label, you can't stick it to this label. You need to put the big label in the printer and print directly on it.") Basically: I put a little label on top of a big label. Label Orgy. Very wrong. My response: "I'm not re-doing those."
• I placed a brazenly ugly "dash" between the house number and street number on the mailing label that I so hideously stuck on top of the other label. In the words of the man ruminating over the shortcomings of my outgoing mail: "What's that dash doing there?!" Gee, sorry.
• I guess I put one of those awful orgy labels on top of the big bad company label slightly...crookedly. The verdict: "That just can't happen." My response: "You feel like mailing these bills out next month? I'll letcha."

SO basically: I failed "company mail 101."

Tempted to say, "Fine - then you better not let me address my own envelopes anymore, I might give the company a bad name." Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't most people rip open and DISCARD the envelope their bills arrive in? If they stand over the garbage can speculating about label-on-label implications, I clearly belong on Mars. Or in Namibia.

8 days til i'm the missus...

With another week to go, I think I can safely say, "I made it!"

A few more details to deal with (er, minor things like, oh, a SUIT for the groom, or food for the reception, or wedding rings, or an official location for the ceremony, a finished dress for the bride, but hey...semantics. It'll all fall into place)

So - in the spirit of warm weather, Fridays, pending weddings and any number of other things that leave me reasonably distracted - I've been reflecting quite a bit lately...my thinking has been rather random, scattered, disconnected. All in all, I think that contrary to romantic comedies, sitcoms, urban legend and special features on msn, a marriage really DOES bring out the best, most lovely parts of all people involved...there are moments of stress, times of wondering, "how on earth will all of this fall into place - and will that pizza place PLEEEEEEEEEASE just call me back?????" but for the most part, I've never felt so looked after, cared about, tended to or well-wished in my life...people really come out of the woodwork in the most unexpectedly generous ways when someone's getting married...

I must say - as graciously as possible - that I wholly underestimated the emotional rollercoaster that accompanies this entire ordeal, but am in all ways completely, utterly content and in the eternal debt of people so selflessly willing to go out of their way to make our "big day" a special one.

(shout out to the photographer that's offering to be robbed absolutely blind - the price he's giving us is nothing shy of highway robbery...ridiculous!)

Other things that have occured to me over the past few weeks:

Even cheap food is expensive.

Girls expect the bride to do fancy things with their hair and makeup. when the bride says she'll "wing it," she gets weird, shocked looks from the other girls.

Fake flowers look pretty much just like real flowers. I've never spent much time pondering fake flowers before. I plan never to ponder them much after this.

You can get everything you need for a decent cheap reception at the dollar party-supply store.

You CAN make it this far and only spend $98...

Fancy, innovative, silicone stick-on-bras are spooky.

Grandmas pick out the best lingerie

"Mrs" sounds very old. Like a school teacher.

Even though I'll be photographed for all posterity in 8 days, a good burrito (or two...or three) is the one thing I just can't say "no" to.

Throw a surprise party for me any day. Hey, even invite people I've never met before in my life...could be fun.

A cookie pyramid sounds like a groovy cake substitute.

The closer it gets to the big day, the more people will ask "Are you NERVOUS?"

A girl can never have too much bubble-gum-pink lip gloss.

Or too many pairs of shoes.

You can get away with the most ridiculous purchases by justifying it as "a wedding expense." Completely superflous stuff: perfectly fine if it's "for the wedding." Shoes, dvd's, expensive tequila: WEDDING (who's to know?)

When all else fails: Dad will save the day.

another one from the skinny files...

Video from CNN today:

"Scary skinny vs. bootylicious ... you decide"

I know, it's the same old comparison: Nicole Ritchie (who collapsed while shopping recently - !!!), Kate Bosworth and the Olsen twins versus Marilyn Monroe, blah blah blah...

Here's the thing: the Marilyn Monroe comparison is becoming overused and weak (yeah, we know, she had hips)...she's the only "full-figured icon" anyone comes up with these days to compare skinny stars against... The video uses a shot of Kate Winslet and refers to her "full-figure" which is a stretch. There's also another TIRED, worn out juxtaposition: a shot from Destiny's Child's "Bootylicious" video, then a clip of Kelly Clarkson...

What makes the comparison weak: Kate Winslet admittedly starves herself before a big appearance (and she's realistically thin to begin with, far as I can tell), Beyonce just dropped 25 for her most recent flick, and after winning American Idol, an early quote from Kelly Clarkson was "I've gotta get a trainer and get rid of some of this booty!"

Meaning that the women CNN used as their "sexy! curvy!" hallmarks are all or have all been in some sort of race to lose weight, which sort of weakens the idea that they're really "happy" with their feminine bodies in the first place...and the women that other skinny-stars reference as the ladies they're "jealous" of might be valid in their own right (Scarlett Johannson and Jennifer Lopez, for instance) but for one skinny star to advertise how envious she is of another star's ample charms, then parade herself around with greased and boyish washboard-cleavage sort of undercuts her "envy" and makes it look more like carefully calculated distraction..."here, look over there at Scarlett's rack while I stick my finger down my throat and get rid of that grapefruit I may have just eaten..."

"the whole sorority is like, totally on fertility treatment!"

Fertility treatment: the new black. Everyone's doing it!

Even 22 year-old girls.

Not because they have a lazy ovary, not because their wombs are "inhospitable," not because they've been treated for cancer and are having reproductive troubles.

Nope. 22 year-old girls are turning to fertility treatment because after 3 months of trying to get pregnant, they're in a hurry and want to "speed things up"

Here's a quote from the USA Today snippet made by a spring chicken who's been trying to get knocked up for a whopping 4 months:

"Even though I am young, it still seemed like time was going by so fast. I don't want to be 35 and wondering if I can get pregnant..."

Whoa, Nellie.

It's a sort of worn out and obvious comparison, but in an age of call-ahead drive-throughs and Wal-Mart while-you-shop childhood vaccinations, how far behind can "lunch-hour fertility clinics" be?

Nevermind that it takes about a year of unsuccessful baby-making attempts before a doctor would call a woman infertile...by all means, let's let impatience be our guide. Welcome to the wonderful world of multiple births at the ripe age of 24...we've got places to go, things to do, babies to make...

And add "trip to the fertility" clinic the to-do lists of fresh-faced co-eds the country over, right between "buy new pair of D&G jeans" and "grab a green tea latte."

...because, like, 27 is like, old.

oprah: not gay.

Oprah revealed - via just about every news media outlet she could find - that she and her best friend Gayle King are NOT. GAY.

Her position is basically that the public assumes if two people are as close as Oprah and Gayle (talking on the phone - gasp! - 3 or 4 times a day for 30 years) that it must be sexual, they must be lovers.

To be exact, Oprah put it this way:

"I understand why people think we're gay...There isn't a definition in our culture for this kind of bond between women. So I get why people have to label it--how can you be this close without it being sexual?"

I think there IS a word for this kind of bond between women: BEST. FRIENDS. What girl hasn't kissed and hugged and snuggled with their best girlfriend...girls go to the bathroom en masse, girls share just about everything, most girls have seen their friends naked, have shared everything from shoes to shampoo to swim suits.

Unfortunately, I don't think MEN have it as easy...If Jake Gyllenhaal can't pal around with another guy for a few days without being labelled gay, it can't be easy. Men aren't allowed to give one another sweet platonic kisses on the cheek or borrow each other's jeans...when men seem to be having tooooo much fun together, they MUST be gay.

I don't think Oprah's tight friendship with Gayle inspired the gay rumours...Oprah is just an easy target because extremely successful, high-profile, powerful women - particularly women with their own...dynasty to maintain - who very publicly choose not to marry their Stedmans and dismiss the suggestion with the ambiguous explanation, "The traditional role of marriage would not work in this relationship" are difficult to comprehend in the musical-relationship world of Hollywood and celebrity. If she's not dating high-profile men and if her relationships aren't tabloid targets, if she maintains normal friendships and manages - somehow - to keep her sexual life well out of the spotlight: it must be because she's gay.

another "best of" list...

I love "Best Of" lists. Love 'em. This time - instead of hot women - it's hot cities. Money magazine brings us: Best Places to Live: 2006.

At the top of the list:
Fort Collins, CO
Naperville, IL
Sugarland, TX

All places I've never heard of before they made the list (that's probably part of the appeal: big-town opportunity, small-town feel)...Texas has the distinction of having the most cities on the Top 10.

Seattle: not on the list.

Other interesting stuff:
Greenwich, CT has the highest median income of any city in 2006

Avondale, AZ is the hottest city, with average high temperatures in July hovering around 107 (here in beautiful, green Seattle, while the rest of the country is experiencing record high-temps, we're waiting for the thermometer to hit 70 on a Saturday in July. I love - absolutely love - heat, so to wake up on the weekends to misty low clouds and temperatures that feel like March: I start thinking Avondale, Arizona sounds pretty good. Let's melt the soles of my flip-flops right off!)

Bloomington, IN has the highest percentage of single people (they're just late to discover the true joys of ematchlovesickpuppiesinharmoniousromantictogetherness.com or similar)

Newport Beach, CA has the priciest homes, with a median sale price of $1.36 million (and I naively thought $869K for a 1941 rambler with a bedroom and a half was a bit stiff in my neck-of-the-woods...silly me, try to buy a starter-condo in Newport Beach...)

Jacksonville, NC is the youngest city this year with a median age of 22.9 years old. Meaning it would be the Most Terrible City to live in on a Friday night. The hot spots would be CRAWLING with nothing by 22.9 year-olds out on the prowl for other 22.6 year-olds and 23.2 year-olds....I may be young, but I'm an old lady on the inside, and a town completely filled with 22 year-olds...ah, guess it's a college-town thing.

Roseville, CA has the skinniest residents with an average body mass index of 24.5. California pretty much dominated the skinny list (big surprise, it's where Kate and Lindsay and Nicole live...they sort of slant the average in that direction)...Texas and Colorado made a strong showing, too.

Arlington, VA residents are the most well-educated with almost 40% wandering around sportin graduate degrees

Lake Havasu City, AZ has the cleanest air. At least until everyone flees the skinnier suburbs of California to get away from the smog and brings their Land Cruisers and H3s and Tahoes with them...

pay this man, killl your brand!

Blue Marlin clothing now has a few hundred grand less in their bank account these days.

That's cuz they gave it to K-Fed.

Virgin Mobile has $25,000 less than they did BEFORE they paid K-Fed to appear at one of their campaigns.

And if you want K-Fed to come speak at your graduation, or wedding, or funeral, or baptism, or ordination, or bachelorette party: it's gonna cost ya $20k. Cuz that's just how he rolls.

He's hot.

Like fire.

So, time for a little role playing. If I were the CFO of a major brand name and I needed a body to stick in an outfit to toss up on a billboard and I planned to pay a quarter million dollars for that body, would that body belong to Mr Kevin Federline?

Thinking.....thinking.....(isn't he the one with the sort of famous wife?).....thinking....(he's sort of tall...)...hmmmmmm....thinking...(he's a dad....dads need to wear clothes, right? yeah, dads wear clothes)...uhhhh.....thinking.....(what about those Carter boys? are they still young and delicious???)....thinking.....ahhhh.....hmmmm....(and that Kathy Griffin chick....she's all over the place these days)....thinking....K-Fed....thinking

NO!!!!!!!

No, I would not allow two hundred and fifty THOUSAND DOLLARS of my company's money to slide into the ever-Lamborghini-lovin palms of Mr Kevin Federline.

If I were a marketing drone for a company as high-profile as Virgin Mobile, would I dare suggest we add him to the paid guest list at our next penny campaign? No, because I like my pretty little head firmly attached to my lovely little neck, and I would expect - had they a shred of decency - that the higher powers at Virgin Mobile would promptly slice my head off between sips of coffee if I suggested K-Fed would be a reasonable addition to our paid guest list.

At any rate, good for the boy for bringing home some cash. The dlisted bit says he's got a line of "beach jewelry" in the works? As an accessory FIEND, I'm still having trouble envisioning exactly what BEACH jewelry would be.

And, because you know you love looking at him, too, here he is again, striking a haht pose:

file under: "unusual grooming habits."

Courtesy of the UK Daily Mail

This girl does not shampoo her hair:

Neither does this girl:

Or this girl

Or this girl

They're responding to the "BBC NEWS PRESENTER CHALLENGE" (as I'll call it). A BBC guy named Andrew Marr decided that the human scalp is distressed from the detergents in shampoo and instead trusts the oils in his skin to keep his hair in a state of...BIOLOGICAL EQUILIBRIUM (as I'll call it). A handful of women decided to give it a shot right along with Andy.

Here's the thing:

I am not disgusted by this.

I visited Amsterdam as a teenager and the first thing the Dutch scoffed at (aside from the fact that we failed to appreciate the true artisan nature of their fresh bread and ruined it by "using up" all of their meat and cheese in typically overindulgent style) was our "American" grooming habits. More specifically, our "wash our hair every day" compulsion.

In a similarly European style, most of the women responding to The CHALLENGE indicated that, Pre-Challenge, they shampooed every several days at most.

They're permitted to rinse their hair as much as they like, but no shampoo - theory holds that after a few weeks their scalp will equalize and they won't deal with the "greasy on top, frizzy at the bottom" phenomenon that MOST women experience after a Survivor-esque sprint without the lather-rinse-repeat ritual because the scalp isn't trying to compensate for being scrubbed clean and chemical-dry by over-producing that lovely grease. Mmmmmm.

Call me filthy, but basically: it works. Our Pantene'd, Biolage'd, Herbal Essence'd heads really AREN'T operating at maximum efficiency.

I won't mention how often I personally shampoo, but let's just leave it at: I look just like every other girl on the street - no greasier - and it's my "dirty" little secret.

I'd just look hotter on "Survivor" than the chicks still trying to overcome the addictive stranglehold that Suave shampoo has on their poor heads!

desperation: the tie that binds.

Who am I to say that people can't "fall in love" without ever having met or seen one another. I guess it happens.

I guess a perfectly desperate middle-aged woman could pay money to sit in front of her computer at home (after sitting in front of her computer all day at work) and "meet" thousands of eligible, likewise desperate middle-aged men and things could turn out perfectly, they could live happily ever after.

More often than not, however, the middle-aged woman (or the man, but I'm not witnessing the plight of the man in this case, I'm stuck watching the she-side of the equation twist and turn through one e-squeeze after another) decides she so desperately deserves to be in love (and not just any type of love, the Meg Ryan flick type of love that involves theme songs and bad poetry recitations) that she will make herself into whatever e-Squeeze-of-the-moment is looking for and shamelessly galavant all over God's green earth with the man hoping that he'll decide she trumps all other virtual-girlfriends and glorified pen pals...

they'll get married...
they'll buy a cottage in the midwest and settle down with a yard full of daiseys

and tulips

and marigolds

and climbing rose bushes

and the children and stepchildren and grandbabies will come visit for the holidays and the e-lovers can regale the family with vivid tales of their keyboard courtship and that first fateful "face-to-face" meeting that involved a 66 Mustang and a 5-day trip down route 66 (plenty of stops at swap meets along the way, of course, and a mind-bogglingly beautiful fireworks show somewhere in Missouri, which, you know, is a really historic town, truly full of civil war history and absolutely brimming with quaint character and any number of other superlatives that make the victimized bystander listening to such descriptions want to swear off of words like "amazing, fantastic and incredible" for the rest of their lives.)

*Pause to catch my breath...*

It's of no consequence that the woman doesn't know a Saturn from a Subaru in any other context...she magically transforms herself into a classic auto enthusiast when the e-Squeeze of her dreams - this month - drags her across the country to a classic car show...all of a sudden she's passionate about Chevrolet...because one can never be too enthusiastic when attempting to come out on top of all of the other desperate middle-aged women he's also emailing...

In fact, she LOVES ALL CARS now. She can tell the difference between a 66, a 67 and a 68 Mustang in the DARK, from a mile away, with one eye shut. And that historic portion of Route 66, the part that's still the original 9-foot-wide road that's cracked and weathered - it was the MOST COMFORTABLE road she's ever travelled over...because that wonderful e-squeeze behind the wheel, across the bench, so close - TOUCHABLE now and organic, not just a voice on the phone...he's better than she ever dreamed. And he'll be HERS. Her son will love him and call him "Uncle" something, her daughter will want him to be in the delivery room when she gives birth to what promises to be the wonder child of the century.

They'll be so happy together.

He'll come back in 6 weeks and they'll bask in the summertime glory of the suburbs - her neck of the woods this time around. They'll eat at the Olive Garden together, they'll take trips to the library together. They'll garden. She'll talk about cars.

Because she loves cars.

I'll be clear about one thing: I have no qualms with internet dating. With services that make money on the optomistic desperation, suicidal desperation, debilitiating social anxiety-driven desperation or curious desperation of people hoping to fall in love. If they want to respond to craigslist personal ads or www.ilovepeoplewithpetturtles.com personal ads, by all means, knock yourself out. Fall in love.

But I hate to see it used as a crutch. Because as anyone who knows someone that's used internet dating for any period of time knows: once you go virtual, you don't go back. Once you've had that first sweet taste of someone with potential - even someone 3150 miles away that sells animal portraits on eBay for cash and lives 20 miles from their nearest neighbor, try to convince that person that it's better to go back to meeting people in person.

Who am I to say which method is "better?" I'm a horrible small-talker, admittedly shy, less than outgoing around new people - a very BAD candidate for traditional "Hi, my name's Biff, you're lookin good tonight baby" hookups and a very GOOD candidate for more cerebral, dialogue-driven, safe-in-the-confines-of-my-bedroom-with-a-glass-of-wine internet dating. I just never caved. I knew it was "what people like me resorted to" when lonely, I knew it was something "I'd probably be good at," and I hated the idea of being so young and so resolved to anonymity...I went MONTHS without so much as a date...I spent solitary evenings reading hand-me-down romance novels and buying shoes and watching "The Notebook" and baking elaborate desserts for...myself.

Still didn't cave. I knew I was too young. Not so much as a draft of a personal ad. Not a second consideration. I didn't want to begin the vicious cycle that never ends...the phone number exchange, the planned trip across the country to meet one another, the fear that I'll meet a bad seed and become a statistic...never once. Didn't even consider it.

What bothers me the most, perhaps, about being subjected to all of this "virtual love" and sunshine and puppies and overuse of the word "incredible" when describing a burger stand in Iowa is the complete disregard being shown for the middle-aged woman's own safety...were her own daughter to parade across the country and even suggest entrusting herself to a man she knows only in written words and pictures, thousands of miles from home, she'd be promptly locked up and declared absolutely batty. But somehow, it's alright for the mom to try the same thing.

And leave her son - currently in court-mandated detention for truancy - behind. All by himself.

the al sharpton commentary can wait - new lohan pictures!!!!

I (neurotically) always start my day by checking dlisted...look what they had today!!!! I won't even try to legitmize my Lindsay Lohan hangup...she's trashy, she's overexposed, she'll be washed up and dried out and her freckles will turn to liver spots before she's 30, but I just dig her. I'm not sure why every 20-something-starlet thinks they have what it takes to channel Marilyn Monroe (it's been done to death and never done well), but here she is again, playing sex kitten and fooling no one...



Actually, I'll revise that thought - I doubt it was Lindsay's idea to tulle it up in D&G gauze and stand over a fan looking off-balance...so I'll turn my critical eye upon photographers and magazine editors that think rehashed Monroe/coy sex-kitten/kohl-eyeliner, frothy lingerie and cigarettes is still edgy...

Ah well...sex (even underaged, overvamped, lost-its-mystery sex) sells.

add "spa" to the list of things that i'm supposed to love by virtue of being female...but don't.

Chocolate, romantic comedies, Jack Johnson tunes, Brad Pitt...and trips to the "SPA."

Things that women are supposed to looooooooove.

Can't stand 'em. CNN had some fluffy feature about how trips to the spa are becoming more and more mainstream - they're not just for celebrities and millionaires. They're for the Target-shoppers among us. Apparently along with "go to the grocery store" and "put gas in the Toyota" I'm supposed to add "Hot-rock massage and facial" to the routine to-do list.

Ick.

I think I can chalk it up to the fact that I have a very large personal....."bubble space." I'm slow to warm to people, takes me a good six-months of small-talk, casual-acquaintance, "hey, how are ya" type interaction before I'm really truly comfortable with a person. I bristle if someone at work - thinking they're being jovial and friendly - pats me on the shoulder or squeezes my arm. Those social hugs - the kind girls seem to start and end every conversation with - drive me nuts. I'm...prickly about having my personal space invaded. And it seems to take precious little to invade the personal space.

Case in point: I ended a first date with a HANDSHAKE once. A handshake.

A handshake.

Weird "personal-space" thing happening with me. One of my quirks. I could say it makes me seem mysterious, but to the touchy-feelier among us, I'm just on this side of "icy."


So, stands to reason that's why the SPA makes me nervous. I had a massage once. Swore I'd never have another massage. Been told they're relaxing. I left feeling so stressed out I wanted to jump in the bathtub with some good loud Travis Tritt and wash the entire experience away. And it was a GOOD massage (or so other people that used the same practitioner assured me)...

The idea of a facial...forget it. I'd get the "I'm uncomfortable" giggles (many stories about how innopportune those giggles can be) and the entire experience would be shot. Shot or not, I'd still have to pay good dollars for the uncomfortable experience, and I have a difficult time parting with money when the experience was...NOT something I'd ever repeat of my own volition.


I cut my own hair. Get antsy when any stranger - even a professional stranger - gets their hands on my head.

The first time I ever had a manicure, the lady kept slapping my hand to force it to relax (note to manicurist for the next uncomfortable first-timer: slapping - probably not the best way to encourage relaxation...).

Destination Spas: prison!!!!!!
For anywhere from $750 to a hundred million bucks, I could allow myself the "relaxing pleasure" of total lockup! Full immersion in the utterly terrifying world of paid pampering. How fun!

Count me out. I'll never be the girl ditching work after a stressful day to go get a massage or a facial. The relaxation is lost on me. If I want to relax I'll order a pizza and dance around in my living room to girlie pop-music. Or buy a new pair of shoes.

I am a girl, afterall...

our big brother has nothing on oz.

After spending some time in Australia several years ago, I can say that the best part - without exception - was Big Brother. I went to a live taping of an eviction episode, watched the shamed houseguest arrive in the studio in the back of a paddy-wagon after being tossed out, screamed and waved and jumped up and down and took pictures and stayed to mingle and oogle the over-botoxed hostess long after they tried to shoo all of the over-caffeinated, star-struck revelers out.

We hardly missed an episode. They were light years ahead of our stateside version of the show - in addition to the constant internet broadcast, they had nightly "uncensored" episodes - uncut, straight from the night-vision bedroom cams. AND, what might have been a boring he-said/she-said argument in the American version was infinitely more engrossing when the mud-slinging came with the nifty Oz-accent.

Truly, something to write home about.

Looks like the shock-em antics of the houseguests have finally gone too far - and the Australian Prime Minister is calling for the "stupid program" to be taken off the air following the sexual assault of one female housemate by two male contestants.

It's too bad, really. Too bad that something fun should spin out of control to the point that the Prime Minister feels the need to start regulating the listings grid. Too bad that a couple of idiots who's parents never taught them it's not okay to hold girls down and rub your groin on them - even on national television - had to jeopardize a great national past time for the entire country. Too bad that police had to intercede.

This is one story I'll be following - not only because of the political media regulation precedent but because it would be a shame to cap off my wonderful Big Brother memories with such a pitiful scandal...

(and I'd classify this under my "don't parents have a certain social responsibility to at least take a stab at raising decent kids...or kids that don't sexually assault on national television?" heading.)

competition I can get excited about. sort of. err...

"If (Kobayashi) doesn't improve himself, he's going to lose,"

"There's physiology in this for sure, but a lot of it is mental,"

"It's just about how bad do you want it and how far you're willing to push yourself,"

"'ESPN will broadcast the competition for the third year in a row live Tuesday at noon ET/9 a.m. PT. The first two broadcasts drew more than 700,000 households,' channel spokesman Nate Smeltz says."

Now guess what "sport" those comments are about:

Competitive eating.

More specifically, competitive hot dog eating. I kid not. According to USA today, "Nathan's Famous Fourth of July International Hot Dog Eating Contest in Coney Island, N.Y. — the Super Bowl of competitive eating" happens tomorrow - and America squares off against the world champ, Japan's Takeru Kobayashi.

We just can't beat the guy. He's held us off for the last five years. Our only hope is Joey Chestnut (who holds all sorts of world records for grilled cheese sandwich, rib and hot wing-eating), but even Joey admits that to even "come close" would be victory enough - 144 lb Kobayashi just keeps eating more wieners than anyone else in the world.

"........."

There's apparently an International Federation of Competitive eating. Interestingly, the less-sumo-than-you'd-guess members of the federation are increasingly "sporty." This year's competitors are younger and thinner - yes, thinner - than eaters in the past - ESPN broadcasts the eat-off for the third year running. Personally, I'm not sure why anyone would want to watch the World Cup when you can watch a skinny Japanese guy shovel 50 hot dogs down his throat...

me-centricity.

I aim to strike a balance between celebrity-/entertainment-/bizarre current events-centric things and exclusively me-centric things...there are BILLIONS of exclusively author-centric blogs out there, I keep up with plenty of them, but it seems for every post I read that's genuinely entertaining, there's another "day-in-the-life-of" blog that's sooooooo ridiculously dull I read it and swear I'll never subject anyone to my own "day-in-the-life-of" details because - frankly - my life these day is not conducive to particularly witty dialogue.

THAT SAID, it's a sunny, Friday afternoon and I'm one of the few people still stuck sitting inside trying ("trying" being a sort of fluid, amorphous term interchangeable with other words like "pretending" and "avoiding" and "resenting")--TRYING to get a little work done.

And that's where the trouble begins. The work. The bookkeeping. The bean-counting. The number-crunching. The accounting.

I was a smart kid in the school days (well, the school days are still intermittantly in-progress as I find secret stashes of money or secret pockets of motivation or unexpected boosts of ambition--boosts which usually come on the heels of particularly frustrating weeks at work), but in the "we-tell-you-what-classes-to-take-and-you-take-them" days of high school, I could never quite snag STRAIGHT "A's."

Because they forced me to take math classses.

I have hosts of sad, pitiful little stories about being embarassed over my math deficiencies that start at the age of 7 or 8 and continue right up through gradution - stories of being forced to perform long division assignments straight through the lunch hour, stories of teachers asking me in front of other students, "Do you remeber HOW TO ADD?" things like that.

So it seems to me like a vicious, cruel, ironic twist of fate that I've spent the last several years refining my accounting skills--professionally. It wasn't planned. I didn't encourage this. I never thought, in those days spent sitting in a classroom in college in San Diego that I'd end up paying rent by dealing with nothing but NUMBERS all day. I figured I'd snag a broadcasting degree or a sociology degree or a business and management communications degree. Didn't quite happen that way. School had to take a break, and I had to get a job, and since then I've bounced from job to job to job as circumstances necessitate, each time landing in a more-accounting-specific position than the last.

It's at times like these - meaning quiet Fridays in the office when the AC is blowing straight down on my fingers and toes and my to-do list is filled with wonderful things like client billings and change orders and payroll taxes and quarterlies and excise reconciliations - that I wonder what to do to set myself more on track with plans and ideas and visions and expectations and aspirations that I've let sit on the sidelines for the past six or seven years...

It's not that I'm afraid of change (except that it terrifies me for the most part) or that I'm unwilling to take risks to set myself back on course (except that risks are definitely something I avoid the way I avoid movies starring Rob Schneider and avoid chocolate anything and avoid shopping for new jeans) or that I've lost some of that critical fervor that previously compelled me back toward school when times got rough (ok, who am I kidding, the fervor is lukewarm, tepid, atrophied), I just feel like I've been looking at my professional situation from the same frustrated position for so long I'm incapable of thinking creatively anymore.

I see myself seven more years down the road in a position just like this one, I hear myself muttering the same, "Gotta get back to school" sentiments to myself...and on days like today (when the last few people have taken off and I'm still trying to figure out how to make this customer statement balance) I wonder what it'll take to kick me back into passionate, empowered, ambtious gear.

I change my mind constantly.

One week I'm planning to head back to school and snag a psychology degree from UW and head straight to grad school.

The next week I'm thinking, "why don't I just finish school with a finance degree (I figure The Employer would be nothing but supportive of some sort of academic measure that suggests I'm interested in sticking around and being a better Employee) and then start thinking about an MBA...that seems reasonably aligned with the current track I'm on, and wouldn't require me to start from SCRATCH in an entirely new field, with NO practical experience and ZERO connections...

then the next week I think, "Hey, what about culinary school! You love to impress people with your cooking!"

and the week after that, "Heather, kiddo, you've been a writer since you could hold your Crayola, nothing makes you happier than that adrenaline rush from a finely crafted sentence, why would you let that slip away...why would you ignore what you're most passionate about just because the challenge of starting over in a new industry seems frightening...shoot, COMMUNITY college seemed frightening after 5 years away from school and you ACED that establishment like nobody's buisiness, what's to be afraid of????"

I don't know.

If I were a cartoon character, I'd be walking around with a big, glowing, beautiful, can't-miss-it Question Mark over my head these days.

There's no easy solution.

Just a very long me-centric tirade with no simple answer.