hope I look this good at 116 (and a picture of howie mandel)

Read this morning over my daily dose of CNN that the world's oldest person died yesterday in Ecuador.

116!

Maria Esther de Capovilla's secrets for a long life were pretty similar to other centenarians: 3 meals a day, small glass of wine, no smoking, no hard liquor. ALSO (a detail that particularly jumped out at me because I work alongside a Fear-Monger that's terrified of dairy and if I could eat a cheeseburger for every time I've heard Fear-Monger say "Cow's milk is meant for baby cows with 5 stomachs, it was never meant for humans. Don't drink milk" I'd be about 35 pounds thicker) she grew up drinking "fresh milk from donkeys and cows."

Man, to have sat down with her for a few minutes...not much in the average high school history textbook that she hadn't lived through in one form or another. She was in good health until a sudden bout of pneumonia that took her quickly, in two days. According to Fox News, her family was planning for her 117th birthday. For 116, man did she look fantastic (she looked better than most 80 year-olds these days)...admittedly, I don't see a lot of pictures of 116 year-old people to compare her against, so I guess she gets off easy: she's in a class of her own.

ALSO - maybe I'm just REALLY out of the loop, but how long has Howie Mandel looked like this (and did I really just google "howie mandel?" Yes, I just did...hmmmm)


FURTHERMORE: Mark your calendars. Some time in October we'll get to see someone special playing an arrogant teen on CSI. And hey, the special someone didn't have to do a thing. CBS recruited him. That's it: I'm officially quitting my job and beginning what I shall call "HeatherAdair's Quest to Become Famous by Strategic Association." Now taking applications from celebrities interested in being exploited for my own misguided stab at fame.

well, the outfit seemed like a good idea at home...

We've all had those mornings: whatever you put on seems just fine when you're in front of the mirror at home. Then you get to work (or wherever) and wish you had a trenchcoat you could toss on to hide the, um - miscalculation.

Having one of those days today. Was feeling ambitious this morning: black leggings, tunic top, peep-toe heels. Seems alright, although decidedly more "trendy" than my usual getup (I like classic, tailored stuff: pencil skirts, lots of black. It seemed adventurous to me to try the whole "bermuda shorts as office wear" thing, but hey, they were black, went well with heels).

Feel like the tunic thing isn't quite long enough to cover up enough of the thigh (one area I'm particularly insecure about). Yeep. The color is more bold than what I usually wear - thinking it would have been safer to use a black top - bright aqua is, um: hard to hide inside of.

So here I am at work, feeling rather like Heather Playing Dress-Up. Like back-to-school Heather. Feeling obviously like anyone walking past today will think, "Strange! She's trying to dress like a high school kid! What's with the plastic headband?"

Sigh.

The shoes are cute, though.


*hey look! no ellipses!*

the entire office is OCD...there's gotta be a way to have fun with that...

And here I was thinking I'd finally chose TODAY as my day NOT to use "..." to end every other sentence. Tomorrow, maybe. "..." is my crutch. My non-comittal way to end a thought. It looks pretty. Makes me seem introspective...

I wonder some days if I'm not the only one in the office without a litany of compulsive hangups that drive my work day.

Some days I start the day with a cup of coffee (gave up the giving up a few weeks ago...ran back to the warm, if not ultimately destructive arms of coffee. The cup takes me back, no matter how many times I've strayed, no matter how long I've been away, how many times I've advised others NOT to drink it while I'm on one of those inevitably self-conflicted fasts. I even abuse my coffee with powdered creamer and packets of Equal. Every time I come back, it's like a new, blossoming, pure love all over again. Then it rips my guts to shreds and leaves me naueous by noon and twitching by two and withdrawn and headachey by five...).

Some days: no coffee.

Some days I get here at 6. Some days, 6:52.

Some days I take little bitty lunch breaks and run up to the little Qwik-Mart for a lemonade. Some days K comes by and we take an hour and a half and split a pitcher and gorge on burgers and finish up with ice cream. Some days: no break at all. Some days: midday Target shopping for pink lip gloss (major vice) and lacey undies and cheap silverware and another lexan water bottle. I must own a dozen of those.

Some days I take the freeway to work. Somedays I avoid it altogether. Some days I don't mind sitting in traffic to get home, some days I take the path of least resistance (and, inevitably, end up behind a school bus making it's afternoon stops).

Bottom line: I'm not particularly obsessive about the way things get done. My desk is reasonably messy, my pen cup reasonably organized (today maybe I'll use a pen with green ink! Tomorrow, black.). Sometimes I stack papers up and shove them off to the side of my desk, sometimes I file them away in nice neat little manilla folders. Sometimes I shred 'em. Very little rhyme or reason to the way I do things (this carries over to home life, too; my living room is usually very well-tended...I may not EVER dust a surface in the room, but the coffee table is organized, the remote controls know their place, the pillows on the couch are fluffed, the flowers by the window look lively, everything has it's place. But don't - EVER - open the hall closet. I may never get all of that junk back in there.).

The coworkers: so religiously regimented I wonder how they ever get out the door to work in the mornings. Even the ones that project a "devil may care, I love life" aura are, in the end, painfully compulsive about their workspace, their schedule, their use of company refrigerator space. SO: I've decided to mess with them a little. Small experiments here and there to see who cracks first. Who cries uncle first. Who demands to know who's undone the careful order of things.

First item of business: I've begun leaving a used coffee stir stick (those little plastic things masquerading as an almost-straw) next to the sink every day. I don't put it in the garbage can, I don't leave it in the sink where someone would wash it down into the disposal, I don't place it on a nice, neat little napkin. Every day when I'm done using my stir stick, I put it out there, all by it's lonesome, in the no-man's-land of the kitchen counter. Every day, someone throws it away. Maybe a snippy little note will appear on the microwave: "Your mother does not live here: please throw away your used almost-straws." I'll keep leaving them there, I think (**Sidebar note to TF: if it's you throwing them away, thanks, man - humor me here, I'm doing a little experiment.**)

We have a series of stacking mailboxes...everyone has their own little inbox up by the copy machine. When I need to leave something in someone's mailbox (a check request, an invoice, an anything), I leave it hanging out about 3 inches. Just enough so that it sort of flops over and looks listless and grossly out of place. In a big stack of neatly ordered mailboxes, it looks glaringly sloppy. Cute. Like the meaningless fax requesting a retention payout suddenly has...personality!

Most of them are a painfully "organic" bunch. Afraid of chemicals, terrified of dairy, always willing to tell you that the sandwich you're eating will KILL YOU or the diet soda you're sipping is carcinogenic.

They ramble ad nauseum about how their delicate digestive systems can't handle HYDROGENATED FATS, and that they can't trust any cooking but their own - and, my, they ate at an organic restaurant last night, but there must have been some HYDROGENATED FATS in their food, because their stomach feels absolutely terrible this morning, "just goes to show you can't trust a restaurant." They're the sort that won't allow their kids to eat an oatmeal raisin cookie purchased in a Grocery Store (that said with raised eyebrows) because they read the ingredients, and they're practically criminal. The kids are NEVER permitted to kill themselves with those cookies again. Full of chemicals and fat.

SO - to toy with the "shade-grown, fair-trade, organic" vegetable people that could write a dissertation on the socio-policital advantages of soy, I'm going to bring in McDonald's breakfast burritos in the morning, Dick's cheeseburgers and fries for lunch, and maybe...hmmm...maybe some Oscar Mayer bologna for a snack. Or a Snickers. Washed down with chocolate milk and Pop Rocks. And I'll keep a container of frosted animal crackers on my desk. Should be fun. Watch 'em squirm.

she of many defense mechanisms...

On the cusp of Paris Hilton's cd release, I found this CNN snippet pretty interesting. Interesting because it seems to be a common theme the easy-target, easy-money, media-birthed, almost-icons use these days: "That person you're making fun of isn't the REAL me...I keep the REAL me hidden so I can't be judged."

Here's an excerpt:

"I'm always playing a character," she says. "I don't talk like this really -- like a baby. I don't act like myself in public, because I don't really want to show everyone the real me. Because I have no privacy whatsoever, the only thing I have is who I really am."

It's an interesting tactic. He Who's Name I Dare Not Type Lest I Give Him More Attention did it. Paris takes it one step further by refusing to own up to her own tunes in a club because she knows the second people realize they're dancing to, yes, Paris Hilton, they'd vacate a dance floor more quickly than a JC Penny's store. It's probably a smart move. Afterall, if I hadn't known who sang "Stars Are Blind," I wouldn't have felt so guilty turning it up or singing along.

BUT, the trouble is, it's sort of like crying Personality Wolf. For all of the times someone famous chooses to disconnect themselves from something they're embarassed to have done, or something that didn't make much money in the end, or something that gets them bad press by saying, "HA! Suckers! I fooled ya GOOD this time," it makes them that much less able to project anything legitimate and expect us to bite.

If, for instance, every time Paris films another season of "The Simple Life" and writes off her entire personality as "a character that she plays" and insists that nothing we see on the show is authentic Paris, then why should we believe that when she donates some money to a charitable cause, or writes one of her own songs, or is quoted in a magazine saying something witty that it isn't "just another character" that she's playing.

If Paris (or any high-profile celebrity that feels they've got plenty to lose by being unguarded in the public arena) is really trying to protect her authentic self from judgement by fabricating a persona for every contingency, how does she manage to separate what she considers the "real" Paris from all of the alter egos in the long run? And if, by protecting yourself from all negative judgements, you manage to also protect yourself from any positive review as well, doesn't that sort of negate the entire experiment? If by putting a more redeeming public image in the closet for fear someone might DARE say or think or write anything judemental about the REAL Paris helps her sleep better at night, good for her...but what happens when she wakes up one morning and can't shake the roll-playing...will she feel better for having spared herself theoretical judgement?

Yep, I'm probably taking this a few steps too far, she was just making a fluff point, it's just a defense mechanism, we've all got 'em, but I think this article got to me because the same faces that leap at the opportunity to get magazine covers and front row seats at the Diddy parties and the awards shows and the St. Tropez celebrity yacht weddings and the after-bashes and the invitation-only events don't mind being seen when it serves their purpose. But the second they have to defend something they've done, they beg not to be seen as role models and claim nothing they're seen doing is "really" them anyway. Of course, they're famous, rich, dumb, why do we expect much more from them, but it's just becoming such a cop-out.

I say, surprise us all Paris. Do something authentic. Or at the very least, make sure your cd upstages Jessica Simpson's.

a collection of unrelated observations

Observation 1: Lindsay Lohan looks great in ugly underwear. And she also does bad, bad drugs with her mommy...

Observation 2: Britney's a great mom. She doesn't let her kid play with sharks. But I've seen her kid recently. I think she should be more concerned that her kid would EAT her brilliant husband's shark-pets. Also, baby number two was an "oops."

Observation 3: Don't try breaking in a pair of REALLY. TIGHT. JEANS when you're gonna be sitting at a desk all day. I'm mildly afraid I may be sawed in half at the waist. They're that tight. Had to wear them, they make my butt look flippin TERRIFIC. Oh wait, I sit at a desk all day. No one sees my butt. So I'll be sliced in half for naught. Man, they're really tight.

Observation 4: Christina Aguilera's cd takes a little getting used to. It's well-produced, I dig the crackly vinyl sound she lays down at the beginning of a few tracks, she belts it as usual, but the whole pop-opera vibe I got after a few listens still has me puzzled. The genres bounce ALL over the board, so stylistically, it's difficult to ever be in the mood for the WHOLE cd (fine, for BOTH cd's) at once. I end up track-skipping like crazy. Cd's redeeming virtue: the Panty-Droppin, Cherry-Poppin song is catchy.

Observation 5: If I hear one more person in my dog-crazy office talk about "The Dog Whisperer" I'll...I'll...I'll force them to watch back-to-back episodes of "Blind Date." Also, the office manager's boyfriend just cut his hair. I know this, because she's told the story to six different people this morning. That's about how great her office-managing life is these days. A haircut is news.

Observation 6: Yikes. It's becoming difficult to breathe these jeans are SO. TIGHT. I'm wondering what would happen, from a human resources perspective, if I were to take them off and work for the rest of the day in my underwear. Man, there isn't even room in these for me to drink a cup of coffee. I know, since I just tried.

Observation 7: I don't care how overexposed and touristy it is, Santorini looks like heaven, and if it leaves us completely broke afterward, I don't care as long as I get to honeymoon there. Try to resist THIS PLACE. Just try. Swimming pools that dribble into the ocean, breakfast served on your private terrace, open air bars, private jacuzzis...complimentary wine, beautiful sunsets...Blast the travel guides that tell us we'll be missing the REAL experience by becoming tourist pawns in overcrowded island resorts. I want the terrace breakfasts and the spa and the wine and the sunsets!

Observation 8: The Pike Place Market turns 99 this year. Presumably that means vendors have been tossing fish for tourists for nearly that long. And it must have been about 98 years ago that Tom Hanks ate at one of the restaurants in "Sleepless in Seattle" right at the cusp of his bloated era.

Observation 9: Muscat, as a dessert wine: rather intense. Dessert wines in general: always sound like a great idea until I have a glass of it in front of me. I've never been able to finish a glass of dessert wine. Same goes for muscat.

Observation 10: August in this town absolutely blows. It's still hardly 70 degrees out there right now. Isn't this supposed to be summertime? I'm living in the wrong town. I hear Santorini is nice this time of year.

more quality programming cancelled for ratings...

It's sad when The Man cancells terrific tv shows just because "no one watches them."

Such a cop-out.

This season's addition to the television burial ground are a couple of my high-brow favorites:

Blind Date

AND

Elimidate.

(****reverent moment of silence*****)

They were the last, stalwart remains of the "relationship programming" genre that included fiendishly addictive gems like "The 5th Wheel" and my compulsive favorite "Cupid" (the platform for the lovely and personality-free Lisa Shannon - a Courtney Cox-Arquette knock-off - to go on dates with brainless thugs and sexually-ambiguous pretty-boys then let her "best friends" critique/dehumanize/humiliate the suitors until they found one lucky (?) sucker whom personality-free Lisa and the evil "best friends" AND the voting American Cupid-watching public agree she should not just date, but marry. Because the aim of the "relationship programming" was never a snuggle-buddy or a passionate affair. The aim was always marriage. Eternal togetherness. Televised matrimony. Ah, unadulturated delight. Check out the website. Really. It's very pink. Hard to resist.)

For awhile, primetime was awash in cheap n' easy midseason exploitation like "Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire," and then the inevitable "Who Wants to Marry My Dad" tag-along. We had "Temptation Island" and "Joe Millionaire" and "Regency House Party" and "The Bachelor" and "For Love or Money" and "Average Joe" and "Paradise Hotel."

It was the golden age of television for people - like me - with poor taste and short attention spans and a voyeuristic streak. I could count on an all-new episode of "Elimidate" every night with my bedtime hot cocoa. The girls would be catty, the boys would be painfully metro, the date locations would be trite and at least one unfortunate luv contestant would decide it was a GOOD idea to write poetry about the object of their misguided, televised affection almost every night. Their declarations of love (and - even better - rationalizations for why they'd chosen to kick Dixie or Burke or Zeke out of the competition) were so awful and uncomfortable and forced I'd squirm and cover my eyes and tune in again for more of the same every night.

It's sad when networks kick such gluttonous fun to the curb...they were saccharine, artificial, vicariously uncomfortable...and they're no longer on the air.

R.I.P. Blind Date. I'll miss you.

And Roger Lodge.

terrorists: making long, international flights even more miserable.

Since the AirTerror plot was apparently foiled before it killed anyone I'll take a moment to whine on a purely superficial level about the many ways they've just made international air travel that. much. worse.

Thanks, CNN, for dropping the info that the terror plot involved mixing a UK version of Gatorade with some "gel" and detonating the cocktail with an mp3 player. Because now I can rest assured that ALL of my methods of combating sheer, unadulturated INSANITY during my long, coach-class flight to Paradise will be well and truly OUTLAWED. Great.

I'd planned to pack a stack of books, about five POUNDS of Sour Patch Kids, a sixer of diet RockStar and my iPod in my purse and "handle" the 19 hours of air travel with as much dignity as possible.

I don't fly well. I can't sleep on planes. And when I don't sleep and am cramped and cold and uncomfortable, and when they try to convince me it's dinner time by feeding me salisbury steak and try to convince me it's nighttime by turning off the cabin lights and try to convince me it's FUN by showing me badly "edited for family-friendliness" versions of terrible romantic comedies (my cheerful alternative: staring at our hardly-moving cartoon airplane imposed over a big black expanse of imaginary ocean...reminding me, in no uncertain terms, that we're a LONG flippin way from there, yet), I get emotional. In fact, I cry.

SO - to compound the emotional, sleepless mess that already makes flying awful, we now have substantial FEAR THAT THE PLANE WILL EXPLODE MID-AIR, and what I can only anticipate will be a cruel, unsual mp3 ban...and sports drink ban. And, knowing my luck, ban of all candies of a jelly-consistency.

I love candy.

I read a list of new "Airport Rules" that Fox News came up with (relating mostly to flights bound in and out of the UK) that basically prohibits ANY items from being carried on the plane...basically, the UK is now in the prestigious position of dictating how many tampons are considered "normal" in the course of a flight...any tampons, for instance, that seem to exceed what a woman might ordinarily need in the course of a flight are BANNED.

Same with any lotion, hair gel, toothpaste, or electronic key chain.

They don't speak specifically to Jolly Ranchers or seedy crime novels (please! just let me bring my George Pelecanos on board! For the love of a young woman's sanity....PLEASE!)

I'm sure my discomfort has NOTHING to do with the fact that FULL can of soda was dropped in my lap by a flight attendant the last time I flew internationally. Or the fact that 3 times in 4 my luggage has been misplaced. Or the fact that the moment I step into an airplane I suffer a rash of zits and become immediately sick upon arrival (sinus irritation EVERY time I fly)...

So thanks, fascist terrorists, for making an unpleasant experience even more unpleasant. And if the Department of Homeland Security has a problem with my alternates (Skittles and diet Coke), I'm personally enlisting in the Army...because I wanna go fight the bad guys that just made rockin out to Christina Aguilera while buzzed on space caffeine and mutant alien minerals a federal offense.

airfare searches: fun, like being stabbed in the ear with a screwdriver!

When I googled "Cheap Airfare" images, I got these morons***

E-commerce is great. If I get my heart set on discontinued banana-flavoured chapstick, I can find it online somewhere. I can buy a car online (done it!), I can find fantastic knock-off designer shoes. I can bid on foreclosed land auctions. I can adopt a kid. Find a husband. Spy on my neighbors. Locate my ancestors. Pirate movies, music, you name it.

But buy cheap airline tickets? You may as well drop me without provisions into a remote village in Nepal with nothing but a "Kiss Me, I'm Irish" tee-shirt and a bag of chocolate chips and tell me to find my way to Indianapolis. Apparently in the great American Quest-To-Make-Life-Easy we've done ourselves in. Or done ME in.

At last count, there are no less than 1,647,991 websites that exist to find me cheap airfare to Paradise. Fine, so forget that, "find a reasonable flight this afternoon and make our honeymoon reservation" theory.

First I have to wade through all million and a half websites, because, wouldn't luck have it, I KNOW that as soon as I give one site my credit card number, I'll find it for $600 LESS over at knuckledraggingcheapflightsonline.com and I'll wish I could get back every penny of that non-refundable web-special fare. May as well be thorough, it's not every day we plan to go broke flying to Paradise, no reason to waste good money on the flight that we could waste at Duty Free.

SO - after I've waded through something like a billion different sites all offering slightly different prices on slightly different flights, I decide, "Aha! That's gotta be the lowest price out there. I'll take two!" Then I start pondering connections and layovers. All of a sudden flycheapinexchangeforonekidney.com starts looking better and better...slightly higher price, but AHA, our only connecting flight is at JFK, isn't that much better than trying to hustle through customs in Germany with 20 minutes to spare? Easier that way...

Then I notice that XYZ airline offers wireless internet. Well, that makes the more expensive flight seem more worthwhile. You mean I could join the Mile High Bloggers Club?

*ahem...side bar...Husband would take issue with "Mile High" used in conjunction with blogging, that's shameful. If I'm doing anything a mile high....well...it shouldn't involve a keyboard, ahem*

Three days later and no flights purchased. At this point, with exactly one month to go, prices start to climb. Mild panic sets in. Suddenly the cheapest flights on tradeyourfirstbornforaticket.com is looking like the best bet. Nevermind that we stop in three different states and most of the countries in the European Union to get there, at least it's $26 cheaper than the next flight that would get us there in the middle of the night (catch: we're meeting some friends IN Paradise and the idea is to get to the airport at about the same time...so that adds an extra level of good old-fashioned fun).

At this point, I'm tempted to take it to a travel agent...say, "I'll pay your fees, just get me there for CHEAP, with the fewest number of connections, and make it a WINDOW SEAT. Whatever it takes to keep my kidneys, unborn children, and fingernails."

My best guess: "easy, do-it-yourself" airfare purchasing is what killed the dinosaurs.



***Nope, this isn't the first time I've bought tickets for international travel, I'm not a complete novice. Apparently, however Desination: Paradise is about THE most expensive place to travel on the entire globe...and add to the pressure to save money the fact it's our Honeymoon, I want everything to be perfect and I'm on an inflexible schedule....stir all of that together, and basically: well, I'm not looking as gleefully happy as the morons in that picture that just found cheap airfare.

reasons blogging has made my life a warmer, fuzzier place:

I had a bit of a Highway-99 epiphany this morning on the way to work... I realized that - GASP - i'm a happier person now that I blog! It dawned on me (at an unusual moment, as most of my best thoughts do: as I was merging onto a particularly trecherous stretch of road)...I was actually looking FORWARD to getting into work this morning to check in with all of my blog buddies...yes, actually reasonably HAPPY on a monday morning...

So, with that realization, I decided to start a list of the many ways the small, spontaneous decision to start writing some thoughts down every day in a public forum has unexpectedly enriched my life...

• I write every day. I haven't written every day since nursing an "unrequited crush hangover" from the early college days that left me with so much angst I started writing a novel. A novel written almost entirely about my high school principal (the object of said crush)...over the years the character morphed into some version of whomever I was secretly in love with at that point (the silent hunky man at my first office job, the skinny, well-dressed frat boy that didn't know I existed, Jack Bauer, that sort of thing), but since taking lame job after lame job and drifting into this sort of black hole of self-pity that - interestingly - squelched rather than inspired my writing, I found an unexpected antidote in "The Blog." Hey, I'd love to say that I actually POST something every day (I try!), but at the very least, I WRITE every day, and feel that much more like myself, that much more calm, that much more creatively connected, and that much LESS likely to slaughter coworkers with scissors and mechanical pencils or scald them with coffee, or walk out on the job..

• I'm bi-coastal! Or, global, for that matter...four months ago I wouldn't have anticipated corresponding with wonderful people from the UK, from Australia, from Spain...from New York, from Canada, from Indiana...it makes my tiny, stuffy, oppressive little tube-shaped office that much less oppressive if sitting in it, at this odd L-shaped desk means I'm meeting people from all over the globe...and it's a beautiful thing to realize that, just like me, we're all sitting at silly little desks, at all types of jobs, with all types of incomes, in all types of relationships, of all different shapes, colors and sizes, sharing one thing we all enjoy - WORDS. And holy cow, doesn't that sound like a corny NBC plug for some human-interest snipped between events during the Olympics, or something a sitcom star would say between Thursday night episodes encouraging couch potatoes to get Literate! Read!
  

• Dlisted: Hot Slut of the Day. Not sure how I got by without Dlisted and Defamer and Perez but work is a happier place now that I can beat my sister to the "Lance is Gay!" punch...of course he's gay, and I knew it at least a day before she did (Sister is always leaps and bounds ahead of me when it comes to music, movies, handbag trends and concert circuits, but I have her bested in the celebrity gossip category, no contest...)!

• I'm not alone...! Were it not for The Blog, I would still think I was the only girl born without the wedding gene, or the only person ridiculously fascinated with Lindsay Lohan for no reason, or the only one that turns up "Stars are Blind" on the radio when they think no one's around...I might think I was the only person that has trouble finding jeans that fit these days, the only one that's ditched shampoo, or the only girl wishing she had more back...turns out I'm not the only one afterall...and that's a pretty great feeling to jumpstart a monday morning with!

• I've got things to do at work, other than work...because it's my official position that people that do only WORK while they're at work are SUCKERS. Why dig right into that big project when I can bounce back and forth between a dozen blogs waiting to see who just commented and who hasn't posted anything in DAYS, and who disagrees with whom, which people were as bored as I with the World Cup, who had their heart broken when Mel slipped up and who saw it coming all along, you know: IMPORTANT things...

• I have a renewed faith in the NICENESS of people I've never met. Honestly, it would easy for us to post cutthroat comments on each other's pages, berate one another, become spiteful, envious MEANIES, but instead (for the most part) everyone is nothing but encouraging of one another - where else in life will people be as unilaterally supportive of one another as in the big, beautiful blogosphere (even if the nice is driven primarily by the self-interested aim to gather more links! i'll take nice, no matter its motive, frankly. I'd rather encourage and be encouraged any day!)

• I'm motivated by a little friendly competition to try harder. Because there are so many blogs written by so many witty, well-read, well-educated, well-spoken, well-composed people, it's a fantastic motivation to be a little more well-read, to aim for a little more wit, to try that much harder...because no one wants to have The Forgotten Blog...

• I get to catch myself saying the old, "I know a guy who..." or "A friend of mine just..." when really, we've never met, have no idea what each other even look like, live an entire country apart, and are familiar with each other only in a written, pen-pal-esque context, but it seems like we MUST know each other better than that...afterall, we spend our entire workdays together! It's a strange phenomenon, but I think I'll call it healthy...the more friends (even in unconventional contexts) the better..

"hey, you sort of look like ____________"

Along the lines of my family's "What 5 Celebrities Would You Strand Yourself On An Island With" game is the sort of similar "What Celebrities Have You Been Told You Look Like?" game (and yes, this is a ME! ME! ME! day...)

So, these are all ones that I've heard at some point...

I'd be interested to know if other people get certain celebrity comparisons ALL the time (flattering or otherwise)...

Jeanne Tripplehorn: I remember being mildly miffed the first time someone made this comparison (because I was about 16 and couldn't think of anything "cool" that she'd done...) - I don't mind it now, she's aged WELL (and if that was really her backside in "Waterworld," she's doing something right...)
Lauren Graham: I hadn't even seen an episode of "Gilmore Girls" when an aunt and cousin told me how much her hair and facial expressions and mannerisms reminded them of yours truly. SO, I tuned in, and - of course - I disagreed (I don't know, I was expecting to see a long-lost twin staring back at me?) First thing I remember thinking was, "She has no neck! I have a nice LONG neck...where's hers? I can't look like that neck-less woman!" But eventually, after a few episodes I got the gist...she's a fair-skinned brunette with a heart-shaped face...close enough. Rest of the family tended to agree with the aunt and cousin: there were definite similarities.
Kate Beckinsale: The asterisk here is: Back in the "Much Ado About Nothing" days...before the giant hair extensions and breasts of questionable origin...(hey, she's still a babe as far as I'm concerned). Another fair-skinned brunette with decent lips and cheekbones, sort of soft-spoken, had that "shy little sister" vibe happening in the younger days that I've sort of rocked all my life...this comparison flattered me, definitely. We'll see if I can keep up (otherwordly cleavage aside...)
Kimberly Williams-Paisley: Ooh, funny anecdote time, funny anecdote time! I mentioned that I went through a BIG time Brad Paisley-adoration phase...something in the back of my mind said, "Heatheradair, you're just the sort of sweet young thing a handsome 'cowboy' like that needs! You should move to Nashville, stalk the Arista building, wait for him to come out, and let FATE happen...oh yes, you're meant to be with this guy." Truly. I kid not. That was my plan (very dry spell in real-people-dating-world, apparently). Anyway, the big purposeless move never happened, but not six months later I read that he's engaged to Kimberly Williams, miss "Father of the Bride" herself, the very FIRST "Hey, you kind of look like_____" comparison I'd ever drawn. ***Sigh*** I knew I was on the right track!

So there we have it...my own personal edition of "Hey, you kind of look like ___________" Always a fun game to fill time (particularly on days when my mind is on anything BUT work, I'm restless and over-caffeinated, running on far too little sleep, and focused on getting through the day so that I can get home and make myself a big, giant, delightful burrito.)

i can't help loving her...

I would have to admit that from the very first time I heard "Genie in a Bottle" years ago while sitting on the floor in my dorm room loathing Manchurian history, I have loved Christina Aguilera.

It's been an abiding love, changing with the seasons, with her weight, hair color, predisposition to outfits that cut off circulation in areas she might want to keep someday and look like they were made out of electrical tape and pvc, but ultimately: never wavering.

I'm the girl at the stop light with her windows down, belting some song out at the top of her lungs, looking like a crazed mall rat, oblivious to the light changing in front of me. And that song I'm singing along with (because I always wanna know when I catch someone doing the same thing: "what are you listening to?????") is probably a Christina tune.

Probably (well, there was a decently hard-core diversion when I decided I wanted to move to Nashville and marry Brad Paisley and songs like "Sleepin on the Foldout" were the meat and potatoes of my musical diet (and interestingly, if I can insert parenthesis within parenthesis (a bad habit of mine) he ended up marrying Kimberly Williams, an actress that I've always drawn comparisons to...funny how that works, I knew my gut was right!), a diversion that also involved a fake Stetson and a big belt buckle and, yes, Wranglers...my my).

I buy tickets to her arena shows (and survived the sea of high-school girls in vinyl pants and halter tops back in the earlier days), and - this is one I shouldn't admit - have a litany of Christina fansites added to my favorites. You know, the really stalker-esque ones that have thousands of pictures of her about town, dining with her family, doing her hair, exiting clubs, bowling, plucking her eyebrows, shopping for shoes, drinking Starbucks, tripping over cracks in the sidewalk - THOSE kids of sites. And I check in with my Christina from time to time, make sure she's still lookin alright, that she and the hubby seem happy, that she still favors GIANT handbags and slingbacks (er...it's not ME taking those stalker-photos, I promise...)

At any rate: yep, I've pre-ordered her cd (personally rather excited about attempt at a cross-genre/cross-generational sound), but basically, this is meant as more of an idol-worship post than anything even vaguely related to actual MUSIC. When she wasted away during her first headlining tour, I defended the fact that anyone dancing for two hours a night on a 90-city tour would drop pounds. When she gained weight and looked perpetually greasy during her tour with Justin Timberlake, I defended her "changing hormones" (hey, that's the excuse she gave!), when she tried a little tooooo hard to be Marilyn Monroe, I defended her right to idolize whomever the heck she wanted - hey, who's to say she couldn't take things a little too far...after all of those hair colors she went through leading up to that point, what else COULD she do with that fried mess but chop it off and curl it up?

Love Christina. Love that she went from Britney-Knock-Off to legitimate pop-princess, to scrawny Latin-wannabe to dirrrrrty, sex-crazed stringy-haired eyeliner fiend to demure and vintage and pencil-skirt addicted.

Love 'er.