Observations on stuff that doesn't matter. (RETIRED)

I've moved!

2006-12-01T00:59:00.000Z

Trying something new - come find me over here:

blood disorder? please.

2006-10-30T16:14:00.000Z

Time for me to weigh in (yeah, pun intended) on the ever over-publicized Nicole Richie eating disorder. Yes, that’s right. Eating disorder.

She can protest as much as she wants, spin it however she pleases, swear up and down that the team of experts Daddy’s paying to fix her up are only concerned with getting to the bottom of her puzzling, troubling, incomprehensible inability to gain weight – no, she’s not in TREATMENT, she’s in CONSULTATION. Fine. But we’re not fools.

I hate being played for stupid. I hate it when celebrity debutantes assume that the greater celebrity gossip-obsessed public is so gullible (and thinks she’s just sooooo cute) they’ll just believe the ridiculous excuses that get published every couple of days.

The latest: her team of Expert Physicians (read: Hollywood ex nip-tucker Docs now available for private hire, equally as adept at bad press damage control as wielding a needle, drawing blood, and looking convincingly empathetic as they’re photographed escorting their high profile ~~client~~ patient away from glamorously in-patient-esque facilities early in the morning) is concerned that Ms Richie may be suffering from a rare blood disorder that renders her completely unable to gain weight.

Because, you know, famous underweight girls that are genuinely concerned they may have a blood disorder would allow themselves to drop close to 50 pounds and then be photographed jogging on the beach in ill-fitting bikinis if they felt they were legitimately sick…at the very least, if you’re concerned that your weight loss is due to some rare, undiagnosed illness, wouldn’t it be slightly more likely that you’d be photographed leaving Whole Foods with your reusable shopping bag full of Lara Bars and protein powder, or stuffing your face with Azteca “Macho Burritos” – even in vain, than jogging, an activity generally associated (at least among people in the over 80 pound demographic) with weight loss…

Okay, okay, let’s say that – for the sake of argument – she got loaded, “accidentally” shared a needle with her best friend and ended up with some strange “disease.” Would your first consultation with experts happen AFTER you’d lost 40 pounds and suffered a year and a half of “EATING DISORDER!!!!” accusations around every corner? I mean, if I suddenly lost 20 pounds without any obvious explanation, you can bet I’d be running to my doctor – with a Jack-in-the-Box Ultimate Breakfast Sandwich and venti, whole milk, pumpkin spice latte in my fingers.

I’m no sucker. I don’t believe that Shiloh Jolie-Pitt has an ounce of either Jolie or Pitt DNA in her body. I don’t buy that either Tom OR Katie has any desire to live happily ever after together. I don’t think that Brit and Kev share a bedroom at Villa del Spears. I sure as heck don’t think we’ll find out that some sort of chemical imbalance is to blame for Nicole Richie’s problems any more than I buy that she and Paris were ever in any sort of feud.

the hot button in our marriage: big business politics.

2006-10-23T19:25:00.000+01:00

This weekend K and I discovered a fantastic way to get each other angry and emotional: we had an “accidental” conversation about corporate politics (don’t ask me how. I think it began with a totally innocuous reference to a childhood friend of K’s that had managed to skim thousands of dollars a month from the coffee shop he worked at during high school. I said, “Wow, I don’t think I could do something like that, I’d be terrified of getting caught the ENTIRE time. Wouldn’t make the money worth it.” From there, it became a quick discussion about the fact that apparently “companies deserve to get ripped off, they’re ripping off their employees left and right by paying them minimum wage and keeping them oppressed and beholden to the company that doesn’t give a damn about them as people in the first place”). So. I assumed my apparently typical position in defense of businesses, K stood his ground and went to battle for the little man (this entire conversation is definitely a microcosm of our entire political belief system, but I’ll blame it on his free-styled Alaskan upbringing and my vaguely Midwestern roots, since I can’t figure out how else I ended up so horrifyingly, unwaveringly politically conservative).

And then the floodgates opened. I was accused of being less than understanding of people treated poorly by employers who pay them in Cheerios. Well, metaphorical Cheerios. Cheerios that taste soggy when they’re all about The Bottom Line. Evil, capitalistic Cheerios. I argued that it hasn’t been all blue skies with fields of honeysuckle for me, either. I’ve worked hard. Employers have mistreated me (coming soon: a more specific account of a job I once held that may or may not have ended because of a box of Sweet & Low). I’ve been laid off ON MY BIRTHDAY. On the first day back from vacation. AFTER I gave them the flag-printed souvenir socks. I’ve been so broke I had to put milk and tampons on the last $10 of my credit card’s available credit because the $2.16 in the bank account just wouldn’t cut it. I’ve raged against corporate ideals. I’ve settled when I knew there was better opportunity. I’ve looked at a pay stub and thought, “is this what I’m worth at the end of the day…is this all there is?”

BUT, as someone that aspires to own a business that’s able to support me entirely, as someone that aspires to wake up in the morning and set my OWN schedule and determine my OWN bottom line and give or take based on my OWN decisions, I can’t help but jump to the defense of business that are taken advantage of and robbed, because behind every faceless corporate entity – large OR small - is someone that at one point laid everything they had on the line, took a leap of faith, believed that their company was viable, and built that business from the ground up – blood, sweat, tears, sleepless nights and all. It’s naively optimistic, sure. But I can’t help but put myself in the place of the coffee shop owner who’s afternoon employee took off with tens of thousands of dollars that didn’t belong to them – someone that in the end, got away with theft and justified it by saying, “they should have paid me more. This wouldn’t have to happen if I got a bigger slice of the pie.” I don’t think that being a thrifty employer, cautious about their revenue, expenses and operating costs is necessarily greedy because they pay an entry-level employee something close to minimum wage. It’s a fact of life afforded business owners: the discretion to pay their employees a “fair” wage, whether or not the employee is happy about it. Doesn’t give Joe Coffee Maker the right to steal.

Do people get ripped off? Every day, on both sides of the working relationship. Is the minimum wage high enough? Not in every case. Would it be terrific if every one made enough money to send their kids to college, to cover their medical expenses, to take a vacation every year? YES! Should every single person working for a company get an even share? Show me a scenario where that’s actually profitable for the life of the business and then we’ll talk.

Anyway – my dull opinions on the politics of employment aside, K and I discovered one area where we can’t even come close to seeing eye-to-eye. I’m married to Robin Hood, and taking the side of the “Office Space” cubicle Nazis. It’s a strange jungle to navigate, knowing that any time this issue comes up we get both painfully defensive and unusually belligerent. We repeat ourselves, we exaggerate, I cry. It’s so out-of-character we SHOULD be laughing about it. I’m sure we will, soon enough.

Ah well, here’s to the beautiful, painful experiences we have on a Saturday evening while washing dishes. Here’s to unexpected philosophical exchanges. Here’s to the conversations that teach us more and more about each other every day – conversations that help me appreciate the nuances of K’s values, the strength of his convictions and force me to look a little closer at my own. Here’s to sitting on the bedroom floor in the middle of the night figuring out why we feel the way we do, figuring out WHY this issue always makes us angry and figuring out how to appreciate each other’s opinions. Here’s to disagreements, to apologies, and to 3 fantastic months of married life. On top of that, my Robin Hood even scrubs the kitchen floor and does our laundry. Beat that.

worth passin along

2006-10-18T02:06:00.000+01:00

I’m cheating on Christina Aguilera.

She got booted from the number one slot in the car cd changer.

I love her – I do. It just that…Sister Hazel has a new cd out. There’s something about Sister Hazel that just makes everything feel…better. Warm. Happy. Relaxed. Sunny. They’ve been through a lot with me over the years. I guess once you’ve sat in your car and cried about some heartbreak or another while a certain band plays in the background, their music just sticks with you. Once you’ve listened to a song after a breakup, or during a hard decision, or on your way to a new job, or out the door of an old job, or on your way to a first date, or once you’ve played the same cd to death while you packed up for college, or unpacked inside your first apartment, that band is with you for the long haul.

That band for me: Sister Hazel. They’re like a good pair of jeans worn in just right; like a perfect pair of black heels; like that favorite threadbare t-shirt – always comfortable, reliable, impossible to replace. I’ll even forgive the irritating “All For You” radio single that seems to be the singular association most people have when they hear the name “Sister Hazel.”

I loved their stripped down early days – the garage recordings with the offbeat a capella anthems. They had gutsy harmony and eccentric guitar. I was hooked on their first major studio release, “Fortress,” played it non-stop for MONTHS at a time. Inflicted it on everybody. They took a slightly over-produced turn with their next two albums “Chasing Daylight” and “Lift.” Neither took enough advantage of their quirky vocals, or those beautiful riffs that go up and up and up and up – signature Sister Hazel…it felt like the heart of their music just couldn’t quite get out…it was buried a little. The vocals ended up mixed waaaaay too far into the background – a pity because that meant missing out on the poeticism of their lyrics, my favorite part about them. They’ve got a groovy, backyard-barbeque vibe to their upbeat songs, but the melancholy tunes: those are the gems. Somehow at the same time dejected and optimistic, their lonely, heartbroken ballads with fantastically literary lyrics always stick with me…

At any rate, they’ve found a happy studio medium with “Absolutely.” It’s one of those cd’s that sounded familiar the first time I listened to it – liked it on the first listen. It’s happy music. It’s sitting-in-traffic music. It’s music to toss on when you finally get fed up and HAVE to spend a weekend cleaning the house (oh…is that just me…). To me, they’re a writer’s band. They appreciate plays on words, unexpected phrasing and lyrical imagery.

Just what I needed during a dreary week when I can’t quite pull myself out of the blahs…music that makes me appreciate writing in a new way. It made a grey, dreary day a little cozier.

Now, if I could just find music that would finally force me to write all of those thank-you notes. Sigh...

And in case you missed the honeymoon pictures, they're HERE

ok, ok, i was dodgin the blog.

2006-10-04T01:27:00.000+01:00

Chalk it up to a new work schedule that makes it difficult for me to blog at work. Chalk it up to coming back from a trip and not wanting to face the "routine" things I did before leaving. Chalk it up to a plan to open a restaurant and all that goes along with that undertaking. Maybe I was distracted because I finally decided to return to school, but then got stuck vaccilating for two weeks over whether or not to spend the cash on culinary school (aha - a hidden passion of mine...I love to cook. I'm a great cook). I love cooking almost as much as I love writing, and these days, it was - for some reason - infinitely easier to make soup than to spend any of my at-home time in front of the computer after a long day at work.

And I was uninspired. Maybe it was the Foley garbage that turned me off to the news and the celebrity websites became dull...or too entrenched in whatever Madonna was or wasn't adopting from afar. Then those poor Amish school children, then North Korea...

It made an already tired girl that much more tired. Between fledgling school ambitions, the weighty dread over the fact that I STILL haven't sent thank-you notes for all things wedding, trying to spend some time with my husband, trying to work eight hours - and eight hours ONLY - during the day, pondering a new business, starting an entirely new way of EATING (yes, Greece weight is hard to get rid of...)...I just didn't have anything left. Nothing that I felt like making Meaningless Observations about. Or meaningFUL observations (heaven forbid), or pointedly inane observations on stuff that almost mattered. I was decidedly unable to observe.

Then, like the long-distance friend you've lost touch with, I wondered if it had been too long. Was I out of the "blog" frame of mind entirely? Was it "gone for good" or was I just in a strange funk? Had I crossed that "it's been too long, just forget about it" threshold (that weird social point-of-no-return where you wonder if it would take more effort to get back into the swing than to just stay away)?

Not sure.

At any rate: Still breathing. Still busy at work, my blog vibe is still a little off. I'm forcing myself to find time in the evenings and on the weekends to do what I used to do during the day because it's so important to me to make time for my husband, for my house, for my education, for my...culinary endeavors (hmmm, perhaps there's a cookbook in the works, as well, in the background). So it's Heatheradair with a slightly new bent. A slightly new schedule. A slightly more weary attitude, but still dedicated nonetheless. Because I miss my friends. My faceless friends. I miss you guys!

And, because it would be strange NOT to toss up some of the fantastic pictures of the Trip I Can't Quite Come Home From entirely (K wants to move to Greece. He said he felt more at home there than he ever has in Seattle. I can't argue, the people are kind, the weather is beautiful, the country is breathtaking, and the euro goes a LONG way), here are pictures of the trip. The trip that began this whole blog-lite spiral!

*small note: it took some kind of FLIPPIN NERVE for me to post pictures of myself in the swimsuit so many times. I do not post pictures of myself in swimsuits except with VERY good reason ("reason" being very good scenery, in this case). i'm layin myself bare here (er, literally, too, I suppose!)...!

Greece: powered by Nescafe

2006-09-25T15:36:00.000+01:00

And airplanes: powered by strangers' GERMS. Cough*Hack*Sneeze*Sniffle. Soon, there shall be pictures, and mildly well-constructed anecdotes...for now: Kleenex and this strange, foreign, offensively bright thing called a computer monitor. The return to work: culture shock. But I am now the proud owner of a 7-word Greek vocabulary (Please, thank you, you're welcome, excuse me, how much, where, and BALLS. fantastic). And a vicious cold.

I'm beginning the slow process of re-acquainting myself with current events, gossip and the new dangers of spinach. Who knew two weeks would leave me feeling so oblivious? As I welcome myself back to "real life" (and struggle to squeeze myself into any of my clothes after nibbling my way through my own weight in gyros), I'm surprisingly content to be back home. Content, and congested.

And, so as not to leave today's title completely unexplained: the Greeks like their coffee powdered. And they like it strong. And, frankly, so do I. Forget ouzo. Gimme a Nescafe frappe, medium sweet. And toss in a scoop of ice cream for good measure. And some Grand Marnier. And a swizzle stick.

back on the 23rd!

2006-09-07T12:21:00.000+01:00

It's finally here! I've been up all night packing & sipping pink champagne. now we're off...for paradise...and SLEEP.

the upside to working 15-hour days:

2006-09-04T03:54:00.000+01:00

Weekends!

Oh, no, wait...I'm working those, too. Sundays, national holidays (guess there's a reason it's called LABOR day...I'm livin the dream), you name it.

Naps on the keyboard! Hmm...naw, those are uncomfortable.

So here are the top 10 GOOD parts about working consecutive 15-hour days:

ONE) No traffic! I'm getting here before people are awake and leaving here after people are in bed! No sitting at stop lights, waiting on the freeway, nothing!

TWO) Incandescent light has fantastic anti-aging properties. Errr, for all of the hours I'm INSIDE, I'm most certainly NOT out in the lovely 85-degree sunshine. Really, who needs sunshine. Wrinkles: overrated. Fantastically youthful skin preserved by the light of a healthy, UVA/UVB-free desk lamp: ageless. If I have an indescribable, ethereal glow: gotta give credit to the computer monitor.

THREE) I don't have to worry that I've forgotten to check in with somebody's blog - I KNOW I've forgotten. I haven't checked in with ANYBODY'S blog in a week or so. No more constant refreshing for comments, no more catching up on everyone's new posts in the morning. Blog? What's a blog? Is that like an Eggo?

FOUR) Virtual biology lessons! I'm getting smarter while I'm glued to this uncomfortable chair - digestive system's acting up because I'm existing on diet Coke and flavored oatmeal and Carnation Instant Breakfast and leftover donuts from the management meeting and old, dried out banana chips from the candy dish at the front desk (sore point, by the way. WHO gets excited about visiting the office candy dish and finding banana chips and wasabi peas and dried ginger and stale almonds and carob anything? I want mini Reese's cups and peanut M&Ms and peppermint patties!). No prob! Just check the symptoms on WebMD! They'll tell you how to fix the pesky digestive condition, and give you a staggering list of related conditions! How neat! While I'm struggling to stay awake, I can ponder the ways this lifestyle will slowly kill me - I'll know the symptoms the second they strike!

FIVE) Live entertainment. If I'd left at a NORMAL time on Friday (read: If I'd left at noon like everyone else around here does) I'd have missed the better-than-COPS car accident directly across the street - white car SLAMS into ghetto Buick, obliterating the back end, blowing tires and bumper pieces and glass all over the road - over-corrects, careens back across traffic, leaps the sidewalk, drives OVER a tree and INTO the building across the street, stopping only INCHES from a glass window and an office full of people! Even stranger than fiction, one passenger BOLTS, the other frantically tries to back the car off of the tree they're parked on before police arrive. Better than TV.

SIX) Christina Aguilera. I can work my way through her entire repertoire as loudly as I want once the last middle-aged man has left the building. And when I'm done with Christina, I've still got the Wilson Phillips archives, the Brooks & Dunn, the Steve Miller, the Jimmy Buffet, the Kelly Clarkson, and the much under appreciated Beth Hart (but because she tends to scream and screech, she's less than office-hours friendly). Just please, stick a pair of SCISSORS IN MY EAR before I'm caught dead buying into office-mate's idea of a good time: Michael McDonald does Motown!!!! "So upbeat!" Scissors. In my ear.

SEVEN) Unlimited pampering when I get home. Want champagne? Cozy pajamas? Sour patch kids? Hot Shots: Part Deux? I name it, and it's mine, accompanied by foot rubs, back rubs, shoulder rubs, the works. I married the most wonderful man ever created.

EIGHT) I can wear great shoes and know it doesn't matter if they're comfortable or not - I'll be sitting in front of this computer the ENTIRE day...I get up to use the bathroom and make an occassional photocopy. 5-inch spike heels or 6-inch platforms would be comfy when they're sitting in a chair all day (not that I own or wear either. Yet. Came very close with a pair of Joey O's that I just bought).

NINE) Working this much is a great excuse to play dumb when anyone asks me ANYTHING. Standard response: "Beats me. But I DID work 15 hours yesterday. And the day before. And on Sunday. Ooh - could I have a cookie?"

TEN) Knowing that after this Wednesday, I'll have 18 uninterrupted days with the man of my dreams the day I leave for this place (you MAY even hear from me again IF I decide to come back):

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

2006-08-28T14:51:00.000+01:00

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...

2006-08-24T17:09:00.000+01:00

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...

2006-08-23T16:15:00.000+01:00

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...

2006-08-21T20:05:00.000+01:00

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

2006-08-17T16:37:00.000+01:00

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...

2006-08-14T16:30:00.000+01:00

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.

2006-08-10T20:47:00.000+01:00

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!

2006-08-07T21:43:00.000+01:00

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:

2006-08-07T15:09:00.000+01:00

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 ____________"

2006-08-03T19:48:00.000+01:00

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...

2006-08-02T20:38:00.000+01:00

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.

look, it really happened!

2006-07-31T22:11:00.000+01:00

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!

2006-07-31T17:52:00.000+01:00

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!

2006-07-27T15:05:00.000+01:00

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.

2006-07-26T16:10:00.000+01:00

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?

2006-07-25T15:42:00.000+01:00

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...

2006-07-21T20:17:00.000+01:00

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...

2006-07-21T15:10:00.000+01:00

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!"

2006-07-19T19:09:00.000+01:00

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.

2006-07-18T15:06:00.000+01:00

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...

2006-07-17T16:38:00.000+01:00

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!

2006-07-13T22:56:00.000+01:00

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."

2006-07-11T22:21:00.000+01:00

Courtesy of the UK Daily Mail

This girl does not shampoo her hair:

Neither does 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.

2006-07-10T22:26:00.000+01:00

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!!!!

2006-07-06T16:29:00.000+01:00

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.

2006-07-04T02:46:00.000+01:00

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.

2006-07-03T18:03:00.000+01:00

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...

2006-07-03T15:14:00.000+01:00

"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.

2006-07-01T00:16:00.000+01:00

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.

hundred dollar burger...??? oh, and some recipes from the kitchen of heatheradair

2006-06-29T21:50:00.000+01:00

Yep: read this on FoxNews today:

"Heaven on a Bun' Costs a Pretty Penny

BOCA RATON, Fla. (AP) — A hundred bucks might buy you more than six-dozen burgers from McDonald's, but the swanky Old Homestead Steakhouse will sell you one brawny beef sandwich for the same price.

Boca Raton Mayor Steven Abrams could barely speak between bites as he devoured the 20-ounce, $100 hamburger billed as the "beluga caviar of sandwiches."

"Heaven on a bun," restaurant owner Marc Sherry said.

The burger debuted Tuesday at the restaurant in the Boca Raton Resort and Club, where a membership costs $40,000 and an additional $3,600 a year.

At about 5 1/2 inches across and 2 1/2 inches thick, the mound of meat is comprised of beef from three continents — American prime beef, Japanese Kobe and Argentine cattle. The restaurant will donate $10 from each sale to the Make-A-Wish Foundation."

Hmmm. They're donating $10 to charity.

BUT, rather than a predictable rant about how the mayor would be REQUIRED to oooooh and aaaaah (he just spent $100, he'd feel like a chump to admit he was anything other than floored by the international culinary behemoth), I decided, in the spirit of the 4th of July (which in my family means BARBEQUE!!!!!!) to pass along some of my favorite outdoor recipes (because, in addition to being a bored cost accountant and aspiring celebrity arm candy, I am nothing if not a fabulous cook). And reading about that burger made me hungry. So here (in no particular order) are some of my favorite summer foods (my, aren't I shockingly domestic!!!):

Heatheradair's Pico de Slaw/Slaw de Gallo (because both names sound funny)
(this is a great, light side dish when it's hot and you don't feel like taking the time to make potato salad)

a few cups pre-made, packaged, ready-to-go cole slaw mixins (cabbage, carrots, whatever)
a few cups or so of REALLLY diced up white onion (soak it in water for a few hours if you wanna take some of the "onion" taste outta the onion..?)
a few cups of really chopped up cilantro - be liberal with it!
a good drizzle of olive oil
a BIG drizzle of lemon juice
another BIG drizzle of lime juice
a few shakes of sea salt
a few splashes of hot sauce

Toss it all together, you're ready to go! Very tasty!

Heatheradair's Halibut Tacos (makes about 6 tacos)

2 good-sized Halibut filets (you don't say!!!)
6 or so soft taco shells
Avocado Ranch sauce (recipe below)
Heatheradair's Pico de Slaw
Enough monterey jack cheese to garnish

BARBEQUE up the halibut filets (I like 'em blackened, seasoned with a little lime juice), spread each tortilla with a some avocado ranch sauce, top with some Pico de Slaw, add a few halibut chunks, garnish with jack cheese, roll 'em on up

Heatheradair's Avocado Ranch Sauce

1 large avocado
a few tablespoons of ranch dressing
garlic salt
lemon juice
hot sauce
chipotle chile powder
more cilantro (summertime theme for me)

Mash it all together until it's nice and smooth (if you're one of those food-processor types, have at it. I'm old-school. I stir with a FORK.). Makes a good salad dressing, sandwich spread, taco accessory, vegetable dip, etc. ("Thanks Heather, sounds yummy!")

Heatheradair's Chipotle Chicken Burger

Well-seasoned chicken breasts...I let mine marinade for half a day or so in a sort of spicy southwest combo - some lime juice, salsa, and all of the spicy, peppery stuff I can find - chili powder, cayanne pepper, you name it. The hotter, the better.
Guacamole (I make my own, but the Trader Joe's-type guac-in-a-box is the next best thing. Anything sold in a round plastic carton tends not to taste like guac...)
Pepper Jack
Burger/sandwich accessories (buns, onion, tomato, lettuce)

Grill the chicken, add the cheese at the last minute, pile the bun high, try to get your mouth around it!

Heatheradair's Pineapple Margaritas

Tequila! Lots of it!
Triple sec
Lime juice
Sour mix
Dole Pineapple Juice

I usually make an entire pitcher at a time...always on-the-rocks. Mmmmmmmm.

Now I'm supposed to sit here and do WORK? I wanna fire up the grill....

i dreamt i was harrison ford once...

2006-06-29T16:36:00.000+01:00

Recalling my really bad "chased by Misha Barton" dream the other day got me thinking about other bizarre dreams I've had over the years...celebrities actually pop up quite a bit. Some of my favorites:

The one where my mom sold me to Nick Nolte as a child bride

I was probably 12 when I dreamt that I'd been given to Nick Nolte as a wife. I cried while mom stood nearby and watched, telling me, "He'll give you the sort of life your father and I will never be able to give you...it's what's best for you." It was a windy day on a strange beach when Nick came to pick me up - mom was nearby to make sure I didn't try to bolt. He gave me a bouquet of candy roses. Yep. Candy Roses. Huge bouquet, too - all the colors of the rainbow. Woke up from that one in tears. Mom had a good laugh.

The one where I was Harrison Ford

I was Indiana Jones once for Halloween once (last-minute costume...borrowed a brown bomber jacket from dad, a funny hat, and stuck some rope through my beltloop that was supposed to look like a whip...I think that was the last year I trick-or-treated. Costumes were tough), had a definite Harrison Ford hangup as a kid...so how exciting that I actually got to BE Indiana Jones in a dream - problem was, in the dream, I was Harrison Ford being run down by a giant Oldsmobile...the dream ended with me/Harrison Ford pinned against a wall, smooshed by the Olds. Woke up glad not to be Harrison Ford in real life.

The one where Jacko stalked me through Grandma's house

In the first installment of a creepy recurring dream (often featuring accomplice celebrities like Misha Barton) I'm chased through my grandma's house by a knife-weilding Michael Jackson...at once point, I hid under Grandma's bed, and he came so close to finding me that his hair brushed my hand - I remember it was crispy like uncooked spaghetti and didn't feel anything like real hair...it was like alien hair. I knew there was a car parked in the driveway that I could use to get away, but Grandma kept her car keys in a drawer in the kitchen, and in my dream, it was both dark and I couldn't run properly (of course) - so I was afraid that by the time I dug through the drawer for keys, he'd have heard me fumbling and I'd be caught. And if I found the keys, would I be able to "run" with them all the way to the car in the driveway, get the key in the ignition and drive away before he found me? Even worse, Grandma was working WITH Jacko - right before I woke up I heard her whisper, "Michael...she's in the kitchen." Shudder.

The one where I stole pottery from Aaron Eckhart

Very bad idea. Aaron Eckhart: Runs very fast. In my dream, he owned an entire warehouse full of ugly pottery, displayed on grocery-store-style shelves, organized by color. I found a pretty rose-colored vase that I liked, grabbed it and ran. Aaron followed. Since - of course - you can't run quickly in dreams, I remember grabbing the sides of his pottery-display shelves and trying to use momentum to slingshot myself ahead of him. He caught me in the end. Woke up...not sure what happened to the vase...

The one where Matthew McConaughey renounced all other women and begged me to run away with him

REALLY disappointed to wake up from this one. He was articulate and poetic and desperate and pleading...he told me I was more beautiful than Ashley Judd or Penelope or Sandra Bullock. He wanted to be with me forever. We'd live on a Texan ranch and drive lifted trucks and I'd never be without a stash of Sour Patch Kids. He couldn't wait to tell his mother about me, to parade me around in front of his friends, I was the woman of his dreams. The only drawback - my sister. In my dreams, she sort of hovers in the periphery, popping up at inopportune moments to berate my common sense and remind me that I'm doing something wrong. In this particular dream, she followed Matthew and me everywhere, warning me that I was "just a temporary fix until he finds someone famous. It won't last."

guess who's number 1....

2006-06-27T19:46:00.000+01:00

According to my recent junk mail I ended up subscribed to the "Ask Men" email newsletter (as far as I can tell, askmen.com aims to be the online Maxim equivalent -- i'm just not sure a MAN has ever even cruised the site, and without "Hometown Hotties" to generate interest, I think it's a bunch of women writing about what they imagine fashion-conscious men might read...correct me if I'm wrong). Interestingly, this week's Ask Men spam contribution caught my eye:

"Top 99 Most Desireable Women of 2006: The most dreamed about...the most asked about...the most desireable women of the year."

Wow, neat!

Lists are great: whether it's the AFI's tribute to "the greatest songs in film" or VH1 cranking out the Worst Anything Ever, or Billy Bush hosting some prime time fluff piece about the greatest TV commercials in history, I always want to know what takes the top spot. So this got me curious. Who are the top 99 women of the year according to Ask Men?

And how do we know that number 87, for instance, is REALLY all that much more desireable than woman 93? And who decides who makes the list? Who's dreaming about these women? Why are there women on the list I've never heard of? And isn't it conceivable that just because certain women recurred in a lot of different dreams they might not all be GOOD dreams? Sure, I may have had a dream that I was in a high-speed chase trying to avoid Misha Barton weilding an AK-47 and driving a station wagon, but if I were a man and had that same dream about her, would that boost her up on the list? It just says "Most dreamed about," not "Most dreamed about in an 'under 17 not admitted without an adult' way."

And how is Dallas Howard possibly more desireable than Gabrielle Union?????

At any rate, I made it all the way through the list...number 1 was no huge surprise. Number 99 was Anna Kournikova (down from the 52 poll position last year, apparently....so, does that mean that almost HALF as many men dreamt about her this year as last year? Or only half as many bothered to "ask men" about her this time around?)

And why is Jessica Simpson higher on the list than just about anybody? For that matter, why is Jaime Pressly on this list at all? Do men actually dream about Piper Perabo? And how do the List Powers That Be decide that one Brazillian supermodel model is hotter than another Brazillian supermodel?

In the end I decided that 99 women was perhaps too large a list...It left too many questions. To list the top 10 most desireable women, that seems more reasonable...but 100? Doesn't that just about cover every major actress, recording artist, sitcome star and up-and-coming intern we've even heard of this year? At any rate, the list accomplished two things:

1) Inspired me to pluck my eyebrows with renewed artistic vigor

and

2) Propelled me to Google Sophia Vergara. The girl has fantastic...hair.

people having scarier-looking tuesdays than I...

2006-06-27T15:22:00.000+01:00

I. Am. Sunburned.

Seattle was in rare 96-degree form this weekend and I was a little too ambitious. All told, I probably logged 18 hours in a lawn chair over the weekend. As such, I'm burned. If the apartment wasn't hot enough this weekend, I was my own bunsen burner, my own space heater, an unwitting radiator making the house even warmer. HOWEVER: pink as I may be, I found a few people looking at least as strange as myself (courtesy mostly of dlisted and perezhilton):

Sharon Stone
It appears she's been attending the Britney Spears School of Beauty, where shimmery eye-shadow and rat's nest hair refuse to relinquish their stronghold. That said, she's got fantastic teeth, even if the rest of her screams "I've still got it! I'm not getting old! I'm at least as hot as Tara Reid!" bwuahahahahahahahaha. Now, let's talk about that "Sixteen Candles-esque" prom dress item she's wearing...It's amazing how quickly a reasonably "well-respected" actress can become a parody of herself.

Janet Jackson
I'll have to plead ignorance to the "fat" phase that sparked the amazing weight loss that sparked a million photographs of her abs that sparked this spooky-looking picture...when was she fat? Where was I during those extra 50 pounds? And why does she look perpetually startled? To be further skeptical, why is her new song so lackluster? I heard a local dj call it "smooth." I would err more on side of "boring," but maybe that's because I expected something a little more high-octane to accompany her unveiling...something that at least projected the illusion of "I was recording this song AND doing a complex step aerobic routine AND benching a school bus all at the same time."
And by the way, Stevie Nicks wants her sleeves back.

Marcia Cross
She's a...striking woman most of the time. She also belongs in that "raptor-class" of people who end up looking more "dangrous reptile" and less "svelte tv star rumoured to prefer girls." I guess the fact that she's engaged partially takes care of the lesbian whisperings. She also falls into the "chest bones too prominant" category, and the "skin so wan she looks like she belongs in a wax museum" but hey, it reinforces the fact that there's someone out there for everybody.

Tara Reid
Something about the high neckline, unusual looking bun-coif and big beads around her neck looks like it's trying to be taken seriously (a recurring theme for Tara these days), but her eyes betray her. A tactic better than a funny-printed shirt (which, I have decided, would look more at home if it were made into a polo shirt and worn on the PGA circuit) would be to marry Chad Lowe (you know, now that he's single) and be cast in a movie as a boy. It worked very well for Hilary. So well, that I'll bet my sister and I are the only ones to remember her turn as the SHE-Karate-Kid in a movie so awful only I could love it (and watch it three times in a row).

a very scientific movie-selection criteria.

2006-06-23T15:15:00.000+01:00

I have a secret:

I love BAD. MOVIES. If it's tepid, uninspired, otherwise poorly produced and stars lackluster actors reciting cardboard dialogue, I'll probably go see it once or twice in the theater and most definitely snatch the thing up on dvd. Bottom line: I'll love it if it completely blows.

I got a text message from my sister yesterday that got me ridiculously excited for "The Lake House."

Sis: Oh, meant to tell ya - j and i went and saw the lake house. it was everything we dreamed it would be. awful dialogue, bad plot, twas perfection.

Me: And were they completely chemistry-free, like brother & sister???????

Sis: Yes! It was awkward to watch and their letter-reading voice overs were read totally flat. no voice inflection of any kind. keanu cried. it rocked.

Decision made: this will be my summer favorite. My sister and I are fans of anything starring Paul Walker or Kevin Bacon or Freddie Prinze Jr and get particularly excited when pop stars flex their acting chops...the movie gets bonus points if we have to cover our faces out of sheer embarassment for the actors:

"From Justin to Kelly" anyone?

for those times you need to grate cheese on your CHEST BONES:

2006-06-22T14:37:00.000+01:00

What happened to pretty little Kate Bosworth?

This was Kate back in the smokin-hot Blue Crush days:

And this is Kate today in a "please buy that I'm Lois Lane and not an alien masquerading as a sack-of-bones with some shiny skin stretched over it" phase:

I won't get into the issue of the work she's had done to her nose (leaving her looking less Sandra Dee and more TURTLE), but the chest bones are really, truly horrifying.

Yes, I watched Lara Flynn Boyle and Calista Flockhart and Nicole Ritchie and Posh Beckham and Lindsay Lohan disappear before my eyes, but there's something about Kate's chestbones that leave them all in the dust. They could grate cheese, those chest bones. Oh that I could peek inside those grocery bags she's pushing in that cart...I'm guessing there's no Boboli or Corona or Wonder Bread or Fruit Loops in those grocery bags. My money's on fifty dollars worth of Evian and a dozen cucumbers (enough to last her until Thanksgiving).

Honestly, however - all levity aside - watching women lose dangerous amounts of weight, particularly high-profile women with the entire magazine-reading, movie-going American public as their audience, terrifies me to no end...

After watching my very best girlfriend in the world waste away - the girl who was more fun than anyone, the girl I went to prom with instead of taking a normal date, the girl who's house I slept over at every saturday night through school, the girl who knew which guys I'd earmarked as my "future husbands" from the time we were fourteen, the girl that kidnapped creepy lawn ornaments with me in the summertime and shared clothes with me at summer camp and knew my deepest secrets and to whom I was attached at the hip for most formiddable years of my life - I became heartsick watching such brazen disease go undiagnosed and untreated. To watch that sort of self-abuse dress itself up as celebrity and go excused for years because it wears a movie-star mask is a devastating commentary about our beauty standards...

It's clear that Kate needs help.

For once, I would love to see Hollywood elect NOT to work with these poor, desperate women until they get a handle on their disease...I would love to read of a studio or a producer opting to save a life rather than profit from it's malfunction. I would love for the fists that wield the power to refuse to endorse the parade of disorder eaters, to refuse to market sickness as beauty, to refuse an actress work until she's been treated, to acknowledge the disorder rather than sneak the actress off into the hills and mislabel it "exhaution" when her heart first fails or she faints from malnutrition on the set.

It's a pipe dream, but one that hits particularly close to home...

Eat a Sourdough Jack, Kate. Come out on top.

a pause to long for coffee.

2006-06-21T20:59:00.000+01:00

I'm not a terribly disciplined person.

I spend money impulsively, I oversleep, I run late in the morning (or the afternoon, or the evening - punctuality: very elusive) , I let the dishes pile up, I never obey the speed limit, I order dessert...

Occassionally, I surprise myself. Recently I decided to stop drinking coffee and I've been STARTLINGLY disciplined about it. In all fairness, I wasn't much of a coffee drinker in the first place until landing my current job - I opted to work the earlier shift and get in at about 6:30 most mornings. Something about rolling into work before most people's kitchen lights come on made coffee a necessity.

It broadsided me. It happened quickly - I moved straight from "non-coffee-drinker" to "all-day-coffee-drinker." I never had a cup of THICK, STRONG, constuction-man-style coffee out of arm's reach. Sure, I added girlie, flavoured creamers to dress it up (love the Cinnamon Hazelnut and the Chocolate Raspberry and the Vanilla Dulce and - around the holidays - the Gingerbread Spice), but in no time at all I had become that employee.

The employee that stumbles into the office and makes a beeline for the coffee before even turning on the computer.

The employee that complains when it's too weak.

The employee that gets irate and waves the empty pot around when someone drinks the last and doesn't brew a fresh pot.

The employee that recognizes when we change brands..."Hey, this tastes funny....where's the normal stuff?"

I didn't like being that employee.

Furthermore, I didn't like the fact that coffee in general wreaked bloody havoc with my complexion, with my stomach, with my sleeping habits...

So: I gave it up.

Takes quite a bit of discipline.

Difficult to walk into the office, past the coffee pot and ignore the smell, particularly when the pot never runs dry around the office and it's always a FRESH coffee smell (a smell I actually found horribly disgusting until becoming a coffee drinker at which point all sensory bets are off...I felt a little betrayed by myself, frankly. I never liked that icky coffee stench, why did I get excited about it now???? I hated the taste of that stuff, why am I a fiend?????)

It went very well. For months now I've opted for a cup of tea in the morning. No, it's not as fun as dumping a good quarter cup of Coffee Mate Irish Cream into a mug, but I'm learning that a good part of the "must have cuppa joe" reflex centered around the ritual of starting my day by holding something warm and cozy...tea is plenty warm and comes in at least 967,000 fun and exciting flavors.

I've been disciplined. I've hardly wavered. I've been impressed with myself. I've even told people, "You know, it hasn't been hard to quit!" in a cocky moment.

And then this morning came around...

It's killing me!

For no particular reason!

I can hardly stand it!

Need coffee! Want coffee! And while you're at it, bring me a cinnamon roll!!!

(see, even my punctuation suggests desperation)

So far, I'm hangin in there...it's easier since I'm clean out of the prissy creamer to gussy up the coffee, so to drink a cup would mean a run to the store at which point the impulse becomes ridiculous and I may as well just wait it out.

Guess it's time to find out what I'm really made of.

where does myspace find these nitwits???

2006-06-20T15:55:00.000+01:00

I noticed two separate stories in the news this morning about dim-witted myspacers doing embarassing and desperate things. In both events, I've pretty much decided that if they'd happened in association with a less high-profile website, it would hardly be news, that people would read the story and think, "what a couple of nitwits" and not give it a second thought. BUT, because these poor desperate people DID try to lure and marry and ARE trying to sue in association with myspace, they're not the idiots: the website is to blame. The vicious, predatory, full-of-lurking-evil website.

Admittedly, the world of horrible, canned page layouts ("thanks whateverlife.com!!!!!") and lame "everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-me" surveys is a slightly different ballgame to me than to that much-targeted 14 year-old girl perpetually falling victim to online stalker-schemes in the news.

I've dabbled with myspace. It's a novelty. It's a place to gawk at pictures of old high school friends all dolled up for halloween, or a place to leave silly little "How was your date last night?????" messages for a friend. It's a fabulous venue for my smug self-satisfaction, because half the point of tracking down people I went to high school or college with is to see if they've gained weight or married that moron they were dating 10 years ago. It's harmless. My friends and I send each other stupid song lyrics and post pictures of our engagement rings and make fun of our bosses. We bug each other on our birthdays. We waste time at work. It's an easy way to keep in touch.

But, as with every "time-wasting, harmless, easy way to keep in touch," there's that caveat. Anything fun and novel can apparently be turned into a predatory device that targets the naive, the inexperienced, the young and eager.

And the NITWITS.

Here's the first Myspace Nitwit Story of the Day: (article here)
A 20 year-old Palestinian man child "fell in love" with a 16 year-old Michigan girl and convinced her to come to Palestine and marry him. They were soul mates, apparently. They "loved the same songs." If that's not reason enough to leave your Michigan suburb and your sophomore girlfriends and cozy up near the West Bank, I don't know what is. To this poor lovelorn boy's credit, he DOES have a job in Palestine...he's never been in "trouble," for whatever that's worth...and he promised that his blushing bride-to-be would sleep in his sister's bedroom. Not his.

The girl made it as far as Jordan before her passport was seized and officials sent her back home.

I'll allow that there is a star-crossed, Romeo & Juliet element to the entire charade, but are they IDIOTS??? This girl gives the entire wonderful world of online social networking a bad name. Yes, let's leave mom and dad and fly our grown-up, in-love self all the way to Jericho and live happily ever after! The nitwit-turned-fiance "decries attempts to portray him as an internet predator." I think I'd side with the heartbroken Palestinian kid in this case. Hey, he wanted to "walk with her through the tree-lined streets of Jericho." Sounds romantic. Very "Ten Commandments." It's myspace's fault anyway.

UPDATE: I just read that the groom's family is campaigning to get their would-be-daughter-in-law back. Back to Palestine. Is is just me, or does that smack of international kidnapping super-plot? sure, she SEEMS like a nice would-be-mother-in-law...

The second Myspace Nitwit Story of the Day is here:
A 14 year-old girl sued the website yesterday after being sexually assaulted by another member. I think we've heard this scenario a few dozen times already. Sweet young things fall prey to malicious man's story about being their team's star quarterback, they convince the sweet young thing to meet them somewhere, the rest is criminal history. Poor judgement to meet face-to-face with someone you'd became aquainted with in a notoriously dishonest capacity? Yes, poor judement even for a 14 year-old girl. Is she a victim? Yes. Is it her fault? No. Is it myspace's fault?

*Sigh.*

I just don't understand. The girl and her family allege that the site has "no meaningful protections or security measures" to shield the underage from predatory users. Apparently her parents have no meaningful protections in place, either. I'd also venture a guess that right up until the assault, during the entire wooing process while the aggressor convinced her he was a high school senior on a football team, the girl LOVED the lack of protection. She loved logging on and seeing that big, bright red, "NEW MESSAGES!" indicator. She reveled in the lack of security, because it allowed her to do stupid things and put herself in stupid positions.

How on EARTH is this the website's fault?

Brings me back to the ultimate finger-pointing American way. Why take responsibility for ourselves and our families when we can be indignantly litigious and demand $30,000 retribution for our pain and suffering. THIRTY GRAND??!!

It's enough to make me want to change the age on my profile to 14, aggressively "befriend" people I've never met, then act like it's the website's fault when things take a turn for the uncomfortable.

people with mondays worse than mine: 6/19/06

2006-06-19T16:24:00.000+01:00

This was one of those "woke-up-feeling-like-my-bones-were-made-of-lead" mornings...where I hit the snooze something like 27 times and still wanted to shove my head under the pillow for another hour or 10. On the bean-counting, desk-jockey front, this definitely promises to be one of those 12-hour days (made longer, no doubt, by my inability to STEP AWAY FROM THE BLOGS. HOWEVER...I figure these guys have it worse:

Brad Pitt
Woe is Brad. Apparently before Angelina's c-section scars have even healed she's planning to adopt another orphan, nationality as yet undecided. Because three small children aren't enough. So between the middle-of-the-night-feedings and the diaper changes, Brad can ponder the fact that giving birth to their "Messiah-baby" was such a positive experience for Angie that she promptly declared to Anderson Cooper and the greater CNN-following public that her next child will be another adopted refugee orphan.

Side thought: has she tattooed over her c-scar yet? I figure that will be her next move...

Kevin Spacey's Career
I've always loved Kevin Spacey, even after his ookily asexual turn as Bobby Darin. He's dashing, accomplished, tasteful...and yes, noticeably absent from stage and screen for awhile now. PerezHilton posted this quote this morning:

"As far as I'm concerned, when I looked at what happened in my career in 2000 - after American Beauty - I thought it couldn't get much better. What was I going to spend the rest of my life doing? Trying to top myself? Trying to stay hot, trying to make sure I was in the right movies? I'm trying to do something with my success which is bigger than myself. I'm no longer interested in my personal career. I am interested in the impact I can have on a lot of other people's careers and on audiences." (emphasis mine)

In other words, his mechanism for coming to terms with the fact that he plateaued half a decade ago is to try and pass his decline off as HIS choice. Sort of the way that uncomfortable-looking women in Hollywood come to their own defense by using the "men are intimidated by my success, so I choose not to date" excuse. Not to compare Kevin to a dateless diva...heavens no...

Jenny Craig
Did a double-take when I saw this headline on Fox News: Nestle to Buy Jenny Craig for $600M. Nestle claims to have a "nutrition" sub-unit and has aspirations to turn the public's attention away from its powdered chocolate milk endeavors (well, that's noble enough, I suppose) and transform themselves into a "nutrition, health and wellness company."

I suppose it's possible that someday our children will hear the word "Nestle" and equate it with something more like "Newman's Own" than with miniature crunch bars languishing in the bottom of an easter basket after the Cadbury eggs had been picked out, but it seems to smack of corporate desperation that a company so ingrained in America's chocolatey way-of-life would decide to begin their overhaul by swallowing a company that's more "butt-of-elementary-school-childrens'-jokes" and less "health! nutrition! wellness!"

And where does this leave Kirstie Alley???

people for the ethical treatment of lobsters?

2006-06-16T22:04:00.000+01:00

I KNEW there was a reason I avoided super-yuppie Whole Foods: They're a bunch of illogical pansies.

Apparently the fact that Whole Foods is no longer selling live lobsers and crabs is newsworthy...fine, fine, fine. Apparently they're the "next generation's big-box retailer with a conscience." Good for them and their fantastic bacon (I hear it's fantastic...everyone says it's fantastic. In fact, people in my neck-of-the-woods can't even hear the word "whole" and "food" in the same sentence without launching into a sort of google-eyed state of fantastic-bacon-worship).

I can appreciate a certain degree of..."crustacean sensitivity" (i like watching crabs crawl around at the beach as much as the next girl and generally opt to toss them into the tide pools instead of let a kid with a chunk of driftwood bludgeon the poor things) but not when the cause is spearheaded by DITZES. Yes, ditzes.

Maybe it's the consummate literature student in me, but I tend to expect people (or well-intentioned yuppie foodstores with fantastic bacon) to substantiate an argument with reasonable evidence. I don't care if it's a beer commercial or a doctoral thesis...if you're making a point, back it up.

And try not to sound like a ditz.

Back in the middle school days, I had a bunch of girls over for a sleep-over, and the next morning, my dad made all of us a fantastic breakfast. I passed one of my friends a plate of dad's fantastic bacon and she looked absolutely. horrified. "I can't eat bacon...those poor little pigs!!!" So we passed her a plate of grilled ham. "Ooh, yummy, thanks!" said the friend, and ate three pieces.

This Whole Foods Social Conscience rearing it's head is the commercial equivalent to bacon versus ham (and i'm becoming conscious of the fact that i've never written the word BACON so many times in my life...)

The basic premise of the "we won't sell live crustaceans" argument is that it's cruel to the animals. Inhumane. They're kept in small lobster-dungeons (my favorite part of the family trips to Red Lobster as a kid--aside from the hush puppies which you CANNOT get on the west coast--was watching the little lobsters in the tanks writhe all over each other), then *GASP!* dropped into boiling water once their time has come.

But here's the kicker - this was the statement that earned the "ditz" label:

According to Fox News, a spokesman for PETA announced that they were thrilled with Whole Foods' decision because:

"The ways that lobsters are treated would warrant felony cruelty to animals charges if they were dogs or cats."

Well if that's the way you feel, People for the Ethical Treatment of Lobsters, I expect a likewise lofty crusade tomorrow against ground beef, your fantastic bacon, chicken breasts (free range or otherwise, because let's face it, the chickens died in the end, too, in a way that I'm certain would NOT be acceptable for Rex or Scruffy or whomever), salmon, giblets from ANY animal...etc etc etc.

FURTHERMORE, Whole Foods will continue to sell "frozen lobster products." Because it's difficult to watch lobsters writhe in your own stores knowing they're destined for someone's pot of boiling water, but if a processing plant somewhere in Connecticut stores them, slaughters them, disassembles them, and ships them to your store, you can feel warm and fuzzy and equitable about the entire process.

was i born without the "wedding gene?"

2006-06-14T19:18:00.000+01:00

I really think there IS a gene that dictates "eagerness to plan a wedding."

I'm short that gene.

I have a wedding coming up (in a startling SHORT amount of time, in the opinion of
people who were born WITH the wedding gene). I'm sure nine months down the road, once the wedding is behind me and pictures are framed and hung on the wall with care, I'll "be able to laugh about all of this."

In the meantime, however...

Here are some excerpts from recent conversations:

My wonderful mom: You're going to carry flowers, though, right?
My wide-eyed, oblivious self: I'm supposed to carry flowers? What for?
My wonderful mom: Well don't you want something to hold? Like a bouquet?
My wide-eyed, oblivious self: Oh...do I have to carry flowers? What kind of flowers would I carry? Could I just carry...ONE flower? I haven't thought about this...
My wonderful mom: Maybe you should ask your cousin to find you some flowers to hold.
My wide-eyed, oblivious self: ...........

This one occured between a co-worker and myself after they overheard one of those conversations during which I absolutely lose my cool and broadcast my emotional deficiencies to the entire office during one of those "personal phone calls."

Fatherly Co-Worker Guy: How's everything going today?
(my nose is still red and my eyes still puffy from the lost-cool-phone-call)
Me: I've had better days.
FCWG: You've had better days huh. Yeah, this stuff can be tough....us guys, we usually just go with 'whatever..doesn't matter to me.' Makes it hard for the lady.
Me: Trouble is, I wanna say, 'whatever, doesn't matter to me,' TOO! That's the way I feel..
FCWG: And everybody has opinions, don't they...a lot of opinions coming out of the woodwork...
Me: Seems like it. So why don't I have as much of an opinion as everybody else?
FCWG: We've all been there...all been there.

This is not totally true...I have an opinion. I don't want fancy flowers and big puffy dresses and bridesmaids in tulle and coordinated shoes...I don't want caterers and rehearsal dinners and tableclothes and flowers and poetry recitations...

HOWEVER...I'm a young, suburban, 20-something female...when I throw up my hands and say, "I don't want to plan a wedding!!!! I don't care what you wear, or who you bring, or where you sit...I don't wanna be responsible for it! No! NO NO NO!!!!" people give me this sort of unusual, sideways, "were you dropped as a kid?" look...it's a sort of squinty expression.

Fiance is likewise laid-back. Likewise not inclined to want to plan much.

So far I've spent $30 on a white sundress. I'm going to the local grocery store for a cake. The reception will be about a dozen pizzas from the italian joint down the road. There will be ONE bridesmaid (my sis) wearing WHATEVER she feels like wearing and ONE groomsman wearing WHATEVER he feels like wearing...

I'll be sportin a $30 Forever21 dress and trying not to drip pizza sauce on it. Then, I'll wear the dress whenever I want to for the rest of the summer - because it's PRETTY, dangit - and there's no tulle or beads or anything to stand in my way.

My one good idea so far: party favors. Mixed cd of our favorite tunes. Seems like an honest, substantial (CHEAP!!!) thing to toss at the people kind enough to endure the Saturday-afternoon-in-july-debut of my gross genetic shortcomings...

people with mondays worse than mine: 6/12/06

2006-06-12T18:00:00.000+01:00

I think this will be my new monday-morning ritual...since I'm sitting here wondering how on earth another weekend could disappear SOOOO quickly, biding my time until another one rolls around and lamenting the rainy, icky, grey, dreary, depressing sight of the Ugliest Highway In America right outside the office window, can't hurt to do a little digging and figure out who (or what) else woke up this morning and wished they hadn't:

Superman
Been a rough couple of weeks for the Man of Steel, what with his unwavering heterosexuality being called into question by just about every major gossip source, not to mention aisle 4b of the local grocery store...apparently reports were so rampant that the director of the upcoming spandex-fest issued an "official" statement about the hero's orientation. Statement went something like this:

"Superman 'is probably the most heterosexual character in any movie I've ever made,' said Bryan Singer, director of 'Superman Returns,' a new movie about the crime-fighting superhero that opens June 28. 'I don't think he's ever been gay.' "

The rest of the denial is here. No one's talking about Clark Kent, however...that could give the movie an entirely new dynamic. Sport coat and dockers: Gay. Tights and cape: Straight, straight, straight.

Denise Richard's Abs
Rough Monday for her abs because last Friday, they unfortunately had no choice but to appear with the rest of her body at the Pussycat Dolls Lounge, in the sort of trashtastic regalia that does NOTHING but help her efforts to gain full custody of the SheenSpawn. I admire Denise's tummy, I really do...in fact, if I were going to abandon my children and galavant around Europe with a rock star's sidekick, I'd be sure to take abs like hers with me...but if a genie popped out of my coffee cup and gave me the option to sport Denise's body and Denise's head/neck/hair/face combo OR my own tummy and face, I'd keep my own softer, more...approachable figure. In short...that's one uncomfortable-looking woman. With uncomfortable-looking hair.

Bruce Willis
James Blunt beat him to the Petra Nemcova punch. Pictures of Jimmy looking pale and young and out-of-his-league here. Interesting, however, that even a $50k donation and ultimate action hero status weren't enough to secure the girl. Bruce would have to drop 40 pounds, spend a solid year avoiding all natural light, develop a fatalistic-emo-pop vibe and learn to sing like a girl. Now that I think about it, Kale's insistence that the metro craze killed the burly man's appeal is starting to seem more and more accurate. I'll stick to my guns - I'd take Bruce over Jimmy any day.

Keira Knightley's Abs
Her abs might not realize it, but if the rest of Keira's body has anything to say about them, their days are numbered. She's trying to kill them. In an attempt to score "decadent flesh" a'la Scarlett Johansson, she tells Elle magazine that's she's gorging on pasta and wine - here's a snippet of the article. I guess pasta and wine are the poor-man's implants? I actually think she might win this battle...I vaguely remember cleavage back in the early Pirates days, so I htink she's got it in her...

verdict: i'm still a kid!!!

2006-06-06T22:40:00.000+01:00

I'll always remember the time my mom told me she never stopped "feeling 19 years old." I was probably 16 or 17 then, and couldn't figure out what she meant. Surely I'd feel more mature, more accomplished, more...perhaps cosmopolitan at 20 than I did at 16? Surely I'd wake up on my 21st birthday with sudden, precise, unassailable grown-up wisdom? Surely I'd feel well-adjusted and self-confident at 25? Surely I wouldn't feel 16 forever?

I was right. At the cusp of another birthday, I don't feel 16 (whatever that feels like).

Most days, I feel about 10.

Increasingly, I realize that many of the things I never outgrew are the most precious to me. Ok, I finally shelved the pilled, threadbare, limp little stuffed dog that slept with me every night. For the most part I can drink a glass of pinot gris without making an "ewwww" face, but for every little adult-ism I've gradually adopted, there's a 10 year-old-ism that I just can't shake. And with each year that passes, I proudly stick to my guns on this point: I'M STILL A KID!!!!!

For example:

Sugar Cereals
They were (blessedly) never outlawed around my family's breakfast table. Corn Pops, Sugar Smacks, Fruit Loops, Cocoa Pebbles, we ate them all (Dad was a Cap'n Crunch man, for instance...). I get the feeling that I'm supposed to have moved on to things like protein shakes or power bars or frittatas...but the cozy feeling I get from the pink milk in the bottom of a fruit loop bowl is all the wake-up juice I need. I don't think I'll ever out-grow the wide-eyed wonder of standing in the cereal aisle (with the "adult benefit" of shopping for myself and myself only) deciding whether I'm in an Apple Jacks or a Honeycomb mood...

Saturday Morning Cartoons
Up until a year ago (when PBS rearranged their saturday morning schedule), I'd still wake up early on the weekends to catch "Jakers! The Adventures of Piggly Winks," an adorable cartoon about school-aged Irish farm animals. My sister and I would call each other as soon as an episode ended to yak about how cute they were with their little cartoon brogues and "Full House-"esque moral dilemmas.

I spent waaaaay too many afternoons during high school (and college, if I could adjust the bunny ears just right) watching episodes of "Batman: The Animated Series." Had a big crush on cartoon Batman. His milk carton-shaped head and spooky, lipless mouth together with his clearly tormented past made him more faceted and interesting than most of the X-Men (although I watched them, too). I've probably seen every episode. These days, I don't watch tv (chalk it up to an unwillingness to pay ridiculous cable rates, though my cable-free reception is so awful that UPN was my only option), but the shows I miss the most are the weekend cartoons.

Barbies
Give me a Barbie, I'll follow you anywhere. The magic hasn't worn off. Any gift-giving holiday is more merry when I get to unwrap a Barbie. These days they're passed off as gag-gifts, as gifts-with-kitsch or as inside jokes, but the girl in me has yet to outgrow the thrill of my very own leggy blonde in a box.

(on a completely unrelated note: this caught my eye when I was trolling for Barbie pictures...)

When I'm sick, I want my mom
I battled a nasty case of strep-on-top-of-bronchitis-on-top-of-a-mean-flu awhile ago and when I was laying there trying unsuccessfully to sleep, waiting for the pain killers or the anti-inflammatories or the horse tranquilizers to knock me out, I wanted my mom there to squeeze my hand, wipe my hair off of my face and bring me some Saltines and earl grey. Sisters and boyfriends and roommates do the best they can, but no one makes me feel better like Mom. As I grow up and have to deal with the same old stuff (like realizing that cliques and don't go away just because we get older and we battle the same insecurities when we're 40 that we battle when we're 14...the break room at work can feel just as uncomfortable as the cafeteria in middle school when hormones hit just right or someone says just the wrong thing. Bad hair days persist, regardless. Some days, when you're sick, you still have to get up and go to work, even as badly as you'd like to stay in bed and watch "The Price is Right"), the remedy stays the same: after a bad day, I still automatically send an email to my mom. She's always steadfast and supportive, particularly when I feel unhinged.

So, as another birthday approaches,** I cling a little more closely to the things that have made me happy, comfortable and at home since my earliest memory (which, incidentally involves a large rock, my big toe and ends with a cure-all green Otter Pop).

In the meantime, here's to Fruit Loops, Superman, Barbie dolls, and mom's secret "aspirin-crushed-in-a-spoonful-of-honey" remedy for any and everything.

**Yes, I realize that I'm a bona fide spring chicken. I have no "I'm a dried up old lady" illusions, I just get retrospective around my birthday, realizing that time passes quickly...that it seems like just yesterday I was riding my first bicycle straight into the bushes at Grandma's house because I couldn't steer and brake at the same time. I'm young. I'm inspired. I'm twenty-something. EVEN SO, I'm allowed to reflect on the good ol' days. While eating the kind of sour candy with the neon sort of wrapper that 4th grade boys usually dig.

things that are better than cake:

2006-06-05T21:19:00.000+01:00

I work in a relatively small office - an office that is unnaturally fixated with celebrating the office birthdays once a month ("3:30 pm, first Thursday of the month! hope you can make it!"). We've been known to go ahead with the birthday celebration when all of the people who actually have a birthday during the month are on vacation, out to lunch, at a meeting, wherever - big deal...any excuse to celebrate.

With cake.

Expensive cake.

$50 cake.

This is not a huge sheet cake to feed 150 or a beautifully conceived piece of melt-in-your-mouth, confectionary genius. It's just a plain, round, layer cake from the bakery down the road...I peeked between the layers for the hidden gold once...it wasn't there.

Problem is, I don't like cake. Ok, I might make a concession for a made-from-a-Betty-Crocker-box Cherry Chip cake the way mom used to bake it, but to generalize, I just. don't. like. cake.

The office doesn't understand.

"You know, Heather, if you're eating it to celebrate a birthday, the calories don't count."

("Don't assume i'm one of those calorie-averse types. I LOVE my calories. Just not in the form of cake." )

"Look Heather, we ordered the white cake with raspberries this time instead of chocolate, so you can have some, too!"

("It's not the CHOCOLATE I dislike. It's the CAKE. Ok, and the chocolate. I don't like chocolate.")

"Hey Heather, are you sure you don't want even a little piece? There's ice cream to go with it!"

("I know what your'e doing and it won't work! They taught me about people like you in D.A.R.E! Bandwagon tactics! Broken record! Coersion!!! I won't fall for it! I won't eat the cake!!!! NO! NO! NO!!!!)

Welllll - now it's my birthday month. This Thursday at 3:30, I'll be celebrated. Just me.

I've been so unabashedly, predictably anti-cake for so long it's no surprise that they sent Troy to my desk this morning as a...cake ambassador, to find out what I'd like in lieu of cake. Trouble is, the "in lieu of cake" applies to the entire office. In honor of Heather's June Birthday, NO ONE will eat cake. No pressure.

It took me most of the morning, actually, to come up with some viable alternatives. Things--other than cake--that everyone can enjoy:

CHEESEBURGERS. Mmmmm. probably one of my favorite things. and french fries. I kind of like the idea of inflicting a tower of cheeseburgers on everyone - the vegans, the vegetarians, dairy-phobics - all of them.

All things sour and sugary and gummi...I'm a candy fiend...so in the spirit of celebrating right along with Heather, I suggested a pinata. Or at the very least, a conference table full of assorted candy-things...hershey's bars, licorice, Sour Patch Kids - whatever. I like it all.

But I don't want to hit the pinata. Not my style.

Guacamole is rather difficult to put a candle in and serve up in any pretty way, but it's another of my favorite things...so I'd imagine if you slapped down a big bowl of guac, big bowl of salsa and some tortilla chips, I'd be pretty happy...and I'd love to see them all stand around and try to make witty small talk about tortilla chips the way they try to make witty small talk about the cake.

I like champagne. And breakfast burritos. And cinnamon rolls. And anything with cilantro.

Coconut ice cream is pretty tasty. Same goes for most things involving butterscotch, but that's a little ambiguous. I like oatmeal cookies and those big, awful Costco muffins...and powdered sugar mini-donuts (that could be a fun party trick...watch Heather devour an entire box of hostess powdered sugar donuts!).

A tower of anything sounds fun to me...if it can be stacked, layered and then otherwise disassembled after singing "Happy Birthday" it's all that much more fun.

Three days to go...my suggestions were taken under advisement and will be passed up the line to those ultimately responsible for deciding how we'll celebrate...me.

I'll keep ya posted.

people with mondays worse than mine...

2006-06-05T15:54:00.000+01:00

Since it's monday, and I'm generally prone to feeling sorry for myself for at least the first 4 hours of the day, i'm trying a new tactic this morning: finding people who's mondays are a whole lot worse than mine. Sure, I could sit until lunch time lamenting whatever decision I made years ago that landed me here, at this desk, in this temperature-inconsistent office, in this uncomfortable chair, but instead, here's my list of people for whom this monday is almost certainly worse than mine:

Joe Simpson's ex-Son-in-Law
Jessica has offered Nick a $1.5 million divorce settlement. Apparently he's entitled to something like $17.5 million from 2005 alone...my guess is that money is tight at Camp Simpson after the Hair Extentions Venture and $1.5 is about all she's got left.

The brighter side: If the stock of "Team Jessica" versus "Team Nick" t-shirts at Kitson boutique in LA is any indication, the greater Beverly Hills shopping public prefers the mister. So he can take his million and a half to the bank and rest easy with the smug satisfaction of a man that just won the ultimate Rodeo Drive t-shirt challenge. And if that's not better than alimony...

The Briterline Fam
Must be nice to be born with the proverbial silver spoon...but that distinguished entitlement now comes with a new set of grueling expectations. According to The Artist Formerly Known as K-Fed, ""It's completely unfair when a child is brought into this world and now he's already looked at like a prince," the soon-to-be-dad of four explains to Item magazine. "My kids are going to have to learn what a real job is, what life is. You don't have it easy with me. Period ... My kids are going to work at Taco Bell, dammit!"

The brighter side: "real job" is a flexible term. If fast-food doesn't work out, they can check with daddy for a more palatable list of alternatives. The market for celebrity child tell-all exposes is practically unlimited.

Cloned mules
Don't know why this made me think of the Brangelina baby, but the cloned mule offspring of a horse and a donkey (the same two animals that previously produced a champion racing mule) came up short in competition against "traditionally bred runners." See, the genes of two stellar parents doesn't necessarily spell W-I-N-N-E-R for the next generation (still thinking of Brangelina Baby...how first reports suggest that she has "brad's nose." shudder...) Rough day at the Reno racetracks for genetically engineered MULES.

The brighter side: according to researchers on the cloning team, the clone's "athletic performance" is "one thing that will make people feel warm and fuzzy about cloning." That's the word from Kenneth White, a Utah State University professor involved with the project. And you know, I think Ken's right...cloning-for-sport makes ME feel warm and fuzzy.

Beyonce
She spent her weekend with Wal-Mark executives and Taylor Hicks in what had to be her most fun public appearance in recent history. If it wasn't bad enough that her featured Christmas marketing campaign didn't really connect with the megastore's target audience (what??? you mean the average Wal-Mart shopper didn't buy the idea that Beyonce shops there, too???) she must have had some final contractual obligations to fulfill...it's the only believable reason to explain her performance at the annual shareholders meeting in Arkansas.

The brighter side: while Wal-Mart rejected its shareholders' requests for humane chicken slaughtering, they "agreed to quantify its women and minority workers and to define their duties." So Beyonce was more than just a great end to a great meeting, she was also an inadvertent poster child for "The New Wal-Mart." An "organic" Wal-Mart. A Wal-Mart that "loves change."

There...now I feel muuuuuuuuuuuch better about my monday. All I have to do is come to work and warm the seat. My weekend was spent cruising the Barnes & Noble bargain racks...I have it pretty easy!

the world is run by "d" students.

2006-06-02T16:18:00.000+01:00

I've amended my long-standing theory that the world is squished firmly in the sweaty palms of "C" students - that's just being too generous. Nope, after somewhere in the vicinity of seven separate jobs I've come to terms with the fact that those back-row, sleeping-thru-class, cheated-off-of-my-history-test, never-learned-to-write-legibly, always-asked-"will-this-be-on-the-test" kids are like sleeper agents in the offices next to us.

What they lack in brainpower they make up for in honest-to-goodness brown-nosing. What they lack in autonomy they make up for by legalistically adhering to (and, more irritatingly, ENFORCING) any single rule in sight. Oy, the policy-mongers. They lack any initiative of their own, but take solace in the feeling of superiority they get from citing a rule.

"No, you can't borrow ahead on your vacation, the employee manual says so."

"No, you can't comp time off, we don't have a comp policy."

"Noooooo, I won't put these homemade brownies out in the kitchen because it's too early for anyone to eat chocolate."

I kid not. Someone actually baked the brownies, brought them into the office, and kept them stashed under her desk until the stroke of noon, at which point the foil came off of the avocado green baking dish and the brownies showed up in the kitchen. And you know what - after all of that wait, they were "healthy" brownies made with no REAL brownie ingredients. Gluten-free this and carob-powdered that...and she made us WAIT???

They feel empowered by policing the workplace; I guess if they don't have power on their own, they can ride policy coattails into glory...??? Arg. Forget thinking for yourself, forget taking the workload bull by the horns (ok, fine, even I dodge the workload bull...), make your mark by...uh...boldly (blindly!) following in the shadow of the rule-makers! Can't go wrong by being the finger-pointer.

And while you're at it, reheat last night's broccoli in the microwave, because it makes the office SMELL. SO. GOOD.

i'd be his arm candy.

2006-06-01T18:37:00.000+01:00

I decided one day a few years ago that I wanted to be famous (well, that's misleading. I've wanted to be famous since I could hold a hairbrush like a microphone and lip sync to Amy Grant. BUT, I revisited this topic a little more aggressively just recently). So the question became, "Famous for what????" Well, I figure I have any number of things that I do pretty well, but becoming certifiably famous by my own merit...that takes too stinkin long. I'd rather just be famous by association.

Not "trashy-famous," in that jet-setting, trustafarian, daddy's-money way...I'd rather be Famous-Guy-Arm-Candy...have my picture taken, appear glamourously in all the right places, at all the right times, accompanied by all the right gentleman.

The criteria is pretty simple: I'd accompany decently well-respected, more or less clean-cut, sexually low-profile (that is, not prone to tabloid-esque flings with over-exposed minor-celebrity girls or A-listers who have otherwise been linked with so many co-stars they're a verifiable petrie dish. ewwwww), generally well-dressed famous guys around town (premiers, press appearances, restaurant openings, things like that), careful always to be photographed with them, until I became a household name, too. It's basically an extension of a game my mom and I like to play: IfYouCouldBeStrandedOnADesertIslandWith5Celebrities
WhoWouldTheyBe?

So here's the lucky list:

Dennis Quaid
He makes reasonable professional decisions, reasonable personal-life decisions, is reasonably rugged, and by association, would make me seem like a reasonable sort of girl...NOT a bad reputation to have as Famous Guy Arm Candy - who wants to be received as flaky and disengenuious, anyway? Associate with the reasonable and they'll take your picture much more frequently (and probably opt to catch you at the more flattering moments, no less!). And on top of that, Dennis seems like the kind of guy that would say something reasonably complimentary about your hair or dress at just the right moment.

Simon Cowell
Ok, I think he's foxy in that smirking, non-plussed sort of way...and basically, if the man that's underwhelmed by everyone were seen around town with me...well that would automatically put me heads and shoulders above most everyone else without doing a thing, right? If the man that looks down his nose at even talented, good-looking people decided it was A-OK to take me to dinner...superstar, right then and there.

Anthony LaPaglia
"Uh...what are you, SIXTY years old?? Why are you into him???"
Guess I'm a sucker for swarthy, quiet types with a little in the middle (and apparently chin, and cheeks...and...). But he stays under the radar, doesn't land himself in the tabloids, and there's that subtle little accent that creeps in from time to time. He broods a little...and what girl doesn't like the challenge of cheering up a brooding, swarthy man? Not that primetime tv hunks tend to get a whole lot of attention anyway, so maybe the arm candy can work in both directions in this case...he'll be seen around town with a nice young thing...I'll be seen with "that guy from that one show...with the blonde girl...and wasn't he the one wearing the mesh shirt in 'The Client?'"

Jeff Probst
Apparently another 20-something already beat me to the punch with this one...but she pretty much went straight down my bullet-pointed list of "things to accomplish before I'm 30" and took the wind outta my sails..."Psych degree, check! Get on tv, get tanned, get skinny, check! Take the Khaki King home to mom and dad, check!" How would he catapult me to superstardom? I'm not....reallly....sure. But he's got those sparkly white teeth and that wry sarcastic angle...and that corny helicopter bit that got so old at the end of every season of Survivor, I loved that bit!

George Clooney

This one is pretty much just a "what-can-you-do-for-me" pick. He's a decent-looking guy, but I'd call it more of a conquest thing...if Lucy Liu can't keep the man, there's not a lot of hope for the rest of us, but to be seen - actually seen in public, not rumoured to have dined in private - with him would make me that much more intruiging, AND he's about as high-profile as they come...only foreseeable complication: having someone's equally high-profile arm to rebound toward when I'm inevitably dropped cold for ambiguous reasons having something to do with "committment."

forget starter condo. i want an island treehouse.

2006-05-31T19:56:00.000+01:00

One of the best Christmas presents I can remember receiving was my very own copy of The Swiss Family Robinson...the deluxe, remastered, restored, two-disc set (courtesy of Bethy).

I love those Robinsons. They're plucky. And golden-skinned. They can dance, and sing, and terrorize vicious bands of pirates using fruits and vegetables of the island.

I watched the movie last night, and after a quick discussion about what Family Robinson planned to do about the shortage of women (Roberta was darling, sure...but does Fritz really want to share, just for the good of the island?), I decided that the overpriced, windowless apartment conversions being sold as "condominiums" are stupid.

I don't want a starter home or a fixer-upper or a nice bland duplex.

I want a treehouse. With a retractable roof to gaze at the stars, and an organ to play so that the family can dance peppy jigs, and a water wheel...and ugly curtains, and a giant conch shell for a sink. That's what I want.

I want a deserted island, and a pet tiger, and a Fritz of my own...

Kale tells me "I'll build you one!"

"Okay!!! Where?!"

"Ummm...somewhere with trees!"

"Perfect!!!"

And we'll use a bellows to stoke the kitchen fire, and we'll catch and eat...wild chickens and we'll bathe in the ocean and frolick in the surf and live happily ever after!

And if we end up with a child as irritating as Ernst, we'll definitely send him off to a distant "University."

and i thought there were already too many reasons to visit dollywood

2006-05-26T15:52:00.000+01:00

Add FREE GAS to the list of fantastic reasons not to miss Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.

Apparently concerned that high gas prices would deter summer visitors to the town's one claim to fame, Dollywood, the town's executive director of tourism came up with this very original tag line: "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade -- or in this case, gasoline!"

Now legions (and when I say legions, I'm not kidding - apparently 11 million people visit Dolly Parton's home town every year) of kids can now tug on their parents' sleeves and say, "Dad, can we drive to Tenessee for gas?!" and Dad can say, "Sure, slugger, long as you let me ride a roller coaster or two while we're there!"

The giveaway continues through the summer. Apparently a giant red tanker (and a team of Pigeon Forge-ites in matching red t-shirts) swoops through the town's outlet malls, restaurants and other area "attractions" and distributes $30 gasoline gift certificates.

Meaning that clearly, I should scrap all current honeymoon plans and demand a trip to Dollywood...where, along with the beautiful memories of hot dogs and ice cream cones and lemonade in keepsake plastic cups and souveniere photos of myself on various roller coasters, I can hit up the shell station courtesy of Dolly Parton's home town...

making the whole visit worth it.

reasons seattle's okay

2006-05-24T18:35:00.000+01:00

Seems most of the blogs I regularly read these days come outta NYC. And good for 'em. I like to think I could hack it in most cities if push came to shove, but that's basically a lie...I'm west coast-ish. I'm suburban. I'm not good with public transportation. I like generic chain restaurants. I shop at...malls.

West-coast-ish as I may be, I'm not crazy about living in Seattle...I've lived here long enough not to appreciate whatever it is the newcomers appreciate. The weather is - yep - RAINY and horrible most of the year. People tend to be clique-ish, politically correct, passive-aggressive. They drive miserably. Too many of them own boats that they too seldomly use.

That said, I have to appreciate a few things about this town:

I can wear whatever shoes I want. This is the home of "socks with sandals" and while I may have ridden that wave ten or fifteen years ago, I generally choose to conform to fashionable footwear standards. But if I wanted to, I could wear the "LATEST, HOTTEST AQUATIC-HYBRID SHOE FROM REI!" with pride, knowing there were at least a few thousand others out there sportin the same. I could wear something from my high school Doc Marten collection and no one would look at me sideways.
I don't have to worry about which place is this week's "hot spot" because...um...there aren't any. In a land of Microsoft money and Starbucks, the comings and goings of clubs and restaurants are few and far between. There are steadfast local mainstays where the food really is the point (think stuffy steakhouses where the "boat people" go for a ciroc martini after taking their in-laws out on the yacht to oogle the pieces of Bill Gates' pad visible from the lake). There are pizza joints, but the places with VIP lists and 4-hour long waits at the door are the breakfast spots serving the best "organic biscuits and shade-grown coffee."
"Dress Code Strictly Enforced" means that I'm A-OK with a bright pink bra hanging out of my wife-beater and a trucker hat on my head. I kid not. I remember a club opening up a few years ago that called itself "Seattle's only Vegas-Style Niteclub...dress to impess, ladies!" Checked the place out...must have been five or six girls with pink bras, itty bitty stretched-out tank tops and trucker hats. Strictly. Enforced.
Dick's Cheeseburgers. Not the deluxe, they over-do the runny sauce-relish stuff, but a nice strawberry milkshake and a plain old cheeseburger are tasty and cheap...leaving me with plenty of cash in my wallet for shoes from REI!
The VonDutch trend came and went and we survived obliviously unscathed.
If I know someone that knows someone that works at Microsoft, I can get cheap software at the company store.
If I know someone that knows someone that works at Microsoft, I can get cheap xbox games at the company store (came in handy a few times for Christmas presents).
If I know someone that knows someone that works at Microsoft, I can get Nalgene bottles that say "MICROSOFT!" at the company store.
While I can't afford to buy a house here yet, I CAN afford to pay my rent and still have plenty of cash in my wallet for shoes from REI!

another baby robbed of any shot at normalcy

2006-05-23T20:05:00.000+01:00

In a fair and balanced world, there would be a special school where rich little children with names like Apple and Suri and Coco and Sailor Lee and Dreena and Aspen go to feel normal, to fit in, to avoid the giggles and "huh? could you spell that" reactions from classmates with more...conventional names.

Enroll Bluebell Madonna Haliwell in that school, asap.

Because when reciting your baby's name, it's always neat to have it sound like a verse from "This Old Man." Nick-Nack-Pattywack. Bluebell Haliwell.

Maybe it was a subtle dig at the absentee father of Ms Ginger Spice's baby...because she knows he'll inevitably read about the baby in a magazine or newspaper. He'll probably recoil knowing that there's a lovely little girl out in the world that's made of 50% him and her name is Bluebell Madonna.

Unfortunately, I don't think such a school specifically exists...because even in the most expensive, exclusive, probably British private Academy, there's bound to be a perfectly rich and entitled Mary or an Ann or a William or a Jonathan...at which point all bets are off. Poor little Bluebell will come home some day and ask Mommy Ginger why the girls at school think she was named after a dairy creamery...

if office life was a disaster movie...

2006-05-22T18:42:00.000+01:00

Power went out today at work - utterly debilitating, by the way. But as we're sitting around making awkward "hey, can we go home now!" banter (lots of needless jokes about doing work "the old-fashioned way"), someone says, "Sorta feels like we should be hiding under our desks or something, like it's a drill."

What prompted that, I dunno....BUT, in the spirit of Finding Creatively Inspiring Situations in Everyday Life, I had this absolutely fantastic idea:

If this WERE a disaster epic and we were the cast of characters, who would I be? Or the rest of the office for that matter...So I came up with the sort of standard "distaster movie" stereotype characters and tried to determine who fell into what role...

Since it's my disaster epic fantasy, I get to be the Surviving Damsel. Yep, the one that looks great in wet/scorched/maimed or otherwise clingy and partially obliterated clothing...I'm the one with the hair that looks fantastic even when wet and plastered to my face. I can be broken, bruised, battered and bleeding and the hunky hero guy still wants to plant a wet one on me as the credits roll. I have a high-pitched, blood-curdling scream that I use liberally...I'm not expected to come up with the means of survival, I'm just expected to be a "team player," swim when everyone else swims, climb when they climb, run when they run and cling to hero's arm for dear life, trailing just far enough behind to make him look manly and...heroic.

We'd need a standard Kurt Russell/Bruce Willis/Russell Crowe-esque leading man. These are in naturally short supply in the standard suburban office environment staffed mostly by middle-aged working stiffs, all of whom look about as dashing and heroic as my KitchenAid stand mixer. There's the ex-Army Colonel that may have been tough once, but now he's just a tall, thin man with a bald spot and well-shined loafers.

There's a young, broad-shouldered, tight polo shirt-addicted ivy-league type down the hall that might look the part, but he's lacking that certain rough-around-the-edges ruggedness that makes him believable in a save-the-world-from-certain-demise role...his skin is a little too fair (too many hours at the gym, too little time outside, I guess?)...if he got slashed by a falling tree while saving the damsel or punched by the villain during a narrow escape...it would ruin the whole look. Not to mention I think he'd cry.

MrCompanyOwner is also out...he seems camera-friendly, he's got a certain outdoorsy vibe that suggests he might be able to run faster than a tidal wave or hold his breath for 20 or 25 minutes while doing some under-water-welding to free trapped innocents gasping their last few breaths. Trouble is...he's about 5'5, 150 if he's lucky. A little too slight, perhaps to save the world. And he's a very picky eater. That doesn't bode well for his survival if he needs to stop mid-disaster and order up a steaming plate of edamame while everyone else is raiding the last vending machine on earth for Snickers bars and Doritos...

Basically, it doesn't look all that great for planet earth if it's left up to this particular group of working stiffs...maybe I should suggest we add a line to our employment application:

"Please list two qualities that would enable you to save the world in the event of an epic disaster."

ahh, Captain von Trapp...

2006-05-20T02:40:00.000+01:00

Got a pesky bit of "The Sound of Music" stuck in my head this afternoon - "How do you solve a problem like Maria" came out of nowhere and absolutely broadsided me...the same verse, of course, over...and over...and over:

"She'd outpester any pest
Drive a hornet from its nest
She could throw a whirling dervish out of whirl
She is gentle! She is wild!
She's a riddle! She's a child!
She's a headache!
She's an angel!
She's a guhlllllllllllll!"

At any rate, the only way to get the tune outta my head was to dig out the 40th anniversary edition dvd and watch the pretty nuns sing the rest of the verses.

And then, there he is...

Captain von Trapp.

I think I actually swoon over the good Captain. So buttoned up and presentable. So straight-laced. So smug. So dashing. So crisp. So well-coifed, well-dressed, well-shaven. So trim and precise and starched..with that honey-smooth voice. And...shrill whistle. And strange child-rearing practices (but clearly, so virile...8 children, was it? my my my).

His transformation over the course of the movie is so subtle, I pretty much can't help falling in love with the Captain right along with Maria...I want to serenade him in the gazebo...snuggle up against those perfect lapels...

Ah, Captain.

"i know you by the tone of your clip-clop"

2006-05-19T21:43:00.000+01:00

MrCompanyOwner loves wood. Loves old wood, new wood, dark wood, light wood, heavy wood, porous wood, expensive wood, very expensive wood, wood of any sort. For awhile, we had an entire slab of birch tree in the kitchen where a more formica-inclined office would have had a mere...table.

So it comes as no surprise that the floors in the office are made of wood (apparently very soft wood because I've found about half a dozen spots where my heel will sink into a stealthy hollow-spot if I'm particularly engaged in anything OTHER than watching carefully where I step and I end up doing a terrible...no, make that wonderful, attractive, graceful FLAILING maneuver to keep from ending up non-upright). They're very noisy wood floors. Sound hollow underneath. Cause VERY loud "clip-clop" noise for anyone walking on them.

After a few years of listening to people "clip-clop" toward my office, I'm able to recognize who's coming as soon as they start down the hallway. And it spooks people.

"Hi Jim."

"Whoa...how did you know it was me, your back was turned?"

"How did I know it was you? mwuahahahahaha."

I could probably use this to my advantage...develop a VERY mysterious reputation. Start telling them cryptic things like, "You have a vague, orange energy that's very distinct," or "Your presence is very disquieting to me, I can feel you from some distance."

my money's on an ugly baby.

2006-05-19T18:41:00.000+01:00

If I had a bag of Sour Patch Kids for every time I read about BabyBrangelina being a genetic lottery winner: I'd. Be. Fat.

Why do we assume that this kid is gonna inherit only the photo-friendly parts of mom and pop? Is it just me, or are we overlooking the fact that Brad has one vertical nostril on his under-sized nose and one horizontal nostril? And if a baby popped outta the womb with Angie lips, it'd be a frightening little bundle of joy for the first 20 years of its life. And Daddy's pockmarks...ah, yes, the pockmarks. Maybe a baby with a mile-high forehead, giant lips, asymmetrical nostrils and a skin condition COULD be good-looking, but genetic lottery-winner?

I'd bet Jennifer Lopez and CadaverMark would have one heck of a pretty kid, and I doubt anyone would have expected Liv Tyler to turn out so lovely, considering where half of her genes came from.

I would venture a guess that neither of Alan Cummings' parents on their own look half as strange as Alan Cummings himself...just a guess.

Nope, I'm not poignantly homeless.

2006-05-17T20:16:00.000+01:00

Did a little lite reading this morning. Read "The Wandering Scribe's" blog (lite; get it? LITE! As in: No-Paragraph-Breaks-For-Pages-At-A-Time-Written-In-A-Style-That-Reminds-
Me-Why-I-Had-Trouble-Finishing-The-Classics-In-High-School kind of lite).

Had long, deep, "I-feel-like-superficial-pondscum" moment, then pulled back out of it.

I'm sure Ms...Wandering is perfectly, legitimately homeless. I'm sure she really did sneak around hospitals to bathe and libraries to write, I'll assume the best, but in the wake of so much highly publicized literary...uh...misrepresentation, I'm taking her with a few grains. Because it's just turning out to be a little toooooo lucrative. Call me cynical (or perceptive enough to suspect that she had a larger audience in mind when she began writing...she wrote with a self-awareness that seemed - to me - slightly out of sync with what I'd expect a homeless woman unfamiliar with online journaling to crank out).

Here's an exerpt:

"And looking up through the window screen at the still deep-blue sky at almost 2:00 am. A high blue, star-studded dome. I'd never seen the sky like that before, like a funnel way high up in it, as if the lid had secretly been lifted off the 'flat' sky during the night to reveal this other space way high above it. A space which was distinctly domed. Just exactly like the blue-ceilinged cupola of a church, painted with stars — and across it, and at that hour, a handful of seagulls gliding silently and languorously back and forth, back and forth, way way high up through it. Pure and white and silent; their slow flight almost a roll across the deep-blue parabola glittering with stars, and seemingly almost choreographed. Divine. Like doves, sent out on some secret heavenly mission. Or a sign — a silent, wondrous scene — for my eyes only."

Then imagine about a thousand pages like that, all filled with wonder and awe and brain-splitting appreciation for the trees and the crashing surf and a general amazement about things like breathing.

I know, I'm just an American hick with a waning appreciation for finely-strung sentences, delicately crafted, lace-like phrasing and centuries-old British syntax. Or, yes, I'm just a jealous, unpublished, oft-frustrated writer that can't handle watching others succeed where I've failed. Guess I could just make it up. Literary integrity is a grey area these days anyway, right?

No, I'll be honest: compelling homeless plight aside, I just wasn't that into her writing.

I think we're in Kansas.

2006-05-13T06:06:00.000+01:00

I remember listening to a comedy-snippet on the radio a few weeks ago and the guy (I'd give him credit if I could remember who it was) was making parallels between millionaires and hicks...("If you have a dozen cars, you're either reaaaaalllly rich....or reeaaaaallllly poor" and "if you spend all day in your bathrobe....really rich, or just scraping by" and "if you have upholstered furniture on your porch or in your yard...really rich, or down n' out).

SO - when I saw this picture, I thought of the same thing...if you shop barefoot and your friend brings the dog along, you're either in Walmart or Beverly Hills. Sigh.

It's gross, it really is. Sunglasses to obscure entire face: CHECK. Scarf that reaches aaaaallllllll the way to the ankles: CHECK. 'Hawk-shaved rat-dog? DEFINITELY. Ooops! Forgot my shoes!

No, I won't write about 'em cuz I don't like 'em. So there.

2006-05-11T17:36:00.000+01:00

RichieHeatherDeniseCharlie (a desperate, last-ditch attempt by fledgling "stars" of stage and screen to save their kamikaze careers by means of tabloid-itis if I ever saw one. They're probably all camped out together garden-party-style sharing pitchers of mint juleps, anyway. )

TomKat (cuz they still give me the heebie-jeebies and absolutely ruined what used to be a cultivated, if not somewhat loathesome appreciation of MI:II. Can't help loving the way Dougray Scott makes a word like "gagging" sound so difficult to pronounce...but if it means skipping Tom scenes to get to the pinkie-snipping Dougray scenes...forget it. Too much work!)

Mischa Barton (other than to say that her head is oddly shaped and her feet strikingly large. Other than that, she's just BORING to me, no matter how many times she's inadvertantly cited in other catty girls' feuds)

Star Jones Reynolds.

She's so endearingly out-of-the-loop these days.

2006-05-10T17:03:00.000+01:00

There's something sort of sweet about a fledgling, bloated starlet-that-was appearing on a late-nite show to promote a whole lot of not-much. It's even better when her hair looks a little lackluster and she's sporting fantastically squishable upper arms.
But here's what made me giggle: when Mr Letterman asked her if she was pregnant, she said, "Don't worry Dave, it's not yours." I didn't giggle because she was witty. I didn't giggle because she laughed at her own little joke. I didn't giggle because he replied, "Oh. Well I think that's good news for both of us." Nope. I giggled because it was a terrific, iconic example of hard she's trying to stay relevant, hip, "cool." And that she's failing.
See, she's just familiar enough with the Letterman crowd to know that most of the female guests like to "play-flirt" with Dave. It's cute. It's funny. It's ironic. Pretend that you're in love with Dave, pretend you're infatuated with Dave, let Dave make little overtures at you or ooogle your young little rack or compliment your "dress" or something. Play coy, chastize him for being naughty, slap his hand in that coquettish way, it's always a hit. Everyone likes to watch movie stars "play-flirt" with the funny, geeky man.

That much she understands. But she fails with the delivery. Are we supposed to believe, even in that waning-starlet-late-nite-tv-appearance-suspended-reality way that Dave and Britney ever knocked boots? She was too literal. It wasn't coy, it wasn't mysterious, it wasn't playful, it was contrived. And uncomfortable. And too obvious (maybe it's just my taste, but to me, it's not funny unless it's subtle...but then, silly me, sublety is not something rehearsed very regularly in the School of Pop Star). At any rate...she's having another baby. I'll refrain from any "Oops" references, because, well...it's not subtle.

But we can rest assured of one thing. Britney Spears and David Letterman didn't sleep together. Now we can rest easy. She may still be married to a lyrical...GENIUS, she may be modeling parenting skills culled from a combination of sitcoms and tabloids, but she is NOT carrying David Letterman's baby.

Gee, glad that's cleared up.

The games cell phone companies play.

2006-05-08T17:09:00.000+01:00

So, I log into my verizonwireless account this morning to see what I owe this month. Oh gee, apparently I have a $149 CREDIT. Hmmm, this is puzzling since I paid my bill in fully last month and didn't pay anything since then. Puzzling. SO, I check out the payment history and there, on May 4th is a $200 payment...in CASH. Further odd, since I only ever pay with my debit card, wouldn't even know HOW to pay with "CASH" in this case. Strange.

SOOOO, I call customer service, say, "Maybe you have more information about this than I do, but I'm looking at my bill online and see a large $200 payment that I DID NOT make. And it says it was paid with cash, I always pay with a credit card."

"Oh my," says the customer service rep. "Heather, a cash payment is a payment made in-store at a kiosk. Someone probably misentered their account number by one digit and it credited your account, Heather."

I say, "Not that I'd mind a huge credit on my bill, but it's not mine."

"Yes, Heather, and whoever paid that $200 will be surprised when it doesn't show up on their account. Heather, I'm gonna put you on hold while I speak with financial services and find out what to do, Heather."

(I'm NOT embellishing the number of times she managed to work my name into a sentence.)

"Okey dokey."

She comes back a minute later.

"Heather, I'm still holding with financial services, I just wanted you to know that I haven't forgotten about you."

"Cool, thanks."

She comes back after a few more minutes.

"Heather, it looks like we're going to be holding for quite awhile for the next available financial services representative. I don't want to keep you on the line that long, so I'm going to research this for you, Heather, and call you back when I have an answer."

"Alrightee, thanks."

So, she calls back a few minutes later.

"Heather, I spoke with financial services, and they told me to tell you to pay your bill as normal at this time. Your current amout due is $50.06. Just pay that as you normally would, and when the cash payment customer calls to find out where their payment has been applied, we'll take the credit off of your account at this time."

"Ok, thanks."

SO, I go back to verizonwireless.com to make my $50.06 payment. I hit, "Approve!" for my payment, and get an error...Basically the error is telling me that they know I have a big massive credit on my account, and their computers think I'm a dummy for continuing to pay a bill that's at least 3 months prepaid...some sort of "amount entered cannot be less than the amount due or must be equal to or greater than zero." Ok, makes no sense, but basically, it won't let me pay again online until this is resolved. SO, they tell me to pay my bill as usual and wait for someone to call and complain about a missing credit...BUT, I can't pay my bill until someone calls to whine...love it.

Huh...???

2006-05-05T16:16:00.000+01:00

And they say you can't believe everything you read these days.

Noticed this on CNN this morning: "Nicole Richie: 'I'm too thin.'"

Preposterous. She's too what?

Yes, right there between an article about possible peace in Darfur, Rep. Kennedy's "Ambien Accident," and today's oil prices is a snippet about all 82, burrito-eating pounds of Ms Richie, who "doesn't know what she weighs right now."

Riiiiight. And if she's really, truly, actually female and really, truly, actually human, that's a crock of you-know-what. "I have no idea what I weigh right now."

Apparently when under stress, she loses her appetite. She can't eat, she drops pounds, she damages legions of delicate, impressionably young girls who see her shrink and decide they need to shrink, too, she apologizes, she attempts to gain weight on her own. By eating her own weight in mexican food. Apparently that didn't work.

That's where I say "HUH...?" Let's imagine this is me. Let's imagine I go through a horrific breakup (been there), I'm depressed and distracted and unable to choke down my carrot sticks (been there, actually...I found the only thing I could stomach in a time of stress was chai tea, lite on the tea, heavy on the milk and honey...must have had 6 cups a day)...I drop 40 pounds (my hair becomes the heaviest part of my body, my lovely feminine "charms" vanish entirely) and when I finally tire of the incessant "Eating disorder! Eating disorder!" accusations, I decide to take matters into my own hands. I'll force the food down. I'll eat Taco Del Mar and Taco Del Mar only, breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner, snack (sort of the reverse Subway-Jared trick). Now, if this were me, I'd magically see the problem solved. That lumpy area between butt and thigh would be thrilled to come back home, the squishy hips would reappear, and the strange phenomenon whereby each time I gain weight it finds a new, strange, wonderful place to settle where it never existed previously would definitely happen...in short: if I eat nothing but burritos in an unabashed attempt to GAIN WEIGHT it's a sure thing. I'd win every time.

Apparently didn't happen quite like that for Nic. Her boobs are still MIA. Her collarbone is still casting spooky shadows. Her elbows are still thicker than her biceps...

So she's seeking medical attention. The nutritionist's verdict is that if this is NOT an eating disorder, with some proper calories she should see some weight reappear. If it is, in fact, anorexia...well I'd imagine CNN will keep me well in the loop.

Radio stations and Cinco de Mayo

2006-05-04T18:46:00.000+01:00

I have a very high tolerance for bad pop music. Love my top 40 over-played "hits." If it's over-produced, over-exposed, over-advertised and otherwise over-anything, you can bet it's playing loudly in my car. I love the self-indulgent, likewise over-produced morning shows that play the bad pop music, occassionally even listen through a commercial break if I think there's a ridiculously, embarassingly catchy Destiny's Child or Ashlee Simpson song on the other side. But what pushes me over the edge (or, what inevitably drives me straight back to the loving arms of NPR) is the ridiculous excuses they find to inflict their DJ's on the innocent radio-listening public. Case in point: Cinco de Mayo. I think my locally affiliated arm of the Infinity Broadcasting behemoth is managing to be at no fewer than 1,746 places simultaneously this Friday, interrupting our peaceful salsa-slurping, margarita-imbibing, and "Arriba!-"declaring...

Thing is, it's not just Cinco de Mayo...it's President's Day, it's Halloween, it's Valentine's day, (ooh, definitely can't forget St Patty's day....one of their favorites. If they can invade every local Irish pub in the greater Seattle Area in their "party vans" that makes them that much better than the other radio stations managing only to invade 97%)...no occassion to set up a tent and let teenagers give a "shout out" to their friends (inevitably with names like Chelsea, Jenny, Brittany, Lindsay, Carlie...always ending in "eee" sounds) is too small an occassion.

But here's my complaint: as a basically materialistic, more-or-less shopping-addicted, generally fashion-magazine-purchasing 20-something, I'm right in their target zone...I'm supposed to be responding to the "Get on the VIP List" invitations like tabloids to Teri Hatcher...I'm supposed to be spending my weekends at the same clubs and malls and car dealerships they're camped out, looking forward to weekends spent amped up on any combination of Red Bull and liquor I can get my hands on -I'm supposed to be on the edge of my seat waiting for the "By Invitation Only" Halloween Party, or that "Come get a free tank of gas and a bumper sticker" President's Day extravaganza...problem is...I don't do any of that. I just like bad top 40 music. I don't flock to the strip mall with my four Seven-jeans-wearing best friends hoping that "cute" DJ will be there and put me on the radio for three seconds so I can giggle and then text message the rest of my friends to find out if they heard me...

I just like bad music.

Surely I'm not alone...?

Famous people I just plain dig. Part I.

2006-05-03T20:00:00.000+01:00

Can't help lovin the train wrecks.

I don't know if it was the bulimia, the car wrecks, the constant Fueds With Blondes, the briefly-linked-with-Brett-Ratner gossip (that one left my head spinning), the "I love the act of love...but I don't sleep around, that's gross!" concession or the desperate-to-be-the-face-of-a-designer hang-up (which leads, unfortunately, to bland, conservative, suddenly-always-lacey clothing choices - bring back the halter tops and biker jackets of the Wilmer-As-Arm-Candy days, you were much more interesting then!) that endeared me to lil Lindsay, but I guess I'm not alone...at last glance there were something like 40,000 people claiming to be said train wreck on myspace (compared to, say, 33,000 people masquerading as fellow train-wreck Nicole Richie). I spend waaaaaay too much time cruising celeb gossip, but my real weakness is "LiLo." I dunno, maybe I'm just waiting for her to get knocked up, or aisle-dash (please, just not with Brett Ratner!)...maybe I just want to (*gasp - yes, i'm about to say it*) BE her, in some convoluted way...yeep, that's probably it. Here I was, previously self-respecting, decently level-headed, prone to reasonably classy moments, now I'm wanting to life-swap with everyone's most maladjusted Jersey girl? More on this thought later...

Errr...maybe this matters a little bit.

2006-05-03T16:25:00.000+01:00

I'm as envious as the next office rat about kids who's parents can afford expensive ivy league educations (and, ok, fine, I guess the kids had to work a little themselves), but add "Sophomore Harvard Kid With Book Deal" to that and I'm certifiably green-ish.

SO - imagine my disappointment (naw, better that that--my UTTER DISMAY...yep) when I noticed an article today about a teen chick-lit writer with a two-book deal and a "reported" six-figure advance being accused of plagarism. A Harvard student. Contributor to a local newspaper. Published author (aHA - so SHE'S the one out there stealing all the gigs I want while I'm sitting in an ergonimic antithesis, slapping the fax machine around, hoping the bank reconciliation balances for once...just this once...!). Fraud. Uhhh, yep, that's right. fraud.

Ok, so I'm probably overreacting...I'm just the aspiring writer-contributor-ivy leaguer stuck sitting at a desk all day in the accounting office of a construction company withering on the proverbial vine ("Yes, Bob Jones of Bob Jones Hauling and Excavating, I did sent your check for $624.12 on Friday, we paid that invoice in full. Yep, if you haven't received that by Wednesday, gimme a call back, I'll be glad to stop payment and reissue the check!" Now, be a good Mr Jones and never call me again! Thanks!)

I guess it made me start thinking...are the Harvard and Princeton and Stanford students of the world trading original, genuine thought and authentic compositions for an easy cruise on the coattaills of their alma mater's reputation? Have they become so disconnected from the rest of us working stiffs that they figure their school's brand is credit enough? Who needs to write their own material, they've got the greatest academic label in the country slapped on their forehead, who will bother to challenge 'em? I mean really, they worked hard enough to get where they're at, right? Isn't that enough? Good to know Harvard's busy creating the next generations's independent thinkers...

Sigh.

Oh, and I promise, I won't be nearly so soap-boxy by tomorrow...just had to brush off my "holier-than-thou" microphone and get a little social disdain worked outta my system. Watch out plagarizing ivy league sweetie-pies the country over...I imagine your agents will be thirsty for a hard-workin cute young thing like me once they're finished with scandalous damage-control. I've got plenty of my own ideas.

Ah, for now, uh...back to accounts receivable. Rich Guys A, B and C need to pay for their million-dollar remodels...hope their $450 toilet paper holders are servin 'em well. I imagine they probably graduated from someplace like Yale themselves...

"Good to know Harvard's creating independent thinkers..."