growing the family....

My family might be getting bigger by one.

I am fostering a dog. A little Jack Russell mix named Sweetie, although depending on how big she is, we might call her Itty-Bitty. It's a long-ish story, but the short of it is that a friend of some friends knows of a family on some hard times - and their dog needs a home to stay in for the interim. I figured I could handle that, as I'm already used to a small dog.

My hope is that she gets along with the cohabitational pets.

Yes, I realize that these foster situations turn into "forever homes". We'll see. Even if it turns out to be a pain in the ass, it feels like the right thing to do.

Getting back in the saddle again

So, I've gotten past a very tough week: an interview fell through, a guy I had been seeing for 6 weeks decided that he wasn't that into me - and let me know via text message, and I received a bruise the size of a large cantaloupe on my leg (unrelated to the guy).

However, this week, things are looking up. I have a few more leads on possible new jobs, and although work is still frustrating, difficult, and tense (3 people have been fired during the last week), I am feeling okay about things. I am glad to have a job right now, as I have met a lot of people who don't - so I'm thankful there. I have saved a decent amount of go-to-hell money, which always makes me feel more secure. And I just discovered that Icy/Hot pads make bruises disappear a lot faster. But ultimately, I am really thankful for my friends and family, who have all been super supportive of me during this time. You have all kept me sane (as sane as I get, anyway), and I can't tell you how much I appreciate that. That, and I still have supercute and awesome pets. There....that's as mushy as I get. Love you!

eyes welded shut

I want to curl up in a ball and spoon with my dog and cry. It's been that kind of day.

Dissed-appointment

The interview I was so excited about on Friday was canceled. I found out on Friday, right as I was about to leave for the interview, that they had given the position to another person, which was a really big disappointment. I called my contact to thank him for his time and asked him to keep me in mind if any other similar positions popped up and he said that there were a few other positions on the website I could apply to - one having the exact same title (but was with another division?). In one of his initial emails to me, he did say that he was interviewing for two positions...so I'm just left wondering - was he trying to give me the brush-off on Friday? Or is the other position really in another department working for somebody else? I applied for the other position (the exact same description, but with a different application number). We'll see what happens. It was definitely frustrating, but I suppose it shouldn't be that easy to find another job.

I also had a long time to think about it as I drove to Tennessee for a friend's wedding this weekend. Being in the car by myself for that period of time was a little maddening, but I made it.

Onward and upward.

long-haul week

Good news, I scored a job interview! Now, I already have a job, and I am thankful to have a job, but I'm looking for a better fit. However, at my current job - we are in the middle of planning/budgeting/staffing for next year - so we are jam packing our days full of analysis and meetings, meetings, meetings! I managed to fit in a very short phone interview this afternoon, so that seemed pretty amazing, considering I have been scarfing down chicken fingers while typing away at the computer screen during my lunch "break". The interview is later in the week, so perhaps I will feel less stressed then, or maybe after that I'll feel like curling up in the fetal position all weekend while listening to Ray LaMontagne. I'll do my best to keep you updated.

Seemed like a good idea at the time, Pt. 1

It was not wise to open that can of cat food while I had that bland pile of spinach souffle in my mouth. When that warm-metallic-meat scent hit my nose, it almost put me on a bus to pukey-town.

Gross.

I hate moms...

Okay, so I hate stupid Moms who blame others for their shortcomings in parenting their own children.

This weekend at the Drive-In Invasion, I pull into the parking lot, and see an empty spot next to a tent that a family has set up in a previously open parking space. As I get closer, I can see a 4 year old sitting in a yard chair very near to the parking space I am about to pull into. I keep my eye on the 4-yr-old while sloooooooowly pulling into the spot, making sure to pull in as far away from the little tyke as possible. The parents are nowhere to be found. After I pull in and turn off the ignition, the mom knocks on my window, so I roll it down.

"I would have appreciated if you had asked me to move my daughter before you pulled you car up in the space next to her!"

Me (what I actually said): "I'm sorry."

Me (what I wanted to say): "I would appreciate it if you keep an eye out on your own children and not place the responsibility of your childrens' safety into the hands of strangers in a PARKING LOT! Keep your child in the car seat while you're unloading the car! Better yet, don't bring your children to an event where people will be drinking in public all day and racing motorcycles around pedestrian areas. I'm going to slap the taste out of your mouth now."

Ultimately I went with "I'm sorry" as I realized she just wanted to be mad, and as a person who is going to yell at a reasonable person for parking in a parking lot - I had her pegged for a crazy who would probably key my car at the slightest provocation, so I went the apologetic route. Although I did say it with a "Yeah, whatever" tone - so that made me feel a bit better.

I hope I'm never a lazy, crazy mom. These are women who are just taking advantage of the situation. Maybe next time I should say something really awful and then peel out.

Yes, maybe that would educate all involved.

Resuming and resume-ing

It has been a stressful two weeks, but it has also been a fruitful time. I feel like I have figured out a few key ingredients that are missing from my life and a few ingredients that have no business being in my life, and now I just need the patience and fortitude to make the recipe work. Sorry to my readers if this blog goes a while without being updated - I am going through some minor life upheaval and restructuring. I'll see if I can bust out some funny stories by the end of this much-deserved 3 day weekend.

vacation-ing

Sorry that it has been a while since I last rapped at ya. I've been preparing for my big vacation, which means I'm taking 4 whole days off of work. I'm now on day 2 of my vacation. I'm visiting some family, resting, relaxing, and recuperating. I will also be heading to a friend's wedding on Saturday. I'm not sure what to expect from this wedding, but I am friends with both the bride and the groom, so I'm very happy to see them getting hitched. I will update you as the weekend progresses, but for now, I did not want to leave you hanging.

500 Days of Summer

Similar to a lot of my previous boyfriends, I had known about 500 Days of Summer for a while and didn't pay much attention to it until I got really, really bored. It was initially on the bill for the Atlanta Film Fest back in the Spring, but the film description didn't really catch my eye. I saw several major summer blockbusters before this movie even crossed my mind.

Literally, today I thought "I haven't seen a move in a while. Wow, this has really good user reviews." I will check it out.

Damn, it was a great movie. It was a movie that was in love with love, and I can't stand in the way of something that sincere. I loved the quirky touches, the awkward moments, and the karaoke. It was interesting to see things from the guy's perspective as well, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt did a really decent job of portraying all the emotional stages that his character experiences.

It has its cutesy moments, like the unbelievable tough-talking 11 year old sister and the goofy friends, but sometimes I'm willing to let some cheap gimmicks further along the plot if it helps with the pacing of the film.

But then again, I also really liked My Life in Ruins, so it may be fair to say I'm in that wierd girly place where I'm just into romcoms at the mom(ent). For those who have an aversion to girl-trap movies - go see 500 days, don't go see Ruins. Trust me, I know what I'm rappin' about here.

Hot Tubbin'!

In spite of this fantastic piece of art by Ashkon, I'm not a huge fan of hot tubbin'. I can do it for short periods of time, usually after skiing or swimming, but ultimately, you're sitting in a small pool of re-used, over-heated water. The water always smells a little suspect too. . . kind of like feet. That always drives me over the edge. Well, Ashkon seems to enjoy it, even if he does have to hop the fence at a Motel 6 to get things hopping after escaping from a totally boring sausage party.

Ashkon- Hot Tubbin'

zzzzzzzzz aid

Due to a lot of recent job stress, I have not been sleeping very well. I will lie awake in bed for hours, without being able to fall asleep. I will wake up with a start in the middle of the night. It really sucks. My sister recommended that I try melatonin pills. I also understand that I will need to address the underlying stress issues (which is why I am saving up my go-to-hell money), but in the short term, I need to get some sleep.

One night during grad school, I took a few Tylenol PM to try to get to sleep, and then every time I started to fall asleep, one of my legs would jerk and wake me back up. This ultimately left me even more exhausted and frustrated. Similarly, when I returned from Europe with a case of the German measles and a nasty cough that kept me up for 24 hours straight, I did what any normal person would do. I downed some Nyquil in order to knock my ass out so I could get some much needed rest. I then proceeded to wake myself up by coughing every 15 minutes and had wierd fever dreams in between.

I think what I'm saying is that my body is too strong for the sleep aid. Let's hope that the melatonin will work, or I will have to get serious and get a prescription for non-habit forming Ambien.

Traffic Court, yo.

So, I had my first personal experience in traffic court this week.

A few weeks ago, I was pulled over and told that my tags had expired, which was a surprise to me. The officer said, "You know, I'm supposed to impound your car...but I'm not going to." So, let me digress a little here and say that it's the little touches that make normal law-abiding folks hate cops. I understand that police officers have very stressful jobs. They deal with the scum of the earth on a daily basis. However, police officers need to differentiate between treating potential scum like scum and treating everybody like scum. If you pull somebody over for driving with their running lights on instead of their full headlights in the middle of a well-lit city, and the offender is genuinely surprised, not drunk, and has no prior offenses - perhaps it is best not to threaten to make them go to driving school.

Also, don't threaten to impound somebody's car when you have no friggin' intention of doing so. Did that make you feel better? Will that threat make it more likely that I will get my tags? Probably not more likely than the fact that you already issued me tickets that require me to go to traffic court. I think that the possibility of a large fine and or other penalty is motivation enough to register my car and pay my personal property taxes on my car. But nooooooo, you had to take it an extra step, just so I could thank you for being a dick. "Thank you, officer. I appreciate that," I replied.

"I hope you fall off your bike and get some road-rash on your fat-parts" I thought inside my head.

I'm not saying all cops are bad. It's just the bad ones that give the rest a bad rep.

So, traffic court was pretty straightforward. I went in and registered early. At the beginning of the session, the bailiff explained that the court would be trying cases not in alphabetical order (which really sucks for trinny, as her real name resides at the end of the alphabet, curses!) but in the order in which we registered. Joy, I thought - I registered 2nd, so I'll be out of here in a jif!

Then they began looking at cases alphabetically. Then they stopped to have the newly released jailbirds come in to get officially released on probation. One of the things that jails provide people with upon rejoining the cruel world is a roll of toilet paper - I saw several former inmates holding these in large plastic zip-loc bags. Then they stopped to try any cases where the defendant was being represented by a lawyer. Then the juvenile cases. Then more jail releases.

I wasn't all bad. I felt a lot better about my situation after watching some of the youth offenders go through their whole rigamarole. It's really difficult to sign up for anger management courses, submit a clean drug test, and prove that you are enrolled in school, according to a lot of these kids. It's also difficult to come to court, where you are being judged, in clean, conservative clothing. Tight jeans, baggy jeans, cut-off jeans, garish shirts. They were all there. It wasn't a surprise, really. During the opening spiel, the bailiff informed the court that we needed to spit out any gum before addressing the judge, and I thought "oh, this should be good." Any time you have to inform a group of adults to spit out their gum at a public court hearing - you know you have special people involved.

In the end I pleaded no contest, paid my expired tag fine, and moved on with my life. Now I'm always going to make time to register my car and renew my tags on time.

my big mouth

I have a problem where I tell people exactly what I think of them. People I don't even know, or have just met are as easily susceptible as close loved ones or long term friends.

My mother has a favorite story that she tells about me. When I was very little, our next-door neighbor, Mrs. Stewart, would yell at my two older sisters and all of the neighborhood children whenever they would run through her yard. At one point, she had probably yelled at me as well, but I was too young to remember.

One day, when I was three, I was tooling around with my mother and grandmother in our backyard. (My grandparents were also our next-door neighbors, so Mrs. Stewart knew both my mother and grandmother.) I was happily picking raspberries when Mrs. Stewart walked into our yard to talk to them. I flipped my three-year-old lid and started screaming "get out of our yard! get out of our yard! GET OUT OF OUR YARD!"

To get your comeuppance hurts. To get it thrown at you by the complete honesty of a three year old has to sting something fierce.

My mother apologized and took me inside the house to "discipline me", which involved her laughing until she cried. This is probably where it all started. That was the crucial moment when I got the positive reinforcement from a parental figure that shaped who I am today.

I am a bigmouth who can't lie and will tell you exactly what I think of you, and some part of me, no matter how misguided, thinks that this sort of behavior will be rewarded. In a psychological/Transactional Analysis sense I am looking for "strokes" - be they positive or negative. I'm realizing this isn't the most handy tool to carry with me on my interpersonal toolbelt. It's sort of like spraying mace in somebody's face as they try to shake your hand.

Occasionally I will find my brethren, and we will become fast friends, like my friend Mike. One time, during the last "Targeted advertising" (re: junk mail) class of the quarter, an ex-boyfriend made a desparate last-ditch effort to get more class participation points by asking "What exactly is targeted advertising." to which Mike replied from clear across the room, "Haven't you been in class at all this quarter?" in an angry tone of voice that suggested he could have easily followed it up with "you f'ing moron." We were friends before this, but at this moment I knew we would be friends for life. However, it can cut both ways. For example, one time when I spit my gum out into a trash-can with an emphatic "Phoo!" instead of discretely wrapping it in something and quietly dropping it in, Mike laughed and said "Classy". Like all true addicts, we just don't know when to quit.

So the last two times this has been an issue were in public places

Situation 1: In the Dulles airport, a TSA representative informs us that we will have to move to another area to get into the transportation screening line. One guy can't get there fast enough, and starts walking past us really quickly, and then knocks over some luggage from people who are walking in the opposite direction. Then he steers his rolling luggage dangerously close to a baby stroller. He gets comments from several folks who he nearly runs over with his Samsonite, "Hey!" "Watch it!" "That was rude!"

As usual, I can't help myself.

"Hey fella, we're all going to the same spot, do you need to take up the entire walkway?"

"Why don't you mind your own business?"

Then I got testy.

"Well, Jesus, just how wide are you, sir?"

"F*ck you."

Situation 2

I am standing behind a couple at a rest-stop McDonalds on the PA turnpike. The poor teenager who has to fulfill orders near the holiday gives the man his coffee. "Goddamn!" the man says. "You didn't need to put that much sugar in my coffee! Get me a new one. My God!"

I swear I wasn't going to butt-in, but then the guy turns around to me and says "Gosh, what are you gonna do?" as if to say "I had no choice. Too much sugar in my coffee and I'm a real b*tch! This McDonald's clerk totally deserved it!" I would have perhaps stayed out of it, but the fact that this lowlife was looking for backup or the feeling that he was justified in accosting a stranger with profanity was too much.

"Do you think swearing at the clerk was appropriate?" I asked.

"What do you care?"

"I think you could have had the same result without having to swear at that young man. Have a good day sir."

"You don't hope I have a good day. You want me to burn in hell."

And he said it in such a creepy way. It was compounded by his sleazy John Waters style mustach, his wierd pedophile shirt (striped button up, yellowed with age, short sleeves, mock turtleneck underneath), and his beleaguered wife - who looked like life had handed her a crap sandwich. I wanted to point all of these things out to him, as if to say "Listen, glass house man. Stop treating people like crap - you need all the good karma you can get."

So I settled for "No, but I think you should treat people with more respect." and then walked away. I was trying to keep it classy in a bad situation.

I swear I'm gonna get shivved someday.

Bad Behavior

It has come to my attention that I have a magical rump. Yes, rump. I could have been cute and coy and Canadian and said "bum", but I'm more of a solid midwestern gal who has grown up with the ability to open doors stuck in the doorframe with a single bump with my rear, so "bum" just seems too adorable to use in this case.

Why magical you ask? Because people seem to think I will magically respond well if they make contact with it, as if I were a genie in a strange sort of fleshy, awesome bottle. Over the past few years, I have endured a lot of pinching, slapping, copping-a feel, standing too close in a crowded room, and general buffoonery involving the my rear.

It started around 6th grade. I was in a program for the gifted, and once a week we'd all get bussed to a local elementary school to learn about accelerated subjects and further alienate ourselves from our peers. While hanging out with Heather and Erica near the tetherball pole one day, two boys came up and said, "We're taking a poll about who has the biggest and best butt in the 6th grade." We tried to hide our rears, but we were out in the open, and there were two of them, which allowed them to employ some strategies that we couldn't counteract. They'd fake to the right and then the left and then split up, leaving us vulnerable with no safe direction to turn to. We weren't coordinated enough to make a triangle of security, and we were slow to react, being both halfway confused at the stupidity of their statement and half embarrassed because of it. After a few seconds of dodging and weaving, Brian and Ken pointed at me and said "You tied with Esther for biggest and best butt!" Esther, another student in the 6th grade, was an early developer who wore lots of eyeliner and tight jeans and easily outweighed me by about 20 lbs. Needless to say, being compared to this girl-woman left me really confused, as I certainly wasn't an early bloomer by any stretch of the imagination (Are you there god? I'm still waiting for my boobs, ahem). I guess I didn't notice that the developement had been happening someplace I rarely paid attention to, and now it was starting to draw the attention of others. This was long before J-Lo and Sir Mix-a-Lot had popularized the large posterier. It was still an era of "you can never be too thin or too rich" and I was neither, and my large posterier was just one more tick on the list of awkward shit I'd have to deal with while growing up.

My cheeks got their first pinch at a frat party that I went to in sixth grade,with my sister (another story for another time, so don't judge her too harshly for this), where a really drunk guy mistook me, braces and all, for a co-ed. Or he could have just been a pedophile. He said "How'm bout you make an ass out of yourself and get on the dancefloor wif' me?" I told the gentleman that I was 12. My sister swooped in and said "She's 12." He said "That doesn't mean she can't dance wi' me." It amused me to no end at the time, but now I can't help but hope he got alcohol poisoning and died that night.

The torture was just beginning, as I soon signed up for Industrial Arts in the 8th grade. It was just my luck that I got to share the class with nearly all of the school's juvenile delinquents, one of whom was rumored to already have his own custom made pool cue. This was before the dawn of Prozac and Adderall being commonly prescribed for adolescents. Add pubescent hormones to the mix, and you have a dangerous cocktail of shyness, bravado, and squirreliness . It was also unfortunate that this was the year that stirrup pants were in. Being acutely aware of my burgeoning rump, I countered the fashion movement by wearing a lot of long, booty-hiding sweaters. To no avail. I got pinched and groped on the every-other-day schedule. The teacher - Mr. Werline, a man who didn't believe females had a place learning how to employ motor skills or the kind of critical thinking one would use to solder or drill holes in metal, wasn't exactly the understanding kind of person that I wanted to confide in. I spent a lot of time calling home sick on odd days during that semester.

Flash forward to college: I am hugging my boyfriend outside of a restaurant, and a group of eight football playing-looking guys walk by. "I wouldn't let her go," says one fat-neck, "She's got a nice ass!". They all laugh while they walk away, and my 5'9" 145 lb boyfriend is powerless to really do or say anything about it. I wasn't really expecting him to, as these guys were so built and their chests were so developed that they didn't look like they could clap. Of course, this follows that fact that the same boyfriend took a covert picture of me bending over in my bathing suit at the beach the previous spring, which remained unbeknownst to me until he cheekily showed me a few weeks later. I was livid, but has wasn't giving up the picture, saying "It's awesome" and giggling like a little kid who got into the wine cabinet. He is married now. Does he still have that picture? Has his wife found it and did they have a fight about it? "Who is this?", she'd scream. "Just a friend from college", he'd reply, but when she asks "Fine, then you won't have a problem throwing out this picture, will you?", his downtrodden face will betray his fondness and nostalgia for the rump in the picture, and she will know that he is lying. They either divorce because of this, or she shoves the anger deep down inside of herself while thinking, "It's a huge, fat ass, anyway."

Seriously, I don't understand. It's an okay seat, but I don't think it warrants this kind of attention. It's not small, but not crazy huge. Plus, it's not like it should invite the same kind of attention that a large chest would get you- it's covered all of the time. I don't wear low cut jeans. I don't try to draw attention to it (except this blog). It's just there.

None of this really helped once I got to grad school either. Along with all of the "pretend sports" that you see investment bankers and rich-pricks playing on a regular basis (swinging the imaginary golf club or throwing the imaginary football to signify that they are busy and important and sporty), touching my caboose became a favorite excercise for some. From some guys - this was no surprise - they were scuzzy and drunk. My particular non-favorite was at the winter-formal dance, where "Jarrett" walked by with his date, "Rachael" a fellow classmate, and he managed to open palm slap me on one cheek in the middle of the dance floor without her noticing. I could have caused a scene, but when somebody has a dead soul - nothing will make them feel bad about 14 yr-old behavior. I just made sure to stay away from him after that episode. I also didn't feel to bad for Rachael - who would make out with anything anywhere, including the dishwasher at the local eatery whom she met while coming down from a 6 hour bender. If she ever found out about Jarrett's actions - I'm sure she'd move on in short order, or to a short-order cook.

Some advances were a total surprise - as they came from guys who otherwise seemed like nice, mannered men. I had, what I considered to be up until that time, a friend, who goosed me so hard that it felt like he wanted to make his fingernails touch while pinching my cheek. Naturally I screamed in some serious pain and gave him the pummeling of his life. Later on, he apologized and seemed to feel genuinely bad about it. He never tried it again - so we called it a truce. Then there are the guys seem nice but turn into creepy jerks. "Fahri" kept sneaking up on me and goosing me whenever I went out (it was a small town - it was hard to avoid the school crowd), and every time I yelled at him or hit him- "Fahri" would swear up and down that he didn't do it, it was somebody else. He was dating a fellow classmate as well. All of these episodes make me wonder how well we really know anyone at all. My lady lumps are apparently a divining rod for jerks.

I figured once I got out of school and away from the MBA-holes, that my derriere would get a long and well deserved reprieve from constant assualt....until last New Year's Eve, where a married friend hit my ass so hard in the middle of a party that I literally became airborn.

This time I fought back. I turned around and started pushing him, saying "What the hell was that? What was that? What are you doing?" In the end, he felt pretty bad, he was pretty drunk, and he said that I was free and clear to smack him in the face as hard as I wanted to, which I did. It made me feel a bit better, and was probably a better end to the night than having a nasty fight or leaving the party in tears. This time, at least I got to smack back.

Does anyone else have this issue? I can't be the only one, but I don't hear a lot about this from the friends that I've talked to. My rear needs some R&R. Any suggestions? It's enough to make me want to go to extreme protective measures.

"It is wayyyy to early to be that crazy."

I have been doing a lot of adventuring in nature lately with large groups of people. I have learned two important lessons from these outings.

1. I hate big groups of people, because in every group, a horribly inconsiderate person (usually drunk) lays in wait to douche all over most other folks' decent time. Coupled with the fact that I have low patience and little tolerance of buffoonery, I get filled with a hulk-like rage about these episodes pretty easily.

2. These people in turn, make me into an unhappy crab - thereby further ruining the group experience.

Adventure 1, River Tubing: Some friends invited me to their lake house for the weekend. Once there, we met up with other friends, along with plenty o' siblings and siblings' boyfriends and girlfriends. We decided to tube down the local river on Saturday. I am a little on-guard against these types of outings - as I sunburn pretty easily. Thankfully so do many of my friends - so we completely lubed ourselves up with SPF 70 before hitting the water and faithfully reapplied thereafter. The issue came when we hit portions of the river where the water just wasn't moving. In spite of the ice cold water - the sun turns your innertube into a special kind of torture device - where you need to splash water over every surface lest you singe your skin. Also, after applying copious amounts of sunscreen and sweating a lot, the rubber started rubbing off on us - leaving big rubbery black streaks that smelled like the kid in school with greasy hair and terrible body odor. There were only so many distractions before we were just like "Get us the hell out of here."

Those of us sober enough to care started paddling. Amazingly enough, the drunk people, who couldn't stand or move their limbs, had enough wits about them to attach to our rafts via a well placed foot or arm. 12 people attached to 2 people paddling pretty much equals 14 people sitting in one spot. Only after we managed to detach ourselves (and the cooler of beer) from the drunk people did they find the motivation to paddle their own asses down the river and reattach themselves to us (and stop paddling). Have you ever seen those fish with the little parasite things that attach themselves to the fish's mouth, but the fish can't get rid of them, because....well, no hands? It felt a lot like that. This trip was supposed to last 4 hours. After 6 hours, three of us had had seen enough dirty band-aids and people puking to last us a lifetime and started a non-stop paddle towards the take-out point. We figured that anybody who didn't make it back we could chalk up to survival of the fittest or divine judgement concerning those who can't hold their drink, so if they drowned or got sunstroke - so be it. We reached the shore in 15 minutes. The rest of the group took another hour to drift back. We wanted to race back home to help with the grilling, but we had to wait for the slowest part of the group and all ended up reaching home base at 9:15 - which put a big damper on the 4th of July cookout - especially for the folks who did not go tubing that day.

Adventure 2, White Water Rafting: Two of my good friends and I had agreed to join a whitewater rafting trip. We had previously tried to plan a trip earlier in the summer, but that didn't pan out. So when my friend's brother invited us on a white water rafting trip - we jumped at the chance. We got a few forwarded emails a few weeks ahead of time with directions and the instructions to show up at the rafting joint at 1:00 pm sharp. We calculated out the travel time and decided that we needed to leave the homebase before 10:30. We met at my place at 8:30 to go grab a leisurely brunch. We had a great brunch sitting at the outside patio at Murphy's, which was punctuated by a crazy person who felt the need to rant and sing his craziness at the world while we were enjoying our Eggs hollandaise. Then Mel finally broke the "we're ignoring him" rule and said "It is wayyy too early to be that crazy", which I am nominating for best quote of the week. We swung back to my place to change and then head out. One friend was kind of antsy to get there on time or early - so we left a little after 10 a.m.

We arrived at the place at 12:40 and then we waited for the rest of the group to show up, and waited, and waited. The woman (let's call her Suzie) who organized the trip didn't show up until 1:30, and then proceeded to drink in the parking lot while screaming "It's my birthday!!!!!! I'm 30!!!!!" We found out that the tour wasn't supposed to start until an hour later - but the time in the email was listed as such to prevent the truely truant amongst the group from showing up late. The start time proceeded to get pushed further and further back as the organizer and her group drank beers and threw a frisbee in the parking lot. I know we could have joined in the festivities, but we got up at 8:30, goshdamnit! We were tired, and we didn't want to throw a frisbee or trade love beads or sing kumbaya while hanging out in the parking lot with a bunch of hippies for a few hours - that was not what we signed up for. We were goal oriented and we wanted to white water raft. We finally lined up for the safety demonstration at 2:45.

During the safety demonstration, while the rest of us were trying to pay attention to how we should avoid falling out of the boat and dying, Suzie and her overly energetic friend proceeded to pose girlishly and dramatically on the demonstration boat - in a way that only looks acceptable (but annoying) for a child participating in a beauty pageant. Nobody really understood what was going on, particularly the people that were not a part of our group. People were looking around like "I don't get it. What's the joke? This is wierd." The best explanation I can think for this phenomenon is that some women pull stunts like this with the underlying thought (conscious or unconscious): "Everybody thinks I'm cute." It is this thought that absolves them, in their own minds, of all their crimes - that turns their every annoying, cloying, petulant, desparate action into an adorably eccentric show. I'm not a fan of hitting children but people like these would have benefitted a lot from a good childhood belting. Every time I think I would like to live the life of an artist - I am reminded that it would be filled with these people, and then I stab that dream until it's bled clean out and doesn't rear its ugly anymore.

We grabbed our gear and proceeded to board a school bus, where the fun continued. Drunk girl and friends proceeded to sit at the sound bearing focus at underneath one side of the elliptical ceiling of the bus and started screaming to each other over the 4 feet of space that sat betwixt them. My throbbin' temples were located directly under the other eliiptical focus. We were treated to shitty, screaming renditions of "My heart will go on." and then some wise-ass decided that they needed to sing a song "in-the-round", and they pillaged forth an unholy and unending version of "Row, row, row yer boat", which made most of us want to row it off a cliff. I am only glad we didn't have to suffer through "Boom-chicka-boom". My prayers for a grisly crash were not answered, and 15 minutes later we were at the drop-off point. Things after that got considerably better, as the sane people all took to one boat, but we were hopelessly tainted by the morning debacle. Driving home that night, we were exhausted and tired, and probably totally grumpy with each other. It was a race to get the car back home before we passed out, which could have been avoided had we gotten an extra 2.5 hours of sleep.

So the question becomes - should I just chill out or is my anger reasonable? I'm not the only one on these trips who gets uppity about this behavior, so I know that I am not alone. And why should the most inconsiderate part of the group dictate what the rest of the group will do or put up with? If I am being reasonable, is there any way to combat this without becoming the a-hole who is trying to "ruin everybody's good time, man". Is there a slick way to tell people to knock it off?

It's this kind of behavior that makes me wish I was partying with more Mormons.

The new age of friendship

Dear potential Facebook 'friend',

I wanted to let you know why I ignored your friend request, twice.

You were a total heinous 'yotch to me in Junior High. After that we lost touch, I know, I was partly to blame. You were probably busy with your remedial classes and bullying, and I was busy trying to avoid you - it looks like I still am.

Granted, I surely had my moments of cattiness in school, but I'm not trying to 'friend' any recipients of my past trangressions.

I can only hope that you try to friend me again so that maybe this time when I ignore your request, after you can't find as many people you met once at that AA meeting or from the summer you worked at Pizza Hut to randomly friend, you'll notice and get the goddamned hint.

P.S. - Congratulations on getting really fat. Did you have 5 million kids, or did you do that all on your own?

Land of the Lost

It's too bad that I didn't watch this series as a kid. The strong feelings of nostalgia would have most likely helped me to enjoy this movie more. Bummer, because I really wanted to like this one.

Combining the special effects necessary (even nostalgia wouldn't excuse a claymation dinosaur from the old series in this adaptation) for today's audience with over-the-top cheesy costumes and high-school play caliber set props was a difficult gig to make work from the get go. They did what they could, but ultimately even the actors didn't seem to be having much fun with it, and I didn't either.

Dangit!

High points: Danny McBride getting in a few good one-liners. Matt Lauer's surprise spot.

p.s. - I know the list for remakes is getting shorter and shorter, but if somebody tries to remake The Waltons, I'm gonna straight-up hate on that from day one. Nobody remakes the Waltons.

did you ever have to make up your mind?

Oooooooh, what to see this weekend? What to see, what to see? Three movies are competing for my attention this weekend as The Hangover, Land of the Lost, and My Life in Ruins are all opening. Right now, Land of the Lost has the early lead because of the absolute brilliance of Danny McBride. He is the highlight of anything you spy him in. His series on HBO, East Bound and Down, never fails to shock me and make me laugh at something entirely innappropriate (like snorting cocaine on the down-low next to an eleven year old in the middle of a junior high cafeteria, or getting back at your enemies by throwing them off the back of your jet ski and into painfully shallow water). Extra bonus points if anybody can recall what he yells right before activating the explosives in the opening scene of Tropic Thunder. He makes lowbrow humor a higher art form.

After that, I will have to appease my X chromosomes and see My Life in Ruins. Unlike every other female in the US, My Big Fat Greek Wedding didn't knock my socks off. Somehow I still want to see this movie, if only for the sweet beard on the love interest. I fully expect to hate myself after seeing this one.

The Hangover is tempting, but I have a feeling that it blows its comedic load in its commercials.

I'll update as I knock some of these out this weekend.

My summer of blockbusters, part two!

Star Trek

I have to hand it to JJ Abrams: he not only managed to resuscitate a kitschy old media franchise, he whipped it into shape and got it a nose job too. The amazing thing about this movie, is that it is not only a great standalone movie and works well within the Star Trek universe, but that it compelled my movie-going friends to go back and watch the Wrath of Khan (they hadn't seen it before). That kind of cross pollination is what marketers dream about for most of their empty, soulless lives.

I am also a fan of the small details that help to build the characters in a movie. All of the close-ups on Chris Pine - who plays Kirk, show every skin flaw possible, but it works because he's a cheeky wise-ass with a checkered past. Our first scene with him involves him being drunken, sweaty and swaggering, and still disarmingly charming. On the other end is Zachary Quinto's Spock - with porcelain skin and perfectly cut hair. I'm fairly certain that the makeup crew was manscaping the back of ZQ's neck every five minutes to keep it that inhumanly impeccable. This lends itself well to Spock's tightly-wound persona. The character depth and inner conflict that was imbued in Spock's character was a really fantastic surprise as well.

Uhura's long fake eyelashes and constant cat-liner were kind of distracting - but hey, they're paying homage, so I'm not going to bash it.

I liked this movie so much, I won't even spoil it for you. It was awesome. I can only qualify that by saying I'm not a Star Trek fan. What also impressed me was that the big name actors played their roles so well that when the credits rolled, folks were like "Where was Winona Ryder? Eric Bana was in this movie?" It was also fantastic to see Karl Urban on the movie screen again - as he had a certain something as the smoking Russion assassin in the Bourne Supremacy. Let's not forget Simon Pegg or Jonathan Cho who both helped to round out and shape this movie. It's all about the team here.

Go see it, twice. Nerds.

My summer of blockbusters!

Since I can't sleep due to worry about heading in to a hellacious day at work tomorrow, I will keep you updated on my summer movie watching progress. I have no impulse control, so the plot is pretty well laid-bare below. You have been warned.

Wolverine

I have enjoyed all three of the X-Men movies, which require the ability to seriously suspend your logical thought for about two hours. (If all Storm is gonna do is eventually zap somebody with a bolt of lightning to kill them, why the hell doesn't she do it at the beginning of the movie, instead of near the end of the movie - after getting the crap kicked out of her? Also, why doesn't she whip up some freezing weather at the end of X-2 in order to freeze Alkali Lake, or why doesn't Freez-o boy freeze the lake in order to save everyone from being drowned? Oh right, so Jean Grey can step outside of the ship to do it, and 'die' in the process. I guess they needed some emotional immediacy. Rant aside, I dig the series thus far.) I was also looking forward to Wolverine due to the Hugh Jackman factor. If anybody can look nice with that wierd haircut, it's him. In fact, he looks kind of prissy when clean cut, so he should never be allowed to shave beyond a 5 o'clock shadow, in my opinion.

However, Wolverine....ech. It was a combination of totally illogical strangeness and empty characters that failed to pull me into the movie. So, Wolverine and his brother not only heal from just about everything - but they don't age much past late-twenties adulthood either. After living for a couple hundred years, you would think they had bank-rolled enough dough so that they could support some sort of playboy lifestyle. Apparently not so in that they really dig fighting in wars, on the US side of things. They are their own men, they are rebels, until they are recruited by a shady military officer for a special ops mission and then they blindly follow along, killing possibly innocent civilians without any sort of objective for the mission. Wolverine can't take it, so he leaves the group. Flash forward a decade or two, Wolverine's brother Sabretooth is taking out members of the old rogue military unit. The shady military officer shows up to warn Wolverine, telling him about this special procedure that could make Wolverine more deadly than Sabretooth. Wolverine declines the offer...but hey, Wolverine's special lady gets offed by his brother, so then he agrees to the medical procedure in a fit of vengeful rage.

So if this wasn't spoiler enough, let me just lay it all out there. Lady friend isn't dead, it was all a setup to get Wolverine to undergo the metal-bonding-to-skeleton procedure. She's a mutant that can hypnotize with her touch. Then the procedure was all a setup to get Wolverine's DNA to make a superweapon? If all of these things were a setup - then why kill the other members of the special ops unit? Why not just get the love interest to love-hypnotize him into getting the procedure done? Why not just get his DNA in a less obvious fashion. They can get it off of a drinking glass for crying out loud.

Essentially, it was all an elaborate setup so that the series could try to explain why Wolverine has metal shooting out of his hands. Ultimately I didn't care. Since I was already watching the X-Men series, I'm already on board with buying that metal blades can shoot out of Hugh Jackman's hands. If I wasn't watching the X-Men series, because the metal-hands thing is too outlandish - Wolverine is not the movie that will bring me into the fold.

Also, Sabretooth is creepy. His special powers include growing gross yellow fingernails, quadripedal running, and growing totally inappropriate sideburns. There are also shots of his hands where his fingertips are huge and puffy, and reminded me of the worst creature special effects from those Leprechaun movies you've peeped on the USA channel when you're bored in October.

At one point in the movie, a doctor tells Wolverine "Focus on the reason you came here, that will help you through this procedure." I tried, but not even a nearly naked Hugh Jackman could save this lead-sinker.

Rating: Like gargling with salt water, kind of unpleasant and disappointing.

Let's get this out of the way immediately.

Yes, it's a serious title for a blog.  If you have come to this blog looking for some sort of watchdog group/scathing political commentary/conspiracy theories, go away.  I don't want to be rude, but I also don't want to waste your time.  This will be my little space for writing, and if what we write can be considered a window into our souls, then this blog will be mostly devoid of any substance whatsoever.  I can't say I won't write a review about the most recent episode of Gossip Girl or discuss at-length the only-adorable-to-me antics of my pets.  I like what I like (including kung-fu cinema).  I will do my best not to embarass myself or my family.  I'm a fan of run-on sentences (and paretheses).  You have been totally warned, yo.