Word of the day

From Dictionary.com:

wastrel \WAY-struhl\, noun: 1. A person who wastes, especially one who squanders money; a spendthrift. 2. An idler; a loafer; a good-for-nothing.

Is someone trying to tell me something???

And did you know that Tylenol PM (aka TPM) doesn't work as well after you've had a couple of late-night mochas?

Haiku

wedding bells ringing
for a love match made at work
good luck, klurf and seel!

A picture worth a thousand words...

This is kinda how I'm feeling this afternoon...

Happy Friday!

damn that mercury
is it still in retrograde?
enough, already!

The Drudgery report...

I absolutely hate doing laundry. I think it's the most tedious of all my regular weekly tasks. It wouldn't be so bad if I had a laundry room in my building, but literally airing my dirty laundry in public every week is just no fun.
Gather it up, drag it down the stairs, cart it two blocks to the laundromat, hope there are no washer or dryer hogs on the premises, go home during the wash cycle (it seems like a HUGE waste of time to actually sit in the laundromat twiddling my thumbs when I could be home, sitting on my couch, watching "Gilmore Girls" reruns instead), go back to put my clothes in the dryer, go home again to wait out that cycle, then finally bring it home, lug it up the stairs, fold it, and put it away.
BLEAH.
Now, laundromat etiquette holds that if you do not make it back in time to remove your own clothes from a washer or dryer once the cycle is done, people who are waiting for a machine can take your things out. It's kind of icky, actually, having strangers handle your clothing. But yesterday, a fellow laundry-doer took one of my loads out of the dryer, and FOLDED IT ALL. Neatly. Even piled it all up according to size (all towels). I don't even fold my own things that neatly. I've never been so stunned... in a GOOD way... at the laundromat.

Home, sweet, home?

I'm sparing you most of the details of what's happening in my apartment now because, really, I'm sure this is getting tedious to read... but yesterday, I returned home to find that the door to the medicine cabinet in my bathroom had been taken down.
I'm sorry, but a girl's gotta have a mirror in the bathroom.
This is inhumane.

The Muni experience...

knees a mile apart
your package ain't that big, pal
muni spacehogger

We eat ham and jam and....

....Spamalot!

News item:
An abridged version of the Broadway hit Spamalot will open in Las Vegas in 2007 at a custom-built theatre.
---------

This is just plain WRONG. They're planning to cut a half-hour out of the show in Vegas. That's a great idea -- take a brilliant show and mess with it, just to get people back out onto the casino floor to lose their money sooner. WTF??? They should call it "Spamalittle."
AND... the decision to take the show to Vegas means it won't be coming to the west coast anytime soon. BOOO.
My advice? Go to New York and see it there. I was fortunate enough to see the original cast, about a month after the show opened on Broadway, and I laughed so hard I cried. Repeatedly. I had such high expectations that I was afraid I'd be disappointed. I was blown away. Even the Playbill is funny.

Deep thought of the day

Stepping off the curb repeatedly to search the horizon for a Muni bus does not make it come any sooner.
Relax, people!!

Omigod, horoscopes really DO come true!

First, a haiku about my commute home:

I fell on the bus
Second time in, oh, six weeks
Ang and Re would laugh

Now... oh my god, oh my god, the mess in my apartment. Aussie handyman has put a big sheet of plastic up on the bathroom ceiling, to keep the debris from assaulting me, so that's an improvement. But the contents of my bathroom, from the towel rods to the things I need to make myself so stunningly gorgeous every day, are scattered around my foyer and my dining room. I might need to get up early tomorrow just so I can groom properly. It looks like he's prepping to put in a new ceiling and to paint the walls, so here's hoping that's done when I get home tomorrow.
But the dust. Oh my GOD, the dust. My apartment is already a dust magnet, but whatever's gone on in here today has turned it into a sand dune. And it looks like Aussie handyman tried to sweep up, with a wet broom, perpendicular to the grain of the wood... so there are streaks of some powdery white substance that have dried onto the floor all... over.... my.... apartment.
Time for some deep, cleansing breaths. And some cocktails.
Fuckity fuck.

Haiku...

ceiling falling down
bits and pieces, on my head
what a fucking mess

You should prepare yourself for another annoying day...

That is how my horoscope for today starts, and truer words were never spoken.

You know how my bathroom ceiling is dropping debris all over the place? Today I got nailed while I was in the shower. Twice. And once while I was... um... seated.
It's bad enough that I have to clean the tub before bathing -- this is really fun at 4:30 in the morning, by the way -- and sweep the bathroom floor 15 times a day.... now I have to be pelted with some ancient molding material from my ceiling while I'm naked, sleepy, and trying to get clean?? As the Cheese would say.... GAH!
Cranky. Pants. Are. On.
And here's how I spent my Saturday night: trading phone calls with our Aussie handyman and two of my neighbors, so we could figure out the source of the leak. This entailed one neighbor running her shower for 15 minutes... then the other neighbor following suit. Imagine our surprise to learn that the leak is coming from two floors above me. It's a magic leak, apparently, as it's completely bypassing the second floor and inundating my ceiling instead. I'm trying to remain happy that we've found the leak... while pretending to be all Zen about how long all the repair work to my ceiling and bedroom wall is going to take.
And I must admit, the Aussie handyman's liberal use of the words "darling" and "love" in conversation is charming the hell out of me.
"Happy" Monday, everyone!

A Summer Sunday

hey, where'd the sun go?
shining brightly two days straight
all gloomy again

Cool links

Some of my favorite places on the web:

http://www.dooce.com
She's funny as hell, she's poignant, she's a must-read.

www.televisionwithoutpity.com
All snark, all the time. Snortalicious!

www.gawker.com
http://www.defamer.com
Great celeb cheese, media news. Love them!

And some fabulous things you'll find right here at blogspot:

http://queendomofcheese.blogspot.com

http://theokcorral.blogspot.com

(jesus, i think it got that right this time...!!)

http://overfiftyish.blogspot.com

Please, please tell me now...

I'm always amazed by the power of music, and how quickly it can transport me to another place and time.

I was in my car today, impatiently flipping from station to station (as usual), when I came across that early 80's "gem" (those are sarcastic quotation marks, fyi) "Rosanna," by Toto. Now, I don't particularly like that song, but I smiled and turned up the volume. In my mind, I was back on the beach at La Jolla Shores with my good friends Julie and Patty, the summer Patty brought that tape on many of our beach trips. By the end of that summer, Julie and I were so sick of that song that we actually counted how many times the word "Rosanna" is sung. (I don't remember anymore, but the number 21 jumps out at me. I didn't count today.)
Next up? Duran Duran's "Is There Something I Should Know?" Ahh, now I'm with Julie, spending an uncomfortable night in the San Diego Sports Arena parking lot, for the privilege of buying nosebleed seats to a Duran Duran concert. I don't think either of us slept, between the beach chairs and the competing stereos all around us. Would have been nice if they'd all played the SAME DD album at the same time...
I also remember our trip to the legendary Bob's Big Boy across the street in the morning for a greasy breakfast, which took us less than ten minutes to inhale. It was a LONG and arduous night, after all. (And the concert itself was really great, despite the shitty seats. Another classic moment -- a pubescent girl behind us was surveying the stage before the show with her binoculars, focusing on the bass guitar when she says, "Oh my God, John's hands are going to touch that guitar!!"Ahh, youth. At least she had good taste in band members....)
And then I remembered how long ago all this happened, and it took me aback. Didn't help that I was on my way to get my rapidly encroaching gray hairs chemically altered when I took this trip down memory lane. Jeez. Was it really THAT long ago?

We're not drunk! We're just singing along with the hunky Gavin. And a few thousand of his closest pals. (Okay, we were drunk, too). 6-11-05 

Ooooh.... bright lights! 

Paging Ty Pennington!

Where are those hunky TV handymen when you need them?

I feel like I'm living in the middle of a home improvement project. You see, there's a mystery leak above my apartment that's creating regular rainshowers in my bathroom. As much as I like rain, I really prefer that it stay outside, where it belongs.
Another charming side effect of this leak is that water is getting into the wall between my bathroom and the bedroom. I can see the water stain spreading toward the electrical outlet that's on the same wall. Needless to say, I've now unplugged everything in there because, as some of you know, I've been known to sleep through fires in my building (ahem. A subject for a future post).
And since this building is nearly 100 years old (does that make it historic, or just... OLD?), there's only one electrical outlet in my bedroom. My apartment is grounding strip city...

Anyway, this isn't the first time I've had a leak like this, so that wall already has some water damage that's never been fixed. The handyman who's working on the problem this time tried to tell me yesterday that it's my little humidifier that's making the wall wet.
From the inside out? I'm no expert, and I may have been under the influence of tequila when we spoke, but I don't THINK so, dude.
In an attempt to find this pesky leak, he's now torn down all the plaster from the bathroom ceiling, leaving nothing but old exposed wood and little bits of whatever ancient bonding material was used to craft this building to fall down on my head and make a big fucking mess on the floor, in the sink, in the tub... and oh, did I mention, on my head? Do you know how creepy that is to stand under this torn-up ceiling and have little bits of it fall on you? It's a good thing I WAS under the influence of tequila when I came home last night, or I would have been even more annoyed by the spectacle that is my bathroom. (Imagine me drunkenly sweeping the floor in there. Imagine my surprise when I realized it had crap all over it again ten minutes later.)

As I sit here typing now, I can hear PLINK PLUNK PLINK PLOP PLOP every couple of minutes.

And there's some odd cardboard-esque covering on my bedroom wall (is it ancient wallpaper? someone's lazy way of painting in ye olden times? what the fuck is this shit??) that the not-so-handyman has torn up, so my bedroom isn't exactly the comfy sanctuary it normally is.
Mark my words....if something happens to my velvet comforter cover, there'll be hell to pay!

Good times.

tgif...

too much tequila
head throbbing, stomach queasy
what was i thinking???

will we ALL have blogs one day?

So here I am, entering the blogosphere...

Deep thought of the day: It is never okay to clip your nails in a public place. Ever
Why do I see (or more accurately, hear) so many people clipping their nails on the bus? Or even in my workplace? WHAT IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE??