Fighting a losing battle...

I hate housework.

You already know how much I hate doing laundry. But I hate all housework. All of it. And my apartment is a dust magnet. I live on a busy corner, I have lots of windows that don't seal properly (the building is nearly 100 years old, after all), and hardwood floors. So there's always a light sheen of dust in here...though more often, it's much more than a light sheen. There are dust bunnies so large I could name them and tell people they're my pets.

Last week, I did a major housecleaning. I got rid of the giant piles of crap that were overflowing on my dining room table (why do my 401K plan and my HMO send me so much shit? that i should file? or at least, destroy in such a manner so as to prevent identity theft??? aren't we supposed to be a more paperless society??), I took a bunch of old computer equipment that was cluttering up my dining room to a recycler, and I even moved some furniture so I could clear the thick layers of dust underneath. I was so proud. And the apartment looks really great. It almost looks like a grown-up lives here (though there ain't no grown-up here...as you well know.).

But here's the thing: now I'm doomed to constantly clean. I'm so frigging neurotic, I don't want to put ANYTHING on my dining room table now, not even for a day. And when I start to see the dust gather, it really, really bugs me. And there's no winning the battle with the dust. I could dust every day, and more would gather within a matter of minutes. I need to become more Zen about the dust. Dust is inevitable.

Just wait until I get to the closets. Then I'll really be in trouble with the neurosis. More than I was before I started to clean this place up.

Uh oh...

Where did my "comments" option go??

I've lost my comments option! I've lost my comments option!

Oh. Wait. There it is.
I don't know where it went on the chocolate post.
I didn't eat it. I swear.

Be careful what you wish for...

I heart chocolate.
I love its sweet smell, its rich texture, and most of all, its indescribably marvelous flavor. Plus, all those lovey brain chemicals it induces. Mmmmmm.

To paraphrase George Costanza, I would live in chocolate if it were socially acceptable. I want to be ensconced in chocolate.*

When Miss Cheese recently asked me what food I would choose if I could only eat one thing for the rest of my life, my answer was chocolate. (Hers was cheese, natch.)

When I discovered that whole gluten intolerance issue last year, I remember saying to myself, "Thank god, at least I can still have chocolate." (And most alcohol, but that's another story)

All you have to do is look at my chunky self, and you can just tell that I am a chocolate lover. And I have sometimes joked that perhaps the best thing that could happen to me would be to develop an allergic reaction to this heavenly substance.

Um. Yeah.
I've noticed that the last few times I've had chocolate, I've felt pretty awful afterwards. No, not in that girly, guilty, "oh my god, I shouldn't have had that, I'm so chunky, I'm so bad blah blah blah" kind of way.
More in that, "oh my god, I feel seriously nauseous and I would feel so much better if I could just puke" kind of way.

The horror. Oh, the horror.


*george wanted to drape himself in velvet. i love velvet too. velvet and chocolate. mmmm.

Boo!

Ahh, yes. It's that time of year again... when I am driven batty by the way many people pronounce "Halloween."

I hear "Holloween.." a LOT.

The occasion is "All Hallow's Eve," right? "Hallow" is not "hollow." On hallowed ground. Hallowed be thy name. You would never say "hollowed be thy name," while reciting the Lord's Prayer. Isn't that blasphemy?

Then why do so many people say "Holloween????"

I know. I should be concerning myself with bigger issues... like, when will Karl Rove get his??

I have a three-day weekend ahead of me, and I can't tell you how happy that makes me. Plus, we get to fall back on Sunday, meaning an extra hour for sleep or play! It couldn't come at a better time.
Don't forget to re-set your clocks this weekend.

Quote of the day...

"Gosh, it's really loud in here today."

- spoken by the person who is typically the biggest noisemaker of them all



Snortalicious!!

A blessing and a curse....*

PMS sucks.

Now I realize why I've been feeling so cruddy all week. All I want to do is sleep.
And eat. I'm soooooooooo frigging hungry... for no good reason!!


To the men out there (okay, at least the one I know who reads this!)... be good to your women during That Time of the Month.

And bring her (and me) chocolate.

*if you get that reference, you win special brownie points and my undying admiration.

We're living in a society here...!

We all experience it... the growing incivility of our society.
Loud cell phone conversations in public places.
Rude drivers.
People cutting to the front of lines.
Talking during movies.

You probably saw the survey published earlier this month, in which 69 percent of those polled said they felt Americans were more rude today than they were 20 or 30 years ago.

And conventional wisdom holds that it's younger people who are the problem, as they were supposedly raised by overly-indulgent parents, blah blah blah, in a time when manners weren't really emphasized.

Right?

Wrong.

I am fortunate enough to see a lot of live theatre and cabaret shows. And in most instances, the people who are having loud, disruptive conversations during these shows are OLDER than I am. People who, you'd think, were brought up in a time when manners mattered more.

People whose heads I'd like to knock together.

But that wouldn't be very civil, would it?

Go, girl!

News item:
NEW YORK (AP) - Lauren Hutton is celebrating her 62nd birthday a bit early by posing naked for a magazine.
Hutton can be seen nude in eight pages of photos in Big magazine. The photos are not airbrushed.
Hutton told ``The View'' that her godkids encouraged her. One told her ``Go, Granny, go.''
Hutton says she wants to show older women they don't have to be ashamed of their bodies.
She turns 62 on November 17th.


I think this is really cool.
Then it occurred to me that I'm sure she looks better at 62 than I have ever looked or will ever look any day in my life.
*Sigh.

What is the deal with mothballs?

And why do so many people on my bus seem to bathe in them? Gah. What a hideous smell that is. Don't THEY smell it?
The odor was so strong this morning my eyes were watering.

Not a nice way to start the week.

And this might not be either, but it's very powerful. No matter where you stand politically, this has to move you (I can't seem to make the link work, so copy and paste into your browser):

http://theunitedamerican.blogs.com/Movies/2000A/2000.html

Oh, but things are looking up! I just caught some video on CNN of Anderson Cooper and John Zarrella, standing outside on a waterfront somewhere, as Wilma came ashore. It was everything I look for in absurd hurricane coverage. I literally jumped up and down with glee.

Can't resist this one...

Why, it's Hurricane Wilma, of course!

Oh. My. God....

"Go, girl!"

These are the words that greeted me on a solicitation I received in the mail today.
Nauseating, no?
It gets worse.

"Introducing the one magazine that celebrates women over 40."
(yes, the 40 is larger than the rest of the words in this sentence.)

It's an offer for a free year of More magazine. And by the misspelling on the address label (there's a "c" where the "a" belongs in my last name, making my surname sound vaguely Czech or Polish, instead of Irish), I can tell that it was Glamour magazine that sold them my name.

Are they trying to tell me I'm too old for their cheesy mag?

Even more troubling -- how do they KNOW how old I am? I've never provided any demographic info.

God. "They" think I need to read a special magazine for my age group.
I need a drink.

October 17th, 1989...

I think the only thing worse than living through
a natural disaster (or...um..DYING in one) is being across the country when a natural disaster strikes your hometown.

I was on the East Coast, 16 years ago today, with my Mom and my now-ex husband. We'd spent the week in Washington D.C., then visiting relatives in Connecticut, and had just arrived in the Boston area. We were spending the evening in Lexington, and were really looking forward to spending an entire day sightseeing in Boston.

That is, until we turned on the TV, to watch the World Series. The Bay Bridge World Series. Ironic? Perhaps.

Obviously, the game wasn't on. And once we surfed around the dial and saw a Weather Channel anchor referring to a "shaker" in San Francisco, the panic set in.

Every collapsed or burning building we saw on TV looked like mine. The national news people couldn't give us enough information so we could figure out what had actually been damaged. I distinctly remember someone saying the Golden Gate Bridge had collapsed (it was the Bay Bridge... and it was PART of the bridge. not the whole thing). It looked like the entire city was in flames.
It was awful.
We cut the trip short, but had to drive back to D.C. to return the rental car, as the assholes at the rental car company wouldn't waive the drop fee, even though we didn't even know whether we had a home to return to. Oddly enough, I got to listen to my station for almost the entire drive, as radio stations on the East Coast were carrying our air live, wall-to-wall. I can't tell you how comforting that was, to hear my friends and colleagues and know they were safe. And to get accurate information about what was what.

Luckily, the damage at home was cosmetic -- though some buildings on our block were red-tagged -- and the kitties were fine. And there's a special place in heaven for my dear friend Cynthia, who actually made the trek across town in chaotic conditions to check on them for me.

The one bummer: someone had turned off the pilot light for my apartment building, as they should have, and that meant no hot showers AND no cooking for 12 days. (We didn't have a microwave at the time.) I came home one day to find a PG&E truck blocking my driveway, and I nearly kissed the guy, I was so happy to see him.

Not looking forward to the next big one...

The Beat, Berkeley, and the bomb...

Is it wrong that I watched the movie "Sideways"* last night while drinking Two-Buck Chuck?
Actually, that juxtaposition is a perfect illustration of the unusual week I had, culturally.

It started last Sunday, when my pal Melissa and I took a trip back to the 80's, when we went to see the English Beat at a small club in the city. Well, okay... it was really just lead singer Dave Wakeling and Some Other Nameless Dudes, but they were billed as the English Beat. And because Melissa knows everyone in town, including the owner of this club, we were able to get in free. Cool! And as we lined up outside, we ran into Miss Cheese, who decided to go to the show at the last minute. Double cool! Aside from the extraordinarily crowded conditions (Great White, anyone? Yeah, we knew where the club's back exit was....), and the guys behind us who decided that it would be a good idea to start slamdancing during "Mirror in the Bathroom," it was great fun. We danced and sang and sweated our asses off. I literally had to peel off my clothes when I got home, I was so sweaty. (Was that TMI? Oops.) Did I mention I didn't get to bed until 1 a.m.? Did I mention that I have to be at work at 7 a.m.? Yeah. But Miss Cheese has to be in at 5 a.m., so she had it much worse than I did.

Then on Tuesday, Melissa and I trekked over to Berkeley, for the premiere of Berkeley Rep's newest production, "Finn in the Underworld." Ummm. Yeah. It's a play that's billed as a "psychosexual horror story," so it was.... unusual. To say the least. And very graphic, sexually. And again, we ran into about 50 people Melissa knows during the reception after the play, so that was entertaining.

To top off the week, Miss Cheese and I got all dolled up on Friday for a night at the opera.
I know what you're saying right now. "Umm... aren't you the one who likes Ricky Martin**? You went to the opera??"
Yes, I did. We took in San Francisco Opera's "Dr. Atomic," which is about the development of the atomic bomb. Not your garden-variety subject for an opera, so that's why we were so intrigued by the prospect of seeing it. And it's not every day you get the chance to see a world premiere that's drawn national attention.
Yeah.
I don't think I'm cultured enough to fully appreciate opera. (I do LOVE the ballet though. Do I get culture points for that??) And it didn't help that so much of the libretto -- which is in English -- was so literal that we had to stop ourselves from laughing out loud at times. One great line? "All that I hear in your hair." Another classic: "Our only solace is the ham sandwiches and the coffee."
Yeah. Imagine those lines being sung in operatic fashion. It reminded us of the way we sometimes sing the news at work.
I actually wanted to bail at intermission, but the wise Miss Cheese thought we should stay so we could see how they would stage the actual explosion. And really, if we'd left, I'd always have wondered about it. But we did both struggle to stay awake during the second act, and some people around us actually left. DURING the second act. Once it was over, and the performers were taking their bows, a number of people fled as if the building was on fire.
While I can't say I liked it, I'm glad I got to see it. And I did find elements of it interesting. I'm just too much of a dork for opera, I think.

Oh. Are you wondering how I got to do all this, even though I'm in a financial bind? Freebies. And the generosity of friends who buy me cocktails and pay bridge tolls when we're out.

* so there's a scene in which the two leads stop to get gas. the price per gallon? $1.71. remember when?
** but I don't really like his new song. however, I'd watch him read the phone book, so I AM enjoying all these talk show appearances he's making to promote the new CD.

Flake-o-rama...

Trying to sell concert tickets on Craigslist is a lot like online dating.


How?

Lots of initial interest... and no follow-through.

What the hell IS that?

I have a mystery substance in my kitchen cupboard.

See, I have a lot of unusual flours and other products on hand to help me live a gluten-free life. And I buy them in bulk, since it's cheaper that way, and when was the last time YOU saw a pre-packaged container of xanthan gum or sorghum in the store?

Anyway. All this stuff is stored in plastic bags, which I carefully label. You know, on those white labeling spaces on those ziploc bags I buy at Costco.
But the writing has somehow come off of one of them... and I have no idea what that grayish/beigeish powdery substance inside is. There's a lot of it, which suggests I don't use it very often...

But am I really gonna have to examine each bulk bin at Rainbow to figure out what the hell it is?


Say it with me, people: "DORK!"

Belt tightening...

So, this financial disaster I've created has forced me to make some much-needed budgetary changes. I did my own manicure this week. I'm going back to coloring my own hair all the time now. I'm selling those Bridge School Benefit concert tickets I foolishly bought. And I've stopped my daily visits to Starbucks.

I miss those mochas.

But my body is apparently not missing those extra 290 calories a day.

I was able to tighten my belt by one loop today.

Who'da thunk?

Okay, yeah... I've been cracking down on portion control in general, and got a couple of good walks in during the past couple of weeks. It is the Fall of Fitness, Frugality, and Frivolity, after all.
But still.

Monsieur Colbert...

He's even funny in print.

A touch of class...

I am nothing if not a classy gal.
When I changed out of the clothes I wore to work yesterday, I noticed a couple of small holes in the seam around the armhole of my blouse.
Mind you, this is not even a remotely tight blouse (seriously!!), but that is not the point.
I am more concerned with the fact that I walked around all day long with holes in my frigging blouse. Good god, was I blind when I ironed it?

And here's another reason why I truly am the queen of the dorks: whenever I try to log on to my blog on a computer where it's not bookmarked, I invariably type in "queen of the FORKS."
Somehow, that seems entirely appropriate...

...red and black antenna waving...

Okay, so I didn't get over to that Blue Angels viewing party. I woke up yesterday feeling pretty crummy, actually... and that's really not the best way to go to a party -- especially when you don't know most of the other attendees.

So that gave me ample time to fight the ant invasion in
my bathroom.
Here's what I don't get about ants.
They invade when it's warm and dry outside, ostensibly
seeking water.
They invade when it's raining, ostensibly looking to get dry.
What the hell? Do I just have high-maintenance ants on the premises?
We want water... we don't want water.
Actually... now that I think about it... they remind me of men of a
certain age...

They're back!

That looks pretty cool, huh?
The Blue Angels, flying past Coit Tower, on a gorgeous, cloudless Bay Area day...

They're here for Fleet Week. And every year, on the days before the big weekend shows, they take to the skies to practice, get their bearings, etc. And every year, people complain about the noise. "Waaah, it's so loud and so scary.... waaah...."
I usually dismiss them as whiners.

Except they fucking woke me up from my much-needed nap yesterday (I'm working a couple of early shifts) when they were (apparently) dive-bombing RIGHT over my apartment building. Bastards!

I'll forgive them when I go watch the show from a friend's rooftop tomorrow.

Kinda wishing I had been the victim of identity theft...

Ever feel like you're out on a really long limb?
One that's really, really weak, and close to breaking? And when it does, it would drop you into a huge gaping maw of horror?
Yeah.
That's where I am right now.
And the worst part is I only have myself to blame.

A neighbor knocked on my door last evening, asking for help in finding the circuit breakers for the building. PG&E had cut her off, because she was behind in her payments, and she'd just gotten caught up and had to flip the switch herself to get her power back on.
Funny timing, for a kindred spirit to show up at my door.

...it makes the world go around...

How is it possible that, just four days after payday, I am already broke? Huh? Huh? I haven't even done anything! There's been no playing, or profligate spending. Jeeeez...

I need to win the lottery or something.

Why aren't more people watching "Arrested Development?" God, that show just gets funnier and funnier. I'm still cracking up this morning over last night's episode. (It's a nice distraction from my bank balance...) In case you need the nudge... it's on Fox, Monday nights at 8 p.m. TUNE IN!

The first Monday in October...

So he picks a woman, so he can satisfy (at least on the surface) those who've been calling for him to choose a woman to replace Sandra Day O'Connor.... but he chooses one with no judicial experience whatsoever, so there's no paper trail. No record on her judicial leanings.

This, on the day that the new guy is installed as the chief guy.

Do you get the feeling that ol' Shrub is sitting in the Oval Office, giggling with glee?

*Sigh.

But this makes me smile:

NEW YORK (AP) - George Clooney is mad that liberal has become a dirty word.
``I'm going to keep saying 'liberal' as loud as I can and as often as I can,'' Clooney told Newsweek magazine in an interview about the film ``Good Night, and Good Luck,'' which he co-wrote and directed.

Another reason he is so sexy. Go, George!

And I'm sorry, but I don't ever want clowns anywhere near me. Ever:

Oct. 3, 2005 - A clown in the operating room may relax anxious children who are about to undergo surgery, but the entertainer has to learn to keep out of the way, Italian researchers said on Monday.
A study of 40 children between 4 months and 3 years old who were accompanied by at least one parent prior to minor surgery found having a clown present significantly reduced anxiety levels for both child and parent. Three out of five children suffer anxiety before surgery, according to the report published in the journal Pediatrics.
Clowns succeeded in distracting the children until the administration of anesthesia, but apparently annoyed doctors and nurses.

Apparently.

Funniest website EVER!

Check it out: Pathetic Personals.
Be sure to click on "cream of the crap," and "how to pp."
There's tons of great stuff all over the site. Snortalicious!

Ahh, Mother Nature heard me and brought the sun back to my 'hood today. Yay!

The promise of a new month...

I was just looking over my posts from the past month.
Jeez. Maudlin, much?

I didn't quite realize how stressed out I've been until this week, what with all the professional and personal challenges of late. And I suspect that's why this week's Margarita Thursday led to Extreme Hangover Friday. (That, and perhaps my general lack of impulse control. Oops.)

Anyway. It's a new month. I love October, with the spectacular weather we usually get (but dang, the fog is back after a truly glorious week) and then the turn to crisp evenings filled with the aroma of other people's fireplaces. I have a lot of fun plans on the calendar. And I'm re-dedicating myself to the Fall of Fitness, Frugality, and Frivolity.

I just need to make sure the frivolity doesn't hurt so much the next day.