Month: November 2003

don’t worry, it’s not what you think

Yesterday morning I came downstairs to find that pattern of brown marks on my carpet. Naturally, having an animal in the house, I suspected the worst, but on careful examination “by careful I mean not sticking my nose in it – and no, I didn’t taste it” I determined it was in fact the most sublime of brown substances, chocolate. “I suppose it could have been carob, but my mass spectrometer is out for calibration.” Momentary relief was replaced by panic when I realized that <a href=”Hastings might have eaten some overlooked piece of candy from the party. I checked him over quickly, apologized for my poop suspicions, and then did a web search for “cats and chocolate”

If your cat has eaten, licked, smelled or even looked at chocolate, he will be dead by the time you get to the end of this paragraph. But unless your house looks like the deck of a tramp steamer full of refugees after a typhoon, he’s probably fine.

“I hope you’re not reading this on your lunch break.”

Just to be safe, I stuck a garden hose in him and ran it for about ten minutes, then squeezed him for a while.

Still, that left the mystery of how they got there. I suddenly realized they had some of the same geometric patterns as crop circles. Obviously, the marks on my carpet are a message from our alien overlords “and if someone wants to get my attention, chocolate is a good medium to use”. After studying the patterns for quite some time, I have deciphered the meaning:

Happy birthday. Eat whatever the hell you want.

Yes, today is my birthday. I am 38, and what a useless birthday that is. When I turned 35 I became eligible to run for president, and passed gratefully out of the MTV demographic. “I have since had the opportunity to indicate my age group on a survey as “35-70″ Thanks.”

Thirty-six was at least mathematically interesting. Bill, who got there a month before me, left me a message saying, “Just wanted to know if you felt like four nine-year olds, two 18-year olds, or like me, half of a 72-year old””

Thirty-seven and 38 just seem like way stations on the road to 40, but I’m okay with that. I know a lot of people are nostalgic for their 20s. Not me. I was a total dipshit back then. If you don’t believe me, check out the haircut in my <a href=”1988 passport photo.

why do I always have to make a face?

The problem with throwing a party and having dozens of your favorite people show up is that you don’t get to talk to anyone for more than five minutes. Saturday night I hosted ScorpioFest 2003, a co-birthday party for Samantha, Jenny, Catherine and, also, me. At the risk of having this post deteriorate even further into 15-year old girl territory, I will just say this:

I have the kewlest friends!!!! You guys are AWESUM!!!!!! :” :” :”

I will remember the party fondly while I am spending tomorrow night, my actual birthday, in a homeowners’ association board meeting. I’m not sure it gets more 38 than that.

The party was trans-oceanic, with Adda and Andri joining via web cam and IM. Owing to wireless network annoyances “plus the fact that it was 4:00 a.m. in Iceland” the conversation went basically like this:

hey

hye

who is this?

are you there?

Taavi’s feet smell like corn chips.

camera locked up again.

… followed by a discussion of a papier mache marital aid that has no place in a family blog. Plus, Adda kept arching her back and saying we could private for 20 credits.

Jesse and Rebecky brought me a pair of badass shades to go with my badass new jacket. “I’ve been calling it Jacket, but I should probably call it Mr. Jacket, or “sir.” I’m not sure I’m man enough for it. I think it’s sneaking out at night to stick up convenience stores.” The sunglasses kind of took me over, like the thing in that thing where the thing takes over that guy. “”No, Sunglasses! I don’t want any more vodka! “Shut up and drink or I will concentrate UV rays into your corneas”” I’ve posted photos from my Sunglasses Period in the gallery.

There’s lots of cheese left over. I had half a wheel of Brie for lunch. Spencer, for some reason, brought an enormous bag with four apples in it, and it’s still here. It’s kind of surreal, or even Surrealist. “Bag With Four Apples will remain on exhibit at the Plooble corporate gallery through the month of November.

I try to be efficient. For instance, when I weigh myself in the morning, rather than just waste that time standing there, I do it while I’m brushing my teeth. “Apparently my toothbrush weighs 47 pounds.” While I’m waiting for the shower to heat up, I clean the litter box. When I’m making an omelet, I start the pan warming up before I beat the eggs. I estimate that these and other efficiencies save me up to three minutes a week, which I can use in far more worthwhile and productive endeavors like listening to the music of Shooby Taylor.

Go to this page RIGHT NOW and download “Lift Every Voice and Sing” and gather a crowd before you play it. Trust me. Thanks and a tip o’ the hat to Adda for that one.

And in a further attempt to drive you off my site, please welcome Proud Icelander to the list of must-read blogs. Here’s a picture of him and me in Reykjavík. Why yes, I think we might have had a drink or two.

researchers at the candle factory

I’ve spent the last couple of hours watching the Rally of France and the Rally of Spain. I love rally racing. “Of course I do: it’s foreign and hard to find.” You get to see little tiny cars going very fast sideways on logging roads, public roads, and through ancient villages where the cars are literally driving over people’s doorsteps “and nearly their toes”. In the Rally of Sweden this year, one driver raced a moose for about a hundred feet. Plus you get to see cars do this. “I nearly bought a Ford Focus because of its success in the World Rally Championship, until I realized that the one I could buy at University Ford would not have a quarter of a million dollars worth of racing parts in it.”

Compared to American sports figures, the drivers are incredibly modest. They say things like, “I’m really slow today. My opponents are driving very well and there’s just no way I’m going to catch them. And I got really scared on that last stage” It took me a while to get used to it. When you hear them swearing via the in-car camera it’s in a foreign language, so it sounds cute. They say things like “Oyo! when they’re about to drive off a cliff. I hope it’ll catch on here, but I kind of doubt the average NASCAR fan is going to get excited about watching Citroëns and Peugeots compete in a sport traditionally dominated by Finns.

Now that I’ve talked about that, I feel I can safely mention that Primo and I went candle shopping Tuesday. We went to the tritondous Buy Yourself a Lifestyle Mall and examined the waxy offerings of Expensive Barn, Expensive Hardware and Eddie Bauer Home-My-God That’s Expensive. Then we found the candle store. I think it’s called The Great American Candle Company, or possibly T.G.I. Candles.

We discovered that candles are divided into four categories: candles you want to eat, candles that are okay to smell, candles that are not okay to smell, and candles that smell like total ass. “Primo looked at the Seaside candle and said, “What does that smell like? Pine trees and low tide?” I rejected New Car Smell, Litter Box, and Feet, and chose Nantucket “which does not smell like whaling” because I liked the chalky blue color, and Sage, because it was one of the few that fell into Category Two. In retrospect, Nantucket was not a good choice. They’ve been sitting in my living room since I brought them home, and now my house smells like cheap aftershave. “I suppose it would be Old Spice.” Every time I walk in there I expect to see a guy named Vic sitting on my couch in a Member’s Only jacket.

now THAT’S the back of a banknote

The designers here at the Plooble Bureau of Printing and Engraving have been working overtime in the realization that Plooble shoppers need something other than a Fitty. After careful consideration, the Currency Committee has selected a group of esteemed Plooblers to be honored on our banknotes.

“Click the thumbnail to make ’em grandiose.”

Please be advised that printing out these notes and circulating them may be a violation of applicable laws in jurisdictions less enlighted than the Untidy State of Plooble. “My apologies to the counter staff at Quizno’s who received a Fitty in the tip jar, courtesy of Primo.”

If I spent half as much time on my job search as I do on this blog, I would be president of IBM by now. “I had to say that before my dad did.”

Despite the fact that I have made my living for the last 14 years as a professional communicator, I often talk, um… wrong. I have a real problem with pronouns, for instance. Last week I was on the phone with an HR Lady and in answering her question “How did you learn about our company? I told her, “I met the president of the company at a party and he asked him to send me his resume”

I once sent an unsolicited email to an ad agency who I hoped might hire me. I figured I could take a jauntier tone and wrote, “I write like a champ in any media” Moments after I hit send I realized I had just made a grammatical error in a sentence extolling my skills as a writer. Guess what? Never heard from them. I’m sure they were happy that I gave them a quick reason to avoid reading the rest of the email, like the way I felt when I got cover letters with typos in the first line. Or the time I got a resume addressed to me as Pubic Relations Coordinator.

I wish.

When I worked for the newspaper I called people all the time, and some of them didn’t want to talk to me. On more than one occasion this exchange occurred:

“Hello, this is David Thomas from The Chapel Hill News”

“Yes?

“Fine thanks, how are you?”

My greatest fear was that I would one day end a professional conversation with “I love you” This probably says something really peculiar and/or pathetic about me, but hey, I don’t keep any secrets from you.

I have walked up to a receptionist more than once and said, “This is David Thomas” like I was on the radio or something. “And I’ll be right back after this short break” I’m always happy to find I’m not the only person who has problems with everyday talkifying. When I worked at Big Telecommunications Company Who Sucks and Laid Me Off, a friend walked into my cube one day and announced, “Hey, it’s Alyssa! That’s what we say on the phone, hon, not what we say in person. Still, it was endearing.

Speaking of talking, allow me to be the very first person ever to write about how electronic mediums medias things have changed communication. I spend far too much time IMing with Adda “at least from a getting-anything-else-accomplished perspective”, and since she’s screamingly funny, I end up typing “lol a lot. I tried to resist it at first as lazy shorthand, but then I just gave in. She is trying harder than I am though, and her current alternative to “lol is “hink” I like it. Hink hink. HOL. Rebecky also went through a similar soul-searching process. She writes “haha!, which is kind of weird but funny, sort of like watching a recent immigrant tell his first joke in English. “I wonder if they’ll make their way into speech. Wanna start a trend? The next time you hear something funny, keep a deadpan expression and say “rofflemao””

Adda and I have realized that most IM shorthand is dishonestly hyperbolic. I mean, seriously, how often are you actually laughing out loud, let alone rolling on the floor laughing your ass off? You wouldn’t be able to type, for one thing. With that in mind, we created a more accurate abbreviation: LQTS – “laughing quietly to self”