Celebrity Sighting

Update: Half the staff at UFood, where I purchased today's lunch, thinks I look like Hilary Duff. Or, more specifically - "That blonde one, in that Cinderalla-kinda movie. For TV."

meat is murder...tasty, tasty murder

Nobel Prize? Please. I wrote my senior thesis on this in high school. I would like my chunk of the prize money now.
Meat: Making Global Warming Worse

This is common sense folks...

I never eat meat - and that's counting poultry and seafood, for the zoology illiterate - more than a few times a week. It helps to be poor. I did consume part of a "Buffalo" chicken calzone (with bleu cheese) last night - and I notate Buffalo that way because it's like consuming "New England clam chowder" at a Denny's in Cleveland.

pencils down

Last night I was up every two hours with sneezing fits. Allergies?! NOW? I never get them this time of year. And during the longest bout of actual sleep I managed to catch I had a terrible stressful dream about a standardized test. Um. First I was seated in the dark, then the proctor yelled at me for trying to move, and then there was some sort of riot. Bad, worse, irrational.

My fig plant is dying. It's drooping (like the Mister when he can't get on macrumors), and I don't think it's getting enough light. Our apartment is very bright and airy, but it doesn't get any direct light, oddly enough. So I put it on the balcony yesterday, and it blew over. I did the same today, because I have no other alternatives, and I'm just praying it doesn't blow right through the railings. Sad sad fig. I thought of bringing it to work, but I'd have to put it in the kitchen where it would inevitably get over-watered. It can't go in my cube, it would probably throw itself off the counter out of pure despair.

I guess all I can do is hope it makes it until Halloween and then use the leaves to be Eve.

I just put two and two together about my dream and the fig. I need a new hobby.

trust falls

Staff retreat yesterday...painless enough but I felt like I was back in a lecture hall, listening to lots of people dole out important information but not truly engaged. Yes yes listening is an important skill and I know two ears, one mouth et cetera...but for goodness sake, if someone asks you a question (and not a rhetorical one!) then it's a lot harder to yawn. Just sayin.

BUT we got out at 2 and I had a glorious freebie afternoon! Ran an errand in the car and decided that my own voice was far more entertaining than anything on the radio, and I sorely missed Kara's karaoke machine. Maybe I'll invent Kar-aoke - where you can do karaoke while driving. DMB "Crash" would be top on the list. And "Ring of Fire." Har har.

Finished "The Book of Air and Shadows." It had a disappointingly happy ending. Really. Gruber pansied out. I wanted him to go for it - half a dozen people get tortured throughout the book, and another dozen or so are killed...but he doesn't describe much of it! There's a scene where someone's brains end up on a coffee table, and he just kind of brushes over the description. He didn't embrace the gore. He's billed as a "thriller" author, and I was not thrilled. Entertained, but not thrilled.

live to eat and read

More reading. This book is so good...well, I admit I have no idea what's going on in the plot right now, but at least I'm enjoying myself. The Man and I spent a lot of this weekend lying on the couches just reading and replacing our blood with tea. He seems to be enjoying the book on Steve Jobs I got him for his birthday, so that's happy. And we look up words we don't know together! Everybody all together now..."Awwww...bleaaaarghphooey."

I broke my Going to the Gym Daily Streak last week because I had crazy blisters/shoe wounds on my heels and couldn't bear to don sneakers and socks. Too bad so sad gonna get fat. I did go today, though, and watched a stupid Rihanna music video on the flat screens and decided her music and look have nothing to do with each other. Pseudo-goth + dance/hip-hop? Nope. And all her songs are the same.

Saw Tropic Thunder - laughed my pants, er, skirt off. I love Ben Stiller's characters - they're all over-muscled, ditzy males with an affinity for head bands. Comedy gold. Except the Focker ones, and Along Came Polly. But did you ever see Heavy Weights? Classic steroidal Stiller. And Disney, to boot.

Tried a new sushi place - awesome! And the tapas place down the street - awesomer! I'm eating the leftover salmon RIGHT NOW for lunch and love it. It wasn't exactly Las Ramblas though because of the loudmouth Russians sitting next to us who talked on a cell phone the whole time. Like, one cell phone, two people, talking to each other, to their caller, and ticking me off. But they did advertise flamenco events...I'll be there.

On to travel talk...I really want to visit Andrea but am trying to get my mom here to visit me and it's all too complicated. And the likely dates are bookended by important work events and I'd like to visit Pittsburgh to see my sister too (more to gawk at her living outside her natural environment)...what to do.

I don't trust books; they're all fact, no heart.

Ever been late to work because you've been reading during breakfast and lost track of time?

I feel like that might happen in the next few days. And this threat is only exacerbated by the fact that I can't ever get a seat on the D line on my way to work, and thus can't read (very well without getting jostled) whilst standing up...so I try to get in my morning lit before the commute. But I do love to eat cereal and read a good book.

I think I would be pretty happy to find out that heaven is an easy chair next to an ever-replenishing bowl of Honey Bunches of Oats with whole milk, and a stack of the best books ever written (hopefully Jesus likes himself a lot of Agatha Christie, and a good bit of candy-lit because no way am I spending eternity reading the likes of Faulkner. That would be Hell). There would be kitties, too. Oh, and that guy I like.

live free or die hiking

Can't...type...too...tired.

You know what I'm craving right now? Mall. Pure, unadulterated mall. Indoors, filtered air, people in coordinated outfits stepping on my blissfully sneakerless impracticle-shoe-shod feet. Top 40 music piped in next to artificial plants. And an Auntie Anne's pretzel. And a diet coke. Yeah - eat that Mother Nature.

I prefer my physical activity (if I can say "prefer" and "physical activity" in the same sentence) to be limited to 30 minute blocks. It's manageable, I know I can shower right away, and it means I only have to give up being lazy for half an hour of my day.

So that four hour hike Sunday has all but liquefied my non-existent muscles. We headed up Mt. Monadnock, and I was the most inexperienced hiker there. Lots of families were taking advantage of the perfect weather on this loveliest of Labor Day weekends, so many small scampering six year olds lapped me on that mountain. But enough of those memories, I have the mosquito bites to help me relive that afternoon.

On to brighter news - Joe Biden looks like a saint compared to what the Republicans have dug up - ARGGGGGH it's pro-lifer Evangelical Christian former beauty queen Sarah Palin! Step right up to view the feminist's nightmare: our first GOP viable female VP candidate hate's women's rights! The real cherry on this backwater sundae is that her abstinence-only sex education stance has firmly backfired and she still won't budge to consider that maybe America's kids are smart enough to cope on their own if they aren't kept in a holy water bubble - Palin's own 17 year old daughter is pregnant. Surely, this poor girl has enough to deal with without media scrutiny - but for the love of Kotex - somebody send this family to therapy!