You Like Me, You Really Like Me

Most if not all of you are friends with me on Facebook so this may be boring for you.  My friend list recently exceeded 300 people and I decided that it was time to trim it a little bit.  There was an explosion of people added in the year leading up to my 20th high school reunion and since then things have calmed down a bit.  Out of those 300+ people there were maybe one or two that I couldn't really place despite my best yearbook scanning efforts.  I suspect this is because their name has been changed but they didn't think to include their original handle anywhere in their profile.  Not fair.  Deleted.  Next I moved on to the folks that only seem to have anything to say when they wanted to promote their pyramid scheme/sell crap from the comfort of your own home business.  Don't get me wrong, I think social media is an excellent resource for the promotion of small business and if I sold crap from the comfort of my own home I'm sure I'd use it.  The people I deleted didn't seem interested in using it for any other purpose, however.  Gone.  The rest of the folks that I got rid of were people that just didn't seem to be on Facebook ever or if they are they just look.  I figure if they're never logged in then they don't care if I drop them and if they're creepy voyeurs then it's good riddance there too.

Before I did all this (actually the process is ongoing) I posted a status explaining what I was going to do.  This way if I delete someone with whom I have had little interaction they might have seen my status and will know it wasn't personal and can re-request me if they'd like.  I figured I'd get some comments from people saying that they were thinking of doing the same thing.  What I did not expect was the flood of comments from people asking me not to delete them.  I apologize if I caused anyone to panic.  Seriously, the people I deleted probably have no idea they've been deleted because they don't seem to be on FB at all anyway.  One thing this outpouring has cause is that I will now be extra-paranoid about my statuses and whether they are boring or not.  No pressure.

Having said all that, I would encourage people to take a good hard look at what information they have out there and to whom it is visible.  Those of you with kids, especially.

Kuckoo for Cocoa Puffs

So you know the voices in your head?  I'm not talking crazy voices that tell you to to shave one eyebrow or that the government is trying to steal your thoughts.  I just mean the ones where you have imagined conversations in your head with people.  Maybe you don't have them but I think you do.

Anyway.

Most of the time I don't think about these voices because they're just expressions of my own thoughts ("Holy crap, it's hot out here." or "Please don't be a telemarketer." or "Where the hell did I park my car?"). 

Every once in a while, though, they surprise me.  A couple of weeks ago I was driving in my car listening to the radio when a new song started.  I think it was Van Halen's "Jump".  If it wasn't it was certainly in an equivalence class with "Jump".  As it started I head the following very clearly in my head:

"Oh, hell yeah!"

What the heck?  I mean, I appreciate this song as much as the next person but I am pretty sure that reaction was not mine.

Should I be worried?

Oh Fud.

Yesterday was a very nice day.  I got to drive my car with the top down, go to a barbecue, have a yummy burger at Fudruckers, and go see my former football team (sort of  - they've been bought and renamed) give a solid beat down to their biggest rival.

Let me tell you about my trip to Fudruckers.  I love Fudruckers but I don't live near one so my love is generally unrequited.  Obviously I was pretty excited when I pulled into their parking lot yesterday.  I get a little scared, though, when I saw that all the blinds were pulled down.  It looked pretty dead.    Crap, what if the damned place went tets up in the years since I was last there?  I parked the car and walked toward the building hoping fervently that I wasn't going to be disappointed.  As I approached I saw that the windows were indeed covered completely with white opaque window shades.  Ugh.  I also realized that my fly was down so as I was checking out the windows I zipped myself back up.  The entrance was around the corner and when we got there I was elated to see that the door opened into a fully functioning Fudruckers.  I was puzzled as to why they were depriving their customers of a view of the bee-yoo-tee-full day outside so I skipped the order counter and went to check out the dark tomb of a seating area.  Those blinds?  Turns out they were some sort of magical one-way blinds that are opaque from one side and totally see through from the other.  Awesome.  Just awesome.

So to recap, I had an awesome day with a brief interlude of zipping up my pants while standing in the middle of a big window of a surprisingly busy restaurant.  Not that this stopped me from going inside and eating at said restaurant.  I mean, hey, it's Fudruckers.

Odds and Ends

These things don't really go together so I'm just throwing them all into one post.

I was waiting for the bus the other day (to take me to the subway which takes me to the train which gets me to the car which swallows the bird that swallowed the spider that ate the fly...) when I heard this repetitive clinking sound. I couldn't figure out why this sound bugged me so much but it did. It wasn't loud or anything but it was really sort of creeping me out. There was only one other person at the bus stop and his back was to me but it seemed like it was coming from his general vicinity. So there I am standing on the curb squinting around trying to solve this mystery when I finally identified the sound. Usually I feel better when I figure something out but this was not the case here. My epiphany was this: the dude was clipping his fingernails. On the street. Wating for a bus. I'm not talking about a little I-just-snagged-the-nail-on-a-zipper type maintainance, I'm talking a full-on Just-look-at-these-claws-I-really-need-a-mani sort of nail clipping session. Am I the only one who is creeped out by this? Like, really creeped out. Intellectually I know that I shouldn't be, but still.

Obviously, I took a picture.

And another thing:  what is up with people who fill up their soda at the self-serve soda thingy and then take a couple of sips before walking away.  Or worse, take a couple of sips, replace those sips with more soda, and then walk away.  I'm generally a patient person, I think.  Maybe not, I don't know.  Whenever this happens and I'm waiting for my turn to fill my cup I have thise urge to just smack them in the back of their head.  Not so that it hurts, just so that they get a noseful of soda.

Next I have a couple of pictures to share with you. The first one I took a couple of weeks ago in New Orleans. This is on a door in an elementary school lunchroom. I thought it was cool that the President was being used as an example of good table manners (vs Elmo or a sports figure, etc).

The second picture is old but it cracks me up.  Last summer I was at home and I heard a thud from the living room.  I didn't feel inclined to investigate because I have three cats who range in size from 15 to 19 pounds.  Cats of that size make frequent thuds.  Anyway, the next time I went into the living room I learned two things:

1.  Someone had knocked over the fan.

2.  Dennis does impressions.

This, obviously, is his knocked over fan impression.

 

The Mile High Club

Ha!  I bet that title got your attention.  Calm down, it's not what you think.  I just wanted to peak your interest.

I recently took a couple of trips involving air travel and decided to spend some time on one of the flights to write a blog entry.  The catch here is that when I fly I take anxiety meds (hey, I used to get drunk like everyone else but having ulcers put the kabosh to that).  The following is what I wrote.  The only changes that have been made are fixing some pretty egregious typos.

*********************************

So I thought I’d try something a little different for my next blog.  I’m currently on a flight from Boston to Chicago toward the goal of reaching New Orleans this evening.  The something a little different is not just the air-blogging.  It’s more the blogging while medicated.  I usually pop a couple of chill pills before boarding and from what I understand I seem fully functional if a little bit groggy.  Which is good.  I have to take people’s word for it, though, because I remember very little of my chill pill times.  So while it’s possible that nothing exciting will happen, I’m going to write this blog for myself as a little time capsule.

I was late to the airport because someone stole my cab at school.  I’m not talking about the big city idea of cab stealing where you hail the cab and then some jack hole jumps in and they take off.  I called for it at noon to pick me up at 3.  At 2:55 I was where I said I would be waiting.  Still there at 3 and now it’s kind of raining.  The reason I called a cab a priori (editor's note:  I managed to misspell the word plane twice but has no problem with a priori) rather than flag one down was that I didn’t have time to go hunting for an available cab.  So anyway, at 3:15 I talked to their dispatcher who was frankly puzzled since his driver had picked someone up at the assigned time and place.  I heard him berating the driver over the radio for not asking a name and then picking up a guy when the name was a woman’s name.  He tells me another cab will be sent.  The story fizzles from here because I was mad at the idiot cab driver but couldn’t take it out on my actual cab driver.  So I fumed my way through a ton of traffic and at least 2 near misses on my way to the airport.

Now I’m on the plane and aside from it being pretty bumpy there at the start it’s all good.  I can say that because of the chill pills.  Huppy and I are across the aisle from one another and must communicate by our own sign language.  This probably isn’t necessary except that I’ve decided it is and she’s really, really not good at reading lips.  I think it might be her disability.  Everyone has one.  I just told her I loved one of the flight attendants.  He's a round elderly Asian guy who moves with ruthless efficiency.  I conveyed this to her with a series of eye rolls and head tosses and then I drew a heart on my arm rest.  I think she got the message.  She didn’t stand up and ask if there was a doctor on board so that’s good.

Let’s talk about Huppy for a moment.  She’s still wearing her coat, has her headphones in and is thoughtfully staring in front of her.  No book, no laptop.  Just staring.  What’s going on in there?  Her hands are folded on the tray table in front of her.  Do people really do that?  Also, it’s always the tray table in front of you, never your tray table.  I wonder why.  Are the airlines trying to teach us about spatial relationships or do they think we’re dumb enough to try to monkey with the tray table in front of someone else.  I, for one,  am not interested in the sort of personal space violation that this would entail. 

The last flight I took from either MLI to ORD to ORD to BOS (memory problems, remember) had a serial farter on it.  It was a nightmare.  I overheard some people saying that the culprit was actually spraying deodorant after each episide in order to cover it.  While nice in theory I can say that in practice the poop particle dispersion rate was far superior to the deodorant’s.  For me, the deodorant part of that story will forever stay the stuff of rumor.

But that was not this flight.  This flight everything smells like peanuts.  It must be the snack of choice for high flying travelers.

The flight attendants keep bringing things back to the back of the plane.  Once it was a handheld grey box.  Now it was a tray held high with what looked like silverware wrapped up in a napkin.  I’m guessing we have a person back there who actually ordered an honest to goodness meal on the flight OR they’re setting up for an emergency tracheotomy. 

The woman in front of me just opened her flavored seltzer (the drink for people who hate taste) and it fizzed all over.  She held it in the aisle until it calmed down and then started whipping her arm around to fling off the seltzer that she got on herself.  So now I have selzer on my foot.  The thing that really ties it all together is that she’s wearing a raincoat.  Sitting in her seat.  On and airplane.  Apparently she knew she was sitting in a seltzer splash zone.  If I had known I would have worn galoshes.

Already I can see the benefit of this blog.  I can guarantee that without it I woudn’t have remembered why my right foot is sticky. (editor's note:  it's true - I didn't remember why my damned foot was sticky)

Other random thoughts:  sometimes compromising is the same as losing.  When I get up in the morning and stand at the train station it is in the mid to high 30’s.  I know that by the time I head home from work it willl be in the 60’s at least.  So I try to dress warmly enough so I’m not freezing in the morning but light enough that I don’t feel like bursting into flames in the afternoon.  This, it turns out, is not possible.  I know, you think the secret is layers.  That may be true for normal people but when I put clothes on in the morning I cannot later be held responsible for their location or how they get from one place to another unless it is on my body being worn as clothes.  So, my compromise is the same as losing because based on what I’m wearing there is a 15 minute window in the afternoon when I am dressed weather-appropriate.  Unfortunately I never get to savor that moment because I am in class at that time.  I think my new strategy is to dress whole heartedly for either the morning or afternoon temperatures and just suffer during the other one.  It adds up to about the same amount of misery and the compromise way but this time I have the added benefit of experiencing the part of the day where I get it right.  I’ll let you know how that goes.

I Wish I Had Thought Of That!

Here's a story.  Of a lovely lady.  (Me)

OK, stop laughing.

ANYWAY, this happened to me last week.  As you may or may not know, I've been studying martial arts for the last 5 or so years.  Recently I came to the very difficult decision to take a sabbatical from tae kwon do in order to spend more time at the gym.  My knees have been really hurting lately and it would take a few days to recover from TKD class which would happen just in time for another TKD class.  In between I would be too sore to do any other exercise.  This did not amount to enough activity so I was getting steadily less...visibly fit...which only exacerbated the knee issues even more.  So, I decided to take a break and go to the gym at least 4 times a week (one day with a personal trainer, even).  I saw someone I knew from TKD last week and was asked why I'm not in class anymore.  I gave the quick knees-recovery-sabbatical explanation and was given the following advice:

"You should lose weight, then."

I'll give you a moment to process that.
...
...
...

I know, right?  Who says that?  Several responses flitted across my brain before I answered.  They were:

"Huh.  That never occurred to me!  Wow!  Thanks for the advice!  Before I go, will you help me tie my shoe?  I forgot how.  Also, please explain to me how to open this door.  Do I push the knob thingy?  Turn it?  Do speak a password into it?  Dang, things are so confusing!"

or

"You know you said that out loud, right?"

or

"Considering I almost certainly outweigh you and I have a black belt in tae kwon do, would you like to amend this conversation in any way?"

But I went with:

"Uh, yeah, that's the plan."

I'm Baaaaack!

So, yeah.  I'm sorry that it's been quite a while since I've posted.  I've been teaching an over-overload this semester and it's been insane in the membrane.  In the grand scheme of things, I can't really complain since no matter how crazy my schedule is it only ever lasts for three months before I get a minimum of a month off.  Here's a hodge podge of stuff for you:

1.  I am now down to one pair of pants that fit me.  Stress and the fact that I like to do most of my grading in restaurants have really taken a toll on the old waistline (and buttline, and pretty much all my lines).  Why am I sharing this with you?  I had originally vowed to not purchase more pants seeing as how I have many, many pairs of pants that are only 10 pounds away but after a marathon session of grading at Panera (see?) I decided to go see what I could find at Target.  I headed over to the women's clothes and wandered around trying to find something that seemed to be made of natural fibers and didn't have some dipshitty sparkly butterfly pattern glued to the pockets.  Right before I decided to abandon hope and go throw myself at a pizza, I found a pair of khaki pants that looked workable.  Not low-rise?  Check.  Made from cotton?  Check.  Waistband that won't dig in when I sit down?  Check.  Inexpensive?  Check.  Thank goodness!  I grabbed them off the rack and started to head to the checkout lanes.  Right before I got there something on the tag caught my eye.  I looked closer, turned around and put them back where I found them, and speed walked out of the store.

They were maternity pants.  As the kids say, FML.

2.  Remember when I told you I got my feet tangled up in my pants, fell down, and messed up my toe?  It's still messed up!  A toe is not a complicated body part.  What the hell could still be wrong with it?  Frankly, if this keeps up I might have to let it go. Times are tough and if it's not going to hold up its end of the bargain I'll find another toe.

3.  Thank goodness for iPods at the gym.  I've been doing a lot of interval stuff on the elliptical lately and I suspect that I probably sound like an obscene phone caller at times.

4.  Last Tuesday I had the house to myself for the evening.  This is what I did:
     3:00 I arrived home from work
     3:15 I headed to the grocery store
     5:00 I made tacos for dinner (the totally inauthetic orange powder in the beef kind)
     5:30 - 7:00 I watched some TV
     7:15 I went to bed

     I'm so wild and crazy that I go beyond wild and crazy and end up wrapping around into completely boring.


Thanks for reading, all.  Have a good night.