Stuff I Wrote A Long Time Ago: Let's Do The Time Warp Again!

Note: The following is a LiveJournal post from a little over two years ago. It fit so beautifully with the Bits and Pieces post that I had to re-post it, here. I hope you enjoy.

I’m risking the Lazy B’s displeasure to say here on LiveJournal that I was in my local Starbucks this morning (well, the local one that I hit on my way to work, not the local one two blocks from my front door that I go to for wi-fi)--anyway, I was in Starbucks, and it took me a second in my non-caffeinated state to recognize the music. Then I did. It was Nirvana’s “Polly”.

I almost ran screaming out of the store. Yes, Starbucks is also a Seattle institution, and yes, they make a point of playing unusual music...but to have Nirvana, the seminal grunge band against all that was institutional and accepted, a band that was the definition of anti-establishment in my formative years—I almost hurled from the time warp. For a moment there were two of me in that Starbucks: a seventh grader getting her first cup of coffee with her daddy’s money in Proctor right after that Proctor Starbucks opened, thinking about Stefan Krick and the warmth of pot and cologne drifting off him when he hugged her, Nirvana blasting in her head--not headphones, because they weren’t as popular then and not allowed at school, but Kurt Cobain singing straight to her in her head, because he was the only one that understood her--before coffee was cool and before Starbucks was ubiquitously establishment. Twelve years ago. And this old girl in her sleek black pants and brilliant white-and-black shirt and black shell and black peacoat, standing tall in black work-appropriate heels, long hair pulled back in a sleek ponytail. Her massive black Jeep stood outside waiting for her, her German Shepherd kept the house warm while she was gone, she had a company credit card and business cards with her name on them, and that afternoon she would walk on the beach in the sunshine.

What would the seventh-grader say to me? What would I say to her? We looked at each other across an expanse of lifetimes in the multiverse, each choice I had made on the way looming up out of the abyss between us, parallel universes created from multiple choice:

Your parents have just grounded you for the umpteenth time. Once again you are plunged into a social black hole. You’ve already lost two relationships because you couldn’t leave the house to see them. Now your friend has attempted suicide and you’re staring blankly at the ground from your parents’ roof. Do you:

a) Throw yourself over the edge?
b) Cry and think about how much the world hates you?
c) Enjoy the view?
d) Close your eyes, feeling the Grim Reaper ready to take you as you teeter on the edge, then climb sadly back down?

You’ve just gotten two 1.8 GPAs in a row. Congratulations, you’re on Dean’s Vacation! You get the letter while you’re interning in D.C. You know you won’t be able to stay with your boyfriend while you’re apart a year, not to mention the shame of academic suspension and all your friends being done a year before you. Do you:

a) Accept the suspension as a sign from God and take a year off?
b) Not return to school after you do that, losing your boyfriend, your sorority, and your degree?
c) Stay in D.C., becoming a high-class call girl?
d) Accept your parents’ offer to help fight the suspension?

If I had picked mainly a’s, b’s, or c’s, would I be where I am now? But how the hell did I get here? This is not my beautiful house! This is not my beautiful wife!

EDIT: Through a chain of funny coincidences, Stefan (who turned out to be a somewhat talented artist but with more talent for getting high) now WORKS for that damn Proctor Starbucks. And just last week he ran into the back of a car that contained, among other people, the little sister of aforementioned very depressed friend. Who is now completely fine and a pillar of society. And Little Sister wasn't hurt.

Bits and Pieces

I was sitting at Starbucks just yesterday with Claire, (holla!) one of my tutorees. (Made up word meaning: girls I tutor.)

Okay, I am growing older, and it is a sad truth that the music I listened to and loved in my formative years is also growing older, and therefore, Time is softening the edges of music that was considered so rough in its day that it was banned from my middle school. Case in point: two years ago, I heard Nirvana's "Polly" in a Starbucks, a song whose barely veiled lyrics discuss gang rape and BDSM. The buzz surrounding this song has of course disappeared, as the song is 14 years old now, and all that's left is the mounrful dirge tune and Kurt Cobain's sexy, barely intelligible mumble. (Ironically, exactly what caused the furor in the first place.)

While R.E.M. wasn't, and still isn't, a band that could be directly compared to Nirvana, they certainly started around the same time and were considered part of the new sound on the radio, although R.E.M. was barely a grunge band. Still, I fell in love with R.E.M. around the same time I fell in love with Nirvana, and because of that, when R.E.M.'s "Everybody Hurts" came on the air in the Starbucks yesterday, I sang along for a few bars, even though it embarrasses Claire. (Ah, teenagers.) She looked at me.

"It's Everybody Hurts," I said, stating a fact.
"Who is it by?" she asked.
"R.E.M.," I said, thinking, duh.
She responded, "What's rem?"

Oh, Lordy. Am I THAT old?

Apparently not old enough, as just a few hours later, I posted about cuddling with my dog while he was sleeping, proving that I was late to my next tutoring appointment, and therefore was speeding along on the highway when a cop pulled me over and issued me a ticket.

Hello, insurance! Sorry about that! Please don't raise my rates too high, thank you!

LT, when I was telling him this story: "Does your insurance have a three-ticket limit?"
Me: "No idea. Guess we're about to find out." (Those playing along at home will remember that I got two tickets in one week, last year, and one of them was deferred for a year. Not quite a year ago.)

Uh. Whoops. (And I was doing so good, too!)

A Problem

I have Titan back for the first time in two days, and he is lying on the futon, snoring away, and I am sitting in the space between his front legs and his back legs. His warmth is at my back, and like I said, he is snoring.

And I have to get up and walk him, if only briefly, and then go tutor for the second time today, and I really, really, REALLY don't want to.

Sigh.

I Have Not Given Into the Dark Side!

The banner above this post, or rather right below the title, is NOT an ad! I am not making any money from it!

It's a banner, and it's cool, and the color happens to work with both blogs (totally accidental, I swear) and it happens to be about an issue that I care about: Internet Radio.

The FCC is considering substantially raising radio fees for internet radio companies, meaning that most of the stations I listen to and enjoy--FineTune, Pandora, Last.fm--will be out of business; they just don't make enough money (with no advertisements, no backing from huge evil corporations like Clear Channel, and no payola to ensure that Chris Brown's latest Crapola gets radio play) to pay a huge radio license fee and still pay for their server upkeep.

One of the amazing things about the internet is its incredible cheapness; for a couple of bucks and maybe 200 bucks in recording equipment, ANYONE can put out a CD, start up a radio station, start a cooking show, or publish a book. It's wonderful, because there are some really talented people out there who don't have the time (after their 9-5 jobs) or the connections (because not everyone lives in NYLA) or even the inclination (because a lot of mass-media companies really suck) to go the mainstream route of getting a manager, publicist, or agent, and then having the agent shop their book around, and then signing most of their creative rights away, etc, etc. So they publish, or record, on their own instead. The internet makes that possible, and while I don't get to read or watch Google Video much at work, I DO get to listen to Internet Radio.

Don't take that away from this Chemical Engineer! Sign the petition--and contact your representative today!

Compare and Contrast

I would just like to make it clear that today I have:

Lifted Weights

Walked for 45 minutes up and down hills.

Cooked for two full hours.

Washed most of my dishes.

I am TIRED, y'all. I may be in bed in not too much longer.

But the problem is, that while I have been doing all these things, and reading a bunch of design blogs, and abusing my account at the library while I check books out constantly and read them voraciously and spend eleventy-million dollars at the grocery store all in one day, therefore necessitating the Massive Cook-Off that happened tonight, and watching F1 racing with the LT and walking the Monster, one of my blogging idols, Crazy Aunt Purl, has gone and wrote herself a book.

Meanwhile, I have had half of a mystery novel sitting in my computer for, oh, going on four years now.

This was originally funny, as in, "Hey, I'll buy a house when pigs fly or when I finish and sell my novel, whichever comes first," and now, four years later, I've reached a point that I always ANTICIPATED I would reach, but wasn't really prepared for until it happened:

I may never finish my novel.

I may end my writing career before it starts, just another wannabe who thought she could write better than the billions of pulp fiction on the shelves, or even if she couldn't, she could at least make some money, or at least enough to fuel her latte habit, and INSTEAD of doing even that, she failed, just like so many thousands, possibly millions before her.

Since my book is not a secret, unlike Laurie's (hi, honey! I'm SO proud of you!!) I might start talking about it, not here but in the other blog. Or I might, instead, look at my schedule, see that I'm working 55 hours a week including tutoring, and decide it's a miracle that I even make all my own meals and walk my dog an hour a day. (And blog, of course.)

(Note: Laurie did all of the above except have a dog to walk, but she walked ANYWAY, for half an hour at least, every day. I have no excuse.)

Anyway, want to see what I've been doing with the time that I'm not using to write?

...

Today was one of the very first, really WARM days we have had here in the Cloudy Gray; Titan and I passed three banks, and all of them proclaimed the temperature to be 64 or above. It was humid, which did wonders for my newly trimmed hair (ha) and we walked all over, trying to find beauty.

This is something new I've been doing; I've said that I'm reading a lot of design blogs, but since so many of them are complete crap, I'm also getting back in touch with the basics. I'm re-reading Pride and Prejudice, a book every girl should read once a year at least, I'm reading the entire Griffin and Sabine series, and also Nick Bantock's companion book, "Urgent Second Class." I rediscovered Tamara de Lempicka, a cubist painter from the 1930s whose calendar I had on my wall my junior year in high school, right after my trip to Barcelona (I was so chic!) and I'm also reading my Shakespeare (again). (If that sentence sounds like "taking my vitamins", it's sort of apt--only much more enjoyable!)

Anyway, this steady diet of Cubism, Surrealism, Nick Bantock's Collage School, Anglophilia, and Francophilia, has made me quite the wanderer these days--both mentally and physically. Fortunately, Seattle--often bemoaned for its hills and pocket neighborhoods, cut off others--is absolutely perfect for this, because the very presence of its hills practically mark out perfect spots of discovery, of hidden beauty. (Who else would climb that sixty degree hill except someone who had a reason to be there?)

So Titan and I have been wandering and pondering (and pooping, in his case) and I may divine a great deal of wisdom from these paths, or I may not. In any case, I swear I will start up my novel again.

Tomorrow.

Been Working

(I know, shocking, right?)

And in honor of this amazing event, a list of funny things said by my coworkers!

Me, talking to my BIG boss: "I'm so sad that your office is right by mine--no sneaking in in jeans anymore!"
My Big Boss: "Oh, you always look fine anyway! Look at you today, your shoes match your sweater!"
Me, laughing it off: "I'm single, Boss..."
My boss: "So, what, you're trolling now?"

Me, to my immediate boss: "I'm so impressed. I wouldn't have had the chutzpah."
My immediate boss: "Yeah, I have a spine and a big mouth."
Me: "That's why you're the manager!"

My business manager, talking about why he has no money, "Yeah, I need to stop chasing beavers."

(I blinked several times at that one, even though I knew that he was talking about hunting beavers on remote land he owns in Missouri.

Probably not funny to anyone else, but when you spend your days chasing down lasers, anything is pretty damn funny!

The Closest to Fame I Can Get on a Monday

I got my name in lights with notcelebrity.co.uk

I Suppose it Was Inevitable...

...One of the girls I tutor is reading my BLOG.

This would be a really awful idea, was I not already editing myself because my PARENTS are reading my blog. (Hi, guys! Great seeing you on Saturday!)

(Before my readers get on me about free speech, I've gotten to a time in my life when really, it's a good thing that I'm editing myself a little, I think. Because after 25 or so, a bunch of posts that read, "OMG I GOT SOOOOOOOWASYTED LAST NITE" are even less charming than they are at 19, no?)

It's a Sunday night, and I am still (again) fighting with my iPod and my hard drive; not that they are misbehaving, but rather that they are not doing what I want them to do, but instead simply what I am TELLING them to do. (Update much later: I FIXED IT!)

I'm having one of those moments where I had a brilliant idea on the way home in the car, didn't write it down or record it in any fashion, and am now cursing that fact. Oh, well. I start this week with new tunes, really good leftovers, and tahini. What could be better?

The Cutest To-Do List I've Ever Seen!

Create yours here.

(Notes: I assigned myself a call number based on the Dewey Decimal System, a breakdown of which can be found here. If you look up my number (at least the first three digits) you'll see that it's Satire and Humor, because the likelihood of this list occurring as-is is low, at best. I thought about classifying it as 818, Miscellaneous Writings, but thought Satire was more appropriate.)

A Recent Discussion

I recently got to see my very good friend D, last seen here, as she flew in to Seattle to see family for Passover. (I showed up the night before the actual dinner, and it turned out to be an excellent strategy, as they had a bunch of beer in the house that they were trying to drink up--no yeast during Passover, you see.)

D and I opened beers and sat on the couch in her father's living room, and talked, and talked, and talked, and two hours later we were still talking and I had to physically tear myself away from the conversation, because it was 11:30 pm and she may be on vacation, but I sure wasn't. D is a doctorate student, you see, at a very famous school that we will call Varhard, and she is working in genomes, doing some fascinating stuff that may get her published well before thirty, if everything goes right, which is quite a feat, not accomplished by many. (I'm very into the commas today.) To say that she is smart would be sort of an understatement. The girl is brilliant.

And, as many brilliant people are, she's not good at the art of compromise, or tolerance, or even compassion for other people's stupidity, and as I am trying to convince myself that compassion is the better part of knowledge but not wholly succeeding, we play off each other well, and we had a grand old time bashing the failing academic standards of this country. I had heard rumors of grade inflation at Varhard and others, but it wasn't made real to me until D confessed that she had to APPLY to give her undergraduates a C, and if you want to give a D, you'd better have the President at your back, and if you want to fail a student--and I wish I was joking--you have to defend your grade in front of a panel of grade reviewers.

Let me say right now that if CMU wanted to fail you, they did so, and often they laughed at you while doing it. I took classes from professors who wrote things down with one hand and erased with the other, professors who brushed off questions with the answer, "Ask me next semester when you repeat this class", professors who prided themselves on failing half of the population. I simply could not believe that a school such as Varhard was handing out As and Bs like they were candy, and the worst part--because, oh, does it get worse--is that D is teaching a biology class, and her students are PRE-MED.

I gaped at her. "Your pre-med students are getting inflated grades in their biology class? What about the rest of the sciences?"

D looked at me with pity. "Ah, there's the rub. The interesting thing is, my class is only a semester long. And it is half of their science requirement."

I took a pull from my beer. "I will hate the answer, but I have to ask: what, exactly, is Varhard's science requirement for a pre-med student?"

"One year of science total," D replied. "The first semester is Chemistry and Physics combined, and the second semester is biology."

"Just out of academic curiousity, what the HELL is the basis for the Varhard pre-med program, then, since it is obviously not science?"

"Being 'well-rounded'," she replied, almost spitting the words.

"Note to self," I said, "do not ever subject yourself to treatment from a doctor who got his pre-med at Varhard.

"No kidding," she replied, "I don't want my doctors to be 'well-rounded'! I want them to know something!"

(Note: D and I are not well-rounded, so perhaps the academic importance of such a quality eludes us.)

Much later on, with most of our beers gone, I was regaling her with tales from the front lines of tutoring (thank GOD that the girls I tutor are all receiving fairly standard educations, or I would be unbearable as a tutor) and she in turn told me about her niece, who had recently told D that she was reading Hamlet in her high school English class. "That's great!" D responded innocently.

"Yes," said her niece, "we're reading the New Version."

D blinked a few times. "What New Version?" (The exact same words that I had interjected at this point in the story.)

"It's the new version," her niece said impatiently, expecting like all teenagers that D could read her mind. "It has the original on one side, and the new version on the other. We're only reading the new version."

D and I stuck our heads in the oven.

Toothbrush has returned!

We now return to our regularly scheduled blogging.

It is much like a normal Monday today, only more so. I have fines at the library, there has been a horrible shooting at the VaTech campus, I haven't lost a pound of the five ten I was trying to lose, and it's gray outside, and what's more, I have had a very unproductive day, the kind of day in which I fear that if anyone has installed a secret camera in my cubicle, my walking papers will arrive on my desk tomorrow.

HOWEVER. I have gone to the grocery store, and I am excited about it, and I plan to hit the gym tonight, and I am excited about that. (Totally not, but trying to be anyway.) I do still have a job, and I get to see my friend Beau tonight, and we shall cook and talk about plays, and yes, I have a bunch of posts rattling around in my head. For a future day.

And besides, my day could be so much worse. It could be this day. (That's me, sprawled out on a bunch of rocks. Not recommended.)



Totally unrelated side note: LT and I went skiing on Saturday, for the very last day in many months, if not until next seasons, because...the season is OVER! I'm sad, but happy we got a great last day in, and my new skis are amazing, thank you to all who asked about them. I finished the season in one piece! How can I be having a bad day after that?

Yes, I Brushed My Teeth Anyway

This morning I woke up (blearily), stumbled to the bathroom, (even more blearily), (no, I am not drinking a lot anymore mom, thanks anyway, I always wake up like this) and fumbled around in my special "M" mug that holds the toothbrush and toothpaste, only to find them not there.

Yes. My toothbrush and toothpaste have disappeared overnight.

Actually, I'm pretty sure they disappeared overnight THREE nights ago, when I dug them out of my ski bag to use them and then...somehow...they flew into the ether, never to return. I have searched my apartment. I have no idea where they could have gone to, and while I did find this when I returned home yesterday...


...possibly suggesting that foul play had occurred and my toothbrush and toothpaste COULD be in mortal danger, I am pretty sure that particular plastic bag held a crust of bread, and that it was probably eaten by Titan Poltergeists. Poltergeists on the Atkins diet who just could not help themselves when they saw my crust of bread. It is the ONLY logical explanation.

I would never attack your bread. Even when possessed by poltergeists. Please leave me to my drool.

Overheard while walking

Titan and I were walking on the Street of Freaks (read: Broadway) this afternoon as usual, and in front of us was a sudden police altercation.

Just like that. We were strolling along, I was minding my own business, which is to say, I was eagerly staring at people on the street, willing them to do something interesting so I could write about it, although I'd probably forget anyway. And Titan was minding HIS own business, that is to say, attempting to check his pee-mail, in spite of his mean owner keeping him on a short leash and trying to attempt SOME kind of exercise on our stroll, which is greatly at odds with stopping every three seconds...

...but anyway, as I was saying, we were strolling along like normal. And suddenly we (I) looked up, and there were three cops remonstrating with a homeless person, who seemed to be in possession of a large green trash can, obviously a city can, that he did NOT want to give up, and there seemed to be another homeless man, somehow impeding either the cops progress or the homeless guy's progress, or possibly both.

Titan and I skirted the argument with a minimum of effort, not being too concerned, and on our way to better things. (Pooping.) But there were two other individuals who were clearly NOT on their way to better things; in fact, it would not be inaccurate to say that they clearly had all the time in the world, being, if not homeless, then the next thing to, and indeed one of the individuals was SELLING a homeless newspaper. And they spoke thusly:

HomelessPerson #1: "What's going on there?" (Meaning the remonstrations.)
HomelessPerson #2: "I don't know. Some stubborn drunk, I guess."

Now, Seattle has a bad rap for being a very "white" city, as in, a lower population of black people than, say, almost any other major city in America, and as such we are labeled as not too diverse, but let me tell you, a city in which there are so many homeless people that there are CLASSES of homeless people, as in, a city in which respectable homeless people can pass judgment on less respectable homeless people...

Well, that is a diverse city indeed.

How to Completely Ignore Your Boyfriend's Advice

Hi, honey!

One of my brand new loves is the magazine Blueprint, which is (gasp) yes, a Martha Stewart magazine, but you know, I'm kind of beginning to LOVE Martha Stewart, and yes, I'm booking my therapy appointment now. (And by "therapy" I mean "day at the spa".) (I think actually cheaper.)

Blueprint is Seriously Awesome, I've subscribed already, and I've only seen one issue. They profess their goal to be helping YOU design your life, and if there's a more noble goal, I don't know what it is. Because I have big dreams of big design, readers, and I need A LOT of help, and I can't afford an interior decorator. Therefore: Blueprint.

And Blueprint has a blog (who doesn't?) and on their blog recently, they had this: the best-sounding laundry detergent ever. LT will shoot me, because you could buy about 400 loads of Tide for the same price, but I really, really want to try it, and not only that, I'm getting drawn into the REST of their website--with the stain remover, the crease releaser, and the two different detergents for white and darks, which I barely ever separate out anyway.

Totally pointless. But OMG I want.

Very, very accurate. Surprisingly so.

And hella fun, anyway!

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

Blogging the Relationship, 16*

*Number has been assigned randomly because I can't remember the last time I did this.

Me: "Hi, big strong boyfriend who works on cars!"
LT: "...Oh boy."
Me: "No, it's nothing serious. Helter gently released my rearview mirror from its duty the other day."
LT, who does not read Crazy Aunt Purl: "What?"
Me: "My rearview mirror fell off my windshield!"
LT: "Ah! That happens."
Me: "I bought a kit at Shucks."
LT: "Good luck with that--they don't always work very well."
Me: "Well, if it doesn't work, what do I do?"
LT: "You could keep gluing it on, or go without."
Me: "I can't just go without--it's dangling by the wires!"
LT: "Ha! Whoops. Hey, you like dangly earrings, can't this be a dangly mirror?"
Me: "No. It's not sparkly."
LT: "You could make it sparkly."
Me: "Then it could be a disco ball!"
LT: "Well...I guess it could..."
Me: "OH! That reminds me!"
LT: "WHAT?"
Me: "What?"
LT: "HOW CAN A DANGLY, NON-SPARKLY REARVIEW MIRROR THAT MAY OR MAY NOT BE A DISCO BALL REMIND YOU OF ANYTHING?"
Me: "...How long have you been dating me?"
LT: "...Damn."

I am pleased to announce...

...that I FINALLY shook off the binds of flickr and have a brand, spankin-new, PICASA page.

But you can't see it!

One of the reasons for having this picasa page, and I have to thank alex for this, is that I can just dump all my pictures online--getting them off my camera, and out of my active folders on my laptop--and then call on them at will, or share them only by giving the address to others (the other people who joined me on any given ski trip, for example.) They won't be private, so if you happen to stumble across them, you don't have to feel guilty or anything (unless you WANT to) but I won't call attention to them by putting the link up.

You will more than likely see them appear here in the blog, though!

Also, today I did something I swore I would never do: I donated money to my incredibly expensive college, and NOT in the way of paying back my student loans.

Yes. I succumbed to Carnegie Mellon's constant attempts to beg for money, and I gave them a very small gift, no more than five lattes, and...here's the kicker...

The Lazy B matched it! Now CMU has ten lattes, and I only had to buy five!

Why did I do it? Well, it's a sad but true fact: a large part of CMU's standing in lists such as U.S. Best Colleges, and so forth DEPENDS on alumni giving. To put it another way: the long and involved algorithm that U.S. News uses to rank their colleges, definitely includes the AG factor, as in, alumni giving. When CMU tells you that you can make your degree worth more by giving money to them, they're not kidding. It is a total bitch, because that shouldn't matter, but it is true.

SO. I gave money to a college that I'm still paying student loans for. SO SHOOT ME.

Skiing: My Arch Nemesis

It's April second (shoutout to Redhead, whose birthday was yesterday!) and although I am trying to convince myself otherwise, the ski season is almost over.

No, really, it is. Almost. And I can feel it. I can see it on the faces of the lift operators, and the ticket sellers, on the mountain as trees and rocks poke through the snow, and in the stores, as they sell last year's demo skis for a tenth of a price of their November 2006 MRSP.

Ah, skiing.

Skiing takes me away from my troubles, both literally, as it's a road trip every weekend, and figuratively, as I can't concentrate on anything while skiing except, well, skiing. Sitting at my desk or at home, my mind races; on the slopes, my mind is transparently clear. Instead of the brain gerbils clattering around on their exercise wheel, all I can hear is the swish of my skis on the snow and the occasional hiss-thump, going over a mogul.

At the same time, though, skiing means my dog languishes at home, the dog hair piles up, my mail goes unopened, my bills go unpaid, magazine subscriptions are wasted, and library books (and Blockbuster DVDs) rack up huge late fees. I never thought I would say this, but I am looking forward to the end of ski season.

This season, by the numbers

Days I have skiied: Roughly 20.
Weekend days I have had available for skiing: 38.

I am damn tired.

Dollars, roughly, I have spent on lift tickets: 825.
Dollars, roughly, I have spent on gas: 600. (Assuming an average gallon price of 3 dollars, including all the times I bought gas in Canada, and a Helter MPG of 16.)
Dollars, roughly, I have spent on food: $450. (Assuming 30 dollars per day for snacks, lunch, breakfast, liquor, and restaurants, probably lowballed.)
Total number of dollars I spent skiing, this season: $1873.

Number of shoes this equals, at an average shoe price of 30 dollars a pair: 90.

NINETY PAIRS OF BRAND-NEW SHOES.

Number of lattes this equals, assuming five dollars a latte: 360.

HOWEVER. Number of hours of therapy this equals, assuming 200 dollars an hour: only nine!

A bargain!

My God.

Dewey, who has not yet agreed to be my adopted big sister, just wrote this post about how behind she was in her financial arena, shall we say.

You could take this post, substitute, "my life" for every mention of "money", and you'd have MY post for today.

I moved into my apartment two months ago. Since then, I have been out of town twice, had house guests, and obviously, gone skiing every weekend I wasn't either out of town or entertaining my Little. Yesterday, for the very first time, I moved the TV stand from where the CABLE GUY had put it when he was hooking up my cable. The LT and I have been watching movies on it like that for a month and a half, and it never occurred to me that it might work better in a different spot. Tonight, I might, for the very first time, sweep my apartment. This week, I might, for the very first time, actually combine my huge iPod library onto one computer, so that I might update my iPod for the first time ever, the end, amen. I have skied all season--for the past six damn months--with the same tunes, because I haven't been able to carve out time for myself to even update my own iPod. Meanwhile, my boyfriend and all his friends are listening to brand new tunes that I provided them.

Excuse me. Was that bitter?

Ah, well. Today is a brand new day. It's sunny, I have joined a gym, I have made an appointment with a personal trainer, and most importantly, I have COMBED the Martha Stewart Living archives. I will spring clean if it kills me.

*Drinks more coffee.*