In Which I Start to Talk About Japan

I have already talked a little about Japan; for previous summary posts, try First Japan Post, Second Japan Post, Third Japan Post, Fourth Japan Post, Fifth Japan Post, or Japan Summary Post.

Anyway. Once more, with details!

At the start of my trip, I flew into Tokyo on my own--the Js wouldn't arrive until Saturday--and I was deathly ill, an experience I never want to repeat. I had read several guide books telling me how polite the Japanese were and how I needed to cover my mouth when I coughed and you CANNOT blow your nose in public, but not one guide book addressed the problem of what to do when you break out into a coughing fit in a crowded subway and it's either blow your nose or drip onto your seat, and your mucus is bright green because it's so infected. Shockingly.

I survived the whole way from the airport to the neighborhood I was staying in, Ikebukuro, and I couldn't decide if that was a good thing or a bad thing. I was really, really sick. I don't remember which line I took from the airport--I think it was private, i.e., not one of the main lines that services the Tokyo area. If this sounds confusing, it is. Tokyo's subway system is not centralized; it's a mishmash of about three or four different companies, but they do at least attempt to work together. After several mistrials, the Js and I found that the best thing to do was to buy a low-fare ticket--making sure it's for the correct company--and then go through with our whole trip, possibly changing Metro companies without knowing it, and then, attempting to exit the subway station. If our ticket was accepted, we got to go; if the machine spit it back at you, you could take it to a machine and add a little more on, the surcharge for switching companies or the extra distance or whatever. It was easier to do it this way than try to predict how much we'd need or if we'd cross subway lines.

However, at this juncture, I was all by myself and got to struggle, which was fine--this was part of the reason I'd flown in early in the first place. I wanted to get a few days by myself. I arrived in Ikebukuro and, after wandering around for a few minutes in the dark with all my luggage, broke down and took a taxi. Ikebukuro isn't popular the way Ginza is, but it's still very crowded and I was surrounded by crowds of young Japanese laughing, talking, smoking, and I was very aware of how nerdy and out of place I looked and I just wanted to get to the hotel. My ryokan, the Kimi Ryokan, was very close to the station and I got right in and encountered my first problem: for reasons known only to the universe, I had had serious debit card issues right before I left for Japan. I had lost one and the other expired, or something, so I get to Japan and I have no way to get any more cash, all my money is in the account that I can't access because I have no PIN number, and I have $300 from traveler's checks to last me until Blog Knows When, and all the guide books I read told me in no uncertain terms that Japan is a cash-based country and NOWHERE takes credit cards. I was so worried I would do the wrong thing that I accepted my guide books as gospel, and it didn't even occur to me that places like Starbucks would definitely take my credit cards until the Js arrived and laughed at me, carrying my wad of cash around.

Anyway.

In spite of my misplaced fear about cash, my ryokan was one of the few that would NOT take credit cards, and I didn't have enough cash on me for more than a few nights--and I was staying five, and I had to eat some time--and so I had to tell the front-desk guy that I would pay just as soon as I could, really. He was nice about it --for the moment. I was shown to my room--no key cards, everything is done with real keys and locks--and I almost cried with relief, it was perfect. I highly recommend the Kimi Ryokan. It is very small and basic, but very clean and very lovely, with gorgeous dark wood everywhere. I got a real Japanese bath, struck out for some food, and crashed into bed.

The next morning I woke up at 3:30 with a coughing fit and figured, while I was up, I might as well get up and sight-see, which I did.

One of the reasons I've postponed getting my pictures up for so long is because I had the devil of a time trying to figure out how I was going to juggle so many formats. Finally I figured that I would write posts, like this, and divide my pictures on Google Picasa accordingly into photo albums with notes, and I would embed the photo album for each post, like below:

Flying Into Tokyo!

Does this work? Comments, questions?

Melting

It is hot as the dickens here. It's supposed to be 89 today and 90 tomorrow, and I realize this doesn't seem hot to some folks--some poor, misguided folks who live in, say, LA--but now imagine 89 degrees and NO AIR CONDITIONING.

Yes, that's right, folks. We here in the PNW do not normally need air conditioning, and so we do not have it. A lot of STORES don't even have it. I mean, Target certainly does, but my gas station on the corner does not. Just as a for-instance.

Titan is lollygagging on the floor, tongue hanging out, although he is not too hot to occasionally stir his stumps, walk out to the computer, and look at me pathetically. Also, he is trying to get me to take his cooling vest off, which he hates but I actually think works. I haven't eaten anything that can't be cooked in a microwave or served cold in days, except for coffee. I have my one pathetic fan on and the sweat is dripping down my face. And my friends Sydney and Matt are getting married, OUTSIDE, at FIVE PM, on one of the hottest days of the year. I had a nightmare last night that I missed the wedding, that I was taking swimming lessons while the wedding was happening, and I was secretly happy because I knew I was cooler than the people at the wedding were.

Help! Send me AC.

Family Talk

Hello, I am buying a motorcycle--in fact, I have already bought it--and up until Tuesday I had only told people under 40, and more importantly, people that were not related to me, that I was doing such a thing. And I have received uncensored acclaim.

I told my mother on Tuesday, and she was very upset about it, as I had predicted she would be, but she tried as hard as she could to remain polite and civil about it. She didn't say anything nasty, like, "Your desire for attention sickens me".

But when my uncle called me today it was a little more of a shock. My uncle is a funny, sarcastic, intelligent man; I dig every second I spend with him, and I especially dig his partner, a lovely and extremely talented graphic designer. Both she and my uncle laugh at my jokes and get me good books for Christmas presents, which is about all I need to like people. However, they are relatively private people, and my uncle especially is not given to large displays of affection. I was especially not expecting him to make a rare phone call to say to me, "I hear you have bought a motorcycle, and I disapprove."

Being my uncle, he said it much more creatively than that--he said, "I called so that you and I could put on a skit in which I play the old fuddy-duddy, and you play the rebellious teenager, and I can tell you what I really think about you buying this motorcycle, and you can respond by rolling your eyes and not taking my good advice." But the fact remained that he disapproved, that he was worried about me, and wished I wouldn't. The irony here, of course, is that my uncle is no fuddy-duddy--he's a modern man who feels no need to control the youth. He has never called me to say such a thing before, ever, not in 27 years of my life, and I knew he called me out of true concern for my well-being and that it took effort for him to make such a call, and he took that effort because it was so important to him. I can't just brush this off. Because of that I am now much more conflicted about this purchase than I was just a few days ago, although of course I'm still going to buy it--it's a great bike, it's a great deal, and I'm already committed.

My father hasn't yet called to do this same thing, although I expect it any day. It's particularly frustrating because both he and my uncle, although related only through my mother, owned motorcycles, and my grandfather--my mother's father--owned a motorcycle, and put me on it when I was very young. And I have ridden around on the back of the LT's motorcycle for almost a year. Never have motorcycles or the safety of motorcycles seemed to be a conversation topic of high importance in my family. I never heard a WORD about motorcycles until this week, in fact. And now that I am buying one, oh my Blog, the world, it is ending. I do not understand.

Much, Much, Lighter, and There Is Pepperjack!

I was in near hysterics reading this post from WideLawns. I can hear myself saying all week, in my head,

"You have heard about this? The bread with banana?"

Revisionist History

I was just reading my post about Wall-E and how I cried throughout the entire movie, and I can tell you all now that it is, indeed, a very good movie, but perhaps not as touching as I found it right then. I was incredibly sad on a daily basis, already; I was watching my relationship shudder and jerk its way to a halt, and Wall-E is about robot love, about a robot who falls in love with the human race--and then another robot--and has so much love to share that he gets humans to become human again.

Perhaps saying that my relationship was shuddering and jerking to a halt is too harsh. I certainly felt very neglected, but perhaps I didn't know how to ask for what I wanted. Then again, I wasn't sure the LT would have dropped a pail of water on me if I had caught fire, so I figured that asking for more attention would be a waste of time. And besides--even if I had been sure of a welcome reception--it is so humiliating to ask for more attention, like Esther at the tip of King Xerxes sceptre. What are you supposed to say? "I want you to look happy when you see me"? "It has been a month since you've told me I was good looking, a compliment I get daily from strangers, and it would mean so much more coming from you, it would be like a glass of water on a hot day, PLEASE tell me you think I'm pretty. Please, otherwise, I might die."

And you DO die, lying in bed looking at someone's back, little bit by little bit, starved for attention, crying yourself to sleep softly because he might hear and you don't want to say how needy you've become, jumping at his every word, trying to make him happy, so that he might smile at you again and give you some hope that he still likes you. You don't want to admit that his opinion means more to you than anything, and that not hearing it kills you.

And after awhile, being unwilling to say how much you've been starved and are still starving, you just...give up. You decide, if he doesn't think I'm really that great, I can at least take up a hobby, something where I might be around men who will have some reason to touch me, and so you take up dancing, and you enjoy yourself and it's a lot better than going to bed early to lie silently next to someone who ignores you, and so it begins to take up more of your life until your boyfriend starts to get mad that you're spending so much time not with him, and so maybe he becomes even more critical and then the whole relationship spirals downward in a matter of months.

So. That's what happened.

YouTube Is My New Boyfriend

I just discovered a seriously wonderful use for YouTube: Monty Python sketches!!!

I don't know why it didn't occur to me before that YouTube would host so many. I've found hundreds of scenes from movies, after all. Monty Python sketches would fit neatly into that category. And yet I just discovered it, thanks to this post in Slog.

So as to add to the fun, here are two of my favorite written comic sketches in the world. Not that there aren't sketches that are just as funny, but I fell in love with both of these seeing them performed by my friends, so they have a special value for me. As a special bonus, they require no props whatsoever--it's just two people talking. Undeniably brilliant.

Lighter

I just spent a whole ten minutes of my life--okay, maybe five--looking for this commercial, which struck such a chord in me when I saw it that I still remember it, even though I only saw it once.

And I thought you all should share in my joy.

Bad Advice

Did everyone know that I had a brief job writing for an online magazine called "Pretty Witty"? I did. It was very, very brief, both the job and the site. But it gave me a chance to write a real column--which Editor Extraordinaire Anna tells me is supposed to have a beginning, middle, and end, unlike my posts--and throw around a lot of snotty comments about "my editor". The column I came up with--the idea that got me the job--was called Susie Homewrecker, meant to be a parody of an advice column in which the advice columnist only gives really terrible advice. My editors at the time loved it and gave me the job, and I wrote four whole columns before the entire thing folded.

Anyway.

It's times like this, when I'm on my own again and can be just as bad as I want to be without hurting anyone, that my mind goes back to that column. I am doing everything you are not supposed to do. I am staying out late, I am dancing, I am barely eating--and when I am eating, I am eating cheese and that is it--and probably I scarcely need say that I've stepped up my alcohol consumption. Not the kind of drinking in which you tell the bartender just to leave the bottle at the table, but the kind of drinking in which you purposely slow your consumption rate so you can go for the burn. (Don't worry, Mother--soon I'll get fat and have to slow down.) You COULD, of course, describe this behavior as "staying away from ice cream and getting regular exercise", which is absolutely true. Or you could describe it as, "hanging out in bars and sometimes eating", also absolutely true. It just depends on your perspective. (Hey, a lot of salsa dancing takes place at bars, okay?)

Anyway.

Because of this, I have lost a little weight--all the alcohol hasn't caught up quite yet--and when I mentioned this to a friend, she demanded of me, "WHAT have you been DOING? Whatever is, tell me your secret."

And I said, "Um...I broke up with my boyfriend and have been subsisting on brie and sparks, and I've gone dancing seven hours a week." You see? Terrible advice.

Shocking

I have been SO long without blogging that I had to re-enter my password! That is NOT okay! What have I been DOING what my time?

Well, giving rides to strangers, for one thing. I was driving around late at night on Thursday, after giving rides home to R and A (hi guys!) and as I was driving down Mercer, I saw a girl on the side of the road, walking home. Nothing particularly unusual about it, except something about her movement caught my eye. I thought she was disabled at first, and then I realized...no. She was really that drunk. I quickly thought about my options. She looked about my age, maybe younger, and she seemed harmless. And I would have felt terrible about just driving by. I made a quick U-turn and pulled up beside her.

I rolled down my window. "Hon, are you going to make it home?"

"Idonkno," she said. I nodded.

"Get in, I'll give you a ride home."

"Imna'far," she said. "Jus' the nex' corner."

I understood. "You don't know me, and you don't HAVE to get in the car. But if you want a ride, you can have one."

She climbed in the car so quickly I thought maybe invisible bad guys were after her. "Than' you SO much," she slurred, and sure enough, she wasn't far--maybe another ten blocks. I dropped her off and she told me I was her best friend.

"Hon," I said, laughing, "you aren't going to remember this in the morning, but thanks. People have done me a good turn or two myself, so pass this on when you get a chance."

So. My good deed for the week.

Also, and there is no casual way to say this, the LT and I are no longer together. It seems like we might be able to salvage a friendship--even a good friendship--so that's good, at least.

Ode to My Stylist

It seems ridiculous that I have been with my hairstylist long enough to be a "special" customer, but it's the truth. I was with her when I was Young, Broke, and Barely Legal--I got my second real haircut in T-Town from her--and as I matured into Old, Rich, and Upstanding Citizen, she got her own salon and took me with her as her customer, and then she got a bunch of other services at her salon and she and the aesthetician took me under their collective wing and made me the relatively well-turned-out girl I am today. She was the one who cut off my hair when I donated it; she was the one who convinced me to color it, she is the one whom, now, yells at me to get my highlights touched up more frequently and get in and see Jamie, the aesthetician. (She and Jamie are big believers in tough love, which I need.)

One fine Saturday morning I arrived at the salon maybe, slightly, hungover. Okay, let's rephrase. I was so hungover that a lit match around me would have burned blue--that much leftover alcohol was wafting from my skin. Tyson--my stylist--spent about five minutes with me before bringing me a juicebox. "Here," she said. "Drink this before you pass out."

A little while later Jamie came in and Tyson called to her. "You would not BELIEVE how hungover Aarwenn is," she chortled. "Come and yell at her."

I rolled my eyes. Jamie appeared, stroking my hair and sniffing. "Have we FED her?" she asked Tyson. Tyson rolled her eyes in return. "I gave her a juicebox," she said, with the air of washing her hands of the whole event. "And I wouldn't let her have coffee." Right after my cut and color, I went to meet with Jamie, who poked and prodded at my skin. "You see all these little bumps?" she said. "This is all the toxins you've been pouring into yourself coming out through your skin. This is PARTY skin."

"I know," I murmured, "and I've worked damn hard for it." She smacked me on the back of the head. "Well, now you get to pay for it," she said, and got out her extraction tools. (Note to the uninitiated: extraction of blackheads HURTS.)

I absolutely love them, all the women at that shop, and I love them more because of our different worlds. The salon is all women, and of course my daily environment is all men. I know nothing about beauty, and they know nothing about technology--of any kind--which means that sometimes my arrival at the salon is hailed by cries of delight. "Thank GOD you're here," Tyson will say, pulling me back into the break room. (A sign of true privilege.) "Our computer won't do so-and-so. Can you fix it?"

"Of COURSE I can fix it," I like to say with haughty grandeur, and I haven't been wrong yet. The littlest things amaze them--how fast I type, keyboard shortcuts, Alt-Tab, the fact that I know what a "cookie" is, and not the chocolate chip kind. We're learning from each other, even. At first I was worried that the flow of knowledge was going all one way, that my skin and hair were looking better and better but I hadn't contributed much beyond my IT services. I love the challenge of trying to break down what I do for the layperson, but I wasn't sure it was having any affect until Tyson said to me, with pride,

"Hey, you know how you were telling me what 'nano' was? We had a hella fancy shampoo company in here last week giving us their sales pitch, and they were going on and on about nano-this and nano-that and finally I raised my hand and said, 'Doesn't "nano" just mean "small"? I mean, seriously?'

I laughed. "Good for you! Did that send her down a peg or two?"

"OH my god, it was like I had kicked her puppy," Tyson said, pinning my hair up. "The entire sales pitch was based on how cool this 'nano' was, and they were going on and on about surface area and all kinds of technical jargon, and I just said, 'But doesn't it just mean "really small"'?"

"It does, and it ALSO has to do with surface area versus volume," I said, and, unable to let an opportunity for education go by, gave her the Reeses Cup Analogy. (Later post.) She listened attentively, but even if she hadn't, it didn't matter. I'm bringing nanotechnology understanding to the masses! Hooray!

And I have pretty hair, also Hooray.

The Need to Ball

No, not the need to bawl. The need to ball. The need to floss. To flash your bling. Okay, people over 35: The need to...oh, heck, I don't even know the older slang words...the need to flash your wad? Ah, I got it! The need to show off by the use of fancy toys.

It's a little long.

Anyway. Sorry I haven't been blogging much. I've had a lot on my mind, and while sometimes it's good to blog about that kind of stuff, sometimes it's not. I've been working on losing weight again--down eight pounds!--and working on saving money. I've been contemplating simplicity versus stuff. I've been drooling over my friend Sarah's apartment, which is a perfect little studio with the CUTEST kitchen and bathroom ever. (It makes my place look too large and overdone.) I've been obsessing over Mint.com, which has a bunch of new and amazing features, including a graph that shows how much money you've spent versus earned in the past six months, and if the numbers are right, all I can say is: No wonder I'm carrying a balance on my credit cards. Wow. My new plan is to visit Mint six times a day, hoping that the very act of doing so will prevent me from spending money, which will in turn hopefully swing the balance of earned vs. spent back to black. (However, in spite of all my other faults, my net worth is not too bad. My 401(k) balance exceeds my car loan and credit card debt, so disregarding my student loans, my net worth is positive! Um. If that even counts.)

It's so interesting, this need to floss. I COULD, of course, take the bus to work, and walk up the stairs, and drink tea, but I sure feel a lot spiffier driving my Jeep right up to the door of my work, getting a VIP parking spot in the shade, walking four steps, riding the elevator up to the fourth floor, taking a sip from my Starbucks mug and drawling to my personal assistant while raising my massive sunglasses, "Anything important, darlin'?"

Perhaps my imagination ran away with me on the last part, but that doesn't negate the ease and spiffiness of driving and elevating rather than walking and stair-climbing. Sadly, it's never cool to arrive somewhere out of breath and rushed. (Busy, self-absorbed, and on the phone, though, is still totally cool. Totes.)

The POINT is, I was recently talking to a grad-school friend, who told me that in waiting tables he had earned more than enough money for the whole summer and couldn't decide if he should keep working or quit and devote more time to his side projects. "Uh huh," I said thoughtfully, doing some fast mental arithmetic. Let's see, call it $150 per shift including hourly wage and tips, he's worked about ten shifts...okay, so $1500. We'll call it $2000 to be generous. Sure, that's a lot of money. And then I looked at Mint again and realized that I spent, on average, $4200 a month. (And no, I don't actually make that much, hence my problem.)

What happened to my days of subsisting on $500 a month? That summer in which I lived at my sorority for $300 for the entire summer, waited tables and participated in a few medical experiments, and had more money than I knew what to do with? Times were certainly tight, or could be, but the cash flow of tips makes up for a lot of budgeting ills. There was always more money. And there was always food, at the restaurant. A human's needs are actually very basic: food, shelter, transportation. (We'll take for granted that said human lives in a city and has access to clean water--this is basic living, not post-apocalypse living.) Once you've paid for the roof over your head and you have a place to get food, the rest of your money--which exists mainly to ensure your food and shelter in the future--should be excess, right? It seemed so, at that time. I imagined what would happen if at some point in the future I got a real job. I might make $50,000 a year, I thought. I would never want for anything ever again.

HA. That is not what happened. Instead, my needs expanded to fit my income. Suddenly I had a LOT of needs. I needed a car--and not a used one, a brand new one, and then I needed insurance and gas, and then I needed to drive fast, so I needed speeding tickets and higher insurance rates. I needed a nice apartment. I needed a lot of nice apartments because I chose poorly the first time, so I needed to spend a lot of gas driving back and forth between various apartment locations. Let's not forget that I needed to fill up those apartment with nice furniture. I needed new work clothes, and I needed (NEEDED) new work shoes. I needed high speed internet and cable TV, and then I needed to rent movies, and then I needed a Netflix account. I needed a better cell phone package. I needed to be online everywhere, so I needed a year-long contract with AT&T Wireless at Starbucks PLUS my home high-speed bill. Instead of drinking at dive bars where pitchers were 11 bucks, and that was all we got, I needed to go to fancier places with my new yuppie friends and order martinis.

Good LORD did I need a lot of things.

I thought that once I got a real job I had to change lifestyles--from the Young, Broke, and Barely Legal to the Old, Rich, and Upstanding Citizen. And I thought the Upstanding Citizen NEEDED all that stuff.

I was wrong, obviously. Completely wrong. I didn't need an apartment; I could have lived in a RV if I wanted. I could have even lived in a van, bought a $25/month gym membership at Boeing, and showered in the gym locker rooms. If I decided to get an apartment I could have gotten a studio. If I had chosen to get a one-bedroom I didn't need to fill it with furniture. Even after I got my work computer, I could have gone to a library all day and used their free wireless connection instead of buying one for myself at home. (I won't even mention how little I actually needed the one at Starbucks.) No one actually needs cable TV. And NO ONE needs MARTINIS at ten dollars a drink.

I'm getting on towards four years into my Old, Rich, and Upstanding Citizen lifestyle, and in some ways, I'm cutting back. I'm replacing martinis with beer and drinking fewer beers. I just cut my cable TV. (Need my internet, though.) (Yeah, sure I do.) I finally settled where I was going to live and I've lived there for more than a year, going on two. I carpool to work and take the bus where I can. I haven't gotten a speeding ticket recently and my insurance has gone down. I switched my bank account (FINALLY) so I no longer pay overdraft fees. Little steps.

But it's not really about that, because as soon as I freed up some money I found an amazing lingerie store and went to Japan and redid my apartment, putting me back in the hole. It's about reminding myself that the only thing I HAVE to do every day is shower, put on clean, presentable clothes, and go to work. I don't NEED anything beyond food for myself and Titan. I don't NEED Starbucks or to go out to lunch and I don't NEED to buy a cart full of groceries every time I'm at the store. I don't even need any more work clothes and I certainly don't need any more shoes. I can try to floss all I want to, but at the end of the day, Titan isn't impressed anyway and I'm home by myself bemoaning my credit card debt. Nothing flossy about that.

Movie Reviews

Everyone go see Wall-E immediately, IMMEDIATELY, seriously, drop what you're doing. It is really that good. Warning for sensitive people: BRING KLEENEX. I bawled through at least three quarters of the movie, often while laughing hysterically at the same time.

However, there is absolutely no rush to go see Wanted, and in fact, you could easily go without ever seeing it. You could watch Domino or Gone in 60 Seconds and have the same effect. Better yet, you could make a screensaver with shots of Ferraris, Angelina Jolie, and shiny guns, interspersed with screen-caps from The Matrix, and you would have the entire movie. Oh, and maybe a shot or two from Fight Club. Having said that, I enjoyed it, because I like all those things--Ferraris, The Matrix, etc--and getting them all together in one movie wasn't bad. Still. Not a work of art for the ages.

Overwhelmed by My Obligations

I have barely started on Japan pictures, I went camping last weekend and I have several good pictures from that, I did mostly nothing this weekend because I was down with strep throat, but I did see the fireworks. And so on. Blech.

Wednesday Links

Hey, I may not have anything interesting to say, but the internet probably does.

Some really good things from Slate today:

A Slate author lives for a day on a gas rig.

Can breast motion be harnessed to run, say, an iPod? This would be awesome!

Things To Read If Bored

This lady made a New Year's Resolution to use her crock pot every single day in 2008, and the resulting blog is funny, useful, and delightful. Meet The Crockpot Lady.

And if you grew up by an ocean, were fed raw seafood from an early age, and are slightly obsessed by all things briny, then you'll love this blog as much as I do: The Hama Hama Oyster Blog. Seriously awesome.

Note: do not apply these two blogs at the same time. Oysters are best enjoyed raw, seared, or broiled, or possibly grilled. I'm not sure they would be very good cooked on low for 6-8 hours.

Salsa Lessons Have Started!

The LT and I have started our Salsa Lessons; one down, four to go. We are still speaking to each other! Hooray!

And we learned things about each other--and ourselves--right away. I am apparently a very stiff follow compared to all the other girls, which I knew, but is still embarrassing--and necessary--to hear. And I introduced the LT to a Salsa Friend, who I then asked to dance, who joked that he was worried that the LT was going to beat him up. The LT was surprised, but I wasn't--I don't think he realizes how intimidating he can be, and how much he subconsciously calls out physical insecurities in others, although it's not his fault at all, poor guy. (Really, he's a sweetheart. Most of the time.) Dancing is so physical; it's hard to lie about yourself or others. I realized after a few rotations that I must be intimidating the hell out of my leads, because they kept backing away from me until they were stepping off the edge of the dance floor, and even then none of them tried to push me forward or even suggested that I might want to take a few steps backward. Next time, I'll write it on the insides of my eyelids: SOFTEN UP, you tense disaster. The world will not end if you don't get this move perfectly, but what WILL happen is that leads will start to avoid you, so soften up, already!

Either that or I hadn't worn enough deodorant. Hey, I report, you decide!

Poor Man's Twitter

Sunday Night

Titan is throwing up and I'm annoyed about everything.

No, Titan throwing up isn't anything serious. He drank a lot of lake water today and then got into chocolate, which is MY fault, sadly. I managed to get him outside for some of the ill effects (the ickier ones) but NOT in time to prevent him from throwing up half the pond in my living room. He's asleep in his bed now, a good sign.

Reflection on Monday Morning

LT and I did a smorgasboard for dinner--I just pulled out all the leftovers from all the fancy meals out I've been eating lately, and there have been a lot, between the anniversary dinner and sandwiches on the road--and it would have been yummy, had I had my salad ready and Titan hadn't decided to be sick. It amazed me, since I was already annoyed, how much the LT sitting at my computer while I got dinner ready bothered me. This is a long issue: I like to be entertained while I'm doing things, and the LT likes to leave me alone, hoping whatever task I'm performing will be done quicker with fewer distractions. I yearn to be watched while I put make up on, and chatted to while cooking. I actually don't multitask well, but light background conversation with just the LT isn't much of a drain on the mental resources, although of course I hang on every word of the LT's. (Hi, baby!)

Therefore, one of the reasons I was happy, on Sunday afternoon, to happen upon the smorgasboard method of dinner was that I thought my prep time would be nil, so the LT and I could hang out in the kitchen for at least a few minutes, but then I wanted to make salad and the LT immediately escaped to my computer to read about a plane we had seen that day, because he was curious, and then he tried to show me, and I've never cared much about classic planes and I've never cared less about them than I did tonight, with a sick dog and a strong case of annoyance going on already. SIGH.

The Rise of the Geeky Girl and Reactionary Men Who Should Be Sterilized

Or, Gender, Gender Issues, Power, and Powerlessness.

Welcome to Thursday. Let's get right down to it, shall we?

I'm not sure who has seen this article already--I know that my own mother had to bring it to my attention: Geek Girls: Revenge of the Nerdettes. Go ahead and read it, I'll wait.

Done? Good. This article is characteristic of the worst parts of Newsweek's "fluff" reporting, which is too bad because it allows really stupid people to take shots at the badly written article and then use those shots to try to smear the Nerd Girls. Although I should have expected that kind of slant from a site named Men's Activism.com: Reaction to Newsweek Article.

I especially like how the post and subsequent comments react to statements not even in the actual article or video, such as claims that the women in question are blaming popular culture or complaining that 'guys' can't tolerate a strong woman. Huge projection issues, anyone?

I shouldn't get so upset--I have no idea how many readers MensActivism.com has per week, and three comments to a post doesn't signify widespread beliefs, thank BLOG. It just burns me. It burns me like anonymous commenters saying Jennifer Love Hewitt is fat, it burns me like gross, paunchy men twice my age leering at me, it burns me like a recent comment from a homeless man about the supposed "girliness" of the LT's bike. (The LT's sport motorcycle is yellow. Not as manly as, say, a black Harley, perhaps, but no one sane, under any circumstances, would consider his monster of a bike not manly.)

I'm trying to find a common theme here. What, specifically, burns me about these encounters? Is it simply a question of reality? For example, Jennifer Love Hewitt is not fat. Under any circumstances. She may not be perfectly toned--therefore exposing a few lumps and bulges in a swimsuit--but I'd bet she still fits a size 4. So first, these people are factually wrong. Second, it also burns me that people--even a very few selected persons--feel qualified to judge, since according to statistics, it's very likely that the people marking Jennifer Love Hewitt as fat are size 16s themselves. For example, it burns me that the homeless man felt qualified to judge the LT's bike for being girly. I mean, seriously? You think you have room in your life to judge other people's possessions? And the few commenters who bitched about the claims they thought they saw in the Nerd Girl piece--how can you bitch about hypocrisy and dumbing down of standards when you've just proven you can't read what's actually on the page?

Perhaps it's reality. I know that my version of reality is right--especially in the areas of "people who wear a size 4 are not fat" and "homeless people have no room to decry the quality of motorcycles"--and it bothers me that a few don't agree. Or maybe it angers me more that the few who don't agree don't realize how wrong they are, don't realize how dumb they are, don't realize how far they've fallen to the bottom of the social ladder or how out-of-step they are with the rest of society. But what would I be able to achieve by somehow holding up a magic mirror to those I deem unworthy? Is my desire to hurt people that strong? And what if I discovered I was wrong and it was really me who was too far around the bend? My need to punish people who burn me in this way--especially, for example, old men who leer at me--scares me. And yet so far I've managed to stay on the right side of my anger.

Tuesday Morning

Talking with a Friend

Is more valuable than ten cups of coffee. I’m tired and sleep deprived, no one’s fault but my own, and I rolled into work this morning completely incapacitated. My friend L and I got some coffee, and my life was 50% better after coffee and 100% better after chatting with her.

(The Lazy B has three on-site Tully’s stands. Also dry-cleaning services and DVD rental services. There is some value in working at a site as large as most cities in America.)

On Being Tired

Before I left for Japan, when I started going to a hip-hop class about two months ago, I knew I was out of real dancing shape, but I had been running a few times a week and doing a little yoga. I was surprised at how difficult the class was, but also surprised that I could almost keep up. And I was pretty bendy.

Fast forward one month: in Japan, I walked what felt like miles and miles of stairs, but after retuning from Japan, I didn’t feel like running and I barely walked. And I haven’t done any yoga, or really stretched at all, period. Hip hop class last night was NOT my friend. I was creaky, non-bendy, and my muscle memory was shot. (Climbing the 99 stairs at the water tower and riding behind the LT on the motorcycle this morning didn’t help either.) My quads are definitely yelling at me today. Phooey.

On Finding Things That Work

My hip hop class works for me. I’ve been to good classes and I’ve been to bad classes, and the first time I attended this class I knew it was the right one. It’s difficult, it uses real music—hard, fast, slightly dirty—and we do a little toning before we start dancing. It doesn’t involve dated moves, 90’s music—or, god forbid, 80s music—and they really work us hard. I’ve run into enough bad classes to make me very thankful for the good ones I find. I still miss my kickboxing instructor—Tiffany—from Tacoma, and I was the thinnest I’d ever been in my junior year of college because I took a fantastic class at college from an instructor named David.

Complete Lack of Conclusion

Because I am very tired. Thank you.

On Vegetables

I STILL can't make myself buy the right amounts of vegetables and then use them correctly--or in a timely fashion--when I get them home. It's so frustrating. I can't figure out a limit of vegetables I can actually cook or eat in a week, or I tell myself that I'll overcome that limit when I'm actually buying the vegetables so I should get more. When the truth is I've NEVER looked in the fridge, hoping for vegetables, realized that I was out, and sighed and eaten macaroni and cheese instead. I have often put aside fresh vegetables in order to eat mac and cheese, however, and then been surprised when my vegetables turn to sludge in my crisper.

A whole pound of fresh asparagus sat for two weeks, until I roasted it. And it’s now roasted, covered with olive oil and sea salt and smoked salt, and still going bad in a plastic bag in my refrigerator. Maybe I should just admit to myself that I don’t much like asparagus—or maybe that I just don’t like the idea of it. I eat it if served to me, and I enjoy it thoroughly. But in my own refrigerator it loses its appeal. Why? Who knows?

I do like spinach, though, and have I bought that? No. And potatoes, and onions and garlic, and sunchokes, and all manner of dark leafy greens, or lighter salad ones, and peppers of all kinds (especially roasted, yum) and tomatoes—even bad ones—and all sorts of other veggies, yet I’m stopping myself from buying more until I eat the damn roasted asparagus. Phooey.