The Salt Mines

Here's how stupid and wound-up and uptight and therapy-hungry I am. I've been on vacation since Friday, Feb 15 at 5pm. So, that was 10, nay 11 days ago. (I've been watching The Tudors, can you tell?) The last day of my vacation is tomorrow. And instead of spending my vacation relaxing, unwinding, emptying my mind of work troubles, I spent every day counting down how many days it will be before I have to return to work. All I can think about now is how it's almost over! I sabotage myself every time I have some time off. It's never enough. NEVER! And who in their right mind finds the first grey hairs ever on her head on vacation? It only exacerbates the feeling of my time running out, not just in vacation time, but in life.

I ask in the most innocently possible tone of voice I can muster, as well as faux meekness...

what do you think it means?

nano nano

I'm a little late jumping on the Apple gizmo trolley, but I finally got an iPod. OK, I didn't get it - it was given to me. For Valentine's Day. By some guy that likes me, I suppose. It's an iPod nano, because I've been going on and on about how could I possibly fill up one of those things because I don't listen to a whole lot of music and I already have 20 gizmos to keep me occupied on the plane every other week already.

Well, I didn't think about the whole podcast thing, so now I have to constantly delete stuff to fit more crap on there that I will never get around to hearing because it's 6 days of audio bliss at my hands, but anyway... A colleague of mine inisted that I subscribe to net@nite so I could learn about something called PageFlakes, which at first I thought was really cool, but now I don't know. I can't figure out how it's all that much better than any other bookmarking thing. It's like having a customized home page, but I never had a need for one before, so why would I want one now? My homepage was always the Google search engine and I never had any desire to get away from that. If I needed to get to another frequently visited website, I would just bookmark it. Maybe I haven't figured out how to fully take advantage of all that PageFlakes has to offer. Whatever. I just want to keep a little up on the whole Web 2.0 thing and this net@nite seems to fit that bill. That and Wired Magazine, my new must-see mag. And for the love of Christ, don't ask me what Web 2.0 is. And don't ask anybody else either - it'll be like teaching a pig to sing and you'll just get overloaded with buzz words and bullshit.

So if you want to check out PageFlakes and let me know why it's all that and a bag of chips, that would be great. Or, if you see any reason to Pagecast (that's right, you heard me), I'm all ears. I will say this: it was easy to start throwing things together and I now have a PageFlakes home page, and probably will forever because now I'm going to be too lazy to get rid of it, until the next great thing comes along.

The Socioeconomicalisticness of Blogging

I've got lots of friends. At least my Christmas card list and email address book lead me to think so. And there are a bazillion blogs out there. So you would think that there would be some overlapping (e.g. that I would have lots of friends who blog). But apparently, in my world, it's a case of "Never the twain shall meet".

But that's not why I'm here today. I'm here to ask you if you've ever realized that the blog is a form of form letter. You know, those lazy people who send out the same letter to everyone because they are too lazy to write to each of their friends individually that little Timmy is captain of his soccer team and Aunt Mildred broke her hip again and here's a picture of the dog in front of the Christmas tree tightly swaddled in some red and white straight jacket made of yarn created during Thursday night Knitting Club.

The blog takes this laziness a step further by telling everyone, "OK, I'm not even going to send this letter to you - you come to me at blahbityblahblah.myblog.com"

I even had a friend today take it a step further by suggesting that I blog something for him (and he has his own dang blog!)

What does this say about society today? (Because you have to have some universal point to your blog entry, or else it won't engage the reading world at large). I don't know what it says, so I will just leave it up to you to comment about what YOU think it says, thereby perpetuating this "taking it a step further" thing.

So sue me. At least I brought the damn thing up. At least I blogged today.

Seven Things

First of all, for those of you complaining that you couldn't see that the space hog the other day was, in fact, parked in two spaces...bite me. Just kidding. Try clicking on the picture next time to enlarge it and it may help.

Second of all, somebody tagged me with a meme. Now there are memes and then there are memes. I am in favor of the second group.

Thirdly, before I fulfill my taggedness, I want to expose some of these viral networking devices for what they really are, and that's chain email in meme's clothing. Perhaps I was naive in the beginning, dazzled by a newfangled Wikipedia-required word, but now, you meme you, I know what you are - you don't fool me. Yeah, you gotta get up PRETtee early in the morning...blah blah blah...

Anyway, I got tagged by ByJane (and no, I'm not stuttering). And this one may wind up making me feel friendless, or bloggy friendless as I don't even know if I know 7 other people who blog. I may have to include this one on my MySpace page.

And the rules go a little somethin' like this:

1. Once you are tagged, link back to the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Post 7 random or weird facts about yourself on your blog.
4. Tag 7 people and link to them.
5. Comment on their blog to let them know they have been tagged.

Those Seven Random Things:

1. I will pay way too much for gym membership.
2. I resent paying for parking anywhere.
3. I resent it more when they charge you to valet park your car.
4. I resent it even more when they "convert" an otherwise free parking lot during the day into an alleged valet parking lot at night.
5. I once ran into a friend from high school at the Louvre in Paris.
6. I wish I had more blogging friends. (sniff!)
7. I am slowly but not necessarily surely learning Spanish.

And I'm tagging:

Southern Poultry
Kelli
Liz
Larissa
David
Melissa
and that would be the extent of my blog network. See? No friends.
{SIGH!}

Christmas Time is here....Still.

Due to the writer's strike, we bring you reruns of last year's posts. Here is a picture of our Christmas tree from 2007:

OK, OK. I'm kidding.

Not about the writer's strike. About the tree. This picture was taken yesterday.

In our living room.

Why? Because we are lazy, that's why. And who are you to judge anyway, Ms. I'm Wearing Yesterday's Clothes? - oh, wait, that's me too.

Oh yeah? Well, what about you and your filthy car that hasn't been washed in months?

Oops, nope, me again.

Oh, you think you're so perfect with your perfect teeth and your perfect cat and your perfect kids and your perfect figure and your perfect house, and your perfect marriage and....and...well what the hell are you crying about?

Wild Space Hogs

So I'm in the grocery store parking lot the other day, trolling for a spot. It's raining. The parking lot is packed. And I see this:

Now I ask you.....why does this fricktard think it's OK to be a pig?





POLL REPORT:
"Other responses"
1. maybe someone ELSE was parked all wonky, which forced him to park the way he did

2. I had to look very hard to even SEE that it was two spaces.

Movie Review: Smokin' Aces

My latest movie review of Smokin' Aces has been published on LameMovies.net.

Click here to read it.

By the way, you can make comments on the review, but you need to be logged into the site. In the interest of shameless self-promotion, please feel free to comment away.

Celebrity Sighting: The River'ses

Can we talk?

Walking past the front window of Jerry's Deli, I thought I saw a distorted version of Joan Rivers before we walked into the place ourselves. We were then seated near her table, so I had a chance to see the woman sitting across from the distorted woman, who was wearing as much makeup as the distortion across from her and could have been her daughter, Melissa, but oh, the make up!

I asked my friend to confirm the identity of the daughter, since he was seated to be able to look right at them. He said yes.

It was in the next few minutes that I learned of Joan Rivers suing GQ over an article written by Bert Hacker (later identified as Ben Stein- former game show host and utterer of "Bueller... Bueller"). Apparently, Mr. Stein said that Ms. Rivers complained that her husband, who later died, was driving her crazy. Maybe you already knew about this 1987 scandal, but it was news to me.

A few minutes later, they left and looked around as if searching for screaming fans. Outside, someone took a picture with them, although I don't know how anyone could recognize anybody underneath all the pancake - sheesh!

We watched the fan outside watch Joan's car pull away. My eyes darted to their table, as I studied its contents for interesting tidbits. Coffee cup with pink lipstick stain. Leftover matzo ball soup. As I turn around to report to my firned of my findings, I see the fan outside peeking into the restaurant at Joan and Melissa's table. My friend looks at the fan. Their eyes meet. They smile.

Our behavior is exactly why the C list celebrities act like they do with their "Don't you know who I am?"

If I were quicker-witted, I would have run outside and asked her who she was wearing.

The Many Faces of Joan...

Book Review: If I Only Knew Then...

It's been over a week since I last blogged and I just didn't have a damn thing to say, but I will say this: my review of If I Only Knew Then... by Charles Grodin has been published on Curled Up With A Good Book.