zen and the art of toaster oven maintenance

i understand that many people who are interested in things like blogs are by necessity interested in things like technology. since my brother is one of those techno-engineer-gurus who can answer fancy questions like (and this actually happened) "hey, why won't my computer turn on? oh, wait, never mind... it's not plugged in yet," i understand that people like that are irritated by people like me who think that technological wonders happen at the whim of the circuit gods. but i can't help it. maybe it's that i don't have a lot of money and so my electronics are, well, not very good. but i regularly assign animist tendencies to my electronics. my blender is possessed; my stereo is a critic and prefers to play cake "short skirt long jacket" to any other cd track; my toaster is clingy and doesn't like to part with the bread for fear of loneliness; my stove is a minimalist and doesn't think i really need more than one burner; my refrigerator lacks self-esteem and demands attention with the chugging-rattling sounds it makes. even my brother, who has worked for very fancy technical companies, has lived with me and my bad electronics long enough to allow a certain degree of mysticism into my discussions regarding household appliances.

so imagine my surprise yesterday when my friend the figure skater, who happens to be a tech-buff figure skater, didn't nod indulgently when i suggested that my laptop's mouse track-pad had attention deficit disorder and couldn't be bothered with keeping my cursor in the same place on the screen while i typed. reasonable, no? no. apparently this is unacceptable, and there are drivers that fix such things. before i knew it, there was an installing and an updating and an adjusting of my preferences. and like ritalin, the driver now makes my track-pad stay on focus and do its work.

i am a reasonable person, and understand that from this i should conclude that technical problems have logical solutions. but i can't help wishing that my theory of animist gadgets is not only true, but that people could also have drivers. wouldn't it be lovely if we could just download patches for our acquaintances' loopholes? let me be the first in line to download a personal-space-preserver, an awkward-silence-blocker, super-hygiene-protection. where's technology when i need it?

what would brian boitano do?

so this afternoon i went ice skating with a co-worker who just so happens to be a former collegiate national figure skating champion who can't do triple lutzes right now because he's recovering from ankle surgery. so, sad for me. i would have felt so cool being the girl at the rink with the jumping guy. but even sadder for him, because instead of jumping and twirling, he was stuck on hockey skates with me, trying to teach me one of the more subtle moves in skating: turn left. there was a lot of "you know, it would work better if your feet weren't so far apart" and "ok, now try that while moving a little bit faster" and "yeah, i was trying not to notice that look of terror on your face." i am proud to report that all my limbs are still intact.

on the way back home, we were discussing the health care system's poor rationing of resources. it was hard for me not to laugh, though... i mean, rationing of resources? how about a national figure skating champion teaching me how to turn left? clearly i have more than my fair piece of the figure skating pie.

how the game is played

my blogmate and i suddenly seem to be in the matchmaking business. we set up a girl that we know (and like) with a guy that we don't really know (but we know is hot) with remarkable ease, a deed for which we were rewarded with gossip and cookies.

once the date was made we cornered our friend for some pre-date coaching and discovered 1) we're not the most clueless people around when it comes to rules of engagement, and 2) we're totally promoting hypocracy/double-standardness.

it went like this: first we gave very specific instructions about wearing booty black pants and furry (i.e. touch me) sweater with plunging neck line, smelling good, and having touchable hair. then we not so gently pointed out to her that video rental is generally recognized as a thinly veiled suggestion of, at very least, high-school like make-out session, if not groping and other activities more scandalous, and that no self-respecting girl would agree to first date movie watching on any couch of any kind.

first of all, doesn't EVERYONE know what "hey, let's rent a movie," means??? seriously- i know what it means and we all know how booming my love life is. as an aside, i should point out that video rental is a perfectly respectable way to address mutual wantingintotheotherspants-ness when you've already been on several dates, or when it's just not going to go the way of traditional dating.

then there's the question of why i would get her all hooched-up so that he wants to jump her bones but also prep her for the "hey, i'm not that kind of girl" talk. so much for progress.

getting ready for greatness

i don't know what it is, but in the throws of exhausted delerium i have moments of clarity that result in my pondering truly compelling insights and questions. stay with me:

1) do i really want a boyfriend, or would a puppy suffice?

2) when dealing with globally dysfunctional coworkers they be cohorted into three groups: lazy, clueless, or broken.

3) leftover pizza is really good.

4) now that i've finished both seasons of sports night on DVD what new TV series should i start to feed my heroine-like addiction?

5) how much do i love buying crates of clementines and eating at least 6 a day?

6) i am in no way, shape or form a mathematician or statistician of any kind and should not be subjected to multiple powerpoint slides that make their point (to someone other than me) by using many scary symbols vaguely reminiscent of calculus (if i was smart once the moment has definitely passed).

7) i will never be able to run a marathon.

8) no one is ever going to find me a shaggy grad student.

i swear it's like i'm some kind of visionary.

late night musings

now that mmmb is moving here, potentially disrupting me and my blogmate's blissful codependence, i've decided that i should

1) get to know him enough that i can kiss butt a little; maybe he'll not notice that he moved here to be with a girlfriend who is constantly occupied by my vaguely unstable presence; for example- while it kind of sounds like he's an architect or an urban planner, he's neither an architect nor an urban planner... or, my blogmate almost drowned on their first date...

2) find out what i stand to gain from his arrival, like, he has an eye for hanging posters or, will have a costco membership or, will fix my bike when it's broken...

3) take advantage of his new job and new connections to potentially meet other nonarchitect-nonurbanplanners and not stalk them, per se, but rather, crash their nonarchitect-nonurbanplanner parties (i guess #3 is really a subset of #2 but i'm giving it's own category so that my blogmate can have something to tell her mother)

4) employ him as my spiritual advisor as i travel down the path of potential unitarianism (otherwise known as more butt kissing)

for once my glass is half full...

resolutions of the unattached

1) i will not find a way to interpret all of my blogmate's postings as underhanded reminders that i have no love life to speak of (for example, i won't feel pressure to date more so that she can have something to tell her mother)
2) i will abandon all boy-snagging strategies that involve stalking of any kind
3) i will remain violently opposed to j-date
4) i will continue to recognize that the purpose of going to unitarian church is not to meet guys
5) i will strengthen my resolve to reject any and all men who are shorter than me

mother knows best

from tonight's phone conversation with my parents, i conclude that everyone is riveted by updates on my blogmate's dating life. i called them tonight to float the news that mb and i will be temporarily living together while he gets settled into his new job and figures out where to find an apartment that won't cost half his salary. their response?

"well, that should give you a reason to throw out that stupid orange desk in your hallway."
"by the way, how was [blogmate]'s date with that guy your friend set her up with?"

hmm. well, at least her dating life is distracting them from worrying about mine. not that i mention my blogmate's dating sagas to my parents often - i think this one made the highlight reel on account of his flying in to see her and making more money than god. again, clearly other people's lives are much more interesting than my own. so i said something brief like "nice guy, had a good time, but too short and bad teeth," followed by something general about where they were each at in life. my mother: "oh. why doesn't she just get him some clip-on teeth?" segue into monologue about bad-teeth-covers that hide a crooked smile and only need to be removed for meals, and how excited she is at the prospect of covering some of her bridgework.

so there's a new solution: instead of using the internet to find new romantic interests, just take an old option for a romantic interest and fix his teeth.

no stone left unturned

i walked into my office yesterday morning to the very excited announcement by my blogmate and one of the secretaries (the one who's always being hit on by one of our coworkers) that they had found the chicago rugby team.

i was enthusiastic about it. "i would love to play rugby!" i announced. it had never occurred to me, but maybe playing contact sports will make all my problems go away (as opposed to, let's say, j-date).

"no, no" they told me, "we don't want to play rugby, we want to gawk at hot rugby players." so i abandoned my new career as a rugby player and got on the internet to find out about the chicago lions rugby club. while there are no games until late march, there was the very friendly, and i'm sure personal invite to go hang out with the chicago lions at their favorite bar. you bet we're going to take them up on it.

so now i've created a little contradiction for myself. i won't look for love online because i think it's pathetic, but i will stalk the chicago rugby team, thinking that it will make all my problems go away. i'd be disapointed with myself except that this plan may actually be a step up from swooning over a professional clown, willfully going after an unhinged architect, or letting myself go gaga over new guy in the office without bothering to find out that he's a moron.

i have nowhere to go but up.

desperate plea

ok, look. i'm sure that you all mean well, but PLEASE stop telling me that j-date is the answer to my problems! for one thing, i'm only vaguely jewish and would no doubt be a disappointment as a nice jewish girl. while it's nice of all of you to remind me my current dry spell, i am, in fact perfectly well aware of my romantic prospectlessness. and finally, I JUST DON'T WANNA. i'm not saying that online dating is for losers, but i'm pretty sure that it's not for me. i'd like to think that my life is pretty full- after all, i have clowns to stalk, figure skating to watch, PBR to drink, and would someday like to take control of my electronic devices. now if you'll excuse me, i have WB shows to watch...

stay away from the water cooler

did this just happen?

so there i was at work today, talking with the guy who's one further up on the totem pole. nice guy, very laid back, gives me plenty of autonomy while still telling me what to do (good since i'm kinda new here), showing me pictures of his 4-year-old twins (so cute)... my blogmate calls to tell me about the lats guy at the gym being a show-off again, i start to laugh, work guy wants to know what's so funny. i try to explain. work guy starts to inquire into blogmate's dating life. i try to avoid situation politely by saying something like single, having been on some dates, trying to pretend like i don't know every miniscule detail. then work guy starts on monologue on how hard it is to meet people, and how he thinks my blogmate should, basically, use j-date. he actually logged on and started trying to find a good match, telling me he doesn't think romance is necessary, that arranged marriages are fine, and all you need to do is find someone to have babies with. he looked at his upcoming work schedule to find out when he and my blogmate would next be working together so that he could tell her there's nothing creepy about online dating.

i'm unsure how to receive this advice-which-is-not-really-for-me. on one hand, this guy might be a fun male gossip friend. he did tell some funny stories about his friend, the gay new york doctor who took a job in (of all places) neenah, wisconsin (minority, anyone??). or about exchanging cultural festivals with another friend in which his friend would join the jewish folk dancing and he would in turn march in the hispanic section of the gay pride parade. this makes me think he might be cool. however, he also told me at some point that he needs to dominate relationships and likes women to be submissive and that women don't often do the job that we do because the hours are hard and they are attached to their babies. this makes me think he might be less cool. i'm torn. i kind of wish i had been a little busier at work today.

darling clementines

even more amazing than my fascination with figure skating is the fact that one of my coworkers is a former competitive pairs figure skater and is willing to fuel my obsession. i burst into work this morning and made a b-line for him only to get immediately shushed with a "don't say anything, i haven't seen it yet!" he did, however, explain some intricacies of the figure-skating world (their dumb rehearsed speeches exist to mask their actual dumbness, for example) and offer up his competitive highlight real AND his own personal montage of disastrous falls- i can't lose!

more amazing still is that the showing off 18setsoflatpulls guy was at the gym today and i discovered that he has the same smirk, bad form on the lat pull machine and overall smarminess even when he doesn't know he's being watched.

the most amazing thing is that my MP3 player has found a way to screw itself up without my computer incompetent self doing a thing. why, oh why, did all the songs transfer in various states of duplication? bootyliscious is a pretty annoying song at baseline, but it becomes really annoying when you've heard it 3 times in succession. i'd skip to the next song but i don't know how.

girly enough for the both of us

so i don't know what it says about me that i spent my saturday night at home on the couch watching the national figure skating championships, much less that i have several formed opinions on the subject.

first of all, no apologies. i have an unabashed love of competitive figure skating.

dismal choice of music. not that i'm any kind of classical music afficionado, but it went something like: harry potter soundtrack, chicago soundtrack, disney's aladdin, weird new age beethoven medley, classical beatles compilation. seriously. there must be better stuff out there.

the sky cam thing was OK. you got to see some cool angles, but it was just unsteady enough to make me pretty dizzy and a little sick to my stomach.

speaking of queasiness, what else can i say about the montage of disastrous pairs figure skating accidents followed by multiple testomonies by past and present skaters against helmets, skull fractures be damned.

loved the chevy commercial with the two cars sliding across the ice, mimicking ice dancing.

hated, not only the peppy blond with perfect camera smile, stupid canned athlete speach, and skininess, but especially the repeated live commentary about how hot she is.

that settles it, i'm getting a life... tomorrow.

if beauty is skin deep, i'm screwed.

does anyone remember the skin care commercials claiming they had products specially formulated for three skin types: dry, oily, and "combination" skin which supposedly has a mysterious "t-zone" in which the nose and forehead are oily but the cheeks are dry? and that their (the skin care people's) products could balance such things?

does anyone believe this nonsense?!?

i work long hours in an old building that is alternately freezing, sweltering, dry and humid with apparent disregard for the weather outside. so maybe i can pin the blame there. but sometimes in the middle of a long day, when i step away to get a drink of water, i catch a glimpse of my reflection in the mirror and wonder how on earth nobody has suggested that i see a dermatologist. t-zone? can neutrogena come up with something that fixes a nose and forehead that are both oily AND dry (peeling greasies?) and cheeks that are neither oily NOR dry, but develop transient nightzits which disappear by morning? i've tried taking a face-washing break in the middle of the day, but it only lasts for an hour or so. i've tried just sopping up the greasies and covering the nightzits with some powder-foundation combo, but that just makes the peelies more prominent. and nightzits seem to be impermeable to concealer. so i've thought about trying to just have good hair to distract from the greasies and peelies, but i also have problems with furries - you know, curly hair pulled back into a ponytail which over time releases all the little pieces that are too small at the temples, making tiny little horns that shoot out on either side. i would pretend that the furries are intentional, but they tickle, so i keep swatting at them like mosquitoes, which no doubt exacerbates the skin greasies.

will someone in the cosmetics industry just give up the charade of all these customized products for skin and hair types that don't exist, and start a line of beauty products for working women who just can't keep it all together?

cellphone nation

yet again i find myself in an annoying, if not embarassing predicament because my electronics are smarter than me.

first there was the incident with the CD. my blogmate, thinking that she had finally found a way around the incompatibility of windows media player with my car's CD player, made me a proverbial mix tape the other day, and i was so excited to listen to it on my way home from work. not only did my CD player refuse to play it, opting instead to spin it around with that painful clicking sound, but it was so unappreciative of the gesture that it proceded to spit the CD right back out at me. what nerve.

round two is actually alot more disconcerting. i woke up this morning and plugged my cellphone into the charger to have it light up with the "missed call" screen. hmm, i thought, "i didn't hear the phone ring." i wouldn't have thought much of it but the number that popped up next was my ex-boyfriend's. i haven't heard from this guy in the better part of a year (his idea, not mine) and there's a whole other theme brewing about why i could even recognize the number as his after all this time. of course he didn't leave a message, and my crafty investigative work suggests that he called at 7:30 this morning.
having obsessed about this for the last half-hour, i've decided that it's really unlikely that he called out of the blue at the crack of dawn to patch things up. it's only slightly more plausible that he called because he's stuck at o'hare on account the awful weather and needs to be bailed out of some kind of air-travel conundrum. the most likely explanation has to be that he never took me off his speed dial and that his phone had one of those mind-of-it's-own moments and took it upon itself to call me. nevermind me extreme annoyance that he wasn't traumatized enough by our breakup to take my number out of his phone (because you know i did that the very day we broke up), but now i have to sit around wondering why in the world my evil ex is calling me in the wee hours of the morning.


technology: 2 me: 0

getting in touch with my... ?

after a year and a half, the time has come.
and i'm wasting it.

i moved to chicago for a job last summer, and have loved getting to explore a fabulous city and meet wonderful people i am proud to call friends. it has been a little bit challenging doing the distance-relationship thing with mb, but since we've both been busy, i had managed to keep to a relative minimum the where-is-this-thing-going when-will-we-be-together-again whining. for a while, every time he called, i was hoping it was going to be the call where he told me he was moving to chicago. naturally, no sooner had i decided to stop worrying about it when he actually did call and tell me he's moving to chicago.

let me pause briefly here: HE'S MOVING TO CHICAGO! very excited. but back to my story.

so i have a few weeks left of completely unadulterated girlie-ness without compromise- bring on the fruity drinks, hours-long gossip sessions with the girls ("I can't be-LIEVE he DID that to you... it's like, what-EVER..."), twice as many half-the-fat cookies, taking hours to curl my hair before leaving for the night. so how have i been spending my time?

1) burger and bloody mary while watching the packers get clobbered
2) admire my relatively new power drill and wonder what apartment project i could unleash it on
3) spend hours re-installing my mp3 collection after re-formatting my computer over the holiday
4) motionless in front of espn2 stunt dirt biking championships
4) tell blogmate that mb is moving to chicago, prompting the obvious response "now we have to hurry up and do the stuff we'd said we'd do before he moved here. now let's go drink beer at the map room in bucktown! and when are we going to slum it at jimmy's woodlawn tap or play fooseball at the pub over $1 pbr?"

yeah, i need to cultivate that feminine side a little. from here on out, it's all shoe shopping, pedicures, and decorating my apartment in cotton candy pink with bunnies.

looking for love in all the wrong places

i don't know what i find more surprising- that the brad and jennifer breakup has become unqualified headline news, or that so many people seem to be sad about it. i for one am delighted.
in my celebratory state (it is, on some level, now slightly more likely that brad pitt will marry me) i agreed, not only to watch the packers/vikings game with my blogmate, but to watch it in a bar over bloody marys. i had planned a busy afternoon at home trying to get my act together, but let's be honest, all i really do is shuffle clothes and papers around and don't actually manage to make the list any shorter. so off we went to my pseudo-neighborhood bar to drink knock your socks off bloody marys made with absolut pepper vodka with a splash of guinness- a steal at $4. while i love all things wisconsin and desperately want to care about the packers, i was mostly interested in the bloody mary.
so of course it was all a bust. the packers got clobbered, and boy did the bloody marys disappoint. we sat on the wrong side of the bar where we were attended to by someone who was obviously a barback and clearly terrified. he hadn't at all mastered the eyebrow raise and lean forward heyi'maknowledgingthatyouwantadrink maneuver and stood there awkwardly, too far away from us, so that we couldn't tell if we should order or not. we should have known better but we ordered our bloody marys anyway. no guinness, less of side salad in them as usual, and just plain mediocre, especially when we found out that the $4 drink special was off.
we decided to move back to our usual side of the bar but, of course, that meant we had to close out one tab and open another. turned out that was way too complicated for scared barback boy (who would seem way less out of place in a bookstore) and we spent the rest of our time trying to straighten out that mess. then came the mean waitress and the packers' humiliating defeat and our uncertainty about how to acknowledge the guy at the table next to us who we vaguely know from work. the blow was softened by the yummy fries... and vodka is vodka, even if it's entourage includes hohum bloody mary mix.
so rather than viewing the evening as a total loss, i've decided to extract the following learning points:
1) good, cheap bloody mary is better than bad, expensive bloody mary
2) attractive, slick bartender is better than stupid bar back
3) nice, funny waitress is better than mean, bitchy waitress
4) i will never get to root for a winning team and i might as well stop trying
5) there's still a chance for brad and me

searching for answers

how is gwen stefani allowed to wish that she was a rich girl?

who is this jojo person and why she is all over the disconceritingly wholesome pop culture for tweens magazine that i stumbled upon?

since when are ben afleck and jennifer garner a thing and how is it that i learned about from the girl with more face piercings that i can count without seeming obvious?

why do so many people think that the solution to my problems can be found on j-date?

when did tomatoes get so expensive?

how long does it take for insta-cookies to go bad?

hitting the ground running

with the new year just barely underway i've already got a list of things that really chap my hide.
1) entry level coworker falling all over himself to flirt with the secretary. painful to watch.
2) remember the overly groomed creepie? being forced to spend a week working with him. there are no words for how annoying he is.
3) people getting engaged, buying wedding dresses, having babies. enough already.
4) people getting paid more than i do to do my job, rubbing my nose in how much more money they make
5) losing two combination locks at the gym in the same week.
6) the innevitable coupling of very low-waisted jeans with short shirts that really does nothing for me.
7) senior level guy at work arguing with junior level guy across a meeting about whether or not jessica simpson is hot.

refining the resolution

otherwise known as reiterating some of the more salient points of this blog

6) stop entering my building every evening with so much crap that i can't fit through the door
7) vacation in bumblefuck alabama more often (more about this later)
8) reverse my magnetic effect on creepies
9) coerce more people into liking gilmore girls

things i've learned this year
1) those who need lifecoaches the most are the least likely to recognize their deficits
2) oregano needs to be watered occasionally
3) contact lenses don't do well when they are not surrounded by eyeballs or contact solution
4) palm pilots are not amphibious and are particularly ill-suited for toilet water
5) even without cable you can watch the simpsons 4 times a day
6) you can still get a perfectly decent drink for a dollar
7) there's no shame in drinking pbr from the can

dick clark had a stroke?

apparently i'm even more behind the times than my blogmate...
and feeling a little deflated. it seems that my love life is lackluster enough that it's improvement made it's way onto someone else's new year's resolutions (though arguably we spend so much time together that we can have collective resolutions).
anyhow.
every year i have the same, boring resolutions. stop biting nails. go to the gym. eat right. i think it's time i buffed them up a little. so here goes.
1) load up my MP3 player with music that is actually good. or really, not actively bad. even if it's for working out, there's no excuse for the amount of brittney spears on there.
2) spend more time in wisconsin. specifically, check out appleton (and the houdini museum), indoor water park, milwaukee brewhouse tour.
3) learn to drink bourbon, whiskey, and scotch without girly mixers.
4) find clown's name
5) befriend hotbutmaybegayindianguy in my building
6) fraternize with shaggy grad students

in other news, i'm a little disappointed in my blogmate's rendition of the bratgrilling story. as a rule she tells much better stories than i do, but i don't think that she did justice to our marathon of eating. there was something in the air that compelled me to suggest standing around in the cold with stupid hats on, drinking beer, staring at the grill (have i mentioned that i want to be from wisconsin?). somehow the plan snowballed into frozen eggrolls, postickers, brats, corn, upscale fries, lowbrow applecrisp and coolwhip. we sat around for hours eating what was, in retrospect, a really disgusting meal (delicious, but disgusting), totally engrossed in competitive highschool cheerleading. did i mention we were drinking heavily? clearly we lost all the style points we got for highbrowing the tiny lounge and having such a riproaring time in roscoe village the other night, but it was worth it.

then again, maybe the clown is a bad idea...

well, dick clark or not, 2005 is safely underway. sadly, i just realized that dick clark had a stroke, which i'm blaming for my lack of rockin' eve. apparently not so good with the news. i ended up working a late shift last night at work with everyone laughing at me for 1) not realizing about dick clark and 2) arriving 5 minutes late to the countdown just in time to see the mysterious meatballs on the buffet table getting cold and gelatinous, my co-workers already bored with the sparkling fruit cider, wondering what i could have possibly been doing that was more important than watching the ball drop. at any rate, my good blogmate pitched in this afternoon to resurrect my new year's day with a solid afternoon of watching girly tv (not that kind of girly movies! like when harry met sally and cheerleading competitions...) and making a low-brow new year's insta-food spread that would embarrass even the cabbage jello ring at mom's christmas table this year. oven insta-fries, insty-mini-egg rolls, potstickers, just-add-water apple crisp. top off the haute cuisine by grilling brats on the back porch while swilling beer, brat-flipping tongs in hand.

if it's true that the way you ring in the new year brings tidings for the year to come, i am in for some fun. with that, anyone for some resolutions?

1) harass my new co-worker who used to be a collegiate national figure skater for scandalous details on the behind-the-scenes skating world including who is gay and who just wears terrible spandex
2) try to find incriminating footage of said co-worker wearing embarrassing spandex
3) convince blogmate to continue boy-crazy adventures like hanging out in bars in ukrainian village on tuesday nights just in case the work clown she lusts for might stop by, not so that i can meet the clown, but so i can go drinking on tuesdays
4) more: margaritas, jameson, pbr, sunday bloody marys
5) less: banana flavored martini
6) more: instant asian food with suspicious but tasty mystery meat filling
7) less: cabbage-filled jello ring
8) more: fun
9) less: embarrassing myself at work by using the word "poop" while consulting with a more-important-than-me colleague before realizing i'm on speakerphone
10) more: bars filled with fireplaces, furry couches, or polite men cheering while watching gymnastics competitions
11) less: bars filled with guidos, frat boys, middle aged men all dressed the same
12) consider running chicago marathon
13) consider leaving my couch