how you say?... ...ah yes, riot: turns out monterey's mardi gras riot got [semi-]national coverage as well. we're really taking the humanity out of "oh, the humanity..."

extra linky! could God be responding to last night's Sodom and Gomorrah? i'm kidding, of course, the earthquake just strikes me as incredibly biblical in light of seatown's mardi gras violence. list riots along with coffee, "grunge" and rain as what seattle is known for/does best.

addendum: ok, so i posted that link before i'd read the whole article. that's some messed up stuff...it's incredible what [drunk/idiot/aggressive] people can be capable of.

"working:" my coworkers are sweet, but freaks.

first Ira Glass, now this: earthquake hits seattle. i always miss the good stuff.

break out the sack cloth! i'm not what you'd call a "good catholic" (imagine me doing "air quotes"), but the brainwashing went pretty deep and i, too, will be making a sacrifice for lent. my old-school sacrifice entails giving up sweets and snacking in between meals. i'm also going to try to eat more fruits and veggies, along with restarting my weight-lifting regimen. this should be much easier than the years i tried to give up cursing (foiled in the first five seconds of wakefulness when i woke up late for my eight o'clock calc class on ash wednesday and immediately dropped the F-bomb) and guinness. that last one was tough...and resulted in my liver's bath of choice being switched to [dirty vodka] martinis for forty days. talk about punishment...

as long as this doesn't count towards my fifteen minutes: hot thread, comin' through...

another stupid survey that says i'm a man: answering the "on a scale of 1-7, how well does the following characteristic describe you?" questions of the Bem Sex Role Survey gave the following results:

Your Femininity Score is 4.1. Your Masculinity Score is 5.4.

yeah—thanks. in other news, my perfect match on an animal blind date is a Burmese Python:

Well, the pace of life is going to be slow with this date, but he/she is a great partner for those long, loving hugs. You will have a very bloated feeling once you have been to dinner, so don't forget the indigestion tablets. Treat yourself to a good, long book, as you will probably spend a lot of time on your own.

i thought being in love meant never having to [ever again] date a snake. sadly, the bloated part is about right. why the hell do restaurants serve about one-and-a-half times more food than a person could ever eat?

[again, courtesy of /usr/bin/girl and w-g.]

"screw you, hippie! according to the Environics 3SC survey, i'm a New Aquarian, lumped in with the likes of Sarah [McLachlan] and Rage Against the Machine. i guess, in 21^st century speak, that means i'm a bleeding heart.

hmm...sounds about right, but i don't know that "everything changed in seattle" are words to live by. sheesh, i was living in seatown during the WTO debacle and it was all i could do to avoid the area surrounding the convention center like the plague. my dot also landed close to Connected Enthusiast, which—with advice like "eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we may die"—sounds more up my alley. but then, maybe it's not such a bad thing to not have anything in common with Celine Dion.

[courtesy of /usr/bin/girl by way of w-g]

random synapse firing: i don't know what made me think of the stanford prison experiment, but what a frightening example of how the mind works.

eSpoiled: how absurd is it that i'm actually surprised and disappointed by the fact that a restaurant [where we're thinking of holding the rehearsal dinner] in a tiny Massachusetts town doesn't have a website?

and yet another one bites the dust: one woman in the department left last week, and two more are giving notice this week. if you include another woman who will be giving notice before march is out, my stock should be rising sharply.

and let me just say that the freakin Brit that sits next to me stinks like a skunk. nothing against british folks, of course, but the whole stereotype about being strangers to Speed Stick seems to be true in his case. :(

i. am. freaking. out. but that's what i get for stuffing myself with those little butterfinger easter candies. i can't imagine that the impending crash will be any less unpleasant...

oh good lord: what i would have given to have seen this episode of Martha Stewart Living. my cookie-covet was increased by the way-funny review at Lots of Co. what a combo—my favorite muppet with the inflexibly unfunny Martha! apparently miz M was rather put out by Sir Blue Fur's antics. ah, that's my boy...

"report to the principal's office, immediately!" i feel all anxious, with the pit of my stomach feeling like it's going to fall out, just like i do when i know i've been caught at something, or when my parents would ask to speak to me "in the other room." this is not a typical state for me to be in on a monday, but it might have something to do with the fact that i've been Sissy Slack-a-lot for the last four hours...

by popular demand: my gimme list.

they're grrrrrreat! went up to SF again this weekend (i know—can you believe it?!) to meet up with some ND friends that were in town for business and some that live in the area. i was all excited to share the good news with someone who had yet to hear it, when i totally blew it. i was talking to kt about how we'd gotten a ton of calls that morning, including one guy from the international brotherhood of policement (don't even get me started on that), to which i responded i didn't have any $$ since we were planning a wedding. kt was on her mister's cellphone, so she was unsure she'd heard me right.

"you're planning a what?"
"a wedding. oh crap..."

she thought it was pretty funny. me, too, really. my fancy fiancé came along for the ride as well. he's so swell. ;)

short-tempered friends, take note: oh lordy, this story is hi-larious. so the next time i'm rambling on about [legitimately irrelevant] minutae, just ask me about the beans. it might take me a sec, but i'll get the hint.

be still my beating ♥... this guy gets my blood flowing :::wink:::, but his site sucks worse than...well, you know. what was yahoo thinking when they made it one of their daily picks?

keeping my eyes on the prize: don't foget that the guinness toast is tonight! i checked around but couldn't find the exact time for the toast, so just make a night of it!

well, it has been a week... and i apologize if you aren't hearing this from me directly (i promise to keep making phone calls!), but i can't keep my secret any more—i'm getting hitched! J. proposed to me last week, which kinda makes me feel a little silly for having posted a serious V-Day rant. anyhow, i'll put up the details at some other point—as i'm kinda sorta staring into the maw of a rapidly approaching work deadline—but i will tell you that i was [mostly] surprised, there was/is a ring (and it's beautiful), and after much haranguing we might even have a date: early november 2001. yep—that's in just a little more than eight months!

focus, young wedi...

you have to be —> this tall to go on this ride.



somebody stop the world, i want to get off.

DREAMLOG: nothing. nada. rien.



either haven't had any dreams or haven't been able to remember the ones i have had in what seems like forever. could this be another manifestation of a previous dream theory that the screen is blank because they are actually all coming true? or maybe my unconscious is just too busy trying to find solutions to current and future challenges (selling my car, finding a place in RI, moving, finding a job, etc...) to give my brain a vacation.

word of the day or prognostication?

McJob (mehk-JOB) noun. A low-paying, non-challenging job with few benefits or opportunities, typically in the service sector.

[Coined by Douglas Coupland, in his novel Generation X, after McDonalds fast-food chain.]

ah...the glamorous life of a temp...

weblust: dammit, i don't think i can resist the lure any longer; i think i need to just get off of my @$$ and buy myself a damn domain. thing of it is, i'd want to get one that can be shared with my...er...man. brigita.com would be too mine and 13daysfrommonday.com is too unweidly, angsty, etc.

any suggestions?

regrets...i've had a few... but when it comes to seattle, only two: i wish i had seen Death Cab for Cutie and Modest Mouse perform. i'm listening to MM right now and these lyrics are kidna sorta choking me up for no apparent reason:

Your heart felt good it was drippin' pitch and made of wood.
And your hands and knees felt cold and wet on the grass to me.
Outside naked, shiverin', looking blue, from the cold sunlight that's reflected off the moon.
Baby cum angels fly around you reminding you we used to be three and not just two.
And that's how the world began.
And that's how the world will end...

tagential seattle aside: back at my last apartment [that i shared with Platonic D.], there was a brick wall-planter right by the door. it was here that i did all of my transplanting, replanting, and the like. i had bought a bag of fish-guts fertilizer for my plants and had left the remainder leaning against building that met with the planter. anyhow, it was shortly after this purchase that we started to notice a resident of the planter—a very small mouse that i christened Modesto.

god, it's damn hard work to be this clevah...

ho-lee twice! according to sitemeter, my hits from the UK have surpassed those from the east coast. in other words, howie and kel have managed to beat my mom for number of hits! in the immortal (?) words of sally field, "you really like me!"

ho-lee! i just checked my stats for the first time in forever and it said that i got over 20 visitors yesterday and i hadn't posted as thing since friday! pretty damn cool, if you ask me (which you didn't so forget i said anything).

SF Trip Part Deux: after closing out at the red room, J. and i began our wanderings. we walked in circles for the next few hours, stopping into various bars whenever we felt the compulsion. we answered the siren call of a guinness sign at zeki's bar (no links of note but i did find a website that called it "the ellis island of SF bars). we soon realized that we had chosen poorly, as the pair of pints that were drawn turned out to be some of the worst guinness i have ever had (and for those of you that know me well, you know that i've had more than my share of the dark, creamy goodness). it tasted someone had done a convincing dye-job on a imperial pint of budweiser! i am somewhat ashamed to say that i bricked my first pint of guinness this past saturday night, but if you'd been there, you would have understood.



after the zeki's failure, we stopped into the tonga room a second time, only to find the line as long as it had been when we set out at 9pm. eventually, we found ourselves at the owl tree, a corner dive bar that seemed like it should be dank, damp, and smoky, even though it was only dark. here J. continued on with the strong drinks and i switched to bailey's and milk—a smart move on my part, considering the last time i was in SF... thankfully, the folks at the owl tree offered a basket of chex mix-like snax with our drinks. we'd skipped dinner and the one bag of new york cheddar kettle chips i'd had earlier hadn't quite cut it. two drinks and two baskets of snax later we went back to our hotel...and eventually to sleep...



we rose early the next morning, packed, and struck out for haight street. J. was on the look out for "going out pants," specifically a relatively cheap pair of tuxedo pants he could kick around in. the mind was willing but the flesh—in spite of crepe-ily delicious nourishment—was weak, and the hunt was quickly abandoned. on our way out of the haight, we stopped off at goodwill and amoeba music, scoring both times. i would have liked to do/seen more and stuck around to catch up with an old HS friend, but home was sounding pretty good to me as well at that point, uncomfortable couch be damned.

SF Trip Part Un: i'm baaaaaaaack! so, after a self-determined day off [friday] of walking doggies and power lounging, a weekend up in SF, and a president's day of odds and ends, i'm back at work and back at the 'blog. J. and i got a bit soggy during the alcatraz tour on saturday, then waited in the rain for a sourdough bread bowl of not-so-vegetarian clam chowder (of which i only ate about one third), finally checking into our oh-so-swank hotel. after a few hours of laying about, trying to connect with in-town friends, cleaning ourselves up, surfing the hotel's version of web TV (blech!) looking for good bars in the neighborhood, and overriding J.'s assertion that my combat boots didn't go with the plastic pants i was wearing, we hit the town.



after checking out the long line at the tonga room—a very tiki lounge at the fairmont hotel (across the street from our own)—we wandered over to the next alcohol-infused destination on our list, the red room. this ultrahip lounge was designed by the same people who did the backflip and the sno-drift, and it showed. much in the same way that the backflip is dominated by blues and the sno-drift whites, the red room is decidedly red. i really think that this design technique works better in large spaces, for it only made the already-small bar seem almost claustrophobic.



J. and i stuck around for two rounds 7&7s for him and a vodka collins for me that followed an almost-disappointing cosmopolitan, their award-winning cocktail. i'm sorry, but the large size of the drink couldn't distract me from the fact that they garnished it with an orange slice as opposed to a lime wedge, and i'm a girl that needs a drink with bite. i doctored the cosmo with lime wedges and revelled in the Squirt-like tartness of the vodka collins...tho J. commented that it tasted like lemon-flavored alka-seltzer cold medicine. i thought it tasted just super, thank you.



:::to be continued:::

sorry about the lack of posts today... i've been playing hooky. :)

can you keep a secret? ask and i might tell you.

busted! crikey! i was just taking my first stab at the ultra-memey bejeweled when the boss-man walked by and said, "You know you can't win at that."

but then i guess he was implying his own slack while pointing out my own. did we just have a bonding moment?

but on the lighter side of love, J. has asked that i be home at four o'clock sharp this afternoon. i can only presume it's V-Day related. after all that $#!+ i had to say about the holiday, do you think i'd be excited?

you betcher sweet bippy i am.

i never promised you a rose garden... or a diamond ring, or a box of chocolates. these things, people, are just that—things. so for all the people out there that base their self-esteem upon that which they receive on this Hallmark-ed of contrived holidays, beware. you've got bigger problems than the fact that your SigOth sent you pink roses instead of red.

the thing of it is—when you boil the historical facts down to its bare essentials—the modern celebration valentine's day is a romanticized celebration of rape and murder.

Valentine's Day was originally created as a substitute. In the 5^th century A.D., the Catholic Church attempted to be rid of a pagan fertility rite that had been taking place since the 4^th century B.C. Every year the Romans celebrated a young man’s rite of passage to the god Lupercus by holding a lottery in mid-February. Names of teenage girls were placed in a box and drawn at random by teenage men. By this lottery a young man was assigned a young woman companion for their mutual pleasure (often sexual) for the duration of a year. After the year was up another lottery was held. As Christianity spread and the leaders of the Church resolved to do away with this practice by picking a “lover’s” saint to replace the god Lupercus. They picked St. Valentine, a bishop martyred in the 3^rdcentury A.D. for the cause of love.

In 270 A.D. Emperor Claudius had issued an edict forbidding marriage because believed that married men made poor soldiers, not wanting to leave their families to go to battle. Valentine, Bishop of Interamna, disagreed with the emperor and invited young lovers to come to him in secret to be married. When Claudius found out, he was incensed. He had Valentine arrested and brought before him. When Valentine refused to change his views and renounce Christianity, he was put in prison to await execution. In February of 270, Valentine was clubbed, stoned, and then beheaded. from here.

and did you know that what we know as a heart shape (♥) is not meant to represent the organ itself but is rather a symbol of a woman's sexual characteristics: breasts and pubis (top and bottom)? some sources also say that, once inverted, it is meant to symbolize a woman's buttocks from the rear. apparently the greeks built a temple to aphrodite, the name of which translates to "goddess with beautiful buttocks."

bet you won't look at the holiday in the same way again, eh?

flattery will get you everywhere... as long as i can bring J. along as well. but seriously, some kind reader has picked me as the BlogSpot Blog of the Day! and on valentine's day of all days (more on that later)!

oh there are just so many people to thank! i couldn't have done it without my parents (who are so very understanding), J. (who doesn't read this and for that i guess i should be grateful), Howie (who couldn't be a better virtual friend), the folks at blogger (which i guess is down to "folk" these days), all of the inspirational 'blogs i've read over the years (you know who you are), and of course the election committee at tinyblog.

oops—some guy is waving me off stage. anyhow, thanks again and big wet sloppy BlogSmooches for all!

god bless metafilter! i was repeatedly getting 503'd by blogger until the kind [and smaht] folks at metafilter advised me to log on to the new blogger server directly. yippee! now i can 'blog to my heart's content! (k&n-'tent)

or would that be 'blog my heart's content? ('kän-"tent)

mmm...bug juice: i didn't realize that the pictures that adorn the quirky bottles from jones soda are actually submitted by customers! pretty cool and many thanks to the ever thoughtful N. who got me a moby sodie!

oldie but goodie: here's a link to the squishy archives...scroll down for some pretty funny (and true-to-life) valentine poems.

the golden grouch: a friend from mine from ND is throwing her very own Oscar contest. the person who picks the most award winners correctly wins a movie (either VHS or DVD format) of their choice from amazon. i'd only seen about half of the movies listed, but tried to think outside my personal cinematic box. here are my picks:

• Best Picture: Gladiator
  
• Best Actress in a Leading Role: Joan Allen, The Contender
  
• Best Actor in a Leading Role: Tom Hanks, Cast Away
  
• Best Actress in a Supporting Role: Kate Hudson, Almost Famous
  
• Best Actor in a Supporting Role: Benicio Del Toro, Traffic
  
• Best Director: Ang Lee, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
  
• Best Original Screenplay: David Franzoni, John Logan, and William Nicholson, Gladiator
  
• Best Original Song: "I've Seen It All" from Dancer in the Dark. Music by Björk; Lyric by Lars von Trier and Sjon Sigurdsson

the funny thing is, i didn't even really like gladiator all that much. anyhow, this will be my prize if i should win.

lasik can't repair hindsight: i know that the occasional rough patch in a relationship isn't always a bad thing. it shows the two people how they react under emotional stress, handle intimate conflict, and ultimately resolve the problem through communication, compromise, listening,and understanding. i know that we grow as individuals and as a couple throughout...it doesn't mean i have to like it.

the good news is that he's more aware of my position—that i am getting progressively tired of our weekend routine and need variety, an expansion of social outlets, as well as the tools with which i can widen our circles on our own. i know that all of those things won't be coming together immediately but pinpointing attitudes and props (dining room chairs for dinner guests, comfortable furniture for trivial pursuits) that will be beneficial to us now and down the road is very constructive.

i guess maturity isn't such a bad thing afterall!

belated once again: happy birthday, mom!

CYA: there's a slim chance that the data for one of the projects that has been approved is corrupted. i don't know how i missed this before—my only guess is that it was done after the fact or got hosed during a database compaction at some point. anyhow, i can argue my innocence from the position that that DB was what i had been given to work with. i'm afraid of running the original data through the mill and realizing that the book is crap, much in the same way that the belated florida recounts may very well expose our presidential election as fraudulent.

to insure promptness punchiness: if you'd like to express your boundless admiration and undying gratitude for my daily jabberings—or if you feel like this might be a way to give your sagging karma a little boost—just scoot on over here and put a little sumthin' in my piggy bank.

who am i? i answered the questions to the Guess the Dictator/Sit-Com Character game as though they were directed at me personally [as opposed to some dictator/sit-com character that i was thinking of in my head] and got this result:

I guess that you are Joey Potter from Dawson's Creek! Am I right?

uh, that's a negative, ghostrider. i did the same for the BF, answering questions like "do you put down rebellions?" and "are you a demon in disguise?" and got this result:

I guess that you are Chandler from Friends! Am I right?

yikes...now if they'd asked "are you a demon in the sack?" instead, we might have gotten some more interesting results. i'll keep my yap shut about their accuracy. ;)

"change can make people uncomfortable..." so the buzz is only getting louder, along with the sound of silence from the uppity-ups. the elephant is stomping around the office and looking pretty pissed off, but no one's doing much to acknowledge it, much less calm it down. personally, i wouldn't be too upset if i got canned. probably because—deep down—i really doubt anything like that would happen. i really do hope that people start quitting in droves...unless, of course, that's exactly what they wanted to begin with.

the best that VD has to offer: fooled you, didn't i? but seriously—check out the web goddess' kick@$$ valentine for the men of our generation (or women...i just know that of the friends of mine that are serious fans, the men out number the women twenty to...er...about none). i printed mine out on photo paper and it looks perfect. other than the fact that i couldn't figure out how to fix the print orientation so now the card opens the wrong way. anyhow, if you do link to the card and/or print it out, do be a dear and give the sistah-friend a link back?

thank you, howie!! now i know what to get the BF for the 14^th. :)

access granted: ok, her site is back to normal. either she was fiddling or i'm an idiot.

no comments from the peanut gallery, TYVM.

access denied: megnut's weblog now requires a password. didn't see that one coming.

it's golden, they say. other than the fact that the regular yoga instructor came back—sucking worse than ever—and that i got a pretty good night's sleep during last night's windstorm, i really don't have a whole lot to say for myself.

the prodigal son can stick it as far as i'm concerned. it has been—get this—two months since i've heard from this guy back in NJ with whom we're supposed to be doing this pay-per-view project. i just got an e-mail from him—no "sorry i haven't written" or acknowledgement of the time lapse whatsoever, just a de/command that the appendix of the "forthcoming" (hA!) databook be in a particular format. grr...

DREAMLOG: i was a vampire slayer (i know—how cliché). thing of it is, i was killing these baddies with knives—big ones. once again, i'm sure that element of my dream had something to do with the book i'm reading. i guess i really should be grateful that i'm having all of these nightmares as an adult and weren't plagued with them when i was a kid. of course, there is the argument that i have been dreaming the same kind of dreams all along, i just remember more of them now...

i ♥ turbotax^TM: one of the credit cards i have (sorry—no link. i mean really—i do have some privacy standards) is offering the use of TurboTax for free through their website! i'm probably one of the few people who is actually chomping at the bit to do taxes once the new year rolls around, if only because i typically get a good-sized return every year. good thing i had some supercomputer doing the work for me because i don't know that i would have been too keen on trying to figure out the california state tax forms for partial year residents...

like a book, she tells me. it was N.'s birthday today and the whole lot of us went out for pizza—the good, floppy, greasy NYC style slice that's waiting for you under a heat lamp and doesn't cost an arm and a leg. anyhow, an old coworker met us out as well, conversation was made, food was eaten, goodbyes were said...

so N. just came to ask what i thought/think of this old coworker. apparently she could totally see through my attempts at polite pleasantness and tell that i'm not the biggest fan of miss fancypants.

i'm sure this story sucks for those of you who don't know either of these women—barely know me, for that matter—i just think it's funny that (1) i'm a shitty actor and (2) that i'm not alone in this opinion.

DREAMLOG: another case of waking up all sweaty with a sore jaw [from grinding my teeth] and not remembering what it was about. that's probably a good thing, really...

opiate of the crumb-snatching masses: what's your pokéname? mine is Mewchu:

Profile: Mewchu lives in the grasslands of Madagascar and her diet consists mostly of grass, insects and green tea.

Characteristics (Combat and Non-combat): Mewchu can breathe broken glass, eat rocks, spit cosmic energy bolts and breathe Mr. PiBB. She has a song in her heart and cool shades.

Mewchu's natural enemy is Vaporwhirl:

Profile: Vaporwhirl lives in the searing volcanoes of Hawaii and its diet consists mostly of macaroni and cheese, meatballs and Dr. Pepper.

Characteristics (Combat and Non-combat): Vaporwhirl can puke rocks, eat electricity, shoot broken glass, eat acid, spit cosmic energy bolts, throw lightning bolts, and breathe lava. Vaporwhirl has a fear of bricks.

yikes—sounds like vaporwhirl's going to kick my grass-eating @$$.

more of stor^TM: the folks of threadnaught are posting the StorTroopers of the blogging community up on one page. it's pretty cool to see what people have done to doctor their pics. actually, seeing them made me pull out my old troopers and give them a bit of a makeover: new hair and :::ahem::: biceps for me, some height and muscles for him.

hero update: check out the kick-ass super-hero i made over at hero machine! i had a brief e-mail exchange with the creator, jeff hebert, because i thought there might be a chance that he was the same jeff hebert who was my very first kiss back in the 8^th grade. since he's about five years older than i—and you know i wasn't smooching college freshmen while i was in junior high—it wasn't him. he seemed kinda excited at the prospect of being mistaken as being someone's first kiss in a nostalgic kinda way. it was so weird the way my eye got caught on his name...just goes to show that there are some things
a person can't forget.

thanks again to the hostess with the mostess!

forest for the trees. usr/bin/girl linked to this antenna ball conspiracy site, but i no longer care whether or not it's a complete joke and will not waste one more "precious moment" reading their mock-exposé because they don't seem to know the difference between "you're in danger!" and "your in danger!"

watch out—after reading the horrible anti-vegetarian article in the weekly (don't bother following the link to read it because it's not there) last night and recounting it to N. this morning, i'm going to be one hyper-critical grrl today...

our beloved blogger: what lies ahead for us? thinking that i could possibly lose my 'blog without any semblance of warning is really pretty scary. can i please send someone money for insurance? $10/month doesn't seem so unreasonable...

get well soon, li'l bloggie. :(

fiddling, fiddling... no entries as yet since the boss-man has yet to find a spare moment to talk with me re: the two projects i've been working on since i got here so i've been playing around with my troopers and the hero machine. i should have the new and improved people and the hero-me up as soon as i get all the kinks worked out.