just my own selfish opinion, part 394: shouldn't people with dogs rank higher than the average joe?

at least i realized it before i got in line: because the love of my life asked me to do him this small favor, i drove all the way out to the base to the military's version of the DMV to get up-to-date stickers for the "good" car (J.and i traded so he can drive my crappy 'Scort into the ground)...



...only to realize that my dear and loving husband keeps proof of insurance in his wallet rather than the glove compartment. thank goodness the navy used the few shreds of common sense it has at its disposal to post the requirements for a base decal on a sign right outside the building, saving me the waste of time and embarassment of waiting in line. it's going to take everything i have to resist laying a guilt trip on him...

in case you don't read the comments, sideshow bob has both a band and a 'blog. point. click. fancy.

meme me! nine of the following things listed about me are true, one is not. saddle up, Sherlock!

1. i was obsessed with Sting for much of my teen years.
   
   
2. i've played football—and won—in Notre Dame stadium.
   
   
3. although i took it twice, i never passed the Swimmers level of swimming class.
   
   
4. i broke my ankle when i was eight from falling off of the balance beam during gymnastics.
   
   
5. i read everything Stephen King ever wrote by 8th grade.
   
   
6. i'm irrationally but deathly afraid of sharks.
   
   
7. i want to be cremated.
   
   
8. i used to think that the word epoch was pronounced EEE-pock because of some stand-up comedian i saw on TV.
   
   
9. my first pint of Guinness was consumed on my 16th birthday in a pub in Ireland.
   
   
10. my confirmation name is Felicity.

like kris, i'll post my answers in a day or two. and mom, i'm afraid the rules bar you from playing. ;)

is it a mellow Thursday afternoon or a rockin' Saturday night? in spite of our living on the main drag of the city's [supposedly] hip neighborhood, i can't for the life of me figure out why there would be a white stretch Lincoln Navigator parked on a side street near by. could it be there's a bachelorette party having lunch at the restaurant just across the street? i don't understand why the place is packed most nights, the food is horrible. yes, that's a comment on a steak house coming from a vegetarian, but my omnivorous husband will concur. not. good.



back to the stretch monstrosities, apparently the folks at Ford aren't thrilled about people stretching the Lincoln Navigator and are taking those limo companies who do to court.

shower, coffee—ACTION! the best part about early-morning productivity is that i can surf my favorite blogs guilt free!



ok, so i admit that i was lying about the shower part...

it's no six-month deployment, but i was a little bummed to find out that J.'s next underway will last a whole week as opposed to the previously scheduled five days. the silver lining in this news is that i could paint the office the weekend he's gone. of course i'd rather he be here [to help], but you just have to make do...

damn you TV remote! it looks like in all my channel-flicking and dinner-fixing last night, i managed to miss a few good chunks of Buffy last night. Spike and B got their groove-thing on next to the meat grinder? where the hell was i for that? and can someone please explain the wig lady? what was her story?



sheesh, and it felt like i saw the whole thing...

the answer is, Katrina and the Waves! so, kris, what's my prize?

one of the million monkeys gets fired: word on the street is that Fox has pulled The Chamber, in response to public protests (although it doesn't look like anyone has told Fox's webmaster). i know i wasn't the only one who thought that this kind of reality programing brought us one step closer to fulfilling Stephen King's post-apocalyptic vision of the future.



not to mention the fact that it was boooooooooring.

DREAMLOG: put me down for yet another chasing dream. this one had something to do with my being tricked into cheating at some futuristic kind of race and winding up being pursued by some Schwarzenegger-looking Terminator kinda thing. i was running around this huge chrome-and-glass mall—maybe with my mom?—and the last thing i remember is the Terminator chasing me into a elevator...but then i think i managed to blow up the elevator some how and save the day.



more interesting than my piece-y dream is the fact that there's going to be a T3! i figured that out when doing a Schwarzenegger spell-check over at the Internet Movie Data Base. :)

manic monday: i was suffering from a major case of the scatter brains yesterday and was neither able to get much done nor blog about my lack of focused productivity. to my own credit, when i caught the slightest whiff of a deadline, i did manage to buckle down and crank out a half-decent article right before Cleo and i had to head out the door to her obedience class.



she's really been doing a whole lot better, behavior-wise—she really has become a great deal more socialized in the last few weeks. i'm sure a great deal of that has to do with her interacting with more people—friends and strangers alike—as well as hanging around the other dogs in the class. she was actually able to do a sit-stay last night surrounded by all kinds of distractions! what can i say, i'm a very proud mom.

workin' on the weekend: because i was totally ineffective yesterday, i've guilted myself into putting in a few hours today at work and because i'm incapable of putting my nose completely to the grindstone, you know i'll be posting a bit here as well.

what are the friggin' chances? so J. and i finally get back from the change of command reception, me with a whole day's worth of work to get to and him with three beers under his belt and a captain heading out the door. he was more than ready to spend some quality nap time with Cleo on the couch and popped in Fight Club for background noise. for some reason, out brand-new DVD player refued to either retract the drive-drawer (i'm sure there's a technical term for that little piece of plastic, but i can't be bothered right now...) or recognize the disc once i jammed it in. i knew it couldn't be a problem with the DVD (because it wouldn't even play a DVD we'd watched less than a week ago), but just to be sure i tried playing it on our computer.



turns out the movie wouldn't play on our PC, either. i searched the hard drive for anything resembling DVD software, but to no avail. as a last resort, i called Dell support so i could resolve this problem before tackling the other.



did i mention that i've yet to get any damn work done today? and the fact that all the work i did on a spreadsheet on newspaper company data was totally wrong? and that i'd have to redo that and complete the work that was originally on the table for today? just checking.



so after holding the line for a good five minutes, my call finally rang through to the tech support person on the other end. i could hardly believe my ears when i realized that the woman on the other line was the same damn idiot who tortured me back in August! the good news is that she figured out quite quickly that i had to reinstall my DVD software (i really should have been able to figure that out on my own), the bad news is that she couldn't reconcile why i was still unable to play the DVD properly.



while she had me on hold to "research the issue" i remembered that we had to increase the hardware performance under the graphics settings to get the DVD player to work. i think she was p[retty surprised that i had taken care of the problem without her when she came back on the line.



it's now 3:06p. J. is asleep on the couch. i feel like crap. yeah, lots of good work coming from me today.

who knew i was so classy?

Which drink are you?

pretty funny assessment, really—warm and strong yet offensive. now if i could only stomach drinking the things... i did go through a martini phase—which coincided with my giving up Guinness for lent. fortunately, i returned to my senses 40 days later.



speaking of lent, when i was at school back in the midwest, i'd always get a kick out of the fact that fast food chains would put ads for their fried fish sandwiches into heavy rotation...



[courtesy of Ernie]

this is too much: following Moire's lead, i checked in with emode for the first time in ages to take the ultimate personality test. my results are pretty hilarious, especialy in light of the results i got for the "Which Kevin Smith Female Are You?" quiz i took a little while back.

Brigita, you're a Chosen One!



Your personality is actually determined by two personality sub-types — your primary, or dominant sub-type, and your secondary sub-type. You are a Chosen One which means you are a Golden / Seeker. Your primary sub-type is defined by "Golden" characteristics and your secondary sub-type is defined by "Seeker" characteristics.



Wherever you go, you leave a trail of rose petals in your wake. You may even have been Gandhi in a former life. Warm, giving, knowing, and patient, people try to get mad at you, but they feel terrible about it later. As a child, you easily could have convinced your entire class to stage a sit-in against the math teacher, but you're too sweet. Perky and armed with tons of self-confidence, you're not afraid to actively pursue your goals and dreams.

i will be the first to point out just how far off base this assessment is...mainly i can beat those of you who know me to the punch. i mean sure, i'm a bleeding-heart vegetarian that dabbles in yoga, but Gandhi? i guess the quiz failed to pick up on my general dislike of people. what can i say, i'm a mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma.

the road to hell and all that good stuff: despite my plans to get my sick self to the gym today for some light cardio, it looks like i'm going to have to stay on the bench as a cold-related wave of exaustion just washed over me... gah. what i wouldn't give for some chicken noodle soup right now.

serenity now! i finally did my new yoga tape last night since i'd skipped class at the Y on monday (it's not cool to have a hacking cough during a yoga class). i'd ordered it because i wanted to have a yoga option in-house and this tape came highly recommended. the routines were pretty tough but it didn't kick my ailing @$$ (thank goodness). i do have a sore neck this morning, tho...i think i'll add some advil to my herb & vitamin cocktail today.

OMG: someone's got Pitfall! on the web. time suck.



[via a whole lotta nothing which i surfed to while looking to see what's wrong with metafilter]

DREAMLOG: Part I: i was in NYC with a bunch of other people, only one of whom i can remember as my friend Ed from high school. we were just hanging out, having fun when we realized that it was getting late and we had to catch a train back to the 'burbs. Ed tried to catch a taxi to grand central, but the driver just dropped him off at the closest subway station and he was pissed. i eventually made it to GC, only to realize that it was much later than i had thought (ten to two, or something), so i started freaking out about how i would spend the next few hours, not to mention my distress over not being able to find J. i wound up running into our friend, Stump, who was playing it very cool and said he was just going to hang out at a couple of the bars in the station. much to my surprise, there actually was what looked like a great Irish bar right there, with lots of people lining up to get inside. unfortunately, every time i tried to get in the bar, i wound up in some crappy dive with air hockey and scary toothless longhairs. i don't remember if i ever got home or found J.



Part II: this dream must have occurred towards the end of my sleep cycle as i had the idea to make red velvet cake for valentine's day. although, now that i poke around that site a bit more, we might be better served to whip up a better than sex cake. a navy friend of mine once made that for the Red Party we had back in the day and it was so damn good! then again, J. claims to not have a sweet tooth and really prefers pies to cakes. hmm—i do have the fixins for another pecan pie... i'll just have to be sure to bake it when he's going to be around for a while so i don't eat the whole damn thing myself. :)

just because it's "common" doesn't mean it's any less awful: today marks seven days, a whole week that i've been dealing with this nasty head cold. i just know it's going to move down into my chest. any suggestions on how to get myself on the mend and fast?

Indiana Jones and the Second-to-Last Crusade: (clever comment lifted from here) looks like Harrison Ford is going to resurrect his character in the name of big-big Hollywood dollars. puh-leeze.



[via MeFi]

blast! i just spent the last five minutes cleaning dog$#!+ out of my sneakers and just realized that—because he took "my" car to work today—J. has the key to the mailbox. this wouldn't be so bad if not for the fact that he has duty tonight, meaning he'll be spending the night on the ship and will return home tomorrow night. but then if that's all i have to complain about this morning (well, that and my never-ending cold), i've got it pretty good.



addendum: i forgot to add that, in my sleep-addled state, i accidentally poured Cleo's dog food into her still-full water bowl this morning. eew.

moral dilemma: your husband (boyfriend, SO, whatevah)'s friend has recently started dating (thanks, howie) a girl (who happens to be his neighbor, but that's another moral dilemma all together). you had the opportunity to meet her over dinner and while she is very nice and super polite, you don't really have anything in common with her. but then over a random comment about home furnishings, she mentions that she has a part time job over at the local Pottery Barn which entitles her to a 40% employee discount. you and your husband have been planning on purchasing a new bed, dining room table & chairs from said store.



what do you do?

In the Navy, yes, you can put your mind at ease... tonight J. and i will be attending the ship's once-delayed holiday party. seems kinda strange getting festive a month after the fact; it would have been more timely if the ship hadn't botched the inspection prior to our arrival. the plan is to stick with my latest "mouth shut, ears open" strategy of navy wifedom, but wish me/us luck nonetheless.

DREAMLOG: for those of you in the know, i dreamt that my friends—who as a couple as sometimes euphemistically referred to as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon—had a baby! i can't remember if it was a boy or a girl, but i do know that the labor was a piece of cake, as labors go. i'm sure this fact would come as quite a relief to my petite girlfriend, as her husband is more than a foot taller than she and comes from sturdy German stock... ;)

really make those cartoon trolls and goblins to work for you! whole i've never been on "the dole" (how cosmoplolitan of me) myself, i can only imagine that the worst part of it is that you have to prove that you are actively looking for a new job, ala the Seinfeld episode where George trys to pull one over on the unemployment office that he has a potential job lined up as a latex salesman with the fictitious Vandelay Industries.



anyhow, the Gus figured out that you can safely apply for jobs through monster.com with the comfort in knowing that there is a snowball's chance in H-E-doublehockeysticks of actually getting the job. while this might seem as legit as latex sales, you leave a virtual paper trail that your case worker can check up on if they need such documentation for your file. it's genius, i tell you!



not that i want to be unemployed, or anything...

i'll be the first to admit it: the new season of the real world looks like it's gonna be a steaming pile of you-know-what.



"hear that, honey? you were right, and i was wrong."



it's so easy to concede a once hard-fought point when you know that your darling husband never sets foot in your blog. ;)



anyhow, back to the issue at hand. the enormous loft was—as usual—high on form but low on function. it had the token tropical fish tank, jacuzzi, and shared rooms as well as a new element to the show—a two person shower! how novel.



not that race has anything to do with it, but the white folks pretty much bored me to death, but i'm sure they're capable of much much drama. the thing i didn't get was why Aneesa would agree to room with Theo, knowing that he had the hots for her. if that tease isn't cruel enough, she then proceeds to prance around nekkid (because that's how she was "brought up") and jump into the craaaazy shower with him! maybe i've grown out of the RW much in the same way my affection for the X-Files has diminished. actually, i haven't watched that show yet this season, so i guess it's better to say that my thing for the files has died completely. ah, i'll always have Buffy... right?



ps—great behind the scenes stuff here.

DREAMLOG: most of the details escape me [of course], but i do remember that i met Brad Pitt and Michael Douglas (of all people). BP told me that he liked to make a game out of messing with entertainment reporters by telling them anecdotes about how boring he and his wife are. later on, MD played a word game with me where you go back an forth saying a phrase that starts with the last word in the other person's phrase, like "movie star" and "star light, star bright." i seem to remember winning our round of this game by exclaiming "lincoln logs!" at the last moment. unfortunately i can't remember what he said that ended with "lincoln."

so thoughtful: J. left me a little something to remember him by while he's gone for the week. i only came upon it late yesterday afternoon. no, it wasn't a little present he tucked away in the pocket of my coat or a note he left on my pillow, it was something that has totally changed the way i feel, even the way i think...



he left me a head cold. bastard. ;)

in a manner of speaking. my darling husband is "travelling for work" this week and will be "out of town" for five days.



it doesn't seem quite as bad when put into civillian terms.

and i so wanted to be waffles!






Take the Which Breakfast Food Are You? Quiz.



[via anon]

i was going to change into different underthings, anyhow: click on this website, and then stare at the pic for a bit, specifically the doorway. you'll have to look for a little while, but you'll know it when you see it. scared the living hell out of me.



and mom, you are not allowed to follow the above link. ;)



[from the magic that is LYD]

i wasn't originally planning on posting this, but when i saw the results, i felt they just had to go up:

You know all and see all, but that doesn't prevent you from having a child-like innocence and a playful sense of humor. You obviously think very highly of yourself, but that's okay, everyone does. Told ya God was a woman!! Take The "Which Kevin Smith Female Are You?" Quiz!!

friday panic: the hours relentlessly continue to tick off of the clock but the article elves are still on strike. i guess i'm going to have to write this my damn self.

resolutions? bah humbug! but if i were to have one...





i hope they don't mind if i confine all that seducing to the mister. what should your new year's newsolution be?



[by way of Tara D.]

speaking of old classmates, i was browsing the alumni web pages the other day and stumbled upon a message from Dave Kellett, the genius behind the old Observer comic, Four Food Groups of the Apocalypse. United Media is considering whether or not it will nationally syndicate his strip, Sheldon, based upon the number of hits the site gets.



according to Dave, United Media is the biggest syndicator of comics in the U.S. and Canada, so this is a huge opportunity for him! be a doll, click on his comic, and tell him brigita sent ya. ;)

DREAMLOG: i don't remember much, but i do think it had something to do with an old classmate (Schlatter, for those in the know) starring as an extra in a music video of some sort. i vaguely remember him wearing a shiny silver shirt and vogue-ing... so weird.

devil dog does good: the doorbell just buzzed, throwing Cleo into her typical Exorcist frenzy but without the pea soup. assuming it was the UPS guy, i managed to skitter out the door while keeping her in the apartment.



i get outside to be greeted by two nicely dressd men carrying briefcases...and bibles. yeesh. i didn't have the time or the gumption to pull a Grandpa move and invite the Jehovah's Witnesses inside to say the Lord's Prayer and debate religion, so in the same way i try to be kind but quick in dispatching telemarketers, i told them that i was Roman Catholic, punctuating the declaration with folded arms once they didn't immediately get the hint. they said something about there only being one religion at the time of Adam and Eve and now there's 800,000 (or something to that effect), handed me a flyer on the wonders of the bible, and moved on to ring my neighbor's bell. luck him was already at work.



it's been a looooong time since salesmen have gone door-to-door to peddle their wares—why should it be any different with religion? maybe they should team up with those magazine kids and offer a free six months of Time or People in exchange for one gently-used soul. in all seriousness, i totally respect a person's right to practice any religion they want and will even concede that practitioners of wicca should be equally protected under the law. ok, everyone gets equal protection except scientologists—those people are just craaaazy.



the thing of it is, this "equal protection under the law" does not extend to my home or my front step, for that matter. not to mention the fact that any religion that has to recruit members just seems a bit sketchy to me.



the first person to mention the Crusades or the Inquisition gets a time out.



addendum: in my browising, i came upon this gem, Answering Jehovah's Witnesses.

Surprisingly enough, there has been no Catholic book about dealing with Jehovah's Witnesses at your door...until now. Jason Evert's Answering Jehovah's Witnesses gives you everything you need to handle the missionaries. He explains what JW's believe, where their religion goes wrong, what they want to convince you of, and how you can evangelize them.

while the counter-evangelization strategy would be a good attempt at "beating them at their own game," i doubt i would get much satisfaction from employing their tactics. not to mention the fact that i think people should choose a religion after a great deal of thought and introspection, not on the basis of a visit from the Fuller Brush man.

where the shaft never stops: from the sounds of my late late night talk with the mister, J. might be pulling a David Allan Coe today. i guess our assumption that things would get better after the inspection wasn't exactly spot-on. i'd hate for him to do anything that might have long-term consequences with regards to his career (and tangentially, our lives), but i know that his getting raked over the coals, chewed out, torn a new one—call it what you will—every day is doing slow damage to his psyche and it's only a matter of time before that $#!+ rolls down the matrimonial hill. keep your fingers crossed.

"if you see one movie this year..." with all this talk about the best movies of the year—last year, that is—i have to throw my $0.02 into the game a bit late. the next time you're in the video store and haven't a clue what to rent, do youself a favor and check out Hedwig and the Angry Inch. yes, it's about a transsexual that is the front person for an "internationally ignored" punk band, yes it's a rock opera, and yes it's kinda trendy, but this play-cum-movie has earned all of the hype and buzz which surrounds it.

Hedwig herself is a classically tragic figure wrapped in the modern trappings of queer punk glam rock. while the story is certainly touching in a way that can only be described as believably bizarre, the heart of the film is the music itself. the DVD had been spinning for no less than ten minutes, and i was already in tears. i admit that this is no mean feat in and of itself—i am a big ol' softie, afterall—but it was a song rather than the typical triggers which caused my emotional outburst.

the song "Origin of Love" tells the mythical story of that much-examined emotion. according to the behind-the-scenes documentary included on the DVD, the song was inspired by a part of Plato's Symposium which says that love is the desire to reunite with your other half. as the myth goes, humans looked like two people smushed together when the earth began with four legs, four arms, two faces, etc. there were three sexes of these creatures, with them having either both man parts, both female parts, or one of each. the gods got cranky with these beings for some reason, so Zeus split them down the middle with his thunderbolt and then scattered the halves with a great storm.

the last verse of the song is the part that really kills me, as it's sung from the first person, talking about the last time they saw their other half:

Last time I saw you, we had just split in two.
You were looking at me. I was looking at you.
You had a way so familiar, but I could not recognize,
Cause you had blood on your face; I had blood in my eyes.

the verse goes on to explain that the act of making love is really two people trying to "shove [themselves] back together" to become the creature that they once were. that desire for union is actually one for reunion... my weak description is doing neither the song nor the film justice, so be a good sport and rent Hedwig.

mondays. gah. i've had the hardest time getting started today; pretty damn amusing in light of the fact that i'm coming up on 2pm and have yet to get a damn thing done for work. the winter session of yoga started at the Y today and rather than energizing me, i think it totally drained my reserves. i didn't particularly like the instructor—the way she addressed her regular students as intermediates, making me and the other new girl feel like inferior interlopers, or something—and the classroom was frickin' freezing. it might just be a matter of my adapting to the instructor's style or maybe i just need a big old latte spanking to get my @$$ in gear, but i really don't see my sluggishness going into turn around any time soon.



i also feel a bit hamstrung by the fact that i have to make a run to the post office, recycling center, and vet to drop off Cleo's stool sample. the combination of low-energy inertia and mandatory errands looming on the horizion has managed to put a cramp in my day from which i may not be able to recover. someone's got a case of the mondays.



addendum: once again, *$ did the trick. god bless coffee and all of its delicious variations.

ungrateful bitch or just over caffeinated? J. has been hard at work this morning consolidating our financial stuff and writing a few wedding-related thank you notes. so why the hell am i all upset and emotional and mad at him, as though his being on the computer and asking for writing help is somehow putting me out?



the worst part about feeling this way is not knowing why and not being able to explain it to J., who probably can't help but assume that my mood has something to do with "female problems" since i'm being all irrational... doesn't my discomfort with the apparent lack of cause for my crankiness count for something? did any of that just make sense?

cornering the market on procrastination: yet another excuse for a temporary decline in the telecommuter's productivity—it's tough to be at work when everyone else in town is celebrating the snow day.

call me melodramatic...but i just read an article about one woman's battle with alcohol with a slight feeling of familiarity, as if her fate could have befallen me had my life in Seattle not taken a few fortitutious turns. still, there were parts of the story which seemed predictable, not because it was just another AA cliché, but because i had walked that part of her path myself. UDIs (unidentified drinking injuries) and misplaced valuables are kinda funny in college, but the older you get the less humor there is in tirelessly pursuing one's self-destruction.



our age can be measured in either years or liver damage, and the further on we get, the shorter the distance is between a fun night out and landing in the hospital and/or therapist's chair. i am lucky (?) in that the damage caused by my folly did not reach further than the end of my fingertips and that i never [metaphorically] broke anything when i slipped and fell. mud washes off and memories will eventually allow the passage of light once they have been stretched enough times...



my point—and i do have one—is that while i don't have any many regrets, i fully recognize just how fortunate my partner in crime and i are to have emerged from our experiences with a modicum of insight and clarity. should we all be so lucky.

they weren't kidding: the Hampton Roads region of Southern Virginia, aka the area that we're currently calling home, was covered with seven inches of snow overnight. as most of you know, i grew up in the Northeast and went to school in the midwest and am no stranger to the white stuff, so you'll understand how surprised i was this morning to see that the roads had barely been plowed and that the walks had yet to be cleared by 9am this morning. it's like Seattle's Holiday Blast of 1996 all over again, if only on the city's scale of unpreparedness.



all that's fine and dandy and kind of amusing really—now i understand why the grocery store was packed at 3:30 yesterday. silly Yankee, i only bought milk, bananas and tea—the only real downer is that The Mister has yet to come home from work this morning. he could be stuck on the ship (bad but not so bad) or stuck on the roads (bad). keep your fingers crossed.

oh joy! oh monkey!

From: m o n k e y

To: ThirteenDaysFromMonday@yahoo.com

Subject: thanks

Date: Wed, 2 Jan 2002 15:39:47 -0600 (CST)



thanks for mentioning my fruitcake adventure on your website. you know, most fruicakes should be detonated or dropped through a hole in the ice in the closest frozen pond. there are very few fruitcakes that are worthy of eating. a good fruitcake is a tasty liquor drenched treat while a bad one...well... many consider them weapons.



hope you had a happy holiday and i hope you have a happy new year!



yours gleefully,

monkey

it's hard to beat electronic correspondence from a cute and talented monkey. ;)

people actually make these from scratch? i don't know if mom took my advice on what to do with the fruitcake my family received for christmas (which was to blow it up with a firework of some kind), but this monkey almost makes home made fruitcake look yummy!

attention seattle contingent: did you know that Dennis is sinned backwards? who knew?