One of the most frustrating things about being a child is that grownups are HUGE, and POWERFUL, and they can do anything they want, and they can do anything you want, too, if you can just convince them, but for some reason they’ve lost perspective and never want to, say, spend the whole day making a snow fort.
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Guess what I did today?
Categories: Daily Slog
Has anyone else seen that Huckabee-Chuck Norris thing? I am floored, but it actually seems to be a REAL PROMOTIONAL AD made by Huckabee’s machine in order to persuade people that Huckabee is a good choice. Yes, you got that right: it seems to be, not a slander ad created by ingenious video-editing fifteen-year-olds bent on discrediting Huckabee, but an actual ad meant to promote Huckabee.
…
I won’t post a link here, and give it that much more free publicity, but if you google the two men’s names it won’t be difficult to find.
Categories: Daily Slog
Yesterday I worked. Today I worked. Tomorrow I will be working. Anyone else see a problem with this? Sigh.
Karaoke was a ball. I finally did (within the last 10 minutes) talk Maura into singing. As I didn’t know the song, though, I can’t tell you what it was. I can tell you that I sang a good five times. Let’s see whether I can remember them all…Fidelity (Regina Spektor), Somewhere Over the Rainbow, Vincent, Dream a Little Dream of Me…nope, can’t remember the last one. It was one I hadn’t done before, karaoke-ing. Actually it was the first song I sang. It’s totally on the tip of my tongue…Oh well.
Actually I was such a hit (or, perhaps, seemed so pathetic) that the DJ offered me a job. “Have you waitressed before?” “Er, no.” “You’d love it! You should work here, you’d be great. You could meet people your own age!”*
I have begun to write from Divine Dictation sections of the Book of Flippance. I may post a few shortly. Most of them have been going in the “Communications Log” where I work: instead of complaining about each other, we’re supposed to write it down and initial each other’s entries to know we’ve read it. I know it’s supposed to be complaining about each other because a manager told us, “But it’s not a place to always write negative comments.” I have many opinions, of course, but I am too passive-agressive gentle and sensitive to sign my own name to them, so I’ve been writing them from various other perspectives. The sandwiches, for example, wrote an entry a few days ago complaining that their trip to the Great Restaurant in the Sky had not occurred in a timely manner, thanks to negligent acolytes having failed to note the expiration dates. Then they found a god willing to take them in, of course: His Flippant Grace and Mercy. Thus the entries from the Book of Flippance: “And Yea, His wrath shall be great, an ye diverge from the obsequies due unto His devotees; and know that His highest priestess has devoted the foodstuffs of this cafe unto Him. For in His generosity He shall embrace any who turn to him, though He is first and foremost a God of Automobile Trafficks. Thou shalt inter those devoted to Him in a timely manner, and shalt mark and mourn their passing in the funerary log.” –Flippance, 43.17i
I think “i” maybe was a bit much for the communications log, though. In fact I will be surprised if many beyond me (and me, of course) get it without these last couple of sentences to draw their attention to it.
*Well…I was out with Maura and Frank. Note that I hadn’t given a second thought to “people my own age” until the DJ mentioned it. Then I noticed that most of the people my own age there seemed to be stinking drunk and wondered why I would want to meet them. To be fair, they seemed to be having a good time. And there were a couple of good voices, good enough that I don’t think they could have been tooooo drunk. But I digress.
Categories: Daily Slog
I am in serious withdrawal. Dragging Maura out tonight to a (sketchy?) karaoke bar. We’ll see how things go.
Categories: Daily Slog
Shame I’m not always good enough to appreciate it. I like popcorn; I like skiing; I like when Audrey tries to bug me and fails; I like Apples to Apples; I like getting enough sleep; I like that I have friends who understand that when I’m not calling them or mailing them I am still thinking about them; I like music; I like that my mom’s coming to visit this weekend; I like snow; I like books; I like that funny sensation in your nose just before you sneeze; I like small furry things, that are alive; I like being young; I like hibiscus tea.
Categories: Daily Slog
1) At the last minute, in the middle of the night.
2) With an inhibiting hatred and fear of personal statements.
2) With a blog entry in the middle.
4) With two number twos, and no number three.
5) With blue staples.*
6) Sick, disheartened, and half-asleep.
7) With your various application materials so well hidden around your room that, after having written one of your personal statements and fixing the online bits for two applications, you suddenly panic, thinking you have not only no manila envelopes to send applications in, but also no transcripts to send. Did you leave them in Florida somehow? Are they in your car? (No.) Did you leave them at Okemo mountain that time you were skiing there and stayed overnight with Maura at Jackson Gore and worked on applications? No, they’re in such an obscure place that you’ve actually given up on finding them and on applying to the schools you just spent so much effort and fees on, and are ready to commence the storm of aaaaaaargh, tears, etc., when it finally occurs to you to check there, even though there’s no way you would have put anything at all there, really, but you might as well glance over at the spot OH MY DEAR SPATULA THERE THEY ARE!
8) Distracted by the news of the death of a really nice relative that you didn’t know that well, really, but who still was a comforting background presence in your childhood, with whom every interaction was cheering, and who sent you three little Christmas presents every year.
*The blue rubs off on your hands and on the lovely paper you just printed…and ordinary gauge staples work for 20 pages, but not 25, by the way.
Categories: Daily Slog
I guess I’m just a favorite of Lady Misfortune. It never rains but it monsoons, apparently. And why does the deluge always come when important things that I have been putting off need suddenly to be taken care of swiftly and completely? Urgh.
Categories: Daily Slog
This conversation actually happened:
Customer: “What does this mean, on the coffee bag? It says ‘Ground Coffee, Café Moulu.’”
Me: “Hmm? Oh, ‘moulu.’ ‘Café Moulu’ just means ‘ground coffee.’ It’s French.”
Customer: “I don’t think that’s what it means.”
Me: “Ah, nope, that is what it means. Took French for five years. Moulu, past tense of ‘moudre,’ ‘to grind.’”
Customer: “…Oh.”
…It’s lucky I’d gotten anal curious and checked the infinitive form of the verb when I first saw that on coffee bags, or we’d have had the same conversation, only I’d have been making a strong assumption and would have guessed the infinitive as “moulir,” or possibly “mouloir.” I’d have defended whatever I picked to the death, too.
Categories: Daily Slog
Being the sound I made as I hurtled down the mountain on Tuesday. It smelled like summer, it was so warm and lovely! My most fun ski day this year. So far. And the snow was nice, too! I hear it wasn’t great for snowboarders (poor babies…I zipped by quite a few), but on skis, it was lovely speedy snow, not too slushy, though enjoyment was tempered by the knowledge that the ski day came at a steep price…basically the entire 35-50 inch base that we had =(. The streams were rushing down the mountain almost as fast as me. But it was so warm that even Caryn and Hannah could have gone out and been totally comfortable. I’m not exaggerating; there were lots of people in shorts. I wore two layers on top: a turtleneck and a windbreaker, and I kept the windbreaker unzipped all day. Maura didn’t put on her gloves once. My feet were boiling. The guys manning the tops of the lifts were sunning on the porches rather than bundled up inside–I swear, I think one of them had an umbrella-d martini. Okay, that was an outright lie, but he should have.
That was Tuesday. Wednesday was pretty good; I was still looking forward to skiing Friday and Saturday. Now it’s looking like freezing rain tonight and tomorrow morning, so maybe I’ll just get to go Saturday. If there’s any snow. (Tear.) And today, just as it looked like we’d close early/on timeish, I managed to shatter a (glass) tea pot and cut my fingers open, geysering blood all over the counter and floor. Ick. And just when the slicing open of the knuckles on that hand had healed, too! Spatula god, look favorably on my hand, the weather, and, of course, on Mocha.
Categories: Yay!
It’s aliiiiiiiiive!
After not responding for over 24 hours (no lights, not even the slightest of hums or the faintest heat when I held down the power button/changed the battery/etc.), my aging-but-svelte computer, in its lovely, fickle way, decided resting in peace wasn’t its cup of tea after all. Thank Flippance.
Categories: Spatula God
