'cause I love the way you say good morning

UPDATE: For all you folks getting here from the lyric in the title, I thought I would help you out by pointing you to Ingrid Michaelson's site.

I sometimes kid myself that I am really handy. Mostly, I have just been lucky. Even my official toolbox doesn't really make me much more official. I should remember this more often when I take on weekend tasks. Turns out, I wasn't able to cut a foot of length off my curtain rod with my dremel. Instead, I ended up with some metal splinters in my hand and a two pieces of rod that no longer fit together. I had to buy a new one. In preparation for throwing away my ruined one, I started to bend it into pieces. After I bent the pieces, I decided I liked the way they fit together, so I stuck it on my wall.


The official tally for the final harvest is-

One large pumpkin
Three large zucchinis
One small pickling cucumber
One baby cantaloupe (unripe/inedible)



I started thinking about the sheer amount of stuff I have to do for thanksgiving and christmas and got sick. I feel like October 9th is too early in the year to be worrying about this, but I guess not.

That said, think I will go watch some more TV and ignore both homework and laundry. Happy Tuesday, all!

I hope the evening finds you well

Yella borrowed Bitter is the New Black, like she asked for, and today, we were discussing it. What was weird is that I know I had written a whole, big thing about the book because the author made me so fucking angry but repeated trips back through the page revealed nothing. Then, I thought to check the drafts only and bada bing. I found the entry, which is below. But before we get to that, I just continue to be amazed by the joy and laughter my friends bring to our house. It always amazes me. Spending a Sunday with them is the best thing ever.

Also, in a series of coincidences, Limmy happened to bring up the fact that he finally knew who sang the song in the Old Navy sweater commercial. I don't know why he mentioned it, since we weren't talking about it, but I was ecstatic, because I have been meaning to track that song down for days. Limmy told me it was by Ingrid Michaelson, who might be my new girlfriend. Then, when I burned it for Limmy and we played the song, Yella and Mike realized they wanted the song, too. It was so weird that a) we all liked the same song from the old navy commercial and b) that it managed to come up tonight at our carnival dinner. My contribution to the carnival dinner was popcorn balls. Yum! I intend to post some pictures from this weekend, including the final vegetable harvest (holy canteloupe) and my first foray into metal sculpture. Peace!

Here is the original post from 7/13/2006!

I’m all jacked up on strawberry soda and I can’t go to sleep. Which is bad, because just today, I turned over a new leaf and decided to be get-to-work-on-time girl and this new leaf only works if I get to bed early enough to wake up on time. Tomorrow, I may turn over another new leaf and become no-persistence-or-follow-through girl. Please, like I ever stopped being that person. I even made it to work on time, despite staying up well past my bedtime to finish Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. I’m officially 15 years old again. I should have been reading it under the sheets of my bed, by flashlight. I even cried when Cedric Diggory died and Dumbledore gave his speech to the students at Hogwarts. *Most fascinating discovery, both Dumbledore and Hermione are recognized by the spell check. Even more fascinating is that a quick check of my custom.dic file does not reveal that I have added either word. Talk about a cultural phenomenon.

So, I finished Goblet of Fire and MFS had to bring me Order of the Phoenix and I don’t want to do any of my required reading for school, so I plucked a new book out of the bag of delights Villi and I picked up this weekend at Barnes and Noble. It is called “Bitter is the New Black” and although I am only five pages into it, I am disgusted with it. This woman is just, quite simply, a beast. She prefaces the book by including every letter she had been sent admonishing her outrageous and presumptuous behavior and writes so flatteringly about herself, I wonder if maybe I am missing some subtle and delicious satire and this is how a down to earth girl imagines a raging, materialistic psycho would behave. Alas, it is not fiction; it is a memoir and it is disgusting. Since this woman seems to think pushy behavior is not only appropriate, but also encouraged, I think I will write her and ask for my money back, rather than returning it to the store. She will understand that for the sake of the bottom line at Barnes and Noble that, regrettably, I cannot return the book knowing that it is not defective in manufacture, only in content. We’d see how funny she thinks honesty and cruelty are at that point. And as a side note, she rants on and on about being the only person she knows with any style, but the picture she chose for the cover clearly shows white flowers in her hair with a dark colored bridesmaid's dress. I will tell you right now, no one who is photographed in this outfit has anything even approaching natural style. I’m almost ashamed to carry a Coach purse after reading the first chapter of her book. If I had read her bio, I wouldn’t have wasted my time. She is sales; I am support. It is a fundamental difference between people, on par with cats vs. dogs. Sales people lack a certain tact and quiet dignity that I find necessary. This author (ha!) reaffirms that belief.

Well, I’m starting to feel tired. The ranting and furious typing have sapped my energy so I will post this and snuggle into my new and clean sheets and try to go to sleep.

play the second note gently

I tend to stare up at popcorn ceilings or down at patterned floors and find faces in the swirls and textures of paint, tile, stucco, whatever. I stare at them for a long time and try to set their features. Then, I look away for 15 seconds. When I look back I try to see if I can find their faces again. Usually, I can't, and it makes me feel like a bad person for losing these people so easily.

Unhealthy and anti-feminist

Last week was a bad, bad week at work. All the hope of stasis and control that I had felt previously left, and every little thing made me angry. I was so frustrated with the whole thing that I actually thought, "man, I wish I were smoking hot so somebody would just take care of me." Of course, I don't really believe this. The idea of not having my own money and my autonomy scares the bejesus out of me, but I know I am not the first woman who, in a fit of career induced rage, has wished for our simpler and more shackled time, if only for a moment. It is a natural step in the battle we are fighting to occasionally look back and lament the past, even though we know what we are doing is right.

I stumbled upon this article in the New York Times that says that women are getting unhappier while men are getting happier.

They attribute the fact to the idea that women, now faced with a full time job and all of the responsibilities that come with it, now spend more hours doing things they consider unpleasant. Men, on the other hand, are actually working less but don't seem to be sharing in the household work with their SOs. Consequently, they spend less hours doing tasks they consider unpleasant. Even non-labor tasks like spending time with family, show a large gap in the happiness index between the genders because men equate "spending time with family" to watching the game or having a few beers. Women equate that with helping family members with projects, assisting their aging parents, or cooking and cleaning in preparation of these visits.

I have seen this with every man I have encountered, from my father, to the men I babysat for, on down to my roommate. Even when we have parties, the girls always end up cooking and cleaning in the kitchen and the guys all end up out by the grill or on the couch drinking beers, considering the charing of animal flesh to be their only "job."

The article mentions that many women are torn between the wants of the older generation and the wants of the new generation. "Her mother’s goals in life, the student said, were to have a beautiful garden, a well-kept house and well-adjusted children who did well in school. “I sort of want all those things, too,” the student said, as Ms. Stevenson recalled, “but I also want to have a great career and have an impact on the broader world.”

I know this feeling. I enjoying cooking, baking, sewing, entertaining, and decorating, but I also want to feel like my life is interesting, important and not empty and shell-like, like Sandra Lee. It is hard to reconcile all of these conflicting wants and still be good at your job and do well in school. Sometimes, I am not sure what will make me happy. Maybe that is the real problem women face today?

And none for Gretchen Wieners

Between school and playing Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix on the XBOX 360, there hasn't been time for much else. Weak apology offered.

Took my baby prius to the body shop today. In its place, I am driving a ford focus that I hate. It smells like a motel room in a motel that had to go non-smoking to comply with state law and the room always smells like bathroom cleaner and generic carpet sanitizer. ICK.

Since upgrading to vista at work, I have been playing some chess titans. I feel like a lot of my personality defects could be cured by learning to play chess. Impatience, overconfidence, and the inability to treat many people as my equal have brought me down before and they bring me down in chess. Must learn myself out of this.

In other news, here are my boyfriends of the week.

Whenever I am on the elliptical at the gym and Flagpole Sitta comes on, I think of this guy and his bad ass lip-syncing.



And the other is Lupe Fiasco. I heart him.

Blanket

I love LOVE love cover songs. I don't get too crazy with my playlists, but I am super meticulous about my cover songs playlist. Until recently, the Stray Cats version of You Can't Hurry Love was probably my favorite, but I am really digging Tracy Bonham's cover of Crazy in Love.

Other stuff to write about, but I am so busy, it seems. Maybe later.

GAHHHHHHH

What a terrible fucking week! I'm at the point where something as small as there being no Pepsi in the fridge will probably cause a severe and permanent mental breakdown.

I'm taking it in stride, since my Prius had a far worse week. Hit twice in one week.

UPDATE: I should specify that the second attack on my car was perpetrated by a wall that I got into a fight with. I suffered light casualties, but the wall is toast.

Say wha?

I used the term ethnomethodology to refer to the investigation of the rational properties of indexical expressions and other practical actions as contingent ongoing accomplishments of organized artful practices of everyday life.

I are fucked.

Pet Peeves

1. Websites that resize your browser. Grrrrrr. Leave it alone.

Clean up on channel 4

I'll just start this post by saying, "youtube, you let me down."

I was trying to find a link to a Wal-mart commercial that has been bugging me, but oh well. There is a new Wal-mart commercial that opens with a frustrated woman standing at the gas pump. She is frowning in concern. "But what am I going to do about gas prices?" Then, they cut to several other earnest looking, hardworking Americans who talk about how now, more than ever, money is tight. These anypeople then go on to say that "paying too much for the stuff I use everyday, that's just crazy."

Which is Wal-Mart's way of indoctrinating the American people into dismissing the power of the activist dollar. It makes me so angry that Wal-Mart is essentially branding anyone who actively chooses to spend money at places other than Wal-Mart as foolish or crazy. I haven't set foot inside a Wal-Mart for more than 4 years (not counting the time I was an accomplice to a tennis racket purchase). Yes, if I shopped there, I could save money, but I prefer to spend my money in less evil places, and I want Wal-Mart to know that I do that. It's kind of a silly campaign, since the people who are boycotting Wal-Mart aren't going to be tricked into being a consumer at Wal-Mart, but it still makes me angry. How dare you, Wal-Mart. Don't you turn this around and make it about me. I may be crazy, but it isn't because I pay an extra $0.32 for canned tomatoes.