catheroominations

GAH! I just realized today is Wednesday, so I ran around the house looking for things to shoot in macro. We had some ant visitors earlier today but of course they all vacated (thank goodness) so I couldn’t get them with my macro lens. Plus, no one wants to see ants. So here’s what I came up with in a pinch:

What it is

Tiffany bracelet

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A letter to AllanThinks and AliThinks, 25th of March, 2009

OK. You guys were at Al’s tonight, right? For a Twitter meetup?

Well…

I had this co-worker (I will call her S) when I worked at the University of Kentucky Department of Surgery Publications Office. I always felt that she was too smart for me although we got along very well. She was very “bookish” like I was, but in a more highfalutin’ way. She once recommended I read some Flannery O’Connor and I tried, but UGH. Way over my 24-year old head. S and I both loved cats and French, and Berea crafts, and Birkenstocks, and other similar things, so we became friends. Our other coworker, C was also into cats and things so the three of us were work buddies.

We sat in one large room with our boss. Let’s call her W. In our drab room of an office, each of us sat in our own corner, with our back to the center of the room, and partitions beside or behind us to simulate privacy. So friendly! Because W demanded Total Silence so she could focus on such things as plasminogen activators, thrombocytopenia, or documenting sex change operations, the three of us with poorer work ethics began conversing via email. Considering that the office was about 20 feet wide by 25 feet long, this was not the quickest form of communication because it took so long to send our thoughts through the tubes all the way around the world or where ever they went before landing at our desks. But we were to remain mute unless a surgeon walked in needing our editing or desktop publishing expertise, so email was the only way for us to talk.

I think it was Tuesdays that were Street French days. Each week, one of us was in charge of teaching the other two a new word or phrase. Sometimes it was so hard not to snicker at what would appear in my inbox. But if I let out a giggle (or a fart, for that matter), I was afraid I’d be knocked upside the head. (I regret not backing up those emails on a floppy disk so today I could sit there and look at that floppy, thinking, “I sure wish I could see what I saved on there, but this Mac doesn’t have a floppy drive!”)

Anyway, I digress. Or did you not notice?

For some reason, just yesterday I decided to look for S on teh internets. Lo and behold, there she was! She has a web site and she is still like totally ohmigod smart and stuff too. She’s also on Twitter, but I didn’t click the Follow button for fear that she’d find my own Twitter page. I mean, it would be like Chrissie Snow requesting to follow Stephen Hawking. S does tweet some lovely poetry though. I sort of want to stalk her for that. She even has a couple of poetry books published. I have one that she sent me years ago.

Just in case I am painting a not-so-nice picture of S, you should also know that she is also a very nice, caring person with a dry wit. But, remember on How I Met Your Mother when Ted’s college girlfriend came back and they hooked up? And how Ted’s friends felt like everything and everyone seemed beneath her? That’s how I feel around S. Unlike the Heir to the Massengil Fortune on HIMYM, it’s not on purpose, and it’s not her fault. I know that I am intimated by her intelligence, and it’s like, totally me and not her, but still.

(It’s taking me a long time to get to the point, isn’t it? This is how I talk in real life, by the way. I include several unrelated details you probably don’t care about, but they pop into my head so I must include them, however haphazard they are.)

OK. So. I went through the posts on S’s blog, and one of them from earlier this week promoted a poetry event she would be attending on Wednesday (tonight). At…

wait for it…

Al’s in Lexington.

So when I saw Allan’s tweets about you guys being at a Twitter meetup at Al’s and the bar being taken over by the poetry people…

DUDE!

(S would never say dude, even for dramatic effect, by the way.)

My two universes collided in Kentucky tonight. Did the walls shake or anything?

I felt a rumble under my feet all the way over here.

*The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is an epistolary novel. It’s a really cute story, sometimes sad, but a really fun read listen. I checked out the audio book from the library.

I’ll bet you can guess how many pennies are in the photo.

• Work is crazy busy
• I’m training for 2 half marathons
• I’m getting ready for my in-laws to come visit for my birthday
• Guitar Hero arrived at my doorstep yesterday

So, NaBloPoMo? Maybe next month. I have priorities, you see.

But one interesting thing happened. Yesterday one of the ladies at work brought in homemade Chinese food that her family made. We’re talking authentic Chinese food. Not Mr. Chau’s. Not Panda Express. I’m pretty open-minded when it comes to food, but shortly after I was presented with my plate, I headed to Taco Bell for a Crunchwrap Supreme. Because, well…I’d had baby octopus legs with my Shredded Wheat for breakfast.

• It’s Sunday, and rather than relish in the last remaining non-workday, all I can think about is how excited I am for Memorial Day weekend. Just that one extra day makes the weekend like a mini vacation.
• Our apartment is in a massive state of disarray right now. I should be doing something to uhm…array? it, but instead, here I am typing. I cleaned out my closet in a fit of “none-of-these-damn-clothes-fit-my-fat-ass-anymore-so-why-do-I-keep-them?” Consequently, we have numerous bags of tax deductions waiting to go to Goodwill.
• In an attempt to raise money for Team In Training, I am selling a huge pile of books on Amazon. So, along with Trader Joe’s bags full of discarded clothing, the floor is covered in piles of books.
• Daphne is hissing at Desmond right now because he cannot be near her without batting her and emitting a purr/meow that sounds like a dove’s coo. Daphne is not charmed by him one bit.
• Wow, I used to really like Usher, but as I watch him on last night’s SNL, I am realizing he’s a bit lame. Maybe he’s a good dancer, but I’m just not in to that kind of showcasing performance.
• I should blog more, shoot more photos, read more, cook more, clean more, and be more organized.
• David Cook will not win American Idol this week (unless someone destroys Utah’s lines of communication). But he should. David Barfuleta is better suited to performing in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. I have the same reaction to hearing that little Monchichi sing as I do when I hear Gee Dub talk.
• Matte and I went to a fun party last night and met a bunch of fun people. There was burnt almond cake from Dick’s bakery, and I refrained from eating more than one piece. Since I was the cutter of the cake, I made sure my one piece was huge with lots of frosting and almonds though.
• I think I’ll go to BlogHer. How can I not? It’s in San Francisco, practically in my backyard (if my backyard was 50 miles long, and if I had a backyard in the first place).
• I am really good at procrastinating.
• This post is extremely haphazard, but it’s Sunday, and I don’t get paid to think on Sundays.

This post is random and haphazard.

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Take a look at my “sideblog” over there —> (on the side, get it?). Feed reader peeps will need to come over to the actual blog to see it. I’ll be putting bits of tiny randomness (rumblings, if you will) there from time to time.

Also, if you leave your feed readers and come on over, you’ll see I updated the photos in my header to brighten up the place a bit.

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You have just over a week to get your answers to me on the logo alphabet quiz. We have someone seriously in the running for First Prize, so get those mental juices flowing! If you’ve already emailed in your guesses, you can send more in as you think of them. I’ll combine all your answers on April 1.

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I don’t usually blog about my dreams, but this one was pretty interesting (and I actually remembered it when I woke up.)

I was dating Jack Nicholson. I was spending a lot of time with him and almost missed dinner with my friend Paula because of it. (I am, in fact, having dinner with Paula tonight, so it was eerily real when I was dreaming this.) As I was driving to meet her, I called to say I’d be late and “Oh My Gawd! I have to tell you about who I’m dating! You’ll never believe it!” As news got out, I found that my friends were not too happy about this new man in my life. Several tried to sabotage my new romance. One of my guy friends did some major research and snooping and found a photo of Kevin Spacey at Jack’s house. Kevin was wearing boxer briefs and a bow tie and he was holding a cocktail of some sort. He appeared to be dancing. Kev’s photo was inserted in a card sent to a guest at the drinking night at Jack’s. The note inside the card went on and on about how much fun they had “that weekend” and “isn’t Jack the greatest? I love him.” My guy friend heard from this carouser that Kevin and Jack were secretly a couple. I didn’t believe my friend at all. I said “but he was with Lara Flynn Boyle!” And my friend said “Yeah. So? Do you really think he was hittin’ that?” I had to admit he had a point. Also, after a few of months of dating, Mr. Nicholson had still not tried to “hit” me. I thought he was being respectful and gentlemanly. He did want me around all the time, and he bought me lovely things (a new camera!) but, as it turned out I was not his type exactly. And yes, he was wearing those sunglasses through the entire dream.

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If anyone can tell me when F/X is putting new eppies of Rescue Me and Damages on the air, I will be ever so grateful.

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And lastly, did you hear about Charlie Rose’s shiner? This man has priorities, is all I’m sayin’. Read about it here.

Why do the iPhones that TV show characters use beep when someone hangs up ends a call? Cuz, I’m kind of thinking iPhones don’t beep like that.

Is it just me, or has the PC on the Mac commercials lost weight? He looks quite svelte lately.

The other day, Def Leppard came on my iPod and I thought Joe Elliot was saying “Love is like a bomb, baby, c’mon get it on. Livin’ like a lover with a red iPhone…” He’s really saying “radar phone.”

The other day I saw a Vokswagen Jetta with an apple sticker beneath the license plate. The license plate said MAC1984.

On the new iPhone commercials, they tell us that instead of carrying a cell phone and an iPod, you should get an iPhone. Well, what if I carry TWO cell phones and TWO iPods. What’s the solution then, smart guy?

This NaBloPoMo is killing me, people. Seriously. I just yammered about random apple crap. And do you capitalize the A when you type apple? I don’t think so, but…oh…who cares?

In other news, I had leftover onion rings for dinner. FYI, onion rings don’t reheat very well, even when they are from the Fog City Diner.

Tomorrow night might produce a better post. I’ll be blogging after a wine tasting party with the work winos.