dirty trick

I woke up and looked at the clock.
It said 12:26 pm.
Is it the weekend? I wondered.
No, Thanksgiving weekend just ended, and I've only had...one work day.
No, it's Tuesday.

My body's played dirty tricks on me like this before. It usually involves me staying up a little bit too late, but still with enough time to get my minimum required 6 hours to function, and somehow I wake up 10 and a half hours later with no recollection of turning off my alarm. (Once in high school I woke up at noon, the exact moment of the end of my community college Shakespeare course in which I was supposed to give a presentation on one of Shakespeare's sonnets. I had to grovel to him to let me make it up, and he said I only could if someone else didn't show)
My boss, of course, had e-mailed me several times in my absence and knew I wasn't online, so I had to explain that my power went out and I was sleeping off a cold. He told me to lay off the booze, he doesn't want me to end up on an afterschool special. How embarrassing. I didn't even go out that night! And he totally hasn't done my annual performance review yet.

I guess I've paid the price of staying up until 1:30 watching videos on my laptop, and my featherbed and blackout curtain setup, and I'm going to have to start setting a few backup alarms. On the bright side, I think I might have slept off a cold that might have been coming on, because today I feel super.

Igor: lee, your blog is SO out of date.

me: um, didn't i blog like 2 days ago?

Igor: 2 days!?!?

Igor: what do you think this is, print media?

Igor: that is like a century in the blogosphere

we are clearly not on the same page here

quarterlife

I want it to be great. Because I love media that deals with the internet generation, and super-high-budget, well-produced web content is so rarely done and so edgy, and I crave free, portable, high-quality audio or video content (especially when I'm getting ready for bed and my apartment's silent since my roommate's sleeping).
It looks and feels like a good show. The characters seem interesting with their smoky, serious attractiveness and their subtle subculture outfits (though they're all so white - I thought this was problematic when I assumed it was set in LA but since the show is ostensibly set in Chicago, maybe the absence of any interracial interaction is normal?). Everyone's gloomy introspectiveness plays the same nostalgic My So-Called Life chords, and they deal with all the right issues.
Maybe the problem is inherent in the 8-minute episode. When you try to pack in that many short cuts and that much plot into that short of an episode, it's bound to feel like it's all a preview, the way watching MTV reality TV shorts cut to music can make you actually wonder whether you're seeing the real show, or just previews of it (until you realize the whole show is a preview for real life as conceived of and sold by MTV). Even though they're flirting with having almost serious conversations, you never catch anyone hanging out or talking before the scene starts - it's never implied that you're missing interactions or parts of conversations - it's as if you're expected to believe everything of any importance that's happening in these people's lives since the first 8-minute episode has all been on camera. And their conversations wrap up so fast and neat. It's hard enough to pull off full characters that feel genuine in an hour-long show.
It's like an episode of the Hills, only acted out by poorly-dressed college graduates who are supposed to be smart and creative, and occasionally say clever things they never bother following through.
Then there's the fact that you can't buy it - this supposedly timid, thoughtful girl doing a video blog and spilling all of her friends' darkest secrets. Real blog - yes. Video blog? If the girl thinks she's a writer, why would she carelessly talk to the camera and never write? Her roommate dates her next door neighbor and his roommate is in love with her and she's in love with him? And their roommate is a bartender taking community acting classes who thinks she's going to make it as an actress?
The real problem though, is in lines like, "I hate not knowing and waiting and finding it so hard to figure out what we're all supposed to be. But what's my choice anyway? I certainly wouldn't want to be anywhere other than where I am now." This is obnoxious not just in that life is what you're doing when you're making other plans cliche. It's the convenient summing up of issues facing twentysomethings without actually engaging with them. Do I need to be hit over the head with the fact that twentysomethings are in a life transition that can suck but can also be great? At least on My So-Called Life everyone was sad and nihilistic because adolescence is such a depressing trap there is no real way to go through neatly, but the twentysomethings on Quarterlife actually think their lives are going to make sense when they become magazine writers and actors and filmmakers and married and adults.

sweater search off

Last Hanukkah I decided that I wanted a Hanukkah sweater. I love the Holiday season, but not just in that I wish I celebrated Christmas kind of way. While I do love Christmas parties and mistletoe and days off work and It's a Wonderful Life and Christmas decorations, I totally love Hanukkah, mostly because of how all out my parents and their friends went about it when I was growing up. Hanukkah combines all of my favorite holiday elements: fried food, candles, chocolate coins, whimsical spinning tops and like four dozen Hanukkah songs in Hebrew!
I do sometimes feel left out - I've never celebrated Christmas or had a Christmas tree, and the PC holiday equality didn't really kick in until I was 11 or so, so I still grew up with Christmas parties and tree ornaments as prizes in cereal boxes (do they do that anymore?). I don't really wish for any of it, but I also don't feel like I have to deprive myself of a holiday sweater - It never occurred to either of my grandmothers to knit me one when either of them knitted - probably because Hanukkah isn't really a big deal in Israel, or because they came of age before irony.
When I looked last year all I could find were dog sweaters, so I guess the selection is expanding, or getting easier to find, but still - it's not quite what I'm looking for. I want a really fun, knitted sweater with a dreidel or menorah on it, that's clearly for kids. Most of them are appropriately awful (and by that I mean awesome) but they're not quite the Hanuukkah sweater I always wished I had.

Sadly the closest I've seen to what I want only comes in Build a Bear size. I guess I'll keep looking. Search off?

blogger for one

A few months ago, when a huge group of girls I know signed up to run a half-marathon, I of course declined to join the fun and sign up because:

a. I hate running
b. I hate waking up early on the weekend
c. I already work out, and even though I want to be in better shape, I'd really rather spend my free time getting better at physical activities that I enjoy and have a chance at getting good at

Some of the girls who signed up worked out even less than me (or didn't work out at all) - it seemed really painful to think about someone who doesn't even regularly work out training to run this kind of superhuman distance. But definitely admirable - I mean good for them if they're really going to take it seriously and train for this great cause.
One of these girls, whose blog I read fairly regularly out of bored curiosity, linked to a new blog she'd started to chart her marathon training progress.
My friend and I checked it every once in a while and found it a little bit funny, since her running blog just kept explaining why she wasn't running. Of course there were even some good reasons why she wasn't running, and nobody really judged her for it, except that it's a really popular half-marathon with a huge waiting list, so you'd think if you were not able to properly train for this really difficult feat you might just drop off and let another runner take your spot, and write off the registration costs as charity. Instead, the girls who didn't train ran the half-marathon anyway, and came in a little slower than a walking pace, and were subsequently resented for bragging about finishing the half by those who had trained hard and ran it in half the time while sustaining horrible, painful injuries.
I guess this girl must have seen that all of the hits on her statcounter were from a single location, because my friend was basically the only one reading her blog who she couldn't identify, so she must have figured out who it was. Of course, there is tons of friction between them from the past. When I randomly checked the final posting I lost it laughing - it was a personal letter to my friend that stopped just short of mentioning her name - it even mentioned the tech company she works at, which she must have seen in the logs. Only about an hour after I sent it to my friend and checked back again to have another laugh, I saw that it had been taken down, which could only mean that she checks her statcounter even more obsessively than I do. It's especially funny since my friend hadn't even seen this personal letter to her, which had been up for weeks, and the moment she read it it was taken down, as if the blogger had been waiting for weeks to do it.
While this is all totally catty gossip, gossip is never really interesting in and of itself - more a springboard for telling compelling stories and analyzing social and cultural patterns, and the psychological analysis of the lengths to which people will go. One day when early cyberspace is studied to examine its social internet behavior, this just might be one of many case studies on the psychological effects of interpersonal friction, female antagonism, and blogging for a perceived audience of one.

stats

My friend told me when we were hanging out this week (at Trad'r Sam's in the Richmond, sipping from a gigantic cocktail in a Salad Bowl with cocktail umbrellas and straws) that he has so much free time at work, his friends can't post blog entries fast enough to keep him entertained, and he keeps up with every single Valleywag post.
That's impossible! I said. That's like 80 posts a day!
It got me wondering who, besides him and my few friends who comment, is still reading my blog, which hasn't really been getting much love from me.

I finally got around to getting the statcounter back up yesterday - it had become inactive when Blogger forced me to upgrade, and I wasn't able to figure out how to get it back up until they redid part of their UI, and then I just forgot for a while as my postings have dropped in frequency and quality. Obviously for personal blogs de-listed from the Blogger directory and as unpromoted as mine, the statcounter is mostly to satisfy my curiosity - because there's only a few dozen unique visits, and I can usually figure out who most of them are by their location.
I have to say I'm flattered with the results so far.

I'm sure most of these are friends reading from multiple computers, or who have me on their RSS reader and maybe can't be bothered to keep up, especially when I'm probably not working hard enough to deserve their regular readership, but I hadn't posted in a day so it couldn't all be RSS hits - anyway it's totally flattering that this many people are still reading my blog, when it could still really improve in quality.
It's like when I get comments on postings from friends of friends like Nato's roomie Joel and find out they're still reading my blog - that's so nice!
I've definitely sometimes given thought to taking down some of my old blog entries, like the more embarrassing or inappropriate ones or just the really stupid ones, but I figure so few people are reading this let alone digging through archives, and they're basically all in my social circle, and nothing in it is that bad. Also, even though this is really flawed logic, I feel like if someone is going to go to so much trouble to find my blog, they kind of deserve to see it. It's hard to imagine it happening, except in pre-dating due diligence background checks (what potential employer would really go to the trouble?), and really - I never had anything to hide, because it's no real secret what a huge nerd I am.

Elaine's uninentional Haiku

I love sports because
they're so irrational - a
perfect kind of love


She adds:
"they're always there for you and you love them through all their imperfections"

how could I not love her?

Another e-mail from my mom:

Your sister is depressed that she ate too much and now she believes that she is fat. Please talk to her.
Love,
Ima

You know you're having a bad week when you feel emotional while watching an Israeli humor Anti-Smoking ad.

fall wedding

I love weddings. They are so much fun - the great party, the dressing up, the drinks and dancing and usually good food, and if you're lucky your date wears a tux!
Besides the red-eye jet lag and my pathetically low tolerance for Boston's fall icy wind, it was a great time. I got to see Emily and go to Celtics opening night too. Boston sports are so fun because everybody boos and trashtalks the opponents so hard, and screams so loud when they score. It was really great to hang out with Emily, especially because we know each other so well I don't have to feel bad if I'm jetlagged, or out of my element, or being a jackass.
The wedding was a ton of fun. The bride and groom set the tone of the reception immediately by making a huge entrance to the ballroom for their first dance. You can't see it in this video, but they begin dancing a waltz (I think it was a waltz, my memory fails me after all of the Vodka Jon's really fun Russian friend had us drinking), and then the groom approaches the band to talk to them about the music, until they start playing Let's get it Started, kicking off a So You Think You Can Dance dance. They do things in wedding attire that have likely never been done.

Macy's gaff

I’d been looking for the perfect pair of shoes to complete the outfit I’m wearing to a wedding this weekend, but without much luck. As a last-minute effort, I looked on Macys.com and saw a few cute pairs of shoes on sale, so I decided I’d swing by the Union Square Macy’s on the way home from work before my red-eye at night.

My feet are small for my height, but a little bit on the wide side, so most attractive shoes for women make my foot look like a sad overweight girl trying to squeeze into a tiny dress, and finding great shoes is no walk in the park. I had to have tried on 40 or 50 pairs and it was starting to get late, but miraculously this satin Alfani pump actually looked good on my foot– so I asked the saleswoman to bring me the left shoe and had a seat. And stood up and looked around. And sat down again. It probably took her 15 minutes to come back, but this was understandable since she was slammed.

I walk around the room in them and it feels like walking on an actual cloud, so I drop them in the box and walk to the counter to make the purchase. I feel bad about having wasted over an hour of getting ready time at Macys, but at least I found these great shoes, and I still had just enough time. My mother says a pair of Alfanis is always good to have around (not sure if that’s true if you’re under 40, but these were cute, and on sale). I’m ready to make the swiping motion with my credit card and am just waiting to see the total come up on the screen when one of the two sales girls behind the counter say “Ma’am? We can’t sell you these shoes.”

“What are you talking about?”

“These shoes are supposed to go back to the manufacturer.”

“What’s wrong with them?”

“I don’t think anything, but the computer says they’re supposed to go back to the manufacturer. That’s why the price is coming back as $0.01. They don’t have a price in the system.”

“But I saw them on the website.”

“They might only be available on the online.”

“But they’re the only ones that fit me.”

“I’m sorry ma'am.”

“I don’t understand why you can’t sell me the shoes.”

“We’re not allowed to, ma’am. I’m sorry.” The two look at each other, then look at me dumbly, feigning some kind of sympathy.

So I turned around and walked out.

I guess I should have demanded to speak with the manager and refused to take no for an answer, but I was in such shock from the confusion over why a department store would refuse to sell me merchandise they had on the floor and that I intended to purchase for the marked price. It doesn’t make any sense! Plus, I had wasted a lot of time there, and if I was not going to be getting my shoes, I didn’t intend to waste any more time waiting for the manager to show up so I could make a scene, since I was already short on time to finish packing and shower. If anything, they as sales people should have recognized the ridiculousness of the situation and called their manager over to see if anything could be done. Who in their right mind walks away from a sale and turns an eager customer away like that?

I didn’t really feel like giving Macy’s my money at this point (probably ever – is that even too drastic?) – because there is nothing more frustrating than having someone waste your time and then deny you the right to buy something which you want, they have and they should want you to have. It seems like a total failure of capitalism – the store presents the goods for sale, I have the money, I want to obtain the goods, the store will not sell them to me. It’s all speculation, but I suspect this would never have happened at Nordstrom or Bloomingdales: stores where they pull every string to make it work, even when the transaction is a return.