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Igor: lee, your blog is SO out of date.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

My mom's response to my e-mail containing pictures of my brother and I in our Halloween costumes:

"It was a very original costume. Next time if you want to be blond you should put makeup."

for one taste of them

Since I apparently lead a charmed life, a spot opened up at the end of the day yesterday to go to Teatro ZinZanni with this ad network. Even though it was my only time to look for critical components of my Halloween costume before this weekend, and I was supposed to meet Elaine later, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to go to the decadent dinner theater and drinks on someone else's tab - I'd been wanting to go for a while, but didn't think I'd do it anytime soon. Plus, I asked Elaine if I should flake on her and she said, "Zinzanni is one of those things everyone should do and not pay for. Like Cirque de Soleil."
God, did we eat and drink. I thought it was a hundred times more impressive than the time I went to Supper Club on a publisher's tab - I've heard Supper Club is less impressive on weeknights, but I doubt the same can be said for ZinZanni. The circus tricks were much more impressive, and the food was better too.
I did make the mistake of sitting at the end of the table, most easily accessible by the cast when they come up in between acts to mess with you. Monsieur Verognier kept coming up to me and running his pointed index-finger thimble down my side to my waist, making my fork spin with the magnet in it, making the hairs on my arm stand up on end with it, giving me horrible chills with a giant vibrating monster hand on my head and making a small bird marionette dance on my table. The second time he came over, he concluded the mild harassment by sticking a folded-up note into my shirt, reading:
"Your lips
Are two rosepetAl rivers,
For one tAste of them,
I burn.
-V"

take your time

I've been going to SF MOMA a lot, and finally using that membership I got this time last year, mostly because I wanted to see the Olafur Eliasson exhibit again, and show it to other people. I went again last night with my friend, but we mostly talked and caught up and had more fun talking to each other than looking at the exhibit. I thought that I'd see something new, or that it would be as exciting as it was the first and second times I saw it, but there's something about seeing an exhibit for the first time that's magic and can't be duplicated. Just like how going to the museum by yourself is a totally different experience, or going to museums with Maya when she was visiting was unlike with anyone else (because she's so meticulously attentive, so great to go to museums with).
When I saw the exhibit last week I was by myself, and there were a lot of people there, and everybody was so animated and having so much fun with it. There was a line at one point to look over a ledge, and these two girls were at the ledge laughing hysterically and saying "Aaaauhhhhh. Oh!" and at one point even "Ew!," and everybody in line is just dying to see what it is and wondering what the hell it could possibly be, and then as it became each person in line's turn and they saw how mundane the thing was, they'd start giggling hysterically, like they were realizing how great it was because of the anticipation preceding it. It was so fantastic!

workplace ambush

Web dev dude appears in my cube. We had talked at a drinks thing over a month ago, where I mentioned my boyfriend, staying over at my boyfriend's house, taking BART to work from my boyfriend's house, and my boyfriend at least a dozen times.
"Wow, I didn't know you ever made it to this side of the office."
"I came over here just to say hi to you."
Awkward.
S walks by and I engage him in accounting talk for a few minutes while he notices ominously hovering web dev dude and comes up with an excuse to vanish.
"You guys seem pretty busy."
"Yeah, I'm in a job transition."
Blah, blah, we talk about my internal transfer. Not sure why he would be coming over to my cube during the work day to talk to me a month after the last time we had an actual conversation, when he knows I have a boyfriend.
"So, what are you doing for lunch today?"
I go into some excuse based loosely on true facts about how I'm supposed to call some friend of a friend during my lunch hour.
"Okay, see you later," he says while walking away.
It feels rude that I blew him off and didn't suggest we do another time, because he might just be trying to be friends, and I would have made an effort with someone else, but I'm pretty sure I saw this scene in our sexual harassment training video, where module after module this woman leads the IT temp on until he's totally obsessed with her.
Not that that's realistic, but it would have been easier to say yes to a lunch invite if he was bringing friends, or if it was otherwise disguised it as something not totally inappropriate like trying to date your coworker who has a boyfriend.

when work is slow

Crazy things happen when work is so slow that I get through enough blogs to read Adfreak.
Going to have to add these to my wishlist:

L: I want to be perfect.
E: peh, i want to be me
L: I don't. I want to be perfect. fake-me.
E: why- thats no fun
L: it would be fun if I were
E: i'd rather be exactly what i am and live in that, and find people who make me feel ok with it and who complement it
E: then i can stop worrying and just be
L: I'm working towards achieving ideal me.
E: hm
E: i gave up on that
E: its working out really well
L: because I think I'll never find anyone who complements needy-me
E: thats a lie
E: every pot has a lid
L: I wish I believed that
L: I think you can find a makeshift lid for every pot but you're always at a yard sale
L: um. nevermind

effortlessly fashionable

Being into fashion never seemed to me like a great way to spend one's time. It's not directly correlated with looking good, it demands a lot of time and money to be into, and it's often totally arbitrary, and by that I mean not directly correlated with looking good, and sometimes even correlated with looking bad, yet fashionable.
Also, I think it's important to do things you excel at, and I've never excelled at reading fashion magazines or spending a lot of money.

But it seems like I'm still sort of expected to keep up appearances and stay moderately fashionable, because even before middle school mean fashionable girls learn to talk trash about girls that aren't fashionable, and even some of the nice, fashionable girls notice when you aren't, and might even talk to the mean ones in the bathroom about your unfashionability at an event. And what's so funny is how something that's supposed come down to subjective taste can turn into some universal discussion of how obviously wrong something is by being last season or a trend you shouldn't follow that says something about you. And the fear is the talk is never just about what you're wearing. It's like a license to trash talk you up and down as if looking good and appropriate and staying current are your only face values.

Even though I love dressing up, It's hard to get into when you actually have hips and waist and thighs, and fashion looks like this:





I'm sorry. I don't look good in maternity wear. You can argue that everyone looks good in these dresses, and I've seen girls successfully rock them, but the ones that are long enough to cover my legs just make me look like I tied a potato sack around my ribs (or am hiding baby weight), and the short ones make those of us who aren't leggy just look as stocky as a dodgeball.

I don't know about you, but I'm sitting this one out.

if you could see me now

you'd see me in the absurdly nice Hotel 1000 in downtown Seattle, where instead of one very large bed, I have two queen-sized beds. What a waste. And a shame I'm only here one night, by myself, and due to a delayed flight can't enjoy the very large bathtub alongside a glass wall (designed so you can watch television in the bathtub!). I love the decadence that could only be conceived of by the hospitality industry.

coit tower is red

I have no idea why. I just saw it on the way down to the laundry room.
I love my apartment. Even when it's too foggy to see the whole view.
I am exhausted beyond comprehension for no discernable reason. Almost everyone else I've talked to is too, which leads me to believe it's the entre-saison, even though it's only the beginning of August, and feels like November.
My life makes no sense to the point that everything feels like an absurdist joke. Not bad, just hilarious.
Last night Elaine invited me out to North Beach Lobster Shack, but when Natalie and I got there the benches were stacked on the tables and the woman said they were closing because no one had come in in the last hour. Which was surprising, because the place actually got very good reviews, and other restaurants in the area weren't empty either. I called Elaine asking her if she wanted to go somewhere else, but she said she and Mark had been looking forward to it all week! We asked them if they could stay open and they said yes, but they were no longer selling alcohol. But we could bring our own. So Elaine sends Mark to the liquor store, and he comes back with Tecate, so we're drinking our own Tecate on the side of our lobster rolls at an empty restaurant, which is funny for so many reasons I can't even begin. Elaine is like me, and finds everything even slightly unusual to be inanely hilarious, which is one of the best reasons why we get along.
On the way out Mark straggles in the doorway of the bar next door watching the Giants game and we caught Bond's record home run, which seems like it must be important.
Not that now is the time, because I'm too tired to be coherent right now, but I really want to start blogging frequently and in quality again, and not just blogging poorly when I've been out drinking and needing to take down the posts because they're that terrible.