So where was I before I was abducted by aliens?

Yeah. It has occurred to me that I can only apologize so many times about not updating the blog before I start to sound disingenuous. So let me just say: it looks like the blogging is not really happening right now. I really wish I had the energy and the time to pay more attention to it, but for the time being I just don't. I'll continue to post things here and there as I feel the urge, but it won't be anything regular. Hopefully when we move to Olympia and my commuting-hell days are over with I'll get back to posting on a more reasonable schedule once again.

For now, know this:
-The wedding date is set for August 2, 2008. The ceremony will be in the Sunken Gardens on the Capitol Campus in Olympia, and the reception will be by Capitol Lake at the Heritage Room.

Bridezilla lives!

I have achieved Dress. A dress, she has been bought. The dress which will be worn to the ceremony we call "Wedding" - that dress, the Ultimate Dress, is now hanging in my closet. WHOOPEE! It was slightly more expensive than I had been hoping for, but I (or rather my mom) had to buy it, because I'm sorry, it was The Dress. The One. The dress that every woman dreams about, the dress that is half-reality, half-myth - the dress that flatters my figure, makes my ass look small and my boobs look...OK, not big, but a good size anyway--and that actually makes my back, normally a no-man's land of flab and poor posture, appear svelte and toned. Sadly, I had to let another dress go that I was for the most part in love with except for the bodice, which was strapless and therefore unflattering - I need boobage enhancement, not boobage smooshment, which is what most strapless dresses seem to tend towards, plus I have this weird issue with armpit rolls of craptacular fatness. But other than that, the whole thing was lovely lovely lovely. *Sigh* But I'm still happy with the one I have, which really was much more flattering, and now I get to gaze at it with affection for another year.

So maybe the date still hasn't been set nor the venue booked, but the dress is good to go.

I am a monster

This is according to Easy's new vet. To hear her tell it, I am a negligent asshole who shouldn't be left in charge of life forms any more complex than a begonia, much less sentient beings. Apparently I have single-handedly ripped Easy's kidneys to shreds by not getting her teeth cleaned regularly (which by the way, costs more than getting my own damn teeth cleaned, something I've only managed to do about twice in the past five years due to my crippling poverty problem), and by just in general being a lousy excuse for a human being. I have also damaged her 14-year-old joints by not feeding her special glucosomine supplements, and have made her a dumpy, bedraggled shell of a feline by not taking her to the groomers to get her matts shaved off.

Well, sorry.

And then we find out that Easy's kidney disease has progressed (no doubt because I am a terrible person), and that she will likely need to be given fluids through an IV a few times a week for the rest of her life. We've not been told yet how much this treatment is going to cost, but I can't wait to see the look on the vet's face when I tell her we can't afford it.

In other news, I am thoroughly enjoying Behind the Scenes in the Museum, and I feel bad about what I said in my last post. It is utterly charming and witty and is no less of a piece of literature just because it happens to be entertaining rather than depressing.

The post that almost didn't have a title, because I forgot to write one in

So.....here I am again. I'm finding myself with very little to say these days, partially because I don't have the chance to read a lot of other blogs anymore, which I used to do in the the past, and which used to give me ideas for my own blog. Also I don't have as much free time both at work and in life in general, so I don't sit around and compose blog posts in my head the way I used to do. And with that build-up, let's go!

Here are some things:

-I used to lament our crappy cable package in Arlington, and was elated when were able to get an expanded set-up when we moved to Tacoma. We now get several HBO channels, BBC America, IFC, blah blah blah. However, I now spend more time flipping through channels than I do watching TV, because even when I find something I want to watch, I am always convinced that there might be something even better if I just keep flipping. By the time I cycle through all the channels, I've forgotten where the shows were that I would have considered watching, and I turn off the TV in defeat.
Message: Be happy with the cable channels you currently have.

-I am becoming retardeder and retardeder by the minute. Yesterday I stopped in at a nice little used bookstore on my way back home from a walk, but promised myself, since I am currently ass-poor what with all the moving expenses, that I was just going to buy one book. I found two books I wanted: Saturday by Ian McEwan in hardback for only $5 (apparently some of the end pages were torn out), or Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson in paperback for $6.50. And do you know which one I chose? Yes, the latter. Now, I guess I should mention that Behind the Scenes was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and winner of the Whitbread Book of the Year, so it's not like I was buying a Harlequin romance novel or something. But I think most people would agree that McEwan is the heavier literary hitter of the two. And not to mention, Saturday was a hardback and yet somehow cheaper than the paperback I chose. Oh well. My brain is dying, whoopety doo.

-I finished reading the seventh Harry Potter book a week or so ago, but I cannot record any reactions or criticism here because I don't want to spoil it for anyone else. All I will say is, now it's over. And what will I do without Harry Potter? Oh Ms. Rowling, how could you forsake us like this? Fine, just walk away with your billions and leave us. Cold-hearted bitch. *Sigh* I guess we still have two more movies to look forward to.

-I saw the movie Superbad last night. It was awesome. The language, it was so foul. The lines, they were so funny. And I hear tell that the movie is spot-on as far as the experience of a teenage boy goes. McLovin. Genius.

OK, I guess that pretty much wraps up the flotsam and jetsam of my mind for the past week. I will try my hardest to update more frequently, but once-a-week is sorta just where my life is at right now.

Um, so...I didn't die or anything

Things have just been a little crazy, what with the moving into a shitty basement apartment and the living in Tacoma while working in Olympia and the going to a friend's wedding the first weekend after moving. I've had about five minutes of down time since July 30th, not that that excuses me, I'm just saying. Also, the new job--I think I'll like it, it seems pretty good so far, and I'm slowly getting the hang of things. But, for various reasons, I can't write blog posts while I'm at work. As for commuting - if you look it up in the OED, I believe you'll find it under the definition for "BITCH." As much as I love Tacoma--and I do love Tacoma--this was quite possibly the stupidest idea I've ever had. I get up at 5:30 a.m., get home between 6-6:30 p.m., work out for an hour, take a shower, and have approximately one hour of my very own to eat dinner and flip through channels before going to bed at 9:00. This is not a life, people. On top of it all, I gained five pounds during the last month and I'm supposed to be going wedding-dress shopping in September.

So much for life getting better back on the west coast. We're already thinking that we're just going to have to bite the bullet and move to Olympia once our lease is up, which is only in six more months, thank god. However, I will sorely miss my neighborhood in Tacoma. I live in the Stadium District, which is a really odd mix of old stately homes, quaint brick apartment buildings, condos, and crazy people. And for some reason we can't quite figure out, tattoo parlors. But nice ones, with very tasteful flames painted on the sides of the buildings. From my neighborhood I also get a nice view of the Sound and Commencement Bay, which seems miraculous after the monotonous urbanity of DC. Don't get me wrong, Olympia has water views, too--they're just not quite as awe-inspiring as those of Tacoma. Our apartment is in this incredibly lucky spot where we get the comforts of a wealthy residential neighborhood--trees, sidewalks, peace and quiet, beautifully landscaped yards--and yet are near the hustle and bustle of downtown (which is mostly hustle, what with the drug dealers and prostitutes, but still), AND have water views within blocks of our apartment. These types of neighborhoods don't really seem to exist in Olympia, at least not for renters.

But, on the other hand, I really can't see living the commuter life for much longer than I absolutely have to. Oh Metro, I loved you so...

...and I'm back.

OK, here's the deal: I accepted the position in Olympia. After contacting HR at my alma mater, it became painfully clear that they were not going to interview me, so I really had no choice. Which is all well and good (and in fact it is neither well nor good, and I want to rip all of their fucking eyeballs out, but whatever). What really sucks is that THERE IS NO PLACE TO LIVE IN OLYMPIA, WASHINGTON. Let me qualify that: there is no GOOD place to live. After four solid days of searching and searching and driving around in circles through the city, we have come to the conclusion that law-abiding professional people who earn incomes and who do not beat either their wives or their children apparently do not rent properties in this fair city, because there are simply no decent places to rent. Every single apartment complex we saw was old and on the verge of collapsing, and the people going into or out of said complexes appeared to be sex offenders. And there are no houses for rent, at least not at this time, and most of the neighborhoods we looked at appeared to be the birth places of above-mentioned sex offenders.

In short, we have decided not to live in Olympia, though it will require me to commute an hour each way from North Tacoma (most of the rest of Tacoma also being replete with sex offenders). This saddens me, people. This saddens me a great deal. I do not enjoy the thought nor the act of commuting, and have sworn to myself on many an occasion that I would never be the single-car-driver-commuting-sap you see sitting miserably on the freeway at rush hour. But on the other hand, I cannot see myself living a mere paper-thin wall away from Cletus and Brandine as they whup some sense into their blended family. No thank you.

Viva la I-5!

So I guess this is goodbye

For a bit anyway. Actually, probably no longer than I would usually make you wait between posts, oh my adoring public. But anyway, just wanted to let the peeps know that I'm smack in the middle of ALA and the painful moving process (well, BF assures me it's painful. I've been standing on the sidelines working and going to conferences and getting offered jobs while he's been doing the packing and running errands. Hey, it takes a village.) Where was I? Oh yeah, going to a conference. So I won't have much free time to post for awhile. The official move takes place on Wednesday, and then the following Thursday I go up to Olympia to check out that job - if all goes as planned, we'll probably be on our way up there for good in a few weeks.

Stay tuned.

My life, and the suckage it contains

It's true, I really do never stop complaining. Wait till you hear what I'm complaining about now: I got a job offer from the place in Olympia (that's good). But the offer is for the same salary I currently make as a paraprofessional (that's bad). True, the cost of living in Olympia is cheaper than here by about a bajillion percent (that's the official number, look it up); however, as it stands now I am somewhat of a kept woman, with the BF largely taking the hit as far as rent and other "shared" bills are concerned. Which means, other than the fact that I now have to give up my feminist credentials, that my personal bills will not substantially diminish once I move, which means that I will continue to be on the verge of homelessness. Yes, I exaggerate, but it does mean that I won't be able to start saving for a house or for Canadian permanent-resident status or for retirement, all things that I had wanted to start doing sooner rather than later. As it stands now, I might be able to afford the down-payment on a house by 2040. But my children, should I have any, will just have to settle for working at the local Arco station, since I won't be able to send them to college. Especially since college tuition will be up to about $500,000 a semester, and that's just the state schools.

But seriously, think about this: I recently went to a budgeting-your-money type seminar, in which I was told that--prepare yourself, now--people our age (20-30) will need to have THREE MILLION DOLLARS saved in order to retire comfortably at the age of 65. That number is of course taking inflation into account, but still. That number scared the shit out of me. THREE MILLION DOLLARS. Just repeat that to yourself a few times and let the terror wash over you.

Anyway. Where was I? Oh yeah, the job offer. So now I'm all conflicted - do I accept the job knowing that I will be poor for a few more years at least, but at least secure in the knowledge that a job is waiting for me, and it's a job that sounds to be interesting and secure (and btw, does not include evening or weekend hours)? Or do I refuse it, on the risky hope that I will receive a larger offer somewhere down the line? And even if I do receive a larger offer, will it come soon enough to offset the broke-ness of being unemployed for however long? It's a gamble, and I'm not a gambling woman.

Meh.

I've just been looking around BookSwim (see below) and that is my official assessment: meh. First of all, their cheapest plan is $23.99 a month, which is 3 books at a time. You know what? I'm willing to take the extra 30 minutes out of my day to drive/walk/metro to the public library to avoid having to pay $24 bucks a month for my books. And the sad thing is, I very rarely read more than 3 books in one month anyway--in fact, I'd go out on a limb and say I NEVER read more than that. I'm too busy watching my Netflix DVDs.

Also, their searching mechanism sucks. I did a search for Pride and Prejudice and the actual book, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, did not show up anywhere within the first two pages of results. And when I browsed through their "British" books, the first two results were by American authors, A Man Without a Country by Kurt Vonnegut and The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton. Dude, hire new indexers. Books by Hemingway and Augusten Burroughs also show up in the top ten "British" books.

So browse their web site and decide for yourself, but unless you're stuck somewhere without a public library, I would say skip it for now. To be fair, BookSwim is still in beta, but I say it's probably not worth trying till the kinks get worked out.

Update on brainwave

Well, the BF (aka KILLJOY) has informed me that he read somewhere last week that someone is going to start doing just the thing I had the brilliant idea for yesterday (you know, the Cybrary). Fine. I accept the fact that I have no new ideas, and will never get rich. That's just fine.*

*OK, I just did a quick Google search and the new service, called BookSwim, is already up and running. I'm going to poke around and see how much it costs, but I think we should all take a moment and note that "Cybrary" is a much more clever name, if not terribly original.

**I guess we should also take a moment and note that a librarian, who gets paid to work in a place that lends out books for free, is now pimping what is essentially a fee-based library. Although libraries generally will not mail books directly to your lazy ass, and therein lies the genius of this service.

Forgot to mention...

I had a phone interview for a position in Olympia, WA, on Friday. While it didn't go too grotesquely awry, my hatred for phone interviews continues unabated. Nothing says "I'm your top candidate!" like awkward, blaring silences. And apparently my interview skills have improved zero percent in the past two years, since I still seem unable to BS my way through questions that throw me off balance. "Ummm..." just doesn't wow people the way I think it should.

Also, we tried unsuccessfully to rid ourselves of the automobile this weekend. We took it to Carmax and I told myself I was being reasonable to expect around $800, and really tried hard not to hope for more, even though I continued to have fantasies about getting an offer of $900, or even $1000. Because let's face it, this is no luxury vehicle we're talking about. It's about one step above a rickshaw, actually. But I have to say I died a little inside when the offer came back at--wait for it--$250. Uh. What? As BF pointed out, we could probably sell it for scrap metal and get more than that. So Carmax can kiss my ass. On to Plan B--pawning it off on an unwary stranger sometime in the next two weeks.

Brainwave!

I think someone, possibly me, should put into effect a service similar to Netflix, only with books. Because I'm always thinking to myself, "That's a book I'd like to read," and then I always forget to write down the title and the next time I'm surfing the library catalog my mind goes blank and I can barely think of a single book I want. So wouldn't it be cool if you could just keep a running queue of books in your "Cybrary" (I'm quite sure I'm the first person to ever think up that word), and so when you finish one and send it back to the library, they automatically send you the next book on your list? No? Because keeping a running list of your own would just be too much trouble.

All of which is just my way of avoiding the packing process. Damn the boxes!

New York, NY - it's my kinda town

I've been back from NYC for five days now, but I've been too busy doing things like sitting on my ass to update the blog. Actually, it's all part of my grand plan - I've been slowing down on the updates lately so as to wean you all for the time after I move, when my updates may become even more sporadic (as if). I say may because it occurs to me that after I move I will be unemployed once again, and will have plentiful time on my hands for writing all kinds of blogs. (Access to the Internet is another matter entirely, however.)

Anyway, this is all to say that I'm sorry, I know I suck for not updating more often. On to New York.

For someone who hates DC for its unrelenting urbanity, I actually really enjoyed New York, although I must qualify that by saying that I only experienced it on a holiday weekend when most of the locals were out of town, and I never had to deal with rush hour anything. The weather was stultifyingly hot and humid, which normally I find repugnant but under the circumstances I wasn't too perturbed by it. I finally see why all the tourists around here can walk around smiling inthe middle of our August heat waves, when all I feel like doing is punching someone in the face and making them drink my sweat. (Ew. That was a little over the line, eh?) I guess marinating in your own perspiration is a lot more tolerable when you're not trying to get to/from work without your melting the make-up off your face or sweating through your shirt.

We saw all the typical New York stuff, walked around a bunch, ate bagels for breakfast and pizza every other meal, saw Rent on Broadway, did the shopping on Fifth Avenue (I bought shoes at a Payless Shoe Source - yes, there's one on Fifth Ave.!). We also went to the top, actually the 86th floor, of the Empire State Building. This was the only sour note of the trip, as it became foot-achingly clear that trying to see the view from the Empire State Building at night on a holiday weekend was perhaps the stupidest plan we could have concocted. We also had the asinine-ness to try to do this immediately after seeing Rent, when I was still wearing heels and we hadn't had anything to eat or drink in several hours. Let's just say, after the first 45 minutes of waiting in an interminable line, I demonstrated some disgruntlement. The next 30 minutes became an exercise in pissed-offedness-to-the-extreme-degree, as the whole experience started to look like a facade to trap unwary tourists in a time-warp vortex where we continued to stand in line like idiots, hoping against hope that the elevators will appear just beyond the horizon, while eons pass in the outer world. Eventually, we did finally make it up, the view was very nice, and now I hope I never have to do that again.

All in all, though, I felt like I could actually fit in there - there's such an ecclectic mix of people, no one ever has to feel out of place. Plus everyone is always pushy and extremely irritable - finally, I've found a land where I could be my true self!

Anyway, so we had our nice little gut-twistingly expensive vacation, and now the real stress begins. We are now fully-offically moving at the end of June, with our plane tickets purchased and space on a moving truck reserved, so all that's left to do is sell the car, comb through all our belongings deciding what to pack, what to ship separately, and what to throw away, and combine that with applying for jobs and finishing up my last month of work on this coast. Piece of cake.

Oh the pain, the hideous pain

Where to begin my tale of woe?

It would seem that I am doomed to live a life mired in physical agony. Obviously I am exaggerating and I realize that many people live with chronic pain much worse than mine, but just indulge me for the sake of this post.

So most of you, sadly, know about all the problems with my legs, because I've chronicled them exhaustively here. Well, the problem in my hip/pelvis (in medical speak, my right sacroiliac region) has only gotten worse as the months have passed, to the point where it was almost too painful to do anything more active than sitting on my ass. So I went back to my doctor, even though I said I wasn't going to, because he's on the metro line and it's too hard to get into doctors around here if you're a new patient, so I went ahead and went back to the same guy. Anyway, he wanted me to get a steroid injection into my sacroiliac joint, and I thought this was a good idea, too, since I was tired of the pain and just wanted to get it over with.

So after a week and a half of back-and-forth with my doctor's office trying to figure out a stupid insurance detail, I finally got an appointment for yesterday morning to have the damn injection. First, the morning started off with me taking a metro train and two busses to get out to the hospital where fancy radiologist doctor gives out said injections. Then I wandered around the hospital complex for about 20 minutes trying to figure out where the hell I was supposed to go. I finally get there, have to do a bunch more waiting, and then I get to take off all my clothes, don a hospital gown, lie face down on the MRI table, and bare my naked ass to a roomful of male doctors and technicians for about 40 minutes while they figure out where to stick me. So it was a morning full of fun.

And here's how they figure out where to cause the maximum amount of pain--they take a 6-inch long needle, poke it into my bare ass, which is by the way hanging out for every male in the vicinity (about 5 or 6 of them) to see, and move me, verrrrry slowly, into and out of the MRI machine. Then they come back, move the needle approximately .2 mm to the left, and do the whole thing over again. They repeat this procedure two or three more times, then finally give me the injection. And have I mentioned that my ass, which is bare, is still naked and hanging out? To be perfectly honest, what hurt the most was the injection of anesthetic, so the pain from the actual injection of steroids and antibiotic were not as excruciating as I had feared--it was nothing compared to my latest root canal--but still, no walk in the park, either.

After the stabbing, I try to untangle myself from the sheets and hospital gown, which they have hiked up practically over my head, and they keep trying to barge in on me to see if I can walk OK, since apparently there was a chance that the local anesthetic would make my leg and foot numb, thus making me fall flat on my face. Meanwhile, my bare naked ass is still all over the place. (It turned out I could walk just fine, and in fact walked the mile from the hospital to the second bus, thus bypassing having to wait for the first bus.)

*Sigh*

The worst part is, I don't yet feel a huge relief from the pain, but it sure as hell better kick in, because I am not going through that shit again. Unless I can be guaranteed a roomful of female technicians and a female doctor this time.

[I guess I should note that, other than stabbing my ass repeatedly with a six-inch needle, the technicians and doctor were very nice, and were very concerned that I was there by myself and would have to *gasp* take public transportation "home," i.e. work.]

In other, more uplifting news, BF and I went to see Pretty Girls Make Graves on Sunday night, which was hugely enjoyable, except for the fact that it was Sunday and thus we both had to work the next day. Unfortunately it's their last tour, but they're playing their final show in Seattle on June 9th, so catch them if you can. I had never seen the band before, and interestingly, only the lead singer and keyboardist were girls. Who knew.

Anyway, the BF and I are headed to NYC tomorrow for the long Memorial Day weekend, so stay tuned for forthcoming NYC blog fodder. Hopefully fodder of the non-mugging variety. Please, let there be no mugging fodder.

Things I will miss about DC

Number one. Nuuuuumberrr one..........*chirping of crickets*

Kidding. Of course there are things I will miss, even though today I am particularly grumpy at the metro (subway system) for making me a half-hour late to work, a half-hour which I will have to take out of my VERY OWN personal sick leave, which is by the way unacceptable, but since I'm pretty sure no one who reads this blog works for metro, nevermind.

Things I Will (Mostly) Miss About DC When I Am Gone, Which Will Be Soon

1. The subway (most of the time - the rest of the time metro can eat shit and die)

2. Only having to drive a car once a week, to get groceries at Safeway

3. Having the option, not that I ever exercise it, to hear any type of live music or go to any club I get a hankering for any night of the week (and as a corollary: to have said venue be lively and full of people on any night)

4. Being in walking-distance to a number of decent bars

5. The plethora of cabs, and the ability to hail cabs on the street from most places I would ever venture, and that the cabs are mostly reasonably-priced

6. Any type of museum I could imagine within a short subway ride, totally free of charge and open every day but Christmas

7. Cool fireworks

8. Pretty much any major thing that happens in the country, I hear it first (OK, not me specifically, but the news media out here)

9. Intellectual vibrancy, and the vast amount of people who are interested in and pay attention to current events (usually because it's their job to do that, but whatever)

10. Access to nationally-renowned cultural stuff, like Broadway plays, major musical acts, author talks, etc.

11. The E-Street Cinema, purveyor of indie movies, beer, wine, espresso, brownies--things you can't get at a regular old AMC theatre--in a comfortable, well-run establishment. The Grand Theatre in Tacoma (which is neither grand nor a theatre, discuss) is not even comparable.

So now, to be fair, I must also list out the things I will NOT miss.

Things I Will Not Miss About DC When I Am Gone, Which Will Be Soon

1. The assholes. Oh my god, the huge number of assholes I encounter on a daily basis (I am probably one of them, but I don't care.)

2. Have I ever mentioned how much the humidity sucks here? I'm not sure that I have. Well, the humidity, it is SO BAD and it SUCKS.

3. The cost of living. If I told you how much money I pay to rent a smallish one-bedroom apartment (which by the way does not include utilities of any sort), you would cry. You would probably also slap me for being such a sucker.

4. Almost getting run over by ASSHOLES every single time I venture across the street. In crosswalks. With the walk-light clearly in my favor. Every. Single. Time.

5. The lack of fruit-and-vegetable markets and bakeries, which I'm sorry to say are also lacking in the Tacoma/Seattle area. Let's all take a cue from Vancouver shall we? And also, the mere fact that all berries in this city are sold in tiny little packages in grocery stores for $5.00 a half-pint. RIDICULOUS.

6. The very tiny percentage of restaurants that offer tasty food at reasonable prices.

7. The pretentiousness. Guess what? Not every one here gets paid a lot of money, so why pretend like you do? Why is shopping at Marshall's made to seem so shameful? I like Marshall's. I proudly shop at Marshall's. (Marshall's is the same as Ross).

8. There is no natural beauty. I mean, there are green pockets here and there, but you have to drive over an hour to see any sort of view, and same goes for mountains or water--they require hours of driving to get to. Meh. I'd rather step out my front door and see those things, thanks.

9. There are many, many Republicans. And they pop up where you least expect them. Think your co-worker is a reasonable person with a progressive outlook on global warming and gay marriage? Think again.

10. The great yawning chasm between rich and poor, white-collar upper class-mummy-and-daddy-sent-me-to-an-elite-prep-school-and-pulled-
strings-to-get-me-into-Harvard-and-then-they-supported-me-while-I
-took-an-unpaid-internship-and-now-I-have-a-high-paying-job-at-the-
age-of-24 types versus people who work one or sometimes two or three mediocre jobs just to pay the bills and who struggle every month just to make ends meet types. Seriously, the disparity seems so much larger here between those who've never lived a day in their life where they actually worried about making it to the next paycheck and those who either fail to make ends meet or are very close to failing. It's shocking to me. I've never encountered so many extremely wealthy people or extremely impoverished people in one vicinity before in my life.

The dizzying highs! The terrifying lows! I've got to live, Marge, won't you let me LIVE?

Hey kids. Not much new here. Except, did I remember to tell you, we're MOVING?! Yeah, but other than that, everything is just kinda boring.

I've been feeling very incompetent at work lately, I think partly due to the fact that I'm doing a brainless job anyone who breathes could perform with minimal training, so anytime I slip up I get mad at myself for screwing up something my cat could do in her sleep. I feel like yelling to myself, "COME ON, lady! You only have five tasks to do throughout the day, and you screw up ONE of them? What good are you?"

So you can see, I'm not going into the new job-hunt cycle with a lot of confidence. But on the bright side, my utter lack of skills, experience, articulation, and self-esteem should provide for some hilarious blog fodder.

Oy vey. Why am I putting myself through this again? Oh yes, because I hate it here.

In other news, did I mention I went to a black-tie event at the Ritz-Carlton last weekend? It was fun, and not as scary as you would think for a girl who grew up in Boise, Idaho, one generation removed from farmers and loggers. I was a little nervous at the beginning, though, and not because I'm from Boise, but because I was wearing a rather, ahem, low-cut dress and I was afraid that one wrong move would give away all my secrets, if you know what I mean. The dress was cut in a way that made wearing a bra basically impossible, and I didn't want to spend a lot of money buying those boob-cup things, and frankly I don't even know how they're supposed to work anyway. So I thought I would just stick on some double-sided tape J.Lo style and be done with it. But the only problem was that I forgot to buy the double-sided tape. So, in my urgency to find something to prevent slippage in the five seconds I had until the cab came to pick us up, instead I opted for doubling over some regular pieces of Scotch tape. Long story short: not the best idea.

In the end, after much frantic tugging and surreptitious boob-tape checking and hiding under my (transparent) wrap-ing, decided the hell with the tape and just took it off. Which actually worked out okay as long I kept an eye on the girls and made sure to keep my shoulders back and my posture ram-rod straight.

My hair was another story, but then my hair is terminally ill to begin with, so we can't really blaming it for looking like death. I would post a photo of the soiree, but I don't own the photos that were taken at the event, so sadly, you'll just have to leave my low-cut dress and ugly hair to your imaginations.

But yeah, other than the boob-tape debacle, I think the evening went pretty well, except for the fact that none of the BF's coworkers talked to me. I guess I probably forgot to mention that the event was sponsored by BF's work, and I don't know why no one talked to me--they weren't mean, they just weren't very talkative. But I got to dance with the BF and get slightly jiggy with it, so you know. Oh, and also there was free food and a dessert buffet and an open bar, and did I mention it was the Ritz-Carlton? Good times.

And that, my friends, was my week in a nutshell.

Stay tuned for my next post, where I will give a blow-by-blow account of vacuuming the apartment.

DC, I hardly knew ye

I guess it's now semi-official--the BF and I are moving back to the Northwest at the end of June.

Let's all breathe a sigh of relief.

I'm not quite sure what will happen with this blog after that point since I won't have DC to rail against anymore, but I'm pretty much a born complainer (no! you say), so I'll probably be whining and moaning about my life in this space for a long time to come. There might be a bit of a hiatus for a while after we move, though, since for at least a month or so we'll be living along the fringes of Middle of Nowhere. We're not exactly sure where we'll be after that, although we are thinking of going back to Tacoma for a bit. We still have friends in the area, we know it well, and it's cheaper than Seattle. And I might have a job prospect there, but it's too soon to know for sure and I don't want to jinx it by saying anything else.

This weekend has erased any doubts, if ever doubts existed, about my determination to get the hell out of here. For two consecutive nights the BF and I hung out with people from various internships he's held while living here, and since his degree involves public policy, all the people were very bureaucratic, entrenched DC-types. Not a single one of them could understand why we would want to move to, of all places, the Pacific Northwest. They know we're from there, all of our family and friends live back there, but still, they couldn't see the logic.

And this is why I want to move.

One person in particular kept asking us, "Isn't it going to be hard to find a job out there? What are you going to do for work?" (As though there are no cities or government institutions or industries in the Northwest, just vast open wasteland. And lumber.)

This is why I want to move.

When BF told him we don't like it here because everyone out here is so career-driven, he laughed skeptically, then proceeded to talk about his job for three more hours. Three loooooong hours.

This is why I want to move.

I need to be able to talk to people about more than my job, because my job a) isn't that interesting to talk about, and b) sucks. And I need to know that I am more than just my stupid boring job. I need everyone else to know this, too.

Here is my bulletin to the the little buzzing worker bees of DC:

PEOPLE. THERE IS MORE TO LIFE THAN WHAT YOU DO FOR A LIVING, OR HOW MUCH MONEY YOU EARN.

So yay! I get to move!

P.S. I guess I should also mention that the BF successfully completed his master's degree, which is why we finally get to move.

Preaching to the choir (sorry)

Since the seventh Harry Potter book is due to come out in July, and since I have nothing else of consequence to write about, let us enter into a conversation regarding the so-called evilness that is Harry Potter.

Point 1: People, please. Do you really, and I mean honestly, have nothing better to do with your time than to protest the school and/or library board of your local municipality over their selection of these books? Wouldn't it be easier for all of us if you went ahead and took your medication and got some sort of useful hobby, like knitting?

Point 2: Do you want to suck all the fun out of childhood? I guess you don't remember daydreaming during social studies or long-division, wishing you could fly or magically disappear or eat really cool candy or turn someone into a toad. Honey, we have a word for these kinds of fantasies and daydreams. It's called FICTION. If you want to protest something, protest the non-fiction books about the occult, of which I'm sure your local library is filled (actually, I'm kidding here - don't protest them. We also have words for things like that: "democracy" and "open society" come to mind.)

Point 3: Here's what I don't get: no one ever protests the Wizard of Oz anymore. Is it because we've come to accept it as part of our whimsical childhood canon? Is it because EVERYONE and I mean everyone in the western hemisphere has seen the movie about a scillion times, and has come to regard the witches and wizards and other magical creatures in the book and movie exactly as they were intended to be regarded; i.e. as figments of a writer's imagination?

Point 4: I guess what I'm saying is: CHILLAX. Unless your children are developmentally disabled, and even if they are, come to think of it, they will get that this stuff is meant to be a fun little release from reality, and not meant to be practiced at midnight with the local witches' coven.

I think the real problem here is not that people are afraid their kids will somehow get sucked into the occult by reading these books, but that those very same people seem to believe the occult is REALLY weaving an evil, book-purchasing spell around our children as we sit idly by. I'm not saying the occult isn't real--or more to the point, that people don't believe the occult to be real; what I'm saying is that people do not have the power to cast spells on other people. Get a grip. MAGIC DOESN'T REALLY EXIST. And you call yourselves Christian?

Oh, and here's a Point 5 for you: You cannot argue that Harry Potter embodies sin and bad value systems and whatever else you want to say. He embodies standing up for oneself, practicing what one believes in, and fighting the herd-mentality of society that causes people to support things they know to be bad and wrong. (I'm sure there was a more eloquent way of saying that but I'm a little sleep-deprived right now.) These are values every good Christian should stand up and applaud!

I don't get people.

What a week

We live in a sick, sad world. And that's really about all the energy I have right now to comment on Monday's horrific events. Every day at work this week has been like attending an eight-hour funeral and I'm just drained.

What makes me particularly angry about this whole thing is that it showcases to the world the most violent aspect of our supposedly civilized society. And we ARE a violent society--this country was founded by guerrilla fighters who started a war with the British because they had the audacity to tax our TEA, for crying out loud. And I won't even go into a tirade over gun control laws because I think this incident speaks loud enough for everyone to hear. (And by the way, I don't think the usual argument--"criminals can get their hands on guns if they want them badly enough, whether or not they're legal"--applies in this case, since this was a middle-class kid from suburbia with a clean criminal background. I don't for a minute believe he would have known where to get an illegal handgun.)

Violence runs through our veins, and each school shooting and Waco and Oklahoma bombing and invasion of Iraq--which I'm sorry, these things DO NOT happen on a regular basis in most other western countries--highlights to the world what we so like to keep hidden under our SUV-driving, Starbucks-drinking facades.

OK, I guess I had a little more energy than I thought.

Anyway, now I'm rambling and I don't know what I'm trying to say, other than that I really, really want to go back to Canada.

And now I'm tired of talking about death and tragedy. During my weekly Thursday afternoon perusal of the Internets, I came across this really stupid thing on the Best of Craigslist, entitled "143 Reasons I Will be the Best Girlfriend You've Ever Had". So to lighten the mood, I've made up my own, opposing list. Enjoy.

Reasons why I will NOT be the best girlfriend you ever had (and I don’t give a shit if I am or not)

1. I don’t give a shit if I am or not. Being in love with someone is not a competition.
2. I don’t like the color purple. Ok, that’s a lie, but the point is, wtf does color preference have to do with it?
3. I go to the gym, but I still have some cellulite and I don’t look like a supermodel. Sorry.
4. I like to eat. A lot.
5. I don’t keep up my nails.
6. I rarely get my toes done.
7. I drive an automatic, when I drive, and I will never learn how to drive a manual.
8. I don’t want to watch you work on your car. It will not get me hot. What I WOULD like to see is you volunteering to take the car into the shop to get worked on without me having to constantly nag.
   
9. I don’t care what kind of car you drive.
10. I drive a 1996 Ford Contour, baby! Does that get your motor running?
11. I’m short but not little, and it makes me mad that I always have to look up to you. (And why would you find it a turn-on for a woman to always have to crane her neck to see you?)
    
12. I wear granny panties.
13. My hair isn’t long.
14. I can’t guarantee you I won’t steal food off your plate. I’m fat, remember?
15. I won’t always let you be the “man” in the relationship. Whatever that means. I will assert my opinions in ways that I see fit, and I might be aggressive about it if I feel I need to be.
16. I don’t always smell good, particularly early in the morning or after I work out. There’s a little thing humans do, called sweating. I sweat.
    
17. I don’t even know what “ghost ride” means.
18. I’m 30 with the mind of a 30-year-old and the heart of a 30-year-old. If I act like I’m 10, please slap me.
19. I might “burden you” with my PMS problems. I can’t help it – it’s PMS. And if you get on my case about it, I might start yelling or crying hysterically. Or I might just shove a piece of cake in my mouth and ignore you.
20. I don’t have any of my childhood belongings with me because I’m an adult.
21. You + Me + Dancing + Outdoors + Rain = Afternoon spent being miserable because I hate being cold and wet, and you WILL hear about it.
22. If I “accidentally” leave my underwear in your bed, you have my permission to be grossed out.

There are no words.