Fuzzy Alarm Clock Logic

Anyone else notice that morning logic, particularly the logic your brain spits out in the first 5 minutes after waking up is total crap? And yet, it seems perfectly good at the time.

I am the type of person who is awoken by alarm clocks just enough to find sneaky ways to get around them.  Its a fine line.  If an alarm clock is loud and buzzing and generally incredibly obnoxious I will turn that thing off so fast my sleep cycle is hardly interrupted at all.

On the other hand, if the alarm clock is sort of gentle, doesn't jar me too badly, then I will blissfully hit the snooze button, and then again...again...again.. you get the point.  An alarm clock without a snooze button is scary.  After all, you have total and utter failure, or you get up.  There is no in between.  So I guess you would need to work out the percentage of times when failure occurred, consider the consequences of failure, and determine whether you have an acceptable model.  I think for most people the acceptable percentage of total failure is pretty low.

Obviously when I say total failure, I don't mean the alarm clock, I'm talking failure to get out of bed and get to required duties approximately at accepted time.  I think the fraction of alarm clock failures due to actual alarm clock failure is very low.   There is also human error in things like plugging in, charging, setting, etc. but those do not relate to the morning, those relate to whether your brain is functional at night.  Mine generally does quite well at night, and if yours doesn't, and also doesn't in the morning, well, I think you have bigger problems than your alarm clock.

There are 4 sets of circumstances which have actually worked to get me out of bed in the morning in the past, say, 10 years.

I can no longer use a pencil

Yes, strange but true.

I made that proud comment back aways about how I have escaped my heaps of paper by putting absolutely  everything on an electronic storage device.  (Like I know its horrible, if someone got my phone and actually figured out how stupid I am they could do some serious damage)

But there are unintended consequences.

The first sign I laughed about.  You see, banking is amongst the things that had moved 100% online.  Starting in Iceland (and I was happy) So, when I moved to Boston, I had to regress a bit.

I gave up being a stubborn mule and got a bank account with checks, and bought the stupid checks (and of course, now I have like a hundred when I will use 1 or 2 a month and therefore will have moved and be scratching out the address on them before I actually use them all.  They have puppies and kittens on them though, so all good.) First check I write, I completely mess it up.  I mean, its been 5 years! I'm supposed to remember how to fill out a stupid check (yes, as an adult one should be able to write a check, but of course me=adult is still under some question).

My roommate assured me it was salvagable by crossing out and initialing, and apparently it was. At the time I only had one check so I couldn't just rip it up. That little random descriptive bit is to assure you that I'm not stupid enough that I wouldn't just move on to the next check if there was one available.

Moving on, I also do not write at work.  I have several pads of paper on my desk.  I have a couple of pens, rollerball pens, I never use ballpoint pens.  However, the paper mostly has doodles, and unintelligible scrawls, many with lines through them.  These occasionally represent my thought processes.  Aside from those pads there is no paper in my office.  (There is a nice whiteboard, but the only thing on it is a fake greek mathematical equation my boss wrote on it) I gently mock my colleague for her paper accumulation skills, but clearly we are meant to balance one another out.  She is also a frequent and adept user of pencils.

Glee Episode 2

Okay, I should preface this by saying that, in general, like 95% of the time, I don't like Britney Spears.

And I don't mean, since she went all crazy, after that I had compassion for her. I mean pre-Justin break-up, pre-anything that people have used to diss the girl.  Just not my style of music.  the Hit me Baby video was kinda fun.  Then there was the cycle to always reinvent herself by doing something more insane than the last time she got on stage. (*the big exception being that I absolutely love the song Everytime and am embarrassed that there is a Britney song that I love as much as I love that song.  However, I knew they weren't gonna put that in the show.)

So anyway, my expectations were not high, but I thought Glee could pull it off, but, um, no.  Not for me.  There were cute moments, as always.

Painful as it was, Will actually had a story arc.  It would be very strange in the world of how tv shows are made if Will and Emma didn't get a second shot, so I can't help thinking as much as I'd like to punch John Stamos, it isn't worth it cause he won't be there in the end.  Also, Will deserves to suffer after he inexplicably made out with Idina Menzel's character a.k.a. Rachel's mom last season.  Wonder if we'll ever get to see her and little Beth again. Probably awkward.  This being Glee and not so much like every other tv show written, its possible they will never give Will and Emma another chance.  Or of course they could hold out the tension so long that when they finally are a couple everyone yawns.  Classic tv mistake I hope they don't make.

Umm, anyway, storyline, not so good.  having storyline in the first place good
And Terri in a small dose is a good thing

By the way, I didn't think it was inappropriate for him to sing with the kids! It livens things up.  I know its school not camp, but god knows when I was a counselor there was nothing the kids loved more than the staff talent show.  Admittedly, it was a performing arts camp, and we tended to be, well, performers.

Rachel finally, at least temporarily, realizing that she doesn't need to put a choke collar on her boyfriend and singing him a cute song was good (Not Britney).  There are honestly only a few moments in any given episode where Rachel and Finn make any sense at all, and this one had a lot of them.

Eeeeek!

Okay, I know an unintelligible shriek is not a good title, but here's what happened.
I read the post I put up yesterday, and discovered, that it was totally not funny.  Like there were seeds in there of what might be amusing, but on the whole, no.

So I added a note and decided to consider deleting, no biggie right?

Wrong.

Because you see, then the thought started to bother me, if I thought that was going to be funny but on hindsight it isn't funny at all then what about every other post?

And I started reading my own blog.  And nothing was funny.  Nothing.  No big deal if I was writing a blog on Civil War history or something, but I know perfectly well that there is no content whatsoever here.  The only thing I thought I had going for me was that what I wrote was kind of funny.

Which made me wonder, why is anyone reading this? If you've never been terribly popular like me there is a strange tendency for 'They're all laughing at you.' to pop into your head.  This would obviously be utterly pointless since I wouldn't know they were laughing.  So, next option.  There aren't actually people reading it.  There is just an ever increasing number of people who randomly hit upon this page each day in their internet forays, but all of them think its stupid and never come back.  Statistically improbable.  (And don't ask me just what do you mean by statistically when you use it in that context cause that's the sort of annoying thing I would pull)

And eventually, I go back to Take 2, my reattempt to blog where I said the following:

The thing is, if I start thinking someone might read this, particularly someone I actually know, I might start censoring myself. And that would suck for me, and make for boring posts.

Clearly I had a touch of omniscience.
So deep breaths and suck it up.  Not everything that comes out of my brain is funny.  A lot of it is just total crap

My earliest forays into writing

NOTE: Upon re-reading I am considering deleting this post due to lack of humor.  I don't know what happened.  In my head, a little girl writing stories about death, murder and mayhem seemed loaded with amusement.  Perhaps it is lack of pictures.  A drawing of little me with my perpetual blonde pigtails scrawling bad drawings of gruesome deaths with black crayons would have made it funny.  I don't know.  But I fear this post has failed, and as such may soon disappear.

NOTE 2: I don't give a damn

I don't know why these popped into my head today, but I randomly remembered my earliest writing style.

Okay, to be honest, the first I don't remember, it has been shared with me by my father.  Apparently, when first requested to write something 'creative' (if the contents of a 4 year olds brain can actually be called creative) my thoughts were short and to the point.

I wrote: A girl walked into the forest.  She died.

I am curious what my kindergarten teacher thought of this as a first effort.  Given that it is accepted that you have to be about 7 to understand the true concept of death, I clearly didn't know what I was writing.  Its not like I was exposed to TV that could have influenced my thoughts, because I was absolutely forbidden at that time from watching anything other than Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers if I was sick, and the national news (no local news) and Redskins and Celtics games (my father had some sense of the idea that hypocrisy would have been bad so we were allowed to watch anything he watched).  On a side note this led to an early sense of being an outsider when the other kids discussed The Cosby Show and I was like, 'Who?'

I must have been reading something, but I didn't think my parent's were letting me read anything very gruesome.  Then again, there's no way they could police with the quantity of reading I was doing, and after all you assume you can trust the school library.

Now, at least initially this seemed to be a one off thing.  My writing soon grew prolific.  We had that light green paper, which you turned sideways, and thereby had these gigantic lines to write on to encourage you to write in straight lines rather than scrawling illegibly all over the paper.  I would fill 10, 20 of these pages.  No big deal, right? Well, for parent's day, everyone's stories were stapled to the wall.  Each sheet was stapled to the next and hung on the wall.  Mine, ummmm, was fine for the first say 7 pages, but then the rest lay in a disordered heap on the floor.  There really wasn't much to do.  You could straighten up the heap, that's about it.

Fiscal Irresponsibility

In general I consider myself to be pretty good about monetary issues.  I used to always add 'for my age' when I would randomly decide to say that in my head to comfort myself.  However, that is no longer possible.  There is no 'for my age.'  At my age you should have your shit together. But still, there's some evidence that I handle things fairly well.

I pay all my bills on time (Thank god for the internet,  how on earth did people do this when it required stamps, checks and envelopes, as well as a pen?  I mean, that's 4 items you have to gather in order to take care of a bill.  In addition, of course, to the bill itself.)  There have been times I have slipped into credit card debt.  Living in New York City immediately after graduating college is just not supportable unless you sold out and went to work for a bank or a consulting company. (Sell out being the term that all people who don't make as much money as they'd like to use for anyone who is making as much money as they'd like to.)

Now I find myself again, with some, err, let's just say a balance on my credit card.  Why? Moved, two months no salary, surviving on post-doc salary which makes one wonder what you went through 12 years of higher education for.

However, I will throw in here now, even though it doesn't belong, that I do have an IRA! Take that! (Yeah, I know there's jack shit in it.  Oh to anyone who believed I would actually stick to that self-imposed language restraint.  Ha!)

I have noticed though that in some ways I have money totally backwards.  For example, had credit card balance, wanted new computer.  Tacked 2000 onto credit card bill.  Now, want 200 phone.  Waiting to pay off credit card bill first.  What!? Why am I doing this? What caused this seed to take root in my mind, caused me to think that this made any sense.  And I don't mean that 5 years ago when I was an irresponsible child I decided that I just couldn't wait for 2000 computer.  I mean last month I couldn't wait for the 2000 computer.  But apparently I can wait like a good little fiscally responsible girl on a moral high horse until I've actually paid for the 2000 computer before buying the 200 phone.  Order of magnitude difference here.  Drop in bucket. I should buy the damn phone and enjoy it now! I swear that would be the actually sensible thing to do.  But I don't.  Instead I am confident that the bill will be gone in 5 weeks and I will have plenty of money for phone and to start saving for travel fund.

Apologies if anyone wants to see $ scattered all through out there.  I can't be bothered.

Saving for travel fund? Since when do I do this? My approach is to decide I want to go somewhere, and it is high time I went somewhere, because I am sick to death of being wherever I happen to be, and pick a place and go.  Actual funding sources do not usually come into play in this decision.  It probably is a good idea though.  Once I decide I must go somewhere, its not like I'll have the time to save for it.  I'll be too busy figuring out what to take with me.  Its hard to figure out what to expect of the weather halfway around the world.

Reddit

I just discovered crack, I mean Reddit.  I'm generally super slow and way behind the times on computer related things (hence stubborn refusal to learn things which would make this page look more unique.)  So I just came across Reddit today.

And, ummm, hours later...

I can't think of an appropriate exclamation to express my emotion.

I tell it what I'm interested in, and it spits out tons and tons of things about what I'm interested in.  And then, some of those have awesome comments.  But I can't go past like 50 comments before I'm like, 'whatever, on to next topic'  The comments either get REALLY repetitive.  Or, they devolve into a two person invective.  I can see some voyeur getting kicks out of seeing two people go at it with long emotional but still intellectual diatribes.  Not me.

Of course, there are the posts that two comments in are proved to be some sort of hoax.  So everyone thinks this piece is hilarious, which it is.  Person hunts it down and finds it word for word posted in a forum in 2008, writing that that is the oldest one he can find.  This clearly implies that if you copy out the whole thing and post it in Google you will come up with multiple hits and the earliest appeared to be from 2008.  To me this indicates remarkable determination to get things right, damn it!

There's a special girl's area, which is sweet, cause it says basically, you're not allowed to be mean in there or you'll be banned.  Apparently you can be mean in any unisex forums, and there doesn't seem to be a guys only one.  That would probably be sexist.  That said, I love the girl's section! And will probably be checking up on what's posted in there.

I also get my fix of science people.  Obviously I am one.  The thing is, there are science people, and then there are the science people who like to harp forever about how wonderful and perfect science is and how everyone who doesn't agree doesn't get it, and is stupid.  You don't actually want to get involved in a conversation which could in any way be turned towards science with the latter.  Which pretty much means don't talk to them, stay away.

Morning

What on earth possessed me to think, after putting all my towels in the dryer last night,
"Its okay, I'll just remember to pick one up on the way to the shower in the morning"

On what planet did I think this was going to happen? I mean, seriously, you stumble out of bed at 6:30 and shuffle over to the bathroom in your robe, and you're going to remember to detour to the laundry room to pick up a towel?

No, no, instead, you're going to take your shower in blissful peace, shut off the water, open the door, and stand there freezing as it dawns on you that all your freaking towels are in the dryer.

To extend the crazy morning, I have this stupid class to go to, which I repeatedly nodded off in, but just barely avoided actually putting my head down on the table, which I figured was just a tad too obvious.  After that I have to book it to make a shuttle bus.

I'm sitting on the bus, and I swear, I think this guy walking towards me is walking a camel.  We're in front of a hospital.  I don't live in Egypt or somewhere else where camels might be a regular part of the landscape.  But seriously, I thought it was a camel.

Now, he actually wasn't walking anything, not even a large dog.  I mean, if you saw a Great Dane in the corner of your eye, you could be forgiven for thinking it was a camel.  I mean, you'd still be kinda strange, but people would kinda look at you funny and go  'ooooh' instead of just laughing at you and saying 'wtf is wrong with you?'  (Although, if anyone you know actually says 'wtf' they should be defriended.  It's just not appropriate as a word to come out of your mouth rather than your keyboard.)

So, guy.  It was a reflection.  Some weird reflection that ended up looking like a camel.  There was literally nothing there.  I have no idea how something on the sidewalk in between 2 hospital buildings came out looking like a camel.  But I reprimanded my brain and let it go.

Glee Episode 1

Okay, so having gushed over Glee, I obviously can't let the first episode go by without comment.  I'm sure 200 people at least have gone through the episode in detail somewhere on the web.  I, however, did not sit there watching with a notebook.  I watch for fun, its not a job.  Therefore, I couldn't possibly tell you what happened in most of the show.  I can tell you the hilarious and not hilarious, as determined by me.  Also, quotes may not be perfect.  I watched it once two days ago.  If I remember an approximation of a quote it means it was either very good or very bad

Hilarious.  
The opening bit.  I was a little slow on the uptake and so I was a little like, huh, what are they doing? when the dweeb started interviewing them and I realized he was actually bringing up things said on the fan forums.  The plea from fans not to have Will do any more rapping is the one I most whole-heartedly agree with.  And Will's reaction, People don't like to see me rap?  Awesome.
Now, I didn't hear the whole Kurt one, but there was definitely reference to autotune, which seems like a pretty personal jab at Chris himself so I'm surprised they'd go there.  That said, I love and adore with hearts coming off the end Chris Colfer and would be irrationally protective of him if someone said he gave another person a splinter.
Kurt 'I don't suppose you could just cut out that last bit.'
Finn 'That was out loud, wasn't it?'

     On a side note: I wonder what those slushies are made of because the cast doesn't flinch when one is coming at them.  Its good because then we don't know its happening until its already happened, not realistic, but who cares about that, clearly not what the show is about so moving on. (Kurt got slushied by the way, if for some bizarre reason you didn't watch the show.)

Empire State of Mind. Yay! great number.  Showed off Quinn, Santana, and Brittany's dancing skills (I know the dancing skills belong to the actresses, but I don't remember Santana's name, so for the sake of equality I'll use the characters' names.  Naya or something?) Thank god they left Rachel out of the dancing.  'Bad Romance' made it clear that Lea Michele's dancing abilities ain't with her costars.  Def better to have her stick to singing where she is obviously awesome.  Loved Kurt's hair all ruffled and sticking up, so used to seeing it shelacked down.  In general the cast seemed to be having so much fun with this one, so awesome

Finn's spazzy dancing at Cheerios' tryouts

'The Bieber cut has got to go.'  I don't even know who got to say that, but it is SOOOO true and totally hilarious to throw that in there.  (Tom Brady, you listening? If above 13 this haircut is wrong)  Hopefully the blonde newbie will be given a new haircut soon.

Mike has a personality, and he's dating Tina! And they fell in love at Asian camp! Awesome

Not so hilarious
the beast, however its spelled.  She just messes up the dynamic between Will and Sue.  We all knew Will would cave and couldn't be mean for an entire episode.  The character could be kind of interesting I guess, so maybe I should reserve judgement.  Just, nothing about her was particularly funny or touching.

Honestly, the balls in the mouth line.  I realize that this should be funny.  However, its not up to glee standards.  Here's why.  Kurt (auditioning for the role of kicker), Brittany (cat's reading my diary) and Puck (Call the Vatican...) especially all have great one-liners.  There isn't really a buildup, their lines just come out of nowhere and crack you up.  Obviously there's a setup often, but you don't notice it.  This line was obvious in its set-up.  I mean, where else are you gonna go with a character saying 'You're mouth is huge, how many tennis balls can you fit in there?' Actually, that line left alone would be a good glee line.  It would just make you go, huh? did they go there? but they had to go the obvious route and spell out the humor.  Not necessary! Glee fans are smart, we can figure it out ourselves!

I am hating spoilers at this moment too.  If I hadn't heard from all over the place that newbie (that's what I'm calling him until I can actually remember his name) is going to be a love interest for Kurt, would I have noticed the absence of Kurt when the rest of the boys listened to him sing?  Probably not.  I at least would not have spent that musical number thinking, "Hmmm, the writers must have in mind a specific way for Kurt and newbie to meet, so it makes an impact, that wouldn't happen if Kurt was here watching this song. So, does that mean the crush will be immediate?...." Its also possible that the song just wasn't that interesting and didn't hold my interest, but maybe it was good? I won't know until I watch it again.


So not hilarious
This Charice girl.  So, I have no idea who she is.  Given that she seems to go by one name I assume that I am unusual in having no idea who she is.  If I cared I'd google her.  Generally Glee's guest stars have been great (Neil Patrick Harris at his best, but I kinda od'ed on Kristen Chenoweth).  This one was a disaster and I sincerely hope she never shows up again.  She had, like, anti-charisma.  I mean, the glee kids are basically annoying but manage to come off endearing in spite of it.  Since everyone is off in the world of over the top characters and a certain level of obnoxious its all funny.  That Charice girl made McKinley High seem the like the wacko place it is, but not in a good way.  She was a normal person entering wacky land.  I guess you could say she wasn't given enough character to work with, but please, an actor builds that.  In her interactions with Rachel, it was like Lea Michele decided to double her craziness to make up for the zapping of it that Charice was doing, and therefore Rachel seemed like a total maniac.  Classic glee stuff like the exchange student joke and the Asian community finding out just were not funny.  On top of that, when she actually sang her song, it, um, was, nothing special

Special Added Note: In hindsight that looks kinda harsh.  I'm sure she is very good at what she actually does, which I assume is singing.  I just think she is not a good fit as a Glee guest star

In addition to the spoiler and guest star thing, I wish I didn't know about Britney, and I hope that's not a trainwreck.  And I'm also not keen on knowing there's a Rocky Horror Picture show episode, but psyched to hear its directed by Adam Shankman who years of watching sytycd has made me want to hug.
I guess I was so actively spoiler-free last season that I'm a little overwhelmed now that my ears are open. Why can't we just have the show without knowing everything about it ahead of time?

Yay!

This is me:

because Glee starts tonight! I can't wait! Okay, well, obviously I can wait, but I'm still super excited.  

However, this is also me:

                          

because somehow I seem to have acquired a cold overnight.  My head is stuffy and my throat hurts.  But my seminar went pretty well. Ughh

Confessions

These are my confessions
Just when I thought I said all I can say
My chick on the side said she got one on the way
These are my confessions.




okay, no, sooooo, so, no. But I just had to go there, cause that damn song played so many freakin times that the word calls the tune to my head despite, well, something like hatred.

So, here's the deal.
I know I said I wrote this for me and me alone. That I just write the random stuff that comes into my head. But here's the thing. I noticed that a few people appear to read some of these things.

And you know what? I've realized that that is super cool. So I am totally reversing myself.
And I feel like a hypocrite.
It took what, like a couple of weeks for me to go from, no one is ever going to read this to yay! someone is reading this!
If anyone does read, feel free to comment, share your own stories or thoughts.

Or, you can remain silent.
Or, you can decide, that girl changed her tune pretty damn fast, she's full of crap, and go away and never read anything I write again.

Its all good.

My up and down relationship with my hair

So, I have somewhat difficult hair.  I  envy those women with simple natural hair that grows past their shoulders and doesn't do any weird wonky stuff along the way.

Mine is super fine, and super frizzy.  This means that at times it is capable of pretty waves, or even curls with a little product help.  There have been a few glorious results when using a diffusor.  (The rest of the times it looked god awful, and having no recourse at that point I gave up on the gamble.)

However, most of the time there are a few waves buried underneath, a few stick straight areas, and lots of damage.  So the ends are all different lengths.  Its also blonde by the way.  Its naturally fairly blonde, but looks way better at that super blonde level.  Unfortunately, when I get my hair done at salon it mostly ends up being, a. not that blonde, and b. totally fried.  Sucks double.

So, my irrational deal is that I always, always want long blonde hair.  I don't understand why this should not be possible.  I just cannot get it into my head that it will not happen.  Nope, never.  The longest it will ever look decent is in the past.

So, I always think, I'll let it grow a little longer and then trim it.  Just a little longer, and then when I trim it it will look good.  Just a little longer and it will be past my shoulders when I trim it.  (Above my shoulders and I get an inevitable and yet totally unpredictable J, where it looks like 3 inches of my hair has decided to swoosh out away from my face.  I realize that some people aim for a similar style, but a. it looks stupid on me, and b. I haven't the slightest idea how to get that under control.)

So, I wait.... and I wait.... and my hair attempts to grow.  But mostly it gives up and falls out.  Enhancing the all different lengths at the end appearance.  I start putting it in a ponytail every single day, because then I don't really notice what's become of it.  If I never actually have to make it look good, I don't really know how god awful it actually is.

And then, inevitably something sets me off.  Something makes me realize.  I don't know if its a brief moment of irrational anger at the being that makes my hair so effing messed up, or if its a moment of clarity when I come to peace, ever so briefly, with the fact that I will never have long, flowing, blonde hair.

This moment occurs when I have finally gone to the salon to get that trim.  They kind of eye my hair with horror, but try to conceal what a hot mess they think it is and ask me what I'd like to do.  I start with the plan.  Just trim it a little.  I beg them to keep as much as possible.  Explain how much I'd like to have long hair.

And as I'm sitting in the chair, looking at myself in the mirror.  That switch happens.  And I say 'You know what, cut it all off.' And a few minutes later my hair is jaw-length.  The stylist will ask 'are you sure?' first.  Because he/she doesn't want to have me screaming irrationally that I want my hair back afterward, but really they are happy.  Hair stylists hate damaged hair.  They just want to cut it all away.  The problem is, then I would never have more than a few inches of hair.  And I think I do prefer sporting hair.

For a couple of weeks I love the fact that I can blow-dry my hair and it looks good in 5 minutes.  I'm ready to go in no time.  Lack of pony-tails not a problem.  And then, that wish sneaks back up on me.  Damn it.  I want long hair!

And so the cycle begins again.  Knowing this cycle well, having been through it many times, I would guess that my long hair will be jaw-length in the not too distant future.

How the car Actually got damaged

This story came up at work the other day, and it reminded me of several amusing factors to the story and I decided to type it out.

First of all, I hope my parents don't read this.  Its possible that they have either totally forgotten this incident occurred, or at least the details.  Also, this story happened when I was a teenager.  I think parents of teenagers are a little smarter than teenagers give them credit for so its possible they got the truth and chose to not break us down on our lies. (This would be rather unlike my parents though.  My father once berated me for lying that I had eaten something for breakfast when actually I hadn't.)

But I've gotten way ahead of myself.  First I must explain, the we is me and my older brother.  We have had a love-hate relationship all our lives, luckily solidly in the love side for the past 5 years.  In high school though... we tipped to the hate, or at least the stay in separate corners.  He punched me in the face, I kinda roundhouse whacked him on the temple.  Really, separate corners was a good idea.

However, nothing galvanized the sibling relationship like parental disapproval.

My brother had the car and announced he was going to go to the mall.  Now, I am/was a nerd, but still knew how to be a teenage girl and pretty much said 'ooh! I wanna come, please can I come? will you let me come? I promise I'll be good'

To which my mom pretty much replied something along the lines of 'no, no way, absolutely not, HELL no.'

Why? Such a violently negative reaction from my mom? Well, my brother does not drive in the same way you do.  My mother is not American and so her idioms/metaphors can get a bit confused, but early in my brother's driving career she announced that she didn't want to put all her eggs in one basket.  In this case, her eggs were her children, and the basket was the car.  And when my brother was driving the basket there was a far too high a probability of the basket crashing, breaking the eggs in the process.  In other words, if my brother was going to get himself killed at least he wouldn't take me with him.  To this day it is completely understood within the family that my mother should never, ever be in a car while my brother is driving.  I should mention here too that my brother has had 15 years driving experience, and is alive.

So, my brother's response to my mother's desperate pleading/ordering me not to go, was to suddenly decide, sure, he'd take his little sister to the mall with him.

Said trip was uneventful, but somewhat of a bonding moment, and upon return, I believe we even had a normal conversation with my mother in which all parties were calm, and then parents went off to bed and brother and I were left talking and watching TV.
Then, my brother suggested we go to a party.  Now, we never actually had a curfew, but a curfew would have meant nothing to my brother, and I was never out past any time one would choose as a curfew (yes, sad little nerd. Actually my brother is as big a nerd as I am, maybe worse)  So, while not technically breaking any rules, it was nonetheless certain that parents would not approve of departure from the house after midnight to go to a high school party.  I was either 14 or 15 at the time too, so that would have been a problem.

Then, there was the fact that it was raining, not hard, but enough to ensure wet pavement.  The party was near the park, and he just had to go over a certain bridge and show me what happened.  So off we went.  This is the part that my mom always feared.  My brother was driving, well, a fair amount over the speed limit, through a dark park in the middle of the night.  There was this particular bridge which he accelerated into and flew off the other side of.  (Which is actually very fun to do. And sadly I have not repeated.) Then he told me he was going to go into controlled skids.  Which he did, several long ones, I was dutifully impressed.  And then he came out of the skid.  And in a split second he had lost control.  We were off the road, across the grass, plowing into the underbrush of the park until we lodged ourselves well onto a fallen tree trunk.  I believe the first words out of my brother's mouth were 'Thank god the airbags didn't go off.'  Then we were faced with, well past midnight, no streetlights, off in the forest, stuck on a tree.  Which kinda sucks by the way.

After several good samaritans had stopped to help we got to the crux of getting ourselves dislodged.  This involved several people endeavoring to lift and push the front end of the car off the tree while I did something in the car.  What did I do? I have no idea.  I had never driven a car.  Clearly I had the basic concept under control, but was a little stressed by the situation and unclear as to my duty.  My assumption is that it was to put the car in reverse and then push on the gas on the count of three while they pushed.  I think.

Why, if I was this totally clueless was I nominated for this job? (which seemed absurdly important to me at the time)  I believe it had to do with the fact that I was a 100 pound weakling who would have made no contribution whatsoever to the pushing effort going on.  I'm not sure I got the car pedal thing right either.  You'd have to ask my brother.  Something worked however, and we were free! The evil tree defeated.

After much heartfelt gratitude to the kind passersby who stopped to pull our car off a tree, we were left with a mildly damaged car.  There was a broken headlight and fog lamp.  The frame on the front end was slightly bent.

Aside from this, admittedly difficult to see damage, the most striking evidence that something had gone wrong was that the car was now completely covered with wet leaves and branches of trees.  We tried to remove some of them, but the wet made it very difficult to get all of them off.  So we drove home.  Our stress level rose from the 4-5 in anticipation of tomorrow's explanations to parents, to about 9 when we drove past a police car.  We were terrified he would notice the blown headlight and stop us to ask about it.  We didn't really know what would happen, but it seemed likely not to be good.

We were, of course, busy getting our story straight.  The answer became clear.  It was flimsy, but it would have to do.  The agreement was that we would say that the 'accident' had occurred earlier in the night on the way back from the mall, but we didn't want to say anything so we avoided the subject.

So the next morning, when we got up for our Youth Orchestra rehearsal (yes, nerds all the way), my brother took on the task of explaining this to my father.  I was called upon for corroboration and stuck to the story admirably.  I was closely questioned about my brother's driving behavior of course.  I explained that he might have been going a little fast, but really not very fast at all (lie) and that we were driving through the park (no mention of flying across bridges or skidding down the road), and firmly stated my belief that it was merely the combination of wet road, curvy road, and a little too much speed that led to the unfortunate incident.  Probably had my brother had a similar event occur without me there to solidly corroborate and give my supportive version of events things would not have gone so well, but my word was accepted.

So, when we came home the previous night we were calm and normal kids, and had you looked out the window there would have been a nice little Neon sitting there.  The next morning we were two jumpy stressed out kids and there was a car outside that looked like a tree had shed on top of it.  We came through it all right though.

Damn it, this time I'm going to be random

So the whole point of this thing was an outlet for my pretty random thoughts, but for some inane reason I've been putting them in order instead.

Well, except Chris Colfer is a panda says Gail Collins, that one, in retrospect was a little bizarre.

So, yeah, the point is, things often pop into my head. They're generally pointless things, but I can write them down or I can have a conversation with myself in my head.  The former is generally well accepted and titled journaling or blogging.  The latter tends to alarm those around you, particularly if thoughts turn out to be amusing and you laugh or otherwise have facial expressions which fit very well with the conversation in your head, but not with the actual real world around you.  Then it appears to be a symptom of mental illness.  Which is not to say that I'm not mentally ill, or that there is anything wrong with being mentally ill.  It sucks for people with psychiatric disorders, but the rest of the people ought to step off cause it doesn't affect them.

Oh, have I mentioned that I do psychiatry research? I don't think so.

I'm actually at work now, which means writing this is definitely not what I ought to be doing.  I'm giving a seminar next week and I should be preparing for that.  But, um, I'm seriously awesome at procrastination.  Like, I'm not gonna say I take the title, because I do know one person who is better than me.  But that's it.  One, and he's related, so we got some serious procrastination genetics happening.

Have I mentioned that I study genetics?

Maybe I did.  And a certain level of laziness prevents me from going back and reading previous posts to determine if I did or not.

I had to get up at a ridiculously early hour to get to a class.  I, am WAY beyond the age of going to class. I got my degrees,  I thought that was the end of it.  (Seriously, too much school, too many degrees).  I hate said class.  To the point where afterwards I have to decompress by whining to colleagues who don't have to take the class right now, about how annoying it is, so they, basically, end up experiencing on some level the pain I experience by having to go to it.  Technically I'm auditing it, but since I'm required to show up, and required to do homework every week, it doesn't seem like audit to me.  Yes, homework.  I am over 30 and I have to do homework every week.  I wish I could draw you a pathetic little picture of me, but I suck at drawing and I don't think I'd do very well at those MS Paint cartoons either (particularly since I have a Mac and therefore no MS Paint).

Oh, must check e-mail.  Since its my work e-mail its possible that it is important, or at least of interest. These days my gmail account mostly receives things which could be sent to Spam box except for some slight tug that tells me not to, because sometime, in the future, there's a chance (or a certainty) that I will receive an e-mail from that entity that I actually need to read.  Example being ATT sending hey! get another line! offer e-mail, which I would love to hit spam on, except, then I might not get the e-mails that tell me that my statement is ready and its time to pay the phone bill.  That would not make me happy.

Ah, just asking what degree I have, to which I sadly, though sometimes proudly, answer both.  Despite the fact that I have both and MD and a PhD, I still have yet to decide if that was a good thing and I'm all happy and smiley about it, or if it was a ridiculously stupid way to spend years of my life and really I should have done one or neither.  Problem with the one thing is I have no idea which one.

Now brain is blank due to the extreme neuronal activity required to keep the seminar out of my head.  They are spent.  They can only do so much, and avoidance is it.

And my PhD field was neuroscience.

As much as I can no longer type because I am now figuratively curled up in a little ball of guilt, this post has been quite revealing to those mythical people who might read it.  Several of those pesky facts that you wish didn't make up your life but somehow seem to do so anyway.

U2

This is going to be one hot mess.

I'm just gonna lay that out there. I'm tired.

But, I have also experienced a resurgence in my adoration of U2 of late, and I keep finding myself wanting to talk about it.  Hence, blog.  Not funny blog however, well funny in the sense that I can be laughed at for my gushing over 20 year old music.

It is now my opinion, that people, at least those who like music, have a point in their lives when they connect with some music.  (At least if they're lucky, it would really suck to be musically inclined and pass through the critical period hearing nothing but crap.)  I don't know if that time is always around junior high, but it probably is.  That's when you first reach out to the world to see what parts of it are like you, instead of just either doing what you're told or saying 'NO' for the fun of it.
Once you hit junior high school the 'NO' usually has a reason.

When I hit the age of 12, my brother introduced me to Achtung Baby.  Now, U2 did not turn out to be his music (he went through a couple stages and finally landed on techno when he was actually old enough to go to raves) but boy was it mine.

I was only 7 when Joshua Tree came out.  At that time I was cruelly deprived and was basically only allowed to listen to classical music, but had begun to sneak in a few others.  Car trips were tough because there aren't really classical stations outside cities, so my parents would go for country.  Occasionally though, when running through the dial, a song would come up that we would beg and plead my parents to leave on.  The big three from Joshua Tree always got that treatment.  The names are so bloody long that I shorten to 'Streets' and 'Looking For.'  'With or Without You' has no good short version though.

That's a long-winded way to say that I had a lack of access issue and was too young to get it when Joshua Tree came out.  Even though I am well aware that it is at least the best album in the last 30 years if not longer.

So, I fell in love with Achtung Baby.  And as is my approach to anything, if I find something I like, I immediately go out and find everything I can by the same person/people.  I bought EVERYTHING I could find.  In no time flat I had every studio album they'd done, a couple live ones and EPs.  Of course I have everything since as well.

So, I am a huge fan of U2.
I own cds, downloads, DVDs, books.
I do not, however, classify myself as an obsessive fan.  I've only seen them live twice.  I do not faint or cry.  Well, I almost fainted the last time but that's because my temp was 102 and the stairs were steep and I kept feeling like if I stood up I would keel over on to the people in front of me.  Also difficult to sing along when you have a raging sinus infection.

However, either obsessive or cunning was how I got there in the first place.  I bought the tickets.  Then I decided to move to Iceland.  My advisors were trying to determine an appropriate trial run for the Iceland thing.  I had it.  I would pack up all my stuff, put it in storage, move to Iceland, come back just in time for the concert and then talk to advisors (sell, move belongings, etc.) It worked out very well except for the whole raging sinus infection thing which happened due to the trans-atlantic plane flight.

I may be a bit delusional.  Perhaps my behavior qualifies as obsessive.  However, the definition of an obsessive fan has certainly changed over the years.  I've 'liked' them on Facebook obviously, so I get little updates.  I don't do Twitter though, (don't know if they do either, but sometimes it seems like everyone does) so no attempting to follow every move of their lives.

However, part of me, will always be in love with Bono from Joshua Tree to Rattle and Hum.  Even when Achtung Baby was out I watched the old videos and it was the earlier Bono who I adored in the adolescent crush way.

Now I'm old and I'm freakin intellectual about pretty much everything under the sun.  So I got to thinking.
 (Warning: massive tangent)

 F. Scott Fitzgerald is my favorite author.  I love all of his books, but I love The Beautiful and the Damned the most.  In consideration of why, I have realized that This Side of Paradise is a little too naive.  Gatsby is completely polished.  The Beautiful and the Damned still had the raw energy of these two people and their crazy lives, but it had enough polish on it because he was an established writer and I'm sure had gained much more real life confidence (as opposed to the simple arrogance that makes people believe they can do great things with no supportive evidence).

So, back on topic. First up, Bono and his image, let's face it, has a lot to do with how U2 is perceived. The other three just shut up and stay in the background except for that brief moment when Adam Clayton was going to marry Naomi Cambpell but that's a total digression

U2 is like that.  Boy, October - totally raw.  War - sparks of greatness.  Unforgettable Fire - beautiful full album.  Then Joshua Tree hits and its like, holy cow these guys are the most amazing thing.  I'm sure they knew, just look at the screaming fans and the photographers and everything that came with Joshua Tree.  Bono in those videos and concert footage from Joshua Tree and Rattle and Hum had achieved the outer validation of his own belief in his ability, and that changes a person.  However, it was still new, unprocessed.  By the time they got to Achtung Baby they had had to figure out how to deal with it (Otherwise their heads would probably have exploded.) And ever since they've been the greatest rock band of our generation.
But its that guy, just realizing his own stardom, understanding the world was his oyster.  He is absolutely adorable.

So why do I love U2 so much? Maybe its a cop-out, but there's just that connection.  You hear something and it really matters to you, it affects your perception of the world, it changes how you feel.  Once a band does that and gets into your soul, I think they'd have to do something terrible to get kicked out. When I listen to U2 memories of my life come flooding back with each song.  Certain ones in particular are inextricably linked with certain events.  To choose a very public one - Walk On, with 9/11.  I was living in Brooklyn at the time and needless to say it had a major impact.  There are other songs that have personal meanings to me.  In all the very worst times in my life a U2 album came out with at least one awesome song to see me through it.  I hear those songs now and it reminds of those times, but the pain is mostly erased.  Some of the songs make me laugh out loud for the memories I have of them.  Its such a strange thing to say or even think, but they have really given me so much.

Power

So I had this really (ridiculously) long post I was writing, and the damn power went out.
Computer cutoff, no lights.

I decided, of course, to take this as a sign from somewhere above me that it was time to stop my intellectual theorizing on rock bands and famous authors and the appeal of a certain rock star and go to bed so that I can make it to a couple of seminars tomorrow morning.  One on the basics of population genetics (which god help me I better know everything in it or I will be irritated at myself) and the other on the 1000genomes project, which, I'm gonna say it, should be really cool.  That is, cool in a totally, TOTALLY nerdy way.

Of course then the power came back on, but I think it would be a very bad idea to try to write that post over again.
The topic of U2 will be left to another day, very soon.

This is not really a post.  Just a whine at how life enjoys slapping you in the face sometimes just to see how you react

Update: I am a moron.  I cannot figure out how to work a little blog site.  But I will endeavor to learn

Human version of Cuteness

I know this is starting to look like my thoughts are completely occupied by Glee, but that's because they are.  Chris is the human equivalent of that panda bear.  He is adorable.  How could anyone not think so? And something else he shares with pandas.  The sensible part of human society wants to hug a panda, and wants to hug Chris, and yet they know, this is not the right thing to do. (According to Gail Collins 5% of Americans are just bat-shit crazy, paraphrased.) Somewhere deep down lots of us would like to hug a panda bear, but something tells us not to break into the zoo and do it.  Similarly, something about Chris may make us want to hug him, but (as far as I know) no one hunts him down to do so.  If they do they are part of that 5%.  And Gail Collins is absolutely awesome by the way.  She always makes me laugh.

Actually do we still call it a panda bear even though we know they're not bears? Have I reverted to my childhood when they were still called that? I think we just go with panda now, but panda bear sounds more cuddly.

Well, we definitely call him Chris Colfer

Crosswalks

Having become a relatively newly minted perpetual pedestrian I have a complaint.  Why can't cars stay out of the effing crosswalks!  Its not that hard.  They're the white things on the road.  They're like, totally covered with diagonal lines.  They REALLY stand out.  So, why, oh why, do people in their happy little cars treat them as just some extra feet they have to stick their little noses out in traffic so they can shoot across an intersection just as quickly as they possibly can.  What the hell? Do they save a few seconds? No, not really.  Are people so accustomed to seeing crosswalks that they have somehow become immune to them and no longer see them?  I doubt it.

Drivers just have no respect whatsoever for the crosswalk or the people who use them.  We are insignificant little gnats in their day.  I cross a lot of crosswalks on my walk to work each day.  And, most annoyingly 6 do not have any little red hands or green men to at least allow me a few moments of unmolested walking.  On those intersections it is entirely up to the benevolence (generally nonexistent) of the drivers to allow me to pass during rush hour.  Outside of rush hour I can generally wait and scoot across during an absence of traffic.

But two things annoy me most.  One, the lesser of the two, is when someone drives up behind me, and then turns right directly in front of me.  I want to slap the person upside the head when they do it when I have a little green man going for me too.  I want to jump up and down like a four year old and point at the green man.  But I also find it annoying when someone is turning off a larger road and rather than slow down and allow me to cross they zoom on ahead of me just as my foot hits the crosswalk.  So I have to stand there and look at the oncoming traffic and decide who is going to turn on a blinker at the last second and nearly take my leg off.

More annoying is the blatant disregard for the crosswalk's existence.  Where a whole stream of cars, when the opportunity arises, pulls up such that their car completely covers the crosswalk.  Not just a little ways into the crosswalk, I mean completely covering the whole thing.  And since their eyes are totally focused on the red light and traffic in front of them, I have no interest in taking my life (or at least limbs)  in my hands by walking out in front of them.  So, I take a circuitous route as I weave through the traffic, inhaling their exhaust and feeling the rush of heat when its already 90 outside.  NOT FUN.

And, I have noticed, it is not pure ignorance.  They do know what they are doing.  How do I know? Two things.  One, when it is raining, and you are standing on the corner huddled under a pathetic little umbrella, cars are much more likely to actually come to a complete stop and wave you across.  Such a contrast!  Of course, if they don't you can get sprayed in the face by a puddle.

The second reason I know is more specific.  In the last month or so they have been doing a lot of construction around my tangle of crosswalks.  They have closed some lanes, redirected some traffic.  Most of the time when this occurs there is a policeman there, usually with a police car.  As I walk across the bridge if I see the policeman's hat or the lights of his car I cheer inside.  A smile lights up my face, I walk with a spring in my step.  Because this means that the crosswalks will be completely devoid of cars, and the cars stopped at that intersection will always yield to me.  On the other intersections nearby, cars no longer pull the bait and switch stunts of turning down the wrong road or from the wrong lane.  All cars behave beautifully, and I have an easy walk, instead of the standard harrowing 4 hops across 7 lanes of traffic.

I love the policeman and his funny hat.

Actually, even the presence of the construction workers themselves makes the car people behave better.  Perhaps its a hat thing and I should invest in a peculiar hat

Cuteness

Panda! Isn't she cute! In fact, truly adorable.  Actually I have no memory of whether she might actually be a he, but I've decided to go with she.  Doesn't the bamboo look yummy when being munched on like a giant candy bar? She's not a very tidy eater though.  

Pandas have a remarkable ability to look cute, all the time, to everyone.  Someone has probably researched what it is about the panda appearance that humans find so appealing (probably some psychologists who study facial pattern recognition) but despite the curiosity I have now piqued in myself, I will not look it up.

Okay, I admit, I'm just throwing a random photo of mine in to break up the monotony of nothing but words.  I have no puppies and kittens.

Nightmare

So, its kinda fading away a bit now so I must record the horror before I forget it.  I always forget my dreams promptly.  Last night I awoke in a sweat at 3 am.  As I fumbled to gain full consciousness and shake my brain free of restraints I was aware of what I left behind.  In my sleep, I was dreaming.... that I was making an A/R fanvid.  I don't even remember what couple, or story, but given the amount of Glee I've been pumping into my brain of late I'm sure it had something to do with that.  Which means I'm glad I don't remember what the hell I thought I was doing because it might have interfered with future enjoyment.

So, I have nothing against fanvids.  I have certainly been known to view a few of them.  Love the song, love the couple (its always a couple), fun to see how someone pieced together their scenes.  And I realize that this is a huge amount of work to do, because I have absolutely no idea how you do it.  I realize that not knowing how does not guarantee that its a lot of work, but in this case, I think my statement holds water.

However, I have a big problem with A/R vids.  I draw the line there. If you have never seen the show/movie, well then why the hell would you watch? If you have seen the show but you couldn't care less about the characters in the vid, why would you watch? If you have seen the show, and like the couple, and might watch, well, then you've seen the scenes as they actually occurred.  Where the vidmaker is trying to make it seem like character A is smiling at character B, you remember perfectly well that in that scene character A was actually smiling at the character's significant other, character ummm, C? for consistency? So attempting to watch one of these vids requires multiple leaps that tax the brain and beg the question why the hell do I care too many times.  Not fun, usually stupid.  And generally the story is so impossible to divine from the video that the maker has to describe it in detail in the description.  So, a video of random misplaced clips of characters with no actual interaction.

I kinda get where some people might say, but this is actually creative.  You use clips that are available, but you put them together in a different way to tell a different story.  But that's just me seeing the other side for a moment.  They suck.  And I am embarrassed for my brain that it managed to come up with doing that as an activity during its nighttime romp that I can't control. Bad brain.

Happy World

Okay, this is dicey.  I'm going to share this particular little concept of mine, but must try not to sound psychotic in the process.  I promise I'm not.  You see, Happy World is a very useful place.  If I had called it my happy place, it might not sounds so strange, but as luck would have it, when seeking words to describe, Happy World is what came out.

Happy World is a place in your mind you can retreat to for hours on end and live in a world where your biggest dreams actually come true.  You make one little totally unrealistic leap at the beginning, and you're golden.  You can just live in that world instead of the real one.  Obviously you sometimes have to join the real one.  Occasional food consumption and showering strike me as important ones.  Now, lest you think I am simply smacking a label on daydreaming, oh no.  Happy World is daydreaming on crack.  You think of something totally unrealistic and then you LIVE it, for days, not just like space out and daydream about something for an hour.  This is hard-core total escape from reality.

A daydream ends with the wistful thought, oh well, that's never going to happen.  Happy World is left briefly when the real world jolts you out of it, and you return as soon as possible with a big smile on your face as if you are sinking into a bed covered with down pillows.

Why would one want to make use of Happy World?  Well, basically when life is hell.  When everything in your life sucks and you get sick of thinking about how it sucks.  Because Happy World is fun.  It is the most fun you can have, because the dream you hold closest to your heart at that time has come true, and you get to live it.  What can be better than that?

So, why not live in Happy World all the time? It turns out it is only accessible when life sucks.  Once you realize that what you're doing is a little crazy, you start to fear Happy World a little bit.  Is your time there evidence of a mental disorder more severe than just a little depression? Moreover, when people start to help you, tell you that you don't suck, that in reality your life doesn't really suck either, if you believe them even a tiny bit, then, well, Happy World looks absurd.

But once you've been there, you want to hold on to it, who wouldn't? It is truly a magical, happy place.  So then you go back and forth, do I surrender to the joy of Happy World, or live in the slightly better but still sucky real world and make some attempt to improve it.  You start to eye Happy World with mistrust. Perhaps it is causing your life to slip away even more than if you just lay around depressed.  And your trips become fewer and shorter as you reemerge from your funk and join society again.

 Still, Happy World is WAY better than actually experiencing depression

And now for the shoes

How do shoes relate to Glee? I wish there was a good screencap, but I can't find it.  I am totally in love with the boots that Kurt wore when he sang Rose's Turn.  Loved the whole look, on him.  For me, being a rather boring dresser in general, no skull scarves.  But the plaid pants in knee high lace up boots? I will totally do.

Unfortunately, apparently no one else is interested because I can't find boots I want anywhere! I can find worn out, broken down boots.  Doc Martens, Harley-Davidson, etc. etc., not appropriate for work, at least not my work.  I finally found a gorgeous pair of boots.  Just what I want.  $400.  What!? I don't have that kind of money! But, ummmmm, maybe? Credit card?  They're sooooo nice. I've never spent more than maybe max 150 on any one item of apparel.

My mom made my prom dresses, so I've never even had occasion to buy a fancy dress.  I still absolutely love my mom for doing that.  She is awesome.  I had two proms, mine and my boyfriend's.  I loved this purple stretch velvet, so she made a floor length slip dress out of that for me.  And this periwinkle satin that she made a strapless floorlength A-line gown for me for the other one.  Amazing.  Whose mom does that? I still have skirts in my closet that she made me 10 years ago. I had one shirt I bought that she hated.  Her reaction? She took the shirt and bought some fabric that matched it and made me a skirt.  She said if I was going to wear the shirt at least I would have a nice outfit.

Moms don't make shoes though.  And I am seriously dying for shoes like these.  The only thing I would add is a buckle on the outside of each.  I have wasted SOOOO much time hunting for shoes.  Looked at every website I can find.  This always happens.  As soon as I get into my head I want something specific I can't find it anywhere.

That's not my only Glee wardrobe love.  I have a thing for the classic patterns.  I have like 3 argyle sweaters and 1 argyle sweater vest.  I have argyle socks! So if Rachel's argyle sweaters just weren't like yellow, I'd love her clothes too.  I like plaid skirts, but I went to a girl's school with plaid skirt uniform and now any plaid, pleated skirt freaks me out, reminds me of high school.  Plaid A-line or solid pleated are good.  Combine the two and you have a monster.

But it is Kurt whose fashion I love of course.  This is obvious and unoriginal, everyone loves Kurt.  Everyone loves Kurt's clothes, right? The thing is, this is quiet, mousy little me who wears nothing but black grey, blue and purple. (My friend referred to my laundry on the drying rack as a study in blue.  I insisted there was purple, and I claimed to own a few crimson items, but they rarely came out to play.)

It is actually totally bizarre that I would take fashion cues from a flamboyent, male, gay teenage TV character.  But he wears glen plaid pants! Mine have sadly gone from being my 'fat' pants to my 'God I hope I don't ever go there again, but, just in case....' pants.  He wears pinstripes, with a vest! And a pocketwatch! Oh how I love pocketwatches.  They are totally absurd now, but then, I think guys still wear chains attached to their jeans and they are totally pointless too.  Probably cheaper than a pocketwatch though.  I believe I gave a pocketwatch to an ex-boyfriend.  I think he was just as into them as I was.  Of course, its entirely possible that actually he was into pocketwatches and I developed a love for their antique charm due to the introduction.  Apparently my favorite flavor of cake, German chocolate, I acquired from an ex, and completely forgot that it came from him.  Led to slightly awkward moment, but no matter.  I think I like Red Velvet just as much now.  Its a little showy.  However, pretty much if you put cream cheese icing on anything I will eat it, and love it.

This is kinda boring to read.  Which doesn't matter too much, since this is essentially my diary.  I do realize that it is a diary that anyone can read at any time.  I'm not a moron.  But no censorship.  I wrote this bloody boring collection of words so I will leave it at that.  Next time maybe it will come out interesting.  After all, this is boring even to me. I don't generally whine about clothes, but who knows, I see attempts to find pants and sweaters, and turtlenecks in my New England weather future.  And I probably won't find them.  And I will be pissed.  And due to some self-inflicted constraints on language I will probably end up whining instead of ranting.  *sigh*

Glee!

So I had this whole muddle of thoughts to put down and realized that it wouldn't even make sense to me if I didn't divide into the two topics at hand.  Glee and shoes.  Now, how do they overlap? I'll go into that in the next post.  First, I must express my adoration of Glee, and, more specifically, Chris Colfer/Kurt Hummel.  My reality testing seems weak when I attempt to separate my love for one or the other.  I do know they are separate, and one is a fictional character, and the other is a normal guy.  However, they are both awesome.  And I so wished he would have won the Emmy last weekend because that would have been so cool.  Okay, some of the fangirl expunged.

Why Glee? Well, I have fought hard for my love of Glee.  When Glee began I was over the moon with excitement.  This former school chorus singer, member of all things drama club-y and college a cappela group singer could not wait for a show that seemed designed for, well, ME.  And then things happened.  I lived in a house with two roommates.  One bailed after the first episode, not for her.  The other stuck with me for a few episodes, but I think he pretty much hated it.  So, the likelihood of a 2-1 banning of Glee in favor of some other TV show loomed on the horizon early on, and I think my joy in the early episodes was impaired by the knowledge that I could be cut off any day.  I started watching the show through the eyes of my rabid Sox fan, DMB-loving, turf management specialist roommate.  Through those eyes, Glee sucks.

And so, I lost.  And considered it fair. I tried Hulu to keep up, but no luck.  My old computer had too weak a wireless signal and my laptop burned up on attempt to stream videos.  (I tried to get around this by propping it up on my lap with two fingers, but this resulted in extreme finger pain, including burning of the tips, and fear that I might be damaging the inside of my beloved Macbook Air.  It did absolutely everything else I asked of it, even fitting in my purse).  So, I decided that I would wait for the DVD.  And thus began a concerted effort on my part not to know anything about what happened on Glee.  I would navigate away from webpages.  I would close my eyes and stick my fingers in my ears when a promo came on TV.  And I was successful.

This summer, I bought the whole season on iTunes as soon as I had a computer that could play it.  And I gorged myself on all things Glee.  Once I had watched the entire season I watched my favorite episodes over (Definitely not Vitamin D, there is too much Terri in there for me to take.  She scares me), and then I went to watching my favorite scenes, my favorite musical numbers.  So, Sectionals, Regionals, anything with Puck and Quinn because it was cute to see Puck try to be something other than a total jerk, and most of all, anything with Kurt and his father.  Rose's Turn, how many times I have watched.  And it never gets old.

I bought the soundtracks as well and have a 'Glee' playlist I listen to while walking to and from work.  I have watched every interview I can find of Mark Salling, Chris Colfer, Matthew Morrison, Mike O'Malley.  Like, an entire day spent on youtube seeing them tell the same stories again and again to the various different talk show hosts.  The big difference being that apparently in England you can whip out swords all of the sudden while that fascinating display was not afforded to American viewers (except of course, on youtube).  How hilarious was Matthew Morrison's reaction when the host pulled out the swords and Chris was like, 'I'm kind of a ninja.'  Despite his total lack of experience Chris seems to be great at the whole media thing.  Mark Salling on the other hand, turns out to be nothing like Puck,  he's so soft-spoken you'd think he wanted to run off the stage, and he's the one who already had a record out.  He's got to be used to some level of people asking questions.  He did use a neat diversion at the Emmy's when asked about the keying and egging of car.  The omelette thing pretty much confirmed that egging had occurred but successfully diverted attention.

SO, yes, obsessed with Glee.  And now I have only a couple of weeks to wait before I can have new material to obsess over, and this time I can do it in real time, maybe go see them live if they do another tour thing.  Squeee!!!  Okay, I will never do that again.  Just had to get it out of my system.

Talking to the Boss

So yesterday I had a great talk with my boss.  At least, I think it was great.  It really seemed that way.  Until I thought about it later.  No, I'm still convinced it was good.

It started with the need to explain that although a significant part of the job of a biomedical researcher is to keep up to date on relevant literature, and, especially when forming new hypotheses to read up on past literature, this part of my job just ain't happening right now.  I told him I just couldn't focus on reading papers.  Now, he is a psychiatrist, and he is very adept at using gentle questions to great effect in drawing out everything I didn't particularly want to share.

He started with 'How do you mean?' Which led to the explanation that it required a concerted effort ahead of time to read one sentence and it took half an hour to read a paragraph.  A series of 'But why?'s led only to my sputtering attempts to explain that my brain 'just went away in the middle' Very eloquent. I also explained that over the weekend when attempting to read a paper my mind went so far away that I stared at the laptop screen, it went black, the battery wore down, and I finally had to shut the computer off.  His response. 'Oh, that's bad.' Which I guess was my goal in sharing that unnecessarily harsh picture of myself, but I have no idea why I felt compelled to make myself look as useless and pathetic as possible.

My stash of Ritalin came up (hopefully I do not now seem to be a junkie.) But I expressed doubt that a sudden onset of massive ADD symptoms was responsible for the current trouble.  Then came the idea that perhaps Ritalin would help some now if it had helped in the past.  I made a face and explained that if I take Ritalin when I'm anxious 'I kinda turn into a freak' Again, eloquent and appropriate for the workplace.

We got through a few more stages of 'But, why?'s, which led to the admission of the fact that in the last month I have stopped taking two drugs with psychoactive side effects (I have bad asthma) and subsequently lost 15 pounds.  I expressed the view that perhaps my brain just needs to equilibrate.

Although I had started this whole thing with the goal of explaining why I was a useless employee for the time being (or rather, just telling him that I was, I guess I don't actually have a reason do I) I suddenly saw a light.  I explained that I was able to do analyses.  So after telling him with eyes brimming with tears that my productivity was temporarily at 0, I then proceeded to explain that in the previous 24 hours I had completed several tasks which we had expected would take days.  Just not the tasks that involved reading papers.  Those, not happening, for the foreseeable future.

So the end result was probably mostly that my boss thinks I'm an ADD, anxiety-ridden bipolar mess, and that my standard for what I consider productivity is ridiculously high.

I did not cry, which I'm rather proud of, because despite being someone who really, really, almost NEVER cries, I have cried in front of all but one of my advisors.  The one I have not cried in front of is one I admitted a depression to, and explained that when depressed I stop eating, and therefore had been subtly avoiding lunch with my coworkers.  For two weeks he would gather me up by simply saying, 'Its lunchtime, Anna.' And then if I was pushing food around on my plate too much I would notice him staring at my plate.  Not me, just the plate, but I got the hint.  So despite lack of actual tears, I'm pretty sure he saw all the craziest parts of my psyche.

I may well, at some point, cry in front of this boss, but I think this would have been the time.  The tears were in my eyes, can't deny it, but they never actually crossed my lid.  If one had flooded over and actually gone down my face, then I would have to acknowledge that I cried.  This meant that I had to avoid blinking for an extended period of time and keep my eyes very open.  You know when you're in that state? And you can feel the tears hovering there.  But if you keep your head up, eyes open, and don't blink, they don't actually spill over.  The other thing that can kill you is the voice.  The 'lump in your throat' If that comes up too big, and you try to speak, but the words don't come out, its just too obvious.  Obviously the first thing is to keep your mouth shut and don't try to speak if you know it isn't going to work.  The last thing you want is some croaky sound coming out.  However, in one-on-one situations a prolonged silence on your part can be enough of a dead give-away that the result is the same.  You start to cry, not because of whatever made you about to cry, you cry because you know the other person now knows without a doubt that you were about to cry. And as you're crying you think 'God if only I could have held it together a few more seconds I would have been fine and now here I am looking like a mess with tears streaming down my face.'

After all, none of us cry beautifully like they do on TV.  Eyes slightly red, shimmering, then a tear streaks down a pale face.  Now, I can't say I've ever run to the mirror to see what I look like while crying, I'm usually too busy burying my head in a pillow such that no one will see or hear it.  But I've witnessed others, and I'm pretty sure I look the same.  Face red and patchy, body sort of occassionally convulsing as if you have terrible irregular hiccups.  Eyes rimmed bright red, with the whites, well, red, you could be mistaken for a sudden onset of pink eye in both eyes.  And god forbid you're a woman wearing makeup.  Black tears running down someone's face are enough to make you leave the eyeliner at home (I for some bizarre reason don't trust waterproof eye makeup.  If I get caught in a downpour is it really going to stay firmly in place? I doubt it.)  I suppose I should not have been so sexist with that statement.  Plenty of men wear eyeliner, but I haven't witnessed the effect if they cry while wearing it.  Does it look as pathetic as on a woman? Oh well.  I have strayed far off course haven't I.

I'm a terrible editor, so its not like I can say, hmmmm, let's chop out all that crying stuff and kill it, or save it for another post.  Nope, that's why the blog is called Random Thoughts.  I'm random and unlikely to stay on topic for very long. Particularly since I'm essentially having a conversation with myself here.