The Dirty Lawyer

Hollow Weiner

2005-11-03T20:26:00.000-08:00

I've been bad, I know. Sorry.

I've been busy... with working and stuff... and I had an interview yesterday for that Atlanta job so we'll see.

Halloween was good. I had two trick or treators, princesses in sweatpants and tiarras. Even thought it was about 80 degrees out. They each got about 5 tons of candy, since I was pretty sure that was about it for the night.

Other than that, the next month might be a little sporadic. I will eventually get back on track with the nonsense but in the meantime, everyone just chill!

The Full Monte Cristo

2005-10-09T20:59:00.000-07:00

I've had a rough few weeks. So I've been slacking with the updating. My bad.

The one bright spot was a totally awesome visit to Disneyland with my good friends Betty and Whitey. We had a completely righteous time. Checked out the Nightmare Before Christmas holiday overlay on the Haunted Mansion ride, which was completely coolio as always. My only criticism is I really dig having the ghost guys at the end because I really enjoy sticking my toungue in their ear or fondling them. The holiday overlay gives you a present or a jack in the box or something lame like that, and what nasty things can I do with that? Not much. Meh.

We also went to the Blue Bayou where I ate the most delicious sammich ever created, the monte cristo. That thing is like an unholy union of fat and carbs. It's like the bastard offspring of a donut and a hoagie, and I love it. I ate half of it and still walked around all day uncomfortably full.

I also went on the new space mountain, which I have to say was definatly not improved to the point it justified being closed down for as long as I can remember. And I miss the Dick Dale rockin surf guitar soundtrack that it used to have. That was awesome!

So, what do all you guys know about Atlanta? I'm looking at a job possibility there now.

Working for the Weekend

2005-09-19T18:20:00.000-07:00

Yes, I'm feeling a lot better, thanks.

Still a little cough and runny nose but I feel fine, which is all I can ask for.

I felt well enough to get dragged on a little downtown Disney shopping trip with Erin. She got a raise and is now officially in the 100K club. But, she works at a firm and is miserable so no jealousy from me.

So we went out and had the dinner and drinks thing which she paid for and was awesome for a change not to have to fish out my wallet at the end of dinner and realize how much the damn drinks cost. Oh, and this girl ran up to me and smack into a wall. I was laughing hysterically at her stupid drunk ass when she did the only thing she had as a defense mechanism, puked all over herself. I was still laughing until I realized she was pretty close to me and that was gross. Ew. Go away vomit girl.

The next morning we hit up Sephora. OK, actually, we stopped and had brunch and I had one too many mimosas which led to an error in judgment on my part.

I bought a moisturizer, and I didn't check to make sure it was ok by opening the lid. So when I get home, of course someone had ripped the lid off and stuck their dirty finger in there. Savages. THEN I open my Bare Escentuals starter kit and it was all screwed up, too. There was two of the same exact thing and no top coat. Mother of Pearl.

So the next morning I have to trudge back to Sephora and exchange everything. And I "forgot" the cleanser that was in the kit I was returning. Hey, I had to go all the way back there, and everything I bought was fucked up. I consider that a token compensation for my time. Bastages. Snotty sales girl gave me a hard time over it until I dragged the manager over there. I'm rich, bitch! Ok, I'm poor but dammit, mind me.

Go to my good friend Betty's and wish her a happy birthday, already! Assuming of course she's not the only person who reads my blog. In which case, happy birthday, DEEJ!

Sick Day Blues

2005-09-13T15:23:00.000-07:00

I starting getting sick last night, and this morning awoke with a raging head cold. I called (actually, emailed) in sick.

Because it's me, things didn't go the way I planned.

This morning, I decided since I was up and had the whole day, I would get my unemployment appeal paperwork off my back. Since the hearing is Friday, I wanted to go to Kinko's, print out the appeal I spent a few days writing and revising, and Fedex it to make sure it got there in plenty of time. Sounds like a reasonable plan, right?

So I drag my butt out of the house in yoga pants and a fat chick sweatshirt, with my unwashed hair tied in a knot. Hey, lay off me, I'm sick. I managed to print out the paperwork, find an airbill, fill it out, and wait an inordinate amount of time to get helped. I made sure to seal the envelope so that the creepy Fed ex guy didn't get a chance to read all my personal business.

He types in the address, then looks at my airbill and frowns. "it says the zip code doesn't match the address," he tells me. I look at the notice of hearing I have from the court, and say "92802?" That's right. He then snatches the paper out of my hand, and proceeds to peruse the entire document, flipping through the pages and obviosly reading the sordid details of my current battle with my former employer. I was so pissed. And normally, he would have gotten an ear full from me, but I was standing there, looking like shit warmed over, with my head in a fog, and just didn't know what to do. Actually, it's not true. I knew what to do. I just couldn't do it. I didn't have the strength. He then proceeded to call 411 and ask a bunch of stupid and useless questions, loudly asking for THE UNEMPLOYMENT APPEALS BOARD (like there is only one of them in the country), then slamming down the phone angrily when the operator couldn't read his mind.

So, after looking at my paperwork way too long to see that the address, which was clearly on the front page and clearly the same as I had written, was not a mistake, he told me he couldn't help me because the computer would not let him enter it. Jackass. How dare you make me feel like a looser. You work at Kinko's.

So, I go over to the computers to look up the address on the internet, but of course when I put my credit card in, the thing flipped out and mooned me, then crashed.

So, I called the number listed on the paperwork (which stupid yelly nosy guy ALSO had, and could have called instead of 411, I guess), and the reasonably intelligent woman told me to just fax it, and gave me the number.

Of course, the fax machine had a paper jam, and then ran out of paper. I grabbed a stack of cover letters sitting next to the machine and shoved them in upside down, so I could get my confirmation. Fuckers.

Then I waited again in an unreasonably long line to pay my three bucks for sending a fax.

I got home and flopped on the bed, ready to pass out. Then the banging started.

It seems my upstairs neighbors picked today to fix the plumbing in their apartment which has been royally fucked up since last Christmas. Thanks, assholes. Could you maybe bring in a marching band and give me something to really bitch about?

Around 2 it started to quiet down, so I laid down for a whole half hour before I was awoken by three strange men in my bedroom who looked at me like I didn't have any right to be there, then said "Fire sprinkler inspection". Granted, one of them was a fireman and HOT, but still. And of course, I looked like crap.

So now the whole day is pretty much shot. I didn't really get any rest and I still feel like crap. Tomorrow I will go to work where at least it's quiet. However, no hot firemen will magically appear in my bedroom, either.

Feedback Buffet

2005-09-11T12:22:00.000-07:00

What I learned this week.

Corporate is the way to go. First, people automatically fear and respect you because you aren't dealing with 500 other asshole lawyers. ALSO... and it took me awhile to realize this... because you're doing transactional work, it doesn't matter where you are sworn in! FREEDOM! HORRIBLE HORRIBLE FREEDOM!

However, if there is a downside, it's that you have to learn the lingo. For example, there are no problems in the corporate world. There are challenges. And there is no criticism. There is feedback. Although, I have to say, I love it. I love sugar coated euphemisms that make those bitter little pills go down so smooth. Ahhh.

And yes, using my new found vocabulary, I managed to get paid. Because when I finally got a date I could expect a check, it was September 25th. And I've been working there since mid-August. I pulled out the big guns, and calmly told them that this was going to be a PROBLEM. Oh shit! She said problem! You know it's serious! Well, they got some feedback, let's just say.

And about the fruit fly saga... It seems that, at some point in my life, I purchased a potato. I'm not exactly sure why I did that. But, a potato was bought. Sometime in the last two years, said potato fell behind some boxes my roommate has in the bottom of the pantry. While there, the potato was fed by every negative vibe ever produced from the dank hole of sorrows that is my life. The potato grew into something horrific and foul. It grew spindly arms and legs, and began to shift it's nature from solid to a sort of festering sludge apparently desirable to the incorrectly termed fruit fly.

The potato is now gone. Fruit flies have mostly disappeared too, although I saw a few stragglers today apparently mourning the loss of what must be, to a fly, the equivalent of getting comped at a Vegas buffet. I can see the fruit flies now, in their powdered wigs, arguing about whether that trough holds tapioca or bread pudding.

Aww, I feel almost bad about hunting them down with a can of Raid.

Using My Curse Word Allocation For the Year

2005-09-06T21:22:00.000-07:00

Someone smarter than me once said that hope is the belief that things will get better.

Between national news and the never-ending shit storm that is my life, I'm having a real hard time believing it right now.

First, why is it that anytime I have a job which is reasonably acceptable and doesn't make me want to kill myself eight times a day, they can't quite grasp the concept that they are supposed to pay me? I'm not doing this for a hobby motherfuckers! It's been three weeks and no green! Make with the fucking dough, asswipes! Today I wandered the halls trying to figure out what the hell is going on and got mostly blank stares, and so-and-so is in a meeting and I'll ask him for you as soon as he gets out. My rent check is going to bounce like a fucking crazy ball cocksuckers!!

AND those fucking fruit flies won't leave me the hell alone... .

With all this plus the hurricane stories ripping my guts out lately it is really hard to maintain my fucking natural cheery ass disposition.

Everyone just do what the fuck you are supposed to do and nobody gets hurt, dig? FEMA dude, you are supposed to respond on the FEDERAL level to national EMERGENCIES. I assume that's what the FE stands for and not "fucking eeediot". Fruit flies, you go harass some fucking fruit. I have no fruit in my house except one pathetic grapefruit that is hidden in the crisper drawer getting moldy so you got no beef with me. Accounts payable.... guess why we call you that? PAY MY ASS! If everyone just does their own fucking job, I can pay my own bills and not have to hide from fucking Citibank.

Why are you still reading? GET TO WORK, FUCKERS!

The War at Home

2005-09-05T21:28:00.000-07:00

Arielle's father thinks she, (and, by association, I guess I) need a gun.

Not that I have anything against them in the abstract... but guns make me nervous. Mostly because I am that person that "those things" happen to, like someone breaks in while I'm asleep, and before I even know they are there I'm looking down the barrel at my own weapon.

Which begs the question, how are you supposed to feel safe anymore? Gee, we created a department of homeland security and although it seems that extra layer of bureaucracy did a bang up job in the gulf (yeah, by that I mean our OWN gulf) somehow I don't feel safe in my homeland anymore. The thought that when California finally succumbs to the "big one", the probability of getting the help I need from the people who are supposed to do that sort of thing kind of strikes me as not all that probable.

But, everyone is ranting about that. My point is that although I don't feel protected by my government, I think I feel less safe taking steps to ensure my own survival if it means I have to keep something in my home that makes me ill even at the thought.

If there is a bright side, I thank God that my problems are so petty in comparison.

Because right now my biggest issue is the fact I someone managed to cultivate a colony of fruit flies in my kitchen. They seem to like the sink, even though there are no dishes in there and I have no idea what the hell they are living on. .

I'm lighting a candle every night for all the people affected by this terrible tragedy. Please, if you have a few dollars to give, go here and do so.

Touch me in the morning then just swim away

2005-08-28T10:24:00.000-07:00

It's only a temp job so I guess I shouldn't get too comfortable.

But I feel like someone who was in a POW camp and has been released. I'm in a ... normal environment again and I'm not quite sure how to react to it. So, will I stay here now? I don't know. Will I move? I don't know that either. Maybe. New York is on the table now as far as I'm concerned, too. QUIT HOUNDING ME!

But I'm not sure what will happen between now and... well, forever. If I could turn this into a fill time deal and convince them to create a position for me in the legal department, I certainly will consider it. They like me, I do good work for them and I enjoy doing good work for them because they appreciate me. It really is that simple.

And here's an embarassing story from the not so distant past. I was swimming with my friend and her 4 year old nephew, when the precocious child swam up to me, grabbed my tits, laughed and said "Wow! You've got big boobs!" Fourteen more years and I'm calling that little scamp.

I Shit You Not

2005-08-07T10:00:00.000-07:00

I do try and do things like put the roll of toilet paper on the friggin spinny thing. Honestly. But sometimes it just doesn't happen. I have been officially cured of this affliction, however, and here's why.

I was deep into conversation with Mr. Mean when I discovered I had to use the the "ladies room". By the way, I love euphemisms for urination. Anyway, I had to piss, ok? Maybe it was the three beers I had consumed to kick start the evening. As DJ says, once you break the seal, you're doomed.

So I excuse myself and rush to the bathroom. I always leave the lid down in my bathroom because I have a some sicko twisted cats who will play in the bowl and leave little gross kitty paw prints all over my nice white bleached porcelain.

So I sit down and pee, but something is not right. The usual friendly tinkle of urine slapping water is missing. In my slightly beer hazy brain, I figured this must be because I'm not peeing that hard, and maybe the water level is unusually high or something. I realize now that this makes no sense at all, but at the time it somehow seemed logical.

So I go to wipe... hmm, didn't I just have a new roll of toilet paper out? Weird. Then flush... wait a second....wha?

The only thing that should be in there is stuff I intentionally put there! Is that?

An entire roll of toilet paper swirling around the bowl, ready to plunge into the dark abyss of the already sketchy plumbing of my apartment?

Suddenly synapses started connecting.

I didn't put that new roll on the spinny dispenser thing, and when I rushed to open the lid, I must have knocked that roll in... and the lack of sound was from peeing on the roll, not some acoustic trick resulting from lack of velocity.

I made a mad scramble to save what I could from going down and ended up with just the soggy cardboard middle part and a sinking feeling of dread. I backed towards the door in horror as the pipes started to sing an unholy chorus.

And then it happened. As I reached the door and hid behind it, the demonic groaning increased in timbre and pitch until an unnatural cascade of toilet water began to fall in waves from under the closed lid, which I had hastily lowered in a pathetic attempt to shield myself from the inevitable. Shortly thereafter, streams of water began to shoot in a copious steady gush from the bolts attaching the now clearly possessed fixture to the floor. Then my toilet turned slightly, a red haze lighting it from within, looked at me, and with the lid and seat forming an unholy maw of sorts, hissed, "Your momma sews socks that smell!"

So I did the reasonable thing. Slammed the door, ran and hid.

After a lecture from Mr. Mean about not running away from my problems, I returned later that night armed with a mop and tackled the inch and a half thick layer of water that the demonic toilet left on my bathroom floor. Luckily, I saw no traces of pea soup.

This morning, when I awoke with my bladder straining yet again, I faced the beast once more, without event.

So for now, my demonic potty seems to be under control. But I'm already living in fear of the day it will decide to strike again. God help me if I ever have to poop, I'll need a plunger with a crucifix attached, I just know it.

No More Mr. Nice Guy

2005-08-02T00:56:00.000-07:00

First the business stuff... for those of you who don't know, I asked the landlord for another month on my lease and I got it. I just feel too up in the air moving to D.C. with no permanent job. Luckily, I have a few solid leads so for now everything is a-ok.

**********

"I'm a nice guy," he said for the ninth time.

You know how a Buddhist will chant "OHM" over and over again to induce a hypnotic trance like state of mind? It was almost like this guy was trying to hypnotize me into believing it. A nice guy. How... nice. That will be a refreshing change. Niceness. Niiiice. Niii....zzzzzzz.

I'm here to tell you, every guy who has ever led off with the "nice guy" spiel has turned out to be a fucking dick. And that is the absolute fucking honest to God truth, nice or not. And I'll take the truth over the nice any day.

There are better things than nice. Like ... compassionate. Considerate. Intelligent. Funny. Kind. Brave. Honest. But nice?

Nice is, at best, insincere. Nice is a mask to make up for all the real qualities you lack. Nice is a healthy dollop of fudge on a big stinking dog turd. Nice is the acrid whiff of Lysol to cover up that foul odor you created in the john. And I'm telling you, anyone who starts out with the, "nice" line is trying to play hide the turd. And that game isn't half as fun as it sounds, trust me.

To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, it's easy to be nice to someone you don't give a flying fuck about.

I was talking to someone the other day, and it occurred to me that this person is great. Not nice. Fantastic. But nice? Not really. And you know why? They don't have to be nice to cover up the stench of the stinking abyss where their soul should be.

And that was really refreshing.

Is it wrong...

2005-07-25T01:48:00.000-07:00

...that I am completely unable to stop watching this?

Quck update and thoughts

2005-07-23T20:02:00.000-07:00

Just a brief "hrm" in the craziness of still trying to get my move together, while juggling the faint glimmers of various job possibilities that present themselves closer to home in the meantime. This is definately a day to day thing.

What is a friend?

Here's what I think.

A friend is someone you can disagree with, and still love. A friend doesn't let petty differences get in the way of your relationship. A friend can take minor criticism without flipping out. A friend doesn't let emotions get in the way of logic and reason. A friend will consider your position before acting rash and lashing out. A friend will give you the consideration of listening to your position... and by listening, I mean actually hearing and considering what you have to say. And if a friend does all these things, they will apologize for it or accept your apology, because friends forgive each other when they act mental.

If there is one thing that I can't stomach, it's when people let stubbornness stand in the way of common sense and reason. But it seems like the more someone backs themselves into a corner via unreasonableness, the more they use that same logic (or, more appropriately, the lack of) to justify their behavior.

Some asshole will always agree with you. That's nothing. You can always find someone willing to justify almost any action you take. Even Hitler had his supporters. Integrity means believing what you do is right *yourself*, without any bullshit from the peanut gallery. If you act on principles, your own ideas, and have the integrity to believe in what you have done and the ability to justify it with logical reason, you don't need a bunch of sniveling yes men to validate your decision.

So maybe I've just been lucky in life to have real examples of what a friend should be. Like Stephanie (who lurks). Remember that time you ditched me at Rocketship Park because I insisted on swinging upside down by my knees from the top of that 13 foot rocketship, and you thought it was too dangerous? You were right. But you didn't have to ditch me... BITCH!

Taking a Break from the Blog

2005-07-15T15:50:00.000-07:00

I will figure this out.

I always do.

But in the meantime I'm not going to inflict upon everyone all the craziness. I'll come out of this like I always do and I'll manage somehow.

Here's the jist of it:

I basically have a job waiting for me in D.C., which pays more than my last job and sounds like it will be great for the short term.

I have no way to get there right now as I have hit a few... snafus.

But, like I said, I will figure it out.

I'd appreciate all your good thoughts/ prayers/ whatever you want to call them in the interem.

Blog Summit

2005-07-08T00:06:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow I'm meeting with a bunch of blog peeps. Actually I already met Becka last week, but tomorrow Arwen, Betty, whitey, and Ruby will all be there! I actually know them better from the various message boards we all post on. I'm sure it will be a blast and a half.

I'll have a full report once the hangover wears off.

Happy 3rd of July

2005-07-03T12:54:00.000-07:00

I watched Saving Private Ryan last night, which I had never seen because I generally detest Steven Speilberg when he tries to be serious. He never seems to mind ruining an ending with crap that doesn't make sense. Like... in the private ryan movie, they were trying to defend this bridge from the germans. So they load the bridge with explosives but instead of just blowing it up and chilling on the side without germans, they instead use their american pluckiness and ingenuity to engage the germans on the dangerous side of the bridge and get a bunch of their peeps killed. Brilliant! Look, I'm no Wellington but if your objective is to prevent the germans from getting across the bridge why not blow it up FIRST? Greatest generation my aching ass.

My grandfather got a silver star for gallantry in action in WWII. Once when I asked him how he got it, he said "being fucking stupid". Now I get it.

Instant Diet

2005-06-28T22:01:00.000-07:00

Since I'm totally poor until I manage the big move, I have been mainly living off bread. Or its mutant cousin that is almost like cooking, toast.

Then I saw this and I think maybe I'll just stick with the diet coke for awhile.

Update

2005-06-27T20:18:00.000-07:00

I guess I can post about this now since most of the people directly affected have been informed.

I'm moving to Washington D.C. at the end of July.

Yes that's right kids! I'm getting the hell out of Cali!

Goodbye beaches that I never went to, star sightings of stars I never recognized, flip flops all year round, outdoor malls, tanning salons, fake boobs, and three hour commutes.

Hello beaches that I will never go to because they are too far away, political sightings of politicians I will never recognize, galoshes (what the hell do people wear on their feet in bad weather? I have no clue), the Washington Mall, not seeing your white boobs for three months, and my personal favorite... the metro!!

So that's that. Big changes for this califrnia girl. I'm looking forward to things like seeing seasons change (we definately don't have that here). And I plan on visiting often... well I have two weddings I have to go to next year so I won't have too much of a choice I guess. (Yay!)

So, that's the outcome of all the crap that I've been dealing with the last few days. I think this is going to be a good change though, nothing like a new start with some adventure thrown in to shake you out of the ho-hums.

You've Got to Be Kidding Me

2005-06-23T16:04:00.000-07:00

I had a bad day today.
A real bad day.
Details to follow when I can stomach actually talking about it.

On the bright side, I'm forced to make some decisions and changes that I was kind of avoiding. Hopefully everything will work out for the best.

In the meantime, here is Tom Cruise killing Oprah.

Plug

2005-06-19T08:28:00.000-07:00

Today is my good friend Lois Lane's Birthday. If you haven't already, go wish her a happy one!

And when you are done, go check out Bloomin' Onionhead. The funniest dude I know.

Job Huntin' Blues

2005-06-17T03:54:00.000-07:00

Why didn't these fucktards just TELL me they wanted someone with an engineering background in the beginning? After finishing a lengthy and detailed question and answer page for a federal job posting, I get to this question:

Please describe your background, experience or education related to electrical engineering, computer science, or physics.

WTF? JUST SAY THAT FROM THE GET GO YOU MORONS!

I was forced to answer that I had none, but I think Steven Hawkings is a kinda cool dude.

Oh, there will be laughter ringing through the halls of the Federal Trade Commision come Monday morning...

Memories of Cooper

2005-06-12T00:28:00.000-07:00

In highschool we had a lovely little tradition known as senior slave day. In order to raise money for the prom and other important events, the seniors were auctioned off to act as a slave for a lucky underclassman, put on a picnic bench at lunch in front of the snack bar in a quaint tradition harkening back to the cute 18th century tradition of forced human servitude. Ahh, good times.

Cooper was the resident class social misfit. I was a year behind him, and even I knew that the guy was a social retard. Although an intelligent young man, he wore the thickest coke bottle glasses available, dressed like a spaz, and was generally a dork. Somehow, Cooper had been roped into being put on the block.

Standing there at lunch, I smelled bad juju along with the heady aroma of cheetos and balogna.

It seems that a group of the largest football players had pooled their money earned from off season stolen stereo fencing, and were planning on purchasing Cooper in order to "own" him for the entirety of the following day and generally torture him.

Cooper had gotten wind of it. Although I really didn't know him, he approached me just prior to the auction with a look of general despair in his eyes.

"Please," he hissed under his halitosis. "Please bid on me and keep bidding on me no matter what. I will pay you back no matter how much it costs. Please!"

Well, I was a logical choice. Not a friend of the thugs, but not a complete social outcast either. I had just enough credibility to make Cooper's plan work. I nodded and Cooper took his place on the auction block amidst the hoots and hollers of the five gangsta football players high fiving eachother over a impressive pile of ones and fives.

The bidding started... one dolla, do I hear one dolla... two from the lady in the acid washed jeans... do I hear three? three from the four hundred pound linebacker with a death wish... do I hear four...

On and on, the auction went, until it was rapidly approaching fifty. And fifty bucks is a lot of stolen car parts. The linebacker glared at me. I smiled and chewed my thumb. SOLD! To the lady in the acid washed for fifty clams!

Copper stumbled off the block and staggered towards me. We ducked into the inner bowels of the snack bar. "Oh god, thank you," he wept. "It was going to be bad if they actually won. Here's the money, go pay."

"I still get you as a slave though, right? I asked coquettishly.

"Um, well sure," he replied, his eyes widening behind his thick glasses, which had started to steam up a bit. "You want me to do your homework?"

"No, no, nothing like that," I giggled. Just meet me before school outside of the science building and I'll have something for you all figured out."

And then I smiled, took his money, and walked away.

And this is the part I'm kind of ashamed of.

That afternoon I went to the goodwill store and got some accessories for my new slave. When Cooper showed up at school the next morning, I showed him what he was supposed to wear that day. A banana yellow neglige with white lace trim, a pair of furry claw foot bear slippers, and a matching white lace parosol which he was to hold over my head as I walked for the rest of the school day.

And I'll be damned if that fool didn't go right along with it. It was the talk of school that day. And that's why I was cool and he wasn't.

To be fair, I did make friends with the nerd that day, and when he told me that no one would go to the prom with him, I told him I would be his date. And I didn't even do anything to humiliate him. I figured there was only a few weeks of school left and Cooper was graduating, so the damage couldn't be too terrible. So I'm really not a terrible person, right?

And no, there was no funny business, I'm not that much of a humanitarian.

And as I was goggling for a picture of a nerd I came across this chick:

To which I say, in a moment of nerd bashing nostalgia:

DAMN honey! If you're gonna get a dorky computer tattoo on your lower back, at least wax your tail first!

Green Eyed Monster

2005-06-09T03:31:00.000-07:00

...and some random thoughts at 4 AM.

I decided brown eyes are boring.

So I went out and bought some green ones.

Here they be.

I got blue ones too but I haven't opened the box yet.

Other than that, applying for jobs and whatnot. I decided the state bar probably wasn't kidding when they said I HAD to pay my bar fees or get my licensed supended so I finally broke down and forked over the nearly $600 they wanted. (Sheesh). Usually your firm pays for things like that but I got canned right around the time they were due. Niiice timing, evil ones!

I've decided one thing I like about Califronia is the ethnic diversity. And here's why. I think that if you have the conviction of mind to say something bigoted, I should get the enjoyment of watching you get your ass kicked. It's only fair.

Don't get me wrong, I believe in freedom of speech. I mean, for the government to kick your ass for your beliefs would be wrong. Way wrong. I'm talking about a good old fashioned ass whooping by the people to whom your venom is directed. I think we should support some kind of bill to allow exception for ass kicking in those kind of circumstances. Mostly because its fun for me to watch.

The Guinea Pig

2005-06-01T00:32:00.000-07:00

Ginny. Is that so hard? “With a ‘g’, like Gin, the drink,” I usually tell people. It’s not that I hate my name, necessarily. I mean, I could think of some better ones, but it’s not the worst. In school, I actually didn’t get much flack for it.

There was one girl in school whose name was just an unpronounceable jumble of letters, much too long to fit in the standard test form spaces on those multiple choice bubble tests we were forced to take every year. She wisely decided to shorten it. Unwisely, she picked two letters in her name which were ‘T’ and ‘J’. This was in the eighties. From that day forward, she was known as TJ Hooker. Poor kid. I saw her name on “classmates.com” a few months ago, and despite myself, blurted out loud, “Hey! TJ Hooker!” She’s probably still scarred from it.

My worst problem was that “Ginny” is short for “Virginia”, and if I tried to cram “Virginia” in one of those test forms, I usually ended up with “Virgin”. That’s not so bad for a fifth grader, I suppose. But when I worked at the bank as a loan processor and had my own email, the company policy was to assign emails with the first seven letters of the first name and the first letter of the last name. So, when people wanted to confirm my email, they would always say, “Is your email address really ‘Virgin-I-R’?”

I guess it could have been worse, my last name could start with an M.

Anyway, my name didn’t give me too much trouble. I opted for the lesser of two evils and put “Ginny” on everything that I could, from school registration to resumes, figuring it was harder to screw up… partly because anyone who has ever known me my whole life has called me that, and partly because it seemed harder to mutilate.

There is one corruption, however, which I took great pains to keep hidden from anyone who might be able to use as a weapon against me. That is, if you pronounce the G in Ginny hard instead of soft, my name is transformed into “Guinea”. Aside from immediately conjuring images of naked pygmies, there is the further mutilation which makes it even worse. And, the next logical connection is, of course… Guinea Pig.

Luckily, no one I went to school with was ever bright enough to figure this out. My friend Stephanie, however, is bright. When I went to UCSB, a beach party school, Stephanie was at Caltech. When I joined the swim team because we got to see lots of naked guys butts and used the same bus to go to meets, Stephanie was in Academic Decathlon. Stephanie and her friends organized intellectual challenges in college that required problem solving skills and creativity. My friends and I organized a road trip in college in which we were pulled over for speeding while wearing an empty KFC bucket upside down as a hat with two holes poked out as eyes, the whole time yelling, “Hey! I’m one of the Cosby Kids! Hey, Mush Mouth, Wubba dubba dubba dubba!”

Stephanie was definitely bright enough to figure it out. No one wearing an upside down KFC bucket as a hat was going to come up with that without some help, and I wasn’t about to tell them. Luckily, Stephanie lived a hundred miles away and we only saw a lot of each other during the summer.

And, of course, Stephanie was my friend. And although she did point out to me this particular appellative aberration and used it quite mercilessly between to two of us one summer in particular, she would never have announced it to anyone who could have really used it as a real tool of evil.

So, a few months ago, while pacing outside of Jiffy Lube while chain smoking and waiting for my oil change to be finished, I was stopped dead mid pace by a brazen female voice yelling at the top of her lungs, “GUINEA!”

I froze. Stephanie has lived in San Francisco for a few years now! Who told this woman! She definitely didn’t look smart enough to figure it out on her own! I stared at her in panic. Limp, stringy, dingy blond hair, freckles… Not the cute kind of freckles, either. The kind of freckles that cross the line from character giving to just plain bad skin, like a sprinkling or corn flakes on her face. She didn’t look like an evil genius. Unbelievably, she did it again. “GUINEA!!” She said it even louder! How is this possible? People were starting to look around at each other, shrugging. They had looks on their faces as if to say, “Well, if my name was Guinea, I wouldn’t own up to it, either.”

Just as the banshee she devil in question opened her mouth for a third go at it, I decided I had to intercede. “Excuse me, are you trying to say Ginny?” I asked, clearly offended. People around me twittered.

She looked back down at her clip board. “Oh, it must be spelled wrong. It’s spelled with a G here.”

“No, it’s not spelled wrong. You said it wrong. It’s a soft G. You know, like George? Not Gorge?” My unspoken tone was, “You friggin’ illiterate moron. Get yourself some hooked on Phonics.”

So, that’s when I had to amend my hypothesis about stupid people not being able to corrupt my name. Apparently, only the very smart and the extremely stupid have this particular gift. Smart people are just aware of the fact that they are ridiculing you. The stupid people will do it because they are too dumb to know how to read.

Well, at least I showed her, I thought smugly, as I paid for my oil change and flounced out.

A few weeks ago, after I had reached the magic 3,000 mile point, there I was again… Pacing outside the Jiffy Lube across the street from my apartment, chain smoking, when I heard that same dreaded banshee devil woman’s voice screeching, “GUINEA!”

I decided that my if my last lesson in phonetics hadn’t helped her, neither would this one. I walked up to the counter. “Yep, that’s me. Guinea. What do I owe you?”

Now quit yer bitchin, Rocks! ;)

See You in Hell!

2005-05-26T19:30:00.000-07:00

This may be a shock to some of you, but apprantly I am lazy. It has nothing to do with the fact I've been slacking about updating my blog recently. No... an internet quiz told me! So it must be true. Come join me in the flames of eternal damnation!

Your Deadly Sins

Sloth: 100%

Envy: 60%

Gluttony: 60%

Lust: 60%

Greed: 40%

Wrath: 40%

Pride: 20%

Chance You'll Go to Hell: 54%

You will die while sleeping - and no one will notice.

How Sinful Are You?

Quantity over Quality!

2005-05-18T18:40:00.000-07:00

I'm feeling a lot better, but have been taking it easy... still have a little cough and runny nose that I can't shake. Which means nothing really interesting has been going on. The highlight of the week was when I passed out from ODing on Tylenol Cold and awoke to find the cap had come off while I was asleep, so I woke up in a puddle. I had that momentary "Jebus! I pissed the bed!" thought until I realized what had happened. Which is good, because we all know the only excuse for pissing yourself in your sleep is if you drink more than a twelve pack. Otherwise you're just pathetic.

You Don't Know Me

2005-05-11T15:35:00.000-07:00

Hey y'all, I'm still sick as a damn dog. So take this here test and see ho well you know me! It'll be FUN!

I made a Quiz for you! Take my Quiz! and then Check out the Scoreboard!

Ugh

2005-05-10T11:35:00.000-07:00

I'm so sick I want to die.

This is day two of head-in-a-fog-only-happy-when-in-nyquil-induced-coma-dom.

I'll try and post something interesting when I have the ability to sit upright for more than half an hour.

Ode to my online mom

2005-05-07T01:04:00.000-07:00

I've been really lucky to meet some great people on the internets.

Some of them are incredible friends, or even like online sisters or brothers. They drive me nuts sometimes, but I still adore them.

But with mothers day rolling around, I got to thinking about how one person has really become my dot mom. (Even tho she's only a year older than me).

She tells me when I'm being a bitch. Or unreasonable. Or great. And I always believe her. And she's the only person who can get away with that, so don't get any ideas the rest of you.

So Lois, thanks for being there and listening, for gently kicking my ass when I needed it, and for being a fantastic person in general. You're the shit.

The great perfume caper

2005-05-06T10:52:00.000-07:00

This morning I was lying in bed thinking about a bottle of perfume that vanished from on top of my armoire a few months ago. One day, it was just gone for no apparent reason.

I went through several possible theories in my head. My roommate took it. (But why? She has a full bottle of the same stuff. Plus, she's not a thief. Even if she is a lawyer.) It was behind the armoire.... no dice. I did something retarded like left it in the freezer. Nope. That mother fucking bottle of perfume was just gone.

So as I was lying in bed this morning thinking about my long lost bottle of perfume, I looked over at the armoire in question and had a sudden frightening realization. My new bottle of Maybe Baby was gone, too!

And suddenly I realized.

The cat had been lurking up there this morning.

I jumped out of bed and looked all around the armoire, but the perfume was nowhere in sight. Just like the last one, it had disappeared without a trace. Then I noticed the trashcan.

Sure enough, that muther fucker had made a field goal directly into the half full trash next to the goddamn armoire. And the heavy bottle of perfume promptly buried itself under a heap of tissues, so that I wouldn't see it when I took the trash out. So now I know the fate of my last bottle of missing perfume.

And I have to say I am extremely proud of myself for not drop kicking that shit weasel of a cat.

War and Peice

2005-04-30T19:11:00.000-07:00

All in all, it had been a rather disappointing meal. Those who ordered salad found it wilted, those who ordered hot food found it cold, and the bread was stale. Arielle, a coca-cola connoisseur, declared it flat, and further opined that the mix was off. I had to agree, as I was trying to consume my own beverage, which purported to be a Jack and Coke, but turned out to be mostly flat over-sweetened soda with no appreciable hint of alcohol. I was looking forward to at least a mild buzz to get me though a dreaded evening meeting, and I wasn’t about to waste another five bucks on another utterly unimpressive excuse for a cocktail. Since I was with Journal colleagues and we were going to a meeting directly afterward, I bit my tongue against doing the usual thing, which would be to waive the glass at the waitress and say, “Did you forget to put the booze in this?”

So, most of us mumbled about the bad service and poked at our disappointing food. I’m not sure why we decided to tempt fate, but someone had the idea to order a dessert to share, since none of us had really eaten our dinners. And the obvious choice for splitting something between six people is a giant piece of mud pie. It seemed like they wouldn’t be able to screw it up, right? I mean, if you order something of which the major ingredients are chocolate and ice cream, how can that possibly go wrong? We had a meeting in half an hour, it wasn’t like we could just go someplace else for dessert. If we wanted it, we’d have to get it here. So, we tempted fate. Oh, foolish mortals!

It looked appetizing enough when the waitress plopped it down and the table and ran. A large wedge of ice cream and chocolate, prone on its side like so much beached whale. “Well, there’s a lot of it!” Somebody remarked. It was true. There was… a lot. Which was good, because there were six still hungry twenty seven to thirty one year olds brandishing spoons at it.

I was shocked, therefore, when I went to dive in to the middle of the concoction with force and found that my spoon struck the top and skidded off to the side, striking the white plate upon which it rested with an audible “Clank!” Arielle looked at me dubiously and tried the same thing, with a better angle of attack. She raised the empty spoon in disbelief, eying the now obscurely bent handle with suspicion.

“Wow, that thing is really frozen,” Kelly remarked unnecessarily. We all looked at the mud pie that refused to be eaten warily. This mud pie was taunting us! A piece of mud pie thought it could beat us! We couldn’t allow ourselves to be beaten by a piece of pie! This was war.

“Alright then, girls,” Arielle declared with the grimness of a general preparing troops for battle. I half expected her to launch into the Braveheart speech. “They can take our dinners, but they can never take, our CHOCOLATE!”

What she did was almost as good. She brandished her butter knife with a flourish. Dim restaurant lighting glinted off the blade. “This calls for heavy artillery!” She declared. We all nodded and took up our weapons. “Six against one, mud pie!” I thought with satisfaction, as six butter knives darted towards the enemy. “You don’t stand a chance,” I thought smugly and I hacked at the mud pie viciously. “That will teach you, mud pie! Think twice about messing with me next time!”

In the heat of battle, a subtle counter attack like the mud pie was preparing is easy to miss. That’s what a good general is for. Some of us had managed to hack away bite sized morsels of pie and had switched to spoons for consumption mode. I was so wrapped up in the satisfaction of killing that piece of mud pie, I missed it entirely. But the mud pie had a trump card. The mud pie bit back.

General Arielle had seen it. “Stop,” she cried, grabbing my knife mid thrust. “Stop! Emergency! Emergency!” We all looked around, dazed after the violent frenzy. Arielle reached out her hand slowly, pinched her fingers into what seemed like air, and carefully drew then back, a long ice cream covered hair about seven inches long trailing in her wake.

That night, the mud pie won.

Huzzah!

2005-04-26T23:45:00.000-07:00

So I got drug to the Renaissance Faire this weekend.

Ok, noramlly I'm all over this goofy shit like white on rice. I mean, I still like Disneyland for crying out loud. I just don't know, something in me snapped when I walked through the ye olde gates of hell and saw all those dorks revelling in their dorkiness, but doing it badly. Maybe it was because it had rained that morning and some of the skinnier nerds got washed away in the deluge. Maybe it was because ye olde lease was up on the place they usually hold this fiasco. Whatever the reason, the sevententh century left me with a bad taste in my mouth and the overwhelming desire to wash renstink off of me immediately upon returning home.

The one good thing about the Ren Faire is that even when I'm in a pissed off mood, look like hell, and scowling at everyone, I'm still gonna get hit on because the whole damn place is populated exclusively with people who lack the ability to pick up on everyday social cues.

Foremost amongst the would be suitors that sought my fair hand balled in a fist at my side was "man-with-a-gingerbread-cookie on a string", which he followed me around with for awhile chanting "hey baby!" in a remarkable interpretation of the renaisance tradition of the castrate.

This is followed at a close second by the village idiot who followed me around clutching his balls and demanding I kiss him.

I found a used coin shop, and listened in horror as the so called coin expert told the woman buying a Roman coin featuring venus holding an apple that it was a biblical refrence. (NO! IT'S FROM THE JUDGEMENT OF PARIS YOU IDIOT! SHUT UP!)

But I did learn something. Apparently "angry" was often mistaken for "lesbian" in the early 1600's. I say this because I got asked if I was one by a total stranger. Twice.

By the end of the day, all I could see were a bunch of people who appeared to have missed the deadline for the starwars premier and had settled for harassing normals while wearing Birkenstocks.

I guess I lost my sense of humor someplace between ye olde pizza counter and Furry Handcuffs 'R Us.

PSA

2005-04-21T23:58:00.000-07:00

There are some psychos out there.

They are out there in real life, too. They just tend to be a little easier to spot. I figure your odds of running into one of these people are at least tripled in a medium like the internet. That may be a little bit of a conservative estimate on my part.

I've had the incredible good fortune to meet some amazing people through various electronic avenues. I adore these people and consider them good friends even though I've never actually met them "in real life". You can find some of them on the links to the right... yep, that's them! Every one of those people are folks I consider real friends. I've talked on the phone with almost all of them, but never actually met them "in real life".

Unfortunately, the psychos you meet on the internet tend to be the kind of psychos that are so fucked up they aren't even capable of carrying on a conversation with another live human being in real time. They are basically sociopaths with a keyboard. I have only met two or three people who I think have earned this title, but both times I was shocked and frightened by it because I thought I knew them.

If you are sitting there wondering if you might qualify as an internet psycho, here's a short checklist I have devised:

1) You have no actual friends "in real life".

2) You do not understand what I mean by the term "real life".

3) You get pleasure out of attempting to make people who are happier than you miserable.

4) You think being called a stalker is "cute".

5) When you walk, your knuckles/belly/and or ass drag on the floor.

If any of these warning signs seems to fit you, I urge you to seek help immediately. If you are unable to bring yourself to seek help, then I suggest amputating your arms at the wrists so that you aren't able to pollute bandwidth with your disgusting excuse for existence.

Thoughts About Flying

2005-04-16T19:41:00.000-07:00

I'm back from my D.C. whirlwind.

I still HATE flying. Yes even though I've flown before... myself... and solo'd. The control freak in me detests sitting there and being at the mercy of flight attendants, other stinky ass passengers, and the red-nosed pilot I just saw saunter out of the bar. I flew with my brother, who is a flight attendant himself, and picked up some good tricks, though. One was to buy an unopened bag of candy and give it to the crew right before take off. They LOVED us for that. It was slightly disturbing, hoever, to see the entire crew chow down on a bag of candy from a total stranger, and take a huge handful up to the cockpit for the pilot and first officer. Hopefully, terrorists never catch on to this idea.

Speaking of which, on the flight over we sat accross the aisle from a very nice middle eastern family. As a person terrified of airline flights, I was willing myself to not be a racist (I have a middle eastern grandmother, after all, and my mother was born in Saudi Arabia) and get myself all nervous over it.

Except we were flying direct to Washington D.C...

And he came back and asked if he could switch his seat to sit in the back of the plane...

And he had some friends that kept coming back to stand in the aisle, right next to the flight attendant station, and chat with him in Farsi...

Ok, so try as I might, they still made me nervous. I'm not proud of it.

The flight home was much worse. First of all, there was not one empty seat on the entire plane. I was sitting next to a woman with a terrible cold and hacking cough. And SOMEONE in that joint was doing some heinous crop dusting. What the hell are these people thinking putting a McDonalad's RIGHT outside the gate? Someone had some serious Mc intestinal distress. Thanks, I really wanted to know what that McMuffin in your lower intestine smelled like.

But, here I am, safe and sound, back to the same old problems I had before I left. The good news is I could definately live in D.C. It's a great city. I love the merto. The cherry blossoms were out in full glory and it was lovely. They have great bars. I love that you can just walk into a bar and it's filled with younger professionals, just like me. To go to a bar in LA you have to do six months of research.

So, back to the same old crap now.

Bye For Now

2005-04-12T23:12:00.000-07:00

I'm going to D.C. for a few days to scout employment and/or living arrangement opportunities... So all you kids behave, I'll be back on Sunday with tales of my adventures. :)

When it Rains...

2005-04-10T22:01:00.000-07:00

If you came here looking for a laugh, go visit my friend Bloomin Onionhead. He's the funniest dude I know. He even managed to cheer my grumpy ass up.

Y'all thought I was kidding about my theory that when shit goes bad, it goes REAL bad, huh?

Well today I found out that I'm loosing my apartment. My roommate is buying a house, and I can't afford to pay the entire rent myself on unemployment.

So... now what?

I guess I should be used to this bullshit by now. Everything seems to fall apart every year or so. Just when I get kinda comfortable. WHAM! Sucker punched in the gut.

Just because I'm used to it doesn't mean I don't hate it.

Sex and the Pity

2005-04-05T12:43:00.000-07:00

At least I don’t have herpes.

But, I have to say, if I did suffer from said affliction, I don’t think I’d choose to discuss it over dinner at a crowded restaurant.

This is what guys don’t understand about a group of women talking. No topic is off limits. I often wish that certain topics were taboo in certain settings, but it’s just not the case. Any disgusting bodily function or loathsome disease is a prime conversation topic amongst a group, as long as that group shares the common denominator of a vagina.

I think at least men have the good grace to recognize a disgusting topic when they happen across one. Women have no such detection device. Or, if we do, we’ve managed to silence that little voice inside that cries out, “Hey! This is gross! Talk about something else! Jesus Christ, people are eating here!”

Despite that fact, I’m thinking exactly this as Emily begins to go into detail about the various medications and creams she uses to control this particular ailment. As she describes the obvious difficulty of the application of one such product, I took at the sour cream on my knife I had been poised to apply liberally to the baked potato in front of me and decide I don’t need those extra calories after all.

I guess we can’t help it. It’s one of those congenital defects that go along with our chromosomal make up. Steven explained this to me once, after I had admitted I really liked the movie Moulin Rouge.

My brother Steven is one of those people to whom taste is a lethal weapon. If he found a Justin Timberlake CD hidden under the seat of my car, he’d rant for about twenty minutes about why liking that is not only a serious lapse in judgment, but a sign of personal mental weakness and lack of moral character. In return, I am put in the position of either defending something I secretly know sucks but enjoy nonetheless, or the improbable task of defending Justin Timberlake’s musical genius. Either way, I usually loose. So, on the off chance that I have fifteen extra bucks to spend on a CD, I think this as I pick up Mr. Timberlake’s latest musical confection and move on down the aisle empty handed. Steven says it’s for my own good. If nobody ever told me so, how would I otherwise know that I have bad taste?

So, I was surprised and secretly pleased when he just smiled and shook his head at my candid admission that I had borrowed the Moulin Rouge DVD from a friend and watched it every day for the last week. “You can’t help it,” he said, resigned. “You’re a girl. It’s one of those things that girls can’t help liking, no matter how terrible it is. Like apple martinis and Sex in the City.”

“I like Sex in the City!” I cried defensively. “It’s my favorite show. What’s wrong with it?” I chose not to tell him I was temporarily off apple martinis, having puked up about a quart of them while attempting a poor man’s drunk of drinking heavily on an empty stomach. That, and chicken wings which I had consumed contemporaneously.

He laughed outright this time. “Right, it’s like I said. You can’t help it. It’s some function of having ovaries or something.”

So, as I’m listening to Emily, I realize why I do like Sex in the City, and he wouldn’t. Because guys don’t understand the congenital need to talk about the most disgusting and disturbing things over food with a group of other girls. And that’s mostly what they do in Sex in the City. Maybe it’s because it’s not the kind of thing you can usually talk about to your significant other, or your mother, and it’s cheaper than a doctor. And if you do it at dinner, it makes it less formal and weird. At least for the person doing the unloading. You can get commiseration, comfort, and consolation… and then order dessert.

Dessert in question having arrived, we all settled in to hear Anna’s latest theory about why the trees at her apartment complex smell like ejaculate, taking turns attacking the chocolate fudge cake in the center of the table.

Well, I like being a girl, anyway.

Realization

2005-04-04T20:39:00.000-07:00

You know you have a raging case of PMS when seeing two grown men dryhumping makes you cry.

But seriously, when I saw Sean May and McCants engaging in some good old basketball lovin', I got all misty.

Fucking NCAA tournament. Sniff.

Change is in the Air

2005-03-30T15:27:00.000-08:00

Today I noticed that the Monarch butterflies are migrating. Big swarms of them were flying due north. Flitting clouds of orange. Little kids were running from them. The gangbanger looking guy in the car ahead of me rolled down his window and was trying to catch one.

Must be nice to have an internal clock that tells you when it's time to move on.

I guess a destination doesn't hurt, either.

Directionally Challenged

2005-03-29T16:59:00.000-08:00

Ok, I'll admit it.

I'm a bad driver.

It's actually not that I'm terrible behind the wheel itself. I've solo'd in a plane, for crying out loud. I can handle stop and go and steering. And I'm not one of those people who goes 40 in a 60 MPH zone. So no need to track me down and kill me, Onionhead.

The problem is I have a terrible sense of direction. I've lived here in Orange County for years now and I still get lost. Regularly.

I mean, if there is a 50 50 chance that I will turn the wrong way, I manage to pick wrong... EVERY TIME. Unless I've been there before and I know for a statistical fact that I should go north and not south, I will inevitable end up going the wrong direction.

I have a theory that man have a better sense of direction based upon some kind of genetic predisposition which causes them to store lead in their noses, thus acting as a compass.

The worst part is I will usually end up in a really bad part of town, and have to cruise the streets trying to find a freeway onramp while looking like an idiot blonde with "SITTING DUCK" tattooed across my forehead.

When I lived in LA I once made the mistake of going north instead of south on the harbor freeway, and ended up in Compton. I drove a good three miles before telling myself that there definitely not that many projects in Redondo Beach.

You know, I take responsibility for much of my stupidity, but for pete's sake would you look at this thing?

You need a damn PhD just to get from Santa Monica to Norwalk!

Engrish for beginners

2005-03-24T19:56:00.000-08:00

I went to get new tires on my car today. Because it's just not my style to have one thing go wrong in my life at a time. Ooooh, no. If something goes wrong, a whole shitload of things has to happen all at the same damn time, making me question my sanity, ability to function as an adult, and every choice I've ever made in my adult life.

Anyway, I had to deal with a flat tire today. So I was sitting in the lounge area reading a magazine next to an older Asian gentleman when he turned to me and said, "please, ma'am, one engrish?"

He was holding one of the many Reader's Digest's in his hands that littered the tables in the lounge, and pointing with his finger to a line of text in the story he was reading. "I am trying to learn," he explained.

I smiled at him and said "of course", leaning closer to see what he was looking at.

He pointed to the text and read aloud for me, "John asked him to stop the car so that he could take a leak." He looked at me again and asked earnestly, "please, to tell me, what is 'take a leak'?"

Maaan. It had to be that, didn't it. I cleared my throat. "Urinate?" I offered, knowing immediately that I had used a word much too large.

"Pardon me?" he said, as if I was offering him the option.

"'Take a leak' means to use the bathroom," I tried again.

Still nothing.

"Um, to pee?" I tried.

"Ahhhh," he said, recognition dawning on his face. "Urinate. Use the bathroom. Take a leak. Pee. These all mean the same thing?"

"Well, yes," I told him. Wow, I felt smart. I sure knew a lot about pissing.

"You can say 'take a leak' if you need to pee?" He asked, for clarification, apparently.

"Well, it's not a very polite way to say it," I supplied. This guy needed to know the nuances of pee talk. They should put that on the citizenship exam.

"Ahh. What is the polite way?" He enquired.

"Well, you usually can say, "I need to use the restroom."

"But in Korea, we have very clear words about if we are going to pee or poo," he said, worried.

"Well, you can just say I need to use the restroom, you don't have to tell them what you are planning on doing in there," I countered.

He nodded, apparently satisfied with that response.

Engrish is a funny language.

Please Don't Eat Me

2005-03-22T16:40:00.000-08:00

I really did update this thing yesterday and blogger ate it.

Anyway, the big news is I got fired on Friday. Yeah, I knew it was coming, there just wasn't enough work for me to do. My secretary saw the writing on the wall and quit, so they promoted her to paralegal so that she would stay. So, that took away a lot of the stuff I could bill for. Pretty much the only thing an attorney can bill for that a paralegal can't is court appearances and depositions. And with business drying up, there weren't a lot of those left. So that was that.

Anyway, I think litigation was not for me anyway. Too many pictures of dead folks all bloodied up or bloated from being in the water a few days before someone drug them out. Ick.

So I'm sending out resumes to some other kinds of jobs and see what hits. And I'm considering leaving Cali. Yeah I know, as I look around my crappy 1200 a month apartment and sigh, "Leave all this!?" But yeah, it might be time for a change of scene.

So the good news is I can write some really kick ass stuff because I have time to spend on my blog! Right? Well, I'll see about that.

Happy Birthday to Me

2005-03-16T16:41:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow is my birthday. I'm ok with it. Can't really get excited about it this year, for some reason. Although I have to confirm, having a birthday on St. Patricks day is the absolute best day to have a birthday. Especially if you are an adult. Because no matter what day of the week your birthday falls on, somewhere in town there is some Irish dude ready to pa-a-a-arty.

So for those of you too polite to ask, I'm 31 tomorrow. I suspect I've maybe got a good ten years left before I start to look and act like all those elevator ladies I can't stand in my building. The ones who just annoy the crap out of me. Stand too close, ask three times if "this is going up?", and dress like a frump. Sigh.

So another year gone. Since my last birthday, I've managed to get a job that I now want to quit. I moved. I've become more sure of a few things, and more unsure about even more. I have a few more scars. I own furniture... Which I now wonder what I will do with if I suddenly decide to move to Alaska. I got my dream of practicing in litigation, and now I want out.

All in all, probably a transitional year. Hell, at least I learned something.

Devil Inside

2005-03-14T09:03:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I had a brilliant post for you all, which I was dumb enough to compose on Blogger because my Word at home is buggy and weird. Needless to say, it went "POOF" when my computer decided to spontaneously shut off. Work of the devil? Could be.

Yesterday I was having lunch with a friend at a fancy little tea place in San Juan Capistrano (story to be posted, someday). We were trying not to listen in on the conversation behind us, but DAMN! This rather normal looking dumpy middle aged woman was telling her dining partners, with conviction, that her friend had the gateway to hell in her house.

Wow! The gateway to hell, right here in the OC!! I didn't hear her give an exact city, but if I had to guess, I'd say the gateway to hell is probably in Tustin.

Generic

2005-03-09T21:23:00.000-08:00

I have nothing to say.

Didn't you all want to know that? That's right! Nothing!

So fuck all y'all, I call this an update.

Ok, so I went to the gym today and the evil trainer woman managed to corner me and force me to weigh and measure myself. Which was fine, but I'm a little disturbed by the results.

I somehow managed to loose an inch in my waist... and GAIN TWO inches in my CHEST. WTF??

I can attribute maybe an inch to bra differential. The bra I was wearing today made them look a little pointier than usual. But TWO? This has to be the work of the devil. I have no other explanation. Thanks Satan! I knew using my channel lipstick to make upside down crosses and pentagrams all over my bedroom walls would pay off someday.

Damn You, Jessica Simpson

2005-03-07T16:00:00.000-08:00

I can't help it!

Don't get me wrong, I can't stand the woman's music. But damn if she doesn't make some good makeup and body products.

I'm all for anything that's lick-able. Lick-able! It's like Willie Wonka and the Chocolate factory on my tits! Snozberry? Who ever heard of a snozberry? Jessica Simpson, that's who.

Problem is, the woman has way overpriced things. And I'm just the sucker who will pay $50 for sugary sparkly boobies.

So Jessica, for creating a product that I will pay way to much money for despite the fact I hate you and everything you stand for, I salute you. Kudos. I look at the vapid glossy look your your eye and realize you are a marketing genius. Or at least your daddy is.

Everyone's a Critic

2005-03-03T11:11:00.000-08:00

You know, if you don't like someone's blog, there's no law that says you have to read it.

And excuse me for pointing out the obvious, but if you are so hard pressed to find a topic to write about that you have to troll around the internet looking for people's blogs to diss, maybe it's time you hung up your spurs, cowboy.

And please spare me the thoughtful rhetoric about how people who link to others are somehow involved in a "clique". You sound like that lonely fat kid in middle school who had no friends and held the superior social standing of everyone else in the universe out as some kind of proof that it was really the world, and not you, that had the noticeable body odor problem. Sorry nobody likes you much, Scooter.

So, if you like reading my stuff, thanks. If you like reading my friends, greater still. I like them, that's why they are my friends. I don't link because I'm really lazy and haven't been motivated to figure it out yet.

Anyway, thanks to everyone who reads here. I appreciate ya, lurkers and commenters alike. If you feel the need to engage in a petty little rant about how someone else's blog gets more attention than yours... because you are clearly an under-appreciated genius whose BO problem has nothing to do with the fact that you are unloved, please take this opportunity to fuck off and get a life.

In the meantime, visit my friend Becka. She's cool and she smells like flowers.

Kitty Heaven

2005-02-27T21:24:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking lately about my good friend Lois Lane. Lois lost her father this week after a long and courageous battle with cancer. I can relate, since I lost my mother to cancer a few years ago.

So I was lying in bed tonight tossing and turning like I normally do, and being harassed by the cats. I got to thinking about something strange that happened a few months after my mom died.

Let me preface this by saying I don't know for a fact that there is life after death. But I suspect that there is. And this story is largely the reason why.

When my mother died, I was 22. I had gone back home after graduating with my undergrad degree to help out and work, and take some time off before I went to law school. A few months after my mom died, I was substitute teaching and waiting for my law school application results. I was living with my dad, my little brother who was still in high school, and my cat of 17 years, Pepe (named after the famous looney toon, of course). Pepe was the greatest cat ever. Super smart. Super loyal. Loved me unconditionally. My dad hated him because he had a penchant for vomiting and peeing in unwanted places. Pepe had, therefore, been banished to the backyard and my room, which had a door to the outside.

One Saturday morning, I opened my eyes to see my mother come walking into my room from the door that led outside. She was dressed all in white. My mother always was slightly corny. Of course, she wouldn't make an appearance from beyond the grave in peach. Puh-lease.

She stood in the open doorway as I looked at her in disbelief. Suddenly, from behind her, Pepe came running up to me and jumped on my bed. I hadn't seen him run... or jump... like that in years. His fur was fluffy and glossy like it had been when he was a kitten. The skin disease which had caused him to look rather scabby and patchy in the last few years was totally gone. I stroked his soft back, and he purred and did that little half meow he always did.

"I just want to let you know, I have your cat. He's fine and he's with me," my mother said.

I suddenly felt like a diver struggling to the surface for air. Rising, against my will, to the surface of reality. I opened my eyes and looked at the door, half expecting her to still be standing there. But she, and Pepe, were gone. Only the bright mottled morning light streaming through the windows was the same.

I got up and went to look for my cat in my pajamas.

His food was in the usual place, untouched from the night before. I realized then that he was dead.

I picked up the dish and went to the nearby trash bin to throw it away. My father came rushing out from inside the house, grabbed it out of my hands, and tossed it in without opening the lid more than three inches. When I saw the guilty look on his face, I knew he had something to do with it. And that whatever was left of my cat was sitting in the trash dumpster like a used banana peel. I just nodded at him and walked away. Talking to my father never helped anything anyway.

It turns out that my father had the brilliant idea of putting poor Pepe "out of his misery" by giving him what he supposed was a lethal dose of morphine, which was in ample supply from my mother's illness and death. Unfortunately, since my dad is an idiot, all Pepe did was crawl under his car and fall asleep. My father ran him over as he was leaving for work the next morning, then finished him off... presumably with a shovel.

I don't think I would have been able to handle that information without my mother telling me that everything was ok.

So, maybe I had some subconscious idea that my cat was dead for some reason, and invented the whole thing in my sleep. I don't know. All I do know is that if it was "only a dream", it was the most vivid and realistic one I've ever had, and I usually don't even remember my dreams.

Or maybe our loved ones really do look out for us from wherever they are. I'd like to think so.

Wouldn't you?

If at first you don't succeed....

2005-02-26T13:25:00.000-08:00

... try sucking harder.

That's how the saying goes, right?

There's been a lot of talk floating around blogs about what consititutes a "success".

This is something I've been thinking a lot about lately as I spent a lot of time, effort, energy, and made a lot of sacrifices to become this thing called a lawyer. Then I realized I didn't become anything. I'm still the same person. I just wear a suit. And maybe that's why I'll never be the best lawyer. I'll get by. I'm competent. I can figure things out as they come up. But I'll never be F. Lee Baily. I think I'm ok with that.

I mean, it's just a job. It's what I do, not what I am. The happiest I ever was in a job setting was when I worked as a secretary for a company that managed a bunch of local malls. Now THAT was fun. Because I got to call the Mrs. Feild's cookie guy and tell him the rent was late. And he'd bring me a check and a dozen warm chocolate chip. Emmmmm.

So, I guess I'm a success in that I accomplished my goals. I passed the bar on the first time. I graduated with honors. I am working in litigation, just like I said I would.

So why do I still feel like I need to be sucking harder?

Attack!

2005-02-24T11:48:00.000-08:00

I've been getting my ass kicked at work.

Tuesday was especially bad. So bad that immediately after I got home I drug my brother to a Mexican restaurant where I know they serve a mean Margarita.

Then I got home and had a few beers. I was working my way through a bottle of wine when the attack occurred.

I was relaxing into that blissfully numb state of nothingness, leaning back on my couch under the pretense of watching "Frontline" with my brother. So nice... relaxed... eyelids drooping...

Suddenly, a heavy object descended on my stomach with force, knocking the wind out of me. I frantically opened my eyes and shoved at the object now clawing me in the gut, looking for purchase with it's exposed talons. I managed to fling the object, and my eyes registered a flailing ball of fur which flew towards my coffee table and sent the glass of wine sitting there flying all over the carpet, me, the ball of fur in question, my brother, and probably the ceiling.

My cat had taken advantage of me in my moment of weakness. Seeing my underbelly exposed and vulnerable, he took seized the moment and attacked me at a weak point.

This is why I sleep with my door locked.

Stressed

2005-02-22T16:24:00.000-08:00

Update:

Friday I quit smoking.

Monday night I started again.

My brother has popped into town from Portland and will be complaining about my house, me, the cats, my taste in music, clothes, books, and friends, for an undetermined amount of time.

No major injuries to report but my second toe on my right foot has stopped going numb and now is just a lovely shade of purple from me bashing it while getting out of the shower a week and a half ago.

I bought some new lotion with a bronzer in it (I didn't realize it had a bronzer) and it turned my nails and in between my fingers a lovely shade of leathery brown.

It's raining like a mutha here. You might have heard about it on the news. Today I realized that concrete thing next to my apartment is a river. Who knew?

That's pretty much it. Don't know how long my bro will be in town, so I might be on and off for the next few days. Everyone is socal stay dry, avoid muddy hills, and large rocks. (*Yeah, we know all about you Doc...)

Rain Complainer

2005-02-21T20:56:00.000-08:00

Tonight I went down to my car to get a bottle of water from my trunk for my brother who decided to crash my place. He drops in from Portland on a moments notice because he's weird like that.

He's now eating a huge burrito on my nice white down comforter.

Anyway, when I was down stairs I saw this guy again. That guy was in the exact same spot, muttering to himself about the damn rain again. Jesus Christ, sometimes it feels like my life is on endless repeat.

This time I was smart enough to ignore him. As I was getting in to the elevator, the woman next to me looked at me and said, "Who is he talking to?"

"Himself," I told her. "And whatever you do, don't respond or make eye contact."

Learned Something New Today

2005-02-18T14:39:00.000-08:00

.

I had court in San Bernadino this morning. I thought the name of the plaintiff's firm sounded familiar, and at some point I realized that I had an interview scheduled there that I blew off. They wanted me in the Bakersfield office. Pft.

I'm representing a man whose dog-who-is-not-a-pitbull-but-looks-suspiciously-like-one knocked over some ~~little old lady~~45 year old bitch. The "lady" apparently realized several months later after she wanted to get some improvements done on her home that every part of her body was in agony and is now wondering if the 100K policy limits will be enough to compensate her for the pain of being bowled over by a pooch.

I got there early. I managed to find the courtroom (no elevators?? It's on the fourth floor! I pay good money to work out, you know! And I don't wear high heeled boots when I do!) I went inside to check in with the clerk. I handed her my card, scribbling the calendar number and my clients name on it. Then I park it to wait for the judge to take the bench. I can hear him blasting classical music from his chambers.

"Ms?" I hear the clerk shout a few minutes later. "You're here for the defendant?"

"Yes," I said. That's why I put "DEFENDANT" on the card, you mensa member.

"But they're in default!" She said. Like I just ruined her vacation plans.

"Well I'll be filing a motion to set aside the default," I informed her. It's none of your business anyway... why are you bothering me? I think.

"Hmph. I don't see how you even have standing," she said. Ooooohhh, looks like somebody's been watching too much Law and Order! Next time try turning the volume up so you can get a clue what's going on. Standing.... what an idiot. Since I wasn't about to start to argue with a moron, I crossed my legs and sat there wiggling my sore toes in my boots from my stair expedition. I lost three Chirpas on the way. Brutal.

It was then I saw it.

A woman walked by me... Presumably an attorney as I saw approach the bar and waddle into the center of the courtroom... with a mullet.

Now, I have heard about this phenomenon.. the female mullet. She had the short feathered bangs in the front, and in the back, long stringy dirty blonde hair. Yes, that's right. Party in back, business in the front, all the way. I was so excited to see one of these, in it's natural environment, it almost made the rainy drive into the bowels of hell known as the inland empire worth it. I felt a little teary. She sat behind me and I fought every urge to turn around and look at it some more. Or go up to her and poke it with a pen. A real live mullet, and not even at a white trash costume party!

I was so wrapped up sitting there thinking about the mullet I didn't even realize my case had been called. I grabbed my file and headed to the defense table to make my appearance.

I'll be damned if opposing counsel wasn't mullet lady.

And I'll be even more damned if I wasn't so hypnotized by the power of that incredibly bad hairdo, I have to idea what the hell happened during that hearing. I may have just stood there with my mouth hanging open staring at her and drooling chanting, "mullet mullet mullet mullet mullet..."

So what did I learn today? Don't bother wearing an expensive suit and nice shoes to court in the inland empire. You'll just look out of place. And if all else fails, never under estimate the power of an incredibly bad 'do to throw your opponent off their game.

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

2005-02-15T20:48:00.000-08:00

"Martini Bar" had such a nice ring to it, I thought we should give it a try.

Three lady-lawyers, in the 28-30 year old age bracket, hanging out at a martini bar and trying to get home drunk at 2 AM. What could possibly go wrong?

First of all, they served those martinis in buckets. After one sip, Teresa declared she hated it. I was fucked up after sucking down an entire trough full of vodka already. Erin, ever frugal, decides she's not letting it go to waste and will drink Teresa's.

We are sitting in a taxi on the way home. We are going to the train station where we will catch the last train to Teresa's apartment. This is when Erin realizes she has to pee. And NOW.

She implores Teresa to stop. Teresa informs her we can't, we'll miss the train. I was too drunk to argue on anyone's behalf.

We make it to the train station, with three minutes to spare. Teresa tells Erin that she has three minutes if she wants to speed pee.

"Never mind now." Erin says.

"Wait, you were dying a minute ago in the cab. What happened?"

"SHE PEED IN THE CAB!" I deduced too loudly for everyone's comfort.

"Erin!" Teresa says, scandalized.

Erin shrugs. "What was I supposed to do?" She argues. "I had to pee. I drank two buckets of martinis. "

We get on the train. A lanky black man approaches us and asks if he can come to our place. "I got weed!" he announces. No thanks, we say. He moves on to another group of girls at the end of the train.

As I was getting off at our stop, I saw him getting arrested.

I felt bad. Unless he was lying about the weed...

Happy Valentines Day

2005-02-14T11:10:00.000-08:00

I went to the Huntington Library, Gardens and Museum yesterday with Cynthia. The rains from Friday had knocked the camellias off of the trees, and we wandered the paths in the dense camellia forest lined with a pink and red carpet of petals.

We watched the Koi in the Japanese garden leap repeatedly out of his pond, like he was happy to be alive. No one seemed to notice it but us.

We sat in the zen garden and contemplated existence.

We chatted with an old woman wearing a straw hat in the herb garden about squirrels and the difference between French and English lavender.

We wandered through the British watercolors exhibit. She liked the Gainsboroughs. I liked the Turners and the Blakes.

We visited Blue Boy and I talked about the London Academy of Art and why Reynolds and Gainsborough hated each other.

We sniffed the lilacs... or wisteria... or whatever these are...

Then we had tea and scones and finger sandwiches with the crust cut off and laughed at middle aged ladies in hats.

And yes... I KNOW it's valentines day. So happy Valentines day everyone. I was forced to make chocolate covered strawberries at work today, thus retaining my running title of "Office Donkey". Apparently the senior partner's hot tub fell from one story to another today, and he decided not to come to work today. (Overuse for the big V-day weekend perhaps? Ewwwww...) So our little office party was cancelled. Good thing I stayed up last night and made my tired ass deal with tempering chocolate.

Ouch

2005-02-10T21:01:00.000-08:00

Is it possible that I hate the way comments work now... even more? Thanks Blogger!

Today I realized that working out is a terrible, horrible idea and should not be attempted unless you are completely insane.

Since I am completely insane and terrified of bathing suit season, I've been going to the gym every day.

Today, in my haste to appear svelte as I jumped on the machine which forces you to spread eagle and grunt like an animal, I scraped my leg on a bolt or something. I brushed it off because I was in GI Jane mode and because I don't like to draw attention to the fact that I am a fucking klutz.

About half an hour later, when I was stretching, I noticed a bright red streak running down my leg and pooling at my sock. Upon closer inspection (streeeetch) I realized that I had scraped a long line of skin off the inside of my calf and was now bleeding like a sweaty, smelly, stuck pig.

Scarred for life, I guess I'm wearing one of these come May.

Smile

2005-02-09T17:18:00.000-08:00

As I was walking in my building today, I noticed a good looking man walking towards the same glass doors I was about to enter. He exited, and when he was about even with me said, "Smile." And because I was surprised, I did. It was a total fake smile that I've been accustomed to plastering on my face. It's the same smile I give to judges who are condescending. It's the same smile I give to the senior partner when he asks me to do something again that he should have explained better in the first place. The corners of my mouth turn up, my teeth exposed.

Since when it this acceptable? This happens to me quite a lot. Who said this was ok?

What would happen if I walked up to a male attorney in the lobby of their building and ordered them to smile?

Hey everybody... If you see me on the street and I'm not smiling, take the hint. I'm not smiling for a reason. Maybe I have a headache. Maybe my cat just died. Maybe I hate you and everything you stand for. Maybe I'm thinking about something more important than... Oh, I don't know.... you.

Insomnia

2005-02-07T12:18:00.000-08:00

I can't sleep.

This always happens when I have court in the morning in a far away place. Tomorrow isn't too bad, Riverside. But the fact that I have to get up earlier than usual and be there on time or else really bugs me. I like being at the office in the morning, where I always intend to get there a half hour early but usually manage to stroll in a half our later than the "staff".

That's another weird thing. I'm not "staff" anymore. I'm management. I got a card and a lunch on bosses day. How odd is that? The "staff" made me a corny sign with a poem on it that I hung in my office. Actually, one of the secretaries got mad because no one else hung theirs up so she hung it in my office and I'm afraid to take it down. Even though it's kind of ugly. It's this pepto-bismol pink monstrosity. Man, I'm a born leader.

So I sit here, too awake to sleep but knowing that I'll hate having to wake up after two hours of fitful rest that I will finally manage to get. Then I'll drive like a zombie to the courthouse, do my thing, drive back and be a wreck the rest of the day.

The problem is the minute I lay my head on that pillow my mind starts racing. I have to draw four motions in limine by Friday. I forgot to do a calendar slip for a trial date I got last week. That diet coke I had for lunch today really tasted like regular. Are the Togo's people trying to trick me? Oh, and shit, I forgot that application for determination of good faith settlement that I need to get out... I need to get that out as soon as I can, but definitely those motions in limine are more important... And I need to get a declaration out to that attorney who's an idiot. Maybe if I call her and explain it again she'll get it this time. General damages for a cross claim in indemnity, what a moron! Did I finish the separate statement of undisputed facts in that accident case? Man, the pictures in that file. One lady was missing the top of her head. And then that picture just of the severed leg. Oh, and that kid who got smashed up on the freeway. The drowned baby...

And before you know it, I'm trapped in my own personal self created hell.

On the Subject of Me

2005-02-04T10:26:00.000-08:00

Some one asked me to describe myself in three words, and honestly, I couldn't do it. And I'm kind of glad for that.

My friend, Arielle, for example, refuses to eat fruits or vegetables. Besides the fact that her colon is about ready to drop right out of her body, the idea that an entire food group is closed right out of your definition of what you "like" frightens and disturbs me. So, even though I know I hate salmon, I find myself ordering it in a restaurant from time to time anyway. I take three bites of it, and then I tell myself, "Yeah. You really don't like salmon."

Conflicts are a source of power... and boy, am I conflicted. Ergo, I'm pretty dang powerful. And no, not smelling. Although I did get a little crazy with the "sweet Pea" body spray this morning.

So here's the truth.

The truth is, I'm a brave coward. I'm a stupid intellectual. I'm a kind bitch. A level headed hothead. Junk food gourmet. A chaste whore. An honest liar. A hard working lazy ass. I'm thoughtlessly thoughtful. Recklessly careful... Complicated and simple.

In short, I'm a mess. And the most pulled together person you will ever meet.

The Hustler Lunch

2005-02-01T13:22:00.000-08:00

One thing about my job, you learn to spot a hustle coming from a mile away. It's like spidey sense. About 15 minutes ago, I was running some errands at lunch when my spidey sense kicked into high gear.

I was walking out of the local grocery store when I was approached by a boy who looked to be about 20. Not bad looking, with blonde hair and an athletic frame. He looked like he wanted something, and that is always a bad sign. I pretended not to notice him and popped my trunk to put the groceries I had just purchased away.

"Hi, how are you?" he asked as he got close. He smiled a warm smile. Another bad sign. If people really need help they are seldom smiling about it. I pretended I didn't hear him.

"Can I ask you for help? You seem friendly." He said. "Oh shit," I thought. Is he going to try and convert me or sell me candy? I looked for the tell-tale mini cooler stocked with jumbo sized gummi bears and kit kats, but I didn't see anything. "Ohh, he's good", I thought.

"I hate to be the one to break this to you, but I'm not friendly," I informed him. He still stood there with that plastered grin, not budging. This one is gonna be tough. He just laughed.

"Are from around here?" he asked.

"I'm from all over," I told him. This one was tenacious! Still standing there grinning! It's a bad sign, it means they are either filled with the holy ghost or high!

"I'm from Idaho," he supplied.

"I'm sorry," I retorted. Still nothing but a grin. I decided to going back to ignoring him and finish putting my groceries in the trunk while he got around to the point.

"Well, the reason I'm here is I'm trying to raise some money for college," he started. Ok, finally getting to the point. At least it wasn't religion. He shoved a laminated card in my hand that I didn't look at and tried to shove back at him. He put his hands into the pockets of his cargo shorts and continued talking. "What I need for you to do is adopt me for two days. I'll come over to your house, clean, wash your car, whatever."

Wha..? Wait, here's one I hadn't heard before. This kid wants to come over and be my slave for two days? I stood there with my mouth open, one hand on the open trunk and the other suspended mid-air with the laminated card hovering between us.

He took a step closer. "The ladies tell me I give an excellent foot and back massage," he continued conspiratorially. Hold on... Am I getting propositioned by a kid in the parking lot of Ralphs? His last line made me bust up laughing. "No thanks," I said, shutting the trunk.

"Why, are you married?" he asked, worried.

"No." I admitted.

"Do you have kids?" he asked.

"No, and I don't want any, so I'm going to have to pass up your offer to 'adopt' you," I started to make my way to the drivers side door.

"Are you sure?" He asked. The first time he wasn't smiling.

"You want to take my cart back to the front of the store?" I asked, tossing his laminated card in the kids seat. "I'll give you five bucks."

"No." He said, getting angry. His pride was clearly hurt. "I'm not a panhandler!" He chided me. This kid just offered to sell himself into slavery to me for two days and he's offended by the proposition he take my cart back to the store? I smell bullshit.

"Ok, then have a good day. Good luck with getting someone to buy you!" And I got in my car to think about what the hell just happened.

As I was leaving, I saw him skulking out of the parking lot, towards the freeway.

Honk if You Like Ass

2005-01-31T20:30:00.000-08:00

I had a job interview in butt-fucked Egypt.

This was a couple months ago, to be honest I can't even remember where exactly the job was now. It was to be a District Attorney in some God-awful hell hole in Northern California. Somewhere there's a lot of trees but everything still managed to smell uncannily of ass.

Since I was unemployed at the time, I couldn't afford to fly and rent a car. That meant I had to drive six hours to get to this interview for a job that I knew I didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of getting. However, I had made it fairly far in the interview process for the Orange County District Attorney's office, maybe the fact that I was going to a town where no one in their right mind would want to voluntarily spend time in unless they were in jail would help my odds.

So I got in the car, got myself a big coffee, and started driving.

Somewhere in the mountains I decided to take a pee break after the coffee started to kick in. In case you didn't know, driving a clutch in heels is murder. Driving a clutch in heels for hours because you don't want to take your shoes off and get a run in your hose before your big interview is nearly impossible. I uncramped myself from the Sentra, did my business, and folded myself back into the car for another few hours.

About this time something weird started happening. Every time I passed one of those big 18 wheel trucks, they would honk at me. I'd get behind one, decide it was going too slow, and speed up and pass on the left just like normal. Sure enough, every time I got level with the cab, I'd hear a "HOOOONK!!! HONK HOOOONK!!"

The first time it happened, I decided I must be pretty damn sexy. A glance in my rearview mirror confirmed that this was not the case.

After about the fifth time, I decided there must be something wrong with my car. I turned off the radio and gripped the steering wheel, white knuckled, listening for the sound of a small child caught under my bumper. Nothing.

Once when I was in the car with my friend Arielle, we were passing a truck while sitting in the car and chatting. I happen to be laughing when I looked up and made eye contact with a trucker with this huge grin plastered on my face. He followed us for about 20 miles honking and flashing his lights, trying to get us to pull over. The whole time Arielle was yelling at me, "WHY DID YOU SMILE AT HIM?" Since that day, I have made it a policy to avoid eye contact with truckers.

Finally, after being honked at about a dozen times, I decided to let the policy go. I looked in my rear view mirror. I saw the truck driver pointing down towards his lap. Hmmm. That's odd. I wonder what he's trying to say?

I looked down at my own lap and then I noticed it. The side of my skirt had gotten tangled in the seat belt when I got back in my car, and the entire right side of my panty-hose encased thigh and butt was visible to anyone with a high vantage point.

I'd like to issue a blanket apology to all high profile vehicles traveling on the I-5 at the date and time in question.

Depo Dickwad

2005-01-27T21:45:00.000-08:00

It was my second deposition.

Depositions can be stressful. First, ya got some asshole lawyer there who will make it difficult for you if he can. Second, ya got some asshole plaintiff there who will have selective amnesia, lie, ask you to repeat the same question five hundred times over and over, and play dumb. In my second deposition, I had all of these things.

Add to that a guy who spoke only Chinese and an interpreter who didn't speak exactly the same dialect.

Looking back over the transcript from a few months ago, I confirmed my suspicion at the time that the plaintiff's attorney was a grade A dick. He objected to even the most simple questions, repeatedly interrupting me. Even though it wasn't on the record, reading the words brought back the memories of him continually making huge circles noisily with his cheap ballpoint pen on his dog eared legal pad. Every time he did that, it set my teeth on edge. He could tell, so he kept doing it.

After about two hours of constantly being interrupted over trivial and unnecessary bullshit, I felt the tears start to sting the back of my eyes. "Oh God," I thought, panicking. What if I cry in a deposition? There's no crying in depositions! I think if you do that, you automatically get disbarred! I blinked hard and pretended to study my notes. Don't cry don't cry don't cry. Luckily, my next question was one that brought on another bout of temporary amnesia and plaintiff's attorney called a time out.

Then the worst thing happened. Jackhole plaintiff's attorney sat across from me and reached for the coffee carrafe in the center of the table and poured himself a cup. He looked at me smugly over the brim as he took a sip.

"Mmm. Good coffee," he said with sarcasm. "Did you make it?"

It was then that my mood shifted from upset to fucking pissed off.

"No," I said in my best I'm not amused with you asshole voice. A hundred things ran through my head to say to this jerk at that moment. "What's-a-matter, isn't it the way your mommy makes it?" "No, I don't make coffee for assholes, I just take their client's depositions." "Yeah, I made it with the money I saved from what I was going to settle for until you pissed me off."

Instead, I just looked at him and smiled. There was no way I was crying now. He crossed the line and I realized it wasn't that I was bad at what I did... it was that he was a no good monkey fucker who was getting his jollies from pissing me off, and it wasn't going to happen anymore.

He must of realized it, because actually the rest of the ordeal went surprisingly smoothly. Or maybe the guy just ran out of steam and watching me get flustered just wasn't fun anymore.

There are basically two kinds of dicks in the world. The kind of dick who acts like a dick by ignoring you or being inconsiderate, and the kind of dick who acts like a dick by design. I call these the dick by default and the dick by design folks.

The dick by design people tend to piss me off more because I think it must be a lot of work to achieve that level of assholishness. The fact that they actually have to put forth the effort to be a dick increases the annoyance factor of said dickishness.

Boy. That was a whole lot of dick I just crammed in one paragraph.

I think that's enough dick for me tonight. Trying to talk about this much dick gets ~~hard~~ difficult.

Confessions of a Spaz

2005-01-27T10:59:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I suck at things which girls are supposed to be good at.

For example, I'm a bad birthday person. Most girls are good at it. I am not one of those girls. Luckily, one of my best friends birthday's falls on the same day of the month as me. And my birthday is easy to remember because it's St. Patrick's day.

Inability to force dates to remain in my head longer than about five seconds causes me to make phone calls like the one I made to Cynthia on Tuesday.

Hello?

Hi. It's me. Ginny.

Hi. What's up?

Am I a bad friend?

Ummm. Noooo.

Did I forget your birthday? I did, didn't I. It's the sixteenth, isn't it. Oh god. I did. I hate myself. I'm so sorry. Please forgive me.

My birthday is on the twenty-eighth, dork. It's Friday. We're going to San Diego for the weekend, remember?

Um. Oh! Right! Of course! San Diego! Of course I remember. That's right. We are. No, no... I didn't forget. I'm super excited! NO! I just thought that we were going this weekend in honor of your birthday, which was actually the sixteenth. Yeah. OK! So... let me know when you get a hotel room, ok? OK! Super excited! OK! Yeah, I'll talk to you later!

I chalk this up to another episode of "things I'm supposed to be good at but I'm not".

I also left a highlighter open on my desk, which touched my mouse pad all night and now there is a bright pink moist spot there, which gets all over my right hand everytime I roll my mouse in that direction.

But, you know what? There are plenty of things I'm good at. Umm. I'm good at shopping! That's a girl thing. Aaand, umm... I know what a compound noun is!

I figure right there I'm already ahead of the game.

Outflanked by the Hilton Sisters

2005-01-25T13:05:00.000-08:00

I was hunting alone.

Hunting alone has certain benefits. You can pace yourself and focus on your prey more efficiently. Moreover, you are at an advantage in terms of mobility and speed. Don't get me wrong, camaraderie is nice, but if you are serious about the hunt sometimes another predator can only slow you down. Additionally, if your preferred game is of a scarce variety, you have automatic competition.

What I was hunting today was the most elusive beast of all. The kind of quarry that only appears once a year. It was the annual 75% off sale at Pure Beauty. The chance at obtaining a $25 lip gloss for six dollars was overpowering to my lazy ass psyche, and pulled me with an inexorable certainty out of my warm bed and towards the hunting grounds. Today, blood would be spilled. I would bask in an orgy of bloody carnage, then raise gory clenched fists over my haul and cry out to the shopping gods.

I skulked out of the apartment silently. This was solo work.

Although I had heard about it in advance, I was unprepared for what seeing high quality cosmetics at drugstore prices did to me. I stood in slack jawed amazement and stared... It was indescribably beautiful. Bins stuffed with lip gloss, eye shadows, lipsticks, smelly things, fizzy things, frilly things... and it was all mine!

Now, when you are a hunter there are two types of animal you want to avoid. The first type is the middle aged housemom type. This is the kind who will actually see you pick up a desirable item and snatch it out of your hand. They are fearless. Not the type you want to tangle with. When approached by one of these animals, it is best to remain at a distance and observe. The desirability of something they want to purchase increases exponentially if they know you want it, too. Play it cool. It is the sudden dart for that elusive $15 cashmere sweater in the last of its size that will prompt them to react. Also, they tend to be bottom heavy with a low center of gravity, and thus easy to knock over.

Today there were no soccer moms in sight. The day was mine! It was then I was confronted by the second type of animal you want to avoid in a shopping hunt. The little rich girl.

The little rich girl is annoying because you know it doesn't make much of a difference to her that she's saving $18 on that lipgloss. You know she probably has it at home. The little rich girl is in this for the pure bloodlust. she also has absolutely no respect for anyone else's personal space, as she has been told her entire life that she is the center of the universe and the sun rises and sets in the crack of her bony ass.

About the time I had settled myself in front of the bin I was most interested in, a pair of dead ringers for Nicky and Paris Hilton came sauntering in the door, followed at a respectable distance by their father on a diamond studded leash. Clearly, he was the bankroll for this little expedition. Paris and Nicky sauntered towards me, their sharp hipbones pointed menacingly towards me from their hip hugger designer jeans.

Frantically, I began scooping up handfuls of makeup. Mine! I was here first! Sure enough, I was flanked. Nicky, on one side, snaked a bony arm under me and plucked particularly lovely gel blush I hadn't seen yet out from under me. Meanwhile, Paris dug one of her razor sharp hips in my ass and grabbed a sparkly green eyeshadow. From behind them, I heard their pet father looking at bubble bath and jabbering "Dirty Girl? Dirty Girl? They have a bubble bath called Dirty Girl? AHAHAHA!"

I was out flanked. I knew it. I took my basket to a safe distance and weeded out the undesirable... Foundation made for black skin, an after wax lotion for the bikini area, and three of the four identical mascaras I had swooped up in my last desperate play.

And even at 75% off, I managed to spend a hundred dollars.

But I saved $300!

Head Shop Girl

2005-01-20T15:27:00.000-08:00

I was standing in front of the elevator doors last night tapping my pointy heeled leather pumps impatiently as I waited for the elevator. 5:30 PM is the traditional office exodus time for the working stiff who likes to make it look as if he’s staying late every night. It’s just late enough to have cleared out most of the suckers.

The elevator dinged, and the doors opened. I got into the mirrored tomb with two other mid-level executives and headed south.

“There was another project we were working on that was located on Victoria Avenue,” one was telling the other. Victoria Avenue? That sounds like where I grew up in Ventura County.

“Yeah,” the other one was saying. “There was this head shop there…” Then they both laughed because they were talking about a head shop. Almost ashamed of myself, I knew exactly what they were talking about.

“I can’t remember the name of it,” the guy continued. “It’s a big building, like three stories! Oh, what was it? It's on the tip of my tounge...”

I had to say it. I knew exactly what they were talking about. “It’s Salzer’s,” I volunteered. They laughed even harder. Upwardly mobile lawyer chick that knows the good head shops in a four-county radius.

“But it’s not just a head shop,” I corrected them. “They also have a whole floor that sells only porn and dildoes.”

The elevator dinged again, and I got off on my floor. "Have a good day!"

An Open Letter to Daphne Gallagher

2005-01-18T18:42:00.000-08:00

Dear Daphne,

Although I've never met you, I feel the need to write this and let you know that something has been bothering me lately.

Look. We all have money problems. The last time I had good credit I was in High School and my ass was at least 20% smaller. In fact, this morning I called my student loan people and promised them my first born child and a lung if they would extend my deferment another two months.

However, I have to say it is not OK to keep giving out my number to your bill collectors. I have my own bills I am ignoring! I can't spend my time ignoring yours as well! Today when I got home from work there were three messages on my answering machine... and they were all for you!

Look, it's bad enough that no one wants to talk to me. But it's just cruel to get my hopes up like that only to find out the bill collectors are looking for you at my place again. I don't even want to know why you started giving out my home phone number to your bill collectors. I know you didn't live here before me, because I had a long chat with the guy who lived here before's probation officer and he didn't mention you.

Anyway, I'd like to ask that you please stop giving out my number to your bill collectors. One by one I'm calling and telling them I don't know you and never heard of you, but if you keep giving out the number I'm fighting a loosing battle here. I need your help in this Daphne. Please, let me sleep in just one Saturday without the phone ringing and hearing someone on the other end ask for Daphne Gallagher. I'm begging ya.

Sincerely,

Ginny

P.S. If you are looking for someone to harass, may I suggest the direct line for the Ikea in Costa Mesa?* (714) 444-4532.

*Ikea story to follow in future post. I don't have the fortitude to relive that nightmare right now.

Malaise

2005-01-18T10:44:00.000-08:00

I'm sick.

The office manager gave me a cold. I blame the fact that we worked out together last week and breathed the same air. I knew that this whole "working out" idea would cause more harm than good!

Yesterday I had the day off from work... I spent it in a Nyquil induced coma on the couch. Today I am in the office but I really do NOT want to be here.

Real update when I regain the ability to simultaneously breathe through both nostrils.

Who's the Boss?

2005-01-14T21:00:00.000-08:00

I was the only lawyer in the office today. I RULE!!

No, not really. I managed to stay under the radar most of the day, worked quietly on some things, and decided I was officially done for the day around 3:30. So I called up my good friend Virgil to chat. He said he bought some shoes from the goodwill. I'm sorry... does this gross anyone else out? Shoes? Previously worn on someone else's feet? Ick!

Sure enough, I was interrupted by some asshat who wanted to bug me about some deposition. Of course, since you can't trust any of these bastards, you have to send a letter out every time you talk about something on the phone. By this time it was getting close to when the mailman comes (4:30) so I was standing over the secretary trying to get her to hurry up so I could sign the damn thing. She called over the receptionist and ask her to make copies of the letter after I signed in duplicate.

"Copy both of them?" She asked.

"It doesn't matter," I said. "They are the same thing. You can copy one of them, but hurry because the mailman will be here in a few minutes."

This was too much and she got confused. "Throw one away? They're the same thing?"

apparently I had overloaded her with info. The secretary yelled at her, "Don't listen to Ginny! Just copy it!"

Ok, I knew what she meant but sheesh!

The secretary came in my office after the mail crisis, hangdog, to apologize. Mostly she wanted to make sure I wouldn't complain to the office manager about what she had said.

Honestly, it takes a lot to piss me off, and I wasn't mad, but I don't think she believed me.

YARG! Fear me!

Used shoes? Nasty.

Hot for the Blind Guy

2005-01-12T21:40:00.000-08:00

So I did laundry today.

Laundry is my nemesis. I hate it with a passion. The laundry room in my apartment complex is a festering hell hole. Don't you people know how to clean a goddamn lint trap? Sonofabitch.

So I piled all the laundry I was willing to carry in my laundry basket and put it on my file cart. This seemed like a reasonable idea to me. Laundry cart has wheels. Wheels are good. Wheels mean I don't have to carry laundry basket with my back bowed and neck stretched back at an absurd angle as I lug said laundry basket in front of me.

The file cart didn't do so well on the stairs. Oh, did I mention the brilliant architects at my complex managed to put three flights of stairs between me and the laundry room? And yeah, I live on the first floor.

I managed to get to the pit of hell, only spilling a buttload (pun intended) of dirty panties about three times. I put in a load, cramming as much as humanly possible in the only available washing machine. Other people in my complex seem to have no problem leaving their unmentionables for hours on end, while luxuriating in the comfort of their rank dens of inequity. I realize if I were to do that, I'd come back to find all my panties mysteriously vanished, and be haunted by images of a guy resembling Juan Valdez happily masturbating in one of my lace thongs. I ain't leaving that shit unattended.

So after doing the pile driver to the mound of stinky, I stepped outside to enjoy the unseasonably warm night air. (Read: smoke a cigarette.)

As I'm sitting there I noticed the blind dude that lives in my complex walk by, accompanied by his seeing eye dog, who he is never without. A very beautiful golden retriever. I had seen the blind guy many times before, but usually from my car or sitting in my living room as he walks by. He is very polite and never tries to look in the window.

The blind guy is something of a resident celebrity and everyone seems to know him, although I've never heard anyone call him by name. It's not unusual for someone passing to say, "Did you see the blind guy? I'm looking for him."

Anyway, the blind guy kind of scared me because I didn't see him until the dog brushed right past me. It was the first time I had seen the blind guy close up. I watched the blind guy walk past me with a bag of garbage, walk to the dumpster a few yards away, and toss in his bag. Then he started walking back towards me. He and the dog walked by again, and I could hear him speaking in a low, soft whisper to the dog.

At this point my brain started working. More than usual. After seeing the blind guy close up, I thought, "Hey! The blind guy isn't bad looking! And he takes out the trash!" That right there is an improvement over most boyfriends I've had. Then I started thinking maybe it would suck to have a blind boyfriend. Like, maybe it would be a pain to have to read menus for him and stuff in restaurants. And I wonder if he gets anything out of watching movies. Because I ain't explaining what's going on... If I'm in a movie theater and you have a blind person with you, you can shut the fuck up as far as I'm concerned. Just because your ass is blind doesn't mean you have to ruin the movie for everyone else.

Then it occurred to me... a blind dude couldn't bitch about what you look like! Because if he said, "you know, your ass is getting a little big" you can automatically counter, "compared to WHO? Whose ass have you been feeling, blindy!"

All of this went through my head as the blind guy passed. I took another drag on my cigarette. I had almost picked out the color of the bridesmaid dresses (which he can't complain about... he's BLIND!!) when it happened.

The blind guy did one of those fake little pretentious coughs people do when they are around smoke they find objectionable. Even though he was plenty far away enough to shut his blind ass up about it.

And without a word being said, I was rejected ...by a blind guy.

Maybe I should return the call of that Korean albino dude.

D-Day

2005-01-12T16:10:00.000-08:00

The day I've been dreading is here. I'm going to be forced to start working out again.

First off, I wasn't thinking too clearly and wore a lace thong today. Now, this underwear snafu, in and of itself, will cause a mild amount of chaffing. When combined with a power workout led by the inordinately cheery (and do I have to mention, size 6 on a bad day) office manager, the inexorable result is a third degree rug burn... Literally.

As you might have guessed, I have to do laundry. I hate it when it gets to the point I gotta break out the cute underwear.

It was supposed to happen yesterday. We had all promised. Luckily, the girls snuck out of the office and I managed to avoid them most of the morning so we all pretended like we hadn't made a solemn oath that we would work out... Thank god some people are occasionally as lazy as I am.

Here's a short list of things I think are getting in the way of working out more regularly:

1) I need cuter workout clothes.
2) I need better workout music.
3) I need an MP3 player to play my better workout music.
4) I need better laundry access so that I can wash my sweaty workout clothes easier.
5) I need to loose 20 lbs BEFORE I go to a gym with cute people in it. Therefore, I am planning on signing up for workouts at the ugly middle aged fat lady gym until I get cute enough to be allowed in the pretty people gym. This is all a carefully arranged system.

And... This weekend I am going to finally buy a bed! Yes, that's right. Months of sleeping on a futon mattress on the floor, and I have decided that I am worth actual furniture. Maybe it's about time I... I dunno, started growing up... Considering I'm 30.

A Bead of Glass

2005-01-10T21:45:00.000-08:00

*WARNING: DEPRESSING*

This is a purge. I had to get it out of the way. Every time I thought about something interesting that's happened to me recently that I might want to write about, this kept popping it's head up and I couldn't get past it. So here it is. It's about my mother dying so don't read if you aren't in the mood to read about stuff like that.

***************************************

The television was on in the background. Princess Diana was dead. Who cares.

Earlier that day, the nurse had cornered me, alone, on the front porch. "When she starts to die," she had said in a matter of fact tone, "You'll notice that the breathing will increase, as if the person were exercising. I just want you to know so that you won't be alarmed." She sounded as if she were describing the layout of a v-6 engine. I tried to keep the shocked expression off my face. No one had told me she was going to die.

So I sat there next to my mother, numb. Everything seemed like a bad dream. Somewhere along the way I should have been able to hit "pause" and played this a different way. And now it was too late. It was all happening fast.

"The princess of whales has died tonight in an accident at this tunnel in Paris...."

She hadn't spoken since the morphine drip had started kicking in. I don't think she knew her last words to me were going to be earlier that day, when I put my hand on her cheek and said, "Is there anything I can do for you, mommy?" She creaked back, "Yeah. Loose some weight."

So I sat there next to her at one AM, in her abandoned wheelchair next to the bed, and petted her hand. The world was in shock, and I felt nothing. I wondered vaguely where my father was. It was already tomorrow, August 31st. Labor day weekend. The day summer dies. It might have been hot. Hollow objects don't absorb temperature like things that are solid. I felt nothing.

My father wandered in at some point that morning, smelling like brandy. I took two of the industrial sized vicodin from her bedside table and went to my room. The only sleep I would get would be chemically induced.

Every night for the past year, I had prayed. Please god, please let her get well. I'm too young and I can't do this on my own. Please... And steadily, every couple of weeks, another bout of bad news. Now it was in her spine. Now her leg. Now her liver. Every six weeks, another form of chemo abandoned and a new one trotted out. Something that might work this time, but at the same time knowing the chances and the options were growing slimmer and slimmer.

This night, I prayed she would die. And soon. And that was the last time I ever prayed.

I woke up in the steely dawn feeling like someone had taken a huge weight off my shoulders. This was all a mistake. Everything was fine... Finally, for the first time since I could remember, everything was fine. My mother was there. "It's ok," she said. "I can't explain it, but it's ok."

I wanted answers. How could this happen? More than a year of anxiety, sitting in fetid hospitals, sleeping in empty hostipal beds, and it was... fine?

She took me to a room... a huge room with ceilings stretching even beyond sight. All along the walls were what looked like bolts of fabric stacked as high as imaginable. She pointed to one bolt. "What color is this?" she asked. "Blue" I responded. She pointed to another, "And what color is this?"

"Well... that's also blue. A different shade." I said.

"Could you describe for me every shade of color you see on this wall?" She asked, looking skyward.

"No," I admitted.

"Some things you can't describe with words, I suppose," she said, and smiled.

It took me a moment to realize I had been dreaming. The dream was gone, but the feeling of relief was still there. Of peace. It was a feeling I had maybe had as a small child, that there is nothing wrong in the world and you have every reason to be happy. I remembered reality, but it didn't slap me in the face like it had every other morning for the last year.

I went into my mothers room. My father had either fallen asleep or passed out. It was dawn. She was breathing like she was running a marathon... frantic gasps.

I sat in the empty wheelchair and held her hand. "It's ok," I told her quietly. I didn't want my father to wake up. I wanted it to be only us. "I'll be fine, don't worry. I'll take care of Steven. You don't have to stay... you can go. If you want to, go." I thought about that feeling of peace and happiness that I had only glimpsed, and I couldn't grudge her that. I would have made the same choice.

She made a couple more deep breaths, and she was gone. Still, and quiet.

I sat there holding her hand a few moments more. I closed her mouth. I straightened out her legs, and took a baby wipe from the stash at the bedside table and cleaned her up a bit. I think she would have wanted that. I never let go of her hand.

"Dad," I said finally. He woke with a start. Maybe he had the dream, too. He would never say, if he did. He wasn't the type. "She's gone," I informed him. He didn't react except to look and the clock, then left to call the nurse so she could make arrangements to pick up the body. One of the nurses told me later that she saw him crying in the backyard over the trash cans. I never saw him cry.

I sat with her that morning, waiting for the men with the gurney and strangely opulent velvet bag to come and take her away. Her hand never felt cold to me. I didn't want to leave her alone. When I finally got up out of the wheelchair to let the men take her, rigormortis had set in and her hand stayed extended out even when I let go, like she was reaching out to me.

If you take one second of time, and freeze it, it seems so clear and perfect in that one moment. A spray of water, stopped in an instant like that, turns into a shower of brilliant glass beads... faceted diamonds glimmering against the sun. It looks solid and beautiful to the naked eye. When that second stops, and motion continues, those brilliant stones will falter and fall to the ground, inexorably shattering and disappearing forever in the soft earth.

Life is like that. It's here for an instant. It inevitably falls back to where it came from. Each moment may seem like a diamond for that second, but there is no pause. That bead of water will shatter to the ground and dissipate... back to its home.

Weather Girl

2005-01-07T22:01:00.000-08:00

I hate old people.

Luckily, premature unnatural death and cancer runs in my family and I don't have any of my own to deal with. People have a tendency to keel off in their 40's in the Ginny family.

Although this has a disadvantage in the sense that I have no fiscal or emotional support in the world, the decided benefit is that I don't have to deal with any fucking fogeys.

Now, don't get me wrong. I don't go down the street looking for old ladies to knock over and kick. Here's the problem I have with old people. They can pretty much do whatever the fuck they want and you can't do or say anything about it, because they are OLD. The mere fact their person has inhabited the planet three times as long as you gives them carte blanche to act like assholes. No! No I say! Look, just because you are a miserable old fart doesn't mean you get to do or say whatever the fuck you want! You assholes are responsible for World War II. Greatest Generation, my aching ass.

What precipitated this rant, you ask? Look... It's raining. I realize it's Southern California and this is not supposed to happen, but it is. I also realize that old farts feel a certain sense of entitlement as to the quality of the weather on their last miserable few days on earth, but God is funny that way, you know?

I went down to my car this evening to get some books I had purchased at lunch today because a) I am smart enough to look at the weather report and see that a big storm is coming b) I realize no one else is smart enough to do this, the utility companies will be unprepared, and all of a sudden we will be plunged into darkness for no apparent reason other than a few inches of water are on the ground. (One of these days I'm going to take a bunch of pics and post them with a quiz entitled "third world country or southern California?" Sometimes it's hard to tell.)

As I was backing that thang up and getting out of my car, I thought I heard an annoying screeching voice directed at me. I ignored it and walked on. But no, there it was again. Was someone yelling at me? For getting books out of my own car? I glanced around and immediately spotted the culprit. Shit. A fucking old guy.

"What is going on here?" he screamed at me across the garage. (My apartment's parking is in an underground parking garage.)

I looked at him. "What?" I yelled back.

"I've never seen anything like this my entire life!" He screamed angrily. He motioned towards the drains. They were, understandably, spitting out a stream of water. Seeing as water was falling out of the sky, and we were underground, this seemed reasonable to me.

"Well..." I started, not really sure what the hell I was supposed to say. Sorry it's raining? Sorry about gravity? Sorry you chose to live near one of the number one tourist spots in the country and we have to park underground? Sorry you've lived an obviously pathetic life and haven't had the chance to get out of the 100 mile bubble of SoCal to see what people with actual weather issues deal with? What? For crying out loud, a hundred thousand children are washed away in a tsunami and you're going to bitch because you toes get wet?

"WELL?!" He screamed back. "Is that all you can say? WELL?!" Then he started saying "Well...oh well," in a mocking singsong voice. Like I was the idiot. Yes, I am the idiot who has nothing better to do than lurk in the parking garage and scream at innocent people. I am also apparently responsible for the weather and gravity. Fuck me, I'm fucking omnipotent.

So I decided to walk away. What the hell am I gonna do, sit there and scream at an old guy about whether or not this ungodly torrent of rain is justified? As I walked away, I heard him screaming at my back, "If I wanted to swim, I would have brought my bathing suit! What is wrong with you people?!"

So I'd like to issue a blanket apology to all you old farts out there. If I did anything to contribute to you getting damp or ruining your day, don't scream at me. There is no reason everyone else has to be as miserable as you are.

Substitute Boyfriend

2005-01-07T11:21:00.000-08:00

It's been pissing down rain all day.

Although I generally like the rain, seeing as we aren't bothered by such natural phenomenon as "weather" here is southern California, for some reason today the (albeit, relative) cold and dampness of the day is putting me in a grumpier than usual mood.

Erin came home frazzled last night, begging me to drive her to the airport this morning. She had a deposition in San Jose. Apparently the pantsless lump of a human being she called her fiance, currently in said state safely ensconced in the darkened safety of the cave he calls his bedroom, refused to do it. I'd like to know: if you can't make your significant other take you to the airport at 7 AM, what the hell good is he? Everyone knows the main function of having a ~~kept man~~ boyfriend is that the bastard is morally and ethically obliged to drive your ass places. Airports, mechanics, ER trips and home from drinking binges spring to mind.

So, instead, I set my alarm for the butt crack of dawn. Of course, I slept through it. Erin woke me up this morning when it was time to go by banging on my door in the middle of a dream about actually getting up and going to the airport.

The dream had the benefits of being warmer and less soggy.

Resolve Dissolve

2005-01-03T19:24:00.000-08:00

This year I made a resolution to quit smoking. Not because I believe in New Years resolutions, but because I promised to quit before the end of the year. Therefore, when the New Year rolled around and I still hadn't quit... The inexorable result was a New Year's resolution. Which I generally believe are only for the kind of folks that buy greeting cards. Which I am not one of.

I lasted almost two days.

Sitting at work, with both partners in the office breathing down my neck, was too much. By three PM, I was either going to slash my wrists or have a smoke. Now tell me I don't make healthy life choices? I know what's good for me. I got my ass out of there and across the street to a liquor store, stat. The thing is, I am a much happier person with vices. Yeah, so they are gonna kill me. At least there was no bloodshed involved. Option three would be the senior partner was going to loose an eye, at the least.

I'll have you know, I did buy light cigarettes. I'm not a total cop-out.

My brother called me today, and promptly broke his resolution to stop asking me for money. I guess it runs in the family.

Driveby Compliment

2004-12-30T20:30:00.000-08:00

Whoa, it was wierd in here with Becka posting. She left the toilet clogged up and wrote "VULVA" in lipstick on my bathroom mirror. Weirdo.

Here's what actually happened to me today.

I have low self esteem and therefore I really like it when I get random compliments from strangers.

Today as I was leaving work, this really good looking woman got on the elevator with me. She laughed because we both pushed the same floor (to get to the third floor of the parking garage).

"Don't you hate it when they push the floor before yours and you have to wait?" I joked. We laughed.

"Yeah" she said, smiling. "You know, I wanted to tell you. You have incredible legs."

*Then we started making out right there in the elevator.

Ok, so the last part didn't happen. But my point is, please give a compliment to a stranger every now and then because it can make their whole year.

Blog Post by Special Guest Star Becka

2004-12-30T09:28:00.000-08:00

Shhhhhhhh

Hi! This is Becka. If you read my blog you’ll notice my mother is coming to visit. So I’m hiding over here on Ginny’s blog for the day. Don’t tell anyone, okay?

So um…I was ummm doing lawyerly stuff today and um….okay I suck at this.
And not the good kind of sucking either.

Here’s a song that Virgil let me upload so y’all could hear. It effectively describes your emotions while reading read the first three sentences of this entry.

And eventually, when I return to my blog, this is what I’ll be singing to myself.

Is it strange that the one entry on my blog talking about oral sex got the most comments? Hmm…. I’m not complaining or anything, just curious if I should talk about slurping the pole more.

Psssttt Ginny’s middle name is SO Vulva. Hehehehehe.

I know once this weekend I will be forced to see Phantom of the Opera. Phaaaannnntoommm of the OOOOpppppppera is heeeeeerrrrrrre. Shoot me now. Please.

And to top it off I have to actually go and buy a Christmas gift for Psycho Mom. How cruel is that? If she gets me another packet of shower curtain hooks this year I’m going to “accidentally” drive over them. Not only that but I have to drive to Dallas to inflict this torture on myself. An hour long drive for a weekend full of fun with my mother. sob

Does anyone else get this emotion/depressed/suicidal when dealing with their mother? Is it just me?

Learning to Fly

2004-12-29T15:40:00.000-08:00

I cruised along the taxiway, probably slower than I needed to.

At the top of the runway, I pushed in the throttle and watched as the RPMs soared. Engine, check. I twisted the yolk and watched the alerons wave at me. Check. I waggled the rudder. Check. I glanced upwards again to make sure there was no traffic and pulled onto the runway. I jammed in the throttle in and listened to the satisfying roar of full engine. Moving forward, the plane started to rise off the asphalt strip. Yeah, I knew what lift was. But you could never convince me there wasn't an element of black magic in that moment. It must be something like a glimpse of what it is to die. To rise off the earth, the sound of rushing wind drowning everything in your ears.

And just like that, I was flying.

A few thousand feet off the ground, the farms looked like a patchwork quilt. Dusty roads seamed them all together, blanketing the earth. I turned east, following the mountains. Someone had worn a dirt path in the hill in front of me. I soared over it at 120 knots, humming Pink Floyd.

A red biplane on my left tipped its wings in salute. I tipped back. He rolled over in a quick barrel roll as he passed me and I laughed with no one to hear. Passing houses and farms, I sailed east until I started to loose the light. Then I turned towards the setting sun and home.

Mental Sterility

2004-12-27T21:30:00.000-08:00

So even though I'm "only" 30, I think I'm officially giving up on this whole having kids notion. I never sat around dreaming about that shit anyway. I sat around dreaming about standing up in front of a judge and presenting intelligent cohesive arguments. And look how well that turned out. Seriously, if having kids turned out to be as much of a letdown as everything else I ever accomplished, I can understand why some animals eat their young.

Anywho, I had the bright idea of maybe getting a starter kit. You know, one that was already made. Then I could just do some routine maintenance and reap the rewards of child-rearing with none of the fuss and muss. (Yeah, that's sarcasm. Moron). And no, I'm not talking about stealing one from the mall. I'm talking about adopting.

I was running this idea past Erin. Erin is a good sounding board and will usually tell me when my stupid ideas are actually stupid. As opposed to my family who will automatically tell me all my ideas are stupid.

Erin didn't hop right on board with me on this, though, which kind of surprised me. "I don't think you could handle the responsibility," she said.

"Well I wasn't going to get a baby," I countered. "You know, not one that's easy to kill. I was thinking like one that was already in school or something. Lower maintenance. Bigger margin of error."

"Well," she said reluctantly, "I guess if you got one old enough to take care of itself... and you... that might be ok."

Offended, I was going to let the subject drop. I folded my arms and stared out the window of the moving car, irritated.

"Alright. Do I need to remind you of the balcony incident? Is this the kind of person who should raise a puppy... let alone a human being?"

The balcony incident. A day that will live in infamy and forever preclude me from ever having any sort of voluntary responsibility. Ever.

For the historical record, I'd like to say it wasn't entirely my fault. In terms of a pie chart, I put the apportionment of fault as follows:

30% lies with my cat, Baby. He likes to knock keys off of whatever flat surface I have placed them on for fun. I think he likes the satisfying noise they made when they "plunk" straight into the garbage.

20% can be attributed to my stupid apartment complex for having a lame ass laundry room that I hate to use, preferring to continue to purchase clean underwear rather than go in that god-forsaken third world hell hole.

Ok, what are we up to... 50%. sheesh. Fine. In some states 50% of fault or less is not enough for liability to attach, you know.

The remaining 50% I'll be willing to take responsibility for. I lost my keys. I was late for work. Rather than search high and low for them, I left the balcony door unlocked and jumped over the rail to get in through the patio. This plan worked fine the first few days. However, when the end of the week approached, I still had no keys... and my panty supply was depleted. No keys meant also no access to the hell hole laundry room. So, on the fifth day, I did the same routine, except this time when I left for work I wasn't wearing any underwear.

Now, vaulting over a balcony rail while wearing pants is one thing. Attempting this maneuver in an above the knee skirt... In fact, the same skirt that got me in trouble as too short at my last temp position, is quite another.

Ok... one foot up... ok... now quickly bring the other one over so that if someone happens to walk by, they will only wonder if they saw what they think they saw. No need to provide a Kodak moment.

And that did it. I swung way to fast. I lost my balance. Grasping desperately to avoid landing head-first in the concrete patio, I wrenched my shoulder painfully. Sprained it, actually. I managed to get over finally, then walked around to unlock the front door and get my purse from the patio where I had left it, too wounded to go back for survivors.

As I unlocked the door, I saw my goddamn keys, knocked behind the phone in one of the cat's favorite places to cause death and destruction. Yes, pole vaulting over the balcony the entire week had precluded me from walking past the front door where I would have been able to see them. To smart for my own good? No, probably not. Not really.

I guess it would be ok if I learned from my mistakes. Some people would say my mistakes were not doing laundry sooner. Not looking in a more logical place for my keys. Not strangling my cat.

Sadly, the only lesson I learned was you can never buy too much underwear.

And that's why I should never have kids. Unless they are willing to do laundry.

Last Time I'm Cleaning Santa's Chimney

2004-12-25T10:09:00.000-08:00

Another Christmas almost gone. In the annals of Ginny Christmas memories, this one didn't turn out half bad.

Erin was a good friend and got me some goodies from Sephora, which is all I ever really want anyway. I ate ham last night. I drank nog. I sat in traffic. I had a good telephone conversation with my swell friend Scrubby as we celebrated our "Spinster Christmas Special". Done and done.

Santa did leave me a little gift yesterday. After I had cooked like a maniac to make an absolutely beautiful Trifle for Erin's party:

.

... and other goodies that I slaved away over a hot oven (yeah, it's friggin 75 degrees here!) making, I hopped in the shower to make myself a little more presentable. Mid-shampoo, I smelled something absolutely vile. I would say it smelled like rotten eggs, ass, with maybe a touch of ammonia.

apparently the apartment above me was practicing the little known holiday tradition of taking a dump directly in your sink. Or something. Because foul odors and black crud was spewing out of my sink and polluting the entire apartment with noxious fumes.

After gagging and convincing myself I was not going to vomit, I turned on the bathroom fan, shut the door and shoved an ugly towel down there just in case it decided to overflow while I was out. Luckily when I got home last night the sink was over it's temporary demon possession and I was left only with a foul black residue as a holiday reminder.

Here's the polluted sink in all it's Christmas glory.

.

I guess I was bad this year. I would have preferred a lump of coal, you sadistic fat bastard. Merry Christmas everyone!

Funeral Goods

2004-12-23T01:20:00.000-08:00

Something some asshat said on my friend Lois' blog got me thinking. About my mom's funeral. It's not really that I miss my mom especially at Christmas. She was really never good at that sort of thing. It was probably because her parents died when she was young and she didn't really know how to do it. She did try, she just wasn't very good at it. Who wants Christmas spaghetti, especially when you aren't Italian?

Anyway, my mom's funeral sucked. I hated being on display as the dutiful grieving daughter. Fuck off, everyone. I hated the condescending minister my dad drug up from the church my mom couldn't stand. I hated the obnoxiously pink, eerily large roses. I hated the shiny casket. I hated the funeral home director dude who would only take cash... Even though I worked at his bank at the time and knew the building he was in was entering foreclosure because he never paid the damn mortgage bill, and only hadn't because I had given him repeated breaks on paying the bill. I hated what they did to her hair. I hated the oppressive smell of the chapel. Fake flowers and death. I hated wearing a black suit in August. I hated the warm macaroni salad at the wake. (BTW, Okorie is the only one who ever treated macaroni salad the way god intended, and he did that by shoving his dick in it, drunk, in the middle of the picnic.)

The worst was my little cousin, her nephew. She was really close with him. He was about six years old, I think, when she died. He begged us not to put her in the ground. I really didn't think it was a good idea, either. I guess stuffing and mounting isn't a very practical option.

The other thing he said that got to me was this: He looked up at me with his tear filled eyes and said, "But Ginny, whose going to take care of you now?" I was 22 at the time.

Eight yeas later and I'm still trying to figure that one out.

Obligatory Christmas Post

2004-12-22T15:01:00.000-08:00

Ok, here it is.

I like Christmas ok.

Truth be told, it's about this time of year, just a few days before the event, when I start to think, "OH JESUS H. CHRIST ENOUGH ALREADY". I'm tired of the songs. I'm tired of the decorations. I'm tired of the turkey. ~~I'm tired of the chocolate~~. Well, let's not get crazy here.

Yeah, so anywho, I'm spent and it hasn't even started. Which makes Christmas not unlike most other major relationships in my life. The initial overkill leaves a bad taste in my mouth, and before you know it, it's over before it ever even began.

My only consolation is New Years eve, the only night of the year where it's acceptable to have some strange dude's tongue down your throat... in public. OK, in public... and there is a chance you can get someone to do it.

The Best Compliment

2004-12-21T14:41:00.000-08:00

I was thinking today about the best compliment I ever got.

I think it was in 8th grade. There was this guy named David Dinkmeyer. And yes, he looked as nerdy as the name sounds. Total and complete spaz. But I talked to him because a) I talked to everyone becauseI wasn't a bitch until later in life and b) he was a really good writer... and I find that incredibly sexy.

So David used to write slightly erotic (by Jr. high standards) Sci-fi stories featuring me as the unapproachable vixen who tended to wander into his sleeping quarters wearing only a lace teddy. Oh, an outer space lace teddy, of course. Thing was, the stories were usually so damn good... the teacher would usually read them out loud to the class. this lead to me walking down the hallways at lunch time with people yelling "oops! Wrong room!" Anyway, I had a talk with David to please tone it down as I was getting crap from people. Although I appreciated it, maybe he could try picking on someone else every now and then just to break it up a bit.

He said it wouldn't work as well, and that he liked using me as the main female character and if he had to stop he just wouldn't write stories anymore. Which, of course, no one wanted him to do. So I asked him "what do you like about me so much anyway?"

He looked at me with a slightly guilty expression on his angular nerdy face and said, "you look like Vanna White."

For the record, I don't look anything like Vanna White. But I don't know, for some reason that just seemed like such a sweet thing to say.

At the end of the school year, he went to a highschool that didn't have a gang problem and I went to the regular high school. So I never talked to him again.

But David, if you're out there... I got a space teddy with your name on it.

Feh

2004-12-20T19:58:00.000-08:00

Today I stopped at the grocery store after work, and purchased:

a) A bottle of Tylenol PM

b) A large bottle of Brandy

What does this tell you about what kind of day I had?

The Funniest Goddamn Thing I Ever Saw

2004-12-16T22:33:00.000-08:00

So I was lamenting the lack of good stuff to talk about lately when I remembered it. The funniest goddman thing I ever did see. And even though I wanted to go to bed early because I have court in the morning, I had to write about it. Mostly because I was just lying in bed giggling thinking about it.

I'll warn you straight up, I have a sick sense of humor. This is probably not going to change so save the sanctimonious bullshit. Some women tell me when they hear a baby crying in the grocery store they are overwhelmed by an urge to comfort the child. They have to stop themselves from whipping out a teat right there in public and start breastfeeding, because their nipples get all tingly and shit. When I hear a baby cry in public, I have to stop myself from strangling it.

The funniest thing I ever saw happened at Disneyland. For those of you who don't know, I spend an inordinate amount of time there, so it was bound to happen at the happiest place on earth.

On this fine spring day, I was wandering towards the castle when I saw some jugglers in the courtyard. This was intriguing as I had never seen jugglers before at the land. Come to think of it, I haven't seen them since this particular day, and for good reason.

So there were the jugglers, in their lame ass tights, hurling what looked like bowling pins at one another and making those noises you would expect jugglers to make to enhance the drama of something that, truth be told, is not incredibly dramatic. People had started to watch and a loose crowd had formed around the dynamic duo as they tossed their pins to and fro, making those ridiculous "Hut! Ho!" sounds that are apparently in the jugglers handbook.

While in mid "hut!" however, tragedy struck. One of the hapless jugglers missed a pin. Now, this in itself is some funny shit when you think about it. I mean, your only job in life is to catch a goddamn pin and you miss? In front of a crowd full of people?

However, the funniest thing ever occurred when the pin sailed past the juggler and into the crowd. And hit a baby sitting in a stroller smack dab between the eyes.

Before you call me a monster, the baby didn't cry. The pin bounced off his head with an audible and resounding "THWACK", and the baby just kind of sat there stunned for a second. The crowd was completely hushed in horror. Then the baby just looked at the guy who missed the pin with an expression on his little face like, "you goddamn stupid son of a bitch."

The juggler getting the evil eye from the baby came over and awkwardly patted it on the head. Then the baby did start to cry, and everyone seemed relieved. I like to think that the baby was actually crying because that stupid freak in tights who just hurled a bowling pin at it was touching it, and it was a cry more of mortification than of pain.

Anyway, that was a cool baby. I could hang with that kid.

Criminals Stink

2004-12-15T19:05:00.000-08:00

This was a little somethin I was working on as part of a novel I was thinking about. Any criminal attorney will tell you it's a pretty distinctive odor.

There is no smell on earth quite like the odor of the inside of a courtroom during misdemeanor arraignments.

Yes, there is the usual odor you would normally associate with many people, most living lives fraught with despair, uncertainty, fear, poverty, and addiction all crowded into a windowless, breezeless room. Unwashed bodies, stale breath, dirty greasy lanks of hair… digesting alcohol, from the night before, or two nights before, seeping through the skin, sour, bitter, and angry. But that’s not the nature of the actual smell that hits you when you pull open the heavy wooden door. The source of that smell is the one that really makes you want to turn, hand over mouth, and run back the other way. At least the first few times you experience it. Before you start to understand what it is.

That smell is an odd bouquet. You would think, with every day a new and completely random grouping of total strangers, that the odor would shift, would change with the individuals from where the smell originates. But it doesn’t. It never does. It’s always that same smell, no matter the faces of the men from where it seeps, silently. An invisible arm.

The real sensation that hits you is less than a smell and more of a presence, conjured from the feelings churning in that room, with the fluorescent lights burning in the ceiling, never quite bright enough to chase away that feeling of darkness. From the ones who have never been here before, it’s an aroma of shock, fear, apprehension… terror of the unknown, suddenly before them, incomprehensible as a sudden nightmare but wrenchingly real. For the others, the ones who have sat there, in the empty jury box, five, six, maybe a dozen times before, it’s a different undertone. Resignation, apathy, resent, sometimes mingled with a hint of regret. But sometimes the fear lingers there, too… Fear of being left alone, with no one to help them, facing that formidable atmosphere. Alone, and shackled, hand and foot, in a jury box, with a dozen other bound men in that hideously clinical green county jail jumpsuit.

In short, if hell could be summed up as an odor, that would be it.

Food Fight

2004-12-14T14:49:00.000-08:00

So I just got back from what the building management is calling an "office party". And I think there was a little too much cognac in the mousse I just inhaled so forgive the posting while intoxicated.

Anyway, my secretary, the receptionist and I all haul ourselves into the elevator at about 3:00. By the time we got down there, we were confronted by a winding line all the way through the elevator banks, and spiraling around the lobby. We put ourselves at the end of it and stood there. And stood. Apparently, this was the line that refused to move. Luckily, there was an old lady sitting in the lobby doing a terrible job playing the same three Christmas carols over and over. Phew. Don't know if I would have been able to take it, otherwise.

After a few minutes, I decided to multi-talk, and put myself in the espresso bar line. I got us all a Mocha and got back in the line that refused to move. Ahead of us, we could see people loading their plates with the goodies... Creme Brulee, Mousse, mini pies, little custard fruit tarts, Christmas cookies... Ok, no one was taking the Christmas cookies. Who wants a friggin dried up cookie when there's creme brulee?

Sure enough, by the time we got to the front of the line (a half hour later) what was left? Fucking Christmas cookies, and a few lonely looking pieces of mousse cake stuff. I really wanted one of those creme brulees. Oh well.

Lo and behold, just as I put one measly mangy looking little scrap of cake on my plate, and started to move off, a lady shows up with a whole tray of goodies, including the coveted creme brulee! Yay! After a half an hour of watching people cram their plates with as much as they possibly could, god was rewarding me by delivering creme brulee unto me.

However, fate had a different idea. Just as I reached for one of the coveted treasures, the tray lady looked directly at me, glared, and said, "This is the last of it so how about we save some for everyone else?"

I think it would have been slightly more polite of her to have yelled, "Hey! Tubby! Move your fat ass to the side and let someone else have some!"

This didn't stop the true fat pigs who she wasn't looking directly at, who proceeded to waltz back past me and fill their already full plates full of the creme brulee I was too ashamed to take.

I summation, I just wrote an entire post on a fucking desert that probably looked better than it tasted and I didn't need anyway.

It just burned me up to have to ride back up in the elevator with the piggies who had pyramids of goodies and I was stuck with this mousse that blew.

I hope you choke on that creme brulee.

The Interview Process

2004-12-13T11:36:00.000-08:00

Here's another sumthin I wrote while Job hunting earlier in the year.
(Yes, I now have a job. No, it is not with afro man. I have a whole new set of problems, but none of them hair related).

There's a secret nobody tells you about this whole law school thing. Getting into law school is not that hard. Law school, itself, is not that hard. Passing the bar, while stressful, is not that hard. After all, they tell you what you need to know. You just have to memorize it all and have the ability to spit it back out at a grader with a few facts thrown in to tell them why you're blathering on about the rule against perpetuities. No one gives a rat's ass if you actually understand it.

The secret is, if you do all that, get into law school, take the exams, pass, do well, pass the bar... then the hard part hits you smack in the face. It's damn near impossible to find a job.
I'm thinking this as I'm sitting across from an over friendly Persian man with a giant afro, in his third floor office. He has two giant horse sculptures on either end of his large mahogany desk, which are somewhat successful at balancing out the giant bozo the clown mane wobbling on top of his head. I'm smiling my best "I'm friendly, but not crazy!" smile, in my best suit, with the shoes that always manage to give me a blister on my right heel. I'm pretending to listen to him, but the voice inside my head is screaming, "For god's sake, don't stare at his hair!" I realize as I sit there nodding that I probably look like I've been recently sedated, hands folded in my lap, ankles demurely crossed. As I expound upon my excellent research, writing, and analytical abilities, I'm secretly thinking, "I spent five bucks in gas and three to park for THIS?"

Then comes the dreaded, "Well, do you have any questions for me?" This always comes after the interviewer at issue has spent the better part of thirty to forty five minutes talking exclusively about himself. This is my cue to show amazing insight into the operation of said firm or entity and ask one brilliant, poised, insightful query. In return, the interviewer will nod and fill me in on the particulars of their successful operation.

Problem is, there's usually not much left to discuss after hearing about everything these people do, in more detail than I probably care to know.

In this particular interview, however, I did have a question. Maybe it was just that I wasn't paying attention while trying to avoid making eye contact with the guy's hair, but I had no clue as to what these people did. This wasn't a standard law firm like most of the others I have interviewed with the past few weeks. It seemed to be some kind of consulting firm. Stranger still, it didn't have a legal department. Why they were advertising for an attorney was anyone's guess. 'Fro man wasn't an attorney, either. "Err," I said leaning forward slightly, "Yes, actually, I do have a question. What is it exactly that you do here?"

'Fro man pressed the tips of his fingers together. He nodded, staring over my head for the answer to this particular interrogatory, as it was clearly some kind of abstract hypothetical question, requiring careful reflection. "Yes, well," he began slowly, tapping the tips of his long fingers together in deep thought, "We are managers, I suppose, but we don't actually have anything to do with the actual running of any businesses." He smiled patronizingly, and the afro wobbled again as he looked back at me, hopefully. I think my mouth must have been open, because he went on. "We advise other managers as to strategy for management, to all kinds of businesses, but we don't actually have anything to do with implementation of those strategies. It's kind of a virtual office."

Right, I'm thinking, clear as mud now. You can open an office doing this? "I see," I said, sensing he wanted some sort of false affirmation that anything he said made sense. "So, you are the idea people."

He smiled brightly. "Yes! Exactly!" The afro bobbed in joy as he nodded. He looked like a trainer at Sea World ready to throw me a fish. I smiled back, as it dawns on me that I don't have a snowballs chance in hell at this one.

After a few more meaningless exchanges, he started to fidget at his desk while talking in a way that made it clear he was looking for a tactful way to get rid of me. "Well," I said with the sedated mental patient smile, "I'll let you get back to work. Thanks so much for you time." He got up and walked me to the front door, lest I forget the way down the only hallway in the office in the last forty minutes. We shook hands and I made my way down to my car, waiting in the three dollar parking spot where I left it.

Adrenaline from the potential for employment possibility having drained out of me by this point, I hobbled slowly through the parking lot on my badly blistered right foot. A few feet away from the safety of the car, I managed to step in a large patch of loose gravel. Maneuvering midair to avoid ripping the elbows off my best interview suit, I found myself sprawled out on the ground with gravel in my mouth, my right knee and right palm throbbing. I looked behind me several feet to see one of the cursed black pumps lying on its side like a felled animal, half filled with gravel. I rolled myself into a ball, looking at the large patch of blood where the smooth skin on my knee had been a few seconds ago, dark red blurring into the black torn edges of my last pair of pantyhose.

I grabbed the shoe, staggered the last few feet to my car, and heaved myself into the drivers seat. Satisfied that nobody had seen my graceful headfirst dive into the dirty asphalt, I decided to have a good cry over a cigarette.

And if anyone tells you that passing the bar is as bad as that, they're a damn dirty liar.

Hot Granny Sex

2004-12-12T19:05:00.000-08:00

It's the time of year all shopaholics secretly love.

The pre-Christmas spending extravaganza has begun.

Ok, honestly, the reason I like it so much is because if I'm spending all this money to buy other people gifts, it only seems fair that I should get a little something for myself while I'm at it. And to be honest, Santa has been pretty nice to me so far this year. Santa being me of course. It's the one time of year that it is perfectly acceptable, normal, in fact... To have about six bucks in your bank account. And that six bucks will be spent before the next pay period rolls around.

So a weekend ago I was shopping with a girlfriend of mine, Cynthia. Cynthia knows the drill. Any day of balls-out shopping must be accompanied by lunch and, ideally, a pedicure. We had done the lunch and the pedicure, and were wandering around the lingerie section of Nordstroms when I realized I'm getting old.

Cynthia has a thing for underwear. She could easily blow an entire paycheck on black frilly things no one will ever see. It's similar to my cosmetics fetish. Only, hers get more press.

It was then I saw, temptingly displayed on a table in front of me, an inviting mountain of soft flannel. Not just flannel... Flannel nighties. I ran my hand slowly across the top of the heap. So soft... warm. Comforting. Yards and yards of comfy warm pink flannel in just one of these confections. It occurred to me, wearing one of these would make up for the fact that I didn't have proper bedding... or a proper bed. Wearing one of these would be like sleeping in a warm, soft, lingering hug. Wearing one of these would make me open my eyes to the cold grey dawn with a smile and a leisurely stretch, instead of hitting snooze three times then literally rolling out of bed with the blankets still on. A flannel nighty was sure to make me sleep better and wake up refreshed. It was just the thing I needed to cure that pesky insomnia, which couldn't possibly be caused my habit of having a midnight snack consisting of Diet Coke and Benson & Hedges. Yes, that's what my life was missing! Flannel sleepwear!

While thinking these thoughts I had picked up one of the bulky pink sprigged bundles and was lovingly rubbing my cheek against it. Then I opened my eyes and saw Cynthia's face.

Mouth agape, eyes wide, and browns dawn together... then she frowned.

"You want to have sex someday again, don't you?" She asked, scowling.

I looked guiltily at the granny jammies clutched to my breast. Three yards of soft combed flannel heaved as I looked at her pleadingly. She shook her head in clear disgust. "NO," she declared emphatically.

I reluctantly put the mauled bundle back on the top of the heap and patted it goodbye. Yes, she was right. Buying a granny gown is probably the first sign you are never going to get laid again.

But lace is incredibly uncomfortable in the crack of your ass.

Maxi Shame Over Mini Skirt

2004-12-10T10:05:00.000-08:00

I'm working on some newer stuff... in the meantime, I'm posting some things I wrote earlier in the year when I had no job and lots of creative angst.

So yesterday I had a bad day.

I show up at the place I’ve been temping at on time. I have to be on time because I forgot about daylight savings last weekend and showed up an hour and 15 minutes late Monday morning. I thought I was only 15 minutes late and when someone asked me why I was "so late" I got pissed because I thought it was only 15 minutes. So I got kinda pissy and said, "Jesus, I just wanted a Smoothie!" They just kind of looked at me like I was weird and left. By lunchtime I had somehow managed to figure out that there was a missing hour in the day, and then I remembered that daylight savings, which someone in that very office had told me was NEXT weekend, actually started yesterday.

So, yesterday morning, I’m sitting there typing in numbers like a good little drone, and the phone rings. Which is strange because I don’t really get phone calls here. I answer the phone and it’s Tony, the guy from the temp agency. Tony asks when I usually go to lunch. "Ohhh, twelve, twelve thirtyish…" I say. Is Tony going to take me to lunch for being such a good worker? How cute!

"Ok," says Tony, "Well, I’m going to give you a call back around then to give you some feedback from this position. You have great job skills, so it’s not about that. So just keep up the good work until 12!"

Ok, so now I’m nervous. Wha? The way he emphasized feedback like that made me realize this was not so good. Like not just feedback…. But feedback. Like the overemphasis just highlighted the point that this was a blatant euphemism.

So I actually went out the lunch with Cynthia, my technical boss but also a friend who, if I did something wrong or bad, would just tell me instead of calling the employment agency with feedback. I grill Cynthia and she assures me that she is not the feedback culprit.
I get back to the office at 12:30 on the dot. The phone rings as I walk in the office. It’s Tony. With my feedback.

"Well," he begins, hesitantly. I actually felt sorry for the guy. He didn’t want to do it. "Look, you would like to work for this company one day, right?"
"No, not really," I said, with complete honesty. I must have told Tony that I was an attorney about a dozen times at least. He forgets every time.

"Oh, well, err, still… You want to make a good impression. I mean, this isn’t about your job skills. Your skills are great. They really love your skills. They told me several times about how great your skills are."

Fine, Tony… I have skills! I get it! I should have skills to do data entry considering I have a friggin’ doctorate! Move on! "Can I ask, Tony, from whom this feedback comes?" I ask politely. I already had an idea.

"Err, Upper Management. Let’s just say. Well, anyway, this is a dress code issue. They want you to know that they have a company policy that prohibits wearing miniskirts."
Miniskirts? What in the name of all that is holy? I look down at my plain, knee length, black pinstripe skirt. Miniskirt? I had visions of myself doing the Flashdance with a neon pink ‘80’s Lycra deal. "She’s maniac, maniac on the floor! And she’s dancin’ like she’s never danced before…" Miniskirt?!

I made a pro forma protest but basically just let Tony get out what he wanted to say, then go on and on about what a great "commodity" I was to them. I still had the flashdance song in my head. Miniskirt. I’ve had this stupid skirt for years. I used to wear it to the bank. I’ve worn it to this job at least 50 times, I’m sure. Miniskirt. Whatever.

So, because I’m passive aggressive and because I had been working really hard that morning to keep my mind off the feedback, I decided to do a little job hunting on the company’s dime. So I faxed out about three resumes for jobs I got from the Daily Journal. I call my voicemail about an hour later, and Boom! Three job interview calls! Hooray!
I call the first one. Next Wednesday. Fine. 3 PM. Ok. Good. Next one… Boom. Thursday, 9 AM. Cool. Moving along…

I call number three. I get the hiring attorney. Oh, that’s cool when that happens. OK. "When can you come in?" he asks. "Whenever you like," I tell him. "Can you be here in 10 minutes?" Crap. The place is at least 20 away… and I look down. I can’t go in there in the Flashdance skirt! The music speeds up in my head, chipmunk style, as I start to panic. I’m a maniac, maniac… I asked if I could get an hour. "Sure," he said. "Just get here as soon as you can."

I flew out the door. Gotta get home and change! Ashamed of my miniskirt! Ankles and kneecaps clearly visible! I managed to rush home, change, put on panty hose, and rush back to where the office was in Santa Ana. One hour on the dot.

I walk in and tell the receptionist I’m here for an interview. I had no idea what kind of Law Firm this was, but down the hall I hear somebody screaming, "Oh, he has a hernia now?" and I deduce correctly that this is a workers compensation defense firm. It’s hot in there and I’m sweating like a piggy from all the running around.

The interview was ok. One of the guys laughed at a few of my jokes. That’s cool. Whatever. Really don’t think it was a slam-dunk but it wasn’t the worst either. They could have thanked me for dropping everything to come down there on such short notice. They were wearing Hawaiian shirts and I don’t think they would have cared about my stupid miniskirt.

I walked out of the office, not feeling like maniac anymore. Feeling pretty much like a jobless person with bad fashion sense.

Is this thing on?

2004-12-09T18:15:00.000-08:00

Mostly owing to the pressure of Lois, I started a Blog.

Actually the dirty and the lawyer thing is an unfortunate coincidence. They don't have much to do with eachother, and generally don't appear in tandem.