Friday, October 28, 2005

becurled, bemakeuped, bedecked... And it's off to a night in Vegas. I feel glam! Just the thing after a long week of deadlines and insomnia... Sometimes a girl's just gotta go out. Love to all! 6:52:20 PM    well, yes, but...  [] omsifanamts What the heck does that mean? Oh My Stars It's Friday And Not A Moment Too Soon. I've had a grouchy week -- my blog betrays that at points, I'm sure. It's still a funny balance I'm trying to strike here between a daily SO TODAY I ATE CHEESE AND THEN TALKED ON THE PHONE kind of blog (which is not really my thing) a HERE IS WHAT MAKES ME MAD AND SAD AND PLEASE LOVE ME kind of blog (which shouldn't be my thing, but sometimes is) a WHY IS MY WORLD SO WEIRD BLOG (which is inescapable truth) and a I WILL ONLY POST WITTY THINGS (which is impossible, because only 3.4% of my thoughts at any given time possess any sort of wit). So sometimes, I end up taking stuff off, either because someone calls me on my self-indulgence or I look at it the next morning and go, "Oh, now -- that was just lame." I suppose I could take the cinema verite approach and just gush my life onto the page like paint and squish my fingers around in it, but I'm a fan of keeping a little mystery alive, too. My whiny moments are usually when I forget about the delight of holding back a little and end up less Ingrid and Humphrey than Lucy "waaahhhh"-ing to Ricky. Then again, sometimes I just leave the whining there, because it's true, and hey -- I'm okay with that. This week, though, it was hard to differentiate between posting something reflective and just drooling on my keyboard. I'm happy this particular five-day sprint is over with; I think the weekend will offer me the opportunity to step aside a bit, get my sense of irony back, and maybe do some ironing, too. So, off to work now. Tonight is Vegas Night with my whole work crew -- we're not going to Vegas for real, but we're dressing up in flashy ways to gamble with fake money and listen to Frank Sinatra croon. It's a very "us" thing to do (if you can say that about 100 people). We're a wagering kind of company. There's a daily poker game (which I don't play in, but I appreciate) and endless "I bet you a coffee that..." kind of conversations. I even win them sometimes! In closing, I'd like to say a) thanks for riding out the rough weeks as well as the slightly more inspired ones  at Blogcabin, and b) when you start saying things like "screw off!" in emails that you should probably sip your coffee and shut up. So I shall. But love to all and good wishes for a peaceful weekend. If you get the chance and feel so compelled, answer these three questions in the commenty thing below: 1. What's one thing you think everyone who reads this post should do for themselves this weekend? 2. Suggest a good recipe for me to make for my dinner tomorrow night. 3. Have you ever eaten cheese and talked on the phone at the same time? 7:07:39 AM    well, yes, but...  [] POST Somewhere in my neighbourhood, a car alarm is going off. And someone is a) stealing a car; b) totally startling themselves in the midst of getting into their own car; or c) looking out the window at the very fat squirrel sitting on the hood of their Honda. There are few noises in life that make me twitch more than car alarms. Except for maybe real alarms. When I set off the alarm at work a few weeks back, the sound seemed to have some sort of mind-clearing effect on me; I couldn't seem to do anything properly to remedy the situation. I just stood there with giant eyes and a single thought in my head: NOISY. My co-worker was bustling about, trying to find the alarm company number. She asked me if I knew where it was. NOISY. Then she thought of calling one of the managers, which is actually what we're supposed to do. I should have affirmed her sense at that point, but all I could think was: NOISY. I wouldn't be a very good criminal, apparently. I can't take the heat once I'm in the kitchen. But alarms are not the only thing that reduce my mind to a single thought. For example, when I stand outside in the first snowfall of the year (if we manage to have one), while everyone else is twirling or catching flakes on their tongue or grouching about the impending traffic issues, I'm thinking: FLUFFY. That's right. Not SNOW. Or COLD. Or SIX CAR PILE-UP. FLUFFY. When I step into the shower first thing in the morning, I've generally got the thing cranked so high on the temperature scale that my skin attempts to crawl off my body and back into bed. I enjoy the warmth and purifying sensation of the fiery little droplets and their accompanying steam, but again, it clears my head of all but one thought: HOT. Once, I'd just hopped in the shower and was experiencing my single thought when my roommate asked me a question from behind the door. I think it was something about grammatical structure in a complex sentence. She asked me how I would phrase something, and I said HOT HOT twice before I shook my head violently and found another word. "What did you just say?" "I said, WHAT WHAT." I'm not sure which option was worse. But I could have begun a rap career. When I stub my toe, I always think: BROKEN. When I open my laptop, I always think: PRETTY. When I get on the bus first thing in the morning, I think: WHY ARE THERE NEVER ANY SEATS. Wait, that's a whole thought. When I take my first sip of coffee in the morning, my mind is reduced to one word, but it changes up a little daily. Choices like: OH. And PLEASE. And YES. And OUCH (if I get too excited and gulp it). Or my personal favourite: LOVE. When I see babies, I think: HOLD. When I see puppies, I think: SQUEEZE. When I see fish swimming around in bowls, I think: FLOATY. When I see butterflies, I think: NO. When I see clowns, I think: RUN. I am both a little concerned by my blank-slate brain and vaguely pleased by it. After all, I am usually thinking approximately 7,438 thoughts at any given moment, so the chance to shake the snow globe of my brain or push the reset button or type in GOTO 10 is always a bit of a relief. As long as the other thoughts come back eventually, that is. But one of these days, I'm just going to get stuck with a single word in my head and not be able to recover. My circuits will finally melt and I'll become a mumbling shadow of my former self with a very small vocabulary. Hopefully that won't occur when the Canucks get scored on. Because the single word I generally think of then (and say out loud, sometimes twice) isn't going to make people very excited to hang out with me. 5:09:12 AM    well, yes, but...  []

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