Not quite reality TV

Now don't get all excited, I'm not talking about Survivor, Celebrity Apprentice or Keeping up with the Kardashian's; I'm talking more along the lines of slightly less scripted shows.  If it's supposed to be reality TV, why the heck do all of the logos and product names get blurred out?

Extreme Couponing is an example - why when they are showing the crazy-ass rooms full of products that the people have do they have to face all of the labels away? I don't know if it's more because the producers of the shows don't want to give free advertising to the companies or if the companies are worried about their product being shown in a less than flattering light. The world is filled with logos, children can recognize hundreds of them by the time they enter elementary school, why do we blur them out exactly?

There are renovation shows that blur out the word Tyvek from the house wrap - it just makes the show hard to watch. Or the DeWalt is blurred on the side of the power tools. Seriously, what is real about any of these programs.

Okay, end rant.

Stereotype? What stereotype?

Went to the supermarket tonight. Yes, it's Friday. Don't judge, the store was empty - I made really good use of time, no line-ups.  Bought some Weight Watchers frozen dinners. What? I like how they taste.  I also had a rain check and some coupons. Hey, these are tough times, it's good to be thrifty.  I bought some ice cream too. As a woman it's very important to get my calcium. The thing that might have pushed me over the edge might, and I say might, have been the cat food.

Thank goodness I know I'm not ugly and that this is all mostly by choice.

I have never had a manicure. Or a pedicure for that matter.

Nope. Never had one of either. I've wanted to have one, but now I just feel awkward because I never got to learn any of the etiquette associated with it.  Why have I never had one you ask? Probably mostly because I'm cheap, I mean frugal, hmmm, how about practical? Yeah, lets go with that.

I've hinted on numerous occasions to those in my life that buy me gifts (which reminds me, remind me to write a post on my philosophy of gifts) that I would like to have one, that it would be a special treat, but nope, no luck.  I don't know why I feel silly just outright asking for one, I mean, they're pretty common. Probably because my friends are a pretty practical bunch as well and don't generally have them either.

While we're on the subject of me depriving myself, I've never had a massage or a facial either. Hmmm, I might fail at being a girl. Oh wait, I have lots of shoes! Hopefully 'they' won't throw me to the wolves after all.

Don't judge a book by its cover

First of all, why the hell not? If you write a book, and you want people to read it, you need to make it look bloody well interesting. There is a reason that the Twilight books sell better than the complete works of Shakespeare. That being said, I don't think you could pay me to read either of those.

The other day I was out for dinner, at a restaurant that was probably at least a notch or two above my social standing.  The type of place where you don't really understand what it is that's being offered to eat but you feel a bit too self-conscious to ask. Or at least I do. How am I supposed to maintain my air of middle-class if I have a trailer park palate.

No such worry for the middle-aged guy sitting at the table next to us, which was close in that cozy "aren't we such a great restaurant, look how many tables we have to squeeze in here to feed our adoring fans" sort of way.  He also felt he was in a little over his head, but wasn't afraid to admit it. He joked with his guests (a younger, hip looking couple in their late 20's) that he was probably breaking some sort of unwritten dress code. Initially I was a little embarrassed for the couple and this louder than a whisper (the average tone of the restaurant) gent and his failure to adhere to social norms. I may not actually BE upper middle class, but at least I can fake it.

Part way through the meal we ended up talking to him, probably in big part because he pointed at something we ordered and said, "well, what's that?". Ultimately, we ended up sharing a few nibbles with these folks at the table next to us (it was a tapas place, which is meant for sharing after all!) and our dinner was probably better for it. I think my favorite comment was his take on some sort of snooty pork belly thing - "it's like fancy bacon".  In the end, we had a great night and I realized that he is probably a "better" (if not at least happier) person than I am; he was happy with who he was and not ashamed of it. He certainly was a nicer person than the appropriately dressed snotty woman sitting to the other side of me who had her belongings strewn over my seat when I sat down and didn't even make an effort to move them out of my way.

Charlie Sheen

Okay, so this is a blatant fishing expedition for googlers to end up here. I figure between a post titled "Charlie Sheen" and my post titled "Hookers and Blow" I'm a shoo in for anybody wanting to know a bit more about Charlie boy. Badum dum ching!

So my post isn't really about Charlie Sheen, it's more about people in the entertainment industry with jobs (zing!) and more specifically that part of their job is to be attractive. In today's day and age we are all far too lazy busy to go to the gym to get those bodies that we all dream of, but I think the perfect solution is to become a celebrity - then being attractive and fit is your job. If you fail at it, you're even given a second chance and your own workout video/weight watchers sponsorship/cookbook/tv show to show the world how you got thin again.

Now how does one become a celebrity you ask? Well that is the hard part, because lets face it, if it was easy I'd have done it already. I suggest moving to the United Kingdom. My experience when visiting there is that their daily newspapers and all of their gossip rags spend their entire budgets covering the stories of people who are any number of degrees removed from celebrity. It's like "six degrees of anyone famous". If you play your cards right you will also end up with a record deal over there, they seem to give those out like candy launch many promising music careers.

If it was MY JOB to be attractive, could I do it? Don't get me wrong, I've got a pretty good foundation to work with but how do I figure out the formula? Everyone knows that more attractive people generally get farther in life (unless they're uber mega smart) so should I invest some serious time and effort into going to the gym and reading Cosmo so that I can do the perfect smoky eye?

I think celebrities are maybe all uber mega smart, because not only do they earn way more than I do, but they essentially get paid to go to the gym. They aren't allowed to come up with the same excuses we do because they might lose their job if they turn into slobs like the rest of us. What about people saving up for weight loss surgery like liposuction as a "quick-fix" - would they maybe be better off working less and just going to they gym? Quite possibly, but human nature would probably just cause them to fill those non-working hours with other activities that still wouldn't leave them time for the gym (in their minds).

The solution? Become a celebrity so it's your job. Now that I have solved how to become thin and get paid for it I will work on world peace.

Oh, and Charlie Sheen doesn't need to be a celebrity anymore because he has Adonis DNA and tiger blood.

I should rob you.

Sorry for being away for a bit, I'm doing a spot of traveling at the moment and I am not up on technology nearly enough to have any sort of smart phone (most of those are probably smarter than me) or nice travel sized laptop to put my thoughts down. I've had a lot of good thoughts, but since I am usually in my bathing suit I don't have a place to even keep a pen and paper to write them down (see Soapy shower thoughts to learn more about my perpetual dilemma).

Anywhoo, while traveling, I've been reminded of some things I hate don't like (I heard it's bad to hate things) about other travelers.

1. People who wear their money belt/passport neck thingy on the outside of their clothes. The whole point of those horrible uncomfortable contraptions is to hide them. Otherwise use things like wallets, bags or pockets.
2. People who wear their day pack on the front. Now, don't get me wrong, I've done this - mostly when my main pack is strapped to my back and getting things out of my little bag will be easier when it's within reach. I may have even done it once or twice when in a very crowded area when a deft pickpocket might have been able to get into the bag on my back without me noticing (how I figured that they wouldn't be able to get in if my arms were busy holding it in front I'm not sure). However, when you do this say, at the airport or on a hiking trail, you just look dumb. You also look uncomfortable as you may have noticed that it is not called a front pack, it is called a back pack.

This is all for now. If you participate in these traits and you get robbed by an otherwise fairly innocent looking traveler, it might be me expressing my rage.

I'm a bitch

Office politics. I've never been very good at them.

I am a little different than most people. I generally fully understand social norms and can act quite easily within them, but am definitely not a follower and I over analyze things possibly to a fault.

Which brings me to my point. One of my lazy lazy co-workers who is constantly on facebook (I refer to her as facebook girl) has a phone that every time it goes off, it makes my computer speakers go haywire. No idea why. It's a network thing. My phone/network doesn't have that effect (thank god!). So every single freaking time she gets a call or a text my speakers alert the entire office that she's got a personal call/text. This is assuming she's actually in the office and not on some mysterious out of office business; but that is a story for another day.

Now, calling her facebook girl (FBG) is actually a bit of a misnomer, as she is around 36 years old. Yet there she is on facebook, hours a day, chatting while at work and when she's not doing that she's on personal phone calls rehashing things that she's posted on facebook. Thankfully, she's never added me to facebook because I'm sure I would have to block out millions of things from my newsfeed about farms, mafias and horoscopes. I can make this presumption because she is actually apparently only 13 years old mentally and one day giggled about how she had changed her last name on facebook to Mathers. Like in honor of Eminem. Seriously.

Let the record show, I absolutely go on facebook while at work. Who doesn't? Well who doesn't that doesn't have it blocked? I like facebook for number of reasons, also none of which I'll bother to get into right now. In fact, I'm writing this blog post while at work. I'm such a rebel. My complaint more so is that she's too dumb to be embarrassed by her actions. It's a game that we all play, management knows that we don't work 100% of the time (who does?) but in an act of courtesy, when someone walks by, act like you are working for gods sake. Of course, I'm pretty lucky, my computer screen faces a corner so no one can see what I'm not doing unless they swing around the cubicle wall.

Further to my annoyance, she is a verbalizer. Lucky me, I get a play by play of EVERYTHING that she bothers to do in a day. "Oh good, so-and-so just emailed me back!" "I just printed 25 copies of a document" "Why don't I read this news release word for word even though all the information was already in the paper and I'm days behind on reading these things?" Hmm, okay, she might not verbalize that last one exactly like that, but you get the idea.

On the bright side, since she's not my facebook friend when she really makes me mad I can put snarky status' about her :)

Roommate

I have a roommate.

I never intended to have a roommate again, it just sort of happened. I mean, I had a roommate in my first apartment back when I was 18, although, come to think of it, that wasn't planned either. I realized the other day that my roommate has lived with me for almost a year now. A year! Big deal you're thinking, that's pretty normal. Which it is, except this roommate was only supposed to be here for a couple months.  And now I'm addicted to the extra cash and am afraid of her leaving.

I don't mind having the Roommate, I'm lucky enough to have quite a large house and she's about the same level of messiness/tidiness that I am so that mostly works out. In fact, pretty much my only complaint is how she uses the dishwasher. In a good case of irony, I made her use the dishwasher. Way back when when she first moved in she hand washed all of her dishes. She uses a lot of dishes. Of course that is probably because unlike me she eats a more varied diet than just different types of cereal.

Now, she just abuses the poor thing. Hmmm.... and my pots and pans come to think of it. She has a bad habit of scalding things to the bottom of the pot and then letting it sit for a day and then putting it straight into the dishwasher. I've tried explaining the my dishwasher is the Kia of dishwashers, not like those Cadillac models that they always have in the dishwasher detergent commercials that actually have a hope of getting of baked off food (and then a garbuerator type thing to dispose of the food bits - mine just bakes them onto the other dishes). Then there's the issue of her putting jars with their labels still on in there. Sigh. I've tried explaining it nicely to her, but she just doesn't seem to get it. I suppose on a bright note, she does "do" the dishes, if I leave dish in the sink it magically makes its way into the machine and gets cleaned.

The only other downside is she is home. All of the time. Like ALL OF THE TIME which means that even though it's my own house I feel weird at the prospect of bringing a guy home. Plus, since I turned the entire second floor into my master suite, I don't actually have a door to my bedroom; and I'm a screamer.

Life imitating art

So, because God likes to show s/he has a sense of humor, this is how my evening went. Roommate was watching an episode of Seinfeld earlier, "The Movie". Then, a friend texts me to invite me to movie. I debated not going, after all, I was warm and cozy and deep down I'm mildly anti-social (which is why I put all my best thoughts here and not into real conversation :p). Then I remembered that I'm single and will forever stay that way unless I leave the house once and a while. Although I did have a kind of cute cable guy....

I digress. So the textvite was for the 9:30 show, at the theater closest to my house; which was pretty exciting because this friend always wants to go to the newer, shinier theater that is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay across town. So I told my friend I would meet them (him, his fiancee and her kid) there, declining the odd invitation to go to his place first as that would involve backtracking on my part.

How does this relate to the Seinfeld episode? Well, if you've decided not to follow my handy-dandy link to the synopsis, it boils down to something like this: the gang have plans to meet up to see a movie, but of course all does not go as planned, mix-ups with tickets, multiple theaters, hilarity ensues.

How does the episode play out in real life? Thirtysomething gets to the theater, confused because it's 9:18 and the rest of the crew is nowhere to be seen. So I whip out the phone and ask him where he is. He tells me he's there and not to worry because he already has my ticket. I hear a lot of background noise, yet oddly, the inferior, but closer, theater that I'm standing in is nearly empty and certainly not generating enough noise to be heard in the background of someone's phone.

Yup. Wrong theater. Totally not my fault. After hanging up, I debate my plan - as I'm about to buy myself a ticket to a movie at the theater I'm standing in, the phone rings again and my friend convinces me to drive the 27 minute (that was with almost all green lights, I shudder to think if it hadn't been) drive across town to watch with them. Ok,so the hilarity and similarity mostly ends there. But really, how does something like that happen?? How on earth did he TYPE the wrong theater name?

On a side note, "Life As We Know It" can only have been greenlighted because of who they had cast to star in it. Katherine Heigl for the boys to drool over and Josh Duhamel for the ladies. Oddly, I'm actually mostly a fan of the RomCom, but this one was so predictable and short on laughs that I could have cried.

Soapy shower thoughts

Well, sorry for so long between postings - I was sick as a dog; like, too sick to even bother to watch tv. Yeah, that sick. It sucked.

So, back to my racy post title. I realized that most people just seem to use the internet for porn, so if I have naughty blog titles I should naturally increase my readership. I'm a genius.

However, on a serious note, I really do have all my best blogging thoughts while I'm in the shower - the only way they ever end up on the blog is I repeat the idea over and over again until I get to the computer. I can't wait until someone develops a way to have thoughts transcribed on to paper (ok, screen). I type fast, I talk faster and I think about 17 times faster than that so it would be a godsend. Technology is light years ahead of me so it probably exists already but since I can't figure out how to put videos on my ipod I probably won't end up with it at my disposal anytime soon.

The thirtysomething alternative? I think I might get a whiteboard for the shower. Mounted on the far wall of course. Although, it'll have to be removable or I'll end up having to do all of my blogging in the bathroom - which would then mean my audience that identified with me would be teenage boys surfing the internet for porn and coming across my blog instead. With the door closed for privacy of course ;)

Hookers and Blow

Ah, now that I have your attention...

So, this post has nothing to do with hookers or blow, but does have do with ladybits. I come from a background that is all about keeping private parts, well, private. The idea of stripping off my skivvies in front of a stranger purely for aesthetic reasons seems a bit weird. Now, women have to go for pap smears once a year, this involves not only stripping down to skivvies but some poking and prodding as well, but it has to be done.  The number of bikini waxes a woman has per year varies and whether it's a necessity or not is a debate for another time. Wouldn't it be great if the same gynecologist could do both, whenever either was required????

Of course, one could argue that gynecologists are trained MD's and that a bikini wax is well below their skill set and education level and I couldn't disagree. I'm just thinking that it would be better for all the women out there to have one less stranger dealing with their ladybits.

Just a thought.

Encore!

Recently, I was at the symphony, yes, very posh.

At the end, the guest musicians and the conductor took their bow and walked off stage. The rest of the symphony stayed put. We all clapped and lo and behold, they came back! Call me crazy, but it's the freaking symphony, a stage encore just seems a bit, well, lame.

Bands do this all the time, walk off stage and then, while you're clapping away madly - you realize that they haven't played their most popular song. What?! That can't be! Oh please please please come back. Yay band! GAG.

I'm sure that back in the day, an encore was a genuine thing. Now it just seem a little desperate and attention seeking.

How not to multi-task

The idea of multi-tasking is a great one. We all should do more of it. What we should NOT do however, is watch TV and surf the internet (unless of course you're reading a great blog like mine) as that isn't multi-tasking. While I may like to pretend that it's not just me sitting on the couch and wasting the *prime* years of my life, that's really all it is. With a portal on my lap that can show me in an instant what exactly it is that I am missing.

Oh internet, how I love/hate thee.

I'm thinking of going into a self imposed TV exile (and besides, think of all the great things that will be on my PVR when I go back to it), but I'm pretty sure I lack the discipline for a task of that magnitude.

I did however, turn the TV off to write this post.

I amuse easily

I'm not simple. Really. I just like simple things. This tape dispenser:

absolutely makes my day. So simple, yet so genius! Kudos to whomever invented it. Maybe it says on their website, website here, look for yourself, I didn't check, I guess I don't care that much. I dare say it's worth its ridiculous price tag just because how can you not smile a clever piece of obsolete technology (both the tape - who uses paper anymore? and the cassette).

Arranged Marriage

Arranged marriage is not a topic that comes up all that often in North America, but I think we might be dismissing the concept without enough thought.

Ask any teenager their thoughts on it and you would likely end up with a sharp gasp and then a verbal diarrhea of why it's the worst idea in the whole world. Ask any single person in their 30's and you might just get a different response.

I am currently single. I have tried using some of those singles dating sites as I actually have friends who have had success with them. Of course, I haven't told any of them that I have given it a shot. I obviously am okay with the idea of online dating but I'm also not quite comfortable with admitting to the world that that's how I'm going about it. Seems like it would be a good "how we met" story.... for the wedding reception.

Possibly my favorite thing with online dating is my ability to suss out people before I meet them face to face. If you meet someone in a bar or at a party you might get a bit of slightly intoxicated idea of both their looks and their personality. Online, you get photos that may or may not be accurate, but you get to see how they express themselves when given a blank slate to write on.

This is also my biggest dilemma, the blank slate.

I like words, and I like spelling and grammar. Now, obviously I'm not perfect when it comes to these things, but I figure I'm pretty average and it worries me that my skills in English syntax seem to be far superior than the average single male.  I go so far as to mention how important the ability to use the full word "you" instead of "u" is to me - yet I receive numerous responses that include this sort of text speak. Why? Why? Why?

I realize that I may be eliminating a potential significant other with my ridiculous obsession, but my rationale is that since it's something that drives me INSANE, it's not unreasonable to expect someone who can at least spell - how else am I supposed to enjoy my future love letters??

Fruit Loops

Every time I crack open a box a Fruit Loops (which may or may not have been my dinner this evening) the smell that overtakes me reminds me of being 5. When I was little, it was a special treat and I had to savor the one box I got every once in a blue moon.

Mmmmmm......

Avacados, Cranberries and Cashews (oh my!)

These are just three of the foods that I hated at one time and now don't actually mind that much. They* say that our tastebuds change every 5 years, so now that I'm a "grown-up" I try to go back and taste things that I haven't liked previously to see if anything has changed.

 

On the other hand, mushrooms, almost all fish (unless it's smothered in tartar sauce) and olives are still on the hate list. I don't even like olive oil, and how olives have sex or how something can be "extra-virgin" is beyond me.

*they: they, the people who say these sorts of things. This fact may or may not be accurate as the way to substantiate it would be to ask the good old internet, but there's so much crap on there, who has the time. I will therefore stick to using facts from my memory bank that I enjoy the sound of.

Happy new year?

I get a little fed up with all the societal norms that we're supposed to follow.

Like New Year's Eve. Now, I do like that it forces everyone to get together and ostensibly do something fun, but all the Happy New Year! crap that goes along with it? No thanks. Personally, I have new minute/hour/day resolutions that I can't keep, let alone thinking that I'm going to change anything about my life mid-winter when there are hundreds of delicious things to be eaten EVERYWHERE.

I also don't like Christmas. I enjoy some of the sentiments of Christmas, but (and I'm guilty of this myself) why do we feel the need to spend time with people we don't like in the spirit of a holiday that was once a religious holiday and is now just mass commercialization?? If you like being with your family, then spend time with them. Year round. If you don't like them, don't spend time with them. *note to self, take own advice*

I'll go in depth about my theory of gifts later.

So, Happy New Year!! If you want it to be.