Heeheehee-awwww.......

This made getting up this morning worthwhile.

via buzzfeed

Help!

I don't know what I want for Christmas.
I mean, besides a pretty, pretty pony and a Barbie Dreamhouse.

Generally speaking, if I want something, I buy it for myself. I'm an instant-gratification kinda girl - I am not into waiting.

So I have nothing on my Wishlist - if I don't come up with something soon, I'm likely to receive a Spiral-Bound Takeout Menu Holder. Again.

So help me out, dudes - what kind of neat-o stuff have you gotten lately? What's on your wishlist? Should I just cut the shit and ask for cash?

A proposal.

We should bring back the walking snap.



Seriously.



It's not just for dudes!



Thank you, that is all.

True!

When my mom was little, my grandfather would watch Mexican wrestling (his favorite!) in his easy chair, and he would send her to get "his vitamins" out of the fridge.

Today, I see this. Heh.

Vitamin Beer

by lisa, 2 minutes ago at 10:46am

I always thought Diet Coke Plus (with vitamins!) was kind of silly (image source). Lo and behold, there was a time that Schlitz beer tried to market itself as vitamin beer!

Another great example of how times change.

I just had to change my password for my work email login - after several tries and much deliberation, I settled on a combination of numbers, special characters, and part of my maiden name. Except that I KEEP MISSPELLING THE NAME. That I had for TWENTY TWO AND A HALF YEARS.

On muscle memory.

(And procrastination. Since I'm at work.)

The physical environment in my office (at work) for some reason is superultramega conducive to static electricity. A couple of years ago, I finally put it together that a shock on the back of my hand is not (as) painful, so I got into the habit of, every time I stood up from my desk to leave the cubicle, touching the back of my right hand to the metal cabinet just outside the entrance of my cube (which has a kind of very short, narrow “hallway”). It has become such a habit that I don’t even think about it anymore…until I’m at home and, when I get up from the desk to leave the office there, and find myself gently rapping my knuckles on the wall in the hallway just outside the office door, and I think, Why did I do that?

I am also extremely paranoid about locking my keys in the car. This stems from an incident in high school when my best friend and I had left campus to go pick up lunch and, in our rush to get back in time, locked her keys in her car in the rain. I will never forget H’s pitiful howl of “NOOOOOOOOOOOO!”, like in slow motion, as we stood there in the December cold and pouring rain. We got in the habit of, once exiting the car, holding the car keys in our left hand, far away from the car, and saying “Keys” in order to ensure they were not left inside. Ten plus years later, I still do this without thinking.

We have to wear badges at work, and I elect to wear a mine on a lanyard instead of clipping it to my shirt. I tend to play with the badge when I’m standing and talking, and have gotten so used to this action that when I’m standing in the kitchen or something talking to John, I find myself reaching towards my navel area, my hands looking for something to fidget with.

I’ve also have a particular order in which I open up shop in the mornings:
1. Sit down at my desk
2. Move mouse around to wake up the screen, and enter my login
3. While PC is warming up:

• Turn on coffee pot, which I prepped the night before, to get it perking
• Put my lunch in the fridge
• Put my cell phone on vibrate and place it on the left side of my desk, so it will not keep searching for a signal and die before noon
• Put my purse in the metal cabinet

4. By now the PC is up, so I can open Outlook, and while that is thinking, start logging into the scheduling program I use. I work on up to 12 weeks at a time, and each week requires I enter my username and password – so that’s 12 times, over and over, that I enter the same login.
If I do not do everything in this exact order, then my fingers and brain quit communicating, I forget my login information, and I end up locking myself out and spending 20 minutes getting it fixed.

John has changed the channel to Sirius 90's on 9. Two songs in, "Barbie Girl" starts playing.

G: OH MY GOD, this song is awful. Why do you always put it on this station?
J: What? They play some good stuff. Wait, see? This is a good song!




G: Wow.

I cannot express to you how happy this is making me today.

I have GOT to dig this CD out of the closet.

Lovely!

Love this song, and this is a really nice, groovy arrangement.

9:32
G:
Just so you know
If we ever pass each other in the hall
And you give me finger guns with wink and clicking noise
I may just punch you in the face
9:33
i'm not saying I *would*
But that I *may*
So you would have to think about how lucky you were feeling that day
9:34
C:
You know, I might just be willing to roll the dice on that one.

We have, perhaps, a small crush

From: Jamie
Sent: Friday, November 06, 2009 11:11 AM
To: Gin
Subject: It's just not fair

http://jezebel.com/5398742/jon-hamms-high-school-picture-shows-him-to-possibly-not-be-human

Did he always have to be really, really, ridiculously hot?

Images via amc.com and ONTD

From: Gin
Sent: Friday, November 06, 2009 11:22 AM
To: Jamie
Subject: RE: It's just not fair

HOLY CRAP. I would have this man’s baby.

He has the best teeth.

From: Jamie
Sent: Friday, November 06, 2009 11:25 AM
To: Gin
Subject: Re: It's just not fair

I KNOW. Like, I would have wandered around after him in high school, grinning hugely and stuttering when I tried to speak. And I bet he would have been super nice and offered to like, tutor me in math or fix a flat tire or something, because he probably was always THAT GUY who was beautiful AND nice.

And at least he's with Jennifer Westfeldt and they seem very normal, and he's not with some crazy cracked out celebrity wannabe or something. At least life is fair in that element.

From: Gin
Sent: Friday, November 06, 2009 11:30 AM
To: Jamie
Subject: RE: It's just not fair

So I’m going to post this email chain because I think it’s funny, but I was going to use a different “now” pic of Jon Hamm, so I’m Google Image Searching him, and OH MY GOD I MAY NEED A CIGARETTE.

Image via fusedfilm.com

Hate being in meetings where the communication is so poor that the urge to stand up and say, “One at a time; your turn, Go. No, pare it down – tell us that you REALLY mean. Ok, you’re done, NEXT!” is so strong it’s painful. So irritating – makes me want to take off my shoe and bang it against my head in frustration.

John was flipping through the channels and stumbled upon some little half-hour Foo Fighters video show; I forget how much I like them. They mentioned this song, which I had totally forgotten about. Unfortunately, I can't embed the *real* video (which I really dig [for obvious reasons]: watch it here). Here's a nice arrangement:

Since a couple of you asked, and I have been wide-awake since 7 a.m. (new time, UGH), a recap of our Halloween activities.

I've known this couple for eight years - John has actually known them since high school. We used to spend a LOT of time together, but over the past couple of years, their life circumstances (that sounds so cheesy, but I don't know how else to put it without being more specific and identifying) have changed such that we weren't able to see them as much - we spent time with them maybe a couple of times a year. But even when we did get around to hanging with them, instead of it being about "We have so much to catch up on!", it turned into Something Else To Check Off Our To-Do. It was more work to stay engaged and interested. There were topics that had to be avoided (work, politics, work politics, religion, cursing, drinking, dirty jokes, those times we lied and said John had to work when we really just wanted to do something else besides hang with you). HARD WORK, Y'ALL.

So a couple of weeks ago, when we received an invitation to their annual (G-rated) Halloween party (which we have been to seven out of the past eight years), we debated for DAYS over whether we should accept or go to another couple's house. A sense of duty, and I guess martyrdom, dictated we go to The Stuffy's party.

Mr. Stuffy is a horror movie GEEEEEK, and loves games, so over the years he has concocted games for guests to play - years ago, it was just quickie Halloween/horror movie trivia, some variation of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey that i can't recall - easy stuff. This year, the list of Halloween-inspired activities were:

1. Memory (pick 2 squares at a time, try to get a match)
2. Halloween trivia crossword puzzle
3. Simple jigsaw puzzle race
4. And the grand finale, a multimedia form of Jeopardy, with ONE HUNDRED CLUES, with some complicated, crazyass, made-up scoring system.

Now, don't get me wrong - I am a nerd for games in general, and I LOVE competition. But we had gotten to the party about 7:30, didn't start this last game until almost 10, and by the time we finished, it was midnight. It was like the dinner party episode of The Office, except NO WINE AND NO OSSU BUSCO AND ALSO NO WINE. And all night, I would have to wait until I could get John cornered before I could whisper my dirty riff off of someone's innocuous comment.

It was just.....work. And not very fun.
John's argument with continuing to spend time with them occasionally is that we are just out of practice, and once we get back into the swing of it, things will be easier and more natural. And while I can understand that rationale, I also feel like there should be a natural chemistry with one's friends that we just don't have with them anymore. Not to mention the fact that we feel like we have to be much more buttoned-up around them than we used to.

They have three kids now, and they homeschool them. They are much more involved in their church (LDS). None of these things are dealbreakers for us, but the combination of the three has changed them - which isn't a bad thing - but they are not the same people we used to know.

And so I am back to where I've been about it for the past two years - is it worth the effort any more?