If you're bored then you're boring

So, since yesterday I got all lazy and just reposted something I wrote five years ago, back when I was young and funny and had great skin, I should really work very hard on my post today because I'm getting the gray hair and wrinkles, so I really can't fall back on my cuteness anymore and besides which you don't even know what I look like because this is a blog, not a vlog and so I can't bat my eyes at you or nothing.

But on the other hand, another side effect of getting old is that I have almost nothing interesting to say unless you want to hear about how I was trying to wash in between my toes in the shower today and I almost fell over or about how a bug bit me on my ankle while I was running and I swore and hopped on one foot and almost fell over or about how I was walking from the living room into the kitchen and I almost fell over.

On the third hand which we will all be growing in our next step of evolution, it IS Tuesday, so I could bore you with a Way Back Tuesday about how I first got the internet when I was fifteen because one of my best friends stole AOL cds from a computer magazine in the K-mart and brought them into school and I was the only one who would download it and then talk to him in the chat rooms until all hours of the night until the end of the first month when my parents found out that how the internet works when it's 1994 and you live in the country is that your computer makes a long distance call to the Twin Cities and then stays on that call for all three hours that you're talking to your friend who happens to live in Kilkenny, which is a local call and so would have cost you twenty five cents but instead it costs you like $400 and all of a sudden you're not a Good Daughter anymore. Whoops.

I could also tell you about how my very first AOL screen name was Eve15, because I was an X-Files fan and I was fifteen, and you know how that ends because the Internet Predators were like the first people ever on the internet and all they wanted to do was go into the Private Chatrooms and ask me how much I weighed and what my bra size was, which I thought was FUNNY and I laughed at them, so I wasn't traumatized or anything, especially since I didn't have a Webcam, so I didn't have to stumble on anything especially dangerous to my innocence, but nonetheless if I had a fifteen year old daughter now, right after I berated myself for getting pregnant in high school I would definitely not let her in the private AOL chatrooms, if they still exist.

But I don't feel like telling you about all that, and besides I have a meeting to go to, and since I predict falling down at least twice more before I get there, I should start putting on my protective equipment.



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http://irregulargiggling.blogspot.com

Myspace Monday

So, I have actual stuff to do that is not in front of the computer all day today, but heaven forbid I leave you alone, because I know Hedgehog will throw a fit, so I'm starting a new way to slack off, called Myspace Mondays, in which I just repost a blog from Myspace, back when I didn't know that blogging was all about trying to impress strangers, and so all of America was missing out on my hilarity. So, without further ado, because I have to leave in 5 minutes, here is a post from April 18, 2004, entitled "Deep Thoughts"

I was just realizing that I have lots of deep thoughts that I could be sharing with you all. Like, for instance, how war really sucks. Also, poverty. Those are two things I really don't like. I think probably most people wouldn't like them if they would just think about it for a minute. Cause they really do suck a lot. And I think maybe we as a country should be doing something about that. Like maybe take all the guns in the world and sell them and give the money to poor people. Or we could give the poor people jobs selling guns. Or whatever... But then I think, Maybe war and poverty are like these really hard problems that maybe no one can solve... Like maybe there always has been war and poor people and there always will be, even if we sell all the guns or killed all the poor people. So, I go buy a Domino's Philly Cheesesteak Pizza and a Pepsi. I like Pepsi, because the commercials say that's what the black people drink, and I like black people. A lot of people don't, but I do. I guess that's what makes me different. Sometimes I wish I were black. I think some things would be hard, with the racism and whatnot, but on the other hand, a lot of things would be a lot easier. Like, I wouldn't have to worry about fashion or dancing, because I'd just be good at them. And probably sports too. Anyway, it's a hell of a lot better than being an Arab.

Bananarama

So, I'm not really super great at meeting new people because I usually assume that they're just looking for an excuse to hang me from a meat hook in their basement or make me come to out to dinner with them or something, which makes me feel a little nervous about impressing them just the right amount so that they will like me but not want to make me their zombie bride or whatever. I'm better than I used to be, in that I have discovered that being silent and hanging in the back will goad a certain type of person into poking you with sharp sticks until you participate in whatever it is they're gabbing about.

Anyway, as a result of this, things like orientation weekends cause me anxiety and make me sleepy and drain important juices out of my brain, so that when I come home after skipping only half of all the required activities on Friday I sit in front of the computer and apparently narrate everything I'm doing in what can only be described as a Pee Wee Herman voice. And when Houseboy points it out to me, I have to just stare at him with a blank look because I have no idea what he's talking about.

It is also possible that when one of the professors introduced herself and said she was from Minnesota and didn't even know what the sports teams were, I shot my hand in the air like we were participating in some kind of quiz that would win me chocolate.



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http://irregulargiggling.blogspot.com

Technology is making my life harder

So, I just figured out how to configure my Outlook 2007 with my Vanderbilt e-mail, which is Captain Awesome, but also makes me realize that now I have to put all my important meetings and orientation mixers and to dos and to don'ts and everything from my Google calendar and mail into my Outlook. And probably I have to keep them in both places maybe because if I don't then my Real Husband, Mr. Googles, will get in a strop with me* or I'll forget which things I put in what and show up to meetings instead of picnics and squirt gun fights instead of classes. All in all it reminds me a little too much of the job I had at Religious Non-Profit where I had to help the Executive Director sync his Treo (which he pronounced Tray-oh) with his Outlook at least once a week and then at every staff meeting he just had me print out the calendars anyway and I'd get yelled at from everyone there because things were missing on the printout and THEY SYNCED THEIR CALENDARS DAMNIT, and now I'm finally getting why maybe that is just a big old stupid pain in the ass, but I still kind of want a Blackberry because I think it will make me look smart in class.

I was going to try to look smart in class by hauling my laptop around with me, but then I found out that walking the one and a half miles to my school in the 1500% humidity and 90 degree heat is enough to have me sweating through my clothes even without my 20 pound laptop, and also yesterday I went to do work on my desktop and it said "I'm sorry Antelope, but I heard you were starting school and it scared me that I might have to do work again after like 5 years, so F. you, I'm dead now." And then it turned back off. And then I turned it on again and it said exactly the same thing, like it was a recorded message and maybe the computer really wasn't there at all and was in fact dead. I turned it off and on about 70 millionty more times with no luck and unplugged it and plugged it back in and shook it and hit it like a pinata, all to no avail, so I think that I am now proud owner of a box full of wires rather than a computer. Which means that I can't just take off with the laptop whenever it pleases me to get a shoulder workout, because that leaves Houseboy at home with no internets or typing machine for his Big Important Book about Francisco de Osuna, which I'm sure you are all looking very forward to reading someday.

So what I mean to say by all this is that I have too many programs and not enough computers to run them on, which is a lot like what my brain feels like right now as I look at my bag filled with articles and logic models and forms and charts and kleenex and pretty rocks and shiny things for my nest.

Oh, and p.s., today I got my first e-mail where somebody spelled out the world "ya'll." It's a liminal moment and we should all bow our heads in memory of my former life as someone who never had to hear that word without laughing out loud.



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* That's a Britishism. Yes it is. British readers, shut your traps, I heard it on "Bend It Like Beckham", so it must be real.


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Way Back Whenever I Feel Like It

Ok, so I forgot yesterday was Tuesday. Which is my favorite blog day usually, because it allows me to be even more self-centered than usual and tell you about things in my life from more than twelve minutes ago and pretend that you give a poo about where I come from or what nonsense shaped and molded me or whatever. On the other hand, I'd be surprised if you cared about what happened to me 12 minutes ago either, because that story mostly involves re-reading an article about socio-emotional factors affecting achievement outcomes because the first time I read it I more stared at it and turned pages than actually read any part of it.

So, because I want to and because you have to read this because the rest of the internet is on break today and you know you can't just go read a book, I'm going to tell you about how one time I moved. Ok, lots of times I moved, but this is about the time that I moved between Kindergarten and first grade, because my mom was going back to seminary at an age which, it interests no one but me to point out, was suspiciously close to my age now.

We moved from a house in what was, at that time, a small town in Minnesota, to a town house apartment in what seemed to me to be the bustling metropolis of Alexandria, Virginia. Since I was, what, six years old, I don't remember the exact time line, but I do remember I didn't have to do any packing or hauling of furniture, and instead I got to hang out at my grandparents' awesome house in New York, where they had a pond and a big wheel thing that looked like a duck, which I'm now questioning why I couldn't do for our move to Nashville too. Anyway, at some point there was a giant moving truck that someone drove the wrong way up a one way street and at some point there was a little bit of sock skating on the floors, but at the most important point there was a cross-country drive in a car with my grandpa, who was and is my hero because you could sit in a car with him for 400 miles and just think about the way the numbers on the clock change or the funny shapes of the clouds or how great Punky Brewster is and he wouldn't interrupt your thoughts*.

Anyway, on this car trip at some point we stopped at a restaurant and joined the chatty cathies** for lunch, which was also nice and there was probably grilled cheese involved--all I know for sure is that Suzie really enjoyed it, because she decided to stay behind. Which I did not notice for at least another hour or two. Oh, and Suzie was a doll. Except that she wasn't, she was a real person/my best friend/a surgically reconstructed Frankenstein's monster version of the original Suzie, made for me by my grandma***. And she was all alone in some restaurant because I had been thinking about my kneecaps and whether they would pop off if I pulled hard enough, rather than the safety of my charge.

So, I had to clear my throat a few times I think, and maybe even started crying before I actually thought of a sentence to say, but eventually communicated to Grandpa the tragedy that had occurred, at which point he wordlessly turned the car around and drove some hundreds of miles back to the restaurant on a rescue mission. Suzie now rests safely on top of a bookcase where she is queen of all she surveys.



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*When I called my grandparents, my grandma would put it on speaker phone to talk, but I wouldn't hear a word from my grandpa until the end when he would say "Nice talking to you!" That's a quality conversation, in my book.

** Grandma and my sister. And maybe my parents? I don't remember.

*** I loved her so much her face and hands and feet kept coming off. And Grandma loved me so much she kept sewing her new ones.


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