House Centipede in my House

Came home to this little monster waiting for us in our apartment tonight. It was a little more horrifying than owning a hamster and a little less horrifying than the time I woke up with a millipede carcass draped in between my ring and middle finger (but very much the same kind of horrifying.)

At first we were intrigued, then it moved. We (my roommates and I) screamed like ethnic mourners and killed it with an oblong bike lock: something that may have been more logically used on a human intruder. It took several blows. And a lot of emotion.

Just when I think I'm a rational, self-respecting adult, nature gives me 100 wriggling, screaming reasons why I am anything but.

I Hate Myself for Loving You

I may judge a man for the things he likes, but I will loathe myself for the things I love.

For instance, I sort of hate myself for how much I love Titanic. I also hate myself for not loving Flight of the Conchords. It's probably so I can beat everyone else to the punch of hating me (because I'll always forgive myself, but I know that people like my brother may never find it in his heart to forgive this kind of crime).

But most of all, I hate myself for loving, so much, the ironic, hilarious statement T's. Tonight I went to the laundromat and saw a large man, daughter in tow, with a shirt on that said "STOP SNITCH'N!" across a stop sign, and I had to laugh because, sir you are YELLING at me and we've never met.

But this isn't the first time I've appreciated and adored these shirts. And I hate that.

I hate that you are a grown man wearing a shirt that says, "Sister for sale..." and that I love it.

I hate that I wonder how many times a week you wear that "Warn a Brother" shirt because I know it's more than one and I hope it's more than five.

I hate that I want to know what you were thinking when you bought your shirt. If you laughed, or if (and I hope) you looked at it and thought, 'yeah... people do need to stop snitch'n, and I need to let them know that... one to five times a week.'

But most of all I hate that I don't hate it, not a little bit, not even at all.

Neverland

A couple of weeks ago, I was walking past a crowd of popular homeless people when one stopped and proposed to me. I pretended like I didn't care, and he pretended like he was actually asking for a dollar, you know, that old game of cat and mouse, but ever since then there has been this tension on the corner of 1st and 3rd. You know, I walk past and see him... looking at me... looking at him.

I know what you're thinking, me... a lawyer, with him... a peasant??? But if there is anything this pseudo relationship has taught me is that romanticism is alive, and if you don't believe me, believe the coast of Somalia who has resurrected not only treasure and adventure but PIRACY. Just leave it to this guy, (who is suing pirates) to take the days of yore and pervert it with 21st century disgrace like lawsuits and "emotional trauma." It's pirates. The only emotion that should be felt is sheer elation to have been chosen at all.

I just think that more people should adopt old this romanticism into their lives. Maybe fall in love with a homeless man... or pirate your next lawsuit... I don't know for sure, but it might just make everyone a little bit happier.

Road Trip

There is probably a lesson to be learned with every experience in life right? A road trip certainly is not exempt from this force-fed life maxim. Here are a few gems I got from driving from California back to Salt Lake:

1. Turns out I don't know all the lyrics to Aretha's "I Will Survive." I did not see that one coming.

2. Not knowing lyrics does not stop me from being so desperate for a match that I'm not only a couple seconds behind the song, but also shouting nonsense from the top of my lungs.

3. 6 bran muffins is a lot.

4. 1 hour > 10 hours, when that hour wasn't accounted for in the itinerary. Thanks Mountain Standard time.

5. Nothing makes me think deeper about life than a GPS on a road trip. The parallels are almost limitless

Photo

My Stimulus Package

My parents did a pretty good job of convincing us when we were kids that we didn't have money for luxuries, so don't ask. It was a pretty good strategy, except when the lack of money never showed fruition and thus, 'poverty' is left to be deduced and determined by the child according to what the family doesn't have, and when your aunt owns a health food store, that's most things in the kitchen that the rest of the world has no trouble affording/consuming. Thus a list of 'luxuries' was conceptualized in my head: (Most of this list came from the comparison of my house, to my one childhood-stock friend Carmen's house, whose mother was single and working but bought kid food, so must have been rich.)

-White bread- rich people food
-PAM- rich people convenience (this led to what I like to refer to as the PAM upset of '04 in college when I started buying groceries myself for the first time and saw PAM for a dollar something and bought four of them because I figured they were on sale for what could only be at least 95% off.
-Automatic transmissions- rich people transportation
Hamburger Helper- Rich people don't have time to cook... and Carmen's mom loved HH...

And then I began thinking... I, or my parents, have had the answer to the "recession" (which I still think a ploy set by the national HR union) this whole time!

It's not about giving new home owners a healthy tax break, and it's not about paying teachers more... sorry all my roommates... it's about tricking the nation into thinking things like Ford Focuses and Crystal Light are the finer things in life. When they get to the checkout and see the cheap price, we just have to tell them it's 95% off. Aren't you a lucky shopper!

True or False??

-Routines or "schedules" are just a set-up for causing your own worst day.

In the spirit of the kind of dinner conversationalist I am: let me answer my own question with my own story.

I always have a beverage at 11 a.m. at work. It's a little routine I've formed. Today, I forgot my drink, and my morale suddenly took a devastating turn ranging somewhere in between waking up 3 minutes before your alarm and the Trail of Tears.

I imagine my co-worker's conversation to go something like this:

"What's wrong with the receptionist?"

"Don't know, she's usually on a Splenda high and really likable at this hour."

"Well give her some chocolate, she's starting to lose us business."

Now I have to figure the best way to schedule in a time to de-schedule my schedule.
*My Friend Shauna said I should have more pictures on my blog. Is this what you were talking about Shauna?

;)

I think winkers are sexy, confident, and collected. And being winked at is just about as good as getting proposed to... and almost as intimate. (I've never experienced this first had but I frequent Temple Square in Salt Lake City on my lunch break and thus have become very familiar with the process.) Oh... you're winking at me? You chose me out of this room full of humans to make such a personal connection with and to share a secret and a joke? I DO.

So as an ultimate goal to up my sex appeal I've been trying to transform myself into a winker lately. The cool thing I've learned about being a winker is that they are no respecter of persons. You can practice anywhere on anything... which can't be said about most intimate interactions. So I took this gig to work.

Except it was here that I learned trying to transform into a winker overnight is like trying to transform yourself into a habitual swearer overnight. You just end up mixing your words around and looking like an idiot. Son of a damn! Or you do this:

My married, sweet co-worker mentioned that he was overly warm in our office, and asked if I shared his discomfort. I didn't and told him... but then I felt bad for making him feel like the overweight "always warmer than the average worker" guy, so I tried to compensate by telling him that maybe it was because he was wearing pants, and I was wearing a skirt.

"Ya know, good ventilation."

I guess some part of me thought this was a good time to practice my wink (which by the way was still really slow and mechanical), when really what I should have been considering were the implications of my up-my-skirt reference alone was grounds for at least some form of sexual harassment fines. The wink could do nothing but lead to either some kind of soft lay-off or a restraining order.

So it may actually be the winking that is a result of the sexy, calm, and collectedness, instead of the other way around. But maybe now I can start winning friends and influencing people with my new habitual swearing I'm thinking about picking up.