Today I learned a fact that I seriously could have gone my whole life without knowing: people started wearing high heels to avoid stepping in human excrement when walking down the street.
Thank you NPR for ruining my image of stilettos FOREVER.
And, while in the gym, trying to find ways to blank that particular fact out of my mind, I got stuck watching a baseball game, which is weird, because there is some big hockey "series" thing going on (going on forever, it's like the primaries - I think it started about a billion years ago and they still haven't gotten to some playoff thing, which, by the way, is for the "national" hockey thingy even though Canadian teams are playing - oh hockey, the sport that makes no sense, spawned by theoretical physicists as respite from writing papers on worm holes) and it seems like they shouldn't be playing together as one is a winter sport, and one summer, but whatever.
There was a guy on one of the teams that had the ugliest blue socks pulled all the way up to his knees. I'm not sure what team he was on because I was listening to my MP3 player, not the TV, and the symbol for his team name was just some cryptic letter on his hat. You know, they can have a huge advertisement for Viagra on the wall but allah forbid they put a team name on the uniform so we can know who's playing. It's like, oh look, the blue socks people against the other guys.
The other team were these other guys, not sure who they were either, except that they kept showing this Japanese guy (wonder if he knows how to make sushi, he was kind of cute and looked like he wouldn't talk too much) and they all had super long pants. In fact, the pitcher had pants that were down past his shoes. And, while we're on that subject, his shoes were ugly. They were white and looked like something you might find in a geriatric hospital. You would think an athlete who has to use his feet would have the sense to buy a sexy little pair of cleats or whatever it is they wear to pitch a ball, with some stylie laces but no. He'd rather look like grandpa.
Thank allah I could not see what color socks he was wearing. It might have forced me to swear off baseball forever. That is, the time every two years watching an hour of a game in the gym. It doesn't seem like a lot but it adds up.
So the guy batting was wearing these puffy pants (reminding me of how, in Greece, everyone said "pantaloons" when they meant "pants" - lost in translation) and ugly socks, and the guy throwing a ball at him was wearing baggy pants and ugly shoes, and, you are going to tell me that millions of Americans watch this sport? No wonder why I see so many fashion don'ts in my classes...
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
one of those days
I am trying to decide what my favorite part of teaching class out in DC has been.
Maybe it was when United mistakenly shipped my luggage on an earlier flight to DC and I stood around in baggage claim for AN HOUR waiting for it to arrive, only to find out it had been there all along.
Or maybe it was Monday when I arrived at 730 in the morning to set up my class room only to find that the key I was sent for the building was never activated. And all my students showed up and stood around in the lobby for a half hour until someone with a working key showed up.
No, I think it was today, when the network went down because of Sprint so I am now a half day behind in my class because it's kind of hard to teach people how to use software when their computers aren't working.
No, my favorite part is definitely a few minutes ago, when a metal ceiling tile covering the lights in my class room just randomly fell out of the ceiling. No one was injured. At least it woke everyone up from the nice slumber they were enjoying while I lamely tried to walk them through a meta model exercise on the white board...
It's not just me. I talked to another consultant named Tab and he told me he refuses to teach here anymore. I'm taking everyone out for drinks this evening in the hopes I don't get eviscerated on the evaluation.
Maybe it was when United mistakenly shipped my luggage on an earlier flight to DC and I stood around in baggage claim for AN HOUR waiting for it to arrive, only to find out it had been there all along.
Or maybe it was Monday when I arrived at 730 in the morning to set up my class room only to find that the key I was sent for the building was never activated. And all my students showed up and stood around in the lobby for a half hour until someone with a working key showed up.
No, I think it was today, when the network went down because of Sprint so I am now a half day behind in my class because it's kind of hard to teach people how to use software when their computers aren't working.
No, my favorite part is definitely a few minutes ago, when a metal ceiling tile covering the lights in my class room just randomly fell out of the ceiling. No one was injured. At least it woke everyone up from the nice slumber they were enjoying while I lamely tried to walk them through a meta model exercise on the white board...
It's not just me. I talked to another consultant named Tab and he told me he refuses to teach here anymore. I'm taking everyone out for drinks this evening in the hopes I don't get eviscerated on the evaluation.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
monogamy
The major problem I've always had with being in a monogamous relationship is that I am usually the only one actually being monogamous. Of course, I try to understand that men are from Mars and that causes them to sleep with slutty girls they meet on midnighthookup.com and that because as a woman I'm from Venus where we don't engage in that kind of behavior that I am responsible for the whole mis-understanding of what is to be expected in a relationship these days.
Like, for example, when a guy says to me "I can't figure out how to make you happy." So then I try to reiterate what I tell every guy that I date, which is "I will be happy as long as you don't fuck someone else". And then they are shocked when they fuck someone else and I'm
...wait for it...
not happy!
Keeping it simple for stupid doesn't always work out. I think in the future I will just present a more detailed request, maybe even laminate it so he can carry it around in his wallet, stuck to his lame ass glow in the dark peppermint flavored condom, laying out the specific rules about not fucking someone else:
Like, for example, when a guy says to me "I can't figure out how to make you happy." So then I try to reiterate what I tell every guy that I date, which is "I will be happy as long as you don't fuck someone else". And then they are shocked when they fuck someone else and I'm
...wait for it...
not happy!
Keeping it simple for stupid doesn't always work out. I think in the future I will just present a more detailed request, maybe even laminate it so he can carry it around in his wallet, stuck to his lame ass glow in the dark peppermint flavored condom, laying out the specific rules about not fucking someone else:
- if we are dating, I would prefer you not fuck someone else even if, in your mind, it doesn't count because you paid her to fuck you
- especially if you used the money that you were supposedly saving to buy me a birthday present
- and it still counts that you fucked someone else even if I was in DC and you were in Bangkok and then you sent me an email right after letting me know what you did
- and then had the friend that you borrowed money from for my birthday present send me a bill for the aforementioned present because he needed his money back
- I would prefer you not fuck someone who will then email you pictures of herself sitting naked on the side of a bathtub and you will look at these pictures on my computer in my house and then forget to close them so that when I go to check my email I am instead looking at a naked picture of some girl you fucked
- and then gave a copy of a CD mix you made for me
- I would prefer you not fuck some girl who is going to throw a beer all over you, and me, when she runs into us at a party in NYC, especially if I am wearing a new dress and my favorite shoes, black silk stilettos, which are damaged by the beer
- but I'm not allowed to kick her ass for fucking up my shoes
- because, to be honest, I'm not going to kick her ass for fucking you because I realize you suck as a boyfriend
- it would be nice if you would not fuck someone who scored a 600 on the SATs, works part time as a librarian at an elementary school, and can't "handle the stress" of her life although it's okay if you intend to accidentally get her pregnant and marry her
- while we are dating because you think I'm not going to notice that you are married to a pregnant girl
-because I guess you are used to fucking people who got 600 on the SATs and don't understand the concept of "girl with brains"
- please don't fuck girls who have the same size foot as me because it's convenient to have someone else to fuck who also can wear my motocross boots
- please don't break up with me when you know I'm going to be gone for at least a week for a work related trip because you plan on fucking someone else for the week I'm gone but want to be able to get back together with me when I return home because you need someone to clean your apartment
- and then tell me I have no right to be mad when I find out you fucked someone else because "we were broken up that week"
- try to not fuck our marriage counselor
A lawyer could find the loop holes...which is why I won't be dating one of them anytime soon...
Sunday, April 20, 2008
ballet lessons
I recently got back in touch with a friend from high school who has, as it turns out, spent the last three years dancing with Martha Graham's dance company (Kerreck, you need to move to NYC!!!). Funny that right before we got back in touch I was thinking it was the first time in my adult life I haven't had a professional dancer (as in ballet, not pole) as a friend. I was showing his pics to my sister and we both started laughing about my childhood dance experience...
Besides wanting to be an engineer when I was a kid, I also wanted to be a ballet dancer. I realized the first dream would be easier to meet than the second as we had a house full of math books. But when I was 8 I finally convinced my mom to sign me up for ballet lessons.
This is how badly I wanted to be a dancer: my mom decided that we only had enough money for lessons, but not anything else, so I wore my bathing suit to practice. A fucking bathing suit that was white with red stars and blue stripes on it (I had forgotten about the stars and stripes until talking to my sister today - oy vey).
Worse, I didn't have any tights. My mom had me try on some of her panty hose before deciding I was better off going with these thick ribbed tights that I wore with my school uniform in the winter so I wouldn't freeze during recess, although at the time of this story it was spring and it pretty warm. For shoes my mom decided I could wear my little tennis shoes that she used to buy at the drug store every time my teacher sent a note home about the condition of my shoes (once I had a teacher staple my shoes back together because they had extreme structural failure and I couldn't walk in them - then my dad "fixed" them by putting some kind of contact cement on duct tape to glue them back together - the contact cement formed these weird lumps that caused my toes to bleed - and you wonder why in my adult life I once owned 300 pairs of shoes...okay fine...400 pairs of shoes).
Picture it: I show up my first day, 10 minutes late because our car wouldn't start, wearing a star spangled bathing suit with lumpy ass tights under it and tennis shoes. I vaguely remember the teacher trying to talk my mom out of the lessons while I ran over to the barre thinking that day was the best day ever of my life. I can clearly remember the smell of the mirror and the sound of the wood floor and, at the end of the lesson, running to the other side of the room to the adult barre thinking I would never be tall enough to dance at it.
My ballet teacher ended up getting me a proper leotard, tights, and shoes for the next session, and even gave me a little white hat box to keep them in at the studio since I wasn't allowed to take them home with me. That night at home I made a label with my name on it for my hatbox using my dad's label machine, which was only supposed to be used for labeling his various academic binders, which are still in the library in his office to this day with blue labels and white lettering on this super industrial plastic strip with god knows what chemical as an adhesive.
I did 8 lessons. I practiced my ballet religiously every night in the room I shared with my sister using this old writing desk where my sister did her homework as a barre because the top of the desk had a rail on it. For some of the dance moves that I made up myself I also employed a wooden ladder that my dad had made that went up to my sister's bunk bed. The only record I listened to was Nutcracker Suite.
On the day of my eighth lesson, my mom brought her sister, my Aunt Michelle, to watch me dance. I had my sister fix my hair with a curling iron and was nervous to be performing before an "audience". My mom and my aunt laughed through my entire lesson, and were eventually ejected from the studio by my teacher. It occurred to me then that maybe I wasn't a very good dancer. That was also the day I found out I would not be able to participate in the recital because it cost money. Also, my mom was mad about being asked to leave the studio and told me I couldn't take anymore lessons.
I packed my leotard, tights, and slippers into the hatbox for the last time and gave it to my instructor. She gave me the white and gold outfit that I would have worn in the recital and she gave me the hatbox. I'm not sure if that was an act of kindness or if she had to give it to me because she couldn't get the label I put on it off. I wore that costume every day until it didn't fit
me any more. Every picture of me from that period, including family reunions, birthday parties, me riding a bike and a skateboard, and even a get together in someone's backyard after my mom and a bunch of other neighborhood wives decided to learn to shoot guns, shows me in that outfit.
My sister said she had wanted to take ballet too but after watching what I went through, she decided it wasn't worth it. She recently started taking dance lessons.
Besides wanting to be an engineer when I was a kid, I also wanted to be a ballet dancer. I realized the first dream would be easier to meet than the second as we had a house full of math books. But when I was 8 I finally convinced my mom to sign me up for ballet lessons.
This is how badly I wanted to be a dancer: my mom decided that we only had enough money for lessons, but not anything else, so I wore my bathing suit to practice. A fucking bathing suit that was white with red stars and blue stripes on it (I had forgotten about the stars and stripes until talking to my sister today - oy vey).
Worse, I didn't have any tights. My mom had me try on some of her panty hose before deciding I was better off going with these thick ribbed tights that I wore with my school uniform in the winter so I wouldn't freeze during recess, although at the time of this story it was spring and it pretty warm. For shoes my mom decided I could wear my little tennis shoes that she used to buy at the drug store every time my teacher sent a note home about the condition of my shoes (once I had a teacher staple my shoes back together because they had extreme structural failure and I couldn't walk in them - then my dad "fixed" them by putting some kind of contact cement on duct tape to glue them back together - the contact cement formed these weird lumps that caused my toes to bleed - and you wonder why in my adult life I once owned 300 pairs of shoes...okay fine...400 pairs of shoes).
Picture it: I show up my first day, 10 minutes late because our car wouldn't start, wearing a star spangled bathing suit with lumpy ass tights under it and tennis shoes. I vaguely remember the teacher trying to talk my mom out of the lessons while I ran over to the barre thinking that day was the best day ever of my life. I can clearly remember the smell of the mirror and the sound of the wood floor and, at the end of the lesson, running to the other side of the room to the adult barre thinking I would never be tall enough to dance at it.
My ballet teacher ended up getting me a proper leotard, tights, and shoes for the next session, and even gave me a little white hat box to keep them in at the studio since I wasn't allowed to take them home with me. That night at home I made a label with my name on it for my hatbox using my dad's label machine, which was only supposed to be used for labeling his various academic binders, which are still in the library in his office to this day with blue labels and white lettering on this super industrial plastic strip with god knows what chemical as an adhesive.
I did 8 lessons. I practiced my ballet religiously every night in the room I shared with my sister using this old writing desk where my sister did her homework as a barre because the top of the desk had a rail on it. For some of the dance moves that I made up myself I also employed a wooden ladder that my dad had made that went up to my sister's bunk bed. The only record I listened to was Nutcracker Suite.
On the day of my eighth lesson, my mom brought her sister, my Aunt Michelle, to watch me dance. I had my sister fix my hair with a curling iron and was nervous to be performing before an "audience". My mom and my aunt laughed through my entire lesson, and were eventually ejected from the studio by my teacher. It occurred to me then that maybe I wasn't a very good dancer. That was also the day I found out I would not be able to participate in the recital because it cost money. Also, my mom was mad about being asked to leave the studio and told me I couldn't take anymore lessons.
I packed my leotard, tights, and slippers into the hatbox for the last time and gave it to my instructor. She gave me the white and gold outfit that I would have worn in the recital and she gave me the hatbox. I'm not sure if that was an act of kindness or if she had to give it to me because she couldn't get the label I put on it off. I wore that costume every day until it didn't fit
me any more. Every picture of me from that period, including family reunions, birthday parties, me riding a bike and a skateboard, and even a get together in someone's backyard after my mom and a bunch of other neighborhood wives decided to learn to shoot guns, shows me in that outfit.My sister said she had wanted to take ballet too but after watching what I went through, she decided it wasn't worth it. She recently started taking dance lessons.
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