lions, tigers, and yaks

Last night I had a dream I was in this field in England for a birthday party for Clint. He walked up to me and was holding hands with some girl that was his new girlfriend. I was trying to figure out why he invited me to the party but instead of answering my question he took me over to this rickety wooden fence and said "Look at my animals".

There were two doors like a barn and one had a small window. He slid the window down and there was a horse head in the window. Then he slid the window closed and open again and this time there was a yak with all these weird ribbons and shit on its head. Then Clint walked away but not before saying "don't let my animals out".

So I opened the doors to see what other animals there were and the animals started running out. None of them were real animals except for one which was a lion. The fake animals were really scary looking, like a tiger with a bear head. I started to panic when I saw the lion and tried to close the doors but the lion jumped on the doors and knocked me over.

I was laying on the ground and knew the lion was going to try to eat me so I pulled myself up between the wall and the door and the lion went running across the field. Then these two guys came up to me wearing suits and carrying briefcases and they were like "Franki, you missed your flight! We have to go to the airport now!" And I asked them who I should call to let them know I let all the animals out and they were like "We don't have time!" so then I was in this really old airport and a woman told me my flight was leaving in an hour so I ran up to security and I had these HUGE orange and red tickets.

Then I got to my terminal and found out my flight didn't leave for 6 hours. So then I was like well I'll go smoke but I couldn't get out of the terminal because there was no door, only windows and then I also realized I was in the airport by myself and that I was trapped for whatever reason by the guys with the suitcases.

my coke habit

So today is the first day in my entire adult life that I haven't had a coke. Instead I drank 2 pots of green tea, made with three tea bags each pot. I suppose this is a good thing...

PROS:
-green tea is a lot healthier
-won't have to carry cokes around anymore
-can stop trying to force myself to eat broccoli since I'm drinking so much green tea
-can finally use up that huge thing of Agave nectar I bought 2 years ago that has since crystalized but I think it's still okay to use
-can use all my cool coffee cups assuming my idiot room mate brings them down from his room where he seems to be hoarding them like some kind of twisted underpants fairy
-um...
-oh yeah, if I ever get dragged to starbucks I will actually be able to order something instead of going "do you have any cokes back there?" like I usually do

CONS:
-I'm pretty sure I'm dying, or I feel like I'm dying, and I never used to feel that way when I drank coke, so that means I'll never live to reap the benefits of drinking green tea. Fuck.

a short history on explosives

I just sent the following email to my co-author, regarding a Red Bull video he sent me about some guys creating a wave in a river somewhere in Europe and then surfing it. Why he's watching videos instead of finishing our book is a mystery to me. My co-author and my brother got into a little tiff about the veracity of the vid. Note that my co-author is a geologist who works in the oil industry fracking.

I wrote to my co-author:

I just had the most scintillating conversation with my little brother (insert comment "I'm not so little any more" due to the fact that he is over 6' tall, and then do what I do, ignore the comment and continue on with the story...okay, where were we, oh yes, Nobel). Any way, we were talking about whether or not that explosion in that surfing vid could have been real.

Steve then went through the whole dynamite thing, including how Nobel discovered you could mix sawdust in with nitro glycerin and that makes it stable (NOTE: I am just guessing, yeah, just a GUESS, that Nobel was a bit of a slob and he accidentally got pencil shavings or some shit in his nitro glycerin, and then Bertha, his secretary, was all freaking out and shit, like "Goddammit Alfred! I've told you a MILLION times don't sharpen your fucking pencils around your experiments!" and then he was like, "What evah bitch! I just discovered some serious shit. You want the Nobel Peace Prize? Then shut the fuck up and go type something!" and then she was all like "Dick! I am SO marrying that baron! Then I'm going to tell him to smite you! Oh fuck, wait, then I won't win the peace prize. Fine. I'll just go around saying bad things about your penis." She won the NPP in 1905.).

And that's why dynamite really can't get wet. Or, oh, left that part out, water is what caused nitro glycerin to get so fucky after just sitting around for a few days (or was it weeks? I'm trying to not exaggerate.) And if they really threw some dynamite in that river thing it would have gotten wet and not exploded. That's why bomb squads use a water tank to diffuse bombs (I did not know that, BTW, until I did some research).

So, um, then...

Oh yeah. I threw a wrench in the monkey works quick like. I said "Well, maybe they put the dynamite in a water proof box!" I'm the creative one in the family you know. So then we started talking about Peak Particle Velocity. Steve said geologists probably don't know much about that, because rock people are kind of limited to the whole "Ooh rock. Rock is hard." kind of analysis, usually done before they insert a finger up their nose and stare vacantly at the neighborhood squirrels, going, "Heh heh. I think that one forgot where he buried his nut." PPV causes all kinds of bad things like making buildings fall down and shit. Causing ruptures in the earth. Or, maybe it was PPV is bad if there already is a rupture in the earth, that part is a little foggy, cause I was focusing on remembering PPV.

But, even more exciting, is the Air Blast. Air Blast can cause brain damage and brain damage causes things like confusion over whether the month is June, when the book was due, or July, which is when it is now, and that comes AFTER June, if you were wondering. I've heard climbing is therapeutic for these kinds of brain injuries because climbing doesn't require a lot in the way of intelligence (those in dis-agreement should hang out at the gear counter at Paradise, where, last time I was there, and had a gakked up toe nail, I was asked "Dude, is that your TOE?" to which I wanted to respond "No, I've removed all those and sewn little trinkets I found at the everything under a dollar store on my foot to replace them. Aren't they cute?" but I didn't because at the time I was looking for a climbing partner and didn't want to deal with the rumors of being the "toeless girl").

The bottom line is, could that wave have really been caused by dynamite, and what was the PPV anyway? Did all those building fall down right after the vid was shot due to PPV and Red Bull was like "Fuck us!"?

Also, Steve has a been a member of the International Society of Explosive Engineers for 12 years. He prefers the phrase "blowed up" rather than "blew up". Um, and, to be honest, he doesn't like oil guys too much because they are always hogging up the mountains and you can't mine for coal in the same place because they're always like "Dude, you're going to ruin my hole" in a whiny voice. And, ahem, he said they call it "sweet crude oil" because they are a bunch of arrogant pricks that like to say things like "sweet crude".

the end

Bad Graveyard Bunny

One animal I forgot to mention in my zoo is the bad graveyard bunny. This bunny is pretty large as bunnies go. And he might have rabies or something. As I’ve been walking through the grave yard in the evening (there’s basically a quarter mile track around all the graves) the bunny runs in front of me and does very destructive things.

Because of the upcoming holiday most of the graves have flowers on them. The bunny likes to jump into the flowers, knocking them over. I try to not laugh because I don’t want to encourage him, but yesterday he jumped into the leg of a tripod flower arrangement and sent the thing tumbling into two other flower arrangements, causing this kind of daffodil domino effect.

I know he had to have done that on purpose. Even if he is in dire need of bunny spectacles there’s NO WAY he could have not seen that arrangement. It was gargantuan. In the hour I was wandering the graveyard he knocked that over, two vase arrangements, jumped over a low bench and I’m pretty sure pooped on it, and then he ate some of a nice bushy kind of arrangement. I saw him eating it and asked him if he was allowed to do that and he gave me this look like "what are you going to do about it even if I’m NOT supposed to be eating this?" I felt like telling him that I used to eat rabbits so he better watch his attitude around me, but didn’t bother because those types of bunnies never listen.

Speaking of arrangements, while we are on the subject, some people put strange things on their graves. One person that’s there has a flag on her grave that has a picture of one of those small annoying dogs with a hairy face and a bow on its head. I didn’t even know you could buy a flag with a dog on it. Nor did I know that people put flags on their graves.

If someone ever made a grave for me I hope they will put a pirate flag on it. I however, will not be there, as I plan to be elsewhere. Being buried is not great for the environment.

The "unofficial" King George, VA Zoo

Never heard of King George, VA? That's not too shocking. The town has about 200 residents, most of whom are stray dogs. My "hotel" also is the town's trailer park, grocery, and, I am not making this up, grave yard. The closest restaurant is The King of Pizza (having had it, I would postulate that is an exaggeration unless they are referring to just this county).

To entertain myself, which has not been easy since there's no gym and the only place to walk is in the graveyard, or down the side of Rt 301, I have created a little zoo that I like to visit every day. It's unofficial, but fun, if you ever find yourself in King George VA:

First, walk past the rusted Mercedes with no wheels, and past the grills laying in the grass, to the office, which is actually just a room with lock boxes that contain room keys. When you check into the hotel you have to call a special number and a guy reads you the combo and then takes hits off his bong while you try to open the lock box, saying things like "yeah dude, just turn it slow". Around the door to this office you will find Dusty Cat, a species of cat known for giving off clouds of dust when it fluffs its tail and runs away from you. Besides dust, this species can be identified by its singular ear.

Walk down the drive way onto the highway. As you walk in the gravel break down lane you will encounter the bush bees, bees that collect together in a swarm on a bush. They only leave the bush to chase people like you who are walking by.

A half mile from the bush bees is the electri-dog. The electri-dog has an electric collar, and lives in a trailer park habitat. It is known for lunging furiously at visitors to the zoo and then falling on the ground and wiping its face with its paws as it gets the shit shocked out of it.

Empty pig is the next animal on our tour. Empty pig is a big white pig on top of Crazy Ray's Ribs, which may or may not be closed, it's hard to tell.

Finally, as you cross the highway and head back to the hotel, look for the venemous black strap snake laying on the side of the highway. It looks like a snake, though in reality it's really just a strap that was blowing around from the air currents generated by all the trucks. But, it could have been a snake.

Finally, encounter that truck babboon, hanging out the window and cat calling as you pick your way up the Woodside Inn driveway.

Thanks for visiting the zoo. Please don't feed the animals.

Women - Stop Being Bitches

Today I find myself wondering why women are such assholes.

I’m in my fourth week of dealing with professional, or should I say “professional” women. Normally, thank Allah, my job is done by men so I usually don't have to deal with members of my own sex. Also, up until a month ago, the women I ran into in my job were more like me (of the successful women I met who do architecture, not a SINGLE one had a spouse that had a job - not a SINGLE working husband among the lot).

I spent two weeks working for a woman who was an idiot. My favorite thing she did was call a meeting without informing me, blindsided me as I was trying to get my code done by saying "we have a conference call with everyone in 5 minutes" (thanks for giving me some prep time!), and then, when everyone had joined the call, she announced "I haven't seen any of the code so if this is wrong it's not my fault." Really bitch? Weren't you the one giving me the requirements???

This woman also purposely withheld information from me until the second to last day of my consulting gig, and that required me to pull an all nighter to completely restructure my code so that I could do a presentation the next day for her three bosses, all of whom are VPs. I wanted to kick her in the cunt for that. There I was, for two weeks, putting in twelve hour days including working the weekend, and she couldn’t even give the most basic professional courtesty by providing me with the information I needed to do my job.

And then she had the balls to start crying when I confronted her about withholding information. And I did it nicely, when I was tired from a long run, so I would be able to control the urge to slap her. The entire project was almost ruined because she was so stupid.

Then, last week, I was teaching a class and got into a confrontation with a woman in the class about her project. She made a bad engineering decision, and rather than deciding to correct when her team realized she had made a bad decision based on an example I gave in my class, she decided to attack me instead. Personally and in a passive aggressive fashion. She is lucky, as she stage whispered shit to her embarrassed male colleague, that I don't kill clients that pay me. Her fatal error was when she made a blatantly false statement about a technical standard, and when I pulled the standard up on my laptop and said "Show me where it says that" she picked up her stuff and ran out of the room crying. This woman was in her 40s. It was sad.

I then sent her an email that night saying I would be willing to discuss her point further if she thought it might help. She was a dumb bitch but I was trying to be nice. She didn't even respond back to my email, and sent a male colleague to my class the next day to tell me she wasn't coming back to class and that I didn't need to contact her again. I am embarrassed for her, and feel bad that her coping skills are to act like a pussy.

Ladies, do you really think that kind of behavior is going to get you equal pay with a male colleague? Do you think it's going to help your career to try to fuck over every other professional woman you encounter?

This week in class I got a blonde bimbo who is obviously fucking the program manager, who has made it his mission to get some "after class tutoring" with me. He's divorced. Since he has been asking me questions at break and after class about WORK, she has been disrupting my class by talking loudly, making jokes, complaining about how the software tool that I'm using to teach the class is unuseable (that's right honey, because it requires intelligence), and has been flirting with every other guy in the class, one would assume to make the PM jealous. The guy who set up the class is thinking about removing her because other students are complaining about her behavior.

For the record, I don't fuck redneck guys from small towns that aren't smart. Especially when they are shorter than me. And have a beer gut.

Here's what would be nice: for you, as a woman, to get a fucking REAL education. Don't skate through school getting some bullshit liberal arts degree. Don't take a job in a tech environment if you can't handle it. Stop running off to have a baby every time the going gets tough for you.

You think you're the first woman treated badly because of your chromosomes? Trust me, you are not. And yes, you're going to get hit on, lose your boyfriend because he can't handle a woman that is smarter than he is or makes more money than he does, you are going to pull all nighters for your customer, and they are going to complain because your company sent a female consultant instead of a male consultant and that's life.

And you keep doing your job because you love it. And you aren't going to let some asshole stop you.

Even when that asshole should be supporting you because she's in the same boat. So women, please, stop acting like fuck nuts. Help a sister out.

Expressions I Dislike

"What ever floats your boat" - What exactly is that supposed to mean? That something besides water can float a boat? What's the visual I'm supposed to get when someone says this? A boat floating in outer space waiting for something (jello, money, candy corn) to gather around it and hold it up? It has appalling alliterative qualities. Say it while looking in the mirror. Look at the way your mouth forms around the long O. Yeah, you look like an idiot.

"Getting a bite to eat" or worse "Getting a bite" - My prejudice against people who use this expression always seems to bear out. For example, I was recently invited on a date "to get a bite" by a man who failed to mention until 5 minutes after the date was underway, that he had giardia (AKA horrible diarrhea), meaning I sat at a table in the restaurant by myself, with people staring as my date rushed to the bathroom every 10 minutes, for most of the "date". Which is not to say explosive diarrhea is a bad quality, but the guy didn't have much else going for him, except that he was super rich. He told me I was "over educated" and that "most guys don't see that as a positive thing". Really fucknut? Because, I'm not the one who was so stupid I drank some water I shouldn't have and got giardia. Maybe you wouldn't be shitting your brains out all day if you were smart enough to have known the water wasn't safe.

"Shut up!" - This is an East Coast girl thing I think. I dislike it immensely when I am telling someone a good story (e.g. "So, last night I had a date with a guy who had explosive diarrhea") and I'm interrupted with the exclamation "Shut up!" I often fantasize about slapping the utterer across the face and then waiting to see what will happen next.

"Toodles" - Guys seem to say this to me. I have no idea why. How can you purport to be straight and say such a thing?

girl fight tonight

Is it not bad enough that I have spent the past two weeks in Vegas getting hit on by a very unattractive lesbian? Why, baby Jesus, did you put that stupid bitch C in my class today?

This woman is a cunt of the highest order, which would be fine if she were smart, but she's really quite stupid, and worse, lies when confronted about the stupid shit she keeps saying in an attempt to derail my class. She started off the morning by making a stupid comment that was more aimed at me personally than the class material, which I turned around on her to explain because her logic was so poor it only took mere miliseconds to poke a hole in her argument (for architecture geeks, she stated that she had created a business function hierarchy using a UML activity model - this is one of the stupidest things I've ever heard of).

So the next hour she escalated by making another, more personal comment and another more idiotic technical comment (that a sequence flow and a functional decomp accomplish the same thing). I seriously think she was out surfing web sites and just reading random sentences. She accused me of not knowing the course material that I am teaching (yeah, I've only been doing this FOR SEVENTEEN YEARS BITCH). Then she claimed the standard doc I teach to said something it didn't (that you could use an activity diagram in place of an IDEF0 or use case model). So, being a retarded engineer, I pulled up the standard and said "Show me where you read that" because I've used the standard since 2004 and I know what it fucking says because I argue with idiots like her all the time.

Meanwhile, the front row, all 8 seats, are filled with retired Navy guys, who start quietly chanting "girl fight tonight!" I can hear them, but C, who is sitting 5 rows away can't. I am trying to not laugh. I am trying to not jump up on the table in front of me, cross the room Lucy Liu style and cut her head off with my imaginary samurai sword.

I instead start to laugh as the "girl fight tonight" chant gets more lines added to it, of the flavor you would expect from a navy kind of guy. Fine, I'm immature. Cheri apparently thought I was laughing at her, started to cry (this woman, by the by, must be in her late 40s, going on, I guess, 5), and ran out of the room. Then there was stunned silence. I kept going with the class and then afterwards when everyone else had left the navy guys were all like "what the fuck was THAT?"

I'm pretty sure this doesn't happen to the male instructors but I could be wrong. And this could explain why women in general get a bad rap in engineering organizations.

"Here's your hockey octopus!"

I was reading an article today about why one should watch hockey. I read it in part because I was shocked that there was still hockey going on. Or maybe it's one of those sports that goes on all year, like...um...karate.

My favorite, of the 8 reasons cited by the author of why one should watch hockey, was this:

Octopi: Another sell for the NHL, Wyshynski says, is the grand tradition of bringing raw octopodes to the game and throwing them on the ice either before the game or to celebrate a goal. He says the league banned raw octopus-twirling because of the goo and slime, but they still make appearances, their eight legs representing the eight wins once required for a Stanley Cup win.

I am sorry to have not gotten to see this before the NHL banned the practice. I think giving a bunch of drunk red necks raw slimy things to throw during a sporting event is a great idea, slightly better than giving base ball bats out to passionate fans who have been drinking.

Slip Ray & Ajibberish

My favorite people to talk to when I fly out to DC are the people who work with Avis. I always rent cars from them and have gotten to know a few of the people there beyond just getting my receipt for my car.

One of my favorite people is Slip Ray. The other people at Avis call him Slip Ray because he’s always slipping and tripping getting onto or getting off the bus. I have personally seen him slip and almost fall three times getting onto the bus. Two of those times he was holding a big suitcase so it was really funny.

Then there is Ajibberish. Ajibberish is from Korea and no one can understand what he is saying so that’s why he’s Ajibberish. Usually he will lean his head out the window and yell at Slinky as we are pulling out of the Avis parking lot. Slinky is Slinky because he has orange dreds that are styled in this kind of weird spiral design. Ajibberish will yell “Hey Slinky! You no use you eyes where you put that cars!” And then Slinky will yell back “Why you always talking ajibberish?” Then the other two guys who work in the parking lot will start yelling “Ajibberish! Ajibberish!” Then Ajibberish gets a smile on his face like he’s Elvis and drives us about 40 miles an hour over the metal teeth and out the parking lot.

One time he missed the turn out of the parking lot and drove us up on this grass hill. The bus was momentarily stuck but Ajibberish finally figured out to put it in reverse and got us off the hill. The guys who work the guard shack came running over and Ajibberish yelled “I drive use the force!” Those of us that weren’t smiling were probably scared.

As I pulled into Avis today it was raining, and Slip Ray ran over to my SUV with an umbrella. I got stuck with a Dodge Nitro this week. They tried to give me an H3 but I flat out refused to take it. This was the same day the bandage was taken off my cornea and my eye was hurting horribly besides watering non-stop. The little Indian guy called Soup came running over and switched out my car. I think he thought I was crying about my car but I wasn’t.

Slip Ray grabbed my suitcase and escorted me to the bus. He’s been carrying my luggage for me since I broke my hand back in February. I tell him he doesn’t have to but I think he might have a crush on me. He was also excited to tell me about the woman bus driver Colleen. Colleen is a large, large woman who doesn’t always seem to be aware she is driving. I have made fun of Colleen to Slip Ray and Ajibberish, who don’t like her because she’s a bitch.

It turns out Colleen that very day backed her bus into a brand new Lincoln Navigator. Then she tried to say that the Lincoln Navigator hit her even though no one was in it. She was fired. The manager asked how how she could have missed seeing the Lincoln in the back up camera. Colleen apparently screamed at him “I wasn’t looking at the camera! I was trying to look at the steering wheel.” His repeat of this line in a female falsetto sent Ajibberish into hysterics. Then, as we arrived at the airport (Slip Ray rode the bus with me, ostensibly to help me with my bags, but mostly because he likes to tell me what has happened since the last time I was at Avis) he said “You know why she wrecked the bus? Cause she’s a woooooo-maaaaaaaaan!” I smiled and got off the bus, and as he was pulling away Ajibberish opened the bus door again and yelled “Woooooo-maaaaaan!” at me.

I think they deserve their own TV show.

Dr. D's Dirty Undies

My wonderful opthamologist (if you are in the Denver area and need a good eye doctor send me an email and I'll give you his name) told me the following story when I was in his office Monday getting the old eye ball checked out...

He often goes to Mexico and brings back Cuban cigars which he sneaks in either in his coat or, if it's warm, under his shirt. He's jewish and as our MOT has suffered throughout history we figure it's okay to to say fuck it to some arbitrary embargo.

The past month, coming back from Mexico, TSA found out he was a doctor, and, as he went through customs, they pulled him aside and started going through all of his bags. He said they began ripping his bags open and throwing the contents all over the floor of the airport. As he says it "Dirty underwear was flying everywhere!"

The reasoning given by TSA is that they had gotten some intell that a doctor was smuggling body parts into the US. Never mind that Dr. D is an opthamologist, so what did they think he was going to smuggle in, eyeballs, and that, in general, packing, say, a heart or lung in with your dirty underwear is not a great way to ensure the viability of the organ for a transplant.

Lovely that our airports are being run by people who can't even get a job at McDonald's. If you say they are protecting me put the word in quotes.

Proust Questionnaire: James "justifiably james" Nathan

So, let's see...the first time I met James I was jacked up on chemo sitting in his office trying to figure out what the fuck he was talking about regarding RBAC, ISSM, and wanting me to write a paper on the security features of Solaris 10. I went to the nearest bathroom and puked. He got me out to Denver on a project and supported me through my time with the c. He is one of my true friends and I know if anything every happened to me I could count on Jamesy to help me out. We are going to work on a book together, as soon as the other one is out the door, called "the player chronicles". Hugs & xxx to you J.

http://iamanmd.multiply.com

What is your current state of mind?
BLESSED

What is your greatest fear?
That I wont live long enough to see my children prosper

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
my Patience and acceptance of people

What is the trait you most deplore in others?
lack of integrity

What living person do you most admire?
Muhammad Ali

What living person do you most despise?
hmmmm any conservative talk show host

On what occasion do you lie?
"daddy is santa going to grand ma house too"

What or who is the greatest love of your life?
Vera Viera my second wife

When and where were you happiest?
Hawaii

Which talent would you most like to have?
SING

If you could change one thing about yourself what would it be?
my height

What do you consider your greatest achievement?
my girls are my greatest achievement

If you were to die and come back as a person or thing, what do you think it would be?
hmmm OBAMA

What is your favorite occupation?
the one i am now

Who are your favorite writers?
lawd!! JR TOLKIEN , Philip Margolin, LA Banks, Cornel West

Who is your favorite hero of fiction?
Aragon

Who are your heroes in real life?
Ali, OBAMA, Ben Disraeli, my grand pop

What are your favorite names?
James, Franki, Aayana, Aanisa, Aarika, Aakira, to name a few :)

What is your greatest regret?
that I didnt go back to art school

How would you like to die?
in my bed in my house, in my sleep with my children around me

What is your motto?
Today is a day worth LIVING FOR!

Proust Questionnaire: Tami "XT" Knight

An intro to Tami: the Canadian version of me, illustrator and author of a lot of books including Everest: The Ultimate Hump and a book about household knots. She works with cirkids.org and knows how to make hats!

What is your current state of mind?
Slightly rushed & preferring a bit of a slow down

What is your greatest fear?
Barfing. I really don't like barfing.

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
Inability to advocate on my own behalf.

What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Dishonesty.

What living person do you most admire?
Jane Goodall.

What living person do you most despise?
My ex-boss at my old job who was a pompous asshole but thought of himself as a mystical genius.

On what occasion do you lie?
If it keeps others from being hurt......or asking too many questions.

What or who is the greatest love of your life?
My husband. I'm serious. I won the lottery meeting him.

When and where were you happiest?
Rite now here at home with my family & especially when my son is here with the five of us ( 3 humans ; 2 kitties )

Which talent would you most like to have?
To play the violin and speak Japanese.

If you could change one thing about yourself what would it be?
Lower blood pressure.

What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Becoming a circus arts coach to children

If you were to die and come back as a person or thing, what do you think it would be?
......as opposed to "want it to be"? I'm likely to come back as a Jack Russell terrier.

What is your favorite occupation?
Teaching circus arts.

Who are your favorite writers?
John Irving, Kurt Vonnegut, Gunter Grass, Michael Ondaatje, Tom Robbins ; I'm currently reading Truman Capote.

Who is your favorite hero of fiction?
I don't seem to have one.............yikes. Even searching and thinking about it I can't think of one. I'm not drawn to "the heroic" in literature but , rather, the complex web of a story that an author can tell.

Who are your heroes in real life?
My mum and my favorite coaches and teachers.

What are your favorite names?
I don't have favorites but, being a teacher of children I sure have non-favorites and those are , first, any name that is spelled weird or unordinary to it's norm ( e.g. "Jaimz" for "James" ), secondly, names that are just plain silly ( "Spitfire", "Ramamoon", "Moss" ). Yes I've come across those last three.

What is your greatest regret?
I've divested myself of having regrets and make a monumental effort not to have them. Regrets are a massive waste of time.

How would you like to die?
In a long time from now and at the same time as my husband.

What is your motto?
Carpay all the diems hahaha

Proust Questionnaire: Kerreck "hug me I purr" Jones

An intro to Kerreck: one of my best friends from back in the days of San Fran, ballet, and gourmet cooking (by Ker). A gifted mathematician that got away with a lot more than the rest of us regarding our customer and occupation. The culmination of our partying was the exotic erotic ball where he was interviewed on national TV wearing the star spangled g-string about a month after 9/11. He will hopefully remember me breaking into a boat house in my vampire costume to get my ticket and almost taking a swim in the bay. Our best heist was stealing someone's box at the ballet and then staggering over to Alcatraz the next morning for a tour. We did the sharkfest together although he got out of the water about 40minutes before I did. He is also the one who served me with divorce papers. He even dressed up for the occasion, walked into my cube, slammed them on my desk and said "You've been SERVED!" My last hug in San Fran...

What is your current state of mind?
mildly contented

What is your greatest fear? Becoming morbidly obese

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
Not having a job I love

What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Gargantuan Ego with extremely large body fat %

What living person do you most admire?
No one, right now

What living person do you most despise?
Certain disgusting repulsive obese people at my last job

On what occasion do you lie?
I'm at the point where even I can't tell

What or who is the greatest love of your life?
My kitty

When and where were you happiest?
When I was in the cast of the musical "Good News" in the summer of 1991.

Which talent would you most like to have?
Strolling and playing accordion while singing Rodgers and Hart ballads

If you could change one thing about yourself what would it be? Acquire the above talent

What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Having less than 9% body fat at my age.

If you were to die and come back as a person or thing, what do you think it would be?
A poolside towel boy at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas

What is your favorite occupation? Entertainer

Who are your favorite writers?
I loved Hemingway. Kafka is cool as well as Isaac Bashevis Singer. I am now getting into Gabriel Marquez Garcia

Who is your favorite hero of fiction?
Can't think of one right now

Who are your heroes in real life?
Navy Seals, Marines and Rangers who whip it up on the Taliban

What are your favorite names?
Don't have any

What is your greatest regret?
Getting involved with hateful Zionists when I was younger.

How would you like to die?
Being attacked by jailbait while performing as a male stripper at a sweet 16 party

What is your motto?
Don't have one.

meta crap, broken fingers

Great find by Anonymous:

http://www.well.com/~doctorow/metacrap.htm



My favorite quote from this article: "Short of breaking fingers or sending out squads of vengeful info-ninjas to add metadata to the average user's files, we're never gonna get there."

super eyes

So, by the end of this week, I may have one super eye. And if things go well with that, I will, in a month, get another super eye. Right eye is going first.

When I was a kid my parents would make gifts because we didn't have a lot of money. My dad started making me chemistry sets when I was six. I also had my own microscope. He would get the chemicals and then put together a lab book of experiments for me to do. That worked out well and as the years went on the chemicals I got became more and more dangerous.

Around the time I was 10 I think, I got my usual chemistry set, did the experiments in the lab book, and then began improvising. For one experiment I put some chemicals in a test tube. Nothing happened. So then I corked and shook the test tube. Still nothing. So then I applied heat to the bottom of the test tube. This was all being done in my "laboratory", a pile of bricks on the side of our house. The yard went down a steep slope to our neighbor's driveway, and my dad had been trying to grow grass there, finally succeeding. So there I was, sitting on the side of the house, applying a lighter to a test tube.

The test tube exploded. I remember stomping in the grass because it seems there was a fire in the grass and I was worried about burning the house down. My brother ran inside to tell my mom what I did, which was lucky. She rinsed my eyes out with cold water, almost drowning me in the process. That likely saved my eye sight.

The explosion caused a lot of scar tissue on my eyes. By the time I was 14 I was developing major sight issues and could barely tolerate normal light. This is because, with the scar tissue, my pupil was not reacting as quickly as it should to light. Also, my vision would star and halo in low light or darkness. I ended up going through a treatment for my eyes, but through the military so the treatment sucked. At one point I started wearing sunglasses all the time because I couldn't keep my eyes open in normal light because it was too painful.

In 1994 I had started to get tunneled sight so badly that I could barely read and had lost almost all peripheral vision. A doctor operated on my eyes and attempted to clean up the mess. This was when I was dating a guy named Arthur, who was from South Africa, and the poor thing was in the waiting room, saw me coming out, and then I fainted so he had to carry me to the car. I was wearing these things that looked like paper cups on my eyes to protect them. We had not been dating long. In the car I started describing to him how I saw these metal rings laying on the table that they had used to cut up my eyes. He wretched. I had been given valium before the surgery, making me chatty.

Anyway, as we headed towards my apartment Arthur was pulled over by the hate because my vehicle tags were expired. The cop was confused by his South African driver's license and me sitting in the passenger seat with these cups on my eyes babbling about my surgery. He gave us a police escort to the DMV and got my tags renewed in 20 minutes. He even let us park in the handicap parking space. Arthur had to sign everything because I couldn't see. He told everyone he was my husband which was the first time a guy had ever referred to himself as that. Years later he left a comment on a web page I had set up. We wrote a manual together on object oriented design but they took our names off of it and it was never published: http://www.idef.com/IDEF4.html.



So now, a million bilion years later, I have to get surgery again because I'm losing my peripheral vision due to a build up of scar tissue. Also, currently my vision can't be corrected to better than 20/40 in one eye and 20/70 in the other. The haloing is so bad I probably shouldn't be allowed to drive at night. And my depth perception is shit. Since I spend a fair bit of time teaching classes and in rooms lit only by the light of a projector, this has become a bit of a problem. Also, while in Paris, I was unable to navigate around the various bars and restaurants I was attending without having someone to hold on to (thank you JJ and Dunc, aka bad snow white). But, the surgery, which has been performed for the past year, will fix many of those problems, and possibly even give me 20/15 vision.

Having always had bad eye sight that was never 20/20 it will be interesting if that happens. I keep telling my doctor I will have super eyes. He just smiles at me and asks if I want a prescription for valium to take before the surgery.

Men's Underwear - My Research

Since I've nothing better to do, and I drank an entire pot of green tea this evening and will probably be awake until 2009, and Ry my room mate and constant source of entertainment even if only in the sense of watching YouTube vids of people catching crappies, went to bed early, and I can't go for a walk because the hate is out in force and it makes things less fun, I did some research on men's underwear. As odd as this may sound, I really have no experience with it.

Every guy I've happened upon either wears patagonia boxers or nothing. My interest was spurred by a funny comment my co-author made about Y fronts, and since I didn't know what he was talking about, I did an internet search to find out what Y fronts were.

So: http://www.internationaljock.com/balls-in-one-mesh-ultra-pouch-boxer-briefs-black,8447.html

Yikes.

And how about these suspensories (never even heard of those but I do love the name): http://www.internationaljock.com/suspensories.html

My favorite was the rubber zipper thong, described as such:

This is one of the sexiest and most unusual thongs we've had the pleasure to wear. The pouch is made of rubbery, 100% polyurethane with a very obvious zipper right down the front. The waistband and ass strap are made of 90% cotton / 10% spandex blend that provide just the right amount of stretch. It 's black, it's fun, and it's a conversation piece. From the PB Ultra Body 69 Collection.


"Ass strap". "Very obvious zipper". "Conversation piece".

Perhaps I should get the female version for when I have moments of shyness like when I have to talk to a human being who isn't a client or student, and the conversation comes to a screeching halt. I could just pull out my rubber zipper thong and start the party again. "Look," I would shout, "a very obvious zipper!"

Also, just think, you could name an entire crag of climbs based on that one product description.

This was my favorite though. It's like a
whiffle ball/underwear hybrid:
http://www.internationaljock.com/jofa-hockey-cup,3520.html

I used to wonder why men are so fucked up. Now I know.

Semper ubi sub ubi. Or not. It's bad for the environment. And maybe your psyche.

Cranky the Baggage Claim

I recently bought my nephew a toy called Cranky the Crane. It's some character from some book or something where there's a magical world of talking trains I think. I have to admit to not paying attention when he tries to explain it to me.


Anyway, as I was standing in DIA waiting for my luggage to show up, I couldn't help but think what a shit show baggage claim is at DIA. I was there one Friday evening, in a hurry, and bags were going around three deep on the carousel and getting clogged coming out of that magic hole that spews our bags. There were 3 other carousels not being used at all. Who makes the decision where the bags come out I wonder, a fucking hamster?

The best part of that particular baggage episode was when this really rude middle eastern guy tried to grab his bag, which was a big black suitcase sandwiched between a green roll on and one of those Swiss bags. He grabbed the handle and tried to pull it free but it was stuck so tight he couldn't. And rather than let go he clung to the bag as if it were the last raft leaving the Titanic. He ended up laying across other people's bags going around on the carousel. People were yelling at him because he was on top of their bags and they couldn't get to their luggage.



Then he started yelling for help, and this big african american guy came out of an office where you go to report missing luggage and told the middle eastern guy to get off the baggage claim and then started throwing bags off the carousel onto the floor. The middle eastern guy turned around and started crawling across the luggage in the opposite direction the carousel was turning trying to get away from the african american guy who was yelling "Sir! SIR! Please get off the baggage carousel! SIR!". I was laughing so hard that I started to cry and I couldn't get my bag off the baggage claim so I just followed it as it went around, and people backed away as I approached them. When my bag got to the African American guy he took it off the carousel and said "Here you go, ma'am" but I couldn't thank him because I was laughing.


If the baggage claim were a person I think he would be from the bronx, a guy of 50 who looked 60, with knotty forearms and saggy biceps, smoking a cigarette and complaining about all these goddamn people who travel all the time. And if someone had a piece of expensive luggage he would kick it ,or drop it in a puddle if it was raining. He usually would have alcohol on his breath at work but no one would fire him because his wife left him after 25 years of marriage and even though he would rough her up from time to time he did love her in his own fucked up way and people felt bad for him. When he would finish his pack of smokes he would crumple the pack up and throw it on the floor and say "it's someone else's job to keep this goddamn place clean".

Occasionally the customer representative would come out and say "why are you so cranky? why don't you try a smile?" and then he would mutter to whoever was standing near "that woman don't have the sense god gave a chicken, and they roll around in their own shit".

it all comes down to socks

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...

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.

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:

- 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...

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.

Anniversary of the VA Tech Shootings

Today is the anniversary of the Virginia Tech shootings. It's strange to think that the little cow town college I went to in 1988 will now be known as the location of one of the worst school shootings in US history. It's also strange to think that my friend and instructor Joe lost his father in this senseless act of violence. I also have a sibling who works at Tech who was affected by the shooting.

My friend Trina forwarded an email to me, which said in part:

At the dedication of our permanent April 16th Memorial last August, SGA President Adeel Khan summed it up exceptionally well…

Take time to remember the legacies, remember the dreams and remember the talent that our community has lost. I hope you are inspired to work harder to honor the 32. Share you talents with the world for the 32. Achieve your dreams for the 32. Be more compassionate, friendly and thoughtful for the 32. Be better, for the 32.

In 2008, we remember the 32; we are thankful for the survivors; and we are proud we share together that incredible Hokie spirit.

It's a little cheesy but at the same time maybe someone will read it and be inspired to make a change in their life or someone else's.

Also, I recently received an email from an old high school friend named Con Way. The last time I saw him we were laying on a bed in I think it was the Sheraton hotel at our 10 year reunion laughing about torturing freshmen at running camp. He said in one email to me:

I read this quote or story once about waking up every morning and looking in the mirror and thinking every morning if you saw yourself on the street about to get hit by a bus would give up your life for the person by pushing them out of the way of the bus? In other words would you give up your life for the person you are today? The answer should be yes b/c that's what you've done. Every time I say this story it sounds so circular but it makes sense to me. I mean I've sacrificed everything in my life to have my current life. It better be what I want to do and if not then I should change it.

Anyway, just throwing some random thoughts out there for contemplation today...

kidnapped by pirates

When my brother Bob graduated from college back in 1995 my mom decided to send him to the tropics as a reward. My brother invited me to go with him. We went to the Cayman Islands, where my sister had honeymooned.

Unbeknownst to us, we were arriving at the start of pirate week. It took a day of seeing adult men and women in full costume to figure out what was going on. Pirate week is a big deal (http://www.piratesweekfestival.com/).

I spent the week getting my advanced open water certification with a guy named Len who never wore any more clothes than this one eensy weensy red man thongish bathing suit. Even when we were sitting around the dive shop he didn't put as much as a shirt on. I had Len one on one as an instructor and we had a great time. We did three night dives, culminating in a lobster bake on shore (which I skipped, as I'm allergic, though I had the knack for catching the biggest lobster and then enjoying the boat ride home where the other divers would try to get my lobster by complimenting me). I also met this comedian who, it turns out, was terrified of the water. We did one dive together and he held my hand the whole time. It might have been romantic if he wasn't dragging behind me like an anchor.

So, since I was diving, and getting my certification, I spent my evenings studying and going to bed early so I could get up at 6 am for my dives. My brother was loitering around the beach, in not such a bad position, as the beach outside our hotel was one of the few not destroyed in the hurricane that year and Victoria's Secret was shooting a catalog there. My brother found himself on the beach every day surrounded by scantily clad women. Oddly enough, Fabio was there too.

All this contributed to the events that followed.

The last two days of the trip were planned for us to hang out together. So, on the second to last day, we rolled out of bed at 10ish and headed straight for the bars. We had to walk 3 miles because taxis were ridiculously expensive and my brother was over the closer watering holes.

The bar we went to was open air and on the beach. It consisted of a round, covered bar in the center of a wooden deck. We hopped on two stools and commenced drinking.

Two girls that could not have been more than 16 or 17, and who were obviously models, walked in soon after and sat across from us. I should mention, at that time, my brother had a strong resemblance to River Phoenix. He had good luck with the ladies. In short order the models were sipping their pina coladas and taking pictures of my brother with their disposable camera. It was OBVIOUS they wanted to talk to him.

But my brother, being an engineer, is a bit socially retarded. I prodded him to go talk to the girls. He said he couldn't because he didn't have a good pick up line. At this point I was on, oh, maybe my 3rd or 4th drink, on an empty stomach, and I mentioned that if he had a cool hat he wouldn't need a pick up line because girls like to talk to guys with cool hats.

After I said that my brother slid off his bar stool. I was so intent on watching the smoke come out of my cigarette that I didn't notice he had been gone a while until I was unceremoniously picked up off my stool by a large pirate.

What the fuck is going on? I asked myself, trying to clear my alcohol hazed brain cells. The pirate was carrying me out of the bar. I saw my brother talking to yet another pirate who had on a kind of captain hat with a lot of plumage on it.

"Bob, help me, I'm being kidnapped by a pirate!" I yelled. My brother looked at me, then back to the other pirate, and said "Okay, give me the hat." The pirate refused. So my brother grabbed the sword, which, by the by, was a real metal sword, out of the belt of the pirate who was holding me and said "I challenge you to a duel!" to the plume hatted pirate.

The pirate holding me dropped me rather abruptly on the wooden deck. The other pirate pulled out his sword and began fighting with my brother. I should mention that Bob was very skilled in weapons from many years doing martial arts. And he was drunk. And the models were watching. Someone, I thought to myself, is going to get hurt. Badly hurt.

The bartender was on top of the situation. Moments after the duel started a constable showed up. Unfortunately he arrived right as I had jumped on my brother's back, grabbed the sword from him, and started punching him in the head for trading me to pirates for a fucking hat. The constable grabbed me, and the dueling pirate, and handcuffed us together. It suddenly occurred to me that I might be going to jail. And worse, that I was going to lose my security clearance when news of my vacation got back to my office.

In my best older sister voice, I tried to explain to the constable how my brother had traded me to the pirates for a hat, that I was almost kidnapped, that I was a law abiding citizen and not prone to drunken bar fights, and that my intoxicated state was caused by the sun, and that really it was all my brother's fault. The constable squinted at me and said "So where is this brother of yours?" I glanced around, noticing for the first time that he had vacated the scene of the crime. I finally got a visual on him, sitting at the bar between the two models, taking pictures of me getting arrested.

Right when it seems the story can't get any more preposterous, it does. As the constable started explaining to me the laws in the Caymans that cover drunken and disorderly conduct a tiny man walked in with an entourage of about 40 pirates. He looked at me and asked the constable what was going on. Then he explained to the constable that I was with him, and could they go to the bar for a drink, and perhaps this whole matter could be dismissed. I was uncuffed and three candy necklaces were draped over my head. Someone handed me a shot.

It turns out the little man was the spokes model for Captain Morgan's rum. He was in the Caymans shooting a commercial. He said he intervened because I was obviously a damsel in distress. I thanked him profusely and offered to buy him a drink which made him laugh.

The rest of the day, and night, ended up going downhill, fast. Besides Captain Morgan's pirates, other pirates started showing up as time progressed to a more reasonable drinking hour than pre-noon. People I didn't know were eating my candy necklaces. Every time I lit a cigarette it seemed someone wanted me to accompany it with a shot. Captain Morgan pulled my brother and I aside and gave us t-shirts, hats, key chains, and sundry other schwag. He said we were good kids and that it had been a while since someone offered to buy him a drink and that most people demanded stuff of him. I remember blabbering on about drinking Captains and Cokes in college.

Around 10 PM I started to realize that if my brother and I didn't leave the bar soon we were probably both going to end up passed out around a bunch of people that could have scared the Hell's Angels. So I started to drag him towards the entrance of the bar. A few women that he had been entertaining (don't ask) tried to stop me. We got to the edge of the wooden patio and I yelled at Bob "Run for your life!"

We started to sprint down the beach with about 20 pirates pursuing behind. Looking back, I think the only reason they gave chase is because we were running. Luckily most of them were middle aged and gave up after a few minutes.

We continued running until I accidentally ran into some fishing poles that someone had set up on the beach. I became hopelessly tangled in the lines and was laughing with my brother until the red necks who owned the lines, and who were smoking a lot of pot, came out and tried to beat us up. A little further down the beach Bob found some huge sand castles which he started jumping on. I too tried to stomp a sand castle but it turns out what I jumped on was a rock. It hurt the next morning. A lot.

Eventually we made it the 3 miles down the beach to our hotel, walking past it three times before correctly identifying it. Bob passed out face down on the beach, cigarette still in hand. Rather than helping him immediately I went to the room and got a camera that still had film in it to take a picture.

After some food we both rallied again and I made a long distance phone call to my then-boyfriend and left an unintelligible message on his answering machine at 3 in the morning. The only thing that he could make out was my brother, in the back ground, bouncing on the bed and yelling "Caaaaaptain Mooooorgan! Caaaaaaaaptain Mooooooorgan!"

We have never been on vacation together since.

my room mate's little joke (warning: this blog contains the word butt plug)

I am always writing little notes for my new room mate on the white board in my kitchen, like "don't forget to lock the doors" or "put out the recycling" or "I'll be home by 6". He decided to leave a note for me the other day, which I failed to notice.

Also, yesterday, the guy for the maid service came to get things set up. He was a very sweet man named Bill, with the distinction of owning a Merry Maids franchise for the longest time of anyone in the US. He was the 17th investor. It turns out he was also stationed at an air force base where my dad worked and recognized my last name.

We went through the house and had a nice chat about my office (which he found cozy) and my kitchen cabinets (which are in shambles). He then stood at the kitchen counter writing up notes and the estimate. He turned his head and glanced at the white board, directly across from his line of sight, and the expression on his face froze. I looked over at the white board. There was the recycling schedule (I hope anyone reading this is recycling!), directions to a bike shop, a list of "to dos" for the house. When I went to get a pen to sign the contract I discovered what he was staring at, and wrote the following email to my room mate:

"I would like to thank you for writing "Butt Plugs" (in huge, fancy lettering I might add) on the white board. The poor sales guy, who is 68, kept staring at the board while he was writing the estimate up. I was looking at the recycling schedule thinking "what? does this guy not recycle?" Then, as I was getting a pen to sign the paperwork, I saw your little handiwork. I think we are being charged extra. And the guy made a point of saying about a million billion times "we do NOT open any cabinets or closets". "

I assume I can erase the white board and that's not going to mess up your ability to remember anything..."

aggro undie man and other Victoria Secret tragedies

(I wrote this right before Christmas but forgot to publish it...so here is another shopping goes bad story, though this time I was not hit in the head with a box of Swiffer wipes nor did I have a wreck with my shopping cart)

Tonight I was in VS buying some not worth mentioning unmentionables. The layout of the store reminded me why I never shop retail when I can go virtual. At the check out I had a choice of standing behind this moronic midlife crisis guy or standing next to the counter where I could prop up my book so I could read while waiting for idiot boy in front of me to figure out what credit card he was going to use. Also, I don't know how, but he managed to find many pieces lingerie that were missing their price tags.

I'm talented but not talented enough to hold a handful of underthings and a heavy book (Guests of the Ayatollah, in hardback), so I couldn't move from behind idiot boy even though he was talking so loud I was having problems reading. I was getting annoyed and just wanted to be out of there. A guy walked up, missed the queue, and was standing off to one side. I figured he was just stalking the girl behind the counter and ignored him.

When mid-life ambled off with his bag I walked up to the register and put my stuff on the counter. Stalker came up behind me like a great white to a seal and yelled at me about "waiting my turn in line" as if he hadn't noticed I was in line a good 10 minutes before he was. And no, that isn't a mis-print. 10 minutes in line (missing price tags, credit card confusion, it all adds up tick tock tick tock). He was being such an ass I felt sorry for him and said "You're right, ladies first." He tried to get me thrown out of the store and then had another temper tantrum when the woman behind the counter tried to politely explain to him that I had been in line in front of him.

I should note he would have had to be legally blind to miss me standing at the counter reading a book. There are not many people that I've ever encountered in VS that appear to even know what a book is.

Then, to make things worse, because sometimes I like to, and he was pissing me off with the way he was talking to the staff, I said "Just ring him up. He's probably dying to go home and try on his new stuff." The guy threw his lingerie on the counter and stalked out of the store.

I don't know why drama follows me in box stores. I just know I should avoid them. The two morals of the story are I hate shopping and some customers aren't worth having.

marrow

I just signed up with this website called marrow.org and am now in the process of registering to be a bone marrow donor. The web site has a quiz that you take to see if you might qualify as a donor. If you do then they send you a swab kit and take cells from your inner cheek used for tissue typing. If you match a patient in need you could be called to donate bone marrow. The whole process costs $52.

Also, if you haven't already, make sure you have signed up to be an organ donor and that you have a living will. Disabuse yourself of the notion that you need to be buried with all your organs. And you don't want someone who loves you (or, maybe someone who doesn't love you) having to make decisions about when to pull the plug on your life support and whether or not someone else can have your kidneys.

The end. Now, back to our regularly scheduled idiocy.

Something Red

I don't know why I'm constantly amazed at how retarded most people are, but I am.

Take, for instance, the situation that happened to me yesterday. I was skiing up at Copper (I know my doctor said not to but for the record I think holding a ski pole has been therapeutic as the swelling in my finger has gone down substantially in the past two days). I thought I just had a runny nose and so I kept wiping it with my glove, which happens to be black. I couldn't figure out why, even with the lifts being crowded, I was always on a chair lift by myself. Also, people, I thought, were looking at me funny.

Finally I got on a lift with a Copper employee rescue guy, whatever you call them, who tried to pick me up. When his stupid schtick about the music I was listening to wasn't working he said "Um, you have something on your face." Something what? I asked. "Something red" he replied.

The "something red" was blood from my nose, which had been bleeding apparently for the past two hours. I looked down at the front of my jacket (light blue, because Moonstone doesn't make the right color pink ski jacket) and realized I looked like a serial murderer. The rescue guy cleaned the blood off my face with some snow that he pulled off his ski and then told me that I should wait for him in the SAR hut at the top of the Excelerator lift. He was on the lift to go to a rescue (girl hit a tree, fractured skull, airlifted to Denver), but assured me that he would be back in an hour or so and I should wait for him to return to treat my bloody nose.

I was like, are you kidding? My nose bleeds all the time when I return to altitude. The rescue guy got upset and started going off about how I could faint or worse. Which makes me wonder, what would be worse than fainting while skiing? Fainting while skiing with a broken hand, fainting while skiing with a broken hand in moguls...

I skied off and never saw that guy again. I did get fed a lot of shit at the Super Bee lift by a kid named Kevin from Kansas City, MO, who couldn't get his bar code reader to work. I told him he was incompetent and he said "at least I'm not the bloody nose girl". I saw him again today and we continued our repartee.

Today, as a stark contrast, I got on a lift with a guy who's been grooming runs at Copper for 25 years. I believe he said his name was Larry. He asked me if I could fix his computer in exchange for showing me a fox burrough on a run called Triple Threat. I declined his offer because he was really drunk and Triple Threat is all moguls. I did ask Larry to close the latches on my left boot as I still can't do it on my own. He did and then followed me down Rosi's Run yelling "Franki (he read my name off my pass), fix my computer, please!" Every time I saw Larry today, which ended up being a lot for some reason, he would yell "Franki, fix my computer." I'm sure he recognized me through the blowing snow because I still have blood on my jacket, making me hard to miss.

My last run of the day Larry ran into me (literally) at the Super Bee. He put his arm around me and staggered with me to the lift (Busch was handing out free beers in the parking lot and at the bottom of every lift - I could not figure that out - every snow boarder I got on a lift with was really trashed and standing in line I felt like I was at a bar - um, safety first, glad I wore my helmet today). As we took off into the blowing snow he looked at me and said, "Dude, I think your nose is bleeding."

Thanks, Larry.

united pillow fight

Last night I was almost thrown off my plane, flying from DC to Denver. Why, you might ask, was I almost thrown off the plane, anticipating one of my Marine-like tirades with the f word, a physical altercation with one of the stewardesses, or an attempt to bodily harm one of my fellow passengers that won't talk quietly...no, all I did was throw a pillow. Or, honestly, a few pillows.

You know that never ending business trip where you just continually cross time zones and sit on a runway in delay mode every 3 or 5 days for months on end while life passes you by? It can cause some strange behavior. I'm sure someone has done a medical study. I should probably be on drugs.

Anyway, my colleague and I had just boarded the plane, or preboarded the plane since we both have a million bizillion miles which allows us to entomb ourselves on the plane first. Joy. We tried to sit together but natch the flight was full because united grounded all their 777s and had to reschedule everyone. I got to my seat, an aisle seat, and found this stupid pillow already sitting there. I stood up and looked three aisles down to my colleague, who had a middle seat, and said "dude, have a pillow". He declined the pillow. So, for whatever reason, I threw it at his head as soon as he sat down.

The only people on the plane, at this point, were those people who fly a lot. All jaded, overworked, jaundiced consultants, abused by customers. When the pillow bounced off my colleague's head, he got mad and threw it back, and then threw his own pillow for good measure. Then he threw every pillow he could get his hands on, which was 8. The other jaded consultants started throwing their pillows at me too. I had to fire back. That's what I was taught at work. Pillows were flying everywhere.

At some point during the massive pillow throwing situation, the pedestrians started to board. Someone got tagged with a pillow and complained. The next thing I knew some cake boy in a united uniform was reading me the riot act. Separated me from my peeps, the jaded consultants. Sent me to the back row, without extra leg room, for bad behavior. Told me I was lucky he wasn't throwing me off the flight. I couldn't stop staring at his mouth as he yelled at me for being a, ha ha, "security risk". Was that spit or lip gloss? Couldn't tell from looking at him.

And that's when I knew, we in these united states have lost our sense of humor and our souls. I'm not a terrorist. I'm just an irresponsible human being who likes to throw things at people. Why not treat the guy next to me who snored and farted for 4 hours the same way? At least my behavior only caused slight discomfort.

post script:

The fight continued at baggage claim. I was hit with no less than 7 luggage tickets while I waited for my suitcase. And two e-tickets. No casualties were reported, although some were heard to actually laugh while in the airport.

Player, The Plan

I've decided to become a player. Here's a list of things I am going to do to be more player-ish:

- Start listening to more smooth jazz hits like James

- Buy some kicky shoes with really high heels (I'll just spend more time in the evening doing PT for my knee)

- Or, wait a minute, isn't night when I'm supposed to be out being a player, flirting?

- Also, I will start flirting

- Flirting with people instead of staring at my blackberry and pretending to read emails even if I don't have any emails just so I don't have to make eye contact

- Stop being afraid of midgets

- Oops, that's not really anything to do with being a player, it's just that I accidentally just saw a midget and now I'm going to have nightmares

- Not that I have anything against really little people, I just think your head and your hands should fit somewhat on your body and not be a lot bigger than your body

- Eck, how am I supposed to concentrate on being a player now?

- Fucking midgets

- I'm trying to visualize my favorite shoe. Christian Louboutin sandals made with real diamonds.

- How weird. Nordstrom does not sell Christian Louboutin shoes. But Neiman Marcus does.

- Nordstrom is supposed to have 5,000 plus shoes. What a bunch of bullshit.

- I bet there's a way to write a script to count how many shoes are on Nordstrom's web site

- I wonder if someone is selling those Louboutin sandals on eBay

- Also, I wonder if that guy sent my spinjas

- Someone was actually selling spinjas on eBay for $140

- I will probably have to hide them; I'm not sure players own spinjas

- Although it could be a good way to flirt with people

- Or would that be like asking someone to help you solve your rubik's cube

- Ahhh! There's another midget commercial. This is why I DON'T like TV. I am trying to watch a show on nebulae and they keep showing midgets, in fact a whole midget family, I think it's a show or something, but I can't watch it because there are also midget kids or they might just be normal size. I'm not looking.

- Orion Nebula is one of the most famous and you can see it with the naked eye

- The Orion Nebula has at least 700 stars in various stages of being "born"; it's called a "stellar nursery"

- The Mayans put symbols on their hearths that represented the Orion Nebula

- I wonder if a player would know that?

Maybe I will work on my player plan later...

My Finger Saga Continues

After much nagging from my customer and Clint, I decided to go see a doctor again about my finger. It still looks pretty bad.

The x-ray showed that I accidentally somehow re-broke my finger. The original break was pretty clean. This one was messy and might require a plate and pin to hold the bone together.

I am assuming that the break happened either when I fell skiing, or when I was carrying a box of manuals to my customer's site, or when some asspipe from United Airlines dropped a heavy box on my left hand. It's hard to say. I have been gifted, or cursed, depending on how you look at it, with a high pain threshold. Which is good since I am allergic to every drug except red wine.

But that leads to some problems when dealing with the medical community. This morning my doctor yelled at me for 5 minutes about my finger. He yelled at me when I couldn't pin point the moment of the break, saying "How can you not know when you broke your finger?" To which I can only respond I broke the tip off my femur and then ran competitively on it for 10 years before the break was properly diagnosed by my PT. I was told by 3 separate doctors that I didn't appear to be in enough pain given the fact that my leg was broken so they never took my injury seriously. I broke my right arm and didn't realize it until 2 weeks later when the swelling went down and I realized my arm was twisted. I broke my front teeth and almost ripped my lip off my face but walked 3 miles home carting my mountain bike without realizing anything was wrong with me.

I was also yelled at for going skiing, even though I figured after 5 weeks my finger should be fixed up. My doctor asked me if I really had so little common sense. Um, yeah. I'm an engineer. We aren't exactly known for "common sense". At least I wasn't running around with a key tied to a kite in the middle of a lightening storm.

So now I'm looking at possibly having a plate and pin put in my finger. I am eating broccoli and spinach every day to see if I can head off surgery by eating super foods. Every night before I go to bed I'm visualizing my bone healing. Best case scenario I end up with a weird looking finger. To match the scars on my chin, my weird looking knee, the scar on my heel, the broken nose, etc.

Jumps

This weekend Clint and I went skiing at Copper. I was coming off an 80 hour week in California and that's my excuse for forgetting to pack a jacket. Luckily I had a fleece and the weather wasn't too cold. Clint lent me a bright green shell two sizes too big for me so I officially looked like a retard on the slopes.


I started out the day wrecking on my second run. I dropped down onto a trail, caught an edge, and then tumbled about 50 feet. My skis, not to be outdone by me, slid another 20 feet past me after I managed to stop by hitting a rock. That's when I remembered, oh yeah, I have a broken hand.

Skiing with a broken hand is not as much fun as one might expect. For one thing, it hurts to hold a ski pole. Not that I ever use my ski poles, but since I decorated them with little stars and they match my boots I always end up bringing them with me. I am supposed to some day learn to stick them when I turn instead of just using them to wave around when I'm about to fall. I guess that will have to wait until next season since I think the slopes will close before my left hand does.



Since the wind was blowing really hard and I was inadequately dressed we started traversing the mountain trying to find a protected place to ski (I should mention here I also forgot my ski mittens and was wearing some mittens I keep in my car for emergencies). We ended up finding this really cool area that had a bunch of jumps. I've never done a real ski jump and decided I wanted to try. I did accidentally ski off a small cliff last year in a snow storm at Winter Park, and stuck the landing, but then fell over and tumbled about 100 feet down the mountain, with some snow boarders on the lift shouting "you suck!" for the last 40 feet of that particular fall but was informed that didn't count as a jump.


We decided that Clint would go off the jumps to make sure I wouldn't kill myself, and then I would follow him. The sum total of coaching I got for going off a jump was "point your skis towards the jump and then jump". The first jump was an easy drop off of a cornice that had formed on a rock. I didn't bother to look where I was jumping since Clint made it look so easy. I launched off the cornice, stuck the landing, realized I was going kind of fast, flailed my poles, and then slid into a pine tree. It took me a few minutes to get out of the tree because my skis had gotten stuck.

Feeling kind of cocky, I decided to try a more challenging jump. I followed Clint down to a little snow cliff and stayed about 10 feet above him while he dropped off the ledge. For some reason, it seemed like it might be a better idea to get a rolling start for the jump, and so instead of stopping at the lip of the jump and then easing off I got a running start and had pretty good speed when I hit the edge.

Had I rolled off of it the way Clint did I would have gotten a little air, hit a bump in the snow and continued down the hill. Instead I was going so fast I missed the bump entirely. It seemed like I was in the air for a half hour although I'm sure it was just a few seconds. Part of my brain was going "wheeee!" and part of my brain was going "do you really think you can afford to break any more bones?" My skis finally hit the slope, I stuck the landing, slid a few feet, and then wiped out in such a spectacular manner that Clint asked me if I was okay in a worried voice, rather than laughing at me like he usually does. Some how I got snow in my helmet and goggles, although I don't remember my face being anywhere near the snow.

We did a few more easy jumps, and then I tried to do the rock jump again but ended up going off the wrong direction on accident so I landed on an uphill rather than a downhill, but I didn't fall. Clint tried to get me on the scary jump again but I chickened out.

The next day we went back to the same area and he took some films of me going off different jumps. I used to wonder how bad of a skier I am. Now I don't have to wonder anymore. I'm pretty horrible. But I stuck the landing on the scary jump, even if I looked stupid, and I'm heading back up on Friday to practice some more...