One of these Kids is not Like the Other

I think there was a man peeing in the women's bathroom here at work because I just went in there and there was pee in the toilet already. There wasn't any toilet paper to speak of either. I even looked in the maxi pad disposal bin - empty! Someone peed without wiping. I can only conclude that a man did this.

There were also bubbles in the urine - evidence of a strong stream.

I will also conclude that he wanted me (or whatever woman came by) to know that he had been there. I believe this is called "marking your territory." He wanted some woman to know he had been there and thus, he did not flush.

I wonder if he locked the door whilst he peed.

Recurring Dream Theme

I realized this morning (and in my dream) that there is yet another theme I often dream about: I am driving somewhere and eventually stop and get out of the car. When I return I realize that I didn't lock it and something important to me has been stolen! This time it was three bags because I was traveling on a long trip and one of those bags had my most important items in it. I specifically remembered packing it earlier in my dream. When I returned to my car I was like, "Oh no, not again!" Luckily, I quickly spotted the thief - a short, chubby, older man who was standing nearby. I think I hit him. I doubt I would have the guts to do that in real life. I got my bags back.

The Salster showed up after that. She was going to ride with me the rest of the way on my trip, which was great because I was thinking I might have to take the bus. And of course none of that makes any sense.

Project for Today

I just made Baba Gahnoush for the first time and it is delicious! :)

Trouble

Here's an interesting pattern to my weekend:

Friday: Analyze troubled relationship with friend.

I am friends with the MALE of the relationship.

The couple is: ENGAGED

His rationalization: All this trouble I just spent the last two hours (and three point five years) talking to you about only amounts to 1% of the relationship. 99% of the time she's great!

Uh huh.

My advice: Dump the controlling, ego-maniacal bitch NOW, please!

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Saturday: Analyze troubled relationship with friend.

I am friends with the FEMALE of the relationship.

The couple is: MARRIED

Her rationalization: Well he doesn't really think we have any problems.

My advice: Well, if I was honest a long time ago, it would've been "Don't marry the guy." But now I just hope they can work things out in counseling.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Sunday: Analyze troubled relationship with friend.

I am friends with the FEMALE of the relationship.

The couple is: SEPARATED

Her rationalization: I feel like I'm abandoning him at his weakest point.

My advice: Call a lawyer.

It would seem that there are a lot of troubled relationships out there. These are just the ones I saw this weekend. I feel strangely deprived of my own troubled relationship of four years and thus uniquely qualified to assure people that there is a better life on the other end. I also feel like I really lucked out.

Saturday

I pretty much wasted my whole afternoon on the internet.

Housewife of the Year

Friday

So after my big day at work - a physics lab from 10-11 am - I set off into the world of rain and took the trip a few miles east to a world of sunshine. The rain arrived about 15 minutes later. I had sushi with Dan, my friend from high school who also lives here in Boston. Then I walked back towards his work with him and ended up in Downtown Crossing where I proceeded to shop for bras and shoes.

I am tempted to write about shopping for bras, but I think maybe it would make people uncomfortable. What I most want to do though is put the word "breast" in my blog and see if it causes more people to read my blog. (This might work because Erik posted pictures of his pregnant wife and used this word in the title and men all over the world sent him notes on how lucky he was to be married to this hot pregnant babe.) There's not much to say about the experience anyway, except that Macy's has created a sea of bras out there and it is amazing how many tiny little variations actually matter when considering comfort and fit. I tried on at least 15 different bras and found two that really worked. I also wonder about the super duper large cups that have no padding or support in them. Is there really any reason to wear them? I suspect they may be a giant waste of money, because bras, as we all know, are not cheap.

The girl who rang up my purchase came up with a dollar figure that was roughly $40 too low. Lucky for her I am an honest person who can add numbers in my head. Unfortunately for me, it took three more tries before she could ring up my bras correctly.

Then I trucked over to DSW and found two pairs of shoes that were exactly what I was looking for. I was very happy to walk to the train station in my comfy new shoes and I was very amused by the music talent of the day:

A white, 40-ish, thin, bald, very normal looking guy was singing/rapping "No More Drama" accompanied by the official back-up music, complete with the female backup singers. And he knew EVERY SINGLE word and he played it perfectly - he was pretty much rapping, but he had the stiff white-boy thing going on and it was too funny. Everyone around him had a goofy smile on their face, including me.

The rest of my day consisted of bar-hopping with my girlfriends and ended with two of them coming to my house for pizza. I have little to report about that.

Jealousy

I hate jealousy and I don't understand why I bother to get jealous at all. But sometimes some stupid, random thing hits me in the face and sticks.

The annoying part is that it is really obvious to me that jealousy is dumb when OTHER people are being jealous, so I end up being harder on myself than I should be because I don't want to be one of THOSE people.

For instance, there is a 44-year old woman in Connecticut who I recently learned is terribly jealous of me, and I had no idea she even existed! How's that for stupid jealousy? Yet, I completely understand because in her mind I am the Last Girlfriend and the Last Girlfriend is a woman who just sticks in your craw no matter how nice and not right for your man she was painted to be. I hate being the LAST GIRLFRIEND. It means I am adding to the world's jealousy quotient simply by dating. And I hate that I am never comfortable with the LG either. While I am not even close to the jealousy levels being exhumed in CT, I still get up in arms.

It would be nice if we could all just accept and respect that our friends and lovers have a past and if we could value that past as much as they do and encourage eachother to remain a whole self, not some cut-off version of a self. And that's really not that terribly hard to do, is it?

Obviously, I just don't know. I wonder if blogging is a good way to disable my Jealousy button.

Cup Size

This was emailed to me today by my sister and I thought it was pretty good....


Guess what cup size?


















Okay, what did you guess?
















Scroll down






























This kid's gonna hate his mom for this someday!

Haircuts

So today I finally went to get a haircut, after several weeks of knowing that it was "time to go get a haircut." I go by the "wait until you can't stand it anymore" philosophy of getting haircuts, so I get roughly four haircuts a year. Ideally, I'd get six to eight.

My last three haircuts were purchased at The Hair Connection, a family-run salon that does the whole show - wash, sit you under a heat shield so some fancy moisturizing product can really make you feel wonderful (it never does though), haircut complete with astrological analysis and painful styling experience that you hate wearing for the rest of the day. At least that's been my experience all three times. However, I usually like the cut once I've washed and dried it and not bothered styling it myself. All this for forty bucks plus a tip.

That seems like a lot of money to me. And a lot of time. The last cut took about TWO HOURS!

Prior to The Hair Connection I was testing out Great Cuts, a sibling to Super Cuts, my previous haunt. I liked a woman at Super Cuts a lot and I never got more compliments from anyone else's cuts. So I thought she was a real bargain at $12.99. Unfortunately, I moved away from that area. So, then I tried Great Cuts, which was not impressing me all that much, which is why I went elsewhere.

Today, after two weeks of debate I decided to forgo the leisurely and expensive experience of The Hair Connection and visit Great Cuts again. It is a mob scene at 5 pm. The place is chaos and nobody even has time to sweep up the last person's hair before they (finally) sit you down. I caught up on Britney Spears' life dramas whilst I waited.

My hair sylist was Shana, prounounced Shane-uh, who's been out of beauty school for four years, and out of high school for about seven months more than that. I was immediately suspicious of her talents as she was:
a) very young
b) working at Great Cuts
c) had terrible hair
d) and had a really impressive "tire" around her middle that caused me to revel in judging her.

At this point I have to ask - Why do all hair stylists have such bad hair??? I don't even feel the slightest twinge of guilt in thinking that my hair is ALWAYS better than the hair of the person cutting it. This is a complete mystery to me and flies in the face of the concept of the "walking advertisement." Even at the fancy salons they have bad hair!

Actually, my last cut at The Hair Connection saw me leaving the salon with the same bad hair style my stylist was wearing that day. I felt bad because she working REALLY HARD at making my hair look stick straight and boring as hell. I also felt bad because unless I wanted to take a shower I HAD TO LOOK LIKE THAT all day!

So today I figured I'd skip the fancy treatment, the ridiculous long haircut and styling experience and let some Great Cuts Joe Schmo copy the cut instead.

Shana sits me down and rakes her comb over my ear multiple times. She doesn't even notice that I start instinctively jerking away from her. She is a talker and I begin to get scared that this might be a long haircut too. I am wrong. Interesting enough, she ends up telling me that she used to work at a high-end salon and her haircuts once cost $55! This immediately upsets my entire thinking about how good a haircut is. I KNEW there was something ridiculous going on with these expensive haircuts. But seriously, if I had paid $55 for the haircut Shana gave me, instead of $13, I would be pretty darn upset right now. I'm not even convinced I GOT a real haircut. When she finished, Shana told me that my hair now looks like it did a month ago. Considering I had told her my last cut was three months ago, I found this a little odd. But at this point I really wanted to leave.

In the end, it probably doesn't matter where I go. I still look the same.

The List of Hidden Notes

I don't know how many "small yellow sticky notes bearing a simple message" there are, but the ones I have found were in the following locations:

1. On top of the roll of toilet paper in my bathroom
   
2. Inside my new, regularly used laptop
   
3. Inside my protein powder mix
   
4. In my blender, hidden in the lid
   
5. Stuck to the label of my blue flannel pajama bottoms
   
6. Stuck to the label of my blue flannel pajama tops - They are my most favorite pajamas ever, mostly because they're blue, but not entirely. I also like the yellow smiley face buttons and the way the pants fit. The right pant leg is all ripped at the knee, and my mom tried to sew it up for me (after telling me it was really time to throw them out), but they are ripped up again.
   
7. Inside my bed - I found it in the middle of the night
   
8. In my oatmeal cannister
   
9. On an egg inside the egg carton - This was a surprise since Dirtyghost doesn't like eggs.
   
10. Inside my sweatshirt pocket
    
11. Inside the lid of my liquid laundry detergent (that one got a little sticky)
    
12. Inside this little plastic microwavable pot I have
    
13. In the drawer where I keep my cookie cutters and colored frosting and weird penis straw that I got at Jessica's bachelorette party and cool straws from Friendly's that change color when they get cold
    
14. Under the washcloth hanging in my bathroom
    
15. Inside a washcloth that was folded in the linen closet
    
16. Inside a pink shirt I left lying around my room
    
17. Inside a shoe I don't usually wear because they are uncomfortable
    
18. Inside my old laptop
    
19. In the crisper of the fridge
    
20. On the floor of the tub getting wet - I didn't find this until day 5 and I swear I did shower regularly during that time. I have no idea where it the note was and Bret doesn't remember where he hid it.
    
21. In the rice pan
    
22. In the pocket of my leather coat.
    
23. On the first page of the TIME magazine article about Autistic kids
    
24. On the remote for the TV in my bedrooom (5/20/06)
    
25. On the back of the gym schedule that was in with other papers in the paper-holder hanging on the wall in the office. (5/24/06)
    
26. This was interesting - INSIDE an envelope I had yet to open. (June)
    
27. On the back of a picture of my sister and me.
    
28. At the page I left of on in Barry Mazur's "Imagining Numbers." (6/18/06)
    

On day four I found #18 and #19. I don't know how many there are. I found #1-#7 on the first day. #22 and #23 popped up after about a week.

The Salster

The Salster is a librarian at my school and she is my newly discovered favorite blogger. She is posting everything I ever wanted to see in a blog. For that I commend her and wish to be like her. Sally convinced me that blogs can be saucy.

Check her out at http://hotelovershare.blogspot.com.

Exciting Day

Today was exciting! After yoga (which was not exciting because I was mostly just tired and liked Relaxation Pose the best) I rode the bus to school. The bus was going along just fine and then I realized we were off course and I started to get a little confused and slightly worried. I was, however, nearly 100% certain that I got on the right bus. Soon thereafter, the bus driver tried to turn us down this little street to get back on course but it was slow going and finally a police officer stopped him and sent him down the street.

After that, I realized the neighborhood was crawling with policemen and I was sure something big was going down. I began to get more excited as we crawled through what was now a mess of traffic. Eventually there were more blue blinking lights and a few ambulances in view. We were at the corner of Commonwealth and Harvard Sts - right where Bret and I got off the bus on Friday when we went to the event at Brighton High School.

In the end it was a car accident. Only two cars, but one was pretty beat up. Also, there were so many ambulances that I have to agree with the guy next to me who suggested that pedestrians had been injured. Eventually we got back on course, got passed by an ambulance and life returned to normal.

Then it was off to lunch with my landlords, E* and N*. They are a cute couple in their seventies and they have that whole hen-pecked thing going on. You know, the thing where she talks a lot and tells him how it is and what to do and he says "Yes, Dear" in a sarcastic voice and rolls his eyes at you like he's just letting her think she's the boss. They were a hoot. They talked up a storm. She told me the whole story about how they met and the other guys who were after her. They discussed the plight of modern relationships and were quite liberal in their approach. They had great life insight and were surprisingly adept with modern vocabulary words like "sucks" and "whatever."

Then it was off to the office for the first time in over a week. I can't believe my break is almost over. It was nice to see people and it made me realize once again how much I like the people I work with. I filled out two forms I had been delaying (an expense report and a purchase req) and that was it. Then I had coffee with J* and got the scoop on some happenings at work which I just deleted because I got to thinking it was not public material even if only two people know who I am at this point.

Maybe blogs can't be as saucy as I would like after all.... :(

The Wedding

On Saturday Bret and I went to a Mormon (LDS) wedding. The bride is a student in the math department. The wedding was nice, but all I really will remember are two things:

1) Bret looks totally kick-ass in a suit and very MIB with sunglasses.
2) Bret is the most adorable, most fun man-on-the-dance-floor I have ever seen.

My infatuation level went through the roof on Saturday.

Dinner is Over

Dinner with A* and D* went well and was very fun. I asked lots and lots of questions, which I am prone to do. I am pretty convinced I would be a damn good sex researcher. I love to ask the nitty gritty questions about why people are the way they are. Also, I think I would be a good women's issues researcher. I am very interested in the power dynamics between women and was aware that I felt very little power issues creeping up when I was with two lesbians and Bret. A* and D* had a harder time talking to my power issues which led me to believe that their experience was different than mine.

Bret's dinner was really good by the way and I enjoyed playing the cowboy card game they brought and Bret was nice to me and didn't steal all my cattle when I asked him not to. This of course was a little unfair of me to use my pull as his new girlfriend like that.

Now I am hungry again so I am going to finish my dinner. I couldn't finish it the first time around because I was eating before dinner... :(

Salacious Entries

OK, RhinoDog, I'll have you know that I will not be able to post my most salacious entries now that all my readers are likely related to Bret. Now I have to say nice, only slightly salacious things. I would remove the password protection from my diary, (catatori.diaryland.com) but I'm just not sure you could handle it! That, and you just might not want to read the sappy things I said about your bro.

Bret is making dinner right now for me, A* and D*. A* is his office mate and D* is her wife and A* is pregnant but I don't know how she got pregnant and I am tempted to ask her tonight but I think I will ask Bret instead.

Me: Bret, how did A* get pregnant?
Bret: Um, it was artificial. I can tell you that. There was no... well... I don't know, maybe they did know the donor. But she didn't have sex with a man which is probably the most important detail to know.
Me: Yeah.
Bret: Beyond that I'm not really sure. But I know it happened at home too.
Me: Do you think A* knows about your blog?
Bret: No, I don't think she does. Why?

(This is the part where I explained what I wrote and then we decided I should go back and change the names just to be polite, so I did.)

Now Bret wants me to help him move the table out. He asks a lot of a guest!

Since I am bigger and stronger than Bret I moved the table by myself.

I thought the song on the iPod was saying "I was smoking with a ghost," which I thought was an interesting idea... But it turned out to be walking with a ghost. I wonder how you would tell the ghost apart from the smoke.

So much for my not-so-salacious entry.

Flower Head Gal

Mal Portada

This is a little picture I drew when I was sitting in la clase de sociologia at La Universidad de Costa Rica. El maestro was boooooooooooooooring!

My Blog is Pink!

I'm following suit, but I'll have you know that I was most likely going to do this anyway before Dirty Ghost beat me to the punch!

Now I have to go comment.