Tomorrow's the day! Tomorrow's the day!

Yes, I'm already preparing myself for the glory that is tomorrow. Here I was worried I'd have nothing fun to watch now that the Olympics are over. But I saw an ad last night that reminded me there is a whole new chapter of fun just about to begin! It's not every day fun, like the Olympics, but it lasts way more than 2 weeks. Have you guessed what it is yet?

The Amazing Race!!!

Yes, that's right - a new season of The Amazing Race, with two-man teams, starts tomorrow! Wahoo!!! Freaks and weirdos and beautiful people and some normal teams I can actually root for - it's like Christmas.

My yard: The Weed Farm

I realize it's only February, so it probably sounds too early to start thinking about yard work, much less doing any, but we've pretty much had no winter here in Austin, so the result is that my yard is already overrun with weeds! It's like April back there.

If I could think of any way to make money with dandelions and such, I might just let it go - "Be free, weeds! Be fruitful and multiply!" But as yet, there is no market for anything that appears in my yard naturally, so the volunteer plants must go. Besides, they have sharp edges on the leaves and they cut me!

Now, in the past, I've spent a back-breaking few weeks going into the yard everyday armed with a digger tool and some gloves, and I've hand dug-up every single offender. It's no small chore. It's pretty effective - I don't have to do too much follow-up digging as the warm season goes on (that would be from March-October, maybe November). But I noticed last year that I never really got much of my yard back either. Oh, I still had to mow as the lawn that *was* there would get unruly. But it never looked like a nice, even lawn. It was patchy.

On top of that, none of my neighbors seemed to have the mass of weeds I had. Okay, one of my neighbors did, but they never stepped foot in their yard. None of the neighbors who seemed aware they HAD a yard seemed to have the problems my yard had. So, they all must be using something I'm not.

The first year, I went with no chemicals - trying to help the environment. That nearly killed me. So, last year, I tried some fertilizer - the granulated kind you use a spreader to distribute across the lawn. I think it was supposed to have weed control in it, but it didn't seem to do too terribly much. So, this year, I'm ready to get serious. Load me up with the miracles of modern science, people. What do you use to control weeds and promote grass in your yards? I'm ready to go to war on the weeds!

BobSLEIGH? Whatevuh.

I've been very remiss about discussing the Olympics the past two weeks, considering I've watched them pretty much everyday. I don't really know why, all of a sudden, I'm so riveted this year, but I am, and I'm enjoying it, so I'm going with it. Let's discuss.

Bobsledding. Anyone notice that the announcers are saying "bobsled," like normal human beings, but NBC keeps putting it as "bobsleigh" on its graphics? Who calls it a bobsleigh? Um...no one in this country, and that's where you're broadcasting, so don't be annoying. Put bobsled on your graphics. And in two years, I expect the graphics to say "soccer" and not "football" unless Vince Young is playing.

Speed skating. Could Shani Davis be more of an ass? And Chad Hedrick - quit airing your dirty laundry. You guys don't like each other. Got it. When Shani acts like a jerk to a reporter, he outs himself - no need for you to do it, Chad. When he calls you out during a press conference because you're not being a good team member if you don't congratulate him, just decline to discuss it. We know he's a putz. Be the bigger man and refuse to get drawn into his whinefest. We all saw what he said about being there for himself and having no interest in skating with a team, so if he whines now because the team doesn't support him, whose fault is that? Don't worry, Chad - we know the score.

Figure skating. Is this seriously the Olympics? I've never seen so many people choke in my life - men and women. People were falling all over the place, touching the wall, not making their jumps. How did these people get into the Olympics? My friends and I got to the point last night with the female Chinese skater that we were making up our own commentary - the commentary we wish we'd hear. Dick Buttons finally gave up all pretense of trying to be technical and just said, "Oh my god!" when she fell for the third time, and we would have given cash money to Scott Hamilton if he'd have followed up with, "Is she drunk?" Good lord, people. It's the Olympics. Get your game on.

Ice dancing. Loved it. I've never been into it before, but from what I understand, the new scoring system challenged these people to step it up, and I guess they did, because I really enjoyed it this year. And the American couple? Beautiful - great looking, great skating, great presentation. They were awesome. And owwwwwwww, for the Canadian woman who lost her grip during a lift and landed on the ice on her hip. It's not a safe little little nothing sport like it used to be.

Curling. I can't believe I'm going to say this, but I'm all into it now. I have no idea how this ever got into the Olympics in the first place, and I'll hand in my Cool Card if I have to by admitting this, but I've watched *hours* of it in the last 2 weeks. I'm hooked. I swear, if you haven't watched it, give it a shot. It's like darts, bowling, horseshoes - anything that combines strategy and using finesse, rather than brute force, to place a projectile on a specific spot. Not that I've ever watched hours of those sports, much as I refuse to watch poker on t.v., so I can't entirely explain why I'm suddenly glued to the screen, but I'm into it, man. Maybe it's because I could actually see myself playing this, unlike aerial skiing. And the guys are cutie men. This is Joe Polo on the U.S. team. Hi Joe!







I need to take up this sport/game. I won't have to move to Minnesota, will I?

Downhill. One word: Bode. I laugh at you, man. What an arrogant boob you were before the Olympics, and oh, how the mighty have fallen. Choke, choke, choke. Are you talented? No doubt. But talent doesn't overcome a bad personality. Ask Shani Davis.

That's all for now. The Olympics are almost over. Whatever shall I do with my time until March Madness???

People are so much fun.

More eBay drama. I swear I love eBay and most of my experiences have been great, but it does open you up to having to deal with ... people ... so you end up running across some of the jerks. Remember my caller ID issues? Well 3 weeks ago, I bid on a unit someone had on eBay and I won. It was cheap - $5.50 total - and the guy had like 1300 transactions and good feedback, so I wasn't worried. I did notice that his usual business is sports memorabilia, so this was obviously a personal transaction squeezed in there with all his business ones, but whatever.

Well, I win, pay within minutes, and wait. Days go by and I don't hear from this guy. I finally email him - so did you get my payment? When are you gonna ship? Will you let me know how and give me a tracking number? He responds and says he'll email the next day - Thur (I won and paid on a Monday), with no more information than that. Not great communication by never contacting me or answering how he'll ship or sending me a tracking number, but that's a reasonable shipping timeframe, so okay. A week goes by, I get nothing. I email again, and the guy says he ended up emailing it Monday - a week after I won, not the previous Thursday as he first said. He says he mailed USPS, so no tracking number. Great.

Well, folks, another week and a half goes by - it's now been 3 weeks since I won and paid, and 2 weeks since the guys says he shipped, and I still have NOTHING. I'm not sure if he didn't mail it or he just didn't mail it when he said he did or if it got lost (which we can't track since he didn't use a shipping method with a tracking) or what, but it seems obvious that since this isn't one of his business transactions, he's not really giving it much consideration. Or maybe this is how he runs his business. I don't know. But I either want the caller ID or my money back. This is ridiculous.

So, I email him that I'm giving it one more week and then I want my money back or I'll talk to eBay and see what to do next about the situation. He sends back an angry response (isn't that rich? He's had my money for 3 weeks and I've had nothing, and HE'S mad!) how he's got 1400 transactions and would he really cheat someone for $5.50 and I can tell eBay anything I want b/c if I give him negative feedback, he'll do it right back to me (uh...never said that's what I was going to do, and exactly WHAT was negative about my end of the transaction?) and BTW, don't bid on my stuff anymore. Oh, how SHALL I ever get over not being able to do business with this guy again? Let the weeping begin!

I responded, of course, and told the guy I'd never threatened him with negative feedback, but how nice that he'd threatened me when all I did was pay immediately and never receive anything and he needn't worry about me bidding on his stuff again - his stellar customer service had taken care of that. What a complete a-hole. So, do yourselves a favor. Don't bid on anything listed by greenflyautographs022 (Ryan Batkay). He may or may not send your stuff, he won't communicate with you, and he'll attack you if you complain.

On another note, I am *thoroughly* enjoying the Olympics, and I have yet to post anything about all that, so I'll have to remedy that tomorrow!

Deleted post

Some readers of this blog may notice that a post is missing. It's one I put up earlier today. A few people saw it and one commented (thank you for your comment!), but as the day went on, somehow, the post just felt too personal to be out there. So, I decided to take it down. There are some things you don't feel like sharing with the whole world. This is a strange, open and anonymous forum, and I enjoy it. But a woman is allowed to change her mind, and I did!

Some bloggers will tell you the most private things - what up with that woman in Washington who told any stranger with a mouse and a monitor about her very active sex life? I mean, pleeeease. Of course, I think somehow that worked out for her - she got some kind of book deal or something. But to me, fame and zeroes in my bank account aren't worth my dignity. I'd rather be anonymous, decent me than (in)famous, indecent Monica Lewinsky. But I digress.

My point was that blogging is an interesting medium. Total strangers form opinions of you based on what you write, and you learn about yourself as you decide what to write, how to write it and how you feel about it after it's out there. It's like dipping your toe into the fishbowl that celebrities and other public figures live in everyday. Except that they don't have a delete button like I do. I think for now I'll forego the riches of celebrity (because if I *wanted* to be famous, I could - right???) and keep my delete button.

Email should have training wheels.

You know, for someone who spends all day on the Web, firing off emails and IMs and operating my own little blog here, you'd think I'd be someone you could trust with email. But you can't. I'm more likely to do/say something stupid on email than I am in person, and that's sayin' somethin'.

This morning, I accidentally click on the "Drafts" folder in my Yahoo email account, and I see there are 4 emails in there from last spring and summer. I didn't even know I had any emails in that folder. One of them, I see, is to an ex-boyfriend - someone I get dangerously whistful about occasionally. In fact, just this morning, coming to work, I thought about him. So, because of that coincidence, I decide to open the email and read it - a little sidetrip back in time. We were actually already broken up by the time of the email, but we were still friends and talked all the time, and I'll admit it, I hoped deep down we'd get it all back together. But alas, we instead, went our separate ways, on not the best note, and haven't spoken in about 6 months (whistful noise).

So, I open the message. "Oh, that's nice. Look at us chatting like people who actually chat." (sigh) Click on "Check Mail" to go back to my Inbox and the present. Yahoo: "Message sent." Me: "What?"

I didn't click "Check Mail." I clicked where "Check Mail" would normally be. But in the Drafts screen, that button is "Send." Yes, that's right - I had just sent him the message from last June. Oh crap.

Well, you can't just let that sit out there. You can't let a person open a chatty email from last June with no idea what the hell is going on. So, I had to send a follow-up email explaining what a complete moron I am. "Haven't spoken to you in 6 months, but aren't I a hoot? Someone ties my shoes for me in the morning, ya know." I'm sure he's wondering as we speak how he could've ever let me get away.

Dream or vision? Who's to say?

I had a weird dream last night. People who know me well know that this is not in any way uncommon. I'm a creative type, and my imagination has always been good, which means my unconscious comes up with some doozies when I'm sleeping. Last night it was about Luke Wilson.



I saw Luke Wilson at the UT-Baylor basketball game last night. Since it was a rout, you find yourself looking around for other things to entertain you. Sitting just behind the scorers' table was Mr. Wilson and a date. I think there was a friend with them, too, though I only noticed that when they had to vacate their seats. Seems their box suite wasn't close enough to the action for them, so they just sat in someone's season ticket seats. When those people finally arrived (with 8:00 left in the first half - I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and guess that their Valentine's Day dinner ran long), they booted Mr. Wilson and his pals out of their seats. Good for them. Don't let Hollywood types intimidate you.

Anyway, as Mr. Wilson and entourage retired back to their suite, I saw him a little better and grimaced at his scruffy appearance (he didn't look like he does in that picture above - you think I'd have a complaint if he'd looked like that?). I don't care for the scruffy look. Never have. Shave and get a haircut. I realize I live in Austin, where such sentiment is met wtih gasps and dismay, but that's how it is. I like my men smellin' clean and lookin' sharp. I don't walk around unshaved and with hair that looks confused by the presence of scissors - why should they? You can dress casual. You can be comfortable. I like to be. But look like you give a crap. That's all I'm sayin'.

Well, Luke's appearance must've implanted some sort of unconscious, negative opinion of him in my brain, because I dreamt last night that we started dating, and he was kind of an asshole. I've always had kind of a crush on the guy, but I think that's ruined thanks to my dream. I remember he asked if I wanted to do a couple of activities, and I said one was fine, but I didn't feel like doing the other - I think it was some sort of art show where you go from exhibit to exhibit, stopping at each one for about 15 minutes, but the whole thing would take something like 4 hours. Teeeeeedious. I felt this was a reasonable response. But sometime later, he goes off on me, telling me how he thought we'd get along better and have more in common, and he berates me for not being flexible and open to doing stuff he wants to do. There's this current in his ranting that all of our "problems" are my fault, and that I'm just too much of a plebe or something. I was completely surprised by all this in the dream.

In real life, I'd like to think that I'd tell him to bite it since it seemed to be an indictment of my entire personality and being, but in the dream, even though I was angry, for some reason, I capitulated and said okay, I'd go to the art thing the next day, which would be a Saturday - a valuable "personal" day to those of us who serve employment masters Monday through Friday. Saturdays are sacred to us as days we get to spend doing what WE WANT to do - not what some boss tells us to do, dangling a paycheck in front of us to bend us to his will.

Only after I've capitulated does Luke mention in passing to me, as if I should've known, that this "showing" starts at 4:30 in the morning! "WHAT????" I think in the dream! And clearly my distress shows on my face. But Luke doesn't notice. He's got a tailor there fitting him for the outfit he's going to wear to the showing, and my feelings are a moot point anyway. Mr. Wilson likes things his way.

I woke up from this dream thoroughly disliking Luke Wilson. Unfair you say? Maybe. Or maybe my dreams are psychic. You don't know.

Boom goes the dynamite!

Congratulations Wildcats! For anyone who doesn't know (cuz you were watching the Olympics or something...can you people not switch back and forth between channels?), Villanova ousted #1 ranked Connecticut last night. And what an exciting game it was - I've never seen so many steals! You guys were relentless! And to do it on your home court in front of your peeps - great feeling, man.

The game doesn't affect UT. We're #6, and Villy was #4, so either way, a team above us was going to get the win, but I like seeing CT and Duke get a little slap now and again so they're reminded that they're not invincible (a feeling other people often have about UT!). Lord knows we left our slapper at home when we played Duke, so props to the Wildcats for gettin' the job done against CT last night! You guys were incredible!

On another note, a shout out to OSU basketball. I know that no matter what the facts turn out to be with Coach Sutton, this is a rough time for him. He seems like a stand-up guy, and I'm sorry to hear it. I hope his problems are not what some suspect, and I'm sorry the team has to deal with a distraction like all this as the season enters its hottest phase. This is the messiness of life, though. This is an opportunity to see what you do when a toothpick gets stuck in your chocolate fountain auger.

Incidentally, Blogger is still giving me fits. I either can't post, or it says it's posted, but then my new posting isn't there when I look at my blog, or monkeys are seen jumping on my head. I just threw in that last part to see if you were reading all the way through.

You couldn't have planned it.

I went to an interesting party yesterday. It was sort-of Valentine's themed, but not really (thank God - those of us with no sweetie mostly just want to hit all the happy people celebrating their special love on Feb. 14 every year). It was actually a chocolate party, with a dash of romance.

One of my friends co-hosted the party which consisted of them providing all kinds of chocolate goodies to eat, and all we attendees had to do was bring a clip of our favorite movie love scene, and we could stuff ourselves to the point of hyper euphoria with chocolate.

I'm happy to report that the people who came to this party had great senses of humor and many of the love scene clips were wry. Someone brought a scene from "Dr. Strangelove," someone else picked one from "Raising Arizona," and we even had a "Spongebob" clip. I was entertained. :) One guy, of course, had to bring a clip from a lesbian movie, and the clip wasn't about love but sex, and he had to let us know how following the scene he showed us was "the hottest sex scene I've ever seen." Gee. You're so...sophisticated. Here's a "Hustler" and there's the bathroom. Leave my presence.

Anyway, the highlight of the party was the chocolate fountain. Not the fountain itself, but .... well, here's the story. They had a chocolate fountain filled with Ghiradelli chocolate that you could dip all kinds of things into - cookies, fruit, pretzels. The center of the fountain, an auger, spins, pushing the chocolate up a center tube, and the chocolate drips down from the top, and it's, you know, a fountain. I dipped a few things. It was good. I'm a Hershey gal myself, but I won't thumb my nose at free, warm chocolate.

About an hour into the party, one of the attendees decided to spear a raspberry with a toothpick and dip it in the chocolate pooled at the bottom of the fountain. This would've been fine, except that she got a little over-exuberant. She stabbed her toothpick too far in, wedging it under the auger, causing the auger to raise up and spin out of its natural orbit. It started slinging chocolate around the room in a circle! I'm not joking. It was like something out of a movie. For a few seconds, we all sort of watched it in wonder, jumping back out of the way of the slinging chocolate, while the woman who jammed it tried to reach for the auger - like she could grab it or something, I don't know. Finally, someone yells to unplug the thing, and my friend grabs the plug from the wall and it stops. What we ended up with was everything on the table had this lacing of chocolate as if some gourmet chef had done it intentionally. Even more amazing was that no one got it on their clothes, except the woman who caused jammed it in the first place, and she only had a little on her sleeve. It was amazing! If you'd planned it, it wouldn't have happened that cleanly or with better results on the food that got sloshed.

I wish I had a DVR in my brain that recorded everything I saw and heard and I could simply download it onto a disk and show people later. My actual memory barely retrieves things for my own review later, much less allowing me to show it to other people. I think when the government finally implants us with chips, I'll request they put a downloadable DVR component to my chip.

What's it gonna take?

Stupid blogger.com. I've had problems all week with trying to post. I keep writing posts, and then it won't load them. I tells me that it's saved the post and to try back in 10 minutes, but it ends up taking me until the next day before I can finally post. So, my posts are ending up a day late! I'm all off!

I mean, please. If I'm going to share the fascinating details of my life and my enlighting insights, can I please get the cooperation of the magic fairies and wizards who operate this "Internet" thing?

It this posts okay, maybe I'll try a more interesting post later. If it doesn't post easily, will someone tell me where I'm supposed to go to give the Web sprites their candy bribes?

Plumbers make $50 an hour.

I'm outta control! I'm not kidding. I fixed my toilet AGAIN! No, it wasn't the same problem as before, with the valve, and no, my toilet isn't a lemon. It's all good (thump chest with fist). But I'm thinking of chucking this writing thing and just going straight into plumbing. I mean, these guys are plumbers and they even get to do paranormal investigations! Sounds good to me.

In any case, it went a little like this: I got up this morning to find that the water level in the bowl was very low. I didn't, right at that moment, feel like investigating, so I quickly went to the other bathroom to TCB. But I came back and began to look things over. I flushed, and found it came back even lower the next time. I took the top off the back and watched the mechanisms do their mechanical mechanizing, and I thought. I took my word-oriented brain, and I thought...about non-word things. Could it be the float? Nope, float looked fine. Hmmm. How does the bowl fill? What tells the bowl when it's full? I looked at the parts in the tank. I watched them. And it hit me!!! There was a tube emptying water into the tank. And there was a cylinder with some water in it, and a marking for "fill line" only the water wasn't up to the fill line, and I could see no way that any more water was goign to enter Cylinder. That's it! Tube is supposed to be emptying into Cylinder! Somehow Tube got knocked out (I'll blame the cat. Don't ask me to come up with a scenario - the Toilet Tube-Cylinder explanation is all you're getting today)!

So, I put the Tube back into its rightful place, filling Cylinder. I flushed. Voila! All is well again.

I rock.

Blow out the candles. Or don't. Whatever.

Today is my brother's birthday. That's right - we have a lot of birthdays in quick succession in my family. And they're all just after Christmas - just when you want to buy more presents and cards for people. Mine is next. Yippee.

This is a big one from my bro. He's 40. That's a milestone birthday, though really in his case, he should fly right through this 40 thing. He's married, healthy, has two great kids and a successful and interesting career. In fact, all this talk about him and where he is at 40 is only really serving to give ME a midlife crisis. I'll be 40...in 3 years! And I'm...well...I'm healthy.

I think I'm going to go lie down and stare at the ceiling. Happy Birthday, Bro.

Honey, taste this. Is it spoiled?

I often wonder if I could be on a reality tv show. I don't mean have one of my own where cameras followed me around incessently and the only parts that made it on air were when I was cursing after stubbing my toe, crying because some song on the radio reminded me of some lost love or family member, and drinking a margarita while out with some friends, so that the world is given the picture of me as an angry, unbalanced drunk.

No, I mean like a reality GAME show - like The Amazing Race or Fear Factor. I wouldn't do well on Survivor. I don't like to go 24 hours without a shower and I'd have to hide a razor somewhere. My own body hair growing at will with no interference for weeks on end - I don't think so. And do those people use deodorant? That's not even negotiable. And none of that even addresses the whole "alliance" thing and being all strategic with lying and betraying people and whatnot. I hate that kinda crap. Which of course excludes me right off the bat from Big Brother.

I don't have a weight problem, so Biggest Loser is out. I like the way I look, so no Extreme Makeover. So, that leaves me with the two I mentioned above - The Amazing Race and Fear Factor. I only started watching Fear Factor this season. Before that, it should've just been named Vomit Factor. The whole point was to make people eat foul stuff. I don't eat foul stuff - not on purpose anyway. I poured myself a big ole bowl of cereal at a friend's house once, and a millisecond before the first bite hit my mouth (too late to stop it from doing so), my nose alerted my brain than the milk was bad - long gone. Pushin' up daisies. I nearly puked. Maybe I did - it's been a long time now, and me puking after eating bad milk wouldn't be notable enough to remember. It would be expected. So, am I the chick you want to depend on if you winning $50,000 depends on me eating the worm and fish head mixture that you just put in your mouth, chewed up and then spit into my glass?

But this year, Fear Factor has gotten a little less gross and a little more daredevil. First few episodes, I was thinking, "I could probably do that. I could! I could do that!" Until last night. They had to dunk their heads in a dirty sink filled with grey water and use their mouths to remove big clumps of hair (some stranger's nasty-ass pipe-clogging hair) until they managed to get to the bottom of the sink where a key was waiting for them to also remove with their mouths. Right then, I knew I could never do that show. Not that I realistically could've done a whole lot of other things people have done on that show, but that right there - that goes beyond anything I was put on this Earth to do. Oh, and you know what that last part of that round of stunts was? They had to suck up spoiled milk from a bottle and spit it into another bottle until they reached a certain quantity in the spit bottle. Mm-hmm.

So, we're down to The Amazing Race. I could do The Amazing Race, people. I could. I love to travel, and I'm great with maps, and as long as my partner did all the eating challenges, I'd be golden. That brings us to my current roadblock, though (see I even use the lingo in my real life!) - the partner. I have no partner to do it with. You have to choose someone who you either know you can spend all that time with without ruining your relationship, or that you're willing to kill on camera if they drive you to it. If you love your spouse, but figure they'd drive you to kill them in a high-pressure traveling situation, and you're not willing to do that, don't go on that show with them. Take your brother. Mine wouldn't go with me, so he's safe. And believe me, one of us wouldn't make it back alive if we did it.