I am the biggest dork. . .

I'm like, the brontosaurus of dork. The Titanic of dork. The Steven Spielberg of dork.

I recently purchased "The Oregon Trail, Version 5." (I bought it at this hilariously random junk store in Half Moon Bay, but that's another post altogether.) The Oregon Trail was a treasured memory of my youth, and it was only a couple of bucks, so I just went ahead and bought, to much derisive snorting from my sister.

AND I'M TOTALLY RE-ADDICTED!!!

I know I'm completely outing myself as a computer geek with no friends and too much time on my hands, but that is okay if I can spread the Word Of The Oregon Trail, Version 5. It is sooooooooo muuuuccchhhhh fuuuuunnnnnn!!!!! (That's right, five, count 'em, FIVE exclamation points.) You can go hunting AND fishing AND gathering, and you buy all your clothes and food and stuff individually, and rafting down the Columbia is WAY MORE REALISTIC than it used to be.

In short, you may now know I am the Aaron Spelling of dork, but it's okay because The Oregon Trail, Version 5 is THAT GOOD.

The only down moment came when I was selecting an occupation for myself. If I chose to be a doctor, it described me as having "medical skills." A merchant has "trading skills." But a journalist? A journalist has "no special skills." Ouch.

In other news, here's an announcement, and y'all better pay attention (or I will bust out a full-fledged horrible southern accent on yo ass):

I HAVEN'T HEARD "FROM THAILAND." I DON'T KNOW WHEN I'M LEAVING YET. I PROMISE, PROMISE, PROMISE ON SID VICIOUS' HEAD THAT I WILL TELL YOU, OKAY? SO STOP BOTHERING ME PUUUULLLLEEEEEZZZZ!!!!

Yay for Republican Scandals!!!

Oh, you're trying. You're trying soooooo hard. It's all because Ronnie Earle is a democrat. . .he's a zealot. . . errrr. . . ummm. . .well, the President still supports me!! (Like that is a point in your favor. . .anyway, we'll see how long that lasts.) Go ahead, DeLay, try to explain this one. Haha, I am loving this. If the democrats win back Congress in 2006, I will come back from Thailand and KISS YOU.

Frist, YOU'RE NEXT!!

Eddie Bauer vs. Bangkok, Round 1

Back in June, before the birth of this blog, when I was still planning to move to LA, I interviewed for a job with Eddie Bauer. Didn't get it, which helps explain the whole teaching-in-Thailand thing. And now, because I have other plans and don't need their stinking job, they call me back and say they have a job for me after all. It's a pretty good job and, although I haven't gotten a formal offer, I talked to the regional manager for Southern California for an hour this morning, and it seems like a sure thing. AND IT PISSES ME THE HELL OFF. Why couldn't she have offered me this job in June, when I needed it and wanted it and would have jumped at the chance to make mid-$30,000's as a manager for Eddie Bauer, as pathetic as that is? It's a pretty great opportunity, but there's no way I can accept it now. I wouldn't want to give up Thailand and teaching and learning and feeling like I'm DOING SOMETHING WORTHWHILE. It's just the irony is painful.

And the little part of my brain that is completely materialistic (okay, the medium-sized part of my brain) is going, "You are going to make a cool $6,000 as a teacher in an inpenetrably foreign country when you could be making $33,000, working in fashion, in sunny Los Angeles? Have you been SMOKING those anti-depressants?"

And then a different part of my brain (I'm not sure what part it is, I think the overly Mom-influenced part) says "You have a chance to make a difference in the world and have a unique experience and travel the world and stop being so fashion- and celebrity-obssessed and you're thinking about giving it up to work in retail? You don't even like retail!"

And then the rest of my brain, the regular me-part, says "Everything both of you are saying is true! I want to travel and do something different, but this company is offering me a real career, room to move up, the means to move to LA, which I've wanted to do. But then again, I'm not crazy about retail and it's in City of Commerce and isn't that the ghetto? And do I really want to live in LA? And do I really want to live in Thailand? What about Sid. . .if I go to LA, I wouldn't have to leave him. But I shouldn't base these kind of decisions on a dog. Or should I? And it isn't like working for Eddie Bauer helps the world AT ALL. For all I know, they could be running sweatshops employing the very kids I could have the opportunity to teach and hopefully help. But would I really help?"

And then my psychiatrist says, "Wow, you're crazier than I thought."

I Love Balls. . .

Sid has this little once-white rubbery ball he picked up somewhere. He might have stolen it from Jake. It has replaced his pink loopy-loo toy as the love of his life (after me, of course). He hides it underneath a pillow at night so no one will steal it, and if he isn't playing with it he holds it between his front paws and growls if anyone comes near. It's totally disgusting, because it's got this spongy texture that sort of holds in the spit, so it's always squishy and a little wet. But he loves it so, it just gives me goose bumps of cuteness. How am I going to leave him?

For future reference, oh three or four readers of mine, I'm going to post a new pic every day on Flickr. The link is on the side bar, at the top. It says "Daily Photo," if you're a little slow, like me. And prepare for lots of pictures of Sid, because that's what you're going to get. But I promise I'll only post cute ones.

Of course, anything Sid does is adorable, so. . .

Things That Confuse Me

1. Sheryl Crow - I don't get why everyone is so fawny over her. She looks like a rotisserie chicken and sings things in her songs like "Good is good and bad is bad." And everyone's like, "Ooh, she writes all her songs herself and can play three chords on the guitar. She's so talented!"
2. Breakfast burritos - "I am so hungover I might projectile vomit at any moment and I already feel as I have been doused with grease from head to toe but you're right, what I should eat right now is every heartburn-inducing food humans have so far discovered, served in tubular form and taking approximately 5.8 seconds to consume. Extra grease, please."
3. How the hell my stepdad can watch the entire NBA finals series and then disparage me for watching "crap" on t.v. - Like, oh, "True Hollywood Story" is crap but 7-foot-tall black men wearing squeaky shoes and chasing pebbled leather around on hardwood is quality programming.
4. Sombreros - Besides the fact that they instantly make any party more festive, I don't see the use. Sure, they provide shade for you, your shoulders, and ten of your closest friends, but still. . .I mean, they're so weird looking. And why the dance?
5. All the humping dogs do - I mean, girl dogs humping boy dogs and boy dogs humping my leg - which, last time I checked, didn't resemble a dog's ass THAT MUCH - it's humping every which way. There are some evolutionary instincts miswired there, I think.
6. Why, in Spanish, the words for "spouse" and "handcuffs" are the same - No, wait, that was supposed to go on the "Things I don't understand but am totally okay with not understanding" list.
7. People that like Bill O'Reilly - He's so mean. Who likes mean, yelling, wrinkled right-wing people who interrupt all the time? Who seriously turns on the t.v. and is like, "Sweet, Bill O'Reilly's on. It makes me happy to watch wrinkly white men browbeat perfectly nice people. Interrupting is da bomb!"
8. People who say "da bomb" - Don't you watch MTV? Da bomb is, like, so two years ago.
9. Non-funny movies - I mean, people have to know they're not funny. Someone who saw that movie before it was released had to notice it wasn't funny. So, why bother? Is the money really worth the ridicule and groaning and death threats?
10. Waking up at 6 am - My stepdad gets up around that time, and I think it's against nature. This morning, I heard an owl hooting as he was making his coffee. (My stepdad was making coffee, not the owl.) AN OWL. In case you haven't been watching your Animal Planet, owls are nocturnal. Nocturnal means only active at night. So, an owl hooting means IT'S NIGHTTIME. Nighttime means SLEEPING. Humans are not meant to wake up in the nighttime. GO TO SLEEP, YOU CRAZY AWAKE NON-SLEEPERS! YOU CAN'T JUST GO AROUND AWAKE AT THIS TIME OF NIGHT, YOU KNOW!!

P.S. You might have noticed that this post was written at 9 o'clock on a Friday night. I want you to know that isn't because I'm a pathetic loser with nothing to do on a Friday night. It's because I have no friends.
P.P.S I'm going to start posting a daily photo. I'm doing this for three reasons: 1) J'adore my digital camera. 2)I have too much time on my hands. 3)I'm a big copycatting copycat. Original ideas? Who needs original ideas when you have the Doocer? Here's the link to today's; Laura's First Daily Photo. Guess who it's of?

They're called eyes; use 'em.

A variation on Male Refrigerator Blindness; Male Dishwasher Idiocy.

This is the illness of the brain that causes men to pull open the dishwasher, peer in, then scream across the house, "Are these dishes dirty or clean?" As if the day-old macaroni crusted onto the plates wasn't enough evidence.

A related malaise causes those same men to put dishes dripping with barbeque sauce and crusty bits of disgustingness in amongst sparklingly clean, just-rinsed china. Don't bother asking if they're dirty or clean NOW, fucker.

Damn, I'm going to have to leave the house

I just remembered I have a parking ticket that's due today or it goes up to like, more money than is strictly reasonable. I also really, really need to get a pedicure. It's been like a month. If I let it go much longer, I might gouge someone's eyeballs out with my toenails.

Which might not actually be that bad.

Next you're going to tell me you drive a BMW

I've been in a baaaaaad mood the last couple of days. I, personally, attribute it to PMS. But if you are a man and you value your reproductive organs, you better not even SUGGEST that is why I'm cranky. Seriously, don't even start a word with p. For your own safety and the safety of innocent pedestrians, you don't have to pee, you aren't a member of the PTA, you aren't concerned about the PLO, and you SURE as HELL aren't going to PA.

I went out last night with high hopes, but it SUCKED with a capital F. There has always been a surplus of ugly menfolk in this town, but it seems to be a recent development that they are all FOLLOWING ME AROUND. Two different bars last night, not a hottie to be seen. And these girls that I was hanging out with, oy. Nice in a mildly superficial, slightly snarky way, but ultimately totally unconcerned with me or my welfare, wellbeing, or fun quotient. I miss my girls thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiisssss much. Actually, more.

Icing on the shitty-night cake, the only guy, UGLY OR OTHERWISE, who hit on me was approximately 4 foot 7 inches tall, had a mustache (ew), and thought he'd get in my pants by telling me "There's so many ugly chicks in here, I was stoked to finally see one like you come in." THAT'S RIGHT. He hit on me by telling me I was NOT AS UGLY as everyone else.

And I am such a right raging bitch I said, "Yeah, there's a hell of a lot of ugly guys here too." END. OF. SENTENCE.

The wonders of unemployment

My life is boring. This is what I do every day;
9-9:30 Wake up with much groaning and stretching and whining.
9:30 Eat Rice Krispies for breakfast with a mug of tea with milk, half reading the front page of the paper and half reading the back of the Rice Krispies box.
10:00 Get online, check e-mail (always spam or Thailand update queries to which I have no answers), check MySpace, check this site and write something if I'm feeling funny, which I never am at 10 am, check the Dooce, and just generally dick around for an hour or so.
11:00 Reluctantly put some real clothes on and start cleaning up my filthy house, because my mother insists I contribute to the household instead of just mooching, and she's totally right but it's much more fun to groan and roll my eyes than just acquiesce. I'm not an acquiescent person, if that's a word.
12:30 Notice delightedly it's approximately lunch time, stop cleaning, and begin cooking something carb- and fat-filled, like noodles with alfredo or my personal delicious invention, cheesy rice soup.
1:30 Roll my lunch-bloated carcass to either the couch or my bed for a post-lunch snooze. Funny, I don't look 85 years old.
3:00 Wake up from post-lunch snooze with much groaning and stretching and whining. Resume cleaning and various chores around house.
4:00 Decide exercise is what's needed and put my running shoes on, which causes four smallish but decidedly energetic dogs to go mildly insane and begin bouncing off walls and biting themselves and each other and barking at inanimate objects.
4:03 Put on iPod (invention of the Gods) and take mildly insane, small bouncing hairy objects for a walk, punctuated with acute embarrassment as I am caught singing along with Cindy Lauper by other dog-walkers.
4:50 Arrive home with only slightly tired dogs. Resume cleaning.
6:00 Begin cooking dinner, which is usually some combination of the following: salad, rice, chicken, frozen vegetables, fresh vegetables.
6:30-7 Parents arrive home, tell me house looks nice, thank me for doing a bunch of stuff. Serve dinner, thank heaven someone else has to clean up.
8:00 Parents remember all the other stuff I was supposed to do today and start yelling.
8:30-10:30 Fight over t.v. clicker and computer access with brother and parents.
10:30-11 Put doggies to bed, lock doors, start dishwasher, get into bed.
11-11:30 Read current book, always one of the following: fluffy chick lit about big-city career girl finding love, murder mystery involving English country homes or Hannibal Lecter, or Tom Clancy-style thriller involving battle-toughened men and international intrigue.
11:30-11:45 Play a few rounds of Pyramids on my cell phone.
12:00-12:15 Wiggle around to find comfortable position because Sid is stretched out in the dead center of the mattress and the mere act of falling asleep causes him to gain 20 lbs.
12:30 Fall asleep, praising God and the pharmaceutical industry for the wonders of Ambien.

Repeat.

A true friend of mine. . .

. . .will know what I find absolutely hilarious about the question below, which I found on www.blogthings.com

8. You assume that most people have a viscous streak that could come out at any time.
Yes
No

Oh my god, it's too, too funny. Especially if you put a mental image to it.

Wondering

I wonder if there is a physical limit to the amount of snot one person can produce. Signs point to no.

I Have Found THE ONE!!!!

Oh my goshdarn I LOVE MY iPOD! I have seen my future and it is good.

I am an F-ing computer genius

I bought myself an iPod yesterday. Because I like to be a year or so behind everyone else like that. The reason I didn't write about it yesterday is because I wasn't that excited about it yesterday, because yesterday, it didn't look like I was ever going to figure out how it worked. I have a moral objection to paying for online music, so I couldn't do it the easy way and sign up for iTunes. Actually it's not so much a moral objection as a wallet objection. I have LimeWire, which is nice and cheap (free but shhh! don't tell anyone) but not easy to figure out. And my iPod didn't want to work with LimeWire. And my downloads didn't want to be saved under iTunes. And my computer didn't want to tell me how to fix any of this. That poor defenseless iPod came close to being thrown across the room a couple of times. (Actually, it's probably not defenseless. Knowing Apple, that thing is capable of growing arms and beating me to death with a USB cord.)

But, fucking computer genius that I AM, this morning I figured that fucker out and MADE it take the music from LimeWire (which I found saved under this random Queens of the Stone Age default folder, BO YOU FUCKER). I said, "New iPod, you smug little Aryan bastard, you will take my pirated music and YOU WILL LIKE IT!" And then I did a little booty-shaking, arm-waving victory dance to Britney Spears' "My Prerogative." Because free music is MY PREROGATIVE, BITCHES!!

For such a smart person, I'm pretty stupid

I have started an online TEFL course. That isn't pronounced "teffle," as much fun as that is to say. It's T(eaching) E(nglish) as a F(oreign) L(anguage). I have always thought of myself as someone who has a pretty firm grasp on the English language, at least until the Jagermeister starts flowing. I try to use correct grammar, and my closer friends will tell you how often and how obnoxiously I correct their grammar. (As far as that goes, I stand by my story; it is my parent's fault for constantly yelling "FINE!" every time I answer "How are you?" with "good.") I am one of the planet's least anal retentive people, except when it comes to spelling. I cannot stand a misspelled email and my respect for a person PLUMMETS the first time they write "alot" or use "there" when they mean "their." Not to MENTION using "4" instead of "for" and "2" instead of "to." And if you ever say "irregardless" in front of me, it will take a Supreme Act of a Divine Being to keep me from telling you that you have the I.Q. of a monkey's left nut.

HOWEVER, I have discovered that I wouldn't know a Past Progressive verb if it sat down at the bar and started taking shots with me. Shoot, I wouldn't know it EVEN IF IT WAS BUYING THE SHOTS. And when that's just one of eight different verb choices and you are only on page 15 of 38. . .let's just say I am sitting at my computer with grammar books in a semi-circle around me, and I'm feeling like that monkey's OTHER nut. This stuff is HARD, and it is MY NATIVE LANGUAGE!!

I'm keeping my chin up, though, by filling in the non-graded sections with sentences like, "Suzy has bitten the head off a bat." and "Tommy is drinking his own blood."

Red Cross Reject

So the Red Cross rejected me on the grounds that I am a weak little sickly motherf***er. I wasn't planning on telling them that, but while I was sitting next to the very organized organizer lady, I happened to hock up a wad of phlegm roughly the size of Yellowstone National Park, and twice as yellow. And even though I resisted the urge to show it to her, she told me they couldn't send me anywhere. I wanted to take the disaster preparedness class anyway, because I figured it's only a matter of time before someone declares my bedroom a disaster area and I might as well be prepared, but there were non-virally-infected people waiting for my place, and the organized organizer lady told me "not to be such a little bitch." And I said "Hey lady, you can't talk to me like that just because I hocked up a wad of phlegm the size of a national monument in your classroom!" And she said, "Listen, snotwad, I've got hurricane victims to attend to. Are you going to move your ass and those jeans you've been wearing for five days straight or am I going to have to move it for you?" And I said, "Haaagggghhh, haaaaagghh, snnooorrrkkk, snnnneerrrrkkkk, ptooey."

Why I don't do the cleaning my own damn self (and this is a better reason than "Maybe I like toothpaste all over the bathroom mirror")

I'm pretty sure our cleaning lady thinks I'm, like, the handicapped daughter that my parents take care of. I have an absolute knack for still being in my pajamas when she gets here, usually watching t.v. or playing something online or taking a nap. I'm always here doing nothing while she cleans and it's never anything that takes more brain cells than fingers. She's probably all, "Oh, it's so nice that they let their retarded daughter live here with them. It would be so hard to have a child who can't take care of themself or get a job or even get off her ass one day a week so I can clean the living room." Plus yesterday while she was cleaning my mom's bathroom I totally thought it was my mom in there, so I was hollering across the hall like "Maaaaaaammm!! C'mere I need some help! Maaaaaammm!!" She definitely thinks I'm 'special.'

POOP!!!

Haha, got your attention with that title, didn't I, you dirty little monkey.

My sister Julia and her husband Chris came over today for no apparent reason other than boredom. They brought their two dogs, natch, bringing the grand total to six, which is at least four more than a smallish house should be able to handle. The cleaning lady is here, too, vaccuuming, which makes sane(ish) dogs act like Andy Dick on uncut crack. This house is not nearly as restful as I would like a sunny Labor Day to be, goddurnit. Not that I'm not happy to see them, because I don't see them nearly enough while they are off buying and selling million-dollar houses and Mercedes and discussing interest rates and buying Sleep Number beds and mini-trampolines and just generally behaving like total grown-ups.

On a TOTALLY UNRELATED MATTER, HAVING NOTHING TO DO WITH SISTERS OR BROTHERS-IN-LAW, I'm gonna state something crazy here, for those who maybe don't like to think about it or are embarrassed by it, or maybe have some confused notion of the sanctity of the bathroom (when everyone knows it's just the lovely high-thread-count sheets that are sacred), that EVERYBODY POOPS. It happens. It happens frequently enough that people like to put it on bumper stickers and think that proves they're original and ironically funny when really it just proves they have access to $8.95 and a Spencer's Gifts. I, personally, don't poop nearly as often as I would like. My dog, on the other hand, seems to have an unending supply of poop, quite enough to festoon all our neighbor's gardens and have some left over for the dead center of the street. My Tripod friend Emilie (who NEVER calls me BACK, YOU BIATCH!) have developed wonderful communication with and about our poop, a consequence of traveling through Europe together for two months. We have learned just how to save it up to achieve maximum glooooorious poopage, because you just don't find that many poopable toilets in Greek train station. We are quite familiar with each other's ability to lose ten pounds in one sitting, and emerge refreshed and ready to resume drinking the metric equivalent of Lake Michigan in beer.

Something I find unceasingly interesting in a twelve-year-old boy kind of way is how many different kinds of poop there are. In junior high my best bud Sarah and I somehow got our grubby little Seadragon hands on "The Poop List," detailing quite seriously all these different kinds of poop you could have. Like "Rabbit Poops," those little pellet-y ones that seem to take hours yet leave you staring into the bowl going "That's it? I let my toes turn black from lack of blood supply, all for Cocoa Puffs?" Or the "Spinal Tap," the poop that hurts so bad you'd swear it's coming out sideways. We laughed so hard over that list it nearly killed us. That and our math teacher who was from New Yawk or somesuch place and when we were being loud she'd get our attention by yelping "Huullaaaawwww?" like a gerbil had just run up her ass.

I would also like to state, in case you're interested, that I said poop twelve times in this post. Thirteen if you count the title.

Oh, and if you also find poop funny, and if you don't I will never take a math class with you, go here.

Next up at bat, Sadie the Slugger!!

I took all four members of the Mutts from Hell baseball team to get their shots this morning. There was one of those clinics at a feed store where you just line 'em up and the vet sticks 'em in and you pay and you're out. This was in Watsonville, the ghetto. Great when you have four insane dogs because really, who's going to notice four whacko terriers when there are more Chihuahuas than a Taco Bell commercial and some Rottweiler puppies whose owners are wearing actual prison jumpsuits?

I don't think all four of our dogs have ever been on the leash at the same time. . .in fact I'm not sure that Spot and Sadie have ever been on a leash at all. And they were nervous about something. I think it could have been related to the fact that it sounded like someone was taking a chainsaw to a crate of chickens inside the building. I waited in line for about twenty minutes, periodically having to crawl vertically out of the tangle of leashes, and handing out "lo siento"'s like freaking candy.

It was hellish, but now we don't have to worry about rabies (if it isn't already too late, I have my doubts) or parvo or distemper, whatever those are. I think I might suffer from distemper, and I would like a shot for it.

As long as it doesn't involve a chainsaw.

Never did good before. . .

So it looks like I'll be sent to help out in the aftermath of the ultimate manifestation of PMS, Hurricane Katrina. I go in for some training on Tuesday, then I'll be sent for ten days to three weeks. Hopefully closer to ten days because three weeks will be approaching the date I'm supposed to leave for Thailand, but who knows. They seem pretty casual about things like actual start dates in southeast Asia. Pretty proud of myself and all, until I open the paper and read about riots and rapes and dead people lying around in wheelchairs and then I'm more like, "Holy shit. What is with this surge of good-doing, you crazy biatch? You used to be so normal."

Fucking WaMu

Sorry for the profanity, but Washington Mutual is killing my buzz right now. The I-just-earned-$4,000-from-stock-on-ETrade-and-now-I-can-finally-buy-a-laptop buzz. Is officially killed. Trying to transfer said money to my bank account (kinda helps with the whole spending thing, to have it in the bank), WaMu tells me it'll post in "about 48 hours." Maybe. How hard is this? It's a freaking electronic transfer. I'll answer my own question; It's EASY! And I've already spent almost a month getting this whole stock thing figgered out, I WANT MY FLOCKING MONEY!!!

On a lighter note, one of my oldest and dearest friends (meaning the one I've known the longest who still doesn't hate me) is in Santa Cruz for el fin de semana (known to you gringos as el end de el weekend). Very much looking forward to hanging out with you, LizBoo.