How are you today? I'm superfantastic.

Think of me what you will

I’ve got a lot of time to kill.  And oh so little to tell you, Internet.  But it is only now 3:00 and I have two entire hours to go before I can leave my frigid little cubicle of tedium.  I therefore present this random list of the things that have recently been going through my head:

1. I saw President Bush on TV last night talking to Brian Williams.  His summer reading list, he said, even included “two Shakespeares”.  That’s right, our Commander in Chief has read not one, but two entire Shakespeares.  God help us, that man is in charge for two more years.

2. Project Runway.  I can’t decide who I like this year.  I do know for certain that I am not a fan of Neck Tattoo Guy or Whiny Rectangle Glasses Guy or Angela.  So far I’m rooting for Michael or Uli.  You people may not be aware that I wield enormous power over these things.  My picks almost always win the reality shows (Chloe!  The Hippies!  The Geniuses!) so it’s vital that I make up my mind and soon.  And correctly.

3. If only that worked for football.  Because, wow.  Packers.  So sad.

4. At my last temp job, I filed some invoices from Ms. Frankie Champagne.  Which may just be the best name ever.  Even better than Saxby Chambliss, in my opinion.

5. I recently tried the Lean Cuisine Chicken Club Panini, which I cannot recommend strongly enough.  So I bought some at HEB and received a coupon for $2 off 7 of them.  And when I used that, I got a coupon for $2 off 10 of them!  Where will it end?  I kind of want to keep buying them and using the coupons just to see how many Lean Cuisine Panini they think a person will buy just to redeem a $2 coupon.

6. Do you ever sort of forget how old you are?  You’re thinking of yourself as a certain age and then you’re shocked to remember that you are in fact much older.  I ask because this happens to me.  I made a decision around my 25^th Birthday that I would not like to turn 25 and would therefore remain 24 until I could no longer pass for it.  And I’m afraid that I have somehow mentally bought this idea, surprising myself now and again with my actual age.  And yet, with 2 ½ weeks yet to go before my Birthday, I keep thinking of myself as 29 already.  What is up with that?

7. I had a friend who told me about a party she went to where the theme was “Come dressed up as what you wanted to be when you were a kid.”  Apparently, the party throwers were just out of college and looking for ideas about what to be now that they had grown up.  I would go to this party as a cowboy/princess.  Which could make for an interesting costume.  How about you?

8. It’s Labor Day coming up.  Probably I should not be allowed to observe this holiday since I spend my days not so much laboring as covertly reading blogs, but they’re not paying me for the day off, so I suppose it all evens out.  I have no plans (except perhaps some Passions viewing) but anything would be better than that Labor Day in 1994 when I came down with mono.  No matter how awful your Labor Day plans might seem, mono is not the answer (unless the question is, “What is the most miserable illness you have ever had, Lori?”)  I did have a boyfriend at the time, but he didn’t have mono, so I don’t think we can blame the kissing.

9. I just applied for the Best Job Ever, which would involve reading blogs as part of the job.  I would work overtime at that job.  For free. 

10. Did you ever see that movie Ten Things I Hate About You?  I did, on TV this weekend.  And it’s pretty good (and by “it” I mean Heath Ledger and by “good” I mean hot.)  Apparently it’s based on The Taming of the Shrew, so maybe I’ll take the President’s lead and read me a Shakespeare!  Just one Shakespeare though.  I don’t have the kind of time on my hands that the Leader of the Free World apparently does.

Mother of pearl, it is only now 3:43! 

Remember back at the beginning when I used to spend hours writing and editing these things, making sure they were pieces of comedic literary art?  No?  Well I do, and apparently those days have come to an end, kids. I thereby deem this stream of schlock a Post and put it right up on the interweb next to my photo of authorial pensiveness. 

And if I don’t die of hypothermia by 5:00 maybe I’ll actually write you a little something later.

Let's hope I don't fall on my ass. Not immediately, anyway.

While it is certainly not unreasonable at any time to be concerned about randomly falling down, there is a reason for that title.  And that reason is...really impractical shoes!  But so pretty:

I've resisted the pointy shoes up to now.  Because I already wear a size 9 1/2!  Narrow!  And on a person who is not quite 5'6, those are some big feet to begin with.  Do I really need to add a couple extra inches of pointiness? 

And yet, Stacy and Clinton tell me repeatedly that pointy-toed shoes will elongate my legs.  And I can REALLY USE that.  Because the jeans that necessitated the purchase of taller shoes were marketed by the Gap as Ankle Length.  Ankle!  And yet they are too long on me even to be worn with my pretty Ann Taylor heels.  They are Floor Length in my new irresponsibly tall shoes!  Because my legs are disproportionately short, which, while making me the champion of that sit and reach event in the Presidential Fitness thing, has not done me much good since!  (Except on airplanes, where I do genuinely feel sorry for you long-legged people.  Even if you possibly made fun of me in gym class for my inability to succeed in the high jump portion of the Presidential Fitness thing.  Tall people, with your oooh, look at us jump!  Look at me now, tallies, fitting nicely into this airline seat!  Ha!  Ok, that did not come out so sympathetic, did it?)

But back to our subject at hand.  Many people may have, say, returned the jeans that were several inches too long.  And yet, who I am to turn down a perfectly good excuse to buy new shoes?  Even if they do sort of remind me of that part of The Wizard of Oz where the witch's feet are sticking out from under the house.

And yet, for all of their prettiness and leg-elongating/jean-enabling powers, the fact remains that I am not a person who can safely wear these shoes.  As I previously mentioned, my ankles have problems in regular shoes.  So the likelihood of an ugly, humiliating, ankle-spraining, face-falling experience is high.  Very, very high.  On the other hand, wearing these shoes should be an excellent work-out for the old ankles.  It will actually strengthen them!  I am doing my wimpy ankles a huge favor!  Right?

The shoes will shortly be making their public debut and I ask you, Austin area citizens, if you see me wipe out, please offer me a hand, an ace bandage, some ice.  And my dignity, if you can find it anywhere.

In return, I'll totally let you borrow my shoes.

Call me Joe

I am just about to reveal to you, the Internet, a secret wish of mine.  I have always wanted...a nickname.  Like a really good nickname, you  know?  One that sticks and lots of people know.  Maybe it's because I was never an athlete.  You sporties are always nicknaming each other, aren't you?

Not to say that no one has ever given me one, but every nickname I've ever had has been pretty much only used by the one person who gave it to me.  Amy calls me Loki, to Holly Rose I am Lo G, my college friend Jarrett used to call me The Iron Lady (after Margaret Thatcher, natch), and I had a student back in DC who, for no apparent reason, called me Plum.  Oh, and there is Jake back in San Antonio who used to call me Lib, short for liberal, since I was THE liberal around there, until I started going to a Baptist church, at which point he switched it to The Baptist.  (Just The Baptist, not Lori the Baptist.  I didn't go around baptizing people and eating locusts and honey or anything.) 

Not helping here is the fact that my name does not lend itself to nicknames.  My friend Carl used to call me Lor, but in general there's not much you can do with Lori.  Or Graham, save the ever-popular Graham Cracker, which you could say has lost any novelty it may at one point have had.  I do not count here the nickname Grammer (Grammar?) in high school since it was equally applied to both my sister and I.  And if we have learned anything from Superfantastic (aside from the art of "eh.") it should be that here, if no where else in life, it's ALL ABOUT ME.

So what have you got, Internet?  Ideas?  And how about you--do you have a good nickname?  And if not, have you secretly wanted one?  Because I don't think I'm alone here.  Or is it really just me?

Wiki Wiki Wickety Whack

So, I've been tagged.  (In the meme sense, of course, not in the sense of "spraypainted with the signature of a graffiti artist.")  Katie, of Irony Queen fame, has tagged me for the Wikipedia meme.  Now, I know I'm supposed to act as if I'm irritated since I, as an artiste, am clearly above memes.  Except I must admit that I'm a little bit relieved not to have to think of original material to post here.  Thus, without further ado, I present the Wikipedia meme.

1. Go to Wikipedia.
2. In the Search box, type your birth month and day (but not year).
3. List three events that happened on your birthday.
4. List two important birthdays and one interesting death.
5. One holiday or observance (if any).
6. Tag more poor, unsuspecting suckers people.

Events

1789 - The US Department of State was established.  (They would go on, 216 years later to charge me an exorbitant fee for a passport in which my picture had turned mysteriously green, indicating, I fear, to foreign customs agents that I may be bringing infectious diseases of the digestive tract into their countries.)

1928 - Sir Alexander Fleming finds mold growing in his laboratory, discovering what would later come to be known as penicillin.  (Precursor to later tasty pink antibiotics which I consumed in vast quantities as a child for persistent ear infections.  Mmmm...amoxicillin.)

1981 - The Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously approves Sandra Day O'Connor's nomination as the first female Supreme Court Justice.  (I have no personal connection here beyond a general "I am woman..." thing.)

Births

1798 - James Fennimore Cooper

1857 - President William Howard Taft

1890 - Agatha Christie

1946 - Tommy Lee Jones AND Oliver Stone

1961 - Dan Marino

1984 - Prince Harry of Wales

Ok, I know that's way too many, but who knew that so many cool people were born on my Birthday?

Death

2004 - Johnny Ramone

Holiday

Japan - Respect for the Aged Day

I think we should all observe Respect for the Aged Day, seeing as how I grow progressively more aged on that date.  Which, for those of you wishing to mark your calendars, is September 15.  That's right-less than one month to go for all of your Lori's Birthday shopping needs!  Of course, in a pinch, cash will do nicely.

Oh, and I hereby tag Melissa.

I like cake.

This weekend I went to yet another wedding.  How do I do it?  This was my around my 30th wedding overall.  Apparently I'm a pretty popular girl among the about-to-get-married set.  And as I looked around at my friends as we danced to yet another Abba classic, I thought to myself, this is easily the 5th time I've danced to this very same song with these exact same girls.  Which is why I have nothing left to wear to these things. You San Antonio wedding people (you know who you are) will just have to deal with seeing repeat outfits from now on. 

Except I don't have another wedding until January.  It is the wedding of my friend and former DC roommate, Holly, hereafter known as the Turbo Coolest Bride in the World.  Why is Holly such a cool bride?  Well, to start with, she is getting married in Las Vegas.  (Extra points would have been awarded for a drive-thru and/or Elvis chapel, but I suppose this pretty lakeside thing will be ok too.)  I've never even been to Vegas, so I am extra double special excited about it.  Any Vegas-related tips or advice would be appreciated.  So far I've been told to get myself to the Paris bakery for some bread and if I don't hear otherwise, I may stay there for the entire non-wedding portion of my trip.  Mmmmm...baguettes.

Second, as a bridesmaid in Holly's wedding, I will be spending exactly $0 on my dress.  How is that possible, you ask! Because Holly has selected a color from David's Bridal and allowed us to choose our own dresses.  A color which my sister already has!  What are the chances of that?  Pretty good because she has them all!  And while Holly is all cool and "you can even wear it in whatever length you want" I'm thinking she didn't have "dragging several inches on the ground" in mind as an acceptable length, so there will have to be some hemming.  Or platform shoes.

But I digress.  A lot.  Back to last Friday's wedding and a picture of the cake which was baked, decorated, and constructed by my friend Jenny.  It astounds me a little that I personally know someone who is capable of doing this:

It tasted at least as good as it looked.  Maybe better.  And I bet most of you don't even know the best part of being friends with a baker, which is cake scraps.  There were three entire bowls of cake that was trimmed off this wedding cake to make it all flat and stackable.  And Jenny will let you eat these scraps with leftover frosting.  I reported for duty on Saturday afternoon.  (Warning: should you ever have the opportunity to partake of cake scraps and leftover buttercream, I guarantee that you will fill your bowl too full and as you near the bottom you will feel full and yet you will keep eating until you begin to feel quite ill and then you will KEEP EATING because it is just SO DAMN GOOD.)

Apparently cake baking is thirsty-fying work, as you can see in this picture of Jenny from the reception.

This was an especially impressive feat of wedding beverage consumption considering that it was a cash bar and Jenny only paid for one glass of wine.  The key here was to sit with a bunch of people who don't drink and then take their champagne and their wine that the waiter brought around.  Or to wait until they left the reception early and keep telling the waiter that they were there, possibly making him wonder how it was that these people appeared at the table just long enough to down a glass of champagne and then disappear before he came back around.  So maybe he thought we were sitting at a table with a bunch of cagey lushes.  In any case, free drinks were had and I was not forced to test the limits of wedding etiquette by asking if I could open a tab on my credit card.

So the wedding was a huge success, cake-, booze-, and dancing-wise.  Oh, and two nice people got married.  And here's to the bride and groom, now home in their large apartment in Manhattan.  May you have a long and happy life together and always let me sleep on your couch in New York for free.  Cheers!

Because I know that you people cannot live without perpetual updates on my terribly interesting life

1. On Thursday night, Amy and I did Free Fun Austin Thing #4 (ish) by attending the free musical in Zilker Park, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.  I'd seen it before and they did a good job.  The temperature even dropped below three hundred degrees by the time they started.  The only problem being how that "Sobbin' Women" song stays in my head for days and days after I see that show.  Or even hear the title of it.  Or blog about it.  Gaaah!

2. I finished receptionisting at noon on Friday and we headed to San Antonio for our friends' softball game.  We wanted to go to a game and selected this one since it was the last one of the season and we could no longer procrastinate.  Our friends won in what might have been a very exciting game, had the opposing team's pitcher gotten the ball in the vicinity of the plate with any regularity.

3. Then on Saturday, I discovered that one of the ants that had been crawling on my feet at said softball game had, in fact, stung me on my right Achilles tendon, leaving me by Saturday walking around with one big red puffy...cankle.  Yes, an itchy stingy unattractively large cankle which I was then forced to cover with long pants when leaving the house despite the fact that it has been 287 degrees outside.  Today my leg seems to have returned to its traditional configuration wherein one can clearly see the distinction between calf and heel.  Thank goodness.

4. And throughout all of this madness, I have been on Obsessive Cell Phone Watch of Early August 2006 due to a resume that I mailed out (Yes, mailed!  With a stamp and everything!  On pretty pretty resume paper with guaranteed perfect formatting due to the not emailing!) on Friday for a position which we will call The Perfect Job for Lori.  Because not only do I really REALLY want this job, I meet each and every last qualification that they had.  Of course, since mailing it, I have realized that the cover letter that I wrote is just wrong, wrong, wrong.  The subsequent cover letter that I have composed in my head is so perfect that not only would the purveyors of The Prefect Job for Lori have called by now, it would have been to say "let's just skip the interview and you can start work tomorrow because you are so incredibly perfect for this job." and I would have said "Yes, of course and I KNOW!"  Except they only have the stupid old cover letter of sucky suckitude, so we shall see.

5. The temp AA job is exactly as keeping-track-of-lots-of-things-intensive as I had feared.  And people, THERE IS JUST NO WAY.

That is all.

Temps: Underachieving, a few days at a time.

I'd just like to take this opportunity to thank Austin area temps for setting the bar so incredibly low.  Because, wow.  You people must require some serious hand-holding.

I say this because of two temp-related incidents this week.  The first began when I was awoken a little after 8:00 on Tuesday morning with the offer of a receptionist gig to start that same day by 9:30 please on the opposite end of town.  Which I eagerly accepted because, you know, bills and all.  So I've been receptionisting all week, which if you'll recall is something that I hate to do.  Partly because if you'll recall even further back, I hate the phone.  Also because I am just generally very bad at it.  And yet, I had my supervisor yesterday telling me how great it is to have me here because I am so good and also so infinitely much better than the other temps they've had in this position.  Which confused me because I do practically nothing here.  Here is an itemized list:

1. Answer the phone and transfer calls.  Easy enough, right?  It is true that I only hung up on about the first two or three callers while attempting to transfer them, which I think represents a fairly decent learning curve.  If you look next to the phone, you will see a business card and a post-it note.  Because without the business card right there, I cannot remember the name of the company.  There are four words, two of which are names (including the president's name which, yes, I have mispronounced more than once) and two of which are the function of the business, one word of which I have completely changed, altering the nature of the business despite the fact that the business card was right there.  The post-it note is so I can write down the name and business of the person calling because otherwise I seriously cannot remember it long enough for the person to pick up.  I've found that abbreviating is ineffective here since when someone called, let's call him Joe from a design firm, which we'll call Smith design, I wrote down "Joe Smith" and then three seconds later when transferring the call, identified the caller as Joe Smith.  When I say that I have no short-term memory, I am (for once) not exaggerating.
2. Find mileages for an expense report.  My ability to do this quickly was quite impressive to my supervisor despite the fact that all I did was google the places and mapquest directions from the office.  Apparently my time with you, the Internet, has paid off.
3. Go through files to make sure they are up to date.  Which is what I am, ahem, doing right now.
4. Call some people to ask specific questions and get that information back to my supervisor.  She gives me the name of the person to call, the phone number, and the information to request.  Pretty challenging stuff.
5. Order pizza for a meeting.  Decline free pizza.  Actually the most difficult task so far.
6. Eat Birthday cake.  I tried to decline since I thought it was weird to be going to someone's Birthday party on my first of 4 days at a place of business, but I was cajoled "come eat some cake", encouraged "come on, eat some cake!" and strong-armed "EAT THE CAKE!" until I went, sang, and had homemade chocolate cake.

And that, folks, is setting me apart from the masses of incompetent Austin temps.  So much so, that I was offered the opportunity to stay on here until I found something permanent.  Which would have been wonderful, had that offer not been made just after an interview that I had for a different temp job, an administrative assistant gig that I was told was a long-term temp thing. 

So I got there for my interview and then was told by all three people that they had decided to make it temp-to-hire!  I could have this job permanently!  So then I was forced to admit to all three people that I was not interested in a permanent admin job but I was perfectly willing to temp there just until something better came along.  At which point I was asked whether I was willing to commit to a certain amount of months, to which I honestly answered no, I'm pretty much just here until I get something better.  I also honestly answered that I had no professional experience with several of the primary tasks involved with the position. 

And they STILL hired me.  Despite their reservations about the fact that after they invest in training me, I could still walk out on them at any moment. Despite having had candidates who were actually looking for a temp-to-hire position.  And despite the fact that I have limited related experience.  I ask you, how unqualified was everyone else?  The good news here is that I have a steady job until I find something better and cut and run on them.  It's close to home and the workplace, I was told, is 80-90% male.  Hopefully my administrative incompetence will somehow continue to be a non-issue.

And to all of you temps out there, keep up the sub-par work!  You make us mediocre temps shine like the stars!

Bring out your dead

So, remember how I was all "we saw a roach and we're getting an exterminator!"  Well that was before we discovered that we are apparently blacklisted in this town and no one will hire us.  So in the interest of fiscal responsibility, we've been living exterminator free.  But it has not been easy.  I'm not going to lie to you, it was insect Wild Kingdom around here.  Bugapalooza.  United Colors of Bugatton.  So after two months and several recent harrowing roach incidents (which, yes, involved lots of screaming and inordinate amounts of Raid, the clouds of which may or may not interfere with our continued respiratory health) we decided to self-exterminate.

We went to Home Depot to buy super-heavy-duty pest control spray and did an extremely thorough spraying inside and out (and then evacuated to the dog park to avoid further inhalation-related issues.)  Since then we've been confronted with a somewhat disturbing phenomenon which I will refer to as the March of the Mostly Dead.  Bugs, mostly earwigs, have been emerging into open space to die.  Why they feel the need to share this experience, I do not know, but I'd prefer that they kept it to the bug underworld from which they emerged.  It grosses us out and also confuses the dogs.  But, you know, better mostly dead than alive and kicking (or squirming or whatever.)  And no more roaches!  Yet.  If they do come back, I'm sure the screaming will alert you.