How are you today? I'm superfantastic.

Please hold for the next available post

I've been working on a post this week, actually for longer than that, but it's not the usual just get something written and slap it up on the blog before the Internet gives up because you assume they have the attention span of a goldfish and will desert you if you don't post three times a week kind of post.  Plus, thanks to THE CURSE, I've spent this week either half asleep or madly shoving food in my face, neither of which is conducive to typing.

So while you wait, please enjoy these photos of the giant baby who ate my little nephew.

Is it just me or does this look like some kind of paparazzi photo catching him drinking fresh out of rehab?  He is underage for that Sprite.

And finally, remember that tiny baby who was about the same size as Roary?

Well.

This concludes the HUMOR ME - I'M HIS AUNT portion of the program.  For now.

Willing to accept cash for any of these endorsements

I can't really think of anything to write about, so I am just going to list some things I recommend to you.  Please bear in mind that I am not an expert on, you know, anything really.

Aveeno Positively Radiant Daily Moisturizer.  I had forgotten how hard winter can be on skin.  The Neutrogena moisturizer that I use the rest of the year was not up to the winter dryness, and my Chicago-based friend Jennie suggested the Aveeno.  I can't say that anyone has pointed out that I am looking particularly radiant since I started using it, but it does keep my skin from taking on the texture, as Heather Armstrong so eloquently put it, of an elephant buttock.  For which I thank it.

Fair warning though, use of Aveeno products could lead to this conversation with your significant other and the resulting imagery:

Aveeno?  Isn't that made from oatmeal and...hippie juice?

Yes, from the juice of freshly squeezed hippies.

Psych on USA Network.  Are you watching this show?  I gave it a try when it came out because one of the stars is Dule Hill, who was Charlie on the West Wing.  And it cracks me up.  If you're anything like me, your busy social calendar precludes you from following a show that airs on Friday nights.  But you're in luck here because not only does it air on basic cable, meaning that each episode is aired over and over, but you can also watch complete episodes online.

The movie Persepolis, which I saw on Saturday.  You should see it too, as long as you're down with subtitles.

Betty Crocker Warm Delights Minis.  I mentioned these before, but I had bought the full size, which was kind of too much.  The mini is quite nice.  And it's already all portion-controlled for me, so it makes a good PMS week concession to my chocolate craving without adding to the Why are my pants so tight? I have gotten fat overnight! panic.  (How, every single month, does it take me an entire day to realize that I'm just retaining water?)

Cold weather stuff from Miles Kimball.  My mom sent me some, which has come in oh so handy, especially these socks.  And if you're internet-impaired like my mom, you can call and have a very nice conversation with the lady who takes your order, especially if, like my mom, you happen to be from the town where the company is based.

Spinach Goat Cheese frozen pizza from Target's Archer Farms brand.  Yum.

Sarah Jessica Parker's perfume, Lovely.  I got a bottle for Christmas from my sister and brother-in-law and was happy to find that I liked it even more than I remembered from when I tried it quite some time before.  It's a very clean scent, which I'm into.  I always like the Clean Cotton/Clean Linen/Cotton Blossom family of scents.  Maybe I should just wash the sheets more often.

Cherry Coke Zero.  I'll admit I have cheated on Diet Dr Pepper with this product.

That's what I can think of right now.  And now it is your turn to tell all of us what we should be watching/eating/drinking/wearing/etc.  Advise us, Internet.

A second not-bitter post regarding Valentines Day. I don't even know who I am anymore.

It started with a conversation that went something like this:

Me: You know how I'm not a really girly girl and Valentines Day is a stupid Hallmark holiday?

Alan (getting his hopes up): Yeah?

Me: Well, I'm girly enough.

Alan (hopes now dashed): So I have to come up with something?

I assured him later that it didn't have to be anything big thing, just that if he ignored the day completely, it was going to make me sad.  At which point he told me that he had already ordered something for me, this point coming before the point at which I had any idea at all of what to get him.  Who was the Valentine slacker now?

But then he later (after I had ordered a print for him from Etsy) told me that the gift he had gotten me wasn't all that he was hoping it could be, so he sent it back.  And then he ordered me something from Etsy (it was a Very Etsy Valentine around here!) so it would be something not mass-produced.  I liked his thinking on that.

We decided that on the Day itself, I'd go to his house in the evening and we'd order in since I assumed that all of the restaurants would be packed.  And we all know how I feel about other people.  Except before I even got over there, I came home to find six red roses in a vase on my desk with a card that said "See you tonight."  I bring that up because when I saw it I thought "awww..." but also "if this had been any of those boyfriendless Valentines Days, finding something like that in my apartment would have occasioned a call to the police rather than a :) text message."

Then I got to his house and got the bad news that my present had not yet arrived.  The thing is, as much as I was looking forward to it, I am always more excited about watching other people open the presents I got for them than I am about opening my own.  So I got to do that part and was assured that I would most likely come home sometime this week to find a green gift box waiting for me in my apartment.  Let the breathless anticipation begin.  Good thing I have a short attention span and thus forgot about it for long stretches of time.  Plus, delayed gratification is my second favorite kind of gratification, just after instant.

After Alan opened his print and other gifts (one or more of which may have come from the Dollar Spot) we tried to order food.  I say "tried to" because we were told that between the snow (Of course it was snowing!) and call volume, it would be two hours.  So we did what any reasonable people would do: we drove through Culver's.  Alan was worried that I wouldn't be happy with Culver's for Valentine's Day, but I really, really was, Internet.  Because a) we had just been out the previous Saturday when there were not crowds of couples for a very nice dinner at Johnny Delmonico's (mmmm...steak) and b) I love Culver's like a fat kid love, well, Culver's.

See, I have developed a bit of an addiction to Culver's fries since moving back up here.  I mean, I don't need to go to fry rehab or anything.  If you tried to make me, I would say NO, NO, NO.  And I would stick to that no, unlike some people, because I can quit anytime.  I only eat Culver's fries socially.  It's not, like, a problem or anything.  (I know what that one pair of jeans will tell you, but they are liars and have totally been that tight ever since I got them.)  I don't go around stealing money or anything to support my fry habit.  So what if I get my boyfriend to pay for them half of the time?  That doesn't mean anything.  That doesn't, like, make me some kind of fry whore.  And for the record, it was his idea for us to get a family-size fry to share.

What were we talking about again?

Oh yes, so we picked up our Culver's and went back to his house to watch TV for a while.  And then I waited patiently (as far as you know) for SEVEN WHOLE DAYS to find out what my present was.  I will further have you know that I did not pester Alan for hints on either Friday OR Saturday nights, because I am a mature, grown-up person.  Also, I was pretty sure he wouldn't tell me anything.

Today, I came home from work to find this sitting on my computer:

And inside the green box:

Hydrangea petal earrings in sterling silver.  What can I say?  The man has taste.  And he pays attention.  All of the jewelry that I wear on any kind of regular basis is silver.  Except I don't regularly wear silver earrings because I don't have any that I like.  Or I didn't, anyway. 

(Much more of the artist's jewelry is silver as well.  I see a wish list of additional items in someone's future.) 

(Unfortunately, there aren't any more giving-me-gifts occasions until my birthday, but it can't hurt to have a few things in mind, what with it being only a scant seven months away.)

So that is the story of Valentines Day this year.  Fries, flowers, and jewelry.  Who could ask for anything more?

Huge Democracy Geek Even Votes in Primaries

That title is shamelessly stolen from The Onion.  The article was hanging on the door of our office back when I was a professional democracy geek.

These days I am back to amateur geek status, but today I did, in fact, vote in the primary.  Where I discovered that I am apparently the oldest person living in my ward.  When I was registering, I was the only one at the table who was able to use my driver's license.  Everyone else had to use a utility bill because their license had their parents' address back home on it. 

Making me realize that I voted for Bill Clinton while these kids were in KINDERGARTEN.  That is how old I am.

And who told young people to participate in the political process anyway? 

Ha!  It was me!  I wouldn't have done it if I had known that so many of them would show up for a primary that I'd have to wait long enough to miss my nightly date with Brian Williams.

If it had come up in the course of my civic educating days, I would have told my students that the likely benefit to standing on a street corner with a campaign sign in below zero wind chill does not outweigh the risk of frostbite.  Youth of America, do you really think this is an effective means of persuasion?  Have I taught you nothing?  People uninformed enough to make a decision based on some posterboard you painted yourself don't go vote in a primary and certainly not when it is, by my own observation, approximately eighty-seven degrees below zero outside.

I'll give you that lesson in electoral politics completely free of charge.  In exchange, come November, could you vote during the day while us grown ups are at work?  I may be old, but I remember college - you have the daytime hours.  Put down the sign and go vote.  Prior to 5:00 p.m.

You can make a difference, college students!  The difference between whether I get my Brian Williams fix or not on Election Day.  Will you answer the call?

Thank goodness the writer's strike is over so this award show can proceed.

I forgot, when I decided to have a contest in which I would be the sole judge, that I am very indecisive.  In fact, one of my six-word memoirs that I deleted was "Indecisiveness as a way of life."

And you people didn't make it easy on me either, did you?  You with your witty and evocative memoirs.  If all but one of you could have written bad ones, it really would have helped me out.

In order to just eliminate some choices, I first decided that members of my immediate family were ineligible to win.  But I will say that I greatly enjoyed my sister's "Still uses time and materials unwisely."  See, at our elementary school, you got a grade in that.  And I got, if not straight D's all the way through, then pretty close to it.  Thank goodness there is no longer anyone grading me in that particular subject.  (In my defense, while I also tended to get D's in responsibility, I always got A's in citizenship.  I was spacy, but nice.  Hi, I have AD/HD inattentive.  I can't remember your name, but I like your shoes.)

Then I discovered that it was difficult to choose between those of you I know in real life and those of you I don't know.  Because if we are friends, then I know how well your particular memoir sums you up, which makes me like it even more.  But this is an unfair disadvantage for all of you internet strangers out there.

Thus, instead of one winner, we would have two.

I really liked Holly Rose's memoir "Eighth graders think I'm funny".  In case you've never spent time around eighth graders, you should know that this says a lot about a person.  Unfortunately, this memoir is not so much six words long as it is five.  (Fret not, public, Holly teaches social studies, not math.)  I must disqualify six-word memoirs that do not involve six words.

Making it even easier to choose, as our winner for Person Lori Knows in Real Life, Sharon.  I loved so many of Sharon's entries that it was hard to choose one, but in the end I went with "Who cared about the prom, anyway?"  Those six words tell us a lot, I think.

And now, on to the people I don't know.  You made it terribly difficult to choose, Invisible Internet People.    Not only are you huge grammar geeks, it turns out, but you can also turn a phrase.  In the end though, there can only be one winner.  Or can there?  Because I was torn between two and then you, Internet, started voicing your opinion too.

So instead of two winners, we will have three.  Because it's my contest and I said so.

First, we have Andrew with "Got divorced. Became emotional wrecking ball."  Because I think that's some pretty powerful imagery.

And second, we have Jennifer (winner and fan favorite) with "Made my bed; lying in it."  Yep, that about sums it up.

So congratulations to Sharon, Andrew, and Jennifer!  And thanks to everyone else for playing! 

Oh, and you can enter your memoirs at SMITH Magazine for possible inclusion in their next book.  Which is only slightly more prestigious than winning an award here at Superfantastic and may be read by a few (hundred thousand) more people.  Good luck!

On Valentines Day and Clowns. You've all stopped reading already, haven't you?

I'm not sure what to write this year.  Seriously.  I always write about Valentines Day.  Something crabby.  Borderline bitter, even.

But this year I have a date.  This year on Valentines Day, instead of receiving a reminder that I am perpetually alone, I am getting a present.  A present, people.

It's a strange new reality and I am understandably, I think, somewhat confused.

Because as much as this cannot be a bitter single girl Valentine post, nor can it be any kind of heartsy flowery Valentine schmaltz-fest.  I'm still me and I don't do cutesy.

So I decided, instead of writing all that much, that I'd just offer you this video.  It's Ingrid Michaelson in her video for The Way I Am.  The scenario maybe slightly different from what you personally have experienced, but it perfectly depicts a feeling that I'm sure we've all felt or maybe continue to feel.  And that part at the end is what we're all looking for, isn't it?

May we all find those people who see us for what we are when everyone else would dismiss us for what we aren't.

That, friends, is as schmaltzy as I get.  Happy Valentines Day or Thank God I'm Not in a Bad Relationship Day or Thursday, as you like it.

And finally, thanks to Sharon for reminding me that no matter how you feel about Valentines Day, V-Day is something we should all be able to get behind.  Why not take this opportunity to go there and see if you can't do something to help?

*There's still time to enter the CONTEST for your chance to WIN the first-ever Superfantastic CONTEST with a PRIZE.  (Provided you're reading this before Saturday.)  Go enter now!

It's Official

I heard on the radio this morning that we have officially broken the record for most snow accumulation in a single winter.  76.1 inches and counting.  God only knows how much we'll have by the time it stops.  We have a couple of months left and so far, no sign of a slowdown.

At least I feel somewhat vindicated in all of my complaining.  I am not just whining about winter.  I am whining about the MOTHER OF ALL WINTERS.  So there.

The eighty pounds of cat litter in the back of my car does seem to be helping with the fishtailing problems I was having.  Seeing as how I have no cat, I'll be able to offer Madison-area residents an excellent deal on litter come spring.  Let's say...May?  Hopefully?

*Don't forget, you have until the end of the day Friday to enter the CONTEST in the post below this one.  Keep those memoirs coming!

The Joy of Six

Literary legend has it that Earnest Hemingway was once challenged to write an entire story in six words.  He came back with "For sale: baby shoes, never worn."  According to the legend, he said it was his best work.

Based on that, the folks at SMITH Magazine invited readers to submit six-word memoirs.  The result is a fascinating book called Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous & Obscure.

Alan told me about it last week and suggested that it could make an interesting post.  I thought it would be a fun challenge since in general, I can't even order coffee in less than six words.  I thought I'd give it a whirl and then ask you to leave us your own six-word memoirs in the comments.

But then I thought, even better than that, I could make it a CONTEST.  With a PRIZE!  Pretty exciting, right?

So how it will work, I think, is this: you have until the end of the day on Friday (Feb. 15) to leave us your six word memoir in the comments.  Enter as many as you want.  They need to be original - no giving us six words straight from a quote or song, no matter how well they sum up your life.  And if you give me a fake email address, then you can't win.

The winner will be chosen by me (Superfantastic is no democracy - more of a benevolent dictatorship) and I'll post about it on Monday.  Unless I haven't decided who the winner is yet and then I'll post it later.  And then the winner will receive his or her fabulous prize in the mail at some point after that when I get around to going to the post office.

You can get some ideas at sixwordmemoirs.com.  To further assist you, I wrote a whole bunch of my own six-word memoirs and then deleted all but this one:

Took road less traveled.  Skinned knees.

If I come up with anything else I like, I'll post it in the comments.  But you can't think about that now.  You've got to start writing your own six-word memoirs to post!  So you can win a FABULOUS PRIZE!  Get to work!

In layman's terms: "a crapload"

The official count is 13.3 inches of snow from Tuesday afternoon through Wednesday evening.  That's the second most that the city has recorded, after 17 inches in 1990. 

I still came in to work yesterday, as I am a dedicated employee.  Plus, as a temp, no work equals no pay.  There is no way in hell I would have left the house if it had meant driving.  I do not understand why so many people thought it was a good idea.  I got to work and home courtesy of Madison Metro Transit and two bus drivers who were very nice, despite the stressful conditions.  (Take that, mean bus driver!  It was not even snowing AT ALL when you were mean to me!) 

Even the bus turned out to be a dicey proposition by 3:00 yesterday afternoon when I left work.  Buses were stuck all over the city.  My bus driver was the smart one, at times dropping people off a block or more from their stop in order to find a good place where he wouldn't get stuck.  I got dropped off a few blocks from my stop and then waded home through, at times, thigh-deep snow.  Which, in case you weren't aware, is a pretty good work out.  As will, I assume, be shoveling my car out tonight.

When I got to work, I found my supervisor becoming increasingly shocked about people not coming to work.  "It's not that bad out," she kept saying.  Then she left the earliest out of all of us and said this morning that she wouldn't have made it home if she hadn't been driving a 4-wheel drive truck.

That's the opposite of what normally happens around here.  Anytime there's serious weather (you know, pretty much every day for over two months now) people come in with increasingly scary reports of what it's like outside.  Then they go back to their cubicles and stay until their workday is over.

At first, the dire reports used to really freak me out and I even left early a few times as a result.  Only to find that it was pretty much like it always is these days: snowing, yet with no signs of the impending apocalypse, as I had been led to believe.

For example, here's a typical progression, this one from when we got some freezing rain last week:

"It's pretty slick out there.  Margaret did a 360 spin just trying to get out of the parking lot."

"Jim ran into the post office for 15 minutes and his car iced up again by the time he came out."

"There's no traction at all on the roads.  People are sliding down hills backward."

"Phil froze right to the pavement trying to walk to his car.  Then he got smashed by a runaway semi."*   

"Buildings are sliding right off their foundations and into on-coming traffic.  The Monona Terrace fell into the lake and caused a tidal wave that could have wiped out the entire city, had it not frozen in mid-air!"

"DOOM!  ICY FREEZING DOOM!  SAVE YOURSELVES!!!"

And so on.

We're all set for the moment though with sunny skies, newly plowed roads, and no more snow!  Until we get some flurries later today.  And snow showers tomorrow.  But then it's going to be beautiful except for the subzero temperatures over the weekend.  Followed by more snow every damn day until the end of time.  According to the Weather Channel.  As interpreted by me.

* (Not to worry, I made that up!  Phil is fine!)**

**(I made that up too - there is no Phil!  What you people won't fall for!)

New Toy*

Twitter.  Which isn't really new at all, is it?

I signed up recently just to follow people.  I was not going to participate.  Because I have enough trouble coming up with stuff to post on one site.  If I start using what ideas I do have somewhere else, things will get even more desperate over here.

But then I started thinking about all of those funny thoughts I have that never turn into posts because there's just not enough there.  And God forbid I should ever think or hear anything remotely amusing and not immediately share it with the Internet.

So if you want to follow me, you can go here.

I can't make any promises about how long I'll stick with it, but I wasn't sure about blogging either, and yet here we all are two and a half years later.  Which means that I've had the same website for over twice as long as I've had any address since high school.  Interesting.

*I was going to call this post Something Shiny! but then I realized that I already used that title quite a long time ago.  Which means that I forgot that I had previously used a phrase that is used to convey that a person is distractible and absent-minded.  Imagine that.

Miss Congeniality

I was in the colorguard for seven years in high school and college.  Colorguard is one of the cattiest environments you can imagine.  Don't get me wrong, I met some great people that way and made some good friends.  But the thing about colorguards is, in my experience, there is always one girl who is singled out each year to be universally despised.  And if you don't know who it is, then it's you.

I always knew who it was.  Sometimes she had it coming and sometimes I didn't understand how she got picked, but always I was just glad it wasn't me.  Not that I was popular or anything, but the people who I cared about hanging around with always liked me and no one really disliked me as far as I knew. 

That was really important to me, not being disliked.  It still is.  I honestly don't know why I care so much.

A woman at my temp job today was giving off some serious dislike vibes as she explained to me, first thing in the morning, what I had done wrong and why it was so very bad.  And it really bothered me.  Not the part about me having screwed up, because given my roughly one hour of training in this area, obviously I was going to make some mistakes.  It was the feeling that she didn't like me. 

This despite having been told by my predecessor to ask one of this woman's colleagues for any help I needed because "she's the nice one".  Which pretty clearly communicated her opinion on the other two.  So a not nice person doesn't like me.  I don't particularly care for people who snippily correct me early in the morning.  We should be even.

It's just, I've never been particularly polarizing. 

Of course I am not saying here that there aren't people with strong feelings about me.  But in general, people don't love me or hate me.  They like me ok or they don't have much of an opinion on me.  And given the choice between that and being popular with most people yet reviled by a few, I think I'd still stick with just being tolerated.  Why is that?

And is this why I try so hard to blend in a lot of the time?  Because I'd rather have people just not think about me than take the chance that they would think something negative?

If you were expecting me to draw some conclusions here, I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed.  It's just something I've been wondering about.  I wish other people's opinions didn't matter so much to me, but they do.  I don't know if there's any getting past that or if it's an innate personality flaw and I'm doomed to be like this forever.

Some of you don't seem to care if people like you.  How do you do that?  No really, how?  Because if I could even get to the point where it didn't matter if mean people didn't like me, that would at least be something.  Help a blogger out.  Unless you don't want to, and then that's ok too.  (Please like me.)