10 o'clock and I'm in bed

Hate the player, not the game, y'all. I can't help if my life's a party.

all day

I don't know, beer and tiramisu for dinner. I've adopted a strategy of eating all my parents' leftovers for various meals. It's a pretty efficient, cost-effective strategy, but it means I can't be picky about what constitutes the three daily meals. As a notorious breakfast-lover, I've never been too picky about this. Unfortunately, none of the meals that come my way are breakfast. I got some instant oatmeal the other day, but that's not really what I'm talking about. But, as people who have probably actually had to suffer a little have noted, out of adversary comes innovation, which allows me the creativity to toss everything my parents have eaten in the last week into a pot and eat it for three meals a day. I've discovered that chili and spaghetti are pretty much the same thing, plus or minus a beer sauce. I've eaten some version of this meal for every meal except lunch for the past week. I've dipped chips, pita, vegetables, and cheddar bunny crackers in it. I'm not sick of it AT ALL. I'm just glad I can spend my money on important things, like clothes and beer.

Speaking of clothes, I just bought a new blazer, because I'm always looking for new ways to indulge my inner '80's self, and I decided it was time for an upgrade of the little boys' Ralph Lauren one I had in high school. I also bought a Christmas dress, because for some reason, having a new dress for Christmas is a big deal in my family. I've started reading customer reviews on Anthropologie because I've become paranoid about fit as an adult, and all I've learned from doing this is that all women buy things WAY TOO SMALL, and as a result, the provide inadequate advice to other women because they HAVE NO CLUE about how anything is supposed to fit them. I've also learned that the obesity epidemic is clearly made up by the government, because 95% of all women are a size 0, and if they have to size up to a 4, it's because the item is ill-fitting, not because they're huge whales who have been under-sizing themselves their whole lives. I spent weeks obsessing about the sizes of both the dress and the blazer because the customer reviews and blogs could not express enough how small they both ran. After careful consideration of just about everything I will undergo in both of these items, I ordered my regular size. Obviously there is no fit issue, other than the fact that the dress is a little big in the bottom. So, um, women of America, I think you all need to exhale and try a size up. If you aren't willing to do that, keep your body issues to yourself and stop writing damning online reviews. KTHANX.

As a result of this experience, I have been spending a lot of time wondering what these women's jobs are. They seemingly try on clothes and take pictures of themselves in clothes all day long, and when they are not doing this, they are buying more clothes. I mean no disrespect, I'm just curious. Seriously, no hate, I just want to know what they do all day so I can do it too. Some of my most pronounced talents are putting on clothes, having a lot of clothes, and buying new clothes. I might as well get paid for my skillz, no?

i even forgive you for that weezer thing

(image courtesy of the insider.com)


I need Lil' Wayne to know that I'm not going to let him go to prison. I plan to fight for him on the battlefield of love, just like he says he would do for me. Illegal gun possession, psh. That pretty much goes against everything I believe in, but damn, I love Lil' Wayne more than I love my ideals.

I also wouldn't mind if we were both clear on the fact that I forgive him for the monstrosity of "Can't Stop Partying," with Weezer, and I'm not going to hold it against him because of the line, "gotta stop mixing alcohol with pharmaceuticals," because after choosing to collaborate with Weezer after 1999, I'm tending to agree.

As a way to amass quarters for the laundry machines in my basement, I used a vending machine for the first time since I spent summers hanging out a the community pool, where the vending machine dispensed snacks that. at the time, didn't represent empty calories, but only deliciousness. But now, I need some way to take one for the team my smelly heap of a laundry basket and I represent, and literally the only way that has presented itself is using dollar bills to purchase snacks archaically priced in multiples of 25. This way, I can get something instead of just exchanging money for quarters, and I can do it without going somewhere I would never go anyway, like a bank. It also gives me the opportunity to eat a Twix bar for the first time since 1998, which was the last time my mom allowed my grandmother to buy things that made us fat for my brother and me. Exciting day at the office, today is.

so do you come here all the time?

Juuuust walked past this dude I know, sitting inside a bar, probably having a nice time, while I was carrying a 12-pack of extra-soft toilet paper on my way home from Walgreens. At the time of the incident, I was carrying the toilet paper over my head, washer woman-style, because it was so large that it was awkward to hold. The toilet paper was probably the only part of me that was directly visible from the window. I looked like an eight-year-old with diarrhea. The only other item I saw fit to purchase at Walgreen's was a sink-scrubbing sponge, making me look like someone in great need of cleaning up. Or maybe just particularly concerned about cleanliness, especially wiping? I was traumatized even before the incident, because the fifty-five year old man in front of me at Walgreen's on Brady Street at 8:45 p.m. was purchasing T-Gel shampoo and KY Jelly. AHHHH THAT SHOULD BE MAIL ORDER ONLY. I have no desire to know what you're getting up to after you scrub your dandruff out, old man.

Today I had a beer to celebrate being invited to a party. This could be a pathetic commentary on my social life, and the fact that being invited to a party is an occasion so momentous and rare that it warrants a celebration. But instead, it is a commentary on the fact that I need a celebratory excuse to have a beer. And I was also kinda worried that the beer was going bad.

I'm pretty sure the asparagus is, at least. And probably all the other vegetables, too. You win some, you lose some. I lost an entire salad by refusing to make anything other than frozen pizzas after the exhaustion of the previous taco salad/quesadilla over-exertion earlier this week.

It's doubtfully ethical to blog about work from work, but my boss just left the office after instructing me to finish assembling a zillion sheets of questionably organized, uncatagorized, misnamed, similar looking rubrics into binders, and then evaluate and fill out a sample application evaluation according to those 8,000 rubrics in preparation for our training session tomorrow. Simple tasks like this expose all of my childhood OCD tendencies, usually abandoned in favor of simplicity, practicality, efficiency, and fun, and as a result they take about five hours. And when I am done, I have a sense of pride that completely outweighs any kind of reinforcement or appreciation I will receive for the output. It's sort of a letdown. So I'm sitting in silence after making a pot of coffee JUST FOR MYSELF (!) and admiring the assembled binders. I have outrageous OCD repression.

we all have dreams

Day 29
You are looking at the successful completee of nearly 10 hours of database website informational training. And you thought that you learned a lot in college! Sometimes, I wonder why I even bothered to learn how to use the internet before this job, because I was clearly using it so inadequately. I never realized that every day, I was performing a small miracle as I used multiple-tab browsing while researching term papers and shopping online simultaneously. I’m kind of like the Albert Schweitzer of the internet.

The main thing I REALLY DON’T GET about online trainings is that in real life, it’s probably hard to use all the programs I’m learning to use, but the trainings never cover what to do when the search function stops working, but they are quite comprehensive on the myriad ways to search for someone named “Mary.” They don’t tell you what will happen after the website shuts down, but they make damn well sure that you know of about 80 different ways to find the “Home” page.

In other news, I’ve eaten a jar of salsa in two days, and I’m pretty sure my sink is clogged, but I’m approaching that in stages by using my bathroom sink to wash dishes. Each of these is a clear indication that the old me is not disappearing completely. I also had a dream about beer, kind of in the way that I used to dream about summer when I was in high school.

This evening, I prepared a Weight Watchers taco salad with black beans, vegetables, salsa, seasonings, and avocado, which I can’t classify on my own, but I do know that it is a serious food that people only use with purpose. This entire venture, which included following a simple recipe, quartering the recipe, chopping an array of vegetables, and opening two cans, took me about forty-five minutes. Now I’m eating the salsa with my fingers. Two steps forward, three steps back.

such a big deal

I just made a turkey burger. For myself. By myself. It wasn't hard! This is a turning point.