Well, since all I seem to be doing lately is going to office parties, we’ll make “parties” this week’s theme.
Rubbermaids
Holly munched on crudités as she watched the hostess unpack her wares. She stared at what she was seeing, unbelieving. All different lengths, widths, but only two colors. The hostess handed her one of a medium size and girth. She choked on a carrot.
“I thought this was a tupperware party!”
come one… guess! That’s right, we are having another party! It’s been a week, after all. This one is cool. It’s a 10 year anniversary party for someone and it’s off site. It’s a wine tasting party and, in the end, we each get to take a bottle of wine home with us. I know … I know… I live in some kind of dream world, but it’s true! Evildeb left early to work from home, so she is missing it. Now she is angry with me because I will not give her my bottle of wine. I have a party to go to on Saturday, and taking a bottle of wine with you is a very grown up thing to do, I’ve heard. So I’m keeping my booze. You go home early to snooze, you lose.
I can’t wait to sip wine and spit it out at someone. Spitting is fun!
1. I’m getting the t-shirt. Perhaps today, Tessa wants one as well. Consider it done, kids.
2. For Jack:
a. they rocked! we had a great time, more about that later. I only paid $20, so I definitely got my moneys worth.
b. see above comment about shirt.
c. I do not believe the widgets slow things down, they are pretty small aps. I was having a performance issue one day and tried turning them off… didn’t make any difference.
3. Parents of sticky and loud children: The kids were practically the highlight of the show, sticky or not. More on that later.
4. Christine and Lloyd, if it didn’t annoy Deb, it wouldn’t be any fun! By the way, the panda? “da panda is sweeping! hims paws are under hims little fuzzy head.”
5. Josh, get anything you want tattooed on your inner lip, you beautiful freak. [vegan? that’s just weird. vegans are weird] Speaking of which, you are freaking out the mom again, time for me to reassure her that you are ok, albeit strange. Also, not just your clothes, but any bedding you have will need to be washed. And all of your clothes. Everything.
I enjoy searching out new widgets for Dashboard in OS X 10.4: Tiger. I have a tournament poker one, from the maker of iPoker. Currently, as a Libra, my day brims with romantic potential, this year my birthday falls on a wednesday, the closest free wi-fi is 1.0 miles away at the Thai Kitchen on Queen Anne, it’s supposed to be 74 and sunny tomorrow, and La Banane is french for The Banana. But my favorite new widget is one that let’s me look on different web cams. Currently it is set for the San Deigo Zoo Panda Cam. I periodically go into Dashboard and check up on the pandas. They sleep a lot. For some reason, I feel this need to constantly update Evildeb on the status of the pandas. And, to do it in the voice of a toddler. I don’t know how this started. Maybe I was just overwhelmed, at first, by panda cuteness. We’ll be sitting in a meeting, waiting for it to start and I’ll get Deb’s attention, she’ll think I am going to say something intelligent. Or at least funny. And instead I say “Deb… the panda… hims slweeping on hims back and you can see hims tummy! It’s so flwuffy! widdle panda!” This seems to annoy her, so now I can’t stop. Cute widdle panda! I imagine she wishes I would switch to the Vancouver Aquarium Beluga Cam. I do check on the whales periodically.
Today, Louise and I went to Fred Meyer, because my headphones are seriously broken. One of my phones just snapped off. It’s dangling by the wires. They were dying anyway. Now I officially need new ones. So we were wondering around the electronics section, and we weren’t being quiet at all. It’s not like we were being sneaky. Louise said something funny, and I laughed out loud. I scared the clerk over in the next aisle. He jumped. My laugh made him flinch. It’s not a bad laugh, it’s just an enthusiastic laugh. As in common in the maternal line of my family. I’m easily amused and I like to laugh, it’s fun. And, apparently, it’s good for you as well. But the fact that he jumped just made me laugh harder. I couldn’t wait to come back to work and tell everyone that the power of my amusement startled the Fred Meyer clerk. Serves him right, the selection of headphones was sad indeed.
Tomorrow I should have stories involving Louise’s horror at finding herself surrounded by children at the Zoo concert tonight. She sees children and the first word that pops into her mind is “sticky.”
Tomorrow is Louise’s birthday. But today she brought cupcakes to work for everyone. I learned two British things today. Apparently, when it’s your birthday, it’s tradition that you bring the cake for everyone. So Louise ordered dozens of lovely cupcakes from Cupcake Royale. When we went to pick them up today, she got an extra dozen “babycakes” so as not to run out of cupcake goodness. We, of course, had to sample the babycakes as soon as we got back to the car. I sampled chocolate with chocolate frosting. Awesomely delicious. You could taste the cocoa used in the frosting. Not cheap crisco frosting, I’ll tell you what. They had a t-shirt there that said “legalize frostitution” and I wanted it bad. But I have, like, 973 t-shirts already. But it was a pink ringer T! Oh how I want that shirt. I’m pretty sure the happiness derived from that shirt would change my entire life. Right?
The second thing I learned is that, in Britain, they call cupcakes “fairy cakes.” And x-mas lights are called “fairy lights.” I guess that the UK is the land of the fairies. Later, during the Official Eating of the Fairy Cakes, I had a lemon drop cake. Second to chocolate things, I like lemon flavored things best. Yummmm.
Tomorrow, Tessa, Louise, Louise’s BF and I are going to see the Violent Femmes play an outdoor concert at the zoo. Where we plan to eat thai food and sit on blankets and listen to the monkeys. Surprisingly, it’s not even expected to rain. It should be quite pleasant, in the mid 70’s. I’ll let you know.
Since I post my yahoo and one of my AIM ID’s on my blog, I sometimes get chats from people I do not know. And they are mostly really great, very nice people giving me compliments on my blog and talking blog type things with me. Last week, I had a couple of, what could only be, teenage boys, pestering me with some of the lamest sexy chat I’ve ever received. This went on for several minutes, because I start out too polite, and it take me a while to move from “hey now.. I am not interested in talking with you in this manner” to just blocking them. These kids had 2 or 3 different ID’s, which I eventually blocked. And then I shared their prowess with my friends, because it was so funny. I don’t feel bad about this, because I asked them nicely to leave me alone and they would not. Their vernacular now peppers all chats between Evildeb and I. They have a lot of work to do, if they really want women to talk dirty with them. [to post some of the gems here, would take up entirely too much space.]
But Deb? She is better than me in so many ways. Today, she received a chat, out of the blue, from a complete stranger.
Complete stranger: Hello Deb
Complete stranger: How’z it going?
Complete stranger: you wouldn’t be interested in sharing some secret intimate encounters with a young married guy, would you?
Evildeb: no
Complete stranger: I figured that out.
Complete stranger: Thanks a lot for replying at least
Evildeb: no problem
to me –
Evildeb:it must be my online profile where I say I’m very interested in sharing some secret intimate encounters with a young married guy,
Evildeb: and then a little bit further down I change my mind
Evildeb: I think that’s how he figured it out
Jodi: i think so.
Jodi: or maybe it was the 60 seconds it took you to reply.
I laughed about this exchange for several minutes. Sigh, she’s so tuff!
From blog of a bookslut, I got this fabulous link to somethingawful.com. Evildeb can hear me laugh, when I do, and is usually curious as to why.
Jodi: I’m reading something on “something awful”
Jodi: and it’s making me laugh.
Evildeb: it does that sometimes
Jodi: it’s a cliff notes interpretation of an r. kelly song called “locked in the closet”
Jodi: glossary:
Jodi: Y’all ass is crazy: Your entire ass is crazy.
Jodi: I’ma: I am going to
Evildeb:I want to tell someone that there entire ass is crazy
Jodi: me too
Evildeb: it should be easy enough to find someone around here that would fit the bill
Evildeb: Whiskey tango frank, my brother. Your entire ass is crazy~!
Evildeb: there isn’t one inch of your ass that is not crazy. you are insane in the ass
Evildeb: no
Evildeb: that doesn’t work
Evildeb: the whole of your ass has lost it’s marbles.
Jodi: your ass has lost touch with reality, my brother
Evildeb: yeah
Evildeb: sit down my brother, you ass has totally lost touch with reality
Jodi: Just sit your ass down on some reality.
So, a couple of weeks ago, we featured Phil Collin’s heartbreaking story of love and loss and crap like that. I believe I mentioned that that song never really did it for me, and, back then, I would have turned to Depeche Mode, if my heart was breaking. Back in the mid 80’s, this song was the song of romantic love. At least if you were a teenager. I’m pretty sure that I remember transcribing the lyrics into a notebook, so I could further absorb the passionate longing. My favorite part, comes at the end:
“Though things like this
Make me sick
In a case like this
I’ll get away with it”
So put your best moony face on and enjoy.
Somebody – Depeche Mode
“For the Masses,” a Depeche Mode tribute album was released in 1998. But I had totally forgotten about that. I just happened to trip over Veruca Salt covering “Somebody” while browsing around. It makes sense to me that a woman should sing this song, since it meant so much to the girls back in the day. And there is cello! You know how I love the cello*.
Somebody – Veruca Salt
*a lot, in case you don’t know.
Some of you are receiving a failure error when you try to comment. Some of you are not. I just wanted to let you know, that I will look into this today. I’m not getting the error, so it’s wonky.
I’m still drawing a blank on the 50 word fiction, but the day is young. Friday is not over. Maybe it’s the theme. If the theme is causing you, too, to draw a blank, chuck it… write what you want, consider it a fill in the blank theme.
Meanwhile, until I fix things, here is a picture of me eating an ice cream sammich. Since I seem to be at a loss for words.
You know, I have absolutely no idea what to write. I just finished reading “The Historian” by Elizabeth Kostova, after several days of reading. My brain is so full of someone else’s prose right now… I’m a blank. And so there is your theme. Something to do with blankness. Blank in it’s roll as a noun or verb, it does not matter. You know the rules are lose. Except the word count!!
As for me, I’m going to have to sleep on it. I’ll have something in the morning. For now, I got nothing. Zip. Zilch. Nada. Blankness.
EDITED TO ADD:
Princess Naomi’s Unmentionables
She couldn’t believe the damage. Chairs overturned, broken glass, books dumped everywhere, clothes hanging from the ceiling fan, it would take days to clean everything up. She made way to her dresser and opened the top drawer. Sure enough, they were gone, all her panties were gone. Dirty thieving unicorns.
