Wednesday, April 23, 2008

If this post is insufferable, I blame the meds.

It seems my body has decided to celebrate the much-anticipated onset of spring by infecting itself with the sort of fantastic virus that makes me want to curl up in bed with my stuffy, sniffly, achy-headed self rather than go outside to run through the tulips and make wishes on puppies or whatever the hell all those healthy people who can still breathe through their noses are doing out there tonight. It seems a bit suspicious to me that just when I start trying to eat healthy, my immune system revolts. "Where are my processed, refined carbs!?" my blood cells seem to say. "Why haven't we had chocolate in over a week!?" I've said before that my poor diet was apparently defying science and somehow magically helping to maintain the delicate balance that generally keeps me superhumanly impervious to cold and flu. It's like the crayon lodged in Homer's brain that kept him from being a genius, except that really it's not like that at all.

In any case, in my mind's foggy and self-pitying state, I can't possibly be expected to form logical transitions in a coherent and well-flowing post. You know what that means, right? Bullet points it is! Yay for lazy under-the-weather blogging! Away we go.

  • Around my birthday, I thought it was about time to revisit those New Year's resolutions of mine to see how I'm doing. I always find it hard to think of starting over and new-leaf-turning in the gray bleak of winter anyway (when there are no actual new leaves to turn). Spring seems the more logical time for shaking off the dust in my life and making changes, and since spring's when I mark another year since my birth, that feels like a good time to think about resolutions for the still large chunk of the year ahead. When I looked back at my resolutions this time, I realized I wasn't doing all that well... The vitamin one's going great (seriously? marking this off on my kitchen calendar was all I had to do to make it stick??), the "get fucking organized" one is in some slow but steady progress, and I finally (finally!) met Lara (along with NPW, Red, and once again, Noelle). But the budget? Haven't touched it. I am excellent at running out of money before pay day. I am not so excellent at figuring out just why. And finally, as for the more-sleep-on-weeknights goal? Well, one benefit of this cold is that I went to bed at 9:30 last night. I don't remember the last time I did that. It was remarkable! I told myself I would go to bed by 9:30, and I did exactly that! I have nine minutes to hit "Publish" and make that happen again this evening. We'll see how that goes tonight.

  • Speaking (again) of my cold (because, hello, no one else has ever suffered a cold before, so I must milk as much sympathy as possible for the cross obviously I alone have to bear), I know exactly from which coworker I acquired this bug, and when she came to my desk to apologize for sharing, I accused her of licking my keyboard. The look of unparalleled disgust on her face was understandable, given that this particular woman is so prim and tidy that she probably lays toilet paper squares down in her own bathroom before she'll sit. Still, I thought it was funny, anyway. (But then, we've already established that my humor isn't for everyone, right?)

  • I didn't really intend for the first two bullets to be about my cold. Perhaps I didn't need the bullets of not-so-randomness after all.

  • I also didn't intend to be so linky-here, linky-there tonight. Are any of you really going to click through and read the cross-referenced material? It's OK if you don't. I just like to be thorough and precise.

  • On my way home from work tonight, I saw a group of twenty-somethings teaching themselves to tightrope-walk across a red rope rigged up between two trees in a park. This park is, by the way, the same forest of whimsy near my house where I saw the motley crew of mismatched half-Renaissance men having a photo shoot last year. (And there I go with the links again. Whoopsie.) This begs a multitude of questions (or, three, at least, anyway). Does a troupe of circus and festival performers live nearby? Do they actually live next door? And if so, do I want to be invited to their parties, or not so much? Or, alternately, are they a group of mythical nymphs or fairies who actually live in those woods and come out only... er, only in broad daylight, it seems? I do not know, but I can't wait to see who I drive past in that park next time.

  • Since I'm sure at least two of you are curious, I did email the Hotlist tag guy, the English professor. For those of you who were unclear, by the way, a Hotlist is not the same as a wink, although both can be equally maddening in their passive, er... what's the opposite of passive-aggressive? Passive-friendly? Just plain passive? Moving on. Both are equally maddening, as both imply that the guy viewing my profile is expecting me to step up, and that is not how I roll. OK, it is sometimes how I roll, but in my many years of dating trials and failures, it is rarely the route to success. In any case, I emailed him. The deciding factor was his answer to the "If I was given a million dollars" question (or rather, non-question, as it's stated in that format exactly--a question mark-less sentence fragment). His answer to the non-question was, and I quote, "That should be 'If I *were* given a million dollars,' by the way. Hooray for the subjunctive!" Clearly that is a man after my own heart. My profile may as well say "Word nerd seeks same," it seems.

  • The Neighborhood Giant? Apparently not a man after my own heart, as it's now eight days post-date and still no word from him. The man baffles me. BAFFLES. And that's hard for anyone to accomplish at this point. Moving on.

  • Did you know that if you peel a banana from the bottom rather than the top, those little stringy bits don't stick? No? You didn't know that? That's because it's not true. I have tried this at least five times since I saw this supposedly handy tip in an email my mother forwarded, and it has yet to work even once. This should not surprise me, given the reliability (or rather, lack thereof) of the other information she's forwarded over the years. Microsoft is not giving away money, mother. Barack Obama is not a closet Muslim. Now I just need to find the Snopes.com page to dispel this banana myth.
And that's about enough Wednesday randomness*, I think. It's off to bed (20 minutes late, but still better than usual) for me.


* TM Funky Carter

16 comments:

Aaron said...

Thanks for the trademark. I appreciate you looking out for my (imagined) copyrights. ;)

I hate, hate, hate forwarded email crap. Most people know not to send it to me now, but if they forget, I am quick with a link to Snopes (or wherever) and a note to the person to grow up and use his or her brain.

Make wishes on puppies. Hah! Feel better!

steve said...

Probably cruel of me to say this, but you're pretty damn funny when you're sick, Ms. Stef.

Get well soon.

Anonymous said...

I'm sorry you're feeling lousy. Be that as it may, this was one hilarious post.

Michelle | Bleeding Espresso said...

Hope you're feeling better soon.

And thanks for the tip about the Great Banana Hoax. I could've wasted hours on that one.

3carnations said...

You may be one of the few people in the dating pool that cheer for someone correcting their sentence structure. This may be your guy. :)

3carnations said...

...and now that I reread that, I believe what I MEANT to say was "one of the few people in the dating pool who cheers...".

Irony indeed.

Stefanie said...

Aaron--It's pretty much just my mom who sends that crap still. I thought after the first three times I replied with Snopes.com links she'd stop, but apparently not.

Steve and Abbersnail--Well thanks. Maybe I should try that combination of cold medicine and warm brandy in lemon ginger echinacea juice more often.

Sognatrice--I'm here to help.

3Cs--I need to clarify that he was not correcting MY sentence structure! The line was a fill-in-the-blank question provided on the profile form we all fill out. He was correcting the form-writer, not me! :-)

lizgwiz said...

You are remarkably coherent for a sick person.

I would definitely want to party with the circus people. Sometimes, mentally picturing my friends...I think I do. ;)

Courtney said...

Feel better soon! And good luck with that English professor. Gotta love a man who uses correct grammar. I bet Neighborhood Giant wouldn't have caught that mistake.

Mickey said...

Those people in the park were slack-lining. It does draw the odd looks from passersby.

But the bottom of the banana doesn't have the handle! How could that work! (Still, I'm dying to give it a try.)

Anonymous said...

I am really pissed at the Neighborhood Giant. Bastard. But I hope you feel better soon. Also, you're funny.

Noelle said...

I hope you feel better, although I'm pretty impressed that you cobbled together all those links and sentences under your condition. When I'm not feeling well, I can't be bothered.

Speaking of, I click on the links sometimes. It depends on if I have time, and I almost never click on a link that doesn't have some description of where I'm going. That's a rule I keep for most blogs.

Jess said...

Maybe I'm in the minority, but I like bullet posts. Also, if I were you, I would stay away from the circus parties.

Get better soon!

L Sass said...

I like bullet posts, too. Sometimes when I'm sitting at work reading blogs, it's less daunting to delve into a bulleted post than an enormous paragraph.

Stefanie said...

Liz--You know, I'll try almost anything once. Party with circus people? Why not?

Courtney--Actually, the Neighborhood Giant is an editor. Not that you'd know it from his refusal to abide by capitalization standards in emails...

Mickey--OK, you know I immediately Googled slack-lining right after that. Man, sometimes I really do learn something new every day. Thanks.

Lara--I'm annoyed and confused, but not pissed. And thank you. :-)

Noelle--I'm ridiculous that way. When I know there's a relevant post, I have to find it. On my own blog, that is. Often I can't be bothered to dig through other people's archives for the right post. That's understandable, right?

Jess and L Sass--I think we all sort of like them. We're all a little A.D.D. sometimes, particularly when our feedreader is stacked. Glad I could please. :-)

shelleycoughlin said...

Boo to the Neighborhood Giant. BOO. But yay for our Blogger Meet-up! I'm keeping my fingers crossed that English Professor works out a bit better.