I know this is a strange excuse for a post, but gimme a break; it's Saturday

Male readers, you'll have to excuse me for a minute. I have a question for the women in the house. Ladies, tell me something. Do you actually wash your makeup brushes regularly, or are you of the school of thought that the brushes you use on your face are contaminated only by your own face and hence, any residue gunked up on those bristles can live in perfect harmony with your skin?


I was in that third camp myself up until about a year and a half ago, when I joined the mineral foundation cult and bought the Bare Escentuals starter pack. And it occurred to me only a couple of weeks ago, when I stopped to wonder why my forehead was suddenly breaking out for no good reason, that perhaps there actually was a good reason. Perhaps the brushes I swipe onto my face every single day have, in the year and a half I've been using them, become a science experiment of sorts.

It was probably a paranoid thought as usual, but it grossed me out anyway. So the last time I was at Ulta, I picked up some brush cleaner, and this afternoon I finally got around to using it. Because I am a great big dorky rule-follower, I read the instructions. Actually, scratch that. Maybe I don't read instructions because I am ridiculous or over-cautious; maybe I read them because, as a technical writer, it's a professional courtesy. Yeah. Let's go with that. Of course, as a technical writer, I'm in the best position to critique and be irrationally annoyed by instructions that make little to no sense. To wit...

DIRECTIONS: Apply a dime-sized amount of shampoo directly onto dampened brush and massage with fingers under running water...

NOTE: Always make sure brushes are completely dry prior to application.

It's not just me, right? You guys see a problem here as well? Maybe I should look up "dampened" in the dictionary. Perhaps our pals at M Dubs have changed the meaning of "dampened" to something that would correlate with "completely dry."

Obviously I like to tackle the big issues here at Stefanie Says. Next up: "Lather, rinse, repeat. It's not an endless loop!"

NaBlo 2008: Eight days and counting. We'll get through this together; I swear.

I hear those Latins also made a mean martini

So am I the last person to hear about Zabasearch, or is this nifty little search tool new to you, too? A friend of mine introduced me to that site last weekend, and I quickly decided it's a fine and valuable supplement to Google for routine, recreational sleuthing. Want the last recorded address for any person you've ever known? Want a birth year along with that info as well? Zabasearch likely has it for you. Zabasearch even knows where I could stalk the "bird" half of The Bird and the Bee when she wraps up the tour she's now on. Incidentally, if her "people" are reading this, please know I'm just kidding. I promise I am not the stalking type. Had I not been listening to an archived in-studio performance on MPR's web site while I was Zabasearching (in preparation for the show I'm attending this week), it never even would have occurred to me to check that name. Since I did find her, however, I have to wonder how many other famous and semi-famous names might be on public record. Not that I tried to find any. Of course not. I have better things to do with my time. (Riiiiight. Moving on.)

I actually think it's much more fun to web-stalk non-famous people whom I know than famous people whom I don't, so naturally, I also asked Zaba about some long-lost names from my past, including my old friend Craig, on whom I had a recurring crush back in college. I've Googled Craig periodically over the years, just out of curiosity, wondering where he ended up, and I've never found any particularly informative results. Zabasearch knows where he is, though, and the Google link from that search actually led to a new, recent, relevant result: a wedding announcement from late last summer.

For some absurd reason, my heart actually sank a tiny bit when I read that announcement and saw the photo of my old friend with his smiling new bride. Did I think I was actually ever going to reconnect with him? Of course not. But there's something to be said for far-off silly fantasies tucked deep (or even not-so-deep) within your mind. They're harmless, if you ask me. Most of the time, anyway.

The last time I saw Craig was the weekend he graduated from college. I was in town visiting some friends (having graduated the previous year myself), and I ran into him on Water Street, the street-of-many-college-bars in my former college town. I hugged him, said "Happy Graduation," and asked what he was going to do next in life. "I'm gonna find you, and MARRY YOU!!" he slurred, with a dopey but charming smile on his face. Sigh. He was a drunken fool, but he was adorable. Unfortunately, that's not the sort of marriage proposal you can hold anyone to, so I just have to wish him and his little blond* wife well.

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* This has nothing to do with the rest of my post, but I have to ask it anyway. Am I the only one who apparently learned the word blond as blonde and still prefers to spell it that way? Dictionary.com and Merriam-Webster both indicate that blonde is an acceptable variant, but Firefox's red dotted lines disagree with me. But then, I am the girl who sometimes types her list parentheses backwards, so what the hell do I know, right? Still. Blond looks wrong to me. I much prefer the spelling with the "e."
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I don't think of Craig all that often, but it's funny the things that still always remind me of him. Someone utters the phrase "lactose intolerant," for instance, and I'll remember Craig trying to put a bad ass, powerful spin on a generally wussy-sounding affliction. "I will not TOLERATE lactose!" he once shouted with conviction, calling up the same spirit as political revolutionaries the world over.

And last week, when I was moving books from my tiny, old, inadequate particle board bookcases onto the larger, only slightly better quality ones I bought to replace them (as part of Operation Get Fucking Organized Already), I came across this, which was a gift from Craig on the occasion of my own college graduation (upon which I did not propose to him--either drunk or sober).



It looks like just an ordinary used book of Latin poetry--presumably a fine gift for a graduating English major. You have to check out the inscription inside, however, to see it was actually two, two gifts in one...



All right, so he couldn't remember how to spell my name, and I've known third graders with better penmanship. But let's look at page 115, as he requested, shall we?...



The dude made me my very own booksafe. And I have kept it, to this day.

Like I said, he was adorable. I only hope Blondy appreciates my almost-husband's fabulously dorky wit.

Five things I probably don't need to worry about (but why should that ever stop me?)

The other day, Mimi Smartypants wrote about her likely unfounded fear that she will one day end up in prison. It could happen, I suppose, even if one is not particularly planning to break any particular law. Didn't you read Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason? What do you mean, "No"? I promise you the book sequel was better than the movie one. Of course, neither actually lends much credence to the prison scare, I realize, as it is fiction, after all. Anyway, moving on. My point is I think we all have a set of mostly irrational and inexplicable fears tucked away somewhere in our pretty little heads... things that will likely never happen but that terrify us routinely anyway. Right? I thought so. Here are five of mine.

1. That I will have a stroke and lose the functioning of my [obviously always sharp and brilliant] brain.
   
   
2. That I will go blind (or, nearly as frightening to me--deaf).
   
   
3. That I will fall down the stairs to my basement and break my neck or crack my skull and no one will notice I am missing or break in to find me until the neighbors begin to complain about the stench of my rotting body. (You are welcome for that imagery--er, smellergy? So sorry about that, actually.)
   
   
4. That, when I'm parked next to a van in a parking lot (or when a van pulls up alongside me while I'm walking down the street), someone is going to open the door and pop out to grab me, take me away, and do horrible things to me somewhere. I don't recall being at all worried about abduction as a child, but now that I'm all grown up, apparently I think it's an entirely likely thing to happen.
   
   
5. That my house is haunted by the ghost of its prior owner.
   
   

I am curious what sorts of irrational fears the rest of you are carrying around with you, but I almost don't want you to tell me, actually. We all need to sleep tonight, after all. Share at your own risk (or, mine, rather!), I suppose.

Not-so-targeted demographic

I've been wondering... Do you think we all get the same ads in the banners and sidebars of the sites we all use, or are they maybe actually targeted in some way or form? I definitely hope it's the former, and not just because of the creepy Internet Big Brother implications of Sitemeter and Yahoo profiling me based on my surfing behavior and serving specific ads up in return, but also because I am simultaneously both offended and amused to imagine the sorts of reactions all the college boy bloggers likely had during that two-week period when Sitemeter really, really wanted us to know about the plus-sized lingerie at Lane Bryant. Ah, college boys. Surely almost universally a sensitive and inclusive bunch, if I remember correctly.

Anyway, I don't really want to talk about plus-sized lingerie (or any lingerie, for that matter). Know what else I don't want to do? See Breaking and Entering. I had never actually heard of that movie up until three days ago, possibly because MGM seems to have spent its entire marketing budget for the film on web ads for the DVD release. The esteemed Tomatometer gives Breaking and Entering a certifiably rotten 33% rating, but the constant barrage of sidebar ads assures me it is a well-crafted and compelling must-see drama. Really, who am I going to believe? A sidebar ad surely wouldn't lie.

Know what else banner and sidebar ads want me to do? Become a mystery shopper. But not just any mystery shopper... a sexy mystery shopper!



Personally I thought mystery shoppers were supposed to blend into a crowd, so as to be, you know, mysterious. I had no idea that ample cleavage and exposed midriffs were in fact the norm. Actually, what particularly confuses me about these ads is just to whom they're supposed to appeal. Will sexy, scantily clad women see these ads and think, "Oh, sweet! My pseudo-career options aren't limited to phone sex operator and phony mySpace profile writer! I can be a mystery shopper now, too!"? Are single men supposed to see them and think, "Huh. By virtue of the job description, I can't imagine mystery shoppers really have coworkers, but I'm sure if I sign up, I'll meet these chicks somewhere"? Really, I'm perplexed.

And it's not just mystery shoppers. Apparently sexy product testers are in high demand as well.



If you're a wholesome girl, I guess you can apply too, but your mystery shopping might be a tad less interesting or successful, as it will occur out in a wheat field somewhere. (The hills are alive, little lady. Now go buy a drill and report back.)



In other news (or rather, other portions of my online accounts that I can exploit in lieu of a proper and legitimate post), I would like to know why Yahoo's pool of spammers seems so convinced that I want to "mingle with other Latino singles." I suppose it's not such a stretch to suspect they might have monitored a bit of my browsing activity and figured out that I'm a single girl. But to assume that I am a "Sexy Single Latino"? I'm not sure from whence that idea came. I'm equally confused as to why they might guess I'm a Hot Black Mama (I can't wait to see the search engine hits I get from typing that out), but that one showed up only once that I recall. And frankly, it's not nearly as worrisome as the repeated messages urging me to meet other "Big Beautiful Singles" in my area. I may have put on a few extra pounds in the past year by virtue of my ever-slowing 30-something metabolism, but I'd like to think it's a stretch to put me in the "Big and Beautiful" category just yet.

Idle mind, devil's plaything. Isn't that how it goes?

I have never been in any sort of twelve-step program, but I'm well aware that the first step in addressing any potentially destructive (or just plain ridiculous) behavior is to admit you have a problem. When Maliavale wrote the other day about coming to terms with her teensy little anxiety issues, I laughed not because I thought her tendency towards mental gymnastics was insane but because I am possibly a little too familiar with the sorts of thought loops she described.

Case in point: remember this? How proud I was of myself for finally declaring a one-timezone house after years and years of a crazy bedroom clock game? I actually told that story on a date the other night. (Why? I can't recall. I'll readily admit that I share lots of questionable things on dates; are you really wondering at this point exactly why I am still single?) The date smiled politely and pretended to be amused, but I remembered how Malia relayed these sorts of exchanges and I beat him to the punch by saying, "Obviously I've put a lot of thought into this."

Still, I hold on to some clearly ridiculous idea that this sort of in-depth analysis of life's minutia is charming and endearing somehow. I am not a control freak. I don't overanalyze because I need things to be a certain way; I do it just because what else is my brain supposed to do with its down-time? Seriously, what do the rest of you think about when your brain's idle and unoccupied? I say there's nothing wrong with a little mental exercise, a bit of scenario-playing for preparation sake.

Every now and then, however, I'm reminded that mental gymnastics are not the norm; that not everyone over-processes the way Malia and I routinely do. Consider the scene at the Roseville SuperTarget the other night...


Cashier: Do you want paper or plastic?

Me (surveying the assortment of grocery items on the conveyor belt): Paper for the jars and boxes; for the rest, I don't care.

Cashier: [confused look as she glances from the bag choices on her left to the merchandise on her right]

Cashier (stops to decide whether my Lean Cuisines should go in the plastic bag hanging on the peg rack or in the paper one propped in front of that): So, basically, you want all the frozen stuff in plastic? Is that what you said?

Me: Um, no... [Brief pause as I try to decide just how much of my completely logical-to-me rationale to explain]... I want the stuff in boxes and jars in a paper bag... See, the boxes always poke through and rip the plastic bags, and cans will just roll around and spill out all over my trunk.

Cashier: ...

Me: But, you know... it's no big deal... I didn't mean to be all picky or demanding over grocery bags or something.


But the thing is, I did mean to be picky and demanding... because my logic makes perfect sense to me. Has this cashier never gone grocery shopping herself? Has she never had a pizza box pierce its way through a plastic bag, rendering the bag useless when carrying it into her home? Has she never had spaghetti sauce jars and yogurt cups roll out of a flimsy plastic bag and scatter themselves across her car's trunk? These are minor inconveniences, sure, but if they're inconveniences that can be avoided, is there anything wrong with thinking them through?

And by the way, for my friend Jamie (and any other environmentally minded souls out there), thinking that I wouldn't have this dilemma at all if I'd simply bring my own bags to the store, I'll say that I'm thinking about that, too. Buying or making my own grocery bags has been on my to-do [someday] list for over a year now, I think. Really, though, if the cashier at SuperTarget is thrown off so easily by an unconventional answer to the "paper or plastic" question, don't you think I'm doing her a favor by not adding more complexity to the mix? I mean, if she can't handle "Paper for the jars and boxes," might not her head explode if presented with foreign cloth bags bearing no UPC?

You don't have to say it. I'll say it for you. "Wow. You've really put a lot of thought into this."

There are some things, however, that I do not think through in detail. Like my carefree "I'm making no plans" outlook for this weekend. I do not particularly like being the plan-maker among my friends; I'd just as soon let someone else be the social engineer the bulk of the time. This weekend, I thought, "I could use some down-time. I won't propose any plans, but if plans find me, that'd be fine, I guess." I wasn't particularly anticipating this being a "test how popular I am based on whether my phone rings at all" sort of scenario, but I guess it's what it turned out to be, anyway. The result of this impromptu experiment was two Netflix evenings on my own, a near-futile solo clothes-shopping afternoon at the mall, and an aborted movie outing with The Magical Boy (the one plan I did have for the weekend, which he canceled via voicemail Saturday afternoon). On the plus side, I did actually mow my lawn for the first time this season (it was damn-near shin-height thanks to the recent day-after-day of rain), and I finally painted my interior hallway, the one portion of my home's main level that I had not yet painted in the three-plus years I've lived here.

The hallway-painting endeavor is yet another thing I maybe didn't think all the way through. Or rather, it's something I did think through, but found that all my thinking may have been in vain. I hadn't painted that hallway because, despite its being the smallest "room" on my main level, it has five doorways in it. Have you ever painted around doorways? It's a pain in the ass, I say. All that taping? All that cutting-in detail work? Not a task to be relished, in my book. But I wanted some color in that hallway, something to tie things together, I suppose. So I tried to pick a color that would coordinate nicely from all angles... that would go with the yellow in my bathroom, the sage green in my kitchen, the golden tan in my living room, the lilac in my bedroom, and the rust color in my office/library. I considered all of this, and I decided that navy blue (more specifically, "Blue Cosmos," according to the sample chip) would be a good choice.

And it is a good choice... in the daytime, anyway. As I finished the second coat this afternoon, I thought, "Good job, Stef. That wasn't so hard, was it?"

Now, however, the sun is down, and I'm gazing into my hallway and realizing it's rather unexpectedly dark and cave-like out there. I'm sort of expecting the Sleestaks to come in and take me away into the night. It will probably just take some getting used to, however, much like so much else in life. And since my over-thinking is routinely overshadowed by my tendency towards laziness, I won't be repainting it anytime soon. Perhaps I'll just have to use my hallway light more often... a light I turn on so infrequently that I've yet to change the light bulb since I moved in...

You don't have to say it. I'll say it for you, OK? "You've really put some thought into this, haven't you?"

Yes. Yes, I have. Do you have a problem with that? No? OK.

Out to prove that some things aren't worth the wait

As I mentioned in a comment back to -R- on that last post, I finally overcame my laziness and procrastination and actually unpacked and installed my new printer/scanner/copier thingie. Whoo. It was actually much easier than I anticipated, so frankly I don't really know what my problem was. I even managed to install it with approximately nine-tenths of a bottle of wine in me, which means either that it was so easy, even a drunken monkey could do it, or perhaps that I am a little too used to functioning effectively on more than a bit of wine. I'm going to go with an explanation somewhere in between the two, OK?

So. The printer thingie was no problem. In the midst of connecting the printer thingie, however, I managed to tug the cord connected to my desktop speaker and inadvertently send the speaker in free-fall to the floor, landing directly on my left middle finger knuckle, which, frankly, hurt like a god-damn motherfucker, if I may be so indelicate and repeat a few of the words that spilled out of me immediately thereafter. I'd blame the wine for that, but considering it was the third injury incurred to some portion of my hands in the same damn day, I think the real problem is that I am decidedly lacking in coordination and depth perception skills even when under the influence of nothing stronger than water or cranberry juice.

I also managed to turn off and knock a cord out of my cable modem during this whole process and, unable to reconnect everything in the specific and picky order that's apparently necessary, I ended up having to call Qwest technical support for assistance. At 11:30 on a Saturday night. With nine-tenths of a bottle of wine in me. It has been a while since I had to tell myself, "Now, focus, Stefanie. Don't slur, and don't ramble on with drunken nonsense." I don't know why I didn't just go with it; the Qwest technical support rep would maybe actually like a drunken caller to liven up his night a bit. Damn Midwestern pride and decorum.

Anyway, I don't imagine my technical issues or unintentional self-mutilation are in any way particularly interesting to anyone, so let's get on with the long-promised first fruits of labor from my new toy... my sad representation of my junior prom dress.

Ta-da... (click for larger view)



I also wanted to provide a picture of Miss Prom Pants, the triangle-haired she-devil whom the love of my 11th-grade life took to prom instead of me. OK, so she-devil is a little harsh. I actually had no problem with this girl at the time aside from her occasionally questionable wardrobe choices and her bizarrely geometric hair. And, of course, the fact that she unknowingly stole my prom date. In all fairness, I can't really blame her for that.

Anyway, so I wanted to provide a picture, but it seems the full-on triangle action didn't take shape until later in the year. In the fall of 1990, when most of that year's yearbook photos were taken, her hair wasn't all that absurd for the time. (Emphasis on "for the time." I mean, those bangs? Today? Obviously no.)



Somewhere between when this photo was taken and when Prom Pants was my imaginary boyfriend's date, however, the hair had sort of filled out or been re-permed to be much curlier towards the bottom than alongside Prom Pants's head. In addition, she shunned layers in favor of a blunt cut that let the ends of her permed and frazzled hair lie in a decidedly straight line on the horizontal. The effect was something like this:



Unfortunately, since I have no real documentation, you'll just have to trust me on this.

So. That is the representation of my Hee-Haw dress and of the much-maligned triangle hair. I bet you can't wait to see what ridiculousness I'll deem worthy of posting with my new scanner next, huh? Grocery lists? Baby pictures? Time will tell, I guess.