Elsewhere...

A couple weeks ago, I drew attention to my lazy blogging of late by saying I'd written only seven posts since July. You know what, though? That was actually a lie. You could say I've been cheating on you. Or rather, cheating on my blog. Or actually, not cheating at all; just spreading the love around. Or something like that. What I'm saying is I have actually written a wee bit more than you've seen here. On Thursday, for instance, I wrote about that PedalPub outing I took on Halloween. Last month, I wrote about how I removed the persistent (albeit unladylike) gym stank from my workout clothes. The month before that, I wrote about the Shampoo Slumber Party my friend Jamie hosted a while back. And in the midst of my South Dakota road trip, from a motel with free Wi-Fi in Wall, South Dakota, I gave the Internet a glimpse into what dinner looks like at this spinster's abode.

So you see? I'm actually about 50% more prolific than I appear initially! (It's a weak claim, but I'll make it anyway. I'll even go so far as to argue this short post--hey, it's a short week!--counts as four, four, FOUR posts in one!)

If you're not already doing so, pop on over to The Greenists every now and then. You never know what (or who!) else you might find there.

Four things that have made me laugh in the past hour

1. Kristabella's comment on -R-'s latest post, in which -R- mentioned preliminary plans for B's first birthday party. (Sidenote #1: How in the H-E-double-hockey-sticks is B nearly a year old already?? Sidenote #2: I totally think a decision on the baked goods is a fully valid starting point for a party theme.) The comment in question? It went something like this:
   
   "You should do our family tradition that we have for 1 year birthdays. You set down a shot glass, a rosary, and a dollar in front of the kid. And then see which one he picks. Shot glass, he’s going to be a drinker. Rosary, he’s going to be a priest/nun. Dollar, he’s going to be rich. I’m pretty sure you can guess which one I picked."
   
   Those of you who have newborns (or are thinking of acquiring newborns), I do expect you to file this idea away (and provide video evidence once you've used it).
   
   
2. The fact that I just saw my neighbor peeing from my kitchen window. You see, the window above my kitchen table provides a pretty direct view into the corner of my neighbors' bathroom, which usually doesn't present any problems, given that I rarely eat at my kitchen table (as you know, spinsters more often eat over their kitchen sink or, in my case, on their living room floor in front of the previous night's rerun of The Daily Show). Tonight, however, I happened to be sitting at my kitchen table, and I happened to glance up from my dinner at the exact same time my neighbor glanced over from his pee stance. (I saw him only from the chest up, but it's pretty clear what he was doing regardless.) We made brief, uncomfortable through-the-window eye contact, and I can't decide if I'm amused or skeeved out by it. No, scratch that. Obviously we must go with amused, if for no other reason than hello, I have meandered through my kitchen naked more times than I should admit, and I should just be glad the eye contact happened now and not on one of those occasions. Hee.
   
   
3. Sizzle's friends and nephew. I'm telling you, cute kid stories almost make me consider possibly wanting one of those. Almost. Luckily, I have the Internet for a near-constant stream of cute kid stories, minus the perpetual drain on my bank account and the inability to sleep in for the next 937 weekends. I slept nine and a half hours last night, and it was fantastic. Garnering cute kid stories by proxy is fine with me, I say.
   
   
4. Barry Manilow's Copa Cabana. A Facebook friend just posted a reasonable question as his status update. "Why do I have Manilow's Copa Cabana in my head?" he wondered. I know not, but it reminded me of the semester I spent in Great Britain, during which there was a Manilow-inspired musical playing in London, meaning that every time I rode the escalators in the Tube stations, I saw "Copacabana" posters all around me. Intermittently throughout the entire semester, I had that damn song in my head, and I don't even know the lyrics. So instead, I made up my own. "COPA! Copa Ca-BANA! I think I will HAVE a BANANA! And then I will go to MONTANA!" Try it. I'm telling you, it's fun! My Facebook friend agrees with me, as he followed up my comment with, "It's time to put ON my paJAMAS!" I could keep this up all night. Or, at least until I run out of "-ana" rhymes. Which might actually be now, come to think of it. All right then. Moving on.

Incidentally, I am supposed to be writing my next post for The Greenists (the blog formerly knowns as Allie's Answers) at the moment. But as usual, I am an award-worthy procrastinator and time-waster. I don't actually know anyone who's giving out awards for procrastination and time wasting, but I trust that if you do, you'll pass along my name, right? Meanwhile, I have to be content with this award, bestowed by the always brilliant Flurrious, who I'm pretty sure in real life is that famous Woman Who Can't Forget, because seriously, how many of you would have remembered that I am the keeper of the semicolon?



Not a lot of you, I would estimate. Flurrious, you crack me up. Which obviously means this post should be titled Five Things that Have Made Me Laugh in the Past Hour, but I have already turned off the numbered list formatting, and surely you can't expect me to go back and mess with Blogger's capricious formatting attributes at this point.

Tell me... what's amusing you today?

Nerd Meter

I have been unusually busy at That Place Thou Shalt Not Blog About this week, and it's particularly annoying given that the things I've been unusually busy with are not even my OWN things at That Place Thou Shalt Not Blog About. Instead, they are the things that someone ELSE would be doing if someone else weren't on her second vacation this summer. Mind you, I wish that someone else no ill will. She's an impossibly nice woman and she deserves even more vacations for the things she puts up with when she's there. I just wish I hadn't somehow silently and inexplicably gotten nominated to do those things on the days she's not. Also, I wish there weren't a hole in my damn shower, so I could perhaps justify taking a vacation myself. Grr.

None of this is anything I should be any less vague about, however, partly because there is a reason we don't blog about the place in question and partly because it's really just not all that interesting a series of complaints. Instead then, I'll shift gears and take the lazy way out with a "Just Post a Link"* entry.

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* TM Noelle
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This article may be sort of a nerd meter... I'm well aware that not everyone is a punctuation enthusiast, but surely at least a few of you are like me and find that passionate and sincere discourse on the topic warms your geeky little heart.

If so, Salon.com's "Is the semicolon girlie?" might be of interest...

To me, the semicolon has a certain elegance, like a vodka martini; I don't whip it out every day, but on occasion, and with great relish.

. . . .

Seems to me they're arguing that complex thoughts and nuanced self-expression are chick things, and I'm not touching that one.

. . . .

Not only do I use semicolons, but when I see someone else use them (correctly) I elevate that person to a private pantheon... It's a very nuanced thing -- a test of ear and eye -- but delightful when done right. I haven't read it in 20 years, but in "The World According to Garp," I believe Garp warms to another character when she uses a semicolon in her letters.

I would never consider myself inordinately girlie, but my love of the semicolon is well documented. As for whether real men use semicolons? Well, I think we've already covered that.

My weekend, in bullet points (again)

Is it a sign of unforgivably lazy blogging when nine out of ten of your last posts involve a bulleted or numbered list of some sort? I care not. It has been hot, and I have been wallowing in lethargy. Here we go.

This weekend, I...

• Wrote my 54th Friday Five entry. Can you believe I have been creating those damn lists for a full year now? My first thought is, "No wonder I have such a hard time coming up with topics for those lately!" My second thought is, "Wait a minute. 54?" Help me out on the math here, folks. If my first one was the last week of June 2006, and my most recent one was the first week of July 2007, shouldn't that be 53? Perhaps I've forgotten how to count in this heat, or perhaps I need to add calendars to that growing list of basic concepts I apparently do not understand.
  
  
• Saw three movies (one on DVD, one in the theater, and one outside in a parking lot) and watched six Netflixed episodes of What I Like about You, an entirely cheesy sitcom that I should probably be embarrassed to admit I like and yet, I persist in telling the Internet about it. (Note: I also think the son-in-law on Reba is occasionally hilarious. You see? I have no shame.) (Note to the note: If it redeems my poor taste at all, I have never seen a full episode of According to Jim or Two and a Half Men. -R-, does this mean you can still be friends with me?)
  
  
• Sold an old air conditioner to an overweight drag queen (No! For real! I saw his WhySpace page!) and a dehumidifier I'm no longer using to an aging hippie in a wife-beater and felt clogs. (Thank you, Craig's List, for the extra $55 in my wallet now. Whoo hoo!)
  
  
• Managed to complete a 21-mile bike ride on a 98-degree day without either collapsing from heat stroke nor melting and fusing to my seat.
  
  
• Finished The Time Traveler's Wife. Unfortunately, I finished it five days after it was due (the library wouldn't let me renew it because there are several holds on it behind me), which means not only am I a book-hoarding jackass, but I have incurred a library fine for the first time in at least 16 years. I was a little worried that deliberately keeping the book past its due date would be a bit more expensive today than it was in my tiny home town nearly two decades ago, but it turns out the late book rate has skyrocketed up to only 30 cents per day. Pshaw. They can have my $1.50, I say. Hell, the library is a good and worthy cause; maybe I'll throw in an extra $1.50 just to show my apologies. See? I'm a rebel and a philanthropist! Delinquency has an upshot after all.
  
  
• And finally, last but not least, received an award from the lovely Poppy Cedes. This pink-tastic prize is apparently making the rounds, because last week, Sognatrice was kind enough to bestow it on me as well. I am thoroughly flattered, ladies. Even if this logo does call up memories of Barbie & the Rockers (or better still, Gem & the Holograms), I will post it proudly anyway. (Gem is truly, truly outrageous, after all, and who's going to argue with that?)
  
  
  

In response to that last one, I'm supposed to pass the prize along to five other deserving lady bloggers. Obviously my friends -R-, Poppy, and Sognatrice have already received it, but even that doesn't make it much easier to narrow this down to five. I assure you, you all rock. This list is just a small sampling (in no particular order) of the fabulous women I'm happy to call my Internet friends.

1. Noelle, because she approaches workouts with the same sort of twisted logic I employ on a regular basis, because she wrote probably the best "How I spent my summer vacation" essay I have ever read, and because she introduced the terms "landlesbian" and "waterlesbian" into our lexicon. That last one alone is worthy of an award, I say (even if -R- may have actually coined the latter, if my recollection is correct).
   


2. Liz, because she is nicer to animals than I am to most humans. Also because she is capable of doing all sorts of things that I most certainly am not. Like fix her refrigerator, and exercise 70 days in a row, and avoid unnecessary and superfluous cheese. Oh, and sing! (Really, folks. I've heard her on CD. The woman has a fabulous voice.) Also, her comments routinely crack me up. Her feedback on my posts (and those on other blogs I read) is as entertaining as her own, actual posts, and it makes me think, as Darren once said to Red, "Save the A-material for your own blog!"
   


3. Maliavale, because she is a genius and a visionary (I am still waiting for that International Size Tribunal idea to take hold) and because her now-infamous "Tiny ponies in sneakers" post is still quite likely the funniest thing I've seen all year. Also, she is one of the most positive, optimistic, "the world is my oyster" people I've ever met (or, almost met, if being "virtual" friends counts). And I very much admire her for that.
   


4. Metalia, because she is smart and charming and consistently hilarious, not to mention incredibly helpful, what with all the wonderful product recommendations and movie reviews and all the recipes she sends to my poor domestically challenged self. Plus, she is downright lovely, with her perfect hair and dark brown eyes and her impossibly adorable family. Metalia is like that beautiful and popular girl in high school who you wanted to hate but couldn't because she was actually down-to-earth and nice instead of bitchy and judgmental. Plus, she is apparently even more clumsy and accident-prone than I am (not to mention magnetic to in-the-street-peeing hobos), and really, how can you not love her for that?
   


5. And finally, Nabbalicious, because she taught us all about waxing and Dr. Pepper Lip Smackers and reminded us how very tasty Cadbury Creme Eggs are. And also because at least 127 times, she has written something that has so perfectly encapsulated my own thoughts or experiences that I just have to say Nabbalicious is obviously a cooler, wittier, more ambitious, more talented, and overall more awesome version of myself. And since by at least two accounts, I rock, surely Nabbalicious rocks as well.
   

OK, so that is five, but it would be terribly remiss if I didn't also include a shout-out to my pal Guinness Girl, who has been terribly busy with real life lately and therefore not spending nearly as much time online. She is still witty and fabulous, however, and therefore very deserving of some accolades. As are the rest of you, of course. Let's just say we all rock and leave it at that, OK?

In a nod to Noelle at The Daily Tannenbaum and her "Just post a link" idea...

You need to go here. Because, you know, we don't get nearly enough opportunities in life to be instantly and simultaneously horrified and amused.

Enjoy.

Can I get a "Whoo!" (or maybe some equivalent though nerdier exclamation)?

It seems my shameless campaigning paid off, as I have been granted the 2007 Poppy Award for Grammar and Spelling. Yay!!



I would like to thank the academy, except, um, there is no academy. There is only Poppy and you guys. Oh, and my 12th grade English teacher Mrs. Millmans, who taught me more about proper grammar than any other teacher or professor I've ever had and whose name I just spelled incorrectly on purpose to avoid having anyone connected with my old high school inadvertently Google upon my blog. Ah, the irony of a deliberate spelling error in a post celebrating my spelling prowess. I hope my award isn't revoked for such an offense.

I am pleased to report that I actually won two Poppy awards. The other was a category I suggested myself, knowing I'd be a shoe-in to win. Since Poppy is all secret and anonymous, though, I didn't think she'd actually post such an award. Since she did, I think I can safely mention it here as well.



Poppy is one of at least three Stefanie-with-an-F's who has come to and commented on my blog seemingly solely because of our uncommon name. Clearly we're not quite as rare and original as I thought. It might be a depressing thought if I weren't in such fine company.

Congrats also to Maliavale, Nabbalicious, and Darren for their well-deserved recognition in the "Best Music Reviews" and "Best Photos" categories. And a special shout-out to Liz, who took away the "Most Feral Cat Posts in a Single Blog" award, a category that I'm pretty sure came straight from a suggestion in my comments. Liz, it really is too bad that the Poppy Awards don't come with a trophy, because this has "Year of Liz" written all over it, don't you think?

You know I love a list, but is posting a list of lists going just a bit too far?

If you're just tuning in, I should explain that I'm running reruns this week, for no better reason than that I haven't felt particularly inspired to write anything new lately and that I had this possibly egomaniacal idea that perhaps there was some good stuff in the archives that no one had yet stumbled across. I promise I will get back to my irregularly scheduled ramblings about more current things soon, but meanwhile, I thought I'd use this week's Friday Five to highlight five of my favorite lists-of-five thus far. I am fully aware, by the way, that my blog is suddenly starting to feel like a clip show, and I've never even particularly liked clip shows. Let's just go with it for one more day, though, OK?


Five Friday Fives that you may or may not have already read:

1. Five things I have learned from TV (Television isn't just for entertainment, after all... it's also "teacher, mother, secret lover"*)
   
   
2. Five food-related things you will never hear me say (Also on the list? "No olives for me, thanks.")
   
   
3. Five crappy little non-posts does not a proper post make (I really don't think I was drunk when I wrote this one, though in retrospect I'm not so sure.)
   
   
4. Five ways to make me quickly dismiss your online profile (Just in case I haven't complained about the men on meMarmony quite enough lately...)
   
   
5. Five things I do not understand (This could also be "Five things that annoy me no end," but I already have at least three lists centered on annoyance.)

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* I am hoping Metalia and Darren got that reference, though I don't know how many of the rest of you did.

A shameless plug (plus your regularly scheduled reruns during this ongoing flashback week)

Poppy is giving out some awards, and while I haven't actually voted yet (Sorry, Poppy!) nor nominated myself, I would like to think I am a shoe-in for at least one category. Does anyone want to guess which one? Go ahead, take a look at the list and then come back. I'll wait.

Well? What do you think?

I'll give you a hint. It is not the Best Use of Cheese, and I am not proposing that the one and only recipe I ever posted is worthy of a prize. No, it is the Grammar and Spelling Award in particular that I would like to win. Why? Simple. Because I am a huge nerd and therefore that sort of thing would actually be exciting to me.*

In reality, I am sort of disturbed that something like "Grammar and Spelling" is actually notable enough to be worthy of a category. I would like to think proper grammar and spelling should be a given, and as such, I'm sure most of you out there would be fine candidates for this award as well. All it takes is few clicks of that "Next Blog" button, however, to prove that we are not the majority we should be. It's a sad realization, really. Coca-Cola wanted to teach the world to sing; I want to teach the Internet the difference between its and it's.** (See? Huge nerd! I totally deserve this award.)

Anyway, I do not have any particular and specific post in mind that demonstrates my superb grammar and spelling skills and thereby qualifies me above all others for this award. The mere fact that I have written about spelling and punctuation on no fewer than ten occasions, however, ought to be worth something, don't you think?

Here is just a sampling... various bits of proof that I probably care way too much about this sort of thing. Check any of these out as your encore episode for today.

• Speaking Volumes - The one in which one of the nation's premier public library systems lets me down with the abomination of a simple typo.
  
  
• It's not you; it's me - The one in which I suggest that superfluous and unwarranted punctuation might actually be grounds for disqualification in the dating game.
  
  
• I am the keeper of the semicolon - The one in which I show I am such a nerd about punctuation that I actually wear it around my neck.
  
  
• Because I just never get sick of talking about punctuation (and plagiary) - The one that explains just when and how I realized the semicolon is my trademark. (This one is just as much about bad dates as it is about punctuation, so if you've come here for that sort of story, it's good for that, too.)
  

All right then. Have I proven my point? Then go vote for nominate me, OK? :-)


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* I am well aware, by the way, that typing three sentence fragments in a row does not do much to champion my claim on this award, but I would like to think there is a difference between breaking grammar rules on purpose for conversational effect and ignoring them willy-nilly simply because I'm unaware of any such rules. Agree? OK. (There, I did it again.)

** Its is possessive. It's means it is. Can we all please just learn this already? Thanks.

This is the way it all began (not with a bang, but a whimper)

So apparently today is some sort of holiday? A fake one, of course, but clearly a widely acknowledged holiday nonetheless. Honestly, Valentine's Day is barely a blip on my radar, so I'm not even sure why I'd mention it. The guys on the radio this morning, however, mentioned it no less than 27 times, so I'm guessing the day actually is important to some people. Bear in mind this was Public radio. Yeah, I'm as suprised as you are.

Anyway, in light of it being the 14th of February (and in light of so many of my posts being date-centered of late), I thought today's reruns should be date-related as well. Perhaps you weren't around last winter. Perhaps you didn't catch just how the whole meMarmony saga started way back then. No? Well OK then; allow me to fill you in...

The story of my very first meMarmony date

That date led me to the brilliant idea of post-date performance reviews, which later led to a few other bits of supporting evidence that dating is an awful lot like work. As such, letters of recommendation and formal rejection letters seemed like fine ideas as well.

Are any of you actually wondering by this point why I'm still single? Um, yeah. I thought not. Carry on.

Don't call them "reruns"; call them "encore presentations"

It seems a lot of my favorite bloggers are taking an official or unofficial hiatus lately. Perhaps there's something in the air (or rather, the series of tubes that is the Internet), because I'm not feeling too inspired this week myself. Rather than just post nothing, though, I have an alternate plan in mind.

I was not one of those lucky bloggers who somehow garnered a readership almost instantly after my first post. This could, of course, have something to do with the fact that I didn't actually tell anyone about my blog until I had been writing in it for at least three months, and that I didn't start freely commenting on other people's blogs (thereby getting links out there where people might decide to click over and pop in) for a long time after that. Of course, it could also be that everything I wrote in those first several months was utter crap. Considering I still write entries that I think likely qualify as utter crap, however, I sort of doubt that was entirely the case.

Know what that means? That means there's actually a chance there is a "lost episode" of Stefanie Says that might possibly be interesting or amusing, but that quite likely no more than seven people ever read. I am going to try to identify some of these and post them this week. If you actually have been here for a while and you do remember some of these, I do apologize. (I apologize in particular if you already read them once and didn't enjoy them the first time. Don't you hate it when a rerun is an episode you didn't even like?)

I'll start with one that I'll admit wasn't hilarious or anything, but that is resonating with me pretty strongly lately, as it seems everyone on every road in my usual route has completely forgotten how to drive. Here's my public service message response: My own personal traffic school