I'M SO EXCITED

So tonight is the harry potter 6 half blood prince release at midnight.
and i can't control myself.
i'm like 7-year-old-going-to-Disneyland stoked.
I am full-fledged fantasy nerd tunnelvision headache from excitement juiced.
and needless to say, sitting a cube farm with literally not a single task to do is NOT conducive to waiting.

the.
day.
is.
crawling.

And I'm on stimulus OVERLOAD. I've blown through all of my distraction factors in like 3 hours when I can usually make them last all day. I've read all my blogs. I've exhausted facebook. I've look at at least 3 complete albums of people I don't even know for a single picture of an acquiantance. The crossword puzzle is complete. The sudoku, kaput. I went somewhere else to get lunch and ate it. I've moved desks and set up everything. I had a mini meeting with a boss. I printed off stuff for a craft I'm doing at home. Twitter is a precious notion of time wasting as I've read every post from the 100+ people I follow three times already. And clicked every link.

AND IT'S NOT EVEN 1 PM.

HEEEEEEEEELLLLLP ME!!!

I'M JUST SO EXCITED.

Harry Potter is going to rule.
It's paaaaainful to sit here when I should be painting the back of my tshirt. Or napping so I'm ready for the extreeeeeeeeeme lack of sleep that is as a result of a midnight showing of a 2.5 hour movie.

pain.
ful.

Work: you are ALWAYS cramping my dorkstyle.

Playing Work

On the metro, every morning, hundreds of people commute. They swim upstream and down, to and fro, walk on the left and stand on the right. People are in scrubs with Betty Boop on them, in business suits with running shoes, military uniforms with their gym bags. Packed lunches, hurried sudokus between stops, the 3's and 9's squiggled by the trains jolting brakes. What percentage of this throng is doing what they REALLY want to do?

I'd wager 3%. Tops.

I feel as though I am one of these trudging masses. I get up entirely too early every morning to the meowing of my latest alarm clock, 20 minutes before the one that beeps would go off. I take a shower, put on my grown-up costume, and make the trek in haste to sit at my desk for 8 hours before I rush home to wait a few hours so I can rinse and repeat.

It makes me miss the games we play when we're young. I can't for the life of me ever recall playing "work". Kids play all sorts of games that might turn into an occupation as adults. Playing house, doctor, teacher, explorer. They play games that may turn out to be gruesome as adults- when the surgeon needs to lop off all four limbs, when all of the GI Joe's are killed in an unforeseen microwave accident, or when Barbie jumps off the roof of her three story townhouse via the pink elevator (true story.) The games we played most are the ones that are impossible to come true. Every kid played mermaid or space alien invasion or bears. We dressed up in our mothers' dresses and ran around our fathers' garages

Not one kid played analyst or consultant.

And what about the skills we learned as children? Very few of them still come up. I would jump for joy if I got to make a diorama for a meeting. I was talking to a new friend over lunch, (we'll call her "Indignant Constitutional 11-year-old" or "IC-11" for short- it was a great lunch,) and we lamented over the lack of clay figures and construction paper usage in our everyday lives. No more finger paint or colorful blocks. The days of building cells out of styrofoam and making land masses out of papier mache are gone.

So I look around and see all of the astronauts and ballerinas, trumped up in their dressing to go to beige cubicles and concrete office buildings. The thing is though, there isn't the cloud of despair you would think there should be. People seem to be bustling intently. I wouldn't go so far to say "with great jollity", but it isn't as dismal and dreary as it certainly could be.

I can't help but feel as though this is all just another game. I think it points to my immaturity that I still feel as though I'm playing office. The steps are the same as our games of imagination when we were small. You need to build the fort, (the office,) change your costume, (for me, business casual that makes me look like a barn with hair tottering about on uncomfortable heels,) and establish the rules of the game (be there for 8 hours.)

Or maybe all of the bomber pilots and Egyptian goddesses who are running around my city incognito have something figured out that I don't yet. They hurry to and from their work so that they can rush home and play in their airplane hangars and hidden tombs.

Maybe that's the secret they all carry around. They have jungles and sunken pirate ships waiting for them. The sooner they get to work, the sooner they get to go home.

and the sooner they get to play.

storm

I know it has been a while since I posted- things have been going crazy!

I have had about a month of constant activity and decision. 

Now that I have the time to breathe and actually think about it all, I wish I had taken the time to write about it more as it was happening- maybe then I might have felt less befuddled by it all.

I vacationed in Hawaii with two very dear friends and a 15 month old little girl.  I went on a week long beach-house vacation with my parents and grandfather.  I have adopted a kitten who was previously nicknamed "killer".  I have interviewed for and accepted a brand new job, with much strife at the current job and subsequently bought $700 worth of stuffy suits.  So I've been busy.

Life is amazing- how it swirls, is it not?

I have felt like I've been in a sort of free-fall  None of these major life acts have really been my decision.

And yet, in that there was a sort of comfort.  Maybe it was part shock, part excitement.  I had been wishing for change for months.  I sure got that.  gvvbbg  (<--- Sorry, that was the new cat.)

Learning to trust yourself, no matter what happens, is quite enthralling.

And now, as I wind down with my current job,  have the kitten now dubbed "Weasley" sitting around my throat like an ascot, and reminisce about my vacations, it is empowering to reflect on what has happened in one measly month.

All of those things happen and nothing drove me to write.

Tonight, there was a thunderstorm.  A good, old-fashioned knock-out-the-satellite "gully washer" as my mother would say.

I lay here, book in hand, comforting the kitten- it's his first big storm- and counted the seconds between the flashes and the bursts, the light and the noise, the lightning and thunder.

and I was driven.

I hate to use the phrase "in life", but here I feel it only fitting.

In life, like tonight, I have waited, counting the seconds between the cataclysmic bolts and the rolling booms that are sure to follow.

This month has been the lightning.  And now, we wait for the fallout.

1

2

3

4

5

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positivity.

Should I be nervous that so many of my blog postings contain the "if I ever have a chance of dating you, please don't read the following" disclaimer?

shmeh.

If I ever have a chance of dating you, please don't read the following:

re: 

this jerk face

So.  I went to the CAPS game today with a good friend.  And it was a KILLER time.  We're talking AWESOME.  CAPS won, I rocked the red, (and managed to not get TOO much glitter on her husband's jersey,) and cheered my face off.

It was amazing.

So we were sharing a victory Chipotle burrito, in Chinatown DC, and we were doing EVERYONE'S favorite pastime- people watching.  Now, we were doing what I'll call here "honest peoplewatching."  We were noting the good as WELL as the bad.  We were looking at couples that were well paired as well as some unfortunate girls in heels that were OBVIOUSLY killing them.  Noting the happy and the miserable, the way-too-skinny and the perhaps-big-boneded.  Just generally enjoying the mass of people swirling around the fishbowl world of our chipotle windowseats.

This cute guy who was apparently sitting next to me, listening INTENTLY- unbeknownst to me- all of a sudden crumpled his burrito wrapper, turned to me and said, "say five nice things about the people passing by us."  So I started to.  He cut me off and said "Well all I heard was a lot of negativity."  Got up. Threw out his trash.  Left.  Walked in front of the window.  I gave him a stunned finger-toodle wave, he did this "well, yeah.  There you go.  You know it," head-nod and kept walking.

And I have to tell you, it ruined my day.  I embarrassed myself on the walk home from the metro because I was crying, walking in my neighborhood, in broad daylight.

HOW DARE HE.  At least none of the things I said made anyone else feel like shit!  I was talking to my friend, just having a perfectly NORMAL conversation.

He should have considered who he was talking to.  Not to toot my own horn, but I am one of the most positive people I know.  Did he ever consider that maybe half of the comments I was making were out of low self-esteem?   Of all the clearly superficial perfect bitches in this world that have vacuous conversations, I'm the person he chooses to unload on.  Everyone else on the planet gets to have those conversations, but not me.  Not on this day.  Nice positivity yourself there, asshat.  

And it's SO weird to think that one would have any negativity from being a single girl in THIS city.  Like this guy isn't one of the DC douchebags or DCDB's.  Girls, you know who I mean- one of the light blue striped button-up shirt and khaki cargo shorts wearers with flip flops and some meaningless pseudo-tropical necklaces.  They roll in packs.  They ignore girls for the first 95% of the night, then proceed to give them hope.  Then, when it's all said and done, they cut their losses and run, making the girl feel as though all of the signals were in her head.  That they had nothing to do with it, using the poor girl's insecurity as a smoke screen to cover their exit.  Each of them returning back to the pack so that they can all congratulate each other, put more gel in their hair, and head out to the bar again to rinse and repeat.  And I'm the one putting negativity out into the planet.  Whatever, bub.

It's hard because it comes on the tail of a little moment I had this morning.  I was riding the metro to meet my friend, and I had all of this happy-go-lucky music coming on my ipod.  I was just in the best of moods.  I found myself realizing that I'm often in a good mood.  I sent up a little prayer, in the middle of my metroride, thanking whoever is up there for my sunny disposition.  I know not everyone comes by genuine excitement or happiness or contentment as easily, and I'm grateful that I'm wired that way.

I don't know if it was just too ironic an opportunity to get called out for sheer negativity or if I'm just delusional about what my supposedly "sunny outlook" really is.

Either way.  If you meet that guy, have him respond to my ad.  I'd like to explain myself.

And apologize.

The worst part of all was the kernel of truth at the base of it.  I was uncharitable in my thoughts and in my words.  I even thought to censor myself, but I thought "what the heck.  They can't hear us.  I'm just laughing with my friend.  Everyone does it."  

The worst part of all was that he was right.

And Lord knows you can't forgive a man for that.

Shoe Logic

So, as some of you may know, I believe that you can learn a lot about a person according to their shoes. Judge me all you want, but you're going to start noticing from now on. And it doesn't have to be big, sweeping judgements- just little ones like how comfortable a person likes to be in their work shoes or how tightly strung their tennis-shoe laces are.

As I was scoping out all of the hot commute-home-from-work shoes on the metro yesterday evening, I noticed a pattern. I know that it has always been there, but it just kind of snapped into focus yesterday. And I can't tell if the pattern in our shoes is merely reflective of the differences between men and women, or if it even perpetuates our ingrained notions even further.

What I noticed is this: men's shoes, generally speaking, are designed to look sturdy. Go on, look around the office. The everyman's work shoe of today is probably one of those black shoes with the thicker soles that are squared off at the toes. Even if they're not this EXACT pair- although plenty of them are- they all have one thing in common: they actually look like feet.

I know it sounds nuts, but what woman's shoe is actually shaped like a woman's foot?

And mens shoes are actually largest at the bottom. When a man is standing in his shoes, he looks stable, sturdy, well planted. Do you think that this plays into what we're looking for in a man? We are usually looking for a man who, well I hate to borrow an overused phrase, but has his feet on the ground. Every pair of guy's shoes on the planet makes this easier. The can stand for hours in those Herman Munster's Tuxedo Shoes and look right at home.

Now, lets turn the lens on the ladies. Now I'll preface ALL of this with the fact that I love shoes. LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE them. Doesn't matter if they're uncomfortable or too expensive, I friggin love them. Usually, the more ridiculous the better. Hot pank shiny peeptoe stillettos with bows and lace on them? bring it.

But lets use an analytical eye to look at what we put on our feet..

They're ridiculous. And UNNATURAL. What woman has pointy toes? Heels? What a terrible and torturous idea! And it seems as though the prettiest ones are intentionally engineered to be as difficult to balance in as physically possible. Let's take all of our weight and balance it, in perfect, hip-swinging motion, on two little points that are barely bigger than pencil erasers. Awesome. EVERY woman on the planet has been crippled for a day of uncomfortable, but attractive shoes at least once in her life, (and most of us at least once a weekend.) They just seem like bad ideas all around, no matter which way you turn. And yet, we ALL do it.

And now I ask, WTF?!?!? Is this supposed to make us look like skittish does that could just as easily prance away as fall flat on our asses?

Now, I may be confused- but for the whole "thrill of the chase" mentality, shouldn't we at least be worthy opponents who won't topple over after every third step? Or are we supposed to look all wobbly so we need the support of a big stwong man to cawwy us back to the cave because we're weak wittle females??

Gweat.

But then, I sit here and consider the alternative. Comfortable shoes? You are, of course, referring to ugly shoes. Yeah, right.

And so each of us ladies perpetuate the status quo of the genders. Our shoe tastes are like a modern, living art homage to "Ode on a Grecian Urn." We may never get caught, but at least there will always be the chance we might.

And men sit there, looking pretty, in their practical, feet-shaped shoes. Devices that are ACTUALLY designed to be walked in.

Psh. Pansies.

A note to Brit-Brit's lyricist.

So I was watching some Jump Start this morning on VH1, (yeah I know- its still on. Weird, right?) and the video for Brit-Brit's "If You Seek Amy" was on.

First off- trashy. 'Nuff said. Y'all knew that.

Then we get to the lyrics. I have to confess that in spite of myself, I think that the title is pretty witty. Probably not original to the writer, but still witty. When I finally figured it out, about 3 weeks after I heard it for the first time, I giggled quite a lot. (It's super gay that they changed the title to "If you see Amy" for the radio edit, because now it makes even LESS sense, but whatever.) I figured "Yeah Brit-Brit, you tell the public. You pulled the wool over all of our eyes! Now we know you're making a comeback and its going to be a quippy one."

But then I felt betrayed. The song itself is completely stupid. (I know I shouldn't be that shocked/upset over a "Spears Classic", but there you go.) I feel like the lyricist used up any creative juices on the title. Brit-Brit has always overused the "ooh bab-eh, bab-eh" and this song is no exception. At one point, however- this song ACTUALLY has the words "Ha ha hee hee ha ha ho."

Seriously?

**heavy sigh**

HOW MANY MILLIONS OF DOLLARS DO YOU HAVE TO MAKE AS A POP STAR BEFORE YOU CAN START PAYING SONG WRITERS WHO WILL WRITE SONGS WITHOUT GIBBERISH LYRICS?!!??

I know you're all thinking to other pop MEGASUCCESS stories that used gobbledeegook lyrics too, like "You make me wanna La La" and "The Scatman", but really- Brit-Brit, is this the company you want to keep?

You can do better than that.

BEST. TRAILER. EVER.

HOLY SHIT.

I just watched this with my friend/coworker Erin. We both cried. I mean, tears- down the face- cried.

FROM JUST THE PREVIEW!

The movie is just going to be so friggin awesome. And this trailer shows all KINDS of new stuff that the teasers didn't. It looks like they are totally stepping up their game. It's going to explore every aspect of the plot from the book to tie it all together- the acting looks amazing, the effects are kickass, and I mean just fppszzzzzzt....

wow.

I mean, I got goosebumps like 5 times in the 2 and a half minutes or however long it is.

It made my day. Week. Hell, probably even weekend.

It's days like these that I thank GOD I'm a nerd.

Being the type of person who is too cool to cry in her cube over a 2 minute trailer of a "kids movie"? That just doesn't sound too great.

all of you muggles out there can just bite me- I'm off to dryclean my cloak. You guys are the ones missing out.