Dilbert

Things That Bug Me:

1. "The net-net is this..."

My brother loves to say "The fact of the matter is..." but I like my brother so it doesn't bug me so much as distract me from what the fact of the matter actually is. The guy in the cube next to me likes to say "The net-net is this" 75,489 times per conversation.

2. "I'm out of pocket."

This doesn't bother me when it's used CORRECTLY, as in, "I had to pay for that myself," but OH MY GOD people around this company REGULARLY use it to mean "unavailable." Like, "Are you going to be out of pocket during your vacation?"

THIS IS WRONG.

Urban Dictionary agrees with me:

Paid from personal funds. Somehow over the past half year or so, "out of pocket" has become a new business catchphrase meaning "unreachable, out of communication", which is incorrect.

It's a small world!

Anyone remember when I visited the egg farm in Oklahoma? They gave me an empty egg carton just for kicks and I loved that visit so much that I brought it all the way home with me and then ended up putting it in my fridge because that seemed like a logical spot. It's there on the right hand side of the middle shelf:



So I've had this empty egg carton in my fridge for months and it makes me think of Carey and her family and their eggs on a daily basis. As a matter of fact, I see that carton often enough that when I looked at one of The Pioneer Woman's Twitpics the other day I was like OH MY GOSH SHE BOUGHT CAREY'S EGGS!!

See?



And while all the other comments are along the lines of WHOA THAT'S A LOT OF BUTTER or WHOA THAT'S ONE HECK OF A VIEW, I immediately recognized the Fisher egg carton and I even went to look at the one in my fridge just to see if I was right, and I was!

I e-mailed Carey to ask her if maybe ALL the eggs in that neck of the woods come in similar cartons or if maybe those really were FISHER eggs and SURE ENOUGH! She thinks they are!

It's a silly coincidence, but seriously, I'm SO TICKLED that A) The Pioneer Woman uses Carey's family's eggs, B) that I've seen the source of those eggs and C) that I recognized the cartons.

Before and After

I have two sets of befores and afters for ya:

Before my shower (but after boot camp):

After my shower:

If I lose my phone, whoever finds it will be able to identify me by my zillions of lobby mirror shots. I take pictures of most of my outfits because I am VAIN VAIN VAIN. Know your name.

This particular one makes me way to cry a little tear because there was a stain on that blouse that the dry cleaner couldn't get out so I figured I'd attack it with bleach because otherwise it was definitely a lost cause. I thought I had been successful and was ALL excited to wear my favorite summery blouse for the first time this season and then I got in the car and realized that not only was the stain still there, but the entire area that I'd spot-treated with bleach was now yellow. Awesome. It was so bad I couldn't even pretend that it wasn't there so I had to go back upstairs and put on a shirt I'm less in love with.

WAH.

Before:

After:

I'm on a mint julep kick these days. That there mug is 50% of a set I bought with Daniel one day when we were cruising the Catholic Charities shop in downtown Burrrrrrrrrrrrrrrlingame, I think it was. They're engraved with Norm and Marv's names on them and the date -- 7/14/73, I think.

We think it was the day they won their bowling tourament. Must have been.

Also seen here:

Now it's time for me to go to a meeting where people ask me questions about things I'm surprised they think I have any authority on. I do and all, but in my head I'm 15 years old and I'm totally faking it.

And later? My first time back at a Weight Watchers meeting in over a year. Oh dear.

For BAC

After:

See?? SHORT SHORT SHORT!

Getting my hair did.

You know how when you clean your house you often make it worse before you make it better? If you're doing it right, anyway. I know Joan knows what I'm talking about. Well when getting your own self beautified you also have to make it worse before you make it better:

After I got my hairs did I went out for sushi with Ben and Sarah. It was after 7 by the time I got there and they're both totally jet lagged so I offered a rain check but their goal for the evening was to stay up until 9 (WATCH OUT!) so we went out anyway.

This particular sushi boat moves FAST so that, plus the fact that poor ol' Sarah was t-i-r-e-d meant that by the time she got her arm up in the air, her roll of choice had already ZOOMED by.

Fun Fact:

Going to a sushi boat with Ben and Sarah is not advisable because they end up with a stack of five measly plates COMBINED and you feel like a major OINKER for the six plates in front of you. I will say that I think six plates at a sushi boat is NOTHING compared to the plate towers other people build, but it still made me very self conscious.

When I was still on speaking terms with WWBF we'd go for sushi all the time and I don't know how he did it but I SWEAR half of his plates would end up in MY stack. No biggie because YOU KNOW I WAS PAYING FOR IT ALL ANYWAY except that believe me when I say that I'm SURE it was a subconscious (or maybe just passive aggressive, now that I think about it) Weight Watcher move. (And I guess this is where I should explain that I met him at Weight Watchers, for those of you who weren't around for that roller coaster.)

Unrelated:

I think I might want this cake pan:

The main problem though is that it looks like a WALL of cake and that doesn't appeal to me because, you know, cake is useless without frosting.

Thanks for the link, Jordy.

On the agenda for the weekend:

1. Hot date with Tony & John! We're gonna cross another item off the list of 100 things to try in SF before we die. Possibly #43.

2. Drag queen brunch for Sarah's birthday! We'll be brunching with two pregnant chicks and one of them is pretty close to her due date so we all need to cross our fingers that she doesn't go into labor before Sunday because we're past the cancel-by date so we'll have to pay for her anyway. DAMN HER for not considering the drag queens while planning her family. Sheesh.

2a. And no, I'm not talking about the birth of my future niece or nephew. That one still gets 9 more weeks of cookin' time. S/he did, by the way, kick my hand the other day. My hand was on L's belly at the time, so it's to be expected and all, but it was still a strange experience.

HOLY CRAP I'M GOING TO BE AN AUNT IN NINE WEEKS.

Meme!

I was tagged by Sassy Sarah:

Take a picture of yourself right now.

No primping or preparing.

Just snap a picture.

Load the picture onto your blog.

Tag some people to play along.

Here's the glamour:


I won't tag anyone though because I'm always a chicken about that.

Unrelated: I'm watching Miley Cyrus on American Idol and I want to punch myself for thinking that I should download this song. Damn her for being so Stevie Nicks-ish.

The Fro

I'm getting my hair cut tomorrow but coming across pictures like these make me want to grow my hair out again:




It was very windy on that boat to the Isle of Mull, but maaaaaan I'm missing my hair right now.




[Insert more blah blah blah about how YOUNG I looked even just a few years ago.]

But no more long hair for me. I love the short hair too, so I'll get over myself and YOU JUST WAIT...tomorrow at 4:30 when Laurie asks me what I want I'll tell her that I want it SHORT SHORT SHORT and she'll cut it so it hits my shoulders when it's wet and I'll be happy.

I need a honey so I can start a honey-do list.

I had a meeting in one of those sexy SOMA industrial-buildings-turned-Web2.0-companies last night. It was pretty much just one large open space with a full kitchen in one corner. Like a studio apartment on steroids, actually.

The kitchen really caught my eye because it looked very much like my kitchen -- groovy cabinets, double oven, etc. The difference though is that while my cabinets are a really fetching almond formica (?) with oak trim (vintage 1983, baby!), theirs were white with silver metal trim and the result was really fresh and modern and kinda spacey, but not so spacey that normal people couldn't live with them and now I'm thinking that this could be an exciting way to update my kitchen.


Here's the best picture of my cabinets I can find (without really trying that hard):

So now I need to find out if it's possible.

I know I need to update my kitchen before I sell but because I have a big, giant kinda free-standing cabinet against the other wall, I don't think it'll be as easy as just replacing the cabinet doors and drawer fronts (and new appliances & counter tops), so if I can figure out a way to work with what I've got, I would be happy. The big, giant kinda free-standing cabinet would still need new veneer or whatever the heck it is, but a sheet of veneer sounds cheaper than getting all new cabinets made (because I DOUBT that big cabinet is a standard size).

Anyway, blah blah blah...not exciting, I know, but I wanted to post this to remind myself.

And I'm gonna be really disappointed if I go to Ikea.com and find out that they're not updated old cabinets at all,

My dad flew around the bay and boy are his arms tired.

Before I get to the B-17 BONANZA, I want to just get this off my chest:

Ben & Sarah are on vacation right now and I feel all full of angst that they're not safe and sound at home. It occurred to me that *I'M* usually the one off on the adventure...I'm not used to being the one at home, worrying about the ones who are away.

So, sorry for flying here and there and not really ever considering anyone's concern for my well-being.

Also -- I was telling my mom that I checked their flight from NYC to Dublin to make sure it would arrive in time for them to make their connection to Madrid and seeing right there on my computer screen that Ben and Sarah were flying in the air RIGHT THAT MOMENT was unnerving. I mean, duh, I know that when people go places they fly in airplanes and that airplanes go up in the sky and...uh...FLY, but it's usually something people are going to do or have just finished doing. I'd rather not think about my loved ones hurtling through the air. Over an ocean.

But speaking of flying, this oldfangled airplane was in town for a couple of days and we heard that my dad really wanted to take a flight on it so we bought him a ride as an early Father's Day present. My mom and I spent our Saturday morning on the tarmac, taking 75,000 videos of us talking to each other. I'm having trouble embedding the videos, but really, they're not exciting...just me and my annoying voice that I'm sorry everyone I know has to listen to.

But here's the plane:

Speaking of how strange it is for the world wide internet to tell me that my brother is IN THE AIR RIGHT THIS MINUTE, here's a picture of a plane FLYING IN THE AIR with my father ON IT. In the air. Flying. Dangerously.

From his perspective:

A beautiful day for an airplane ride, no?

He lovvved it and I'm happy my mom and I could be there to watch.

Fun Fact:

Dave (the dog) licks his lips all night long and it jamaicas me crazy.

Solution:

Sleep with the ear plugs my dad gave me for the B-17 thing.

He's spending the night with my parents tonight and I am SO EXCITED to get an uninterrupted night's sleep because I love him, I reallllly do, but I don't know how anyone manages to share a bed with him.

This is probably another reason not to have children.

Hill Valley Preservation Society

I kinda want this t-shirt:

But not enough to actually wear it out of the house.

I am very fancy and I attend book signings. Of cable TV and internet celebrities. But still.

The nice thing about living next to a park (that I wouldn't spend any time in unless I was looking to buy and/or do drugs) is that it's easy to spot my apartment in arial shots of the city like this one:

I love Dooce and all, but the airport is several miles ouside of San Francisco and honestly, I'd be hard pressed to remember ever seeing a commercial airplane flying over the city proper. I'm probably wrong, but what?

Related:

I went to the Dooce book signing last week and daaaaaaaaaaaamn that woman was a trooper. She was super pregnant but was also looking super fierce in a chic dress and some definite CFM shoes that she may very well have been wearing at the time of conception.

I dorked out though and didn't get a picture with her, unlike two of my other compadres Sassy Sarah and Sunol Steph. The angle would not have been fatty-friendly and in order to avoid being a denim-clad beast hovering over the pretty pregnant lady I would have had to complete a squatting maneuver but a quick calculation told me that my skirt + the lack of a table cloth on the table she was sitting behind would not turn out well for the people in the front row of chairs.

So alls I have to show for it is this hastily-taken and excessively blurry shot of someone who, you'll have to trust me on this, is THE Heather Armstrong of Dooce fame:

And also proof that the woman in front of me has pierced ears.

Fun Facts:

1. Sassy Sarah is the first of my friends to actually meet SIL Sarah. She's no Snuffaluffagus!

2. Bree, my BFF from kindergarten, was also there and I finally got to meet her not-so-new baby!

Snowman Underpants

Okay so there was a big earthquake in Italy last night. I love me an earthquake as much as the next native Californian, but nobody likes to hear about bad earthquakes where towns crumble and people die. Especially when your brother and sister-in-law are in Spain and are fixin' to go to Italy tomorrow.

They'll be in Sorrento for three nights and then they'll be going to Rome for three nights and based on what I read on the US Embassy's website, they don't need to change their plans so it's all good in the hood. Well, for tourists anyway.

Ben called early this morning to check up on Dave (who is fine, but is totally bored with me and is clearly missing Ben & Sarah) and I asked him if he had heard about the earthquake. He hadn't, but being in non-English-speaking countries is like being in a bubble...the world continues to spin but the only English you see is the occasional signage for bathrooms or souvenirs.

When Joanie and I checked into our hotel in Venice the guy at the front desk told us that "USA! BOOM!"

Wha?

And it wasn't until the next day when we shared a table at a cafe with a couple other Americans did we learn that there was an explosion at a power plant in New Mexico. Except that now, when I went Googling to see exactly what the heck it actually was, I think maybe it was a forest fire that threatened nuclear something-or-other at Los Alamos National Laboratory. I don't know though.

So anyway, the STRANGE thing is that after I talked to Ben I thought maybe I'd dreamed (dreamt?) it all up because I can't for the life of me figure out how I heard about it and knew to Google it on my phone sometime in the middle of the night. Except I didn't dream it -- it did actually happen, so I dunno. Maybe we have a psychic connection.

Weird.

Fun Fact: I was doing laundry last night and they left a load of stuff in the dryer so I was folding it and discovered that Ben is still wearing snowman boxers. In April. So I safety pinned a note to them alerting him to the fact that they're seasonally inappropriate.

AND NOW THE WHOLE INTERNET KNOWS that my brother wears snowman underpants.

You're welcome Benny!