Sometimes I’m lazy
Today’s blog is brought to you by the letter “I’m old.”
Mar 25th
Okay, yes. The grammar above makes me cringe. But Marie and I tried fruitlessly to come up with a catchy slogan-thing for this and that’s the best thing our brains could find. It’s a play on “women’s rights,” yo. Shut up. Don’t forget to post your contribution to Women’s Writes on Monday, April 5. Email me a link (shine [at] ishineoudloud [dot] com) and I’ll post it here. DO IT!
Okay, so maybe “I’m old” isn’t a letter. Whatever.
I so wasn’t blogging today because I’m lazy, but then I went to lunch.
There are really only about three places to eat near my work, so I’ve been to each of them several times. Because of this, often the servers recognize me. It’s been two years, y’all. And I’m a memorable girl. Anyway, I hadn’t really been to this particular establishment in a while, but they have yummy pasta and my tummy was all, “I NEED YUMMY PASTA FOR LUNCH AND IF YOU DON’T GIVE ME YUMMY PASTA, I WILL MAKE YOU MISERABLE.” Yes, even my tummy uses commas and punctuation.
So I went to the restaurant, sat down with The Purity Myth (I deserve a new pair of shoes for not gathering up all the abstinence “educators” I can find and locking them in a basement indefinitely), and ate my pasta. The waitress was one I had before, but not in a long time.
When she brought me my check, she said, “Do you have a sister?”
I said, “No.” This is a lie, but for the purposes of her line of questioning I didn’t think an entire family tree was in order. If you need to know, I’ll happily go through it with you.
She said, “Oh really? There used to be this girl who came in here all the time. She looked just like you.”
I asked, “Are you sure it wasn’t me?”
She said, “Well, she had red hair like yours, but…well, she looked younger than you.”
“Uh, yeah…are you sure it wasn’t me?”
This conversation went on and I’m pretty convinced that it was, in fact, me. So today, dear readers, I look significantly older than I did three months ago when I last ate at this restaurant. That’s just SAD.
Sorry dudes. This is all you’re getting today.
Mar 16th
I’ve seen this floating around (everywhere, but today it’s also at Rachel’s place) and well…I don’t really feel like writing you a post today, so here are my answers! Try to contain your excitement.
If I were a month, I’d be October.
If I were a day of the week, I’d be Saturday.
If I were a time of day, I’d be happy hour.
If I were a planet, I’d be Jupiter.
If I were a sea animal, I’d be a walrus.
If I were a direction, I’d be West.
If I were a piece of furniture, I’d be a desk .
If I were a liquid, I’d be rain.
If I were a gemstone, I’d be emerald.
If I were a tree, I’d be an weeping willow.
If I were a tool, I’d be a level.
If I were a flower, I’d be a sunflower.
If I were a kind of weather, I’d be a rain storm.
If I were a musical instrument, I’d be a cello.
If I were a color, I’d be orange.
If I were an emotion, I’d be contemplative.
If I were a fruit, I’d be a kiwi.
If I were an element, I’d be fire.
If I were a car, I’d be a ’69 Mustang.
If I were a food, I’d be a cupcake.
If I were a place, I’d be a private beach with less than the average amount of sand.
If I were a material, I’d be cashmere.
If I were a scent, I’d be fresh mint.
If I were an animal, I’d be an owl monkey.
If I were a facial expression, I’d be a smirk.
If I were a song, I’d be “The Garden” by Mirah.
If I were a pair of shoes, I’d be ballet flats.
What would you be?
In other news, I’m in a weird mood today.
My blog thinks some of you are spam. I can’t seem to change that.
Jan 26th
Dear readers,
My blog hates some of you, but I want to take this moment to tell you that I do NOT. I promise that I’m trying to convince my anti-spammy thing that you guys are my FRIENDS, and not, say, the people who are trying to sell me a mail-order bride or viagra. Only one of which I’m considering. I’ll let you guy mull that over for a few minutes.
Anyway, I just wanted to tell you to rest-assured that I will approve your comments as soon as I find them. My blog finds Erin at snarke.net “quite spammy” and often quarantines her! I’m not sure what quarantine is like, but last time she was sitting in there next to a bot trying to sell everyone Ambien. So at least she probably got a good night’s sleep…and possibly purchased some furniture online without remembering it.
I promise I love you guys!
Shine
In other news, I had a lovely weekend of…not doing a whole hell of a lot. I watched a lot of NCIS. SHUT UP, I know. But I love it anyway. Saturday was girls’ night out and I was the only one without an “L” name. I guess this means I need new friends?
I’m kidding, guys. You know I love you all. Even if I am the odd duck for not having an “L” name.
Favorite line of the night? “The Asian Pear Martini at the restaurant where I used to work was so good, I creamed my pants.” And for that line, I left my friend’s phone number for our cute waiter. Who needs a haircut. Okay, maybe I’m hoping they’ll go out JUST so she can convince him to cut his hair.
Friday sucked. Now I will proceed to tell you about it.
Jan 25th
Friday morning, I got a call from a friend who needed a right home from the airport. Her ride had fallen through at the last minute. I called my boss to explain the situation and then headed out to fight traffic to the airport.
After I dropped my friend off, I steered the car toward the office and…flashing lights behind me. UGH. I had just turned right, so I know I wasn’t speeding. I hadn’t run a red light. WTF?
OH YEAH MY REGISTRATION WAS EXPIRED. To be honest, I thought they had mailed me the sticker and I had just forgotten to put it on my car. In reality, I had forgotten to mail the check. Oops.
So the cop pulls me over and tells me what’s what. He gave me a ticket (I deserved it. My registration had been expired since July), and sent me on my way. So I called my boss AGAIN, to explain and see if it was okay if I just went to take care of it right then.
Surprisingly, there’s a tax office pretty close to my apartment. I found a meter and fed it some change and went in…to find the BIGGEST LINE EVER. The best part? They put the line on the far side of the room, and down the side, but you can’t really see it from the door. So everyone walking in thinks there is no line and just walks up to one of the windows. Then the people in the line get angry and snap. I offered to tackle someone.
Once I had gotten my registration updated, I realized I was only about a mile from the municipal court. I figured it would be easiest to just walk up there and take care of my ticket, too. I didn’t realize this would involve an hour wait, a court appointment, a judge, and a bitchy lady.
I walk in to the door that has the proper address and I’m immediately told that I’m “not at the entrance.” The entrance, you see, isn’t on the same street as the ADDRESS. Maybe I’m just being picky here, but if you’re going to bother to have an address, why don’t you make it on the street where people actually need to ENTER THE BUILDING? I finally find the right door and it’s covered with signs for all the things I’m not allowed to bring into the court building. No guns, knives, alcohol, sporting equiment…wait, sporting equipment?!? I guess someone beat a judge with a bat or something.
It just so happens that I have a carabiner with an ATC belay device clipped to my pants because I wanted to make sure that I put it with my climbing equipment (in my car…which was a mile away). The security guard immediately looks at it and says, “What on earth is that?” I explained that it was just a device used for rock climbing, and she held out a tray for me to put it on so she could inspect it. I put my purse on another tray and walked through the security screening. No beeps! Then she says to me, “You got a pocket knife in that purse?” I started looking through my bag and found a pair of nail clippers. She asked to see them and then let me go through.
Later, I discovered that in addition to the pair of nail clippers, I did indeed have a pocket knife. AND a corkscrew with a little knife on it. And I got through that security screening THREE TIMES with three separate guards. Way to be on the ball, boys (and lady).
I finally managed to find the right person and plead my case. She said that the next court appointment was in an hour and could I just wait for that? What choice did I have? It did hit me that my meter was going to run out, so I needed to move my car. No problem! I had an hour to kill anyway!
Back to the car. Move the car. Park it at a meter in front of the courthouse. Realize that I just used all my change at the last meter. Except for one nickel. Which gave me four minutes. FREAK OUT.
Don’t worry, there was a change machine on the other side of security. This part of the story had a happy ending.
As I piled into the courtroom for my appointment with fifty other people, I felt my heart sink a little. How could this NOT take forever? But somehow, because of the way they do the alphabet in this courtroom, I got called as the first person on the left side! The woman who spoke to me was incredibly rude. Especially when I dared to ask her what would happen next.
The judge saw the person who went first, then the next person, then the person after me, then a couple more people. I noticed the woman on the right asking people to hand stuff to the bailiff. So I walked over to her and asked if I was supposed to give her something. The woman I had spoken with told me to sit down, that I would be seen when the judge called my name. I said that I didn’t mind waiting, but he had called five people who had gone after me and I just wanted to make sure that I didn’t have some paperwork or something.
What happened was this: The woman who spoke to me didn’t bother to hand my paperwork off to the bailiff, like she was supposed to. Instead, she held on to it and attached it to the paperwork of the next person. When his name was called, he was handed both my paperwork and his. He went to the clerk to pay his fine. He also paid mine. It took over an hour to figure this out, so I was stuck in a courtroom all that time.
The rules in the courtroom:
- Cell phones must be turn OFF. Not just on silent.
- No food.
- No drinks.
- No talking.
- NO READING.
Seriously. You are not allowed to READ in the courtroom. Is it any wonder the youth of today can barely speak English?
I didn’t make it to work until 4:00 pm. Ugh.
Mexico: The Speedbumps
Dec 15th
Last year, over spring break, I took a little trip to Me-hee-co. It was lovely. The beach was awesome, as was the swim-up bar. Who doesn’t love a swim-up bar? But I think my favorite part of the whole thing was the speed bumps.
I know, I know. It seems weird. Mexican speed bumps are the shit, though. There are at least five different kinds, and they’re everywhere. Residential streets, highways, sidewalks, hallways, you name it. And they take that shit seriously in Mexico.
First, they have the normal, average, everyday USA kind, but about 2 inches taller. If you’re in your teeny tiny car, it’ll rip you up if you don’t slow down. So everyone slows down. These were mostly in public parking lots, like the airport.
Then there are… well, how do I put this? You know the road tits? The ones they use for the left turn lane, so you’ll think really long and hard about trying to get out of it once you’re in it? They’re like the lane dividers but ten times the size? Well, there are speed bumps made out of two to three rows of those. They’re all over the highways and busy streets. They seemed to be the most effective. No one speeds over those things.
After that, we have the big-wide-rounded-top speed bump. It was my favorite when I lived in El Paso, because it’s fun to speed over that kind. They had them in the Target parking lot, and we always referred to them as “Target Speed Bumps.” It never occurred to me that Target may not put those in parking lots nation-wide. What a disappointment. But they had some in Mexico. Not as fun because the cab drivers slowed down too much.
The next ones are the slant-up-flat-top-slant-down kind. I don’t really enjoy these so much. They were the least prevalent, usually seen at check points and things like that. I actually only remember encountering them on the day trip to Chichen Itza. I was on this giant bus. And I get carsick. The tour guide wouldn’t shut up. He kept making these incredibly ridiculous numerological parallels between the Mayan pyramid and everyday things in Western culture. Yeah, I’m pretty sure the Maya didn’t know anything about Snow White and the Seven Dwarves or that there would eventually be 52 cards in a deck. But thanks, dude. Glad you could listen to yourself talk for nine hours.
My all-time favorite speed bumps were these ones that were almost the reverse of the slant-up-flat-top-slant-down kind. There were two slant-down-flat-bottom-slant-up-flat-top ones in a row. These were everywhere, but mostly in the residential neighborhoods. Like the one on the way to the hotel. It was almost like they just decided to build in structured potholes. Probably you could get away with speeding over those things, but I wouldn’t advise it.
Of course none of that matters, since lanes and speed limits are really barely even suggestions in Playa del Carmen. Going the wrong way, but in the right lane? No problem. Just pull a U-turn in front of all the traffic, they won’t mind. And if you happen to drive a tour bus, you have the right of way. At all times. Even if it means the guy driving the other way while you’re passing someone has to go off-roading for a few minutes. Some would call it a really boring game of chicken, in which everyone knows who the winner will be. On another trip, some passengers were telling us about the driving in the Dominican Republic. Apparently, there mothers will drive little scooters while just holding their children onto their sides, sort of football style in my imagination. Compared to that, the driving in Playa del Carmen is amazing.
