Over the last two weeks, I’ve had a small breakdown, decided to take a break from rowing competitively for a while, made some decisions regarding my career & business, acquired a minion, and pulled myself back from being such a friggin’ girl.

sometimes you just need someone to remind you not to be a chick.

In the course of my situational rollercoaster, I had about a week where I thought I should say yes to a possibility that was a bad idea. Then a Frenchwoman was kind enough to metaphorically smack me upside the head & remind me that just because certain situational issues had changed didn’t mean that certain personality differences had altered, so at the end of the day, I had the choice of whether I wanted to have a friend or an inevitable ex-boyfriend – given the way I presented that information, you can probably guess which I chose.

the stuff that oars contribute to.

I’m not quitting rowing. Let’s just make that clear. But I need some time, and some distance, and just… a break. I need to not care about rowing so much, and work on other aspects of my life before I think even about backing up to a stake boat again.

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Initially, I chose to take a week off from exercise completely. What did I do with that extra time?

I slept.

Oh yah. I slept. And slept. And then, when I was done with that, I slept some friggin’ more. At one point, Jenny from Forrest Gump called & was like, “Damn girl, you got skills.”

But sleep doesn’t last forever. Much to Zoey’s disappointment, eventually you have to wake up, roll your sleep-groggy arse out of bed and see to the rest of your life.

Getting my land legs back.

I took a week off exercising completely, and then only did some light cardio last week – 45 minutes on an arc machine at heart rate is a full workout for alot of people, but for a rower that’s just enough to justify sitting (okay laying) in the dry sauna followed up by a nice long shower.

The first workout back after I’ve taken time off is usually kind of… rank. And I mean that in the odoriferous sense. Exercise really is how my body detoxes – I sweat on a ridonkculous level, and if I go more than three days without exercising in some fashion, the sweat that I throw off in that return workout really is just… well it’s noxious. After a whole week off… ugh, I don’t even want to suggest to you what those clothes smelled like when I pulled them out of my gym bag. ’twasn’t pretty, people. just. not. pretty.

It was kind of weird, not having that… routine of working out as part of my daily life. You notice odd things — this weekend I realized this was literally the first time in years that all of my workout clothes were clean & in the appropriate drawer at the same time.

I think the dogs were a little startled to have me around that much. Ernie was thrilled, but Zoey kept looking at me like, “What’s the catch?”

However, we all know that Sedentary!Claris only lasts so long, so thanks to a story involving a pair of pants that I’ll share at another time, I decided to do the San Francisco Half Marathon at the end of July — partly because I’ve lived in LA for a decade & never been to San Fran, but also because the finish line for the 1st half marathon is only about two miles from Lovely Poet & Missi’s apartment, so I won’t have far to go before I can fall over afterwards.

hustlin’ with help.

Along with smacking some sense into me so I didn’t was less likely to make stupid decisions in my romantic life, the aforementioned frenchwoman also said, “You have this competitive drive that you pour into sport, but in the long run it doesn’t gain you much for the rest of your life. I don’t understand why you don’t take that same attitude and apply it to business? Wouldn’t the results of that solve alot of other problems in your life?”

That was very hard for me to hear. Not due to an unwillingness to recognize the inherent truth therein, but because it forced me to concede the one thing none of us ever want to admit — the French were right.

So for me, this summer is also about finally getting my arse in gear & doing what I should have been doing way before now — treating my business like a career instead of a job. That means going through & redoing my contracts, finishing up the revamp of my portfolio, doing some sites for strategic purposes, & launching one of my own projects.

Truth told, it’s gonna be a whack of work.

Which is why it kinda works out that one day in a boathouse locker room whilst shooting the sh*t with a teenager while I was getting dressed, I ended up finding a minion.
If you’re a rower, that sentence is completely legal & actually did make sense. Just trust me & roll with it.

So Veni is going to come help me out this summer, and we’ll see if, between the two of us we can’t take over the world – within project scope, of course. Shouldn’t be too hard, I finally signed up for Basecamp, so once I get done with the tutorial webinar on Monday, we can totally map things out, and before you know it, domination shall be mine. Just you wait & see.

Music: Florence + the Machine (MTV Unplugged)

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In the process of completing a survey as part of a job bid, I finished the Self-Evaluation of Skills where I numerically rated my skills in various software products, programming languages, & miscellaneous skills. In the comments section, I put the following:

“In the survey above, the word “Writing” is spelled wrong.
(I also do proofreading.)”

I’m just sayin’.

Fear the future.

Someone marked a post on pinterest with the caption: “I want to be an Olsen”.

…I don’t know who you are, but I’m really really scared for you.

My monkey has red pants!

Let me start by saying this: I like kids. I do.

Due to the fact that I spent most of my teenage years working as what is now called an au pair* & thus have already raised someone else’s toddler, I don’t presently feel any driving urge to manufacture additional replicants. However, I do like other people’s children & honestly do enjoy interacting with them.
*back then we just called it “babysitting a lot”.

The result is that I am totally the person that stands behind parents at the grocery store & makes faces at your kids so that they laugh & clap and then when you turn around I pretend to be fully absorbed in my iPhone screen, thus causing you to wonder what on earth is wrong with your offspring that they are having spasms of joy over what appears to be nothing at all.

And then, when you turn around, I start making faces at the kids all over again. :thumbs up:

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That said, even I felt a little bad about this one.

I was in Target, & a very cheerful toddler stood up in the cart & began waving at me. As the housewares department normally doesn’t see that kind of enthusiasm, I happily waved back. She obliged by displaying the odd plastic green rubber… thingy that was in her hands (I have no idea what is the new…toy…thing or whatever) and said, “My toy!”

To which I said, “Your toy is very nice. What color is it?” When her face was clearly stricken at not knowing the answer, I said, “It’s green. Your toy is green.”

Toddler was rather delighted by this, and started looking for something. “Monkey!” she proudly said, thrusting out the tiny plush monkey which had been by her feet. “My monkey is green!”

“No,” I told her gently, “Red. Your monkey has red pants.”

It was at this point that her mother decided it was time to move to the next item on her list & we waved goodbye.

However, as I walked around the corner, I heard a small voice saying, “My monkey has red pants!” “Hi! My monkey has red pants!”

And, from my viewpoint, I could look down the line of aisle openings & see that my tiny new friend was indeed now riding the cart through Target, greeting every single person they passed & letting them know that her monkey has red pants.

To her mother:

I am so sorry.

I know what it’s like when I toddler grabs onto an idea & won’t let go, and I realize there’s the very real possibility that you heard about the monkey’s red pants for at least half an hour straight following our conversation, so yes. My utmost, honestly sincere apologies – I had no idea things were gonna go down like that.

Seriously. My bad.
~ Claris

Music: Howie Day – She Says (Stop All the World Now)

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After my mixed bag exercise at Head of the American, last week was my week off.

Why did I take a week off?

originally asked by Sachiel.
In most training plans, athletes are encouraged to take at least one week a year off. For a lot of rowers, this often happens in August/September — it’s a natural break between sprint season ending & fall head racing beginning.

In my case, it happened in July — I wasn’t going to Canadian Henley, so after tearing down the course at Mercer like a bull in a china shop, I’d had a break and started training for the fall in August.

With my right arm injured & the decision not to row NARF, I took the week after Head of the American off — not only in the hopes of allowing my elbow/forearm to heal up, but also so that I could do a second step test to be compared to the one from earlier this fall. I’ll most likely do lactate testing with the kids at Beach!Boathouse in December, but since my first step test was done right after I’d been Sick Because of the Wheat, we did another to see if there was any difference or I just… suck.
(no, I don’t know the answer to that one yet, The Man Doing the Math had two high school regattas to run that Saturday & Sunday – we squinched it in last Friday due to timing of training schedule, so we both knew he’d get back to me with actual results when he gets a chance to breathe.)

For the record, a week off doesn’t mean I sat around on a couch watching TV & eating bon-bons. Instead of doing say, seven workouts in five days, I only did 3, and I was indeed completely off the water for… actually come to think of it I still haven’t been back on the water – my first days back that the boathouse have been erg workouts. #sad

so this is what other people do…

It’s an odd thing, a week off. The only comparison I can make is that it’s like when you work a 9-to-5 job and then there’s that one day when, for one reason or another, you’re not at your job and are instead out & about in the world. You drive around, go to the grocery store, Do Things Out in the World, and think, “So this is what happens in the rest of the world when I’m avoiding meetings and playing WordsWithFriends compiling code? Huh.”

I remember talking to one of the junior alums Alle when she came home for Christmas her freshman year. After four years rowing in high school, she got to uni in NY and decided that college rowing was not for her.

“It’s kinda weird at first, isn’t it?” I’d asked her.
“Oh my god,” she’d exclaimed, “I got like, twenty hours a week of my life back. I didn’t know what to do with myself!”

…and in a way, it’s like that. You look at your schedule & decide it’s going to be an All the Things! week. You’re going to Clean All the Things! and Make All the Food! and Catch Up on All the Client Work!

…and that totally, totally, completely doesn’t happen.

You think you know … but you have no idea.

What actually happens is that you get home from the regatta, and after having driven 12-14 hours in three days, drop all your crap in the middle of the living room, consider a shower, decide that you’ll just sit on your couch for a moment first, and then wake up on your couch the next morning.

Awesome start to what should have been The Week of Efficiency.

The next morning, when you were going to pack your boat on the car then row Z‘s Filippi before driving to Beach!Boathouse to drop off said boat & then pick up the Canine Brigade from their stint as part of Doggie Devo, you discover that it is not only pitch dark, but the coast has also been enveloped in a fog wall roughly the consistency of pea soup.

Good times driving the 45 minutes south on the 405 with that one, especially since my roll of twine disappeared & I couldn’t tie down the ends:

by the time I got to Beach!Boathouse and stopped after the speed bump to take this picture through my windshield, the fog had thankfully gotten a bit better than when I’d left LA. and yes, it was only my second time driving with $5k of hardware on the roof, so these conditions aren’t nerve-wracking at all.

…and the whole week just kinda goes from there. I got some things done, but not nearly as much as I really should have, or honestly, needed to.

The Week of Efficiency turned out to be The Week of Sludgery. Every time I’d be home to do something, I’d end up putting it off. Or sleeping. Or getting distracted by the dogs because I’m home for once & I should spend time with them. Or…something.

But most of all, last week reminded me of just how much the structure of having an athletic schedule helps to stave off depression.

silver lining: modern creatives have learned to abstain from ear amputation. (mostly)

Here’s the thing about creatives – we’re all a little crazy in our own way. That’s what makes us able to see things differently enough to comment on it in some form which gets your attention. If our brains worked like “normal” people, you’d only get “normal” stuff, and then we’d all just be really friggin’ bored at the office.

and in case anyone’s wondering, I actually did buy my parents AAA for Christmas last year.

And for the public at large, this great — these are the kind of minds that think up how to win a debate with your husband over whether to buy new towels by putting a 4 foot high metal chicken on the front stoop, or Seven Games You Can Play With a Brick.

But it also gets you into places where you freak out because all you can think is that you have no idea what the f*ck you’re doing and you have to be honest with people that the reason you haven’t been writing is that you’ve been trying to figure out why you don’t want to get out of bed.

I think part of it is that it’s just that time of year. Here in SoCal, summer ran out on us faster than a whore the morning after payday, leaving behind cold winds and a fog worthy of a Brontë novel, and everyone’s just like, “ugh… great.”

But across the board, I have several highly creative, incredibly smart friends who are having Life!Crisis!Moments! Whether it’s from a book deadline, job uncertainty, or in one case dog training, there’s a high occurrence of us each talking one another off the ledge as of late, and it just keeps reminding me to thank $deity for the internet. Years ago, we’d have each just been the town weirdo, isolated & told by others that there’s something wrong with us, but thanks to the power of the interwebs, town freaks across the world can connect & discover that it’s not that you’re the only person having these issues, it’s simply that geography separated us from meeting face-to-face, so let’s just go ahead & create our own electronic-based support group.

In terms of helping to create an emotionally stable place for creatives to innovate the ideas in their head, the internet just might be the best thing to ever happen for that weird kid who sat in the back of class in high school.

why? because our fellow crazies help us feel better.

Here’s the thing — just like the brains of creative people have the ability to bring about really great things, it also works in the way of being able to see life in creatively bad ways, the thinking about which can cause one to go completely over the edge — not necessarily into Hacking Apart My Neighbors Mode, but more into a despondent sort of Why the F*ck Am I Even Bothering Mode, where you’re so apathetic that not even the possibility of unicorn bacon could make things better.

In Despondent Mode (as I shall refer to things in a rare attempt at brevity), you just don’t care. Things are never going to work out right anyway, they never have, why bother doing anything? It’s way easier to catch up on Hulu, or take a nap, or walk to Target & get food you shouldn’t be eating even though there’s food that’s good for you which could easily be made in the fridge because things will never change and one day everyone’s going to figure out that I’ve actually been desperately hoping no one will notice that underneath everything I’m just a huge failure so why bother trying in the first place when the inevitable is inevitable — after all, that’s why we call it inevitable because in this case I know that that word means what I think it means, goddammit.

It’s especially hard when you’re alone. When you’re out in the world, at work, or amongst other people, you can take your mind off it and focus on other things, and probably get things done. I am ridiculously productive when I’m at Museum!Co – the thought of going in on a day when I’m not getting paid to be there so I can work on other clients has seriously crossed my mind, I sh*t y’all not.

Because as much as you can email, and call, and connect with the Internet Friends Who Are Your Kind of Crazy, there’s a limit to how much that can help. So if you’re someone that’s single and lives alone, there’s no one to talk you off the ledge in real life, because oh holy jesus you don’t want to talk to someone you see every day about it, because then they’ll look at you and what if they always wonder if you’re about to go crazy, and then they’ll try to be like, sensitive & sh*t & be all, “You know, if you ever need to talk, it’s okay” which is well-intended but just comes off really… patronizing. A relationship? Forget it. Who would want to deal with that? Normal people aren’t like this, after all, and people want to be around people who are normal.

…and that’s the kind of thinking & reasoning that starts things off. The problem is that when you’re by yourself, with only your brain, that’s when things can go… a little off the rails.

it’s called a downward spiral for a reason.

When you’re already tired & you get home to the apartment that for the love of god you’re trying to leave but finding somewhere that doesn’t mind that you have two dogs is such a bitch in LA, and there’s work to be done and food that needs to be made because hey – turns out your body doesn’t like wheat so the majority of any food in packaging has become off-limits, and there’s laundry and it’s just you to do everything, because there is no one else there.
You’re on your own, the same way you’ve always been and sometimes can’t help but think you just might always be if for no other reason than that your brain doesn’t work like other girls which is why guys always ask the tiny cute girl who doesn’t have these problems and knows how to play whatever game it is that I’m supposed to understand but don’t because clearly I missed that day in junior high when everybody else got to go over the rules which is why I always do the wrong thing, and even if I did know what I’m supposed to be doing, it doesn’t really matter because guys in California are only interested in Tiny Cute Girls which my double-digit jeans size ass will never be, ’cause while being able to balance 3/4 slide at a standstill with oars up in a single looks great on the water, turns out that’s not exactly something guys consider a siren song of date-ability, and maybe my mother was right that no man is going to want a girl with a smart mouth like mine so couldn’t I at least try to lose a little weight because you’d probably look just lovely if you lost a few pounds but if you can’t manage that you’d best go make yourself useful & work.
Because work is all I’m really good at, or I would be if I would just finally get everything done and live up to all of my supposed potential that everyone is always telling me I have, except I’m tired and I don’t want to have to do everything myself but there’s no one else and I need to just figure everything out and get everything done and do it on my own because I can’t depend on anyone else to actually do anything, I can’t even trust the woman that’s been walking my dogs because when I came home at 7pm on Wednesday she was only just taking them out for their second walk and when I went to give her the check for the month she reeked of pot and I’m so glad I was able to tell her no es más after November 20 because holy shit you’re old enough to be my mom and I already grew up with Drunk Mommy I don’t need Pothead Dogwalker plus now I’m wondering how many times you’ve come into my house and taken my dogs out onto the street when you’ve been high as a fuckin’ kite and am I the only one in this apartment building that’s not a pot smoker this is why I keep trying to leave, for fuck’s sake I just want an apartment that I like in a neighborhood that doesn’t suck in my price range where they don’t mind that I have two dogs and that one of them is over 40 pounds I hate to break it to ya but both of my dogs will cause far less damage than a cat — have you ever been in an apartment where the cat refuses to use the litter box? Do you know how noxious the smell of fermented cat pee in the walls and carpet is and you’re worried about my dogs? Christ on a crutch I hate this place and I don’t want to do a damn scrap of client work even though that money would make it easier to move because I’m just so tired and I really want a nap because I don’t want to deal with any of this and fuck my potential and accomplishment and all the shit I’m supposedly capable of, I am tired and alone and why does it seems like everyone else knows what they’re doing when I feel so lost and it would be so much easier just to go to sleep.

… because in your head, things sound like that, and you just want to sit down and cry.

A bunch.

…and then when you wake up the next morning, all that stuff from the night before is still there needing to be done, and you have to deal with it.

All. Over. Again.

slicing life into more manageable pieces.   like cake.
mmm… cake.

So how, you might ask, does one get through moments like that and not end up in a padded cell wearing a jacket that hasn’t been fashionable since the completely unexpected Spanish Inquisition?

Everybody’s got their own way – some people have a shrink, some people cry, some people yell at other people on the internet, and I’ve got two friends in San Francisco who became roommates & declared themselves The House that Biochemistry Built.
Warning: While there is very little chance of involuntary anal leakage, morbid humor has been found to be a common side effect of any therapeutic technique.

For me, it’s structure.

Other than my time at Museum!Co, I technically do not have an actual accountability to be anywhere or see anyone at any point in time. I am a freelancer, I make my own schedule – theoretically, I can work from wherever I want whenever I want. While that sounds really great, the whole working-in-your-pajamas concept, it’s actually incredibly hard. Most of the time, for me to get any significant work done, I have to literally physically leave my apartment. The CBTL on Melrose? For some reason, that spot is just incredibly productive for me. I can get more done in one 8 or 12 hour stretch where I’ve glued my arse to the chair in the table by the door than I would in three days spent trying to work in my apartment.

But it’s also about not working 12 hours at a stretch, and giving myself a break.

As one guy I know said, “your brain just never stops working, does it?”
To which I unthinkingly replied, “I was left to my own a lot as a child, and according to my brother’s military recruiter I have a high aptitude for creative problem-solving.”
–> for the record, ^that response tends to be a conversation-stopper. just a tip.

I’ve learned that it’s important for me to create times when I can put all of the things in my head aside and just do without thinking, which for me is often achieved by working out.

Some people work out because they’re angry. rowing has a lot of this one.
Some people work out because of their body issues, some people use it to work off stress.

I work out so that my brain is too tired to work itself into Slightly Crazed Despondent Mode.

After growing up & being told that I was chubby & not an athlete, rah rah one of the last kids running around the track on Presidential Fitness Testing Day & all that, I walked into a gym at the age of 18 and discovered something:

High amounts of cardio makes my world better.

The Riddikulus Voice doesn’t think four chess moves ahead because I simply don’t have the mental energy to hear it – truth is, I’m actually kind of okay with the fact that I have a tendency to forget day-to-day operational details — trust me when I say that in my case, better to be absent-minded than overly-minded.

In terms of the largest yield of Fatigue Acquisition in the shortest amount of time, rowing’s hard to beat. Competitive rowers are, well, we’re kinda not right in the head, and most other athletes will openly acknowledge that. I was walking across the pitch at the San Diego Highland Games a few years ago when a very friendly, completely fit Irish guy made a beeline over & tried to recruit me for the San Diego Rugby league. (Like I said, I ain’t a tiny girl.)

I laughed & said, “”First off, I’m from LA, so I’m geographically useless to you, but also the UK already got me in another sport.”
“Oh really,” my would-be recruiter asked, “what’s that?”
“Rowing.”
“Never mind,” his delightful Irish accent informed me as he took a step or two back with his hands in the air. “I used to go running with the rowers at university. You fuckers are crazy.”

That’s right, people. Irish rugby players think the rowers are crazy.

In terms of comparative scale, that’s what one could call “an indicator”.
And every rower that just read that story just had a moment of pride in our sport. #trufax

Exercise also gives me a schedule. I have to get up in the mornings because rowing isn’t something you can do at any ol’ time of day. Or at least, not if you want anything to go well. While Beach!Boathouse is open to members 24/7, it’s a minimum 45 minute drive away.
Thus I have to go to Bear!Boathouse, whose morning hours are from 6am-9am, so if I’m going to go, I’ve got to get up. I try to set up my double days for when I’m not working onsite not only because of scheduling flexibility, but also because then I can’t tell myself I’ll just work later — I have to do it between this time & this time because I’ve already got something to do later.

This way, I don’t have to do everything all at once or feel pressured to Accomplish All the Things in one huge swath — I’ve got a slice of Work Cake built into my schedule, and I’ll do as much as I can in that slice of Work Cake before I go to my next slice of Exercise Cake.
mmm… cake.

except now I have a day without Exercise Cake. omg, no cake!

While it’s admittedly not perfect, this system is sort of what I’ve sussed out for myself, and it wasn’t until this last week when half of my structure was gone that I realized just how much I depend on it to make my world function. Not having that time set aside and not having planned anything to fill that gap in my schedule was just a new kind of horrible, and it really wasn’t until towards the end of the week when I realized that I was running out of time to do all the things that I was supposed to have gotten done over the last week that I actually got my procrastinate-ey depressed arse in gear & was Productive Due to Panic.

I’m not gonna lie — when I put together what we’d discussed for the next stage of my training & sent it to Z for proofing & revisions, I was honestly looking forward to being told, “Yes, go with that”, and being able to have my structure again.

I did not expect the response I got.
“I think everything looks good except that you don’t have a day off. You need one. A complete day off.”

well… crap.

Seriously, this caused me to have a moment.
Like, an actual serious pause where I laid in bed at 4:30am* and had to think about how to do approach this beyond my knee-jerk response to him of, “You & your allowance for HUMANITY.”
*4:30am: Zoey woke me up because she had to pee & I was checking my email on my phone before I let her in & we both raced back under the covers.

learning how to build structure with different materials. I’ve gone from recipe to civil engineering experiment.

The truth is, as scary as the idea might be after the last week, a day off is a good thing. Right now I’m living the present workout/work setup with a specific goal in mind, but I won’t always be able to keep up this pace, either physically or schedule-wise. And Z knows me enough to know that I will just mindlessly work myself into Fail Mode, denying that I need a rest all the way until I hit a wall.

Example: I just got the intro email confirming my membership to CrossFit & they mentioned that on Sundays they have open gym to make up workouts, do extra, or work on certain skills, & my brain went, “I could totally go do that after my 15k steady state… Wait — no, no I’m not supposed to do that anymore. Bad Claris!“

So I’ve got this – the one day free. Baby steps to figure out what it is that everyone else is doing while I’ve been burning off my neurosis. That way, when the time does come for me to step away from things, I don’t have a repeat of last week.

For now, however, it’s time for me to go do an Intro O-lifting class so that I don’t accidentally break myself this Friday when I join up with the regular CrossFit classes. There’s still plenty of time between now & endgame, so I still need to do the work in between.

… which is probably for the best, because I really can’t eat wheat & after writing this, I completely & totally want some freakin’ cake.

Music: Shake it off – Florence + The Machine (Ceremonials)

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- Me in conversation with a junior coach, inadvertently providing an abject example of why rowing really is just something you have to experience to understand

…just lie back & it’ll all be over soon – isn’t that what they used to say?

One of the project managers at Civic!Co emailed me yesterday — I’d talked to him late last week (talking=ongoing email chain with the same subj line as a project we finished 3 mos ago) and said, “At this point, I’m kind of overloaded and I’m not taking on any new work until after Nov 5th.” and J, who I’ve worked with since I started subcontracting there two & a half years ago, said sure, no problem.

…and then today I got an email regarding a migration starting November 7th.

On the one hand, it’s nice to be needed.

On the other, I could use a break.

I’d set the Nov 5th date for new work because I made the decision not to row NARF this year. I’m going to do Head of the American this Saturday and then take a week off for myself, both athletically and personally.

I just… I need the time, honestly.

There’s no way around it — I can tell just by looking at my online bank statement & seeing how many times there’s a charge from Whole Foods West Hollywood between the hours of 9:45-10:30pm, which is particularly ridiculous considering that my fridge is completely stocked with things that are perfectly healthy for me if I would just take an hour or two to set everything up so they’re ready to go.

Have I done this? of course not.

And really, it’s not just food – I have at least three client projects to finish up, a personal site that I need to put live Friday night, and a whack of administrative paperwork/recordkeeping crap for my business that’s just… in dire need of seeing to, lest I get to the end of the year & be utterly screwed. Thus, I’m going to take a week off the water (other than finishing teaching Sculling I) which will give me at least two to three hours a day back to myself & should make The Accomplishment of Things easier to… accomplish.
Yeah, my English kinda failed me there. not gonna lie.

Hopefully I’ll be able to hit the ripe old age of 32 having knocked the majority of Things On my List off said list. While they say that people can age like fine wines, I going to guess that’s not supposed to include dust on your to-do list.

Plus by then, the dogs will probably need another bath – and really, who isn’t looking forward to that?

Music: bang bang bang – Christina Perri (Lovestrong, deluxe edition)

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I dunno about you guys, but I have been tired. There was a snafu with a client’s job that had me working from 5pm on Sun afternoon until about 6:30am last Monday morning, and I spent last week been trying to play catch up ever since. I’m having one of those stretches where I’ve got a case of The Don’wannas – I don’t wanna work, and I don’t feel like doing pieces at race pace even though there’s a head race next weekend, and I didn’t want to drive three hours round trip that night to pick up a roof rack so I can transport my single on Monday…

…et cetera and so forth. It was Head of the Charles this weekend, and while half the rowers I know were either in Boston or on watching the Cambridge web cam to see how many people would use a boat crash to mark their visit to The Land of Dunkin’ Donuts (mmm…. delicious blueberry cake munchkins that it turns out I’m totally allergic to…) I wanted nothing more than to just crawl into bed for The Best Nap Ever.

Which would explain why, on Friday afternoon, I fell asleep for about, oh… 14 hours. oops.

Also, because it’s a stretch where I am slightly whiny and oogy (as if this post hadn’t already given that away) I am also having that time where I just want a Nap Boyfriend.
I don’t need sex (although wouldn’t that be nifty), I don’t need an actual relationship right now, but it would be nice to curl up with a nice, solid male-gender type in my attempt at Best Nap Ever.

Alas, most likely it will be as things normally are — I’ll tell Ernie to go sleep on his bed, he’ll jump over his bed (often because Zoey’s already in it since she’s left all of her toys on her bed) and he’ll hang out on the couch until I’ve fallen asleep, at which point both dogs will take advantage of my unconscious state to climb onto my bed and drape themselves on top of or wedge next to my body so that I wake up hot as hell and pinned down to my own mattress like a mental patient that’s been strapped in for safety.

This is my life, people. Welcome to the whirlygig.

…because clearly a single woman over the age of 30 must be in want of a sailor.

Okay, you know what Google? Meet me at Camera 3.

Do I even want to know what on earth in my internet workings caused your algorithm to present me with this ad?

Really, Google? Really?

When I said I wanted a Nap Boyfriend, it didn’t mean I was going to be trolling the docks to provide any port in a storm, thankyouverymuch.

and now for a #TwitterFail of Olympic proportions

… you ever have that day where you make a joke on twitter about your neighbor being a pothead right as your friend on the National team twitters & cc’s the world championship 8+ to thank you for the baked goods you sent them?

… yeah. Me neither. :cough:

um, hi guys. < /awkward>

Honestly, what I really like about this is the educational opportunity that @thisismagda created:

You ever have that moment where you just look at your world & think, “our lives aren’t like other people.”

… yeah. me neither.

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I was like, this >< close to becoming one of them. You just don’t even understand.

As those of you connected to me on twitter know, I spent most of Wednesday and Thursday being annoyed at a guy named Zuckerberg.

And so, I sat down on Friday and wrote a whole entry regarding Facebook, and the fact that it wasn’t that the new products are bad, it’s that Zuckerberg and his friends rolled things out in a completely douchebag fashion.

It was concise. It was thorough. It explored the psychology behind creating a product that your customers would want versus cramming your upgrades down the users’ throat. It gave examples, and presented an alternate approach which might not have had so many people utilizing the convenience of what happens when replacing the Z in Mark’s last name with an F.

I wrote this, and I finished, and I felt so much better. Then I started proofing and thought… what am I doing?

Oh holy jesus, I almost became an Angry Internet Person.

Let’s be honest – there’s like 50 of you guys reading this at the most. (Hullo mah peeples!! :waves:) What, precisely, would free-ranging on the internet regarding what some guy who I’ll probably never meet nor have the professional ear of actually accomplish?

Most likely nothing, that’s what.

Back when I was working at Spiffy!Hotel, there was a night when I brought yet another high-end car up to the curb, held the door for a Hollywood fit/artfully tan guy wearing artistically worn-out jeans that cost more than I got paid in a day, shoes whose leather was most likely shipped in from Italy for a value outside of what I make in a week, and a t-shirt no doubt carefully chosen to let us all know exactly how hard he’s not trying because he was inherently Cool Enough to be Above Such Things.

Unlike most patrons of such ilk, he actually did tip me, and as I headed over to put the cash in the tip box, I remember Brandon saying to me, “Why did you walk away? Do you know who that was?”
Claris: Someone who actually tipped?
Brandon: That was Michael Bay.
Claris: …. so?
Brandon: Michael Bay!! The director! This is LA, why didn’t you talk to him!
Claris: Okay, seriously, let me break this down for you – I’m a web designer at a vitamin company. Talking to a director of any kind? Not something that’s going to affect my paycheck, because my landlord doesn’t take “I talked to Michael Bay” in lieu of rent.

–> In retrospect, if I’d know how he was going to portray women in the Transformers movies, I would have smacked him upside the head pre-emptively, rent be damned, but eh, whatcha gonna do. On the plus side, viewed from a purely technical standpoint, the use of 3-D in the highway chase scene in Transformers 3 was pretty freakin’ awesome.

The point being, I kind of had to remind myself of that on Friday afternoon. I can write all I want about how things should be and what the better way to do things would be, but that’s not going to actually change the reality of life. Do you know why?

Because yelling at someone on the internet doesn’t change their mind, it just makes them dig in to their position even more.
Before you comment, the use of bold here is indeed for irony. Don’t be that guy.

One of the best things I’ve heard about changing the way that people think of things comes from an authoress who, due to her request that “What is said at book signings will be denied in public”, shall remain… nameless — an awesome descriptive since that’s actually been suggested as a title for one of her books.

Anyway, she was talking about the prevalence of gay characters in her books, and the fact that there’s no big thing of “Gay and here to stay!” about their sexual preference in the stories, it’s simply something that is, and the reason for that is that in the creative community that her parents worked while she was growing up, that’s how it was treated — there was no ABC After-School Special Sit-Down Talk about the fact that Uncle Timmy was “gay”, it was just that Uncle Timmy loved Uncle John, and that’s the way life was.

One of the things that she said was that she finds it fantastic that her books have a huge following in Texas. The fact that there are swathes of teenage girls in the Bible belt and other such communities who are reading this, and for what is most likely the first time in their lives, these girls are having this concept of homosexuality as an accepted way of life presented to them in a way that is neither confrontational nor demonized, and because it’s being done through the vehicle of fiction, many don’t even realize that this idea has just become part of their sphere of comprehension, or that it will probably influence how they view such things as they get older and are of an age to make decisions in the future.

I’ve been around the internet for… well, we’ll just call it a while. Some of the sh*t y’all do as normal internet behaviors are stuff that other people wrote textbooks on because my friends were the ones that started it. I have seen flame wars, I have seen trolls, I have seen fandoms come and go, I have seen (and been in) feuds that just… make your brain hurt. But you know what I have never seen?

I have never seen someone change their mind because someone else typed about how wrong they are in capital letters.

——————————————–

I had someone tell me once that I’m not a very good feminist. They said this because I wasn’t commenting on things like birth control, or abortion rights, or rape awareness. I heard this, and I’m not gonna lie, I kinda laughed. I laughed because outside of the internet, I had just spent the past year breaking down some bullsh*t allegations made against me by a bunch of good old boys who’d thought they could pin the issues in their personal lives on me to cover up their crap and then sweep me under the rug. Unfortunately for them, I don’t scare that easy, and while one ended up on what I hear was a pretty severe employment probation, I really hope the other truly absorbed some learning from his employer-mandated anger management therapy.

Earlier this spring, I had to explain to someone why I wasn’t coaching anymore, and in doing so I said that, penalties to those men aside, the thing which came out of it that I’m actually happy about is that the day after AngerManagement!Issue backed me against a wall and bullied me in front of a bunch of teenagers, I got up, I went out, I went to the boathouse, and I rowed. I’m glad I did that not only for myself, but also because, completely by chance, when I was finishing my workout and pulling back into the dock, I looked up and at the top of the hill were five or six of the girls who’d seen me get yelled at the day before.

Rowers really aren’t verbal people. As a rule, they don’t Sit Down and Talk About Things. (at least, not well.) They looked at me. I looked at them. We all did the Head Nod Thing, and then everybody moved on.

What I said to the guy that I was explaining things to was this – I am glad I rowed that morning because if those girls learned anything at all from what they saw happen to me, I would want them to have seen that I would not be bullied away from being an athlete. No one would drive me out simply because they needed a scapegoat.
I would want them to learn that standing up for the right thing does sometimes mean you’ll get bumps and bruises along the way, but if you are willing to live by the courage of your convictions and work from a place of what is right, ultimately you will find you’ve won by simple dint of having outlasted the idiots.

I don’t need to write about being a philosophical feminist on the internet because I prefer to be a functional feminist in how I live my life.

Anger, bigotry, horrible acts against others — these things have existed since one brother took a rock to the other. But what has been there before any of that is the right thing to do. We do not know the story of Cain and Abel because murder is the way things were set up to work. We know of it because it deviates from the way the Higher Power supposedly set things up to be.

I am at best what could be classified a Recovering Catholic. Bless you, George Carlin.
So while not an active practitioner of… anything at the moment, I do have 13 years of Catholic school studies in my academic repertoire, and just off the top of my head I’m pretty sure that at no point in the story of creation is the line, “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. AND THEN HE RUBBED IT IN LUCIFER’S STUPID FCUKING FACE ON TUMBLR.”

With the exception of the junior boy whom I caught trying to do a one-off 2k test in the middle of August, telling someone they are a dumbass will most likely not change the way that person views the world.
And even in that case, he was willing to acknowledge his stupidity because he’d just learned the futility of his uninformed decision. In short, he laughed when I went, “Okay, you know you’re a dumbass, right?” because, while admittedly a rather painful lesson, he’d learned something new.

Education breeds awareness.

If you don’t like the way things are, stop writing about it to other people that agree with you, and get up and do something to help change it. But do so with the knowledge that these things take time, and anger will not open minds.

Those teachers? The ones that you loved? That you were eager to go to class to see? You went there because you wanted to be around them. Because being around them made you feel better, so you were willing to find out what knowledge they had to share, and maybe give it a try yourself.

The same goes for educating the public, especially when you’re bringing information or a point of view that’s different from what they’ve been taught is the way of the world. These things don’t happen instantaneously, they don’t happen because you’ve RT’d a Facebook opinion, or because you said “F*ck you!” on the internet. Change occurs because you’ve gained someone’s attention through trust or interest, and they are now willing to consider your point of view. The problem is, nobody wants to listen to the person that’s always angry all the time.

So please, stop yelling. Stop bold-italicizing your caps lock. Start using the brains that you were given, and participate.

——————————————–

You know why the people who don’t agree with you appear to be winning?
They’re the ones that show up.

——————————————–

Get up. Get out. Go to the people who are doing the work and ask how you can help — if you’re in an area of the country where like-minded people are hard to find, they need you that much more. Stuff envelopes, make phone calls, stand outside of Trader Joe’s with your clipboard and know that you’re going to get shot down a bunch, but you’ll also end up explaining who and what you are to people who probably didn’t know before they talked to you.

Create education. Find ways to express your opinion without profanity or hostility. If there’s anything that the recent electoral processes should have taught us, it is that the world needs less negativity more people willing to stand up for sanity.

Do something. Do anything. Get offline, and get into the world, because no matter how much Zuckerberg’s douche-ily presented new products want us to think that our lives are only fulfilled by the right combination of apps, the truth is that Out There is where the people are.

There is a difference between what is conscientious & what is convenient – so if you want to change things Out There, why are you still In Here?

Music: Everything’ll Be All Right – Joshua Radin

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… I will have the street cred to say the following sentence:
That is obscene and hilarious RT @scottfish75: I thought you might like a picture of barrowman wanking off a kranky. bit.ly/nOQFJf – @McKelvie
(Warning: Link pretty darn NSFW)

I don’t even need to know what’s in the damn link, I just like the idea of being able to legitimately use the phrase “barrowman wanking off a kranky” in conversation because it just sounds cool.

Because if there’s anything the universe should let me learn, it’s how to make weapons with nothing but nature & a knife.

and yet, there’s the opportunity to do so for a mere $17.
…sometimes, I just love the internet. Don’t you?

It’s like I’m almost a real fake celebrity!

Fake Jonah Hill is following me. I’m kinda tempted to follow him just for this tweet:
In some parts of the world they don’t have clean water, but they also don’t have Kardashians. Sept 13

What up, fake Jonah Hill! Can you send real Brad Pitt to my house for some awesomesauce time?

Keep it up and I’m gonna get out of the car and drop you like 3rd period French.

I have two clients right now where I have the feeling that they’re trying to skeeve me out of being paid. I don’t necessarily know this for sure, yet, but some of the responses I’ve gotten make me think it may be easier to just drop the project(s) than attempt to bother dealing with the problem(s).

One of them currently owes me (a small sum of) money that’s inconsequential in the actual amount, but when I emailed regarding our discussion about using the end of the fiscal quarter to nail down the tracking method so that I’d be able to look & calculate my own commissions, & invoice for the quarter, suddenly emails aren’t being answered.

It’s taken 3 mos just to get to the point where I have the professional freedom to just go ahead & do what needs to be done to create a site that will actually generate revenue, and I’m hesitant to actually move forward with any of that work because they can’t seem to answer that question and/or pay up the piddling $40 from the last quarter that’s my commission because the site was pretty much dormant.

Really, dude? If Amazon can make sure that I get the whopping $1.44 that I was owed before they shut down all their CA affiliates one week into the new fiscal year back in July, I think I’ll be holding off on doing anything for your site until you can show yourself capable of fulfilling quarterly payments, thanks.

The other is just… I don’t know if he’s actually trying to scam me, or just busy & doesn’t realize that he sounds sketchy around the edges because he’s doing a headless chicken impression due to his work’s normal state of being at this time of the year.

If you’re saying someone might be working on what I just proposed already, then tell me that they can’t produce the list of what they’re theoretically working on because they’re out of town, I’m gonna call bullsh*t, because even if you’re not deliberately running it, it sounds really close to that.

Someone in Customer #2′s industry tried a similar thing with me last winter — I made a pitch, they tried to do it without me so they wouldn’t have to pay my fee. Not only did their attempt at a homemade campaign fail, but they ended up writing me a check for the amount I’d have been paid  if the project had made the goal I projected because I sat down with them & had a little chat about a thing we call “Intellectual Property”.

I’m just… I’m freakin’ tired, man.
I’m tired to constantly having to double check to make sure that people aren’t trying to pull a fast one — my business is to make your business profitable. I’m not trying to take money from you, I’m trying to help you make more, so if you just play things straight & pay what I charge to make that happen, you will make back my fee and then quite a bit more.

I’m just annoyed because it’s like, “Dude, if you stand back & let me do my work & everything goes through, you will receive about $125k in materials & cash between now & June, and I’d only be charging commission for $100k of it. Just work with me, let me do my freakin’ job & stop acting like you have to hoard every scrap of info away in a safe deposit box because I’m going to beat you with a stick & then try to sacrifice the kitten you don’t even have — if I frack up & you don’t make money, I don’t make money. It’s just that simple. I want you to look good so you make  money so that I can make money. The end.”

It’s all I can do lately to not just look at people & share the tagline of WilWheaton.net – “Don’t be a dick!”

Everything I need to know about business, I learned from pop music.
No, really.

As I once said to Anisa, “Oh my god, why do people keep acting like this — have we learned nothing from the immortal words of Justin Timberlake?”
and she started laughing, which is why we’re friends.

Mistah JT was totally right, so let’s just start from an important principle that everyone should abide by without each of us having to experience a totally heinous public breakup with Britney — what goes around comes around, biznatches.

If there’s one fact I have seen in practice it’s that karma is effin’ real, dude. Call it ju-ju, call it business philosophy, whatever you want. It might not be now, but oh yeah. If you set about to screw people whenever you can, they’ll make sure you get it right back.

I know a couple of guys in rowing who literally pride themselves on being assholes to other people. They’re totally proud of it.

The problem with that is that while it sounds fun & might work in the short term… nobody actually likes an asshole. They might hang out with you while you’re in charge or have something they want, but when the time comes that you need honest help with something… nobody wants to help an asshole. It’s just that simple.

So while you might think it’s funny & that you have the right to do whatever you want, I can tell you right now I have seen that sh*t come back & bite you in the ass as you watch everybody else get the job you were looking for or the salary you wish you had, and you’ll be left wondering why.

I try really hard to treat people fairly, especially when it comes to money. There have been times here at Museum!Co when I was in on an extra day and the work that I was supposed to take care of either wasn’t ready or just didn’t manifest at all, and I’ve gone to CaptJack and said, “Hey, I don’t have anything to do, do you have anything? Otherwise I’ll just head out so we don’t blow through your contractor budget.”

And you know what? He was okay with that. At one point, he actually thanked me for thinking of it that way. Hey, no lie — I totally could have bullsh*tted some stuff & gotten the extra day’s pay in that invoice for now, but because CaptJack knows that I’ll treat Museum!Co honestly, that’s one of the factors which I know he’ll consider as he extends my contract out further so that in the long term I’ll continue to have a paycheck much much later.

So it bothers me when I have clients that are trying to jigger sh*t so that they can pull my ideas or work for themselves without paying me for it.

I don’t screw with your ability to make a living, why on earth do you think it’s all right to try to hurt mine?
This isn’t like shopping around to find cheaper DVDs on the internet, buddy — this is me having gone out & sourced information and resources & created materials specific to your business & offering an opportunity that I know you didn’t have available to you before where my fee will literally be returned to your organization nine times over, because I only charge 10% commission, so really? Work with me, motherf*cker, & stop acting like I’m some airhead LA girl who you think doesn’t know when you’re lying. ‘cause at the end of the day, I am actually so very East Coast, & Homie don’t play ‘dat.

Because I was born in one & spent a decade in the other, someone once asked me what the difference is between New York & Boston, & this was my answer:

“In Boston, when you piss people off enough, they’ll take you out back & beat you with a pipe, and that’s how things get done.
That’s actually pretty nice of them, ‘cause a pipe is hollow.

 

In New York, they’d use a brick.”

More and more lately, no matter how nicely I try to treat people, their reactions just make me feel like gettin’ my New York on.

Maybe I should iTunes gift them some Justin Timberlake instead.

Music: Be OK – Ingrid Michaelson

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So while I compose this tale of stomach-emptying woe which may have resulted in me thanking the gods I got an apartment with hardwood while I laid on my living room floor in my underwear during LA’s only heat wave this summer, I thought I’d share some of the non-yicky part of last week with you.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to resume sipping on my Nalgene full of watered-down Gatorade and cursing the part of me that told Museum!Co, “Sure, I’ll come in Monday so we can get it done early!”

My son has 46 friends on his facebook page. He’s five days old.

~ Pawswithclaws

This is what happens when you have nerd parents.
…and a nerd auntie, and they all have nerd friends.

Welcome to the future, people – it’s gonna be great.

I know, right? If I was you, I’d totally want me teaching you to row.

Text’d by me to another coach:
I just signed up to teach my sculling I requirement for the december class. I can’t wait ’til flip test day, those poor shivery bastards.

The German language – crushing souls one word at a time.

Actual German word that I had to type out for one of my contract jobs:
Wissenschaftgeschichte
Ha! It is too a real word, I totally linked it ’cause I knew you’d say I made it up.

As someone of primarily German descent, I’d just like to take a moment to look at my ancestral heritage & say:

why on earth would you do that to the children? ’cause you look at that word, & you just know that somewhere, at some time in history — that word completely killed some poor kid’s dreams at a spelling bee.

Is it pathetic if you’re just bein’ honest?

One of the project managers at Civic!Co & I were talking about project management/availability for the fall, & my response was:

yah, I’ll be around the next few months — my life’s boring like that.

After I sent it, I thought, “Wow, that’s kinda depressing.” Then I realized… doesn’t make it any less true. :shrug:

This is totally making my life better.

Texts from Pawnee

First, if you’re not watching Parks & Rec… wtf, man. You really need to. It’s okay if you’ve held out, for a while I did too. Then I had a weekend at the Menagerie following a week of texts from amypop about the greatness of Leslie Knope & there was this Roku box loaded up with Seasons 1 & 2 via NetFlix, & yeah. It was all over, I just can’t even tell you.

Second, if you’ve ever worked in the nightclub/bar/restaurant/nighttime entertainment industry, the captions are awesome because I’ve totally heard the real life versions, and no comic could sit down & make up the sh*t people say when they’re trashed.

Awesome because…

• Not gonna lie, situations like this are how I learned the majority of what I know about the internet.
• Based on how he parties, it would seem Tom Haverford would make a great Bronzer
• Technically speaking, he’s not entirely wrong…
• I know people that have made this particular life choice. Sometimes it actually works out better.

Plus, I just really like this one because it kinda defines a lot of my friends:

I can tell that we are gonna be friends…

There’s often a staff mtg for my department at Museum!Co on Wednesdays, and CaptJack will bring bagels for it — even when there’s not a meeting, he still brings bagels. (this kind of works out for me since as a contractor I don’t go to these meetings, so either way — bagels!)

But Claris, you might be thinking — no wheat, no bagel, yes?

Well… yes. but the New Yorker in me likes the free bagels concept on principle. shoosh.

Anyway, so it’s Wednesday, and there I am in the staff kitchen, putting my bowl of fruit & yogurt together for breakfast across from the mountain of pastries & bagels delivered by the CaptJack Express.

One of the girls that got hired the week before comes in, looks at the bagels & gave a sad little sigh, so I laughed & said, “I know, right? There’s almost always food out here, it’s actually kind of evil.”

She looked at me & replied, “It’s not just that. I’m actually gluten intolerant, but I really like bread, and that’s kind of my idea of hell.”

What can I say? Men have brothers-in-arms, women have sisters-in-intestines.

I cracked up. “Oh my god yes totally. I actually have the same problem. Hence my gluten-free breakfast.” :holds up bowl of fruit:

It was kind of awesome, I’m not gonna lie – we both admitted to constantly eating fruit & the fact that you just… reason out having bread every so often & resign yourself to the part where you’re gonna pay for it after.
example: later in the day, I told myself that the the half a bagel that I had wasn’t bad nutritionally because the cream cheese had lox in it, so I was actually just using the bagel as the vehicle to deliver extra protein to my system, so the protein outweighed the gluten… right? Right. totally. that’s what I said.

The conversation petered out, & she went, “Okay, so what’s your name again?”

“Claris. I’m sorry, yours?”

“lyssa.”

“Awesome. talk to you later?”

“Totally, we’ll exchange recipes.”

It’s like this whole little club that I never even knew I belonged to…

Music: After the Storm – Mumford & Sons

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And in adjusting to all that, sleep has at times been a little elusive, not to mention just the brainpower of getting the semantics of everything figured out so I can go seamlessly from one thing to another & not have to actually think about details while doing so.

…which is part of why I’d like to stop & apologize to you, the ragged band of miscreants who occasionally peruse my bandwidth for (questionable) guidance & entertainment (which tends to endanger what little self-esteem I have left).

Because the last time I was here, I asked you to do me a favor & help out by hitting up the facebook like, Google plus, twitter RTs & tumbler re-blogs through the site directly instead of through my personal facebook page, as some of you are wont to do.

You know what I forgot to do before I said that?

I forgot to put up the f’ing SMS buttons which would allow you to comply with my request.

:takes a bow:

In my defense, at least I realized this all on my own, so no one here got the joy of the neener-moment.

As a bonus (because I’m a giver that way) not only did I recognize the issue on my own, I also fixed it, so if we could all be so kind as to sally forth & pretend this little operational hiccup never happened, that’d be great.

Example the first:
So it’s Saturday morning, and I’m driving down to Beach!Boathouse for practice. As most weekends this summer, France is in the car with me. I was a coach when France was in high school, & when we first started carpooling, I warned him, “Just so you know I’m probably going to treat you like my little brother. Especially since you’ve got the same name.” (Which on the morning when France & my biological younger brother FlyBoy were in the same car, was admittedly a little confusing. Not gonna lie.) France accepted that fairly well and we fell into the pseudo-sibling way of interacting to the point where Pomatto once asked if we were related. *snerk*

Anyway, so there we are cruising down towards Beach!Boathouse. Now, the road goes stoplight, stoplight, stoplight, stoplight, then stop sign, stop sign before the turn.

Well France is kind of laconic by nature, and I was thinking about how to set up the work I had to get done after practice, and I realized… we’ve been sitting at the stop sign for a good minute, minute & a half as the half-paying-attention part of my brain that’s driving waited for the non-existent stop light to turn green.

“Oh my god,” I said as I pulled away, “I was totally waiting for the light. Why didn’t you say something? You just sat there & let me!”

France shrugged. “Hey, you’re driving. I figured I’d give you another few seconds.”

Little fracker…

In my defense, the next day another rower admitted that she’d done this as well. Seems it’s a common mistake for sleep-starved athletes in the area.

Example the second:
so there I am, on my way out of work at Museum!Co one day. Headphones for my ipod in, I meander my way over to the platform for the tram, doing what all of the employees to – go to the tape railing at the edge of the track, disconnect the “barricade”, walk in, then reconnect it.

The platform was empty, but eh, I figured I’d just missed the last tram. There were a bunch of people walking down the hill, which was odd, but after a while when you work at a place that attracts a lot of tourists, you just shrug off odd behavior & think, “psh. tourists.”

So there I am, leaning against a pillar, spacing out, checking facebook, looking at my email, Pandora going in my ears, and somehow in my peripheral vision I see movement.

Looking up, I see k-walla waving madly at me. She starts miming an odd message, and my first thought was, “Dude, you suck at charades.”

Then I realized she was basically saying, “Choo-choo no go.”

In other words, the tram I’d been waiting for? Never gonna show up, and it would seem she’d been standing there for about oh, five minutes or so – jumping up & down, calling my name, waving her arms… whatever to try & get my attention whilst I blissfully hung out as lines of tourists passed me by to begin their walk down the hill to ground level.

Way to go me.

Example the third:
Our network was being slow on Wed, so my playlist on spotify kept freezing up. Tired of that, I moved my headphones to my iPhone & turned on my Pandora app.

Five minutes in, I was flipping through screens on my computer, & got all annoyed at my Spotify interface because I’d set it up to play King, the new release from O.A.R., but I kept hearing Trouble by Ray LaMontagne. I literally kept hitting “Play” pause “Play” pause and going, “Dude, wtf, why aren’t you playing the right song?” for about three minutes before the song in my ears changed & I realized that I was trying to alter my Pandora playlist using Spotify.

So basically right now if we were going to tweet my life, it would look like this:

#GoTeamMe #firstWorldProblems #UserFail

The solution?

Clearly, I need a keeper. Or at the very least, a boyfriend who doesn’t mind that he’ll occasionally have to stop, take me by the shoulders, turn me in the proper direction & say, “Walk in that direction, honey.” Also he’ll have to be okay with the fact that this is something which will occur when I am completely and totally stone-cold sober.

…and yet I remain single. How on earth that is, I do not know.

:looks at the sky:

Hey, Universe, can we possibly work on that? Even just a little?

:silence:

:crickets chirp:

:more silence:

…as always thank you for your excellent guidance. I’ll let you get back to Reginald’s quivering member.

Music: Twin Peaks – Surfer Blood

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As part of my inevitable world domination (after which I shall hand things over to Anya to run, I have no patience for administration) I’m working on some SEO stuff.

While I flipped to the new template (that MrWhyt hates) due to functionality, I’m slowly changing things a piece at a time so it’s all so much more… me.

As part of figuring out what works & what doesn’t, while
I know a lot of you comment & Facebook like through the FB listings, if you could get in the habit of doing it here, that’d be rockin’.

Yes, I have a Pinterest account, but stuff like this is why I’m afraid to use it.

Why yes, actually I do turn everything to sh*t by Bloggess

They have a little blurb article on ApartmentTherapy.com called Expressing Your Love In Your Home. Any time I see something like that, I automatically have the urge to put my finger down my throat and imitate the dramatic huuuuuuuaaawwwwwk noise that I get the pleasure of hearing when Zoey eats grass then goes to the bathroom to throw up. (Yes, my dog throws up in the bathroom. We’ve been in LA a decade, that’s what she picked up. :sigh:)

I need… balance to my cuteness. and possibly learn to become a nicer person.

… eh, who are we kidding — the first one is more likely.

Well, I am looking to move this fall…

Swedish house up for sale, complete with skeleton
On the one hand, that’s actually kinda cool. On the other, I fear I’d never be able to get Zoey out of the basement — she’d just sit in front of the glass all day, trying to figure out how to get to the treasure trove of chewies…

Not to sound like a stalker, but just so you know, I’ve been in your car.

So last week, I told you the story of how I may or may not have had… an experience with our IT dept desk.

During that, I mention that Abrams & I had a mystery email that disappeared in her attempt to schedule coffee with me. Which for all I know, may have been the cosmos trying to help her.

Well we finally managed to defeat scheduling, the email system, and buck the gods enough to acquire 16oz of sugar & caffeine mixed with a small amount of milk.

In the course of this, Abrams mentioned that her husband worked as one of the South Park animators, which seriously is pretty freakin’ cool to begin with.

But then a thought occurred to me.
I know, I love when that happens to.

And I said, “Okay, this is probably gonna sound weird, but I think I’ve been in your car.”

–> Enter the backstory:
In the course of my time gettin’ my doll on as I ran around Los Angeles wearing pink & parking everyone’s car but mine, one of the parties that we did was the staff party for the South Park 100th Episode. It was up in this out of the way place north of PCH in Malibu, across from (one of) James Cameron’s house(s) — I remember that because James Cameron has these massive black dogs, and when I stand there & say, “Damn that’s a big dog” — that says somethin’.

Anyway, at that time, there were some concerns that the party might get hassled because the South Park crew had been having a small… problem with a certain supposed religious sect regarding an episode involving a certain actor whose name might rhyme with… “Com Schmooze”. It seems that the two parties were having a philosophical difference regarding the fact that Scientology believes they’re full of aliens and the rest of us think… they’re crazy.

Thus, the procedure for this party was that the cars were taking to an offsite lot & then driven back up to the out of the way location. (Incidentally, the event site did involve driving over an actual small body of running water through a rather dark, heavily aborial area, & all I could think of the whole night was Cartman in my head saying something about going over the river & through the motherf*cking woods & Grandma turning out to be a freakin’ Christmas poo.)

But, outside the Secret Garden, back down in the parking lot for the Malibu Public Library, I had an assignment. My mission: to put one of the plush South Park characters into the backseat of each car & seatbelt them in like actual children. (Yes, those were our actual instructions.)

Well, being me, I noticed that a great many of these cars had carseats, which not only filled me with joy at the thought that the people who gave us South Park are breeding to help combat the rabbit-like proliferation in Red States, but also allowed me to amuse myself by situating the dolls into the car seats instead of just in the backseat. Because when you’re spending six hours on a Friday night wandering between a parking lot & a secluded wood in Malibu, it’s the little things that make life better.

Thus, last week I was able to look at my co-worker & say, “…and you got in the car & there was a doll in your carseat. Yup, that was totally me.”

\m/

Welcome to LA, people — eventually, you discover that everybody really does know everyone, and the reason the car washes do such great business is that at some point, we’ve probably been in your car.

Music: 5 years time – Noah & the Whale

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