Oh Gin, how could you treat me this way?
It’s been a long week and now it’s Friday – the taste of five o’clock freedom is on the tip of my tongue and I can’t wait for the weekend to start. I think the weekend was invented by THE MAN on the same day he invented the lottery. THE MAN was probably sitting on his bed, counting his lunch money (hundred dolla bills ya’ll!), while thinking about how great it is to be rich and how easy it is to control America through clever marketing techniques when . . . CHA-CHING! The idea of the weekend and the lottery emerged as a means to subdue the masses. Let’s temporarily relieve the proletariat from their angst of everyday paper pushing by giving them a sense of hope!
I guess he was right. The lameness of my day job is fading fast behind me and for two whole days I will be in a better place, called the lawyer-free zone.
If you’ve never worked in a law office, you are probably aren’t aware of the fact that it’s not sexy or fashionable or slick as it portrayed in dramas like The Practice, LA Law or Alley McBeal. It’s actually really boring, and so much of it is just lawyers sitting around in meetings listening to themselves talk (and interrupting each other when they get tired of others talking), saying things to each other like, “let’s touch base!” and “it’s a paradigm shift!” or even worse, “I’ll have my secretary do it!”
Got two big things happening this weekend. In the quest to find a way to use my writing for good and not evil, I am embarking on writing a feature story about a bunch of blind dancers. Yup – you read that correctly. I have an interview with them tonight and I’ve got the nervous nellies. This morning I put on responsible attire and I wore my glasses so that I would appear reporter-esque to my interviewees. And yes, the irony of dressing for the part did dawn on me later on in the day.
This weekend is the culmination of my 12 weeks of singing lessons, and I’ve got a “recital” at an open mike night with a bunch of singing students. I may have to depend on that alcohol hitting my bloodstream to get over my butterflies, so I plan on getting there 30-90 minutes early!
He just smiled and gave me a vegemite sandwich
Bend It Like Beckham Movie Tally 02.04.04: three
The ground floor of my prison oops I mean my office building has a deli which I call the Pregnant Asian Sandwich Company. Everybody that works there is Asian (which is cool, as this is not meant in a derogatory fashion, just an observation) and at any given time at least one member of the deli staff is pregnant. I used to go to the Pregnant Asian Sandwich Co. every day when I first started doing time oops working here. The pastries and sandwiches were cheap and the coffee was strong.
I would get a sandwich a few times a week and I would feel really cleaver, like I cheated the system somehow, because of how cheap it was. Then, I noticed that every single time I ate food there I got a stomachache. My afternoon would be spent clutching my abdomen. I kept going back because the food was so damn cheap, and it didn't occur to me that I was really paying it off with my growing Pepto Bismol dependency.
So after a bad incident with some chicken soup six months ago, I stopped going.
Yesterday, because I only had three bucks on me and I didn't want to brave the rain to go to the ATM, I went back, thinking that I'd be fine. Everybody there was STILL Asian and the check out girl was 7 months pregnant. I ate a sandwich and it tasted good, although I was also ravenous, and temporarily insane from lack of sleep. I was okay until about two hours afterwards. I ended up hauling ass to Walgreen's to buy an industrial sized bottle of Pepto and took a shot of the pink stuff.
Ahhh. Relief. I'm NEVER going back there ever again.
Besides offering stomachache relief, Pepto has an amazing affect of blackening your poo! Yuk! In some cases it can even turn your tongue black.
It's because of the active ingredient, Bismuth subsalicylate. It's a mild antibiotic. When it combines with small amounts of sulfer present in your saliva and gastrointestinal tract, bismuth sulfide, a blackish substance is formed. Depending on how often you "drop the kids off at school," how much Pepto you've taken, and how old you are (your intestinal tract slows down as you get older), it may last up to several days. It's temporarily and harmless ... although a black tongue may gross out somebody you take out on a date, so refrain from showing off your tongue ring. You'll be in deep shit (ha ha ha!) then!
Running, running, as fast as we can
Bend It Like Beckham Movie Tally 02.01.04: two
It's drizzling today so my plans to run are squashed. Somebody in the elevator at work on Friday asked me if I plan on doing any half marathons anytime soon. I will never run 13.1 miles again unless I am being chased by aliens and/or my life depended on it, or if I could exchange my day job as a Legal Secretary for a lifetime of independent, easy wealth. If you plan on running a half-marathon I'll give you a piece of advice that I wish somebody would have clued me in on: chafing is a bitch! Save yourself some misery and put some Vasaline or Astroguilde between your thighs.
The Superbowl is today and I saw a commercial with Jessica Simpson and the Muppets. Poor Nick - he probably had to explain to her for at least a good two hours that the Muppets are in fact puppets, and not real. I have a theory that most kitchen items could beat Jessica Simpson in "Final Jeopardy!" When I figure out how to set that experiment up I'll let you know the outcome.
