Reason to miss the 'burbs

I have no control over my internal waking mechanism. I never have had one. It's generally not early, but not as late as it was in my teenage years. Not having an alarm clock has never been an option, and I sleep very poorly when I know I have to get up early because I'm paranoid that something will go wrong with the alarm.

Take this morning. I was awake but hadn't yet opened my eyes because the alarm hadn't gone off, and I figured I had a few minutes left. When I did roll over and groped for my glasses, I saw that it was 10:54. Oy. Naturally, my car was parked in a metered spot. So I had to jump out of bed, get dressed, and go move it before multiple tickets piled up. Fortunately, not much is going on at work right now and to be honest - no one actually noticed I wasn't there. One thing the blackberry is useful for, I guess. Only had one ticket on the windshield, and did manage to park directly in front of my apartment because the 9-11 street cleaning was over.

Turns out I'd somehow set my clock to alarm 2, which I'd set late in the day for a nap once, rather than alarm 1. Which means I guess I can set it correctly now because Lord knows I'd hate to miss more work.

ROTFLMAO

I think ROTFLMAO (rot-fel-mow) would be an excellent band name. I was lucky enough to have two nights of ROTFLMAO moments in a row. Trying to recapture what was funny at the time wouldn't translate well - I can't find a way to write about them without making it read like an annoying conversation you overhear in a bar and think "Good Lord these people are tedious and not nearly as funny as they seem to think they are."

But the part that stuck with me was how much fun it is to watch OTHER people - people you LIKE - laugh their asses off. On Saturday, friends of mine were hosting a dinner and games night and we noticed the host's yearbooks were out on a bookshelf for anyone to review. Apparently, his wife hadn't done this before, because when she saw the picture of her husband as a senior in high school with a full-on Abe Lincoln beard - that he GREW and sported in all SERIOUSNESS - she laughed so hard she couldn't stand up straight. I honestly don't think I've ever seen her laugh that hard, and it lightened my heart to see and hear it.

Petty Irritation

Here is an entry to test the limits of your tolerance for rather bland stories. I have had two disappointing peanut butter experiences in a row. A few months ago, I bought a "natural" peanut butter - you know, the kind where the oil separates and sits on top and the bottom is a dry concrete mixture. But I thought perhaps I have a more adult palate now, and I will enjoy this style of peanut butter. I guess the formula has changed, because this fucker was oily all the way through. Soupy peanut butter is no fun. I finished it, though, b/c I didn't want to be wasteful. And when I did finally finish it, I went back to a name brand but foolishly decided "Oh, let's see if they've improved the reduced fat version!" Yeah, they haven't. The label claims it's a peanut spread, which is truly a misnomer because it doesn't spread at all. It's the opposit of the oily natural, and it's concrete-y all the way through.

The lesson? Just buy regular mass-produced peanut butter, kids.

The System

Something rather concerning happened this week. Twice. I screwed up washing my hair. Twice. This is odd for two reasons. One, as stated earlier, I love bath products and look forward to using each and every one in the shower with me. Two, I have a system. I've had it for years, as my college friends can attest. In the dorm, where the shower stalls were next to each other with walls that didn't go up to the ceiling, we could talk to each other. (We were lucky to have the walls - I heard the boys had a big communal stall with two opposing shower heads. Although maybe this just feeds into girls hang-ups about their bodies... whatever. That's a different topic. Write about it on your own blog.)

M'Belle once asked "How do you finish so quickly?" and I said, "It's easy. I have. A system." I don't claim to have a very complicated one, but apparently admitting to having one at all made me kinda goofy. Get wet. Shampoo. Rinse. Conditioner. Shave. Wash up with shower gel. Rinse. (See, that leaves time for the conditioner to sink in.)

So once this week, I shampooed twice, and it took me a while to figure out why my hair was still kinda tangly. Then later in the week, I put in conditioner before I had rinsed out the shampoo.

It appears - I am lacking some focus.

Still on Earth

This Saturday as I sat around feeling kinda sorry for myself because I was - well, sitting around on a Saturday - I was checking out Drew's latest blog post on Toothpaste for Dinner and found it was 5 minutes until Lights Out San Francisco. Which I had not heard about AT ALL. But, since it was only 5 minutes away, I turned off the lights. Not the TV, though. Heck, with no lights it's not like I could read or anything. The next day, I even bought some CFLs. I will admit I was finally prodded to do so because of the PG&E discounts.

We had another beautiful weekend. I guess that's nice. I'm sort of longing for a rainy weekend, though - it would better suit my mood. I think I have reverse seasonal affective disorder - it's like that Garbage song, "I'm only happy when it rains...". Except for the part about "Pour your misery down on me," because seriously? Fuck your misery. I have not even found enough psychic space to stuff my own into yet.

Off the Road Again

Just got back from a business trip to the Southland. The control tower at LAX is under scaffolding, which actually looked pretty cool. I also saw the Statue of Liberty when she was scaffolded. Perhaps I should go around the world visiting famous architectural sites when they are under repair. I probably wouldn't BUY that coffee table book, but I'd make it.

Going down to Southern California felt disorienting this time. When I picked up my rental car, all the radio presets were awful and I wanted to change them. And for the life of me, I couldn't recall any radio stations I listened to while I loved there for SIX YEARS. I felt kinda bad, like I'd blocked out a whole portion of my life. I had a vague recollection there was a modern alternative station around 106, and over the next hour as I drove to the hotel I started remembering more. That I LOVED the NPR station, 89.9 KCRW, because of Morning Becomes Eclectic with Nic Harcourt. That there was a Star 98.7, and the station around 106 was KROQ. I guess I only mildly suppressed, and didn't block.

I'm on Earth EVERY Day!

How do you feel about bandwagons? Have you ever seen a bandwagon? If they're full of colorful streamers and tubas and a platform so the cellists don't have to march, I guess they'd be pretty cool.

Here's a bandwagon I'm jumping on today - Blog Action Day. Bloggers all over are writing about the environment, in order to raise awareness. I guess. Did you know we have an environment? Apparently, we do. And apparently, we should take some responsibility for taking care of it. Or at the very least, not destroying it.

To that end, I've been wondering what to do with old vitamins and other over-the-counter drugs, because it seems like tossing them in landfills or flushing them would be bad for water tables, or something like that. (See? This actually ties in to yesterday's bathroom products because all of this crap is taking up space in my medicine cabinet. Which I need to clear to make room for... well, you know.) So after some exhaustive internet research (all right, 5 sites) I found they all agreed flushing is about the worst thing you can do and there are programs to accept your old drugs in CANADA. Curious, I did a more focused search in my own area and found San Francisco has a Safe Medicine Collection Event - IN MAY 2006. I believe I have learned I can best help the environment buy holding onto way too much crap out of guilt and hope for some auspicious time to get rid of it. If only we found a way to power things with environmental guilt...

News of the unrelated - Heroes. Turns out, I'm over it. Mom said the same thing. How about you?

Bath Product Porn

My good friend Dr. P. once noted that I have more bath products than anyone she knows, which is weird because I'm not all that girly. Or into cosmetics. And can generally be pretty good about purging. Oddly enough, my cousin K.B. who is even less girly than me has even more bath products. So now I blame genetics. A recessive gene, apparently, b/c our folks are not similarly inclined to have four kinds of lotion, three shower gels, and billions of sample size stuff under the sink at any given moment.

Tonight, I finally opened the bottle of Lollia bubble bath J.N. sent me for my birthday. It was particularly lovely because while lavender is extremely common, and lavender and vanilla is another new classic combination, this was even better - lavender and honey. The bubbles were soft and dense and lasted the whole bath. Afterwards, I washed my hair with the Kiehl's I splurged on after my recent haircut, and I am picturing my hair spread out like silky ribbons spread over my pillow when I sleep tonight. Who knew amino acid smelled so lovely? And I believe the conditioner has given me a great idea for a salad dressing...

On a tangent, I found my hairdresser on Yelp, which I find less useful the more people who join - much like Match.com. Yelp has become a competition of who can be wittier or snarkier or babble on endlessly about themselves, rather than who can actually provide a useful and succinct summary. Still, I did indeed like the hair salon, and found myself once again noting that every woman I've met named Erin is just cute as a button.