My body is reacting fairly violently to getting older. So, in the interests of record-keeping. Here is a picture of my last day as 27:
And here’s a picture of me reacting to how cheezy I look in that first pic.
How serendipitous
So I like to cook. Not the most manly thing to do, I’m sure, but the ladeez seem to like it. Besides, I have all these tattoos and piercings to make up for it.
At any rate, my interests being as such, I like to cook at least a few meals when I go to visit my parents Only a few, of course, as I wouldn’t want to miss out on take-out Chinese. I get the added benefit, with these cross-country cookings, of reinforcing the fact that I can indeed take care of myself, and lo and behold, must not be 10 after all… I mean just look at the way he handles that knife and those boiling pans of something or other! He must be in his pre-teens at least!
Back on track: I was just typing out a recipe when I realized that this was exactly the type of stuff that used to be a computer’s main selling point. Remember that? Store all your recipes in one convenient place! the ads would say. Forget large cookbooks, store all your favorite dishes on several floppy disks! I’m glad I could finally fulfill my machine’s destiny…
It is a little known fact that I’ll be going on “vacation” (and I use vacation in the loosest sense of the word, seeing as I have no job to take a vacation from) to Washington D.C. next week. As my parents live there, it will be a chance to see them; and, it will also be a chance for ADG to see them, as she’s going with me. She’s already had the pleasure of meeting my dad, but has yet to meet my mom. Inexplicably, she doesn’t seem at all nervous about this, so I must commend her for her courage.
This won’t be our first joint vacation, but it will be our longest, which I mention only as a data-point, and not to express any concern over the matter. 9-ish days with my favorite person sounds like something to get excited about, rather than worried, to me.
As I mentioned, my parents live there, so I’ve visited several times… not yet seeing everything, but the big stuff at the very least. Somehow, it’s not something you really get tired of doing… seeing these same attractions again and again. It’s not unlike going to Europe, I’d say, though I’d hardly equate D.C. to say Paris… Although I can think of no other city that has the same amount of world-reknown monuments in such close proximity:
Moi: Paris, I see your Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triumph, Notre Dame, and Louvre and raise you a US Capitol, White House, Washington Monument, Lincoln, Jefferson, and Vietnam Memorial, and all 14 buildings of the Smithsonian.
Paris: Sacre bleu!
Also in the category of little known trivia, my 28th birthday is coming up in something like two days. Go figure.
Wall Street Throws in the Towel
By DAVID KLEEMAN, APNEW YORK (AP) – Citing a general sense of malaise, Wall Street employees and executives unilaterally agreed to put an end to the world’s largest securities exchange Tuesday. Doors were permanently closed at the close of trading today, and since then numerous offers have been gathered for the valuable real estate. Said one Gap executive on the condition of anonymity, “11 Wall Street? It’s a prime location with great walk-through, not to mention the nostalgia after having that bank or whatever there for so many years. We’d be crazy not to turn it into a Gap Kids.”
Wall Street’s long, but ultimately doomed history began in 1792, when twenty-four New York City merchants signed an agreement to trade securities and wives only amongst themselves, and not to consort with competing auctioneers. This early exchange was located under a buttonwood tree, but was then later moved to the valuable real estate it now has for reasons of indoor plumbing and the invention of air conditioning some 200 years later.
When asked about the dissolution of the venerable 210 year-old institution, Federal Reserve Chairman Al Greenspan was quoted as saying, “Well, it’s too bad, sure; but we’ve had a pretty good run. Besides, have you seen the market lately? We’re almost down to zero anyway.”
Having it driven into my brain like the rest of you undoubtedly have, I caught myself humming Nelly:
It’s getting hot in here…
So take off all your clothes…
I am…
Getting so hot…
I wanna take my clothes off
Doobie-doobie dah dah, doobie-doobie-doobie dah dah!
At that point I realized that it is getting hot in here, and I do want to take my clothes off. Which is why, you see, I’m now sticking to my leather chair.
Continued Spam Adventures
Well, no one yet seems to have a solution to my spam dilemmas; but, there’s a silver lining to that cloud. If I did have some impregnable spam-blocker in place, I’d have missed today’s best subject-line:
From: jen@computer
To: ren@104
Subject: See if your smarter than Brittney Spears
Yeah, read that again.
As part of a larger goal in life, I’ve been taking a realty class at the local community college. It’s been keeping my brain moist…but barely. If I have to sit through another twenty minutes about how if you take a rectangular piece of property and multiply the length and width of its perimeter, you then get this amazing esoteric concept called “area”, or the so-called “square footage”…and how square footage can also be written as ft^2 if and only if, “you’ve taken ‘scientific notation’ as some of you engineering transfer students may have done”…my head will explode. And then the questions after questions after questions that serve to reiterate the question just asked until I want to scream, “FOUR! You Neanderthals! 10 minus 6 is FOUR!”
As I said, this is a small step in a larger aspiration, and I have no actual desire to become a realtor… but if I did I think I’d be a superstar.
This post sponsored by the letter Q, and the number 3
For the good of the community
If you’re a regular reader of this site, you may remember a post in which I put up a truncated version of a spam e-mail I got talking about how spam was such a great way to spaminate spamificationiety for the various spamming spam spammers that have recently been spam. In fact, it was the day before yesterday.
At any rate, perhaps because of my post, or simply because it’s the very nature of the beast, I’ve now received this same e-mail (different subject, different sender, but same text) about a dozen times. With nothing better to do these days than monitor my inbox, you can imagine my consternation. Therefore, I call upon you, the wise and nerdy, to float me some advice: If anyone has experience with, or can recommend, some free or otherwise spam-blocking software that functions as an add-on to Microsoft Outlook, please tell me so in the comments. I would be… not eternally grateful… but pretty stoked for a while, thanks.
Y’all remember when I promised to send postcards to anyone who asked me for one? Well, yes I really meant it, yes I’m still accepting all comers, no I’m not done writing them all, and yes the real problem is that I’ve been too apathetic to stand in a 40 minute line at the post office and have therefore been hoarding them all for one mass mailing… oh, and the check is in the mail.
I wonder if cops ever get to listen to the radio when they’re cruising around in their patrol cars. I’m thinking probably not. It would be surreal to see a officer blasting Roberta Flack’s Tonight I Celebrate My Love while trying to run down a bank robber or escaped con.
That time of year again
I’m not saying you have to, of course. If you feel perfectly fine enjoying the ruminations of an unemployed designer for free, more power to you. If the thought of giving back to the individuals in the blogger community who have given of themselves for your amusement is a totally foreign concept, fine by me. However, if you do have that small shred of decency within you, consider giving back to ME!
Joking joking joking. I kid because I love… I love! My birthday is coming up, however, near the end of this month; and, I will be marching ever closer to that 30 barrier and spending the next year in the purgatory of 28. Definitely no longer in my mid-20’s, and, getting almost to the point where it looks like I’m trying to dress all hip. Almost. But hopefully not quite.
PS I’m not really asking for gifts. I’m not a HOTT camgirl that could get away with that. Birthday wishes from the anonymous masses would be greatly appreciated, if they were forthcoming…and hell, if you really WANT to get me that Samsung MP3 player, who am I to deny you your dreams?
