Easily one of the most ridiculous things I've read about. From the NYTimes via Decorno. A gym for "down there." In general, I think women spend way too much time thinking about how this area looks, and this is part of that. (Kegel exercises can be good for women with bladder control issues, but a GYM?) I mean, really. My personal opinion is that if any man asked me to get a Brazilian, I'd say "Sure, honey, if you do first."
I've blogged before about how much I hate the shopping experience at Safeway (here and here). Yesterday, I was able to experience the juxtaposition between shopping there and at Harris Teeter. I've shopped at HT a lot recently. I haven't shopped at Safeway at all. Lest I forget how annoying it is, I went yesterday. It was actually to get baking chocolate for the cupcakes I was making. Safeway was closer...that's about all it is. Here's how it went.
Harris Teeter. I parked my car in the underground lot at the Pentagon Row HT and walked up and into the store. I sanitized the handle of my cart and walked to the freezer section. I leisurely strolled around, picking out my food. I reached the soda aisle and was disappointed to find out that there was no HT brand diet ginger ale. I asked the guy stocking wine if they had any in the back. Even though he didn't work in the soda section, he looked me in the eye sympathetically, and said he would go and check if there was any in the back. He was sincerely apologetic that they were all out, and suggested I check back the next day when a shipment would be coming in. I went to the deli and got freshly sliced chicken breast, where the deli worker asked me if the thickness was okay. I waited about 2 seconds in line before being checked out by a friendly cashier.
Safeway: I parked in the lot and dashed through to avoid getting hit. Mind you, I only had one item to get, so the shopping part of it was pretty painless. If I had to buy a whole order as at HT, I can tell you how the situations I encountered would have gone:
As for my actual experience yesterday, I stood in the "express" lane for an inordinately long period of time during which it appeared the checkout woman wasn't doing anything. Also, a dog ran through my aisle. Better than what I thought it was at first (a rat), but still--a dog! Followed by a girl.
It goes without saying that I can't wait until the HT opens in my 'hood.
It's been 10 days since I read AT. It's hard some days, but I realize the benefits too. I've had more time to check other design and non-design blogs. I've also spent a lot less time at work reading things on the Web, thereby improving my productivity and making me feel better about myself. Wow, a clean life feels so great! :) Truth is, I went there so often because it was updated frequently and it was an easy way to waste time...so if at work when I was confronted with an unfun task (not that that happens at...work) or wanted to procrastinate, it was an easy fill in. I hadn't been liking it as much as I once had anyway...the insultingish comment was the last straw. Going cold turkey for me is the only way to go!
Is it God behind the scenes? Are we all just six degrees away from each other (hence the Kevin Bacon pic)? I am truly weirded out by the connections LinkedIn has found. One of the "people I may know" it pointed me to is a woman I met at a happy hour while on a job in another city. Um, HOW DOES IT KNOW THIS? We don't work in the same field, live in the same city, or anything. Another one is someone who also taught ESL where I do. Random. Does it have access to my emails? Does it spy on me at night while I'm sleeping. Seriously! I do enjoy the social networking sites, though--I've been in contact, even if peripherally, with people I hadn't spoken with for years!
Picture of Kev by SAG Indie on Wikimedia Commons.
One day at work this week, I was feeling a bit down in the mouth. I wondered why, but being the great student of self-help books that I am, I identified the reason and then felt immediately pathetic: I had one of my photos posted on ApartmentTherapy.com.
What could be awful about this you ask? I have been a self-professed obsessed fan of AT. Okay, it's like crack. I was addicted ever since I first found it by looking for something about apartments three or four years ago. I was practically in line at the bookstore when founder Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan's book came out. Well, this is what it said after my photo:
"Okay, the pics aren't great, but Christine in DC's back and has nice flowers for both weeks"
(see the original post on AT here).
Woah. What? "Nice flowers," but the "pics aren't great"? I may be dense at times but I'm pretty sure that's at least mildly insulting. I felt like Carrie (the one from the Stephen King novel) except, unfortunately, without the powers to set things on fire. Like I was asked to the prom by one of the cool kids only to then have pig's blood spilt on my dress or something. Maxwell broke my poor little heart.
I doubt it was with purposeful bad intentions (I'm not paranoid). Still, I don't really understand the objective there. Pointing out who's not cool enough? Not wanting anyone to think HE'D taken the low pixel photo? I'm no expert blogger or businessperson, but I do know insulting one of your fan/supporters isn't smart. Still, I don't know him, never met him, how could I possibly be offended?
I came to my answer thinking about the nature of internet "relationships." People talk a lot about the anonymity of communication on the web. But, in some ways, we create quick relationships without really knowing anything about the people. While somewhat anonymous, the relationships are anything but surface. Because of the somewhat anonymous aspect, we share more than we would with people at work or strangers on the street. We share interests with them, share our opinions, our embarrassments, and in this particular case, our homes. You'd think NBC's "Dateline: To Catch a Predator" would have warned me off of sharing too much and forming naive feelings, but it didn't.
So, I'm sort of starting my own therapy--like any good addict, I've realized when I've gone too far. I'm staging my own intervention. I'm going to go 12-step on AT. I'm still going to keep checking the blogs from the fun people I "met" through there, and doing my own home improvements, but I doubt I'll be frequenting AT as much as I used to. "Step 1: We admitted we were powerless over our addiction - that our lives had become unmanageable." Being insulted by a guy on a web site to the point where I write a blog entry? Uh, yeah, check, I think that qualifies as unmanageable!
Apologies to all those AT people who are visiting me here...I know I'm sort of flogging a dead horse!
Okay, I got asked for the second time in a row by one of my ESL students if I was married. Picture, pointing to the ring finger and me looking at my bare one. For the second time in a row, I answered "uh, no."
Last time:
Student: "You no married?"
Me: (sheepishly) "Uh, no."
Student: "Why not?"
Me: Ummmmm, well....uhhhhhh....they say all DC guys are either gay or married. You know gay?
Student: Yes, ha ha, but you so beautiful. No boyfriend?
Sheesh, what are you, my mother?
This time made me feel a wee bit better.
Student: "You married?"
Me: "No single"
Student: "You single? Better that way. You single--you go where you want."
By the way, this one had 6 children.
Anyway, that's part of my life as a singleton...particularly at ESL.
On the crowded metro this morning, there was a lost black glove that sat beside a pole. This older gentleman with a Southern accent and a leather coat kept asking women if it belonged to them, including me, and everyone said no. (As an aside, I imagined him to be a Texan business man going to a meeting with the oil lobby...but then, he probably wouldn't be taking public transit. And, anyway, he didn't have a 10 gallon hat or yellow suit.)
This reminded me of two Fridays ago when I felt loss quite acutely. My Aunt Shirle died that morning of cancer after a long struggle with the disease. Death of a family member that you don't see all that often but who has always been a fixture in your life is very surreal. In some ways, truly feeling the loss is delayed and not fully understood...until you're at the next family function and he or she is not there.
That same morning, I dropped my favorite winter hat--a black fleece tight fitting cap from Talbots that I'd had for about 8 years--on the Orange Line metro. I was in a hurry to get off, and it was in my lap, and it dropped. I realized it as I went up the escalator and my head became cold. I truly felt that loss...it was immediate and real. Not to compare to a death, but in some ways, having that loss that was in my face, and made me cold, made all of the loss more real. Knowing you will never have someone or something back is hard to deal with, just on a different scale.
In the meantime, I have filed a "missing hat" report (they call it a loss and found report) to metro, adding "it's my favorite," as if the person cares. Unlike with my black hat, I can feel the cold air whipping through the hat I dug out of my closet to "replace" my favorite. And, I find myself, as I plan my new sewing project, wanting to ask Shirle advice. I guess it has to be enough to know she'll be looking over my shoulder from a better place. Slowly, you come to realize that it's really real.
As I was approaching my stop this morning, a woman jutted out of her seat and lunged toward the glove. Her companion said "Good thing you found that...You definitely would've missed that today!" as she united the prodigal glove back with the other. A little bit of me smiled inside.
Photo by Jeffy on Mad Times. Lots of lost glove photos, which I love, and kitties too, if you're so inclined.
Engraving of the Leader of the Luddites that I pulled off Wikipedia, which according to them was published in May 1812 by Mess, Walker and Knight.
There are times I'm quite the Luddite. Like now, after spending an hour and a half on the phone with my HP tech support guru Rupender in New Delhi to get my printer up and running. It involved a lot of questions from him like "Do you like music a lot?" and "Do you like cooking?" in the awkward silences of his working on my computer remotely or me fishing for the CD rom that came with my machine. I also taught him "Te amo," Spanish for "I love you," for him to share with his girlfriend. (Long story that started with the cooking question.) So, that's how our conversation ended--me reminding him of how to say it which to an innocent bystander would sound like I was telling my Indian tech support person that I love him. Not that I wasn't grateful--it's up and running again...
...Or, maybe it isn't. I just tried printing something out and it said it was out of paper again. I am a little bit on the paranoid, conspiracy theory side when it comes to technology. My warranty is up on Feb. 3. It's amazing to me how things go wrong riiiiiigggghhht after the warranty's up. That's what happened with my last laptop. Then, I followed the directions that the email support gave me, and THEN it said it was out of ink--not before. Before, it said paper. And, when I called, Ru, as I'm going to call him, gave me an offer I couldn't refuse--a set of ink & paper for $35. How conveeeeeeeeeenient.
All this makes me want to just stick my head in the sand and use a number 2 pencil. But then I couldn't blog, could I?
This is a few days late...but then again, it's not like I had Monday off or anything. I think it's good to take a moment to commemorate the memory of a truly remarkable man. And, really, it's not just his memory that is commemorated, but all those who worked with him to change the way America treated its citizens. I don't claim to be an expert on Civil Rights, but I think that's just the point--so much of the recent history of America has been shoved under the rug by the "establishment," not to sound too much like a 60s radical (or for that matter, suburban, rich kid skater).
I went to Atlanta when I was working on their Downtown plan in 2003. One part of this was for the Sweet Auburn district--a historically black business area, for, you know, when they weren't allowed to eat in white restaurants. It is also the area where King was born and is now buried. He preached at the Ebenezer Baptist Church, and another church--Big Bethel AME--was a center of the Civil Rights movement. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference was headquartered there. Auburn Avenue is the location of the King Center, which commemorates King's life and is the location of his tomb.
I learned all of this during the project. I admitted to a prominent black community leader who had been active during the Civil Rights movement that I didn't even know King was born or buried in Atlanta . Embarrassing. Shameful, really.
I learned a lot more during my more recent trip to Memphis. I visited the Civil Rights Museum, which is located at the former hotel where King was shot.
The museum's many issues aside (lots to read, ending was a bit odd), we were glad we went. It really drove home the sacrifices people made to strive for equality. It made me question my own role in effecting change. I really admire King, and not just King, but everyone who put Civil Rights ahead of the safety of themselves and their families. We all owe them a lot. Though I don't think I could ever be that brave, I hope that I can at least stand up for what I believe and know is right and just whenever I can.
I was thinking the other day about what I would present if, say, I was creating a presidential platform or, say, I was controlling the universe. Here is a start to that list:
1.) I don't know why this comes to mind right now, but I would outlaw work for all non-essential personnel (which, let's face it, most people aren't and even those who are considered essential aren't really) between December 23 and January 2. As another rider to this law, I would make it illegal for any work to be due between December 15 and January 30.
I wish I could remember all the good ones I was thinking, probably as I was driving, but if you are at work today and reading this, I'm sure this first one hits home.
