never a dull moment

i'm such a sucker.




she showed up at work last monday, and i said if she were still around 24 hours later, i'd take her in.

my new roommate and i are still working out a few basic rules, but all in all, she's a good girl.

lesson #1: kittens are not allowed on kitchen counters. (the spray bottle has been an effective learning tool.)

lesson #2: it's just a cabinet door being opened. it's not that exciting. there's no need to sprint into the kitchen, leaving a trail on the carpet. finish whatever you were doing in the litterbox, instead.*

lesson #3: kitten food is in the kitten's bowl. it is not in the bowl of bermuda sand or on my plate, and it does not include any members of the cacti/succulent families.

still no name yet (wonder how the vet'll handle that tomorrow). i thought about setzer (as in brian- get it?), as well as shiva, the hindu deity ("detroyer of the universe"), but nothing's stuck yet. perhaps something will come to me this next week...and perhaps not. (frankly, getting the flying poop thing under control is a slightly higher priority.)

*the peals of laughter coming from the other end of the line as i tried to describe the situation to mama this afternoon in no way resembled the advice and support i was seeking.

antici......pation

five things i'm looking forward to


1. 50% off halloween candy at the grocery store in a few more days.
(hellloo, my many chocolatey friends.)


2. the morning after election day
(because every couple of years, i'm reminded that i'm a blue in a red state. however, i'm also a blue who can't stand nancy pelosi and thinks the democratic party would've been far better off without her in charge. it will be a relief to no longer hear ads talking about how (insert name of democratic candidate) is "a friend of pelosi". same goes for the negatively-toned mentions of "obamacare")


3. thanksgiving
(i need to run away from home every few months, or else i get a little stressed-out and stir crazy. my next solo trip won't be until the spring, but a change of scenery should be enough to restore sanity.)


4. the tron sequel, coming out around christmas
(i was too young to see the original in theaters, and given that i don't have a ginormous hdtv (SO's ancient tv still works, and i can think of other, more important things to fdo with several hundred bucks), this is as close as i'm going to get to recreating the missed experience.)


5. one day, probably in the far distant future, when katherine heigl will portray something other than an ultra type-a, demanding woman who picks a fight with the lead male character because he doesn't read her mind and conform to her schedule/plans and doesn't loosen up until 3/4 of the way through the movie.
(typecasting, anyone?)

excuse for not pounding out a real post this week #37

a pool table has mysteriously appeared at the radio station. after taking care of work-type necessities, i've been wandering down the hall to regain my mad pool skillz.....at least i remember being vaguely not-awful in high school, but it's a little fuzzy through the haze of, uh, the cigarette smoke in the bars.

i am nowhere near a pool shark yet; i am merely a guppy.

part of the secret to my success is having a helpful cue ball. it likes to show the other balls how to fall into the pockets.

(the preceding just sounds better than admitting i've sunk the thing so many times that robert ballard is thinking of putting together an expedition- i'm learning it's all in how you spin it.)

reason for not posting last weekend

i assure you, it's a good one:





i was busy playing in a photo booth during SO's cousin's wedding reception.

i'd never been in one before, and had to make up for 32 years of deprivation. (i have almost enough strips at home to give out with my holiday cards this year.)

sometimes, i'm not sure where i get this stuff, either....

wildly inappropriate random thought i had while driving today: do you think, after the dust settled in the lewinsky scandal, that hillary banned bill from using the phrase, "close, but no cigar"?

knowledge is power...or something like that.

i seem to learn things best the hard way. (in fact, i'm sure there are folks out there who are convinced it's the only way i learn- mama included.) i can tell you (from experience) that it's unwise to try to due that tom cruise sock-sliding thing on a freshly waxed floor.* i also know for a fact that you should always check to make sure the coast is clear before talking trash about someone, as they will inevitably walk into the room just as you really get going.

today was not only a monday, but a day of serious learning here in duffworld:

1. it is good to always wash one's hands an extra time or two after handling jalapeños, preferably before rubbing one's eyes. (thankfully, i only rubbed one.)

2. even pickled cauliflower goes bad. in fact, even if the jar is unopened and less than five years past the expiration date (but more than three), you should probably just open it, dump the contents down the disposal, and recycle the glass jar. **

3. it is possible to consume too many jalapeños in one sitting....and if the york peppermint patty i found in the freezer doesn't catch up to those jalapeños by tomorrow, i might regret it all over again.

all that learning was rather exhausting, so i'm off to bed. (i'll be stopping by the freezer en route, just in case i have another one of those york peppermint patties. i'm thinking it might be good for insurance purposes.)

*couch jumping, however, is a fun way to burn calories and get exercise- especially when you're under the age of ten.

**the shelf life for canned reddi whip is much shorter. trust me on this.

sorry about the traumatized cat, but i'd rather hear about the budweiser frogs

i can think of few things i'm looking forward to more than the end of the political ad season. in fact, i believe the list is basically limited to:

1. my next vacation
2. my next appointment with the hunky orthodontist
3. my next hot date (i'll settle for a lukewarm one, though.)
4. the creation of a jack lalanne power juicer in purple.*

no sooner did my favorite tv shows start gearing up for the fall season than the spaces between wound up filled up with mud slung between candidates. i'd compare it to the fuzzy grout i found in SO's shower a few weeks ago, but really, i think the fuzzy grout may be preferable to spending approximately 12 minutes an hour (after all, tv stations still manage to carve out a little room for their promos and teasers) listening to "regular americans" detail every wrongdoing of their least favorite candidates. i do not care if candidate x used to color his little sister's cabbage patch kids with sharpies. i do not care if candidate y hid all of her lima beans in the nearest potted plant during her younger years. i do not care if candidate x likes to prance around in his wife's crotchless panties. i do not care what candidate y did with a rubber chicken and some peach preserves on a dare in college.

i know it's a question that's been asked before, but why don't the ads ever focus on what a particular candidate is for, rather than the various flaws of their opponent?

i'm voting for the man/woman/hermaphrodite who worries about the environment, doesn't care who you marry, as long as you stay within your species, would rather have a splinter pulled out of their big toe with a pair of needlenose pliers than raise taxes on the middle class, and would rather spend 30 seconds of ad time stating the above than telling us what their opponent may or may not have done with a jar of manic panic and the neighbor's cat back when they were twelve years old.

failing that, i'm writing in jack lalanne, as i'm pretty sure one doesn't make it to 96 without having a little common sense....and then maybe he can hire an assistant to get crackin' on that purple juicer issue.

*i'm kidding. please don't buy me one.

you don't look a day over....

so there we were, at the most recent gathering of the thursday night club. one of the members brought his mother out for dinner, drinks, and crap- is there a "d" word for singing? i'm afraid i'm not awake enough to come up with it at the moment.

anyway, i was engaged in conversation with said member and his mother, when she paused, took a good look at me, and inquired as to my age.

"hopefully, still older than i look," i said.

"you look very young," she said.

"how old do you think i am?"

she hemmed. she hawed. she volunteered that she was horrible with this sort of thing. i pointed out that she brought it up.

"you look about 35."

it was pointed out to me that she'd had the better part of a bottle of white wine throughout the evening. this was small consolation.

perhaps i need my braces back.

after a 7 1/2 month hiatus- a classy, mature first post

nothing says "PAAAARRRRRTTTTYY!" like puking.

no, this isn't a reminiscence of the "frying pan incident" or the "tequila jello shot incident"....nor any of the overindulgences that i actually remember.

this is far more recent, as in 12 hours or so ago.

also, this time i'm innocent, having developed a serious distaste for regurgitation years ago. (not only would i not make a good bulemic, but when i worked at the preschool, i established with my assistant(s) early on that if a kid hurled, i'd be the one calling the parents, as otherwise, i'd be highly likely to add to the pile.)

while hiking the mile from the free parking lot (thank you, verizon wireless amphitheater in charlotte) to the venue itself for last night's kings of leon show, my concert companion commented on the number of folks tailgating/prepartying before the show. neither of us can grasp the concept of shelling out $70+ for a concert ticket, only to get plastered before the show and not remember anything beyond the opening act the next day.

however, it seems that others "get it".....like the chick two rows ahead of us.

our attention was drawn first to her big-boned friend, whom we referred to as "skunk", in honor of her stylish (5-10 years ago) two-tone coif. when we first spied skunk, she was chatting up "man boob", the security guard in charge of the gate between the reserved seating area for poor people and the new "vip" section, which i'm sure costs extra. given the intensity of their chatting, complete with some serious flirting on her part (unless all that eyelash batting was in an attempt to get her mascara to dry), i figured for sure that they'd either start making out, or she'd wind up in one of the empty vip boxes.

sadly, it was not to be.

skunk waved her slightly more attractive friend over, so man boob could snap a picture of the two of them during the black keys' set. this would have been nothing to write home about, except the friend, who i'll call "hurley", leaned over as the photo was being snapped and licked skunk's neck. we thought she was just goofing around, but about half an hour later, during the intermission before kings of leon took the stage, we looked over and hurley was decorating the empty seat next to her. (by "decorate", i do not mean she'd whipped out a hot glue gun and some rhinestones. i'm talking about non-aerosol spray painting with her dinner.) skunk actually paused her conversation with man boob and came over to check on hurley. meanwhile, the guy on the other side of hurley was unfazed.

a medic was called over, but hurley and skunk managed to convince her she was fine. (perhaps she blamed it on bad shrimp.) the cleanup crew arrived about half an hour later. the smell of disinfectant blended interestingly with that of certain smokeables, the latter of which being present for a good chunk of the kings of leon's set.

the medic wasn't quite so easily convinced the second time, however. i'm not sure if hurley had a second technicolor yawn, but when i got a clear view, she was passed out like a sorority girl after a frat party. skunk and the medic somehow roused her enough to be led out of our section, if not the whole venue. again, the guy on the other side of hurley was unfazed.

as the action in that area wound down, the chick directly in front of us got going. i'm not sure how her fiance/husband managed to ignore her advances, but i have to admire his restraint. i'll spare you the sordid details (though i must point out that neck licking seems to be a clear indicator of drunkenness), but suffice it to say that he probably got lucky last night, unless she passed out while they were waiting to leave the parking lot after the show.

i'm willing to bet that on the walk to the car, though, a bystander probably had occasion to scream "PAAAAAAARTY!"

five lame excuses for not posting last weekend

1. still traumatized over car's illness- which nearly led to yours truly having to pull over with car trouble in the first well-lit parking lot i passed after getting off work at midnight two weeks ago tonight.

pro: there would have been lots of guys who could have potentially helped me out.

con: said establishment was a strip joint

2. consumed too much caffiene during work and couldn't concentrate long enough to spend an hour pounding out a post.

3. my (friend's) dog ate it.

4. too busy rereading the tao of pooh.

5. knew computer crash was eminent. didn't want to spend its final hours posting.

(actually, it wasn't a full crash- just an update that somehow made everything kerflooey. the incident monday was followed by my office computer being invaded by a nasty russian virus on wednesday that threw out a bunch of pop-ups, blocked my virus scanner (which finished its morning cycle about three minutes after the first popup, and assured me everything was ok), and repeatedly sent me to a fake viagra site, as well as a rather charming porno site that offered "dirty chat" (and poor grammar). i have no idea what the official name of the virus was, but some blend of "rasputin" and "hydra" would've been appropriate.)

in which i narrowly avoid learning yet another lesson the hard way

i have to get used to driving my car again.

i made a deal with SO the weekend before we left on our respective winter vacations: since he was going to be away from home (charleston) longer than i was (columbia), and his flashy new chariot (a corolla almost exactly like the one i was seriously considering over the summer, during the great clutch/transmission debacle) gets slightly better mileage than my 8 1/2 year old wheels, we swapped for a few weeks.

as i headed to work this afternoon, and he headed out of town, we swapped back.

have you tried to switch back to driving a 5-speed after driving nothing but automatic for four weeks? it took my left foot a minute to figure out what it was supposed to do, which led to yours truly sitting in the parking lot, looking like an idiot, trying to figure out why the car wouldn't start.

uh, duh.

SO's main reason for wanting to switch back was that my car had started running hot again on his trip up from charleston friday night, and since he had a long drive back, he didn't want it to overheat.

this is an annoying habit my car had picked up on an intermittent basis lately. over the summer, my trusty mechanic said that there was condensation on my thermostat housing, and that it was okay for the moment, but would eventually crack and i'd need a new one. he said it wouldn't be a huge deal, so instead of freaking out the first time the needle inched toward the red line, i simply turned on my heat full blast, which i balanced out by rolling down my window...in the middle of south carolina winter, which means it was about 50 outside. (actually, the window part isn't unusual. i've been known to suffer frozen hair because i have a habit of driving with the window down, year round.)

today, however, the needle shot up almost immediately, and despite running the heat full blast, didn't budge from its new position, unnervingly close to the dreaded red line.

i believe this is pretty universally considered a problem.

thankfully, i work with boys. not only boys, but boys who know basic things about cars.

when i got to work, i went up to one such boy and asked him if, before he left for the day, he could peek under the hood of the car with me and help me check my coolant....just in case this wasn't just a thermostat housing problem that i could blow off.

did you know a car can still run with a miniscule amount of coolant? thankfully, i do not know exactly how short that trip will be, because after discovering the source of my problem (hoepfully the sole source), the aforementioned boy went out in search of a vat of coolant, so i wouldn't be wandering around the aisles of various gas stations in the wee hours of the morning (i get off at midnight on sundays) in search of this chartreuse elixir.

ooh! ooh! ooh!- let me point out that i thought to fashion a funnel out of one of this thin, plastic water bottles, which seemed like a far better idea than my initial plan to make one out of paper- macgyver would be so proud, despite the lack of chewing gum or a paper clip being involved in this little project, which is not to say i don't have them in my backpack at all times, just in case.

so, now i'll be able to spend the entire drive home this evening getting reaquainted with my car....rather than possibly spending part of it getting acquainted with yet another tow truck service in the middle of the night. this is a good thing.

on personal space, carry-out condiments, and tainted love lotion

they say you can tell a lot about a person by the contents of their personal space.

in high school, your locker contained not only your backpack and books, but also a glimpse into your little world.

that was eons ago, and quite frankly, i don't recall the exact contents of mine, though i'm fairly certain there were pictures, barely opened textbooks, my walkman, a variety of writing utensils, a partially-eaten snack-sized bag of sunchips or doritoes, some random toys, and at least one or two pieces of homework that may or may not have actually gotten turned in.

in college, it's your dorm room that's supposed to tip everyone off as to who you really are. my blow-up blacklight-friendly green couch still lurks in my dad's garage in kansas city, the random quotes i stuck to my ceiling are glued into a scrapbook somewhere, the lava lamp (a high school graduation present from my mom) is in the corner of my master bedroom, and i'm fairly certain that most of my trinkets from mardi gras are still fairly well contained in a box in my living room.

in short, i've always gone for vaguely-organized chaos.

while heating up my dinner this evening, in the radio station breakroom (let me briefly digress long enough to point out that i am not responsible for all the chaos and clutter there.), i had roughly 2 1/2 minutes to glance around the room, particularly at our cubbies.

i've worked here at the radio station for nearly 8 1/2 years now, and though my stations/duties have changed, my production cubby has remained the same.

i think when i first got here, there were signs posted somewhere near the cubbies that stated they were "for production orders only". perhaps if i were curious enough to dig through them, i'd find one of these signs still floating around. however, i'm really not that curious....i know they existed at one point in time, sort of like dinosaurs, and for a while, i heeded their stern words.

some of the 20 cubbies sit empty. either they were never used, or else they were cleaned out when their owners walked out of the building for the last time.

some of the cubbies have a couple of pieces of paper- maybe one of those glossy cards promoting some small-time rapper hoping to catch somebody's ear on the way to becoming the next mc hammer or ice cube or lil' wayne.

there's a cubby on the bottom row that contains a few dozen fedex envelopes, filled with cds from programs we may or may not run on our stations anymore.

also on the bottom row, there's the untouched cubby of the former employee who was busted in the wee hours of the morning, testing out off-label uses for (insert name of major beauty company that isn't avon, as well as a type of fabric and a body part that comes in a pair) lotion while most likely chatting (uh, single-handedly) with one of the many "exotic dancers" he was friends with on myspace.

well, it was untouched until fairly recently, anyway.

as my chicken baja chalupa was heating in the ancient microwave that bears a small black mark from an attempt to nuke a foil-wrapped fast food sandwich (to the nuker, who shall remain nameless, this did not seem like a bad idea. i mean, the foil was only on one side of the paper, so really, it's not like the thing was going to blow like the microwave full of metal in pump up the volume. it did, however, shoot out a couple of interesting little sparks, which actually helped the nuker out of her- i mean their- 4am mid-shift sleepiness.), i wandered over to my cubby in search of fire sauce, because for some reason, the fine folks at taco bell rarely understand what "a large handful" means.

now, my cubby is probably due for a good "decluttering". i have various eating implements (plasticware and chopsticks), condiments (ketchup, arby's sauce, horsey sauce, fire sauce, ranch dressing, mediterranean dressing, salt, and possibly a packet of pepper or two), napkins, teabags (because one cannot rely on sandwiches in foil wrapping to keep oneself awake all the time), a couple of issues of rolling stone, and i sincerely hope i didn't throw out the article about the octopus who was looking for love, finally was set up on an octodate at a ripe old age (no word on whether the soulful crooning of barry white was used to help things along), and then expired shortly thereafter.

it was while retrieving the runaway fire sauce that i noticed it.

or, rather, the absence of it.

the tube of hand lotion was missing.

it's been chilly here in south carolina lately, and with the heat on in the building, the air is pretty dry. i've almost run through my small tube of hand cream. however, i'd rather use a bunch of little neosporin packets from the other break room than to go anywhere near the tainted lotion in the bottom cubby.

lacking the ability to call horatio caine and convince him to chase down the culprit, i have been able to come up with two possible scenarios:

possible scenario numero uno: a desperate employee, suffering the agony of severely chapped, cracking hands, saw sweet relief in the form of a tube of lotion in the unused cubby of a person he/she had never heard of, and helped him/herself.

possible scenario numero dos: one of the buick-sized roaches (last seen scurrying around in my usual stall in the girls' bathroom, leading yours truly to decide to "hold it" during the remainder of my shift yesterday morning, plus the fifteen minute drive home) carried it off...hopefully to some secret corner one of my coworkers' children will never, ever, ever find.

i would have come up with a third scenario, but really, i only had about 2 1/2 minutes to find the fire sauce, attempt to prevent a condiment/utensil avalanche, and retrieve my dinner.

as soon as i finish my last chicken taco, though, i might just have to go back to my cubby and, using one of those sets of chopsticks, carefully pluck out the contents, just in case some well-meaning soul saw the lotion on the floor (if it was fairly full, it may have been too heavy for even a buick-sized roach to haul very far) and, seeing the clutter in my cubby, stuck it on top of my teabags.

better yet- maybe i should wander down the hall to the other break room. i think there may be some unused latex gloves next to the neosporin.

after all, i'm not sure what the possible tainted lotion/chopstick/napkin combination might possibly say about me, but i'm pretty sure it wouldn't be anything good.

hrmmm.....

it was pointed out to me a couple of nights ago that i've been a little too quiet on the blog lately. i'd offer to add "post more regularly" to my list of new years' resolutions, but

a. i don't usually make resolutions. i break enough stuff as it is and

b. were i to make resolutions this year, i'd wait until february or so, when everyone else has broken the ever-popular "get into better shape" resolution, saving me the long wait for a treadmill at my apartment complex.