a bit of cheer from yesteryear*

i noticed today that several of my nearest and dearest seem stressed, depressed, or just generally a little "off" lately. 

perhaps this blast from the past will help, even if it's only for 3 1/2 minutes....and even if it's only because it's hard not to smile at the ridiculousness of the "apostrophe" sort of thing the otherwise bald guy's got going on on his noggin:

that's all i've got for you this evening. hopefully, it helped. otherwise, i may have to bring out the big guns tomorrow night.

*sorry- sometimes i get a little dr. seussish

tempted (by the doughnut of another)

i came to work this evening with a salad and the best of intentions. 

since i started working overnights full time at job #1 (formerly job #4), i've gained a couple of pounds. 

i know this may not be a big deal to some of you, but weight is easier to put on than it is to take off and i've noticed that several of my coworkers at this rather sedentary job are, well, sort of round. (granted, some of that can probably be attributed to the fact that about half of them are college kids who tend toward fast food- a staple of the college diet- but still....)

i like having junk in my trunk, but i'd rather not need one of those little uhaul trailers to cart it around. therefore, i figure it's best to nip these things in the bud (or butt, really) before putting on jeans involves a wrestling match that i may or may not win. 

as soon as i noticed my weight creeping up, i took a moment to reevaluate a few habits i'd picked up (a soda each night to get me jump started before switching to green tea) and dropped (workouts were fewer and farther between). 

i cut the sodas down to one a week (first night back is always the hardest), and my schedule during most of the week consists of

work

workout 

nap

lunch

work

workout

dinner

nap  

i've made a little bit of progress over the past couple of weeks, but i still would like to knock off another pound or two, so i can finally sport the clingy new dress i bought in st. john last month, hence the salad on which i'm dining this evening. 

unfortunately, the crunching of said salad isn't quite drowning out the siren song of the chocolate frosted doughnuts sitting on the table in the room next door.      

since i have a habit of trying to rationalize just about anything and, as we have all heard before, chocolate has antioxidants and is therefore good for you, i'd be lying if i told you i wasn't contemplating just eating the frosting and throwing the rest of the doughnut outside for the birds and squirrels.

like me, they'd probably be far more interested in that than this salad. 

in which i finally divulge my utter smoothness

it's taken me a couple extra days to get around to it, but i'm finally sitting down to pound out the post i meant to write the other night....the one that fell by the wayside because i ran into that article about the woman who actually manages to eat goldfish crackers slowly enough to notice their markings.*

on the bright side, the extra couple of days have allowed me to determine whether my streak of smoothness has ended or not.

i am pleased to report that it has. *knocks wood*

this was my theme song friday:

not because of the heat, mind you (though it was warm enough to drive around with my top down), but because i was on a roll. 

my first smooth move happened early in the afternoon, when the phone rang. since i have caller id, i saw it was the company that handles my ira, and i figured the secretary was probably doing her annual call to set up a time for me to talk to my financial adviser regarding the vast wealth i don't have. 

while i was not raised a southerner (everyone in my family was born west of the mississippi), i was raised to be polite, so i tend to say "yes, sir" and "yes, ma'am" a fair bit in conversations. 

normally this is a good thing, well received by the person i'm conversing with.**

i think i must've thrown three or four "yes ma'am"s out there before i realized that the person on the other end had said his name was eric.

whoops. 

my smoothness did not end there, dear reader. 

later in the afternoon, after i'd taken care of some chores, i finally wrote up all of the donations i'd piled up for goodwill and packed them into a box so i could drop them off at the donation center en route to the grocery store. (naturally, the 1990's era teen magazines my dad shoved into my car after his last trip to the house in kansas city were on the bottom. i'd rather not flaunt the fact that i was actually interested in ym's**** articles about ways to pick up boys.*****)

since the box was pretty heavy and i had other stuff i needed to take with me for my errands (kroger ad, coupons, wallet, cell phone, checkbook, plastic bags to recycle, reusable bags to tote groceries), i simply put the other stuff into the box, on top of my donations and then unloaded them when i got down to the car. 

fast forward a couple of hours. the donations have been made, unused coupons left on store shelves for other frugal customers to use, groceries purchased and put away. by this point, i was lounging on the couch, watching the last few minutes of big bang theory before heading off to bed for my pre-work nap. i reached over to turn the ringer off on my cell phone (it's pretty much inevitable that i'll get a call just as i'm drifting off to sleep), but there was nothing to reach for. 

remember how i'd unloaded my essentials from that box? yeah, well, it appears i missed one. 

so much for settling down for a nap. 

i was on goodwill's doorstep six minutes. 

thankfully, when i'd been there earlier, i'd seen which direction the donee (that would be the person who receives the donations, as opposed to the donor, who does the donating, right?******) went with my box.

also, thankfully, due to the large volume of donations, my box had not yet been dumped out. 

as i retrieved my sad little dumbphone, i noticed him looking at it as if surprised i'd actually be seen in public with the poor thing. (it's developed a little hinge issue recently, and i've yet to figure out how to fix it. tape has not worked, nor has my jeannie-style blinking.) 

"i know it looks a little rough," i said.

i, on the other hand? smooth. 


*actually, let me digress for a minute about that, as i've had a couple more thoughts since writing that post:

thought one: is it just me, or does the marking on the side of the goldfish look more like a fin than a cross? should this be construed as proof that poseidon exists, or are we just to assume the creator of that particular goldfish was trying to make it a little more lifelike?

thought two: isn't it a little sadistic that she stares at her goldfish so intently before eating them? as i mentioned before, i can't stand having my food looking at me. it makes me feel a little guilty. thankfully, when i go out for sushi, no one ridicules me openly for putting a little ginger blindfold on my aji.

**there is only one exception that i can think of, and it happens to be one of the few people i dislike so intensely that i would not pee on them if they were on fire. naturally, because they once told me they disliked it, when i started disliking them, i doubled up on the appropriate term.***

***this is probably proof that even basically nice people can have moments when they're not so nice. 

****wait- ym is no longer published? crap! i need to get those issues back! they're collector's items! 

*****not that i could ever get them to work, anyway. then again, i was generally about as subtle as vanilla ice's highlights during that same era. 

******i thought i was making that up, but no- it's actually a word. you can bet i'm adding it to my scrabble/words with friends repertoire. 

is that christ on my cracker?

i'd originally planned on writing about my ultra-smooth moves today, and i still intend to do so at some point this weekend, but whilst browsing through yahoo's headlines i came upon this article. 

(while you read it, excuse me for a moment while i go retrieve a small snack.)

ok. i'm back. done reading yet?

so, here's the question that comes to my mind, and i figure there's a good chance it popped into yours, too:

how is this even possible? 

now, please don't think i mean for this to lead to a lengthy discussion of whether or not divine spirits try to express themselves through cooking. in fact, i try to avoid almost all conversations pertaining to religion and politics, due to the fact that they usually end with some degree of animosity. 

no, dear reader. i'm trying to work out how someone can actually allow goldfish to sit around long enough that they notice whether or not there might be unusual markings on them. 

i don't know about you, but whether i'm eating them by the handful or scooping them out of my soup, i don't normally stare at my goldfish. (part of this may be attributed to the fact that i can't stand having my food look at me while i'm eating it- it makes me feel like some sort of horrible predator.) 

perhaps if she ate the "xtreme cheddar" variety, she too would find them so irresistably tasty that she would be unable to fight the urge to hoover them down without a second thought regarding unusual markings or, really, much of anything else. 

then again, given the apparent prevalence of food with unusual markings, maybe i should slow down, a little, too. i mean, for all i know, jim morrison could be lurking in this container of ben & jerry's karamel sutra. 

despite my deep, abiding love of that particular flavor, if i find a face in my last pint, you can bet your bippy i'll sell it off to the highest bidder. i mean, this sort of....dare i call it a phenomenon?...can bring in big bucks. 

i just hope he appears toward the bottom of the container.