Spandywear Plus

You can't ignore a juggernaut holiday like Christmas, even with a blindfold and a cigarette, it's inescapable. I don't know how the non-christians deal with it but I'm already sick of it and it's only just passed.

I joined a gym today, a big one with personal trainers and machines and classes and everything. I'm pleased with my athletic ambitions, I even have a plan: Matt hooked me up with a printout of the workout that one of the Olympic teams does on a daily basis...for me it will be on a weekly basis until I can handle the work and breathing involved. It is intense but curiously old-fashioned exercises. I could have gotten by without joining the gym, but I wanted to because I don't own any equipment and there are like three exercises I can't do without a pull-up or inverted sit-up situation. I'm gonna be buff! I'm gonna be...big.

I've never had to deal with any body issues before because I've just always been short and athletic but small...petite, in a word. But now I'm anticipating actually adding muscle and weight in a crazy way, eating way more than ever before so that my workouts don't eat into my muscle. I'm scared of looking different than I have before, but it's not vanity, it's just that I've seen what old football players look like after they've gone to seed and it ain't healthy looking. I'll have to keep this up unless I want to look like a baggy old pair of pants! Can I do it? I'm a little scared because I'm not exactly miss stick-to-it, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see. I really want to be able to compete in kayak racing so if this is the only way, then so be it! Let the races begin! In a year or so!

Death can be a good thing. Lately I've been paying close attention to how I spend my time and I'm not at all convinced that I'm enjoying my life as much as I should. So, in an effort to free up some time and space I am going to re-institute the "Food For Worms" mentality so popular around my high school years. Of course, I was young and stupid back then so my mentality would occasionally cross over into anti-social and got me suspended from school, but I'm in a much happier place now and like what I've got going for me overall, it's just the little things like drive and motivation that need tweaking.

Friends and colleagues from work are leaving at a rapid rate for both professional and personal reasons. I wouldn't care normally except that since transferring to a much smaller department, I am closer to my coworkers than I was in my previous jobs and I am worried that my boss might run off the last of them. These holdouts are my friends and I'm already doing what I can to cover their shifts and keep them happy but it means looong weeks and bizarro schedules while they get their life on and I get fucked. But I do it to myself, so who else is to blame? Anyway it's not like I'm even able to take a four day trip anywhere for the next seven months.
Who are these people out there who get paid vacations?! If you even go near our manager with a pink slip for leave approval, she will say no at first then give you so much grief that you regret ever having asked for time off that you earned! Not for myself, I can't even afford to take a trip to DC, but my coworkers are not happy and leaving as fast as possible for greener pastures, or out to pasture in early retirement.

To complicate matters, I find myself at the end of another rewarding-gone-stale relationship. I'm sad, but I really don't mean to be! I really don't like my birth month, it's depressing and cathartic and has too much roiling ennui and bad weather combined for inactivity and right now everybody is sick except me so I'm left to my own devices to entertain...it just sucks. So, the re-institution of "Food For Worms", a slight riff on Carpe Diem but more visceral, and less Latin. We'll see how it goes tonight.

I'm not going to lie, that Melting Pot restaurant is crap. Overpriced and you do all the cooking and it took like three hours, so it gets like a billion thumbs down. The only thing that could have possibly saved it is if they gave me a mountain of strawberries on my dessert platter for chocolate dipping but all I got was these freakin marshmallows, like I wanted to make smores at a restaurant where my bill equaled what I spend on groceries in a month. Stupid!

I'm just pissy because it was a coworker's idea to take our friend out for a pre-Christmas/birthday dinner and the girl is crazy for bland cheeses, forget about going out for queso or anything with flavor, we ate cheddar cheese dip and over-seasoned meats and it was totally gross.

Luckily, I am not lactose intolerant and slept just enough to wake up in time to watch the Arsenal vs. Chelsea match this morning at the Lion and the Rose. It was an incredibly physical match; we really should have beat them 4-0 but a win is a win in anybody's book.

It's been one of those weekends, I'm just not quite right in my decision-making processes. It was very "Fabregas" of me: today he played like he was a confused and slightly belligerent drunk, I can't explain why he had such a crappy game, but he did.

I need my consiglerie, but she is comfortably full of bland cheeses today and currently sparking an Air Force pilot at a hill country winery. She deserves the day off, but I need some damage control help.

The closest thing to a role playing game I've ever played was a weirdo video game called The Dragonriders of Pern after the book series by Anne McCaffrey. I played this game in the late 80's on an Atari, but it felt sophisticated to me what with notions of kingly conclaves and entire weirs holding me in disdain. I always knew when it was time to negotiate, when to ally and when to fold them/walk away/run. I was good at the game even though I was too lazy to figure out what I was really doing which was nothing at all.

Lately things feel like I'm playing that game again, I suddenly find myself toying with things which I don't quite understand. I also have the odd nostalgic feeling that I'm waiting for someone from my past to return to me but that doesn't really make much sense as I'm not expecting anyone to come knocking at my door. I suppose it's just the holidays picking up where they left off last year with me melancholy and slightly morose, lonely and alone. The ghost of Jacob Marley or sommat...

I knew living on my own could potentially be a bad idea, and it has yet to pay dividends, by which I mean cultivating any kind of a good prosperous or at the very least a grown-up life. So far it's just been nothing but sad sack and various descrepancies that I can't really afford.
My apartment flooded the other day and I got little in consolation or concern by anybody including my apartment manager. I smells a rat there, but that's actually beside the point.
I actually don't really have much of a point tonight, I'm just rambling for the sake of posting something sort of insightful and not just yammering on about how awesome Arsenal still is and will of course continue to be.

By the by, today I was told by a trustworthy source that NATO stood for Not At The Office. Just in case you didn't already know.

Now I'm missing Pizza Express, but I have to ask why do they offer eggs as a pizza topping? The Belgian guy I was with looked at me like I was a weirdo for wondering about his choice of an egg topping but they don't ususally offer eggs as a topping here! It's totally weird! Who on earth wants to eat boiled eggs on a pizza?! I mean besides a longhaired Belgian who didn't like Americans much?
A classic – prosciutto cotto ham, anchovies, fresh strips
of red pepper, capers and olives, topped with a free
range boiled egg (wtf?!)

Anyway, this has rambled long enough, clearly I need to get out more. I leave you with this moment from youtube. Te quiero Jon Spencer...

This week I've been busy moving into a new apartment. I have no internet yet nor have I had much time to email people what with my suddenly realized inability to set up house in a timely or structured manner. I still can't find those dang coffee filters...

Arsenal is still unusually awesome. I've found a pocket of south Texas Gunners at a local pub so now we can all get crunk and happy together. I'll have to tell you about the last time I went to watch a match at 8am after spending the previous evening out. Needless to say, never ever again will I attempt it, I don't care if they're playing in the final. Well, ok, maybe if they're playing in the final I'll drag my tired drunk bones out of bed after only 4 hours of sleep, but never again under normal circumstances.

Things at work are getting heavy, why they choose to get heavy at this particular time of the year I will never know, but people are not exactly filled with the holiday spirit as of yet. Maybe after tomorrow and our next two-day cold front people will cheer the frack up just a little. People (mostly just the big wigs) at work are unusually tense after the holiday but seeing as we've got a bunch ahead of us, everybody should just dig in and get in a good mood already, so says me.

I'm off, I need to find a laundry facility. If anybody has any new or old film recommendations, feel free to drop me a line.

Steve Vander Ark, wtf were you thinking dude?!? I had hoped that you were smarter than this, but maybe there is still the chance that you lost a bet to a publisher or decided to write a printed lexicon with JKR's implicit blessing, but son, you need to get that signature down on paper...

I really don't know whom I'm more frustrated with, the new king stupid or the richest woman in the world, but I am glad that she's brought about this lawsuit because no matter how fly your online lexicon is or how bitchin you might hope to look on a dustjacket, she's got the legs, can hold the water, and will successfully sic her big dogs on you because she's hardcore and Scottish and she owns the entire Potter world. You *will* be taken to the cleaners for copyright infringement just as surely as my wardrobe is 90% black.
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hIGNIcztySvpGhm95iGPhNL7ov1AD8SKHF7G1

Doh!

What movie is it where mentally disturbed people are able to see and hear angels? Anyway, I only ask such a surreal question because of what happened tonight to me and my friend while visiting a Greek Orthodox Church during their yearly festival.

At first everything was great, we ate good food and the night was nice and cool. The band was folking it up and dancers were onstage doing their thing to the sounds of the ubiquitous "opah!". All around there was merriment.

I've never actually been in a Greek Orthodox Church, and this one was open to the public, so my friend and I popped in for a look-see. I loved it: the incense, the ikons, the choir screen...it was gorgeous.

However.

While admiring the artwork, we were approached by a man who at first glance looked innocuous enough. He was in his early 60's, dressed like a tourist in shorts and a baseball hat (should have been a red flag right there, what kind of a man wears a hat in a church?) and was accompanied by a younger man in his thirties. He asked us if we had ever been in a Greek Orthodox Church before and I thought that our hushed conversation would be about the differences between the Greek and the Roman Catholic churches, etc. Not so. This guy started talking about pheromones and why there's sibling rivalry (pheromones) and why there's incest (pheromones) at which point I wished him a good evening and I got the fuck out of there. I left my friend on her own but luckily she took my cue to leave the weirdo as well. What a creep!

Anyway, the truly eerie element to this bizarre conversation is that a week ago my friend and I bought oil perfumes with pheromones (no!) that we've been wearing all week as kind of a social experiment. Personally, I was just hoping to observe any effect they'd have on my boyfriend or the guys at work and then just be done with the chemicals because I think that they smell a little odd and I'm not really a perfume person, but now I really don't want to touch them again because they only seem to work on cretins and/or mentally disturbed people. Which brings me back to this movie that I can't recall...

In a weird and obvious way, y'know, since we were in a church and all when it took place, this could be a sign to leave well enough the fuck alone with these chemicals and just get on with what we're given? I dunno. All I know is nothing good at all has come of it, so put it down to Pandora's Box or curious cats, but I'm done with those things.

I might have gotten a pair of free movie passes for my trouble though, a guy at work gave them to me for no discernible reason...pheromones? Beware!

Every year or so I'll get randomly homesick for the place where I'm not. For those who don't know me, I've bounced back and forth from San Antonio TX to Annapolis MD Washington DC Baltimore MD and back again on and off for the past 7 years since graduating.

My father just got back from a trip back east and he brought home some leaves that had changed color, pictures of sailing folk from the Annapolis Boat Show and a great free magazine called Spinsheet that I particularly love. And bagels, even days old, we just can't get it right in south Texas.

sigh...

I wish I could just take a trip to visit my friends in DC, and skulk around on the eastern shore in towns like Chestertown amongst local watermen and various Washingtonians out for a country trip. There's a place in particular that I long for called Hoopers Island where my dad and I lived for a few weeks in October of 2002. With the task of putting a canvas deck on a friend's 35ft classic Chris Craft, we stayed in one of those huge turn-of-the-century farmhouses that can easily fit a family of 13 and drank Nescafe at every opportunity to keep warm. No heat except fireplaces, and in late summer the local neighbors were all from Mexico, migrant workers up to pick crabmeat for packaging.


Even though this time of the year is when tall ships and schooners go in for downrigging and sailors go equatorial for the off-season, I get the itch to take an adventure in the wake of all the fall boat shows and regattas. The ship I'd really love to crew on is the barque Picton Castle http://www.picton-castle.com/. They have a great program, but they cost way too damn much. I'd have to sell all my possessions just to be able to afford it. I love their destinations though, so maybe one day if I'm independently wealthy and still under 40, I'll do it.

I will however take this moment to declare my strange and abiding love for the schooner Virginia, it's hands-down THE prettiest schooner in the entire world and I do want to sail on it as well. http://schoonervirginia.org/

sessy...

Anyway, the cyber world must rejoice for me because I finally got myself a car! One that is reliable and not 20 years old! I never want to go through that process ever again! ok!

Arsenal's still winning, and I'm not bored of it yet. I just wish I could see a few of the matches, I'm so far out of the loop that it makes me sad. My next major purchase will be a television with the soccer channels, this I vow. And Tivo. yesss...

I'll be much happier after tomorrow, I'm a little stressed out because we've got a program tomorrow with an author coming in and all the various little hassles they inevitably bring with them. Luckily I'm not the only coordinator, but it will be my first/last adult program for reference and I will be happy to see it over and done with tomorrow at 7pm.
Not much thought going on right now, just a sleepy Sunday afternoon and not much else.

The kavorka remark of the last post was down to my getting asked out at work and then getting some words of unprovoked flattery from a coworker. All in a day's work? hm.

-8 hit points for being struck by the arrow of inexplicable attraction...

Kramer: Hey.

Jerry: Hey. What are you doing?

Kramer: I’ve got the Kavorka Jerry.

Jerry: The Kavorka? What’s that?

Kramer: The lure of the animal. I’m dangerous

*********

(I'll explain what the hell I'm on about at a later date)

So I'm on the floor today, futilely tidying up the nonfiction, when it occurs to me that the frock coat is one foxy piece of wardrobe that has faded into obscurity. The length has changed over the years but it totally still works! For example, I adore nearly every period movie in which the fashion of the day features the frock coat. Coincidence?? I think not.
Along similar thoughts, I wonder why men's fashion has abandoned sexy swashbuckling leather boots and embraced the flip-flop. What kind of world do I live in that allows this kind of anti-foppery?! I blame John F. Kennedy, my reasons are inconsequential.
Check out this guy:


By golly it is still a good look! http://www.18cnewenglandlife.org/18cnel/frockcoat.htm

I can't seem to stop jumping up and down like a little girl in sheer delight at still being the tops of the EPL table!! Two of my favorite players got four of the 5 goals against poor, hapless Derby yesterday. I would have been equally pleased if they were all scored by Diaby but I really do love Cesc and Adebayor, they've got a good thing going on, attitude-wise. I like that they can deliver the goods and buoy an entire team at the same time. Hellfire, they lift the hopes of the fans as well; even though we really should know better by now to be cautious with winning streaks, how can you work up the energy to feel wary all the time when your team is number one? I'm going to enjoy this for as long as I'm allowed. The hullabaloo going on over at Chelsea is just the icing on the cake.

Can I just say right here without feeling too ungrateful that the best thing Henry did for the team in the last year is bugger off to Barcelona? Bygones. The team seems to have flowered in his departure, with new talent and young guns and continued leadership by the Tom Landry of soccer, Arsene Wenger.
Let's just hope that Thierry didn't whisper any "advice" to little Tony Parker of the basketball team Spurs at the end of last season when they were seen all about town looking as cozy together as two Frenchmen in south Texas can. I am a little worried about Parker, he really is the reason we won last year. As far as I'm concerned Timmy Duncan is too unreliable, he can't make free throws and gets fouled too often by unscrupulous referees. I only hope we can manage to keep our Frenchman for a few more years. Awww, que chulitos...


uh-ohs...

It's a beautiful Sunday. Check it:

1 Arsenal
2 Liverpool
3 Manchester United
4 Chelsea
5 West Ham
6 Everton
7 Manchester City
8 Blackburn
9 Newcastle
10 Wigan
11 Aston Villa
12 Middlesbrough
13 Birmingham
14 Sunderland
15 Portsmouth
16 Fulham
17 Tottenham
18 Reading
19 Bolton
20 Derby

Enjoy the moment, everyone. ^_^

In the immortal words of Dr. Peter Venkman, "We came, we saw, we kicked it's ass!"

Scum supporters all over the world were suffering from the same mass delusion as all the nincompoops who even once presumed aloud that our A-Team crack commando strike force was not one that would terminally beat those ugly bastards into submission, ass ball style. I'll explain that one later.
heh.

Adebayor got in two beauties, a header and a sweeeet volley, and Cesc got a killer 30 yard goal in which he put all 120lbs of his natural Catalonian heat behind the ball and into the net past the very awesomely bad Paul Robinson. Thank you Paul.

All right boys and girls, let's sing it...2-4-6-8 who do we appreciate? Spurs! Spurs! Spurs!

let's have another song, ok!

Martin Jol's a wanker
He wears a wanker's hat
And when he sees the Arsenal
He says I can't beat that
He tries them all defensive
He tries to push them wide
And when he's in the dugout
He says "Fuck me, we're shite"

This is what the Boss has to say about reserves player Havard Nordtveit:

“What I liked in this boy is his intelligence and his mental strength,” said the manager earlier this season. “He is very mature. In fact I have rarely seen a boy of his age so mature".

Quite! I say, look at those cheekbones! Prodigious talent goes hand in hand with good looks, at least in my book. ^_^
No, but really, I'm looking forward to seeing this young fella come into his own on the first team if Wenger indeed has his eye on him.

Big match coming up this Saturday against die Tottenhammy, and *sniff* I smell victory in the air. It smells like...napalm and antibacterial hand sanitizer. We go through buckets of that goop at work, not napalm, the other stuff.

Oooh! to!
Oooh! to! be!
Oooh! to! be! a!
GOONER!
**************
Suuuper super Tom!
Suuuper super Tom!
Suuuper super Tom! Super Tom Rosicky!



here's one of Super Tom aka "Little Mozart" aka "Tiny Dancer" brushing his teeth. Why the hell not?? That's a pretty gross house you've got there, Tomas...

We've finally caught up in the tables! I was so sure that being in seventh place last week was a major fluke but one we could do nothing about until this week.
A giant, easy win over Portsmouth today vaults us into second place and happily tied with the likely lads of Liverpool for first! I hope that next week we'll have them in second; but a red card today against Senderos and a few crucial defenders injuries might go against us in the match to come, but we'll see.
Rosicky was a joyous and nimble sight to behold, his teammates picked him up by his ankles and turned him right over, he was the big man of the match, as was Fabregas!

I was looking for a new wallpaper image today when I came across an old pasttime; I totally forgot that I positively used to live for this laser tag kind of game called Photon, back in the late '80's and early '90's. Every weekend I would beg my parents to drive me across town to play the game for 7 minutes at a time at the Photon "stadium", and this nerdy fixation did not stop until well after I could drive myself. I remember one trip I took with my friend Barbra, she drove us all the way from Annapolis to the area of Baltimore called Sparrow's Point to play the game with me on my 16th birthday. (let's aw go to Dundalk, hon!)

So crazed was I for this game that I read all of the accompanying series of sci-fi books which were based on the premise that Photon stadiums were actually intergalactic recruiting stations (a la The Last Starfighter) and that the universe was at war with evil beings controlled by the so-called Warlord of Arr. At least, that's the way I recall it, it's been a few years though. Not that they were particularly written well, but they offered a certain type of desirable escapism during divorce talks and cross-country moves and general pre-adolescent ennui.

One character in particular named Lord Baethan who was I think a cyborg/photon warrior of the "light" (a good guy) stands out because in one book he was reduced to live as a human on Earth, all soft and pathetic, as punishment for some crime he was unjustly accused of. I think that he stands out in my memory because he was written as snarky, sarcastic, had long black hair, and spoke like a British person...just something to ponder there. I wonder if I still have any of those books, if so I'll find an appropriately Snapey passage to post. hee! dork dork dork...

I've got the same nasty cold that half of San Antonio seems to be suffering from but it isn't going away, so, I've done and called the doctor. I'd just ride it out normally, but lately it's gotten hard to breathe and breathing is something I enjoy doing well so it's time to get out the checkbook and visit the big dogs of medicine for the first time in almost a decade.

Well, wait, I did get that chest x-ray only a few years ago after an accident on the tall ship that I worked on, but that was really more precautionary than necessary. It sucks though because I haven't been home long since my Euro trip so the accounts are not quite as robust as I'd like to see them. My insurance won't kick in until after September 1, by which time I might be so pathetically sick that I won't care about anything anymore. Plus, it's a holiday weekend, so I've gotta do it now or never. Michael Moore, pray for me...

The people in reference had a farewell dessert party for me today at work, I did my best to not cough on them. I miss my boyfriend this week: I had a Comtrex-induced nightmare last night that he and his sister got nabbed by the Feds upon arrival at Customs. I hope that they will manage to stay clear of any coups and just come home safely, which is silly to say out loud but you know how one bad dream can mess you up for days and irrational fears become real.

Anyway. At least the Arsenal is winning. Things really could be a lot worse...

Not really, but now I only need *one* really good reason to go to China so that I can buy a Top Power backpack or five. Mr. Yang wrote me back today saying that the company does not have North American or European retailers (no duh, but hey it was worth a try), but he did invite me to visit his city of Guangzhou! Hee!

I am a bit of a backpack junkie; for most women it's gotta be purses, but I prefer a well-fitting backpack to almost any other bag. My friend Violeta showed up at work one day with one of their slim backpacks from her trip to Singapore that is proportionally perfect to me and I fell in love with the Top Power bags. http://www.xlbag.com/english/introduce.php
It's only a matter of time now until I get together the scratch for another overseas adventure!

Bit of a slow mid-morning, I'm fighting off some sort of illness so I'm pushing the vitamin C but it kinda hurts to swallow. Bleh.


yo quiero top power

Bummer. The second glance is always the most delusional. Upon a third inspection I saw that the signature, while done in Banksy style, is that of a fan of the Banksy style, not the elusive one himself. I did manage to grab a pretty cool stencil of a storm trooper wearing a suit though...

For my efforts I give you Scotch:


see?


I would have liked a fat storm trooper in a guyayabera instead, but whatever socio-political message floats your boat...