That's what she wondered

In a recent post, I described my difficulties in comprehending adult jokes, which reminded me of the story of my introduction to the country's most popular adult joke, which completely eluded my comprehension for months.

It was about 4 years ago. I had heard the phrase "That's what she said" a few times by then, but I still hadn't picked up on its meaning. People always laughed when it was said, but I had no idea why. That fateful night, I was standing with a group of friends in a Metro station as we waited for our train to take us home when one of them broke out his "That's what she said" app on his phone. At that moment, after months of wondering, I finally had the meaning of "that's what she said" explained to me.

Well, the explanation didn't help much because it still didn't make sense to me, but I learned to accept it for what it is—something you say when you want to turn an innocuous comment into a sexual allusion. When I hear this phrase, (and I hear it often, because I am usually the one making the innocuous comment) I know it is once again eye-rolling time for me. It doesn't really matter what the allusion is supposed to be to, I just know that it's dirty and that's enough for me.

But, four years later, the linguist in me is still curious. I still can't figure out why everyone else but me seemed to innately understand what it meant. And if, maybe, at some point in its early usage, its meaning was somehow obvious. What was its early usage anyway? Anyone else out there as befuddled as I am? If so, check out this article on Know Your Meme. It's fairly comprehensive, and believable.

But it still doesn't explain how people who are not me always understood what "That's what she said" means. I guess some things are meant to remain a mystery.

Simpler Fingers

Well, it's been 2 weeks since the start of Lent, and as is usually the case, my Lenten resolution has not proved nearly as hard to keep as I thought it would be.

Certainly, I have those moments, where I think for no reason, "I wish I were shopping." And almost once every day, I still find myself trying to plan my outfit for tomorrow. But on the whole, I haven't felt deprived—and I've had a whole lot more time in my schedule for Slicing and for learning.

One definite upshot to giving up Personal Adornment as Hobby for Lent is that I have realized it won't be that painful to kick the nail polish habit.

Chips ahoy!

I love nail polish...in theory, at least. But the reality is that whenever I put it on, I waste 30 minutes trying not to touch anything for fear of smudging it, inevitably smudge it anyway, then lose the entire manicure to irredeemable chipping within 3 days. After that, my nails start flaking and breaking, and it's usually 2 weeks minimum before they are recovered enough to put on another coat of polish. Today it's been almost 6 weeks since I last wore nail polish, and my nails are still wrecked. I think it is safe to say nail polish is not the cosmetic for me.

So I think I will bid adieu to my nail polish collection. Maybe I'll keep the clear polish because it's good for so many things (fixing pantyhose of course!) but on the whole, I think my life will be happier without 35 bottles of destruction cluttering up my shelf.

I wonder if you can donate nail polish to charity. If so, I have a lot to share!

I don't get the joke...I am the joke.

I don't exactly have an "adult" sense of humor. Whenever someone says something and everyone laughs except me, I immediately assume a dirty joke has been made, and I start casting around in my mind for its possible meaning. It usually takes me a minute, but with a little concentration, I can understand dirty jokes, even if I don't appreciate them. When I detect one of these jokes in my vicinity, I know it is my job to roll my eyes and act long-suffering. Because that's my function among my friends—to never laugh unless it involves cats.

On Sunday, my boyfriend and I went to a comedy show at Mad Momos in DC (shout out to the venue; we thought it was a cool restaurant with lots of fun entertainment scheduled!). Now, I enjoy comedy as much as anyone, but because of my more G-rated sense of humor, during some acts, I spend a lot of time smiling politely, with a hint of embarrassment, and hoping no one notices me.

Yesterday night, it was snowing and the forecast didn't look good, and most sensible folk were snugged away in their homes. Escaping notice is kind of difficult when you're sitting near the front of the room in a crowd of about seven. I was bound to get my moment in the spotlight before long.

The comedian was talking about the bottomless mimosas, one of which happened to be sitting right in front of me. Apparently my enthusiasm for mimosas wasn't obvious enough, because he asked me, "You don't like mimosas?"

All eyes were on me, and, though I'd rather just drink my mimosa than chat about it for a room full of people expecting humor, I rose to the occasion. "Sure I do, I've got one!" I replied confidently, lifting the glass into the air. I got this. I was going to prove I can be funny!

The comedian then said something about "turn up." In a sense that obviously meant something other than "to appear." A sense I had never heard used before. A sense I did not understand! And the entire audience was looking at me, waiting for my reply. Ever cool under pressure, I activated my best deer-in-the-headlights expression and asked, "How do you turn it up?" The room went wild. Yeah, that was all me, comedy goddess in the first row.

The comedian's explanation left something to be desired, but to defuse any hard feelings, he had me take a drink with him...pinkies out, of course. I guess every comedy show needs a society matron.

So yes, I admit it. I don't understand dirty jokes, and I don't understand slang. But on the plus side, it seems I really am funny. All I have to do is keep being my usual clueless self.

Epilogue: If you, like me, are just not 'hood enough (as my boyfriend put it) to understand what "turn up" means, I did find out on Urban Dictionary. It's something like "Get wild," especially in the context of booze and drugs. It can also be used as an interjection, like a less dorky version of "yippee!" So now I know. Next time someone uses that phrase on me, I'll be prepared. I'll be so cool, I'll grow icicles. Just you wait.

Second Life: Reusing the Plasticware

Every workplace has an Office Mom. At mine, I think I might be the "Office Earth Mother."

We have an official Green Office Coordinator, who is not me, but I'm the one always nagging my coworkers to be more green. I tut-tut at them when they use the handicapped button rather than just pushing the door open themselves. When we go shopping for refreshments for our monthly meeting, I refuse to let my coworker get plastic bags, even when I've forgotten the reusable bags. I carry everything out in a big awkward armful on those days. I'm the only one in the office who adamantly refuses to get double computer monitors—because double the monitors means double the power consumption!

But the Green Office habit I wanted to talk about today is reusing the plasticware.

When my coworkers and I go out to eat, one or the other of them will almost always grab a big handful of plastic forks to use later. Every time I see this, I have a silent conniption.

First of all, I think it's rude to take more than you need at that moment; if you need plasticware at the office that badly, then maybe you should buy some. But secondly, it's wasteful! I feel bad enough when I have to use a single disposable utensil at a restaurant. But it's one thing to use a plastic fork out of necessity because that's all the restaurant has and you need one to eat your meal. It is quite another to stockpile forks at your desk because you're too lazy to wash your own silverware.

But what can I do? It's hard to fault my coworkers for their habits when having your own silverware at our office is such a pain. We don't have a kitchen, so if you want to use reusable dining implements, you have to wash them in the bathroom sink—which is not conveniently located—with stupid foaming hand soap that doesn't clean anything.

Fortunately, I've found a solution! Whenever I go out to eat now, I wipe off my plasticware and take it home. I wash it in the dishwasher and bring it to the office.  Then the next time I need a utensil, I use one of the re-used ones! This really takes a weight off my conscience because I don't feel as wasteful using plasticware at restaurants. And I don't have to go through the hassle of washing my utensils in the restroom! After my meal, if the utensil is still reasonably clean and unbroken, I'll take it home for another wash and re-use.  If not, then I can throw it away with the reassurance that I at least got one more use out of it than I would have if I'd tossed it at the restaurant.

After several months of this, I've amassed such a collection of forks, knives, and spoons, that there is no excuse for anyone at the office to stockpile single-use utensils. So the next time I see them going for the forks at a restaurant, my conniption will not be silent! "Stop that!" I'll say! "I'll give you some of mine!"

Office Earth Mother allows no misbehavior.

Racing the Bus

Chase a bus and you might catch a car, says the public service poster near the ceiling of the bus. I have only once had the opportunity to chase the bus (and I say opportunity, because really it is a rare moment that you're late enough to miss the bus but still early enough that it's within chasing distance). I felt pretty awkward, making it stop in the middle of an intersection for me, so from then on, I've made a point of leaving a little bit early. Because I'm usually early for the bus, I have time to play a little game.

I don't chase the bus; I race the bus.

Whenever I get to my stop, I check NextBus to see when I can expect the bus to arrive. If it says more than 4 minutes, I usually just keep walking. The next bus stop is only .2 miles away (I mapped it) and I figure I can kill some time and get in a bit of exercise with that extra walk.

It's kind of fun, and a little suspenseful, to see whether I can get to the next stop before the bus does. Sometimes it's been very close; I've actually overtaken the bus as it waits at a traffic light.

Only once have I walked to the stop beyond the second one. It's .3 miles farther down the road—not a significant difference by most calculations, but it does take 150 times as long to walk, which can mean a lot when you're on foot and racing a motorized vehicle. The one time I did walk to the farther stop, I had a disturbing experience with a very sick drunk, which has made me kind of afraid to ever risk waiting at that stop again.

Scary people aside, racing the bus is a pleasant diversion compared to standing in the cold dying of boredom. I recommend it to anyone who commutes regularly by bus.

Clumsy walker

If you read my last post, you know I have a tendency, thanks to my fast-walking, heels-wearing ways, to startle people when I come up on them from behind.

Fortunately for those people, the tables are turned when I come up on them from the front.

In fact, if you have ever fallen prey to my attacks from behind and want revenge, there is a surefire retaliation strategy: The next time you see me approach you head-on, just give me a smile and a hello. The sudden call to social interaction is guaranteed to distract me enough that, just for a fraction of a second, I forget how to walk. Just enough to make me skitter sideways on a slippery heel, or allow my foot to pop out of the shoe and break my stride, or slam the tip of my platform sole into the floor and stumble.

It happens almost every time I try to smile at someone in the hallway, which is enough to almost make me want to never greet people again. But fair's fair, I guess.  Now we're even. Now I'm the victim, of my own fast-walking, heels-wearing ways.

The Pursuer

He's strolling down the hallway on his way back to his office when he first notices the footsteps behind him. Click clack, click clack. He doesn't think much on them, in this safe and well traveled hallway, but they keep coming closer.  And so fast!  Click clack, click clack. His stride falters. Is he being followed? He angles to the right a little to let them pass. But they're not that close yet. Just getting closer. Click clack, click clack. He corrects back to the left, hunching his shoulders almost imperceptibly against an unlikely attack. Click clack, click clack. Why are the footsteps coming so quickly? He swings his head toward one shoulder, then the other, hoping to catch a glimpse of his pursuer out of the corners of his eyes, but without being too obvious about it. Click clack. The footsteps are almost right behind him now. Click clack. His body tenses. Suddenly he lurches to the right and stops dead in his tracks, turning, prepared to fight if he has to, or simply let the pursuer pass him if it turns out to be harmless, disguising his fear as politeness.

She turns her head toward him as she breezes by, giving him an uncomfortable half-smile before click-clacking down the hall.

"She" is me. The click-clack is from my high-heeled shoes that make it impossible to travel surreptitiously, and "he" is practically everyone who ever steps into my office building. The reason this story keeps occurring is I happen to be a fast walker. No matter where I go, if there are other people walking in front of me, it is pretty much certain I will overtake them, apparently making them very nervous in the process.

It's embarrassing to know that I inspire so much anxiety in those unfortunate enough to go before me, but what am I going to do? Waste my time shambling slowly, whistle ice-cream-truck jingles to advertise my presence in a nonthreatening way? Probably I am just going to keep on keeping on, striking fear into the hearts of men with my stiff-soled shoes and purposeful stride.

Web Developer / Trainer

My job title is IT Coordinator: Web Developer / Trainer. It's long because that's how we do things at UMD. I usually just call myself either a "Web Developer" or a "Trainer" depending on the circumstances.

Today I was a Trainer. Once every quarter, I put together 2 hour-long presentations to teach staff members of my college how to contribute content to our websites.

The first training, which I present via webinar, always on a Tuesday, is for absolute beginners. It covers everything they need to know, from logging in, to all the many best practices that keep the websites from being complete chaos. It always spills over an hour. And that's usually with me forgetting to cover at least one topic.

I have done this training at least 8 times over the past year, and it never gets any easier. Two days before I present it, I always do a run-through in my office with the door closed. Every time, I make massive changes—cutting parts out, moving parts around, updating the parts about features that have changed since last time. And then, if I've changed it significantly enough, I do another run-through the next day. Every time, I imagine that this is the time I'm going to get it all in under an hour! Every time, I am wrong.

Next time, I am going to change the description of the Basics training to say it will take an hour and 15 minutes. I have finally resigned myself to the fact that you just can't teach people both how to do things, and how to do things right, in just an hour.

In fact, that's why I always follow the basic training with an advanced training two days later. The second training covers a different topic each time. This quarter, it was a closer look at the different types of content people can create on the sites. Last quarter, it was a deep-dive into the features of the text editor. With the advanced training, every presentation is a new beginning. I get to choose whatever I want to talk about, and there's no pressure to cover everything. Nor is there any pressure to make it better for the next time around (because there is no next time around, at least not for the foreseeable future). I just pick enough material to fill the hour. I always enjoy this training more than the Basics, because it is more relaxed.

Nonetheless, I spend the days and hours before both trainings feeling cranky and anxious. Today, I am happy that it's over. Let's just face it; I'm a hardcore introvert, and I'd rather be puttering around my computer than talking to other people about theirs. I finished my advanced training this morning, and now my time is mine again! This afternoon, I'm going back to being a Web Developer for a while.

I did web design

Lots of career advice seems to be along these lines: "Get a job doing something you love." I did. Web design was something I started as a hobby and enjoyed so much that I started doing it professionally. But for me, at least, as soon as I started doing it for a living, I lost all interest in doing it as a hobby any more.

Yesterday, I accomplished something website-related, without anyone having to pay me for it, for the first time in I don't even remember how long. This is not to say I never do anything website-related outside of work, but I rarely ever go beyond "tinkering" and "learning" (with the intention of having another marketable skill to add to my résumé) to actually "doing."

What I did was something simple: I developed a graphical 5-star rating system for my Giant Cookie Reviews.

This project was actually precipitated by a comment on my last macaroni review wherein the commenter expressed sympathy that it wasn't "as good as you'd like." But in my macaroni-reviewing world, 2 Happy Mood Noodles is actually a pretty high score. And so I realized I need to make it a little clearer what my ratings actually mean.

For example in a star system, 3 stars out of 4 would be a proportionately higher rating than 3 stars out of 5. But if I just conclude my reviews with "3 stars," no one really knows how good that really is. So I made graphics, showing 5 empty stars, and only filling in the number of stars that correspond to the rating.

I could have done this easily with static images, but I took this opportunity to learn how to code inline SVG. I spent a good 3 hours on it, copy-and-pasting code, deducing how SVG works, researching how SVG works, calculating coordinates, trial-and-erroring, and working in a bit of half-hearted graphic design.

In the end, I came up with some stars that I found acceptable (you can see them in yesterday's post)—but didn't really make me happy. The HTML source is atrocious, which is never going to fly with an anal-retentive web developer such as myself. And furthermore, in the midst of this project, I learned there is no easy way to provide alternate text for inline SVG graphics, meaning that my rating system is still not accessible to the visually impaired.

So back to the drawing board. I'll probably use static images next time, but at least I learned something.

Chocolate chip cookie from Crumbs

Last Saturday, my boyfriend and I arrived early for a  birthday party (actually we arrived a day early, but that is a whole different story). We had time to kill (more than we ever knew), so we wandered around the mall for a half-hour, and found Giant Cookies at Crumbs bakery, so of course I purchased one to review. I've reviewed a cookie from Crumbs before; that one was chocolate peanut butter. This time I went the safe and sane route and got chocolate chip.

I was going to give this one 3 stars for the texture, until I got to the middle—so deliciously rich and soft but not gooey, and crunchy just a tiny bit on the outside! So I bumped up the rating by a star. I think it would have been improved even more by the presence of larger chocolate chips—the mini ones just don't quite have enough oomph.

The taste was just average, and that's really all I have to say about that.

But the price—oh, the price was not something to rejoice about. At $3.45 for a 140g cookie, I paid 2.46¢ per gram, which earns this cookie a solid 2 star price rating.

The Bottom Line:

Taste: 3 stars
Texture: 4 stars
Price: 2 stars

Haircuts

Over the weekend, I had the honor of shaving my boyfriend's head. Apparently, he was fed up with the annoying rituals of hair maintenance and the seemingly futile daily application of Rogaine. He says he'd always vowed when he was younger, that if he lost his hair, he'd shave his head. We discussed the pros and cons of that, meaning he just asked me, "Should I shave my head?" over and over again until finally he answered himself: yes.

Up until this weekend, I'd always thought shaving a head was a simple process—You set your buzzer to the shortest setting, make a few quick passes, and you're done! Not so! I got hair tangled in the blades, missed spots, had to find novel ways of working around ears, went back to fix the spots I'd missed, fixed more spots I'd missed, fixed more spots I'd missed, and finally learned what a laborious process it is to shave a head. Oh, and yesterday I found there was still a spot I missed.

After all this, he asked me if I liked his new style. But here's the thing! I never like a haircut when it's new. I feel like it changes a person's appearance so drastically, they are an entirely different person. It takes me time to reconcile the personality that I know with the appearance that I don't. So I never make judgment on a haircut until at least a few days have gone by. When he asks me again tomorrow, I'll have an answer, but let's face it. There is really only one right answer to this question.

The Crazy Antics of a Curious Bunny

Jackie asked how Hansel's doing, so here I am to let her and you know!

Hansel, in case you are not yet aware, is a fluffy, sweet-looking bunny with the singular talent of eating my house. A picture's worth a thousand words, so here are a few I took yesterday. (Of course, I probably won't be able to resist putting a few words in there).

Hansel gets fed two heaping handfuls of vegetables every day and unlimited quantities of  hay, but he'd still much rather bully a dog for some of his dry dog food.

When he's not ruining his diet with dog food, he's supplementing it with bits of my couch. I yell at him every time, but as soon as he gets the chance, guess where he is.

Here he is, looking about as chastened as a shameless rabbit can.

Here he is with a large piece of fabric he cleverly tore from the couch's dust ruffle.

And here he is with a different piece of the couch stuck to his whiskers.

For all his destructive ways, I have to forgive him, because he's just a curious bunny.

Weak stomach, strong friendship

Warning: Unpleasant bodily function story follows.

Thanks to a slight miscalculation of how much vodka I should drink in three hours, last night I found myself sitting on the floor of the ladies' room, resting my head on the toilet seat and puking out everything I had eaten the entire day. A friend of mine was a few stalls down doing much the same.

My boyfriend, before he set about the mundane tasks of rubbing my back and making me drink water, took a picture of me in my pitiful state, bless his heart, because he's snap-happy and without shame, and also, to him, drinking yourself sick is some kind of badge of honor (you should have heard how enthusiastically he was planning to get sick after his birthday party).

He was just pleased as punch (why did I say that word!?) by the events of last night. He told me this morning, being with people when they're at their worst makes for a great bonding experience. According to him, me and my friend a few stalls down have passed some milestone of friendship. He says moments like this are the fodder for great stories later down the line. And sure enough, she and I had a semi-pleasant chat this afternoon about our shared moment of misery.

My boyfriend also says you know who your true friends are by whether they stick with you when you're not exactly the best company. So he looks at the bad times as an opportunity to strengthen his relationships.

Well, if he wants to think of it that way, I'm sure not going to try and dissuade him. I'd rather he be pleased by my misfortune than consider me a disgusting barf-bag toting burden he has to drive home. But all the same, that's one bonding experience I would rather have not had.

A story about stories

Today was the first day since starting March SOLSC that I didn't already have a topic ready, waiting, and partially written. And naturally that obliged me to start thinking about what I should write about—and what I shouldn't.

Sometimes, I just want to share my opinion. Sometimes I want to get a little bit preachy. Sometimes I want to write sweeping statements about the world, humanity, morality, and big words. Yet I am writing for the Slice of Life Story  Challenge—not an "essay" challenge or a "missive" challenge or a "manifesto" challenge.

And that's fine. I'm not very good at writing essays or missives or manifestos. Occasionally I get grandiose ideas about these sorts of topics, and I start to lay them out in Springpad for future blogging. And then they languish. After a few sentences, what seemed like a brilliant idea has fallen flat. It's rare that I actually follow through with a philosophical topic.

In thinking about why these topics aren't quite right for Slice of Life, I realize why they don't work for me in general: it's because they aren't stories. My best (or at least, most readable) blog posts are stories. They're what I'm good at.* They have a beginning, a middle, a few silly digressions,** and an end. And at the end, that's where the moral lies, if there's one at all. I usually try to end my posts with some sort of conclusion, but I guess that's not necessary. Sometimes a story for the story's sake is good enough. As contrasted to a lesson for the lesson's sake, which is typically just boring.

Having thought the dickens out of all that, I suddenly realize I have a topic for my Day 7 Slice of Life! I will tell about how I came to learn that, when struggling to find the words to express how I feel about deep subjects like the distribution of wealth, maybe the best approach is to find a story and express it that way.

Not every story has a moral, but this one does: Some way, somehow, every moral has a story.

*Not to toot my own horn or anything.
**Like these ones.

Lent 2014

Three of my first five Slices of Life were related to clothing, fashion, and beauty, giving you some sense of where my priorities lie. I am, in fact, kind of fashion obsessed.

I did the math yesterday. Over the past 3 months, I spent $523.77 (at least, but possibly more) on clothing, hairstyling products, and accessories, over a total of 49 separate transactions. Granted, I made $290.45 of that back in eBay sales, but that's still a lot of money.

It's also a lot of time. I'd guess (unscientifically) that I spend about an hour and a half each day planning my look, executing my look, and shopping for future looks.

Considering how much money and time I'm spending on making myself look good, it wasn't hard for me to figure out what to give up for Lent. On the other hand, figuring out what to say I was giving up was a little harder.

At first I thought I'd just give up "recreational shopping," but that didn't cover the many hours I waste standing in front of the closet trying to find The Great American Outfit.

So then I considered giving up "fashion," but I don't object to reading about fashion and finding out what people are wearing; I just wanted to limit how I apply it to myself. So that wasn't quite right.

I thought maybe I'd give up "vanity," but that seems a little too vague and could easily be misconstrued or redefined at my self-indulgent whim.

Finally after many hours of thought (I've been pondering this issue for the last several weeks), I decided to say that I'm giving up "self-adornment as hobby." Sure, that's going to require some explaining if people ask, but how many people ask? And if they do, I'll just point them to this blog, wherein the central tenets of my Lenten resolution are conveniently outlined below:

• I will refrain from shopping for clothing "just for fun." I will still keep an eye out for the essentials that I've been needing, like the heavy-duty winter gloves that are more for function than style, but I will no longer pass the hours before bed and my lunch break trawling eBay. I will accompany friends to the store if they go, but I will not purchase anything!
• I will no longer spend a good portion of my evenings trying to pick out an amazing outfit that's never been done before. I will select my clothes the same morning that I wear them, and I'll stick to staples that I know look OK.
• If I go out, I will wear appropriately dressy attire, but I will not spend a half-hour on my makeup, and I will choose simple clothes.
• I will also be putting my fashion blog on hiatus.
• When I find clothing I no longer want in my closet, I will donate it instead of selling it as I usually do. That way, my previous consumerism can immediately benefit someone else!

I hope that this will open up more time for me to be a good person. Although sometimes the emphasis of the Lenten fast is on sacrifice, I prefer to think of it as an opportunity to do better. Or as I read in someone's Slice of Life yesterday (sorry, can't remember whose!) it's about making more room for God. That's what I'm trying to do by giving up all activities related to my personal style for 40 days. Imagine all the productive, generous things I can do with 60 extra hours and 104 dollars unspent!

P.S. If, after reading this, you can distill my Lenten resolution down to a concise couple of words, please let me know! I'm still not sure whether "Self-adornment as hobby" cuts it.

A trip down the Wikipedia Whirlpool, Or, What's a Creeper?

A few days ago, I learned something new. It just wasn't what I intended to learn. I was indulging in a guilty fashion pleasure by reading yet another personality-quiz-esque article on Who What Wear, when I decided I had to determine, once and for all, what are "creepers" in the sense of shoes.

I'd heard of them before, but unlike much other clothing terminology, which I slowly learned through repeated encounters, I  hadn't yet got a handle on what exactly they were.

So I turned to Google. Ignoring the ubiquitous shopping links, which would seem to indicate that creepers are some kind of oxfords with platform soles, I soon found myself on Wikipedia. Whereupon I learned that the full name of this already none-too-pleasantly named shoe is actually "brothel creeper." Makes me want to run out and buy a pair. But does not explain what makes a creeper a creeper.

So I read on. Wikipedia informed me, rather undescriptively if you want my opinion, that creepers are made with suede uppers and thick crepe soles.

Well, up to this point, when I heard "crepe sole" as I sometimes did, I'd always rather assumed it just meant a thin paper-like sole, taking my cue from "crepe paper." But those big honkers I'd ignored on the shopping sites had soles that were anything but thin. So naturally I had to look up what crepe meant. Turns out it's a kind of rubber that's rolled out in wrinkled sheets. I guess wrinkled is its commonality with crepe paper.

But back to the article on creepers. I couldn't help but notice a little farther down that these were the shoes of choice among "Teddy Boys." What's that? Off to the article on Teddy Boys. They were—well, I'm not going to bother replicating the whole of Wikipedia on my blog when you could just read the article.

The point is, I can rarely go to Wikipedia and just read one article. I jump from link to link, sinking deeper and deeper until, all of a sudden, there's nothing more I want to read, and I look up with an image of my computer screen burned into my retinas.

But still no definitive image of a creeper. Not this time. Is it really just any shoe with a thick sole? I guess this time, I'll have to go somewhere other than Wikipedia for my answer.

FY (and my) I, an article from Wall Street Journal (non-subscribers, visit with care—they won't let you read it a second time!) pictures a number of shoes in all different styles, referring to all of them as creepers. And the main trait they have in common is an exaggerated thick sole. The video adds the distinction that they are typically a men's style, though some of the pictures are definitely feminine.

Loveboots

Last year at the thrift store, I bought some fake-fur-lined knee-high lace-up boots with 2.5-inch platform wedge soles that I thought were the cat's pajamas. Despite their impractical soles, I figured they would make great snow boots, and I loved them and wore them with pride.

One day, I even wore them in the snow. When I say snow, I mean yucky puddly melting slush, which is far more common here in Maryland than the pure white pillowy stuff that we all like to think snow is.

And after standing in the "snow" for about 10 minutes, my feet were soaking wet and very cold. Fur-lined they may have been, but my winter boots were anything but waterproof. So I set out to get some new ones.

I had high standards. One, I wasn't willing to pay more than about 50 dollars. Two, they had to be waterproof. Three, they had to be flat (fashionable as I looked teetering around in my last pair of boots, I realized that maneuverability is paramount for traveling in the snow). Four, they had to reach at least to my upper calf, and I'd prefer them to be knee high.

My boyfriend, who loves playing in the snow, was all too pleased to help me in my search, but even he grew discouraged after I rejected most of the selections he found on Amazon. I felt like Goldilocks: "That one's too short, that one's too expensive, that one's too ugly..." Eventually, I went it alone, saving an eBay search and analyzing the pickings every day.

It took only a week before I found these babies: brand new shoes from a sample sale last year!

They were stupendous! Brightly colored, enormous boots that would be sure to capture eyeballs everywhere, if not sear them. They are clearly knockoffs of Moon Boots, which I've had a secret crush on since I discovered them earlier this winter. I didn't care that they were not quite as tall as I had hoped; it didn't matter that they were $3.50 over my price limit; I wasn't even discouraged by the fact that I couldn't find a single review of them anywhere online and had no idea if they were waterproof or not.

I had to have them! Nothing else mattered except the outsized pop of springtime color that would surely lighten my every step through the dreary snows of winter.

I placed a bid. I won. I wore them to work today.

I would probably provide a practical review of these big galumphing galoshes, so other future shoppers could buy with more confidence, but it doesn't look as though this particular style of boot is still being made. So we'll just leave it with this tale of love at first sight.

Cleaning out my closet

I'm not cleaning out my closet so much as I am moving it all around the room, but that seemed as catchy a title as any Eminem song reference.

You see, last week, I got the notion that it was a bad idea to keep my makeup, hair products, and skin care items (all chemically sensitive to heat and such) right smack dab in front of the sunniest window in my house. Which is, of course, where they were. Next to a table crammed with pots of cacti all fighting for a taste of the narrow band of sunlight that managed to make it into my room at the awkward angle necessary to reach the spot next to the window.

A simple solution to this problem would have been to switch them up, so the cacti sat in front of the window and the cosmetics sat next to it....But then the cosmetics would no longer be within arm's reach of the mirror....And I never liked the location of that mirror anyway—forcing me to vie for space with my wardrobe in order to get a good full-length view—nor, while we were on the subject, did I like the location of my earring rack.

Before I could tell myself to stop, the various boxes and baskets of beauty products were arranged artfully all over the floor, the clothes formerly in the wardrobe were covering the bed, and I was shoving furniture around the room trying to find the perfect arrangement, which would allow for a) seeing my whole self in the mirror and having elbow room at the same time, b) my houseplants to actually sit in the sunlight, c) my cosmetics to not sit in the sunlight and be close the mirror and not piled too high.

This is the kind of work that's tedious and maddening and that I inexplicably love. I can try arrangement after arrangement, moving everything 100 times, looking for the one that's perfect. I have occasionally stayed up organizing my domicile until 1 in the morning without starting to feel sleepy—and anyone who knows my sleep fanaticism knows that's something. Thursday night, however, I gave up at 11, because I had to go to work in the morning.

I put everything haphazardly in some semblance of "away," and it's now been 3 full days that my room has sat in organizational limbo. In a marathon tidying session on Saturday, I found new or improved homes for everything except a decorative box full of hair dyeing paraphernalia, and my full-length mirror. I want to move my mirror to the wardrobe door, but the mirror's just a tad too wide. I might even have to buy a new mirror, which will truly be something, because the last time I paid real money for home furnishings or decor was over 2 years ago when I had to buy a new desk to replace the one that fell apart when I was moving to my current house.

But my mirror situation is dire. Having moved it farther from the closet, now I vie for space with my computer chair, just to see my distorted reflection through the mirror that's currently propped up against the wall, and I'd have to develop rubber limbs to be able to claim my beauty products are within an arm's reach of it. I even went so far as to go to IKEA yesterday evening. But their cheap full-length mirrors were out of stock, so I went away empty handed. Phew! My streak of furniture non-spending remains unbroken. At least for a few more days.

Macaroni and Cheese from Langermann's on Light

First off, before I forget, I want to give Langermann's on Light (on Light Street in Baltimore, in case you were wondering about the weird name) props for making their regular menu available in addition to their fixed-price Restaurant Week selection. Because there's no pleasure in being forced to pay more for food that you enjoy less, which is usually the case with a fixed menu.

Unsurprisingly, I did not select the Restaurant Week menu, but went instead for every vegetarian's meat-and-potatoes: the platter of side dishes. More props to Langermann's (can I just call them LOL?) for providing this option at a discount over the a la carte prices!

I ordered asparagus, cabbage, and – of course – macaroni and cheese.

The macaroni was nothing to jump up on the table and scream with joy about – which is probably a good thing – but it was nothing to complain about either. It had enough salt and enough cheese, and it was not overcooked. It was probably not worth paying as much as I did for it, but when I was finished, I felt quite satisfied.

All in all, I rate it two Happy Noodles: One for the macaroni itself, and one for the restaurant being such a pleasant surprise for a picky vegetarian.

Slice of Life

My dad's wife Jackie invited me to participate in a special blogging event through the month of March. Basically, you write a blog post every day, share it with other bloggers who are doing the same, and comment on a few of their blogs.

It's called the Slice of Life Story Challenge, but to me, it doesn't sound so much like a challenge as an excuse to use words! Thousands of words! Every day!

It's no secret—I love words. Finding something to write about daily won't be difficult; I've got Giant Cookie Reviews and MacaroniQuests and torrential thoughts about anything and everything aplenty. What will be a challenge is remembering to share my links with the Slice of Life community every day before midnight. Prattling incessantly is one of my strengths...participating in communities is less so.

But I will do it! I have done it, by writing this introduction! One day down, 30 to go!

This is goodbye: A eulogy for my black and white striped shirt

My wardrobe has a high turnover rate. I buy new things cheaply, keep them around for a year or two, get bored with them, and sell them.

With the exception of purely practical staples, like the black pants I've had since I worked at Bob Evans, and an ever-expanding but never-shrinking collection of layering tanks, nothing sticks around too long. Mainly because I have hardly anything in my closet that I'm truly in love with .

OK, I do admit I am sentimentally attached to a few gifted items that I won't give up even when they don't quite fit and I can't ever find anything to match them. And I'm keeping my high school senior T-shirt and the orange top I got in 8th grade until they fall to pieces, simply because they've lasted this long and it would be a shame to give up on them now. But for the most part, I don't have any compunctions about saying goodbye to clothes that are past their prime.

Yet yesterday was a sad day, when I was forced to do just that, to a shirt that I might even go so far as to call my favorite. The first time I wore it (not even two years ago!), I claimed I would "looooooooove" it "until the day it finally bites the dust." That day came too soon.

After I pulled it out of the dryer yesterday, I had to admit to myself that the holes were no longer "small enough to ignore." The neckline was coming apart from the body of the shirt in spots, and the waistband was doing the same. I could probably sew up some of it and get a few more wears out of it, but it would never look good, and it would just postpone the inevitable.

So I steeled myself and relegated my beloved shirt to the pajama drawer.

"What?" you're probably saying. "The pajama drawer? You'll still see it every day! That's not saying goodbye! That is not worthy of a eulogy!"

And, well, maybe you're right. It's more like a breakup. Where me and my ex (ex shirt) are still "just friends." Sure, we see each other, and we get along, but we can't go out together any more. When we do see each other, we're both (OK, let's be honest, it's just me) painfully reminded of a time when our relationship meant more. When we didn't have to hide it. When we could, oh, proudly flaunt our couple-selfies all over the Internet.

Pictures of some of our happier times together

Gosh, it's only been a day, and I miss my Black-and-White-Striped-Shirt already. I wonder if it's thinking of me...

Whitetail Resort Cookies

I don't think ski resort cafeterias are known for their delicious and affordable food, but when I found Giant Cookies at Whitetail Resort, I had to try anyway. I was not much impressed.

The chocolate chip cookie reminded me of cookies made from refrigerated Tollhouse dough (delicious to eat raw, absolutely average once baked). It was too airy and crunchy, especially around the edges. It had no distinctive flavor, but at least it wasn't stingy with the chocolate chips.

Would I pay $3.49 for one of these again? I think not.

The Bottom Line:
Taste: 3 stars
Texture: 2 stars
Price: 1 star (3¢ per gram)

The peanut butter cookie was softer, but still rather dry. Its flavor was, again, nothing to write home about. Its best feature was the presence of peanut butter chips, which are somewhat uncommon in peanut butter cookies. They added some textural variety and a burst of sweetness in each bite, but that still wasn't enough to make me want to buy them at 3¢ a gram.

The Bottom Line:
Taste: 3 stars
Texture: 3 stars
Price: 1 star

What does my sleepwear say about me?

My preferred sleepwear is shorts and a tank top—or, in winter, their warmer counterparts: lounge pants and thermal tees. According to this Who What Wear quiz (which is really not so much a quiz as a subtle nudge to consumerism), that means I put a premium on comfort.

Well, I guess that's more true than not—bed is one place where I think being comfortable is way more important than looking good. But probably my number-one reason for wearing loungewear to bed is because it's so sensible. Nothing does double-duty quite as well as my chosen sleepwear—which is, incidentally, the same as my weekend wear.

That means, on a glorious Saturday, I can roll out of bed and not bother to change for hours...and get away with it! If I were to, hypothetically, answer the door at 3pm in matched flannel PJ's, I'd give off the appearance of someone who is either sick or supremely lazy. But dressed in a pair of yoga pants and a T-shirt, I simply look like someone who's having a cozy day at home! Or maybe even is athletic! I can wear those same yoga pants to the grocery store, with little risk of the sidelong glances I would surely incur if I showed up in a cotton nightgown. With minor modifications, my sleep clothes can take me straight from bed to the gym without any social repercussions.

Money is, of course, a huge deciding factor. I could, and once did, consistently look all put-together in matched sets, but those tend to cost money, and why wear those when you can just repurpose your old clothes and not spend a penny?






And then, of course, we must be realistic. Much as I love them in theory, I've given up on silky numbers before even giving them a try, considering how my dry skin and flaking fingernails snag everything that isn't built for lumberjacks. So sensible, durable fabrics are my one and only.

I may have a slight obsession with dressing to impress (or at least make a statement), but when it comes to sleep and its associated garb, I will sacrifice all sorts of fashion in the name of practicality.

What does your sleepwear say about you?

Weekend Whining

Two weeks and a weekend into this illness, I've had enough with a capital nough. The thought of never recovering is filling me with dread. Sometimes panic. And I think panic, in general, is not conducive to recovery.

I am already annoyed at how boring I've become. I've withdrawn from my skating lessons. I skipped a hockey game and two parties this weekend (narrowly escaping the Super Bowl for another year) and reluctantly attended a third, at which I sat nervously and refused all desserts and generally made myself out to be a loser. I was also doped up on meclizine, which delivered its promised drowsiness nearly 6 hours after ingestion, inconveniently right after I arrived at the party.

My hobbies have dwindled down to one—listening to Cloud Atlas on my cell phone, which is probably for the better because I borrowed this particular audiobook from the library (digitally) and I only have a few more days until I have to "return" it. Oh, and also blogging blind—thankfully this is not too difficult since my touch typing skills are prodigious, if I do say so myself (and heck, I might as well let myself feel good about something, cause otherwise I would be a negative Nancy indeed).

I have attempted numerous times to get  some sort of screen reader software so I can listen to web pages, rather than look at them, which makes my eyes go all wonky. I have learned the utmost empathy for people with visual disabilities, as what I've found thus far has been disappointing bordering on maddening. Stop reading the HTML markup! Stop telling me no text is selected when it is! Stop insisting on reading the quotation marks aloud but not the ampersands! Stop talking like a robot! Et cetera, et cetera.

All the craft projects I've been wanting to do are just sitting in a pile waiting for me to have the fortitude to attempt them. My usually impeccable (though often unfashionable) sense of style has taken a hit, as staring into my closet and trying on endless combinations of clothes is too wearing (get it?) for my brain. I turned down one freelance gig already, and I look ahead with complete unenthusiasm to the one I'm already obligated to do. I paid my bills late, because I couldn't seem to find the time for them in between sprees of sitting in the darkness, thus labyrinthitis  is already costing me pennies upon pennies in overdue fees.

Not to mention the doctor visits, of which there have already been 2, going on  a third, and the prescription, which I probably won't bother to refill.

This weekend was something of a tease, as there were huge swathes of Saturday in which I felt disconcertingly normal, only to have the dizziness come back in several annoying swoops. This morning, I am definitely back to square one. The only difference between the way I felt at the onset of this condition and the way I feel now is that now I'm additionally enjoying occasional motion sickness and headaches. Oh, and originally I would feel better if I closed my eyes; now, sometimes, that makes it feel worse! My consolation is that sometimes I feel like it is easing up, or even occasionally going away completely, so maybe I'm not doomed to a life of dizziness.

Labyrinthitis

Here's a funny story about hypochondria: while I was busy barking up the whooping cough tree, I completely missed a legitimate illness that was right under my nose. Here are the clues, extracted directly from my recent blog posts:

"I was too tired to focus my eyes."
"My eyes wouldn't work properly, and I couldn't concentrate worth a hoot."
"in what could now be called full-on zombie mode."
"I am in a constant stupor."

I've saved you the suspense of guessing what was wrong with me by conveniently titling this post with its name, but if you want to play along, here's the story of how I finally clued in to the fact that something was amiss.

By last Wednesday morning (that's 4 days after the onset of symptoms), I had finally gotten a full night of sleep. Yet still, I had this weird disconcerting feeling of being in a dream. It was hard to put my finger on what was wrong, but things just didn't look right to me, like there was a discrepancy between what my eyes were seeing and what my brain was registering. The best way I could describe it was feeling "spacey."

The symptoms were really vague and very subtle, but after days of scrutinizing them, I concluded:

• Feeling spacey is the primary symptom.
• At times, when it gets bad, I notice things look like they're subtly rocking, vibrating, or bouncing, and I can feel a faint sensation of the same if I close my eyes.
• It gets worse in the evenings and after being active.
• Bright light seems to make it worse—staring at a computer monitor is no fun whatsoever, but oddly, if I get really close to the monitor while reading, I almost feel normal.
• I have had little to no appetite and on bad days I'm downright nauseated.

Like any good hypochondriac, I turned to the Internet for a diagnosis. What I found was a disturbing number of people who developed the same symptoms mysteriously and never lost them, spending years in a state of unreality. Some people got this way after a neck injury that somehow affected blood flow to their brain. Others just woke up that way one morning. I discovered some migraine sufferers experience similar symptoms, and I spent a day believing I had some incredibly long-lasting migraine.

By Thursday afternoon, I had changed my self-diagnosis to labyrinthitis, based on the fact that it's a fairly common condition that often arises after an upper respiratory infection, which I had just had. On the next Tuesday morning (yesterday, and, if you're counting, 11 days after the first appearance of symptoms), I went to the doctor, who also diagnosed labyrinthitis without any prompting from me.

He said some things that were reassuring and some things that were not: For example, people usually get better on their own, but it was a little unusual that I wasn't getting better yet. He also noted that usually labyrinthitis causes a spinning sensation, so my spaciness and occasional rocking feeling are not exactly par for the course.

To me, this says we're either wrong and there's something else going on entirely, or I'm just a weird bird who can never do anything the normal way. He says if it doesn't improve, he recommends I see an ENT in DC who specializes in vertigo.

Insert witty conclusion here while I go to bed. My eyes are tired.

Confessions of a Hypochondriac: The Whooping Cough Episode

Worrying about my health is something I'm good at, having had a whole lifetime of experience. I've believed I had everything from a heart attack (at the ripe old age of 10) to pancreatic cancer to kidney failure to bowel obstruction.

I never go to the doctor and just say, "Help, I have a cough." No, I go to the doctor and say, "Help, I'm afraid I have whooping cough."

That's the most recent case of hypochondria. I blame my own self. Jestingly using the phrase "whooping it up" in my last blog post as a humorous substitute for "coughing," I unwittingly started an avalanche. Before long, I was thinking of the article I read a few weeks ago, by a sufferer of the ailment, bitterly blaming the parents who chose not to vaccinate their children. Whooping cough (aka pertussis) is becoming more widespread in recent years, and the vaccine I received as a child would have worn off by now. I wonder, as I wheeze in my bed by the light of the moon, what whooping cough feels like. Ah, the Internet can tell me!

By the next day, I am convinced I have whooping cough. At least, there's nothing I've read to indicate I don't. In its early stages, pertussis is just like a cold, developing into an "unremarkable," "occasional," "dry" cough, which is just like mine! After five nights predominated by coughing, I am in a constant stupor from the sleep deprivation (or maybe that's another symptom of my illness). I have to see the doctor!

Never mind that almost everyone in my office got sick at the same time, and they've all mostly recovered. Never mind that everyone around me is coughing like it's Beijing or something. Surely my cough is different, worse, and whooping.

I tell the doctor, half ashamed because I know she's going to think I'm a crackpot and probably post cartoons about me on Facebook, but at the same time I'm not ashamed enough to sweep my fears under the rug. She says, "I don't think you have whooping cough. I haven't heard you cough once since you've been here, and usually whooping cough is continuous." Well, actually, the things I read on the Internet say that most adults with whooping cough only have spells once in a while, but I just nod that she's right. "And," she continues, "Usually whooping cough is not just a tickle in the throat. It's usually a deep chest cough."

I say, sheepishly, "Well, they say it takes about two weeks to get to that stage. I'm worried I just haven't gotten there yet."

She humors me by giving me a prescription for azithromycin, but tells me to first take my nasal steroids for a few days, because she thinks I probably just have irritation from post-nasal drip. I thank her from my heart. She doesn't believe my suspicions, but she's given me what I need to stop worrying.

And it turns out, she was right. I did not have whooping cough. That day, I went to the drugstore and picked up a longer-lasting cough suppressant, took it that night, and my cough pretty much had disappeared by the next day. But what she didn't know was that I had something much more insidious to worry about! Stay tuned for the next installment in this thrilling medical drama.

Can't Get No Sleep

I've always had trouble falling asleep, but I've been taking it to a whole new level this week. I got a cold last Sunday, and about 2 days into it (when the respiratory symptoms caught up with the general malaise) I started having trouble sleeping. Wednesday and Thursday nights were mildly restless, but not enough to make me tired at work. Friday I went out with some friends and got home late.  I slept great that night, but I still missed out on a couple hours of sleep and probably reactivated my cold a little. I was kind of in low-grade zombie mode all Saturday, which was fine because all I had to do was run a few errands in the morning and chug cough syrup the rest of the day.

Cough syrup is an experiment for me. I've never really used it before, mainly because the thought of swilling some sugary concoction of chemicals makes me want to gag, and I prefer doing things the natural way (for the record, slippery elm doesn't help). But after whooping it up for the past couple of days, I decided to bite the bullet and bought some sugar-free Robitussin. It was still nasty. Wish I could have just found it in pill form. But anyway, I think it helped. At least, there were a few hours between doses where I didn't feel the need to cough. But right after each dose was usually, for some reason, a coughing frenzy. Probably the gag reflex kicking in.

Anyway, round about 10:00, I realized I was too tired to focus my eyes, so I got myself into bed and prepared for a nice heavy sleep. The kind I usually get when I've been sleep deprived.

But this time as soon as my head hit the pillow, the tickle in my throat came back with a vengeance! I had brought the cough syrup into bed with me, so I just poured a dose, convulsed for a few minutes, and finally calmed down. Then I tossed and turned for a while and realized that I was feeling restless. I blamed it on the Sudafed. It wasn't supposed to wear off until around 4am, so I prepared for a few uncomfortable hours. It might have been the cough syrup, though. Or the combination.

But then, despite the long-lasting effects of the Sudafed on my sleep, it hadn't worked so well on my congestion. Part of my nose was stuffy, and it was extremely distracting! I had also brought my decongestant spray into bed with me (it works better than Sudafed), so took a few hits of that and lay back down.

Then, at 11, I got a text message! My Airbnb houseguests wanted to know if they could extend their stay another night! I had to rouse myself, check to make sure no one else had booked for the following night, and then let them know they were free to book. Later (too much later), while I was still semi-conscious, they finally made the booking, resulting in another text message at 12:40 and me having to get up again, visit Airbnb and approve their request.

At this point, I realized I was going to need some help, so I opened my old sleep hypnosis app. I don't know why I bother with it, because it never works. I have a very low susceptibility to hypnosis. So then I went on to progressive muscle relaxation.

After that, I might have even dozed a bit, but I know I checked my phone at 2:24 am, because I was getting that throat tickle again and wanted to know if it was time for another dose. Close enough! I swallowed it down, rinsed my mouth assiduously with water, then started worrying that maybe cough syrups only come in syrup form because they have to adhere to your throat to work, and by rinsing it out with water, I was undoing its effects. So then I had to swallow the water and hope I wasn't just throwing my cough syrup down a figurative drain. [later I found out I wasn't, so all of that worrying was for no reason, and all of that vile medicine could be delivered much less disgustingly].

More time passed. I tossed, I turned, I had annoying half-dreams while still being conscious of being awake. I felt like the whole night was that—my mind just drifting from thought to thought and plot to plot until, finally, it was 8 am and I crawled out of bed with great relief, just happy to not have to try to sleep any more. I felt even more tired than I had been when I went to bed. My eyes wouldn't work properly, and I couldn't concentrate worth a hoot!

Normally when I get up after a night of inadequate sleep, I can work for a while, take a nap a few hours later, and then face the day feeling mostly all right. Today, however, I got in bed  around 11, set my alarm for 2 hours, and waited. I got the same old half-dreams I got before. It didn't help that it was right around the time I expected my boyfriend to come online halfway around the world. So I had to leave the computer on and facing my bed just in case. Of course, he didn't come online, but the computer did try to go to sleep, prompting me to get out of bed half an hour into my nap and change the power settings, and then it turned its screen off another 15 minutes later, prompting me to debate whether I should get up again, or just leave it off. I decided to just leave it off, but it was too late; the sleep was already lost. An hour and a half into my sleepless "nap," I decided it just wasn't happening, so I got back up to cook some food in what could now be called full-on zombie mode.

I hope I can sleep again soon, preferably tonight! The last thing I want to do is add insomnia to my list of chronic ailments.

Souvenir of America

Half of our office has been sick over the past two weeks. One coworker was out almost all last week, came in on Friday just to infect two more of us, and then has stayed home again every day this week. I got sick on Sunday and took off the next two days. Another coworker stayed home Monday, and a different one has been taken down today.

For me, it was only a minor cold, but I have learned by now that if I don't singlemindedly hurl myself into bed at the first sign of illness and devote all my resources to recovery, my cold will just get worse over the next three days and I'll end up recuperating for weeks. I could have probably gone in to work yesterday, but I didn't want to wear myself out before my big evening.

You see, yesterday evening was the night I was scheduled to accompany my boyfriend to the airport for his two-week trip to Indonesia.

My presence was entirely unnecessary. I could have just said goodbye at my house. Yesterday morning, I told him I wasn't sure if I should go because I didn't want to get his mom sick. She was supposed to come as well and then drop me off at home while she took his car for maintenance in his absence. He convinced me it would be OK because she had already been sick last week (I was going to argue the "different strains" case, but my throat was too wheezy). So I went. But by the time we actually left his home, the party had expanded by a dad and a nephew. Three of us were crammed into the back seat, and I was feeling regretful and trying hard not to cough too often.

Then we got to the airport. It was packed with people waiting to check in to their flights to destinations all over Asia and possibly Africa, and as I stood with my boyfriend in an interminable line, I told him again how guilty I felt for coming and potentially spreading my cold all around the planet. He then started recounting the entire plot of Contagion, which didn't make me feel a whole lot better.

I tried not to breathe in anyone's direction, and avoided touching my face. I coughed into my coat lapels and tried to do it inconspicuously. He then tried to reassure me by saying that I was just giving everyone a souvenir from the USA.

Happy travels, world! Next time I'm sick, I think I'll stay away from airports.

"Pasta Macaroni" from Eurasian HotPot

When I went to Eurasian HotPot for my boyfriend's family birthday dinner, I was not expecting much. Not a fan of Asian food, am I (why ever did I choose to get involved with an Asian man!?) But no one else in the party was particularly delighted, either. Especially with the prices.

Whatever. The "Eur" part in the name ensured, at least, that there were some dishes more to my liking, and of course I took the opportunity to try their macaroni. But then it was so underwhelming, I forgot to review it for weeks after eating it.

OK, to be honest, it was very well prepared and had some interesting weird flavor that I now can't remember. All in all, I liked it, except that it was rather short on cheese. Why do you think I eat macaroni—for the noodles?

So I give it one happy noodle for being interesting, and one sad noodle for not having enough cheese.

BGR Chocolate Chunk Cookie

 
My boyfriend was sweet enough to pick up a Giant Cookie for me one rare day last week when we were not together. He got it at BGR: the Burger Joint. Because it's never polite to ask how much someone paid for a gift, I didn't ask. So I will be unable to assess its value, but read on for a review of its edibility.

Weirdly, but appropriately I guess, it tasted like a burger. Although each bite was good in itself, I detected a note of char in the back of my throat once I had finished swallowing. This may have been a fluke, because (fortunately) I only noticed this during the first few bites. After that, it became your average chocolate chip cookie, complete with at least 2 different varieties of chocolate! Yay!

Texture-wise, it was a little crumblier and messier than I prefer, but in the middle, it was chewy goodness, and the crumbly bits didn't negatively affect my chewing experience, and that's what counts!

The Bottom Line:
Taste: 3 stars
Texture: 4 stars

NoShavember

In case you've been living in a cave and haven't noticed, it's NoShavember, also known as Movember, during which men proudly sport mustaches (Movember) or allow all their facial hair to grow unchecked (NoShavember) (If you've been living in a cave, this is probably every month for you, so I don't blame you for not noticing). Ostensibly, this is done to raise awareness of various forms of cancer*, but in practice, I think it is more of an excuse to gleefully neglect shaving for a month and/or prove one's manliness by sprouting a bush on one's jaw, and the cancer card is just convenient to reach for when someone criticizes it.

My boyfriend is an avid participant in this sport cause, despite his less than stellar ability to grow facial hair. I have to say that in the last week of the month, he still resembles nothing so much as a dog with the mange. When he was just starting to look scruffy in the first week of the contest campaign, I told him, "I'm going to stop shaving for November, too!"

His response was, "NO!" Imagine the most horrified no a person could utter—the kind of no you might say if I offered to cut off your finger—and that's the no that came out of his mouth. If my boyfriend has one fault, it's that he has very parochial views on female beauty...but to his credit, he didn't break up with me when I did it anyway.

My reasons for refusing to shave in November are not so much based on cancer awareness (as I feel that not shaving is a kind of misguided way to support a cause, especially when there's no incentive to learn more about the disease or donate to research efforts or whatever, but since I brought it up, here's the Movember Foundation's donate page), and it's certainly not out of a spirit of competition (the last thing I want is to be known for having copious body hair), but it's pure and simple because of that vehement "NO!"

What do you mean, no? Don't I have a right to choose whether I shave or not? You bet I do, and I'm not going to!

It annoys me that society as a whole is so ardently opposed to body hair on women. It's ridiculous that hair on our legs is considered "gross" (like, on a par with "unsanitary") while the same stuff on men's legs is considered OK. And the same stuff on our heads is considered required (god forbid a woman ever shave her head—the world even freaks out every time a star gets a pixie cut).

This is largely a futile gesture, because ever since I've laid off the razor, I've been careful to keep my legs and armpits covered up. If I end up going to a beachy locale for Thanksgiving (which right now is a possibility), I will shave it all off, even though November won't have ended. Even though I want to be free to make the choice not to shave, the societal pressure is still too much for me. And that kind of sucks.

I hope that some day the rest of the world will realize how stupid their hair phobia is. And I enthusiastically applaud all the women brave enough to give it their own dose of aversion therapy. Maybe my little blog post will help.

Until then, I will proudly stride onto the beach with my unnaturally hairless legs and armpits, and wait in cowardice for the tides of popular opinion to change.


*At some point during the last month, I know I saw a website, no doubt left open by my boyfriend, stating that growing hair is a way to remind us of the hair that people lose when fighting cancer of any form, but I can't find that now. The Movember Foundation was started to raise awareness of testicular cancer.

Cracker Barrel Macaroni and Cheese

I had another bad macaroni yesterday.

It was from Cracker Barrel, a restaurant at which I haven't eaten in a long time, but which I remember for having a fun country store and puzzles on the table, but an absolutely terrible menu—at least for a little mostly-vegetarian selective eater like young me. When I was a child at Cracker Barrel, the only thing on the menu I wanted to eat was macaroni and cheese...I haven't changed much!

Cracker Barrel hasn't changed much either. They still had a puzzle on the table, a store and rocking chairs in front, and a menu full of disgusting meat products. The waitress was even kind enough to tell us (there were two vegetarians in my party) that the biscuits were made with lard, so we couldn't eat them either!

So I ordered a side of macaroni and a side of broccoli and prepared to relive my childhood. When it arrived at the table, I was underwhelmed by its size. I mean, you can't expect much from a side dish, but this was smaller than most.

I was definitely underwhelmed by its taste. The first bite revealed the dreaded Velveeta-texture of Doom! You might not know it, but search my blog for Velveeta, and you will soon discover that anything that reminds me of Velveeta gets an instant downvote.

It lacked any kind of crunch or exciting flavors. The only thing that redeemed it was the noodles were slightly less mushy than they could have been.

I give it a sad noodle for feeling like Velveeta and another for tasting like, um, um, did it taste like anything?

Skittles Gone Bad

I opened up a bag of Skittles today, and my world was crushed when I tasted the flavor of...apple?

Granted, it's probably been a couple years since I ate a Skittle, but they used to be one of my favorite candies, and I distinctly remember the green flavor being lime. But I checked the bag, and it said "green apple," just like that's what it had always been. Could I have been mistaken all those years of my youth, just imagining that green Skittles tasted good because I liked the rest of them?

At this point, I should probably mention, if you haven't figured it out already, that I do not enjoy green-apple-flavored candy.

Well, as I discovered on Candy Blog (which is an excellent idea that I wish I'd had myself!) that they did change the flavor from lime to apple earlier this year. I guess I can't fault them for wanting a little less citrus in the mix (after all, lime is only a few notes away from lemon and orange), but I can gripe enthusiastically about them replacing my favorite fruit flavor with one of my least favorite.

If I had to rank fruit flavors (of the sort that are used in candy, not actual fruits, which sometimes taste quite different), here's how they would go:

1. Lime
2. Orange
3. Lemon
4. Raspberry
5. Cherry
6. Strawberry
          Good
   --------------------
           Bad
7. Green Apple
8. Grape
9. Banana

Just thought I'd share, in case you ever need to know this helpful trivia when I'm famous!

My yoga flip

I'd just like to take this moment to admit I was wrong.

Three years ago, I publicly announced my distaste for yoga and ridiculed most of its practitioners as posers (get it, that's a double entendre!), but in the past year, I have become just the person I once despised.

It's been a long journey, from scoffing when a friend suggested I try it in 2006, to learning some respect for the practice in 2007 through a housemate who did it and yet didn't seem like a show-off or a lemming, to being grudgingly willing to try it on vacation (but still feeling relieved when it got canceled) in 2011, to taking my first class earlier this year, and finally to having used up the 10-class pack I bought on Groupon and feeling sad that it was over.

In those years, I have learned something: I like yoga!

Although it is hard to explain exactly why I like yoga more and more while other exercise programs demotivate me over time (I'm still making better and better excuses to avoid the gym), here are a few reasons that come to mind:

• It's usually slow-paced, so I have ample time to get my uncoordinated limbs into the right positions (unlike dance, for example, which I've also tried).
• No pain, no gain, but with other workouts, it is a huge effort to keep moving through the pain. With yoga, when it hurts, all you have to do is stay still. That's so much easier.
• Unlike other types of workouts where you stretch after you're finished (meaning you're not really finished, are you?), in yoga the stretching is built right in, and you get to end by lying flat on your back and resting. It's such a nice way to tell your body you're done.

Yoga is not the perfect workout. I don't think it burns as many calories as a really vigorous weightlifting session, and I'm sure it's not nearly on the same cardiovascular level as a 10-minute run, but yoga has one huge thing going for it: While other workouts make me miserable, I can go into a yoga class grumpy and come out happy.

And that alone makes it worthwhile for me.

Though some purists would like to make me feel guilty for considering it a form of exercise rather than a more spiritual practice, I like yoga in the form it has taken in America in the 20th Century! A way to work out your body and balance your mind.

Although my 10 studio classes have been used up and I am too cheap to pay full price, I will probably keep doing it at home. Fortunately, there are free podcasts and websites for home-based yoga.

And in the meantime, I've started ice skating lessons, which I also love!