September 2010 Archives

So I had this really odd dream last night that just kept going and going and getting odder...

Kevin and I were out at the store. We got back in my car and I was driving. For some reason, we stopped and Kevin got out of the car for a moment. At that point, I tried to pull over to the side of the road to get out of traffic, but I went too far away from Kevin. I could see him in the rearview mirror with the expression of "where are you going?!" So I tried to turn around and drive back at which point my brakes weren't working. I was pressing them down as hard as possible and with both feet, but the car wouldn't stop and I zoomed by Kevin. As I was coming up to an intersection, I pulled the emergency brake and turned into a parking lot. The car still wouldn't stop and I crashed into a building.

The crash totaled my car, but I walked away perfectly fine. Instead of staying with my car to apologize to the building owners or going to find Kevin, I started walking and ended up at this house. In the house was a lady that in the dream I sort of knew, and she let me inside. We chatted for a while and watched her about 3 year old son play and the family dog run around. The dog then pooped in the hallway and she cleaned it up and I followed her out to the porch as she went to throw the mess away. Her husband had come home and was tending to their massive garden and remarking how the carrots were just about ready to be picked.

Her husband was Rick Bayless! I started putting on my sneakers so that I could go outside and met him and look at his garden. As I was tying my shoe, Rick noticed the small pepper plant that was attached to my laces. I explained that my husband and I just had a little garden with peppers and tomatoes, and this particular pepper plant attached to my shoe laces had been damaged in a storm, and so I thought that my shoe laces would be the best place to nurse it back to health. He inspected the little plant and noticed some problems with it (but apparently not that it was growing on my sneaker).

In order to tell me about my plant, he decided that instead of just explaining things, we should watch an episode of his TV show. So we went inside to his computer which was in this small nook in the house. He sat in this huge leather swivel chair and I sat on the floor. The ceiling was very low. Apparently, he didn't even have all of his own shows on DVD, so he had to find the episode on the internet. As we started to watch the episode, I asked him if it ever felt weird to see himself on TV and to watch his own show. As we continued to watch, other children showed up and joined us.

One pretty little girl about 6 years old was sitting next to me and telling me about her day at school. Rick says, "oh I think you know her mom." And I so, "oh really?" Rick says yeah, "her mom is Lauren Wright." At which point, I turn around and there's Lauren and I say "oh my god Carly!" (Lauren plays Carly on General Hospital.) I start stammering about how I should have seen the family resemblance and her daughter is so pretty just like her. She laughs and tells me to stop trying so hard. (In the dream, it felt as though I was more familiar with Lauren than just watching her on a TV show, there seemed to be an implicit knowledge that I worked for her at some point or was currently working with her.)

I wish there was a thrilling conclusion where Rick cooks us all dinner and Kevin magically shows up and the car is no longer crashed, but as always seems to happen, the alarm went off. And so now I have this odd dream to ponder and Lady Gaga stuck in my head.

...on my office door or maybe floating magically above my head when I'm in my office that reads:

I am not a secretary. I am not a babysitter. I am not the personal assistant or keeper of the individuals in offices that are near to mine. If you knock and no one answers, they are not in. Asking me will not magically make the person appear. Additionally, I don't have a memorized list of where other people's offices are located and what their office numbers are. I can point in a general direction most times to where people in that same department are located, but don't argue with me that you knocked and no one answered because that indicates that you DO know where the office is. I don't know why you expect me to know why they didn't answer your knocking. My guess is they anticipated how annoying you are and are hiding behind the door waiting for you to go away.

• I decided I couldn't stand my hair as it was anymore, so I went for the Carey Mulligan this morning. It turned out a little shorter than hers and a little straighter (such is my hair), but I think it looks cute. It was probably the fastest haircut ever since my hair just needed a restyling and not a full cutting. I'm happy with it, but as also the day after is always the real decision time.




• After my haircut, I went and got my nails done. It was a Wednesday of pampering. If I had the time and money for the pedicure, it would have been awesome.




• There were some ladies at the nail salon, of a certain type and I really hate to stereotype, but well... they were completely confirming the stereotypes about themselves. Honestly, shouting across someone sitting in between you (me) about each of your babies dirty diapers and the resulting gradients of rash from failure to change the diaper in time is not appropriate public conversation. Yeah, maybe if you were sitting next to each other talking, but you were at opposite ends of the salon with someone sitting in between you.




• And the rudeness didn't end with those two, two other ladies were sitting at the nail dryers when I sat down to dry. They were having a private conversation before I sat down, which is perfectly fine. What I don't appreciate is the continued dirty looks for "invading" their little private area. Hello... it is a nail salon and their set up is to group up to 6 people at the dryers... it isn't your living room that I walked into. Then they proceeded to half whisper and give me dirty looks to make sure that I wasn't listening. But neither lady was very good at whispering, and moreover, I don't know the people you are talking about and could care less.




• If you have the October 2010 issue of British Glamour, check out page 60!!




• All of my classes are behind where I'd like them to be and we're only in the 4th week of the semester. I'm trying very hard to be cool with this. Being behind is a product of the students being participatory and spending extra time discussing topics that interest them.




• Yesterday I got a free ride on the express bus because the driver was really nice and realized that the bus I was waiting for was not coming for quite some time.




• I've really got to get some work done now......

I have no prepared lectures for tomorrow. I have ideas, I have some notes, but nothing really ready to go. You'd think in that situation that I'd be working my butt off to prepare 2 hour long and 1 hour+ long lectures. But no, I'm taking a little break because lectures always come out better when the ideas marinate in the back of my mind. So instead, I was looking at random stuff on the internet, and I swear I wasn't looking for hair cut ideas, but I stumbled on this picture.

The actress is Carey Mulligan. I have no idea what she's been in/done. I found the picture on Go Fug Yourself.

What do you think bloggie friends? I think it is cute and fun. I worry my hair might be too straight for this to work. I also worry about having bangs, which I haven't really done in like 15 years or more.

Here's a current picture of my hair for comparison.

Headbands have been helping it look less plain, but headbands pinch my head too much for everyday wear. Most days I push the long side on the right behind my ear. It has "style" based on the cut, but as it is growing in it is getting heavier so just hanging more. the back is also getting longish, which I don't like.

I feel great indecision. So I waste my brain power on thinking about hair and scouring the web for additional pictures of this celeb (all I can find are shorter hair picture of her, which I'm not as interested in).

I really need to get back to these lectures or else I'm going to be debating with my students what I should do with my hair instead of teaching them psychology.

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Ok, I haven't gotten to work, I've been staring at myself in my iPhone's reflective front. Sometimes my hair is great, and I love it. But then I feel like I move to another angle and it looks like "blah!" Ugh... rambling and wasting time....

Are there products that you stockpile because you know that a time will occur when you don't have the product and you'll really really need it?

Now of course, the items that get stockpiled seem to change from time to time. About a year ago, it was butter. For some reason, I was convinced every time we went to the grocery store that we needed more butter. This was aided by the fact that when unpacking the groceries, I'd see all the butter in the fridge and start hiding the new butter in the far corners. The butter stockpiling has ended. It then moved into dish soap. Now we are on to band-aids.

I noticed late last week that we had some odd band-aids (the weird shaped ones for knuckles and fingertips) and only a couple normal ones. I asked Kevin to pick some up at the store. Unfortunately the local grocery store is so poorly stocked that he had few options and came home with a box of random band-aids (a few sport, a few waterproof, a few tough) and some generic band-aids (his subconscious remembered my ban on Curad bandages because they destroy my skin with their evil glue).

Today I happened to be in the pharmacy and decided to purchase more band-aids. And because I'm a weirdo, I decided to organize the band-aids in the medicine cabinet. Small ones, medium ones, big ones, and weird ones. Now we're mostly set for quick first-aid of minor injuries... I say mostly because I'm in band-aid hoarding mode... so I'll probably still buy more the next time I'm at the store.

I just logged onto Bloglines to catch up on some blog reading after being away for the weekend, and I saw the announcement that Bloglines is shutting down on the 1st of October. I've been reading blogs through them for more years than I can remember.

So I'm switching over to Google Reader because... well... Google does it all these days. It was sad to go through all the feeds on my Bloglines and weed out the ones that no longer update. I had several on there that were knitters who hadn't updated since 2008. I guess I kept them around hoping that they'd come back. I think it was more sad because their last posts were always just your everyday, regular post. No goodbyes, no explanations. Just what was happening that single day and then silence. I hope that if I ever stop blogging, I'll remember to at least say goodbye!!

Between 9/5 and 9/11, we attended 2 weddings. The first was for Kevin's brother and the second a college friend of Kevin's.

At Kevin's brother's wedding, I apparently was "inspired" by some Bon Jovi and took over the dance floor in what was in my mind at the time, a brilliant performance. I remember a particularly awesome spin move at some point that I'm sure would have made Jon Bon proud. Thus far, only one picture has surfaced.

I'm hoping there aren't any more!!

Finally after all the hassle of FedEx (I still vehemently hate them), I got my new shoes. Yes, they are my first ever pair of Crocs. I still think regular Crocs are pretty ugly and have no desire to wear them, but I thought these shoes were ultra cute. And bonus, I could get them in a size 4! And double bonus, they were cheaper (even with giving free money to FedEx... ARGH!!) than other options that most likely would have been too big.

I'm on my third day of wearing them and here are my thoughts:

• There are little spikes inside the shoe. They call them circulation nubs. For the first 45 minutes wearing the shoes, I called them death spikes. Ouch!! Now that my feet have adjusted, I don't know that they are increasing circulation, but they are now a pleasant stimulation, and not painful at all.


• There is extra cushy areas in the heels and balls of the feet. It feels like you are walking on a bouncy, soft surface. After the first day, my feet were aching a bit from the extra padding. Even yesterday after my foot was used to the padding, switching to flip-flops without padding felt from odd and a little achy.


• My right foot is apparently bigger than the left. The size 4 fits perfectly on my left foot. It is a bit too tight on the right such that the back is digging into my heel. I got a wicked little blister on the first day. I'm not sure if the right heel pain yesterday and today is because of the blister being pinched or still from the digging in of the shoe. I'm hoping that they'll stretch a little in a few more days and that after the blister heels, all will be good.


• Speaking of blisters, the shoes are also rubbing my instep on both feet. My instep may just need to toughen up a bit and all will be fine, but for right now I have a combo blister pad and band-aid to help ward off additional blistering.


• The black seems to get scuffed better easily, but wiping it off with a damp towel seems to fix that.


• I was worried about my feet getting really sweaty because of the material. But so far, so good. They even say on the website that the material is odor resistant to avoid stinky feet. Always a good thing!

Overall, I really like the shoes. I'm tempted to order another pair that are the same, but with more traction. Not that these ones are slippery, but the traction ones are on sale. I'm curious if a size 5 would fit better on my right foot, and I hope wouldn't be too big on my left foot. From measuring my foot and looking at their size chart, my feet are at the high end of the 4 and the low end of the 5........

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Ok, I did it. I ordered the more tractiony ones in a 5 in brown (can't remember the last time I wore brown shoes!). The price with the cheapest shipping was still much less than the normal price for the shoes. I probably won't get them until the end of the month, but that's ok because I'm still breaking in these new ones.

So I was going to post about the first week of school and the heat and students actually reading their books, etc, I was planning it out in my head as I walked home from the bus. But instead I'm pissed and going to vent...

I ordered some new shoes online because my current black flats are falling apart. I really ought to have replaced them before the semester started, but I hadn't been wearing them all summer, so I didn't realize just how bad they were. So I ordered some shoes and decided to fork over the extra money for 2-day delivery so that I could get them before the long, holiday weekend. Maybe even be able to wear them to the wedding we're attending this weekend.

As I'm walking home from the bus stop, I see a FedEx truck and think to myself, "yay, hopefully he just dropped off my shoes!!" But what do I see instead on the door, a stupid note saying that I can go pick up my shoes in bumblefuck, NY because he wouldn't leave them.

Apparently, dude was too dumb to open the door and see the mailboxes, one of which clearly is labeled with my name and leave the box there. Other delivery guys understand this. Ok, so maybe their "policy" is that they don't leave boxes without a signature at apartment buildings, but that's total bullshit. If that's the case, then they need to start scheduling delivers because who can wait at home all day just to sign for a stupid pair of shoes?!?!

And so I called FedEx and yelled at some lady because get this... the time written on the door tag was 4:05, I was standing in my living room looking at the clock as I called and it was 4:05. She explains that they can only redeliver that day if you call before 1pm. Um, hello? I would happen take that excuse if the delivery note said he tried before 1pm, but he didn't. So I need to sign this stupid door tag and leave it on the front door for all the world to see for the next 4+ days. Because that's more secure than leaving the stupid box inside next to the mailboxes.

So I paid for two day shipping and now I won't get my shoes until Tuesday, maybe. Even...

ARGH!!!!! A FedEx truck just drove down the street!!!!! It didn't stop!!!!!! ARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

With my luck, the stupid shoes won't even fit.

Updated: Well, apparently the driver drove right back to the station after the "failed" attempt at delivery, so he can't redeliver the package today. Apparently, talking to the lady that called me I can personally drive over 30 minutes to pick up my package and it is FedEx's policy to NEVER DELIVER PACKAGES TO APARTMENT BUILDINGS WITHOUT A SIGNATURE.

Yes, that's right, the DELIVERY COMPANY, FEDEX, WILL NOT DELIVER PACKAGES.

She stated plainly to me that it is FEDEX'S POLICY TO NOT DELIVER PACKAGES TO APARTMENT BUILDINGS.

And apparently, I was supposed to take the day off of work and sit around at home waiting for my package because FEDEX WILL NOT DELIVER PACKAGES TO APARTMENT BUILDINGS without a signature. So I lose the extra money I paid for express shipping. And hell, who knows if they'll even deliver my package on Tuesday when they try again because I'll be at work and not able to sign.

I told the woman and I quote myself: "I will never use FedEx again and that I will make sure that everyone I know never uses FedEx again. FedEx is a bullshit company with bullshit policies."

So thanks FedEx for ruining what otherwise was a very good day.