Arrrgh.

Arggh! Stupid Time Warner Cable stupid crappy resolution stupid why can't I have DirecTV Arrrgh I KNOW I HAVE MY S VIDEO CABLE HERE SOMEWHERE.

I have my new glasses!


Something that I did not notice at the time (possibly due to not having my contacts in and my eyes being dilated) were the little side rhinestones (or, as this website says, Swarovski crystals) on the sides! So not only are they totally stylin’, they also cater to my love of things that sparkle. They’re quite the bomb-diggity. I wanted to wear them today, but I go to the gym mid-day, and I don’t think glasses and sweaty faces mix.

(This post brought to you by the blog-off I am currently participating in with Angie. I don't really know what a blog-off entails, but I challenged her to one.)

WILL TURNER! !!!!!!!!

I had this GREAT joke I was going to make today, except I couldn't remember that name, and I had to let the joke go, and now I don't even remember it, but now I can let out that breath I didn't know I was holding.

All I want to do is curl up on my couch with my cat nearby, eat cookies and smell the lingering deliciousness of the pork shoulder/teriyaki dinner thing I made. Oh, and listen to the dryer hum. Right, and watch Law & Order. I am doing these things now, and life is pretty much ideal in this moment. Mmm. I can't believe I have to get up and leave my apartment every morning.

You all have said so many things in the last 24 hours! And I want to comment on them all, but I haven't even gotten around to reading them all. Yet.

I do this thing, and I'm not sure any of you know that I do it, but every time TNT airs the Lord of the Rings movies I watch them. . .in order to force myself into not hating them. I never liked the books, I never liked that orangey animated series from the 70s, I got all zzzzzzzz at the mention of hobbits, but yet--but yet--big sweeping epic fantasy drama is my thing. I love magic and princesses and good v. evil and that whole deal.

Tolkien, though? Shudder. But I wanted to like them, I wanted to be able to enjoy these like seemingly everyone else in the known world, so I rented the first one--Shire & Friends? I forget what it's called--when it came out on DVD, and it took me like, five days to watch because I KEPT FALLING ASLEEP. Didn't bode well, right? But then I did the same thing with the second one. I slept less, but I wandered out of the room more.

The third one I didn't see until it aired on TNT (and even now, I don't think I've seen all of it because of the whole falling asleep/wandering out of the room business). But for whatever reason, I just cannot let it rest that I, you know, just don't like the hobbit movies, and every time TNT airs them I fire up the Tivo and try to watch the whole thing. I figured if nothing else, it would at least become a comforting routine.

And, yeah, this is maybe the fourth or fifth time I've tried to watch these movies? And I am almost enjoying them now. Well, enjoying one, the second one. That one seems alright. Also, while I was bleep-blooping to the part where I stopped watching yesterday, I realized that, like, fully the last hour of that one is dialogue-free (you know what, everyone? if you're going to mumble, it would be awesome if you could at least mumble in ENGLISH), it's just tons of battle, and that I get. When the characters start to get all talky, or action shifts rapidly from scene to scene, or someone gets a notion to do just about anything, I am rapidly and completely confused and annoyed that we seemingly jumped from A to G and there is NO WAY I am trying to suffer through the books to understand why Liv Tyler wears three different outfits in what seems to be one day, and why is there a book and is this a dream and HEY WTF WHERE IS THE BATTLE

OH AND PS? EVERYONE IS STILL SO FIRED FOR NOT TELLING ME ABOUT THE GIANT SPIDER. FIRED FOREVER.

Anyway, if there was a movie where Viggo and Orlando Bloom and the dwarf and the blonde chick whose name sounds like Liv Tyler's character's name but isn't (AND HEY, OMG, COULD THERE BE LESS OF THAT?) fought goblins in the gloomy rain for two hours, I think I would enjoy that movie without reservations.

Also, everyone looks alike. You know I don't care for the hobbits, but I at least feel relieved when it's a Frodo & Samgee (Samwise? Sam) scene, because I can tell those two apart.

He cancelled on me! zomg!

Well, not really cancelled so much as rainchecked, and for reasons that, if he weren't an Internet Stranger, I would 100% commiserate with, having been in the same situation. HOWEVER. He is an Internet Stranger, and this makes it more likely that Valid Reason is a total cover lie for "my third wife went into premature labor with our second child, and I have to be there or else she'll re-initiate divorce proceedings and I can't afford to lose all my hedge fund millions." Something like that.

Although, really really oddly, I am not upset, depressed, freaked or otherwise in high dudgeon about this. Which I normally am/would be. I choose to attribute this to my newly adopted philosophy of beaucoup des poissons sur la mer, and I successfully managed not to (psychotically, or as per usual) put all my eggs in this one basket. Or any eggs, really. All my eggs are in the henhouse and I've got a lovely basket collection going. Or. . .something. LIKE WHAT NORMAL BEHAVIOR SHOULD BE LIKE, OMG.

Also, this meant that I got to spend almost all weekend lazing about my new, wonderful apartment. I'm such a homebody, and I hadn't gotten around to that yet! And I downloaded about a dozen songs from iTunes and it's sunny and just in general a fab day. Except for the headache from the teeth grinding ow.

I've really got to get up and shower sometime soon, because it's off to mom's birthday. . .linner? sunch? What do you call a lunch/dinner/supper meal? That. I'm going to that.

I woke up from a nap this evening (why yes, I napped post-work, pre-dinner) to some sort of clicky, crackly, constant sound. "Is Sadie eating?" I thought. Then, "is something in the wall on fire?"

And after I'd been thinking about it a while, still covered in blankets on the couch, I realized it was raining. Mmm. Then there was the rest of my chicken, eggplant and roasted pepper dish for dinner, then there was a Laker game. Now there will be tea.

Aha! So here is my amazon marketplace link, where you can see all the unloved books for sale: bibliodana

Come see the books I'm setting free!

So today I decided I was going to sell some books. I have never sold or given away a book IN MY LIFE. Because books ARE ME. However, this means I have a lot of books, folks. A lot. (" ") And it has been slowly occurring to me that there's no reason to keep a book from 1st quarter of first year college that not only I never read, but we never even discussed in class. It was a non-book. I hated the class, the book looked like I'd hate it. Yet I have lugged many of these around for almost TEN YEARS.

Anyway, no longer. So tonight I put 40 of the 80-100 books I want to get rid of on the Amazon marketplace. And I'm thinking, "Weber? Heidigger? Plato? Why do I have all this philosophy, ugh. And who would buy these? Only another college student." So I figured I'd have to wait until the start of a school year rolled around. But I just got a notification! I sold TWO tonight! And I rush to my account page to see what was purchased and by whom, and its On the Geneaology of Morals and Ecce Homo (Nietzsche) and the friggin MARX-ENGLES READER. And I'm all, what sadist. . .and then I see the delivery address:

[firstname lastname]
XXXX S. University Ave
#XXX Pierce Tower
Chicago, IL 60637

Ahahaha, k_rock and cruft! Torturing soc students the same way since time immemorial, right?

If you would like to see the books I have for sale, they are here. Fiction and slightly more fun stuff is coming tomorrow.

It's that thing I do, where I don't post for days and then I throw five entries at you in an evening. That's kind an annoying thing, at least to me. Why can't I just have one bloggable thought a day, like a normal person?

Anyway, some things I either forgot to mention or didn't:

* alexparker is forever win because of her tip about agave honey. It is just perfect!

* My nose has been itchy ALL WEEKEND, and it was really bugging me, and tonight I'm getting a little snuffly and I'm thinking it's actually allergies and I am so annoyed about that.

* I wanted to get a massage this weekend. I have a gift certificate that k_rock and her mister got me last year, and I have yet to use it. This is pathetic on my part, especially 'cause I'm all sore due to perhaps overdoing it at the gym at my new place of work.

I was very productive today, despite a 9-11:30 am nap necessitated by a 4:30 am stupid biorhythm wakeup call. I wrapped all the presents I bought for my mom's birthday (I bought them all yesterday, and kids, I TORE UP the malls; I love gameplan shopping), I went grocery shopping, I put away all my washed dishes and washed some more dishes, I washed some clothes, I spent a lot (" ") more money at Target than I thought I would, and I am currently making myself dinner (or not; we'll see how this Frankenstein-ed recipe I made turns out).

And then yesterday my friend Maile and I got haircuts together, and she was nice enough to come get me at the Grove after I had my eyes dilated at an optometrist's appt (I haven't had my eyes dilated in probably over a decade, so I kind of didn't expect it this time, either--oops). And she was further kind enough to drive down to Venice to the place where I get my haircut where she's never been before with Mr. Magoo in the navigator's seat (it was too painful to have my eyes open with my glasses on, and I am super-nearsighted, so there I was with my dilated eyes and no glasses attempting to give helpful suggestions as to where to turn. "Are we in Venice? Well, it's going to be sort of near the left end of the beach, but east some. You should turn here. Oh, this is a building? Well, you should turn at the next place that looks like this but is actually a street, then").

I can't find my glasses. I took out my contacts and wanted to finish this episode of Law & Order but I can't find my glasses. I'm about four inches from this screen right now and I'm still squinting. But this weekend I have a doctor's appt for NEW glasses, so even if I can't find my old one, I will have new ones! Yeah, but not immediately, I know. But before the end of April.

Stevia is crap. Let's say you have digestive issues with fake sugar (Splenda, Equal, etc) and you have a recipe that CALLS FOR Splenda, and you're all, ick, and someone tells you, "omg, use Stevia! It's all natural!" Don't use Stevia. It may be all natural, but it tastes just like nutra-sweet, except chalkier.

What am I going to do with 42 subscriptions to vibe packets of stevia?

Whoops, so I forgot the most important part of my epiphany: how I came to it in the first place! bitchygurl jogged my memory about that, and this is what I said to her in comments:

Oh derr, I forgot the key part of my epiphany! Which totally relates to this and is: I say I want to be pursued, but I have had a problem with every guy who's ever pursued me. I've been in painfully few relationships, gone on a pathetic number of dates in comparison, and mostly all with guys who pursued me. And I've shut down 98% of those dates/relationships. So I was discussing this tendency with mailekai one day, and I thought--"well, self, maybe you actually don't like being pursued. Have you ever thought about that?"



Or, perhaps I don't like the types of guys that want to pursue a girl like me. Or the type of guys who pursue girls, period. Maybe my whole only-child control issues stretch to the area of dating, as well.

So then I started thinking about it--created "Dana's Ideal Guy" and imagined two scenarios: one where he pursues me, in similar ways that I've been pursued in the past, and one where I think I'm all hot and sexy and awesome and pursue--or, in other words, control. Connnnntrrroooolllllll. And I was sort of surprised to realize that I even felt creeped out with Imaginary Ideal Man calling out to me on the street, or writing a solicitous email. I MUCH preferred the scenario where Imaginary Me said, "I like you. Come over here."

So then I was all, "well, what you need for that to happen is to start saying 'I like you. Come over here.'"

It was a little disappointing, initially, to sort of give up on that dream of being the crush object, but the more time I've had to live with it the more comfortable it seems.

I'm not saying this IS how you should feel, it's just the weird crazy thought process that happened to me.

I started to get a little wordy in my response to gfrancie in the last entry, and decided it was worth making into a whole new entry. Yes, my tl;dr comes in volumes. You are so lucky.

First, let me get to the breakthrough, the epiphanic moment that I had the other day about being a girl who is lame when it comes to approaching guys and dating them: Why do I have to be lame? Why, exactly, am I lame? Also, why do the guys get to have all the fun and run game? The epiphany was, essentially, Why can I not also run game?

I don't mean that in a sleazy Player's Club kind of way, but I was thinking about that pink scourge of the bookstore, He's Just Not That Into You and wondering, why does HE get to be not that into ME? What guy sits around hoping that if he wishes it hard enough, or smiles just the right way to a random stranger, or some other bizarre juju, that a girl will want to have a relationship? That is bogus. Why do the men get all the agency (sorry, lit majors) here? Why can't I start at the same level that they do, assuming that I'm hot and awesome and that I will make my moves and run my game until they realize how hot and awesome I am?

It was my Helen Keller under the water spigot moment (yes, I've had a lot of those). Oh! WATER!

Yeah, so I was like, look, I am going to go out there and start chatting up a ton of dudes and not doing the stupid girl thing where I single out one person and put all my eggs in that basket and probably have all that weirdness come out in the communicating and then get immensely crushed when it goes south because I have put all my eggs in the one basket. . .etc. No more!

So, there was that. But, as I was mentioning to gfrancie, I've now run into the problem of ABSOLUTELY NOT KNOWING how to effectively run my game. Because I know what image I'd like to project, but I have also been told recently that I am hard to read. And because the person who told me is a total BFF who I have known over ten years and even lived with at one point, I gave that opinion a good deal of weight.

So I don't WANT to be hard to read. But I'm not intentionally being hard to read, so I'm not sure exactly how much more expressive to make myself. I just emailed this guy that he was cute. Which is true, but normally something I'd never do. Normally I'd interact with a cute guy the way I'd interact with my aunt, waiting for. . .what, I don't know. Possibly, some embarrassing Romantic Comedy Moment where it all goes from 0 to 60 in a scene change! Oh, I am so ashamed of myself. Okay, that is enough self-exploration for tonight!

So. . .Cute Guy Is Cute. I tell him that. Is that too much? Not enough? OMG I don't know!! I'm totally happy to do MORE, go FURTHER, because I've had my epiphany and there is no shame in the game that I am running, but. . .I am a horrible judge of this, clearly!

And yes, krock, I know. Aspies flatmouth. I almost deleted this post several times because of aspies law.

This guy on okcupid just sent me an email saying, among other things, "you clean up really well."

No, right? No. I think perhaps jessica_dwg and I should circulate a helpful pamphlet: Things Not To Say To Girls You Have Just Met (On The Internet).

I made my first cup of coffee in the new apartment this afternoon. The apartment is hereby christened. Now, I'm going to take a shower (yes, at 5 in the afternoon) because I was up at 7am, flea-marketing and grocery-shopping and completely-unplanned-detour-hardware-store-plant-shopping.

Oh, and on one of the parallel streets to the hardware store, there was this street fair thing, complete with rides. And around 3 pm, when I was at the store, there were a total of two visitors for the whole fair. And they were just going around the tilt-a-whirl thing by themselves. It was a depressing scene. The operator of the mini-ferris wheel looked like he wanted to punch someone.

The internet is a rough backwoods place without Firefox. I have to use IE at my new job (which is strange, because they're very permissive about what sites I visit and using AIM and stuff like that. You'd think they'd be happy that I was using a non-resource-sucking, non-security-nightmare program like Firefox. But alas).

I don't really have anything more thrilling than that to say (except that my friend Angie is going TO PARIS TOMORROW and I am totally vicariously excited, and wish to remind her ONE MORE TIME to look out for dog poop), but I wanted to make sure no one assumed I was striking today. And I am not NOT striking just because I'm anti-anti-semetic, either. (Everyone who doesn't care as much about LJ drama as I do can feel free to go on having that make no sense. It's not terribly important.)

oh yeah. If anyone is trying to call me, I am not going to be getting to my cell phone calls right away because I have not been able to locate my charger since Saturday. so that means the cell phone is dead and I have to call into it to get messages.

Also, Pat, if you are reading this, Christel's number is only on my cell phone and that is why I have not yet returned her call. Yes, I know about email. It was a busy busy day!

And I can't charge it in the car with my car charger, which I have, because the socket thingy in the rental car i'm using while my car is repaired doesn't work. ay carumba

OMG I TOTALLY FORGOT THE GAS MAN COMES TOMORROW TO INSPECT WHY I HAVE NO GAS AND I HAVE TO LEAVE MY KEYS ALL OVER THE WORLD BECAUSE I WON'T BE HERE AND NOW I HAVE TO SET A KEY TREASURE HUNT AND BREAK DOWN SIX BUGGY BOXES AND AND AAAAND LEAVE FOR WORK HALF AN HOUR EARLY ALL TOMORROW MORNING BECAUSE I AM COVERING SOMEONE ELSE'S DESK THIS WEEK AND IT IS SO NOT ALL GOING TO GET DONE I AM SO TIRED SO SO TIRED

I can't find my deodorant. I made a big point of putting that in the Target bag with all my toiletries on the day I moved. Yet, it is not in the apartment as far as I can see.

Having an apartment with a washer/dryer and a dishwasher and having them both running at once, creating a beautiful harmony of sloshy warm water, is really the ultimate luxury.

Where is my tivo remote? The commercials on Law & Order are loud.

I saw Peeps today at Ralphs, and I thought of lawgeekgurl, as I always do when I see Peeps.

I am so tired. I have to break down all these boxes, but I haven't done that and they're just sitting outside my door because I'm afraid the boxes have evil Public Storage bugs in them.

I saw a commercial for some music service on demand on your tv or something, and there was this girl singing and playing a piano and I was all, hey, I like that song, so I totally looked her up and she's a real person and then when I was at Target on Sunday (where I did NOT buy deodorant because I was SURE I had packed it) I totally bought her cd and turns out she's awesome, everyone go watch this Sara Bareilles video for "Love Song" because she is SO AWESOME and like a female Guster except like Billy Joel too except better because she's a girl. And I can't believe I bought a CD from a commercial, just like how advertising is supposed to work.

so tired. how do I have so much stuff? Why did I pack it all so carefully? In so very many boxes?

Sorry, the revelation is still forthcoming.

Apartment move has been achieved. It just occurred to me, like, an hour ago (as I lay prone on my couch with my blanket warmed by my space heater) that this is the first time I've had a one-bedroom apartment. That seems odd, for all I've lived by myself, but those were only singles. Huh.

I had this most awesome thought today, and it's all about how having 30 (okay, 29 and a half) years of experience under your belt actually makes for some good ideas and about being the hunter and not the hunted and why do boys get to do all the pursuing and have all the fun and the very premise of that slime-from-hell book He's Just Not Into You promotes a logical fallacy, but, like I said, there's this couch. And right now it is calling my name. As is the CSI marathon on Spike tv.

Yesterday was an awesome day. And I don't even have a reason for it. Here's what happened yesterday:

* I went to Walgreens.
* I continued to be sick as a dog, with congestion all up in the house and a giant sinus headache.
* I ate a mediocre pecan danish. A pecan from the danish stabbed me in the gum, and then my gum swelled up.
* My mom went outside and returned to tell me that someone, at some point in the day, had totally BACKED INTO MY CAR OR SOMETHING and there is now a huge dent in the driver's side rear door.

But all day yesterday, I just kept thinking, "wow, today is an awesome day! It's gorgeous outside, and life is great and the jasmine in the front yard smells so wonderful!"

It was great, but I kept wondering if someone had replaced my regular coffee with Folgers Crystals granulated MDMA.

And today--today is ALSO SHAPING UP TO BE AWESOME! FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER! I would be worried if I wasn't so satisfied.

Unrelated to being caught in the crossfire of random awesomeness, but definitely not detracting from it at all, I've come across a not unattractive, not unintelligent fellow on the internets. (And possibly most excitingly, he is an L.A. native! It is too sad, this thing about me, where if you were born in L.A. I automatically think that's the most intriguing thing about you.)

And now, I am off to CARPE this fantastic DIEM! Which I will do by sitting on the couch, hacking up a lung, watching basketball and smelling jasmine (when my nose works). Just like yesterday.

Oh! Oh! Here is another awesome thing that happened yesterday: my great aunt sent me an afghan she had crocheted expressly for my use. I had no idea she was up to such shenanigans. And it kind of wonderfully smells all over like old lady, but in the comfy safe way, not the musty stale way.