Dear God

I challenge you to go here and not lament the future of our world. I wonder what my kids will do to rebel? Chop off a limb?

9 Things I hate

1. Staying at other people's houses
This is something I will not do if my house is less than two hours away. I hate to stay any place that's not my own bed. I didn't like slumber parties as a kid and once I was old enough to drive I saw no reason for staying somewhere else when my own, perfectly good home was not very far away. The only time I can stay in a hotel or with a friend is if I'm on vacation.

This quirk is particularly frustrating for my poor husband when we go visit his brothers in Fort Collins and he wants to hang out and just stay the night and I have a mini-breakdown at the idea of sleeping on a couch or someone else's bed.

2. Not having my own transportation
This is in keeping with number one. When I'm finished doing something, I'm finished. What most people fail to understand, and what precludes me from car-pooling, is when I say I need to leave I really mean: "I needed to leave 15 minutes ago and if we aren't out the door right this second a meltdown will probably ensue."

I blame both number one and two on an extremely sensitive threshold for over stimulation and not an overwhelming desire to be difficult.

3. This car






This is specifically the H3 model but I hate these cars in general. They're all over the place in Texas and I simply do not understand why. For one thing they only average 16 miles a gallon. I'm shocked it's that good. The only explanation I can come up with is that the owners expect they'll be engaging in urban combat if Mexico invades from the south.

Note: since the car's make is also slang for a certain sexual act, and since I don't want people perusing for porn to wind up here, I'm not including the name.

4. Any time someone calls me and doesn't tell me who they are
Unless the caller is Kent, my mom or my dad I can almost guarantee the first two minutes of the conversation will be me trying to determine who I'm talking to if you don't identify yourself. This is particularly vexing at work when an employee calls and doesn't give their name. However that does give me an excuse not to do what they asked.

5. People that give their babies "unique" names
One of the most cruel things can you do to a helpless child. I would like to say here that if your parents are from another country and give you a name that reflects that heritage I think that's fine. I'm speaking of three specific categories of names: normal names with unusual spellings, names that are made up or names that are "unique!". Let me tell you something, if the average person tells you your child's name is "unique" it means they think the name is repulsive and are too polite to say so. Here are some examples:

Normal name, stupid spelling
Kaytlyn
Krystynn
Jeweliegh
Myykil
And'Rue

Made up names
Jaarene
Shaquaila
Taniqua
Roneefa
Wadine

Unique names
Lamborghini
Ambria
Chance
Trinity
Heaven

At best, your child will be teased unmercifully. At worst you, and they, will look low-class and uneducated. Don't believe me? Just go here. And for the record? I spent some time working with troubled teenage girls that had most of those names so I'm not just making them up.

Also, don't name your kid Giovanni or Sergio. Those are just terrible, terrible names.

6. People that don't get it
Most of us have met people that fall into this category. It's difficult to define "it" but if they don't get "it" you definitely know what I mean. If you've never met one of these people, congratulations! Mostly like it's because you are among those that don't get it.

I work with a few people that fall into this category. It's as though we're speaking in different dimensions. It's almost funny in it's unbelievability. If you recognize it early though you can avoid interacting with these people as much as possible.

7. The following phrases
Once and a while
I could care less
A whole nother

Why do I hate these? It's because they're grammatically WRONG. Let's try:
Once IN a while
I COULDN'T care less
A whole OTHER

Please try to get it right. Thank you!

8. Music snobs
Please get over yourselves.

9. People that claim to not watch TV
I'm not sayin they're liars but I'm pretty sure they're lying

Meat

Some of you wondered how Kent and I were able to go to a steakhouse on Sunday and eat steak. The answer is this: apparently Sundays are like little Easters and you are allowed whatever you gave up for Lent. We aren't making this up, Kent's grandpa said it's ok. In case you're wondering at his authority he was an Episcopalian priest. I'm inclined to believe him.

Since this is such a short post I'll add something else. Years ago the Olive Garden used to run a commerical that went like this:

A man: "I even took my Italian grandmother to the Olive Garden!"

Every time my dad saw that commercial he would add: "And then she slapped the shit out of me!"

I still find that hilarious.

Tower of the Americas

In our ongoing effort to get out and do things Kent and I thought it would be nice to go to the Tower of the Americas over the weekend. The TotA is like the Space Needle of San Antonio. It's 750 feet and supposedly that makes it taller than the Space Needle. However I don't care enough to actually verify this.

Anyway, the neat thing about it (besides the height) is that at the top there is a rotating restaurant. That sounds like a great idea, huh? Enjoy an upscale meal while also getting a panoramic view of the city. Kent and I sure though so, so we planned to go on Saturday night.

Sadly, when we awoke on Saturday it was to cloudy skies, rain, fog and cold. As much as we wanted to get dressed up and go downtown it seemed like a waste to go to dinner at the TotA when we wouldn't get a nice city view. We ended up going out near our house and had a nice time but...we still wanted to go to TotA for dinner.

Sunday was beautiful. We got up early and went out with dog on a hike and decided that we'd try to do the TotA that night. We got home from our hike about 2:00 and I got online to make dinner reservations for 6:30. Do you have any idea yet where this might be going? The only reservations open were for 4:30 and 9:15. Obviously no one wants to eat dinner at 4:30 unless they're 87 and no one wants to eat at 9:15 unless they live in New York and planning to go clubbing afterwards. Reluctantly I called the restaurant to see if they had reservations open at any other time. They did not but told me to feel free to just come in.

Since we didn't have reservations we took our sweet time getting ready. We were ready to head out around 7:00 and I figured that we would certainly be eating by 8:30. When we got there and handed over our $6 to park (!!!!) and got inside the snotty hostess told us that the wait was currently two hours.

Here's what I'm willing to wait two hours for: the birth of a baby, my work day to end, and my flight from Denver to London to finally land. Nowhere on that list is waiting for any type of food, if you'll notice. When it comes to being seated at a restaurant or having food delivered there are three time periods: now, in the next 30 minutes and we'll go somewhere else.

We were given the option of going up to the bar and deciding there if we wanted to wait for dinner. Since we'd paid for our parking already we figured the least we could do was go up and see the view and the rotation. When we got up to the restaurant we had to go up another flight of stairs to the bar. We sat down and the bartender immediately launched into a diatribe about how shitty the night was going. UH-OH! Usually that's not the first thing a customer wants to hear.

We sat down and tried to enjoy the sparkling city vista. As we sat we tried to see if we could see the rotation at all. We both though that we could faintly detect it. We didn't expect it to be all that fast, since the restaurant only makes one full rotation an hour. After many confused minutes we finally asked the crabby bartended which way were spinning. As it turned out we weren't spinning. Only the downstairs rotated. In hindsight I suppose this makes sense. The last thing you want to do is make life harder for people drinking.

We continued to wait. At this point we figured we were already there plus I truly think we didn't believe that it would actually take two hours to be seated. We ordered appetizers at the bar, as I was becoming increasingly crabby from hunger and distressed by the idea of going to bed after 10:00. The appetizers arrived in relatively short-order and our moods improved. Our bartender turned out to not be such a jerk (he said our snarky remarks cheered him up). We figured we should enjoy being able to go out to dinner at 9:00 PM on a Sunday since someday we'll have kids and that will become impossible.

At 9:15 we were at long last paged for our table. Our wait had been almost two hours on the nose. But it would be worth it. We'd have a delicious meal and enjoy a great view.

First, as it turns out a rotating restaurant isn't such a fun idea. I was stone-cold sober and needed to grip onto the table for several minutes before my head stopped threatening to fly off my body. I mostly adjusted but for the whole meal if I moved my head too fast from side to side I was dizzy.

The we had to wait for an unacceptable amount of time for our waiter to come over. When he got to our table I was pretty sure he'd spent a few minutes in the bathroom with a couple lines of cocaine. He took our orders and told us his life story. While I enjoy learning about people and chatting with them, I must be honest and say that 10:00 PM on a Sunday night when I'm waiting for food is not my most chatty time. I kindly told him that if he wanted to continue his employment he would shut the hell up and get our food order in. No, I didn't really say that but wouldn't it be a great story?

Our food finally arrived at our table at 10:30. I'm sure you can imagine what our meal was like. We ate in exhausted silence while blankly staring out the window. I was too tired to complain that my shrimp were overcooked and the garlic mashed potatoes we gross. The steak was delicious though and other than being too well-done the shrimp tasted fine. The whole ordeal was finally over shortly after 11:00. I would never compromise my journalist integrity by telling you the restaurant where we were so poorly served was the Chart House so I won't.

Up next time: why we ate meat on Sunday! Tune in!

Lazy!

I've been so lazy the past week and suffering from a mild case of writer's block, as I said in my last post. See, I don't want to be one of the bloggers that people read either a) because they know me and feel obligated or b) because I'm so mind-bloggling boring they can't believe it. So that's the story.

Moving right along.

Last week marked the beginning of Lent. Although I'm not Catholic or even all that religious I like to give something up for its 40 days. For example, last year I gave up shopping and I'll thank all of YOU to stop laughing. This year I was undecided on what I wanted to sacrifice. I already gave up drinking so I felt it would be cheating to give it up again since I'm not doing it. Kent decided to give up meat. So two days after the start of Lent I decided to give it up also. I mean, I already hadn't had any for a couple days plus, pratically speaking it would make dinner time easier.

However today was a difficult day. I really, really wanted a turkey sandwich. I stood in front of the cooler at the grocery store eyeing all the premade turkey sandwiches. Little turkeys were can-canning in my head. I gathered all my resolve and got what I can only describe as the most disgusting frozen pesto bowl I've ever had. The up side is that now I don't want a sandwich anymore. The down side is now I feel like barfing.

Going 10 days without makes me wonder how I survived as a vegetarian for a year and half in high school. I gave up meat the summer between junior and senior year. I think my rationale at the time was my concern for poor animals. And of course I can't ignore the secret glee only a teenager can get from doing something they know irritates their parents. I was actually dumb enough not to eat meat even during my summer trip to Germany. People would ask me what I thought of schnitzel and would smugly say "I don't know. I'm a vegetarian. I didn't try it." For some reason no one thought that was as impressive as I did. They just looked at me like I was insane.

Later I went back to Germany as a non-vegetarian and enjoyed delicious schnitzel so this story does have a happy ending. Incidentally, what's up with "flexitarians"? That's the dumbest term I've ever heard. They're people that usually don't eat meat but sometimes do, when they feel like it. Known to the rest of us as OMNIVORES.

A little blocked up

I mean that in a much less gross way than it sounds. This is the third post I've started in two days. I seem to be suffering from a little case of writer's block. I promise that I haven't abandoned any of you!

I should be up to snuff tomorrow!

The 8 Habits of Highly Ineffective People

1. Make lots of mistakes. Apologize for said mistakes. Continue to make the same ones, over and over.

2. Make sure your moods are completely unpredictable. This works on a day-by-day basis but is even more effective if you can manage hour-by-hour mood variations. You might consider yelling at your coworkers if the mood strikes you. Talk to them an hour later as if nothing happened.

3. Plan to get by on your looks. Do not cultivate any personality or hobbies. When your looks start to fade become demanding and needy. Complain that no one loves you and you don't know why.

4. Make completely terrible choices in your personal life. Ask for a lot of advice. Ignore all of it.

5. Hold onto grudges for years. Pretend like you aren't mad about those things anymore. Release your pent-up rage at completely inappropriate times and in completely inappropriate situations. Act surprised when people question your sanity.

6. Behave like your time is more valuable than anyone else's. You can do this by ignoring emails and phone messages but demanding prompt replies from people that work for or with you. When you do manage to get back to said people make sure that you don't really answer their question.

7. Vehemently argue a point that is, in fact, incorrect. For example, you could argue that the cervix is inside the uterus rather than at its entry. Maintain that all current science textbooks are wrong. Resort to childish name calling. This example is ideal if you are a woman arguing with a man.

8. Ask friends to borrow money to pay your rent. Tell them you'll get evicted in a bid to gain sympathy. Use the borrowed funds to get a tattoo or buy drugs. When said friend realizes they've been duped, promise to pay them back immediately. Instead, stop returning their calls.