April 2009
April 30, 2009 at 9:24 am
I have a compulsive smiling problem.
When someone gets on the elevator with me, I smile. When the bagger hands me my groceries, I smile. When someone opens the door for me, I smile. The only time I don’t smile is when someone at the grocery store says, “Hey, why don’t you smile for me?” and I want to stuff arugula down their throat, but that’s a whole ‘nother topic.
I think this is a female thing. I also think it’s a desperate-need-to-please-others-and-be-liked thing, which I am working on getting over. I listened to a RadioLab podcast recently about the nature of laughter which revealed that we often laugh when things are not funny. We laugh as a social function to let people know, “Everything’s ok! We’re all friends here!” I think smiling is the same way. I smile to let people know I am not a threat. Please don’t give me trouble. Smile, smile, smile.
It is hard to stop smiling. I find the corners of my mouth being pulled up by invisible marionette strings. Don’t do [...]
April 28, 2009 at 9:00 am
I originally wrote this entry about a year ago for a site called Capessa which has since been closed. Someone emailed me recently who liked the entry and couldn’t find it anywhere, so I’m posting it. There are some time discrepancies now, but I’ll leave it as it is. Just take in mind I wrote it a year ago and I’m going to Europe in May, so wheee!
I was cleaning out my desk a couple months ago when I found a list of goals I’d written six years ago. Usually it is embarrassing to find lists like those because I either haven’t accomplished anything on the list or I realize I used to want some pretty lame things. In high school, I had to write a letter to my future self and an inordinately large segment of it was devoted to wondering whether Mulder and Scully would have gotten together on The X-Files by the time I read it five years later. The funny thing? I can’t remember if they ever did.
I think I shredded [...]
April 27, 2009 at 10:17 am
The Obamas invited a couple thousand special guests to their backyard a week ago. By “special” I mean you had to be any old vagrant wandering around 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue on a Sunday afternoon. As long as you didn’t have a fear of park rangers or wide-brimmed hats, you could get free tickets from them. I suppose they did have some standards, because I didn’t see the man in Lafayette parked dressed as an aborigini stuffing a ticket into his loincloth.
I believe the Obamas were out of town, which is the only reason I was able to wander this close to the Oval Office.
Or that I was able to glimpse the presidential basketball court, or rather half court.
But truly the highlight of the visit was this:
The Presidential swingset! It really is within view of The Oval Office, just like they said on TV. I bet I could have gotten a good 3 or 4 feet towards the swings before that nice man in black tackled me to the ground and hauled me off for a [...]
April 24, 2009 at 9:26 am
This lil’ Viking man stands guard over my computer from the platform of my desk lap. When I saw him in the Norwegian store in Colorado, I wanted to pick him up and put him in my pocket to ward off lint. When I tipped him over and looked at his feet, the number handwritten on a white price tag was more than I wanted to pay. So I put him back and traipsed off to fall on my ass on icy sidewalks.
As I took in the snowy sights of town, I kept thinking about the lil’ Viking man, so much so that I returned to the store later that day and splurged on him. I love his round little nose and his round little hands. He looks kinda dopey, like he didn’t mean to get into the Viking business, but that’s what his father did and his father’s father did, so he picked up the shield and sword and tries to stay in the back of the raids. I’m glad I spent the [...]
April 22, 2009 at 8:20 am
I meant to mention this earlier, but if you live in the Indianapolis area you can get a free breakfast item at Chick-fil-A every day this week. Indianapolis is one of the test markets for their new smoothies, yogurt parfaits, breakfast kid’s meal and house roast coffee. The items are also being tested in Austin, Texas and Knoxville, Tennessee. I got to try free samples of the parfait and the smoothies and they were both tasty. I have a weakness for yogurt parfaits in particular, so I hope that one gets launched nationwide.
Here is the schedule for the rest of the week:
Wednesday, April 22 – Chick-fil-A Chicken Biscuit
Thursday, April 23 – New Yogurt Parfait
Friday, April 24 – Chick-fil-A Chick-n-Minis
Chick-fil-a also gave me 10 coupons for a free smoothie and a free parfait. HOWEVER, they expire May 30 and can only be used in Indianapolis, Austin or Knoxville. If you try to redeem these in New York the counter help will give you an odd look and wonder why you tried counterfeiting imaginary coupons. I also [...]
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"What distinguishes us one from another is our dreams and what we do to make them come about." - Joseph Epstein
