I just posted a new post, but it went below my last entry, because I started writing it before I started writing the other one. Please scroll down to see today’s blentry. (To find out what a blentry is, click here).
So today is my day off, and just now I walked down to the bank to open a new savings account, and sat down to wait for someone at a desk to help me, and this dude walks up wearing jeans and a bright yellow and blue basketball jersey with "Fila" in huge letters across the front. The only way I knew he worked there is he asked me if I had a question.
"Yes, I do," I replied. "What the hell are you wearing? Look around. You work in a bank!" OK, no I did not say that, but are we serious here? I looked at the girl behind the other desk, and sure enough, she was wearing full-on sweats! Like, pink sweat pants and a little pink hoodie. I know this is So-Cal and we like to pretend we’re laid back by wearing uber-casual clothes while we’re actually stressing ourselves crazy about our agents and managers and the fact that we still have over 0% body fat, even after the power spinbox yogalates we did for four hours this morning. But the bank? I mean, I’m even required to dress "business casual" at my editing job, where I’ve never once seen a client face to face. Even on "casual Fridays," sweats and b-ball jerseys are frowned upon. (Oh my gosh, I’m starting to hyperventilate because I just realized I used the term "casual Fridays" in reference to my own life. Excuse me while I call my boss RIGHT NOW and quit my job and make plans to move to an island where I can make ends meet by trading shells. That is, if I can stop the dry-heaving, which is preventing me from speaking clearly).
So I went over to James’ (his name was James) desk and he began the very official process of getting my new account opened by signing into his computer, except that he couldn’t because he had forgotten his password. We joked about that for a minute, and then he decided to write my name down on a plain pad of paper, for some reason. Except that the pen attached to the desk didn’t write, so he picked up a green highlighter instead, and wrote "Marcy Minton" in fat green letters. Then, once that was done, I guess he remembered his password and started typing some stuff, blah blah, yadda yadda, and then went and got a form from somewhere. He came back and started to fill it out, and I saw him searching the desk for a pen and coming up empty, so I said, "You can use this one." And as the words came out of my mouth and the pen passed from my hand into his, it felt like slow motion, and I thought, "I will never see this pen again."
As it happens, just, JUST before leaving for the bank I cleaned out my purse. I had had 2 pens, but decided that was excessive and removed one. This information will come in handy for you a little later. But back to this pen. This pen happened to be one of my favorites. It was one I stole from work during a brief period when they were getting us really nice clicky, soft grippy pens.
So we finished opening the account, and he says Thank You, and I say Thank you, and he shakes my hand, and I get up to go, and Sure Enough. He keeps my pen. I hesitated for just a fraction of a second, picturing myself asking for it back and the awkwardness that would surely ensue, and while I hesitated he began filling out some other type of paperwork with it, and I realized that he seemed really to be struggling today, and therefore I would let him keep the dang pen, darn it.
On my way out I stopped at the ATM to deposit a check. I opened my checkbook to fill out the deposit slip, and this is the part I told you about, the part where it sucks that I cleaned out my purse this morning, because instead of having one pen left, I had no pen. Dammit. So I marched back inside, determined to ask James for my pen back, awkwardness be damned, but there he was, all innocent looking in his loud jersey, still writing with it. I couldn’t do it. So I went to the table where you fill stuff out and used one of the pens attached to the desk (the first one I tried didn’t work, by the way. They really need to get on that!) and went back to the ATM. I was just about to seal the envelope and stick it in the machine when I realized I hadn’t endorsed the check. Arrrrgh. So I went back in again to use the pen, and this time I passed James, and he said, "Did you have another question?"
"No, I’m just… depositing… some…" And he was already like, "Oh, oh, OK, ok," and the awkwardness I had been hoping to avoid was there anyway, but I was still sans pen. UGH! So by this point I was SO ready to just get out of the f-ing bank, and I went back out to the ATM and it was BEEEEEEEEEEPing, and I realized I had left my card inside! But luckily everyone seemed to have steered clear of that ATM, probably because of the ear-splitting beep coming out of it, so my card was still there, and I finished up my transaction and walked home.
Lessons learned: Never clean out purse, never let people in sweat pants/loud jerseys handle your finances, never assume that once you’ve stolen a pen it won’t be stolen from you, and never assume that a simple task will be accomplished simply and without hassle. Never.
I’ve run into a problem.
Jeff and I both decided to give something up for Lent this year. I chose wheat. I made this decision on the way to church on Sunday, not realizing that it was actually the first day of Lent.
I’ve tried abstaining from wheat before, and it worked for a couple months. I actually steered clear, and felt great and saw a noticable difference in the poochiness of my stomach. But then we went to Spain last fall, and frankly the food there tends to be intolerable, and oftentimes bread was the only thing I could eat, so I fell off the wagon and have yet to climb back on.
So about halfway through the service, while browsing through the bulletin and seeing the words "Lent" and "Lentin" about a thousand times, it hit me. Like a kick in the nuts. (so to speak). It’s f-ing Girl Scout Cookie time! And I had just bought two boxes of cookies on Friday — thin mints and peanut butter sandwiches, which are called something else now, but I keep forgetting what. I had already put a significant dent in the thin mints, but had barely started on the PBS-wiches. In fact, they were in the freezer getting tastier by the minute. AW, Maaaaan.
So Jeff and I decided that Lent for us would start on Monday rather than Sunday, because we had been caught unprepared. So we finished the box of thin mints on Sunday, and I’m leaving the PBSs to him. He’s not giving up wheat, and I figure if "JC" could go 40 days without food of any kind, I can probably find it in myself to avoid Girl Scout Cookies.
Speaking of Jesus & fasting & whatnot, we were watching a show about Satan on the history channel on Monday night (it was a rather religious-themed weekend for us) and the narrator was talking about Jesus fasting in the wilderness and being tempted by Satan and how when Satan tempted him with power, that was the most difficult to resist. And Jeff and I were like, "WHAT? No, FOOD, you idiot, FOOD would have been the hardest to resist. You think if you hadn’t eaten in 35 days and someone came up to you and said, ‘Yo, want some power? Or in this hand, I’ve got a chicken leg.’ you wouldn’t pick the chicken? Hell no, you’d be like, Power Schmower, I’m starving. Give me some chicken!"
You may have noticed that the name of this blog, BadMinton, acquired an extra ‘d’ and is now BaddMinton. There is a reason for that, and a good one at that! I tried to buy the domain name badminton.com, but as you may have guessed, it was already taken by a badminton company. Hence, the two d’s, which I kind of like, because it seems to connotate more "badassminton" than "naughtyminton." So, you may now access this blog by typing baddminton.com into your
browser. For some reason, if you type www. you won’t get to it, so
please just skip the w’s while I figure out how to fix that.
The look of my blog may be changing soon as well, because I’m trying to find a different blogging platform I like. I’ve already imported this blog to WordPress, but haven’t decided yet if it’s got all the features I’m looking for. You can take a look and let me know what you think. Right now it’s at www.baddminton.wordpress.com.
The main difference for you is that in the future, instead of accessing my blog through Friendster, you’ll reach it through baddminton.com. So maybe you should go ahead and bookmark that and get used to visiting it several times a day. 
I am outraged that Rebecca is out sick today! I wanted to show her my new gold shoes. How dare she get sick when I want to show her my shoes! And they’re gold! These shoes are especially special, because a week or two ago while at Ross Dress for Less looking in vain for a certain type of luggage, I decided, oh, why not just cruise by the shoe section? and these caught my eye as most shiny things do, because as I have mentioned before, I am just like a crow in that way. OH, and speaking of crows, this morning I was washing my face and heard a scuttle-scruffle-skittling-scampering coming from up above me somewhere. This scuttling was much louder and different from the scriffling of last summer, when I was ON THE TOILET and heard a soft scuttle-scruffle and a GIANT COCKROACH fell OUT OF A GAP IN THE FAN ON THE CEILING right next to me on its back and started kicking its legs until I leapt from the toilet screaming and screaming and fled the room, and I don’t even remember what happened after that because it was so, so horrible. No, this scuttling was much louder and was probably more scriffling than scuttling, and even a little scralumphing, and definitely a fair amount of scampering. I looked up, and through the skylight saw the huge shadow of a crow! It hopped around right on the skylight, scritchety-scratching its claws all over the glass, and then started pecking on the skylight! Just pecking away, right on the glass! I hope that glass is strong because I am not in the mood to endure another creature crashing down on me in my bathroom!
So anyway, I was at Ross looking at shoes, and this adorable gold, shiny pair caught my eye. I tried them on and realized that they were the same brand my old roommate Candice designs shoes for. So I bought them because frankly I think it would have been rude not to, right? And sure enough, I showed them to her and while she didn’t design them per se, since truth-be-told they are knock-offs of another brand, she did the sketching and detailing for them (or maybe sketching and detailing are the same thing, I don’t know). Anyway, I love, love, love them, and I am wearing them today, and Rebecca is not even here to appreciate them! But you can:
This morning at 7:30, while driving to work and figuring out the details of the nap I plan to take in my car on my lunch break*, I passed an expensive-looking but ugly car with about 4 people in it. The person I happened to focus on as I passed was a girl around high school age. She was smiling and talking animatedly with the people in the front, probably her parents. The sun glinted off her lip gloss, and I noticed as I passed that her makeup was perfect.
And I was left to wonder: Where do these people come from? When I was in high school, I did not wake up until I was sprinting from the car to homeroom, barely setting my foot over the doorstep as the bell rang, and it was a good day if my skirt wasn’t completely hiked up under my backpack so that my entire, entire, absolutely whole entire panties were exposed as I ran down the sidewalk, through the halls, and from the front of the classroom to the back, until a kind, kind soul came up and stood behind me and whispered, "Marcy, we have an emergency." Yes, that really actually happened. But anyway, until I started driving myself, I would sit in the backseat, all curled up for warmth, dozing and likely eating and/or spilling a bowl of ceareal, while my mom sped through yellow/orange/red/it’s-all-in-the-interpretation lights and careened around hairpin turns. Makeup was applied in homeroom. Otherwise that half hour sitting in a classroom was pointless, right? Why miss 15 minutes of sleep, then just sit there in homeroom doing nothing? Showers were taken the night before, the snooze button was hit a ridiculous number of times, loud complaints were uttered when forced by a parent to finally sit up, wash face, brush teeth, throw on clothes, and stumble bleary-eyed to the car.
Even now, I do the bare minimum of getting-ready-before-leaving to maximize sleep. I shower and lay out my outfit the night before, I always put on all my makeup in the car, eat breakfast at my desk when I get to work, and on the mornings I do shower, have been known to dry my bangs by cranking up the car heater and leaning over towards it at red lights. Who are these "morning people" who are able to get up and be fed, clothed, and bright-eyed and bushy-tailed before 8 AM? Don’t they get bored on the commute if they haven’t left a significant portion of their morning routine to keep them occupied? Don’t they realize that by a little multi-tasking (driving while applying mascara, for example) they can buy 10 more minutes of precious morning sleep?
Maybe it’s because I went out last night, although not even that late and I only had two drinks, but anyway I just can’t seem to wake up today. Hopefully the lunch hour nap will help. In any case, I’ve come to terms with the fact that I am not, and never will be, a morning person.
* (I have a salad in the fridge so I can eat it before lunch, then spend the full hour in the car asleep. The only kink left to work out is where I will park the car for said nap. The parking garage is far too chilly. I’d like to find a nice spot in the sun so I can crack the window and get a nice breeze without freezing to death. I could go to the top of the parking structure, but then everyone in the building, including all my coworkers, could look down and see me asleep in my car. Not that I care that they know, but I don’t think I could sleep if I felt I was being watched).
I feel it’s time to update you on some things that have been stewing around in this here little room on top of my shoulders that I affectionately refer to as a "brain."
Whilst writing this blog of mine, which is short for "weblog" to those of you not in the know, I have embraced the slight nerdiness factor that I believe comes along with blogging terretory. (For evidence of said factor, please refer to Appendix A). Therefore, in my head and to myself, I have been shortening all sorts of words, as is appropriate I think because of the "weblog" becoming "blog" phenomenon, and because I am a nerd.
Thus, my blog topics are "blopics." That’s my favorite one, and I saved the best for first.
Blog pictures are "blictures," or you can also refer to them as "blotos" if that’s how you roll. Let’s see… blog links are "blinks," which I think is cute. I’ve been thinking of creating a category of shout-outs, wherein I give shout outs to certain people I like. This section, of course, will be called "blout-outs."
What else, what else? OH! Maybe blog categories should be called "blategories." But probably not. I may be starting to push the blog envelope a little too much — or the… wait for it… and here it comes… blenvelope. (This one works especially well if you typically pronounce ‘envelope’ with a short ‘o’ sound, like ‘envoy’).
Well, now you peeps are hopefully up to speed a little. Please refer any questions to the Blequently Asked Questions section, or BL.A.Q.
Appendix A: It is my belief that people who blog (blog peeps, or "bleeps") are usually a little nerdy, often in a cute way. Some examples: Rachel, Eric, Wan and Nathan. I hope you four don’t mind me calling you nerds, but the upside is, I’m also calling you cute! Let’s look on the bright side.
It’s 2006. Do you know what that means? One year until my 10-year high school reunion.
I’m the type of person who would be very tempted NOT to go to this likely-to-be lame affair, and at age fourteen I had the uncanny fortune-telling ability to know this about my future self, and so my friend Elise and I made a pact that no matter what, no matter where we were in life or on the globe or how lame we thought it would probably be, we would both attend this reunion. We sealed the pact on the phone from our respective bedrooms, by taking a photo of ourselves seated on our beds, left leg out straight, right leg bent so right foot is on top of left thigh, and left hand under right foot but on top of left leg, poking out the other side, palm forward. I still have that photo, and every time I see it — the socks and sweatpants against the background of a post-modern Micky Mouse-head twin beadspread — I cannot help but accept the reality that this pact is unbreakable, and I have no choice but to honor it! Come hell or high water, Lord willin’ and the crick don’t rise… I have to attend that reunion.
SO, Folks, I have ONE YEAR to get it together! I have to start doing exciting things and reaching goals! I have to tone my arms and abs! I must have something to show for the last ten years! AND, I have to make sure people I want to see will come! SO, if you are reading this and you graduated from A.C. Reynolds in 1997 (you know who you are!) this is my rallying cry to you! I emplore you to join me in conquering the lameness that will surely threaten to overtake our 10-year reunion. It can’t be that bad if enough of us go, right?
So who’s in?! I’ll see you at the Olive Garden on Tunnel Road — or maybe we can just meet at the old "goth" table outside the lunch room or the senior bench in the common room. Be there or be square!
That’s what I said to Jeff, Rebecca, Eric and Mike last night at the Violent Femmes show. I was referring to the guy directly in front of me. You know the one. He stands there normally and gives you no warning that the second the music starts, he is going to start jumping high into the air, flailing his arms around, and catapulting into everyone around him with category 5 hurricane force. I looked around, and everyone else in that place was enjoying the music in a civilized manner. Dancing, sure, but keeping within their own little personal-space box. So why did we have to get right behind this guy? Why?
As it turns out, I was wrong. He wasn’t the only one, and about 20 minutes into the show, his 6"5′ friend came and joined in the crazy dancing. I heard our crazy dancing guy say to the new, tall crazy dancing guy, "I know, why isn’t anyone dancing, Man?"
I’ll never forget the look of horror on the face of the girl standing on the other side of Jeff when TCD guy moved in front of her and began thrashing around. She couldn’t have been more than 5 feet tall herself, and any hope she still held about enjoying the show had just been crushed. A few minutes later, a third, female crazydancing friend came and joined the first two. They were multiplying. Thankfully, after a while we were able to sidle our way to the left enough that they weren’t directly knocking into us. We breathed a sigh of relief.
Then came "American Music." The crazydancers had apparently been secretly sprinkling their crazy dancing dust on everyone in front of them, because all of a sudden the whole front part of the floor went wild, and we were in a kind of dorky high school mosh pit, but instead of pressing forward, they were all just running around crashing into each other like bumper-humans, and laughing like it was the funnest thing they had ever done. I have never seen anything like it. I mean, I like American Music tooo, bay-beee, but this was taking it to a whole new, unneccesary level.
I sought shelter behind a big, stocky Latino guy who was having none of it, and who unknowingly acted as my human shield. Jeff was on my right, deflecting any rogue human pinballs. Any time one of the crazydancers was hurled in our direction, Jeff and the stocky guy would put out a hand and push them back into the human pile of crazydancing.
Eventually we moved farther back and were able to enjoy the show without being distracted by flailing limbs and headbutting. I’m frankly amazed that I only got my toe stomped on once, and nothing even spilled on me. Rebecca left with considerably more beer in her hair than she came with, but all in all we survived unscathed.
This morning, like many mornings, my boss sent an email announcing the presence of doughnuts in the office. It is always hard to resist because I love doughnuts, but I also do not want to turn into a fatass, so I usually do. (resist, that is).
Well, this morning I was starving to death and had 3 or 4 doughnut holes (holes, mind you, not full-on doughnuts). Later, a co-worker tried to pressure me into eating another doughnut, but let it be known: I refused to succumb and did not — did not eat another.
Well, it’s evening time and I started getting hungry again about an hour ago, so I went and heated up a delicious tamale. I assumed the tamale would appease my hunger, making a day-old doughnut seem unnecessary.
I assumed wrong.
