Cubemate: “Steve* invited us to attend a Self-Important Asses Who Talk Too Much* club meeting sometime. I’m thinking about going.”

Me: *rolls eyes*

Cubemate: “What, you don’t like Steve? Why don’t you like Steve?”

Me: “He’s just…he wears shiny black dress shoes with white athletic socks and light wash, tapered leg jeans. I just…no.”

Cubemate: “Yeah, you’re right. Douche.”

Note To Self: Not everyone in your workplace will appreciate your comment that a certain new web application “sucks [your] balls”.

Dammit

With the weird change in weather down here, my allergies have been acting up, leaving my nose completely clogged up. I usually keep nose spray in my purse for such occasions, but cleaned it out the other day, so it’s…somewhere in my house. Out of desperation, I took some daytime cold decongestant stuff I had stashed away in my desk, and now I’m all squirrelly and lightheaded and shaky feeling.

I am digging my new phone. It’s pretty and does neat things, but best of all, it is compatible with this site, so now it’s loaded up with free pictures and ringtones. Free stuff – woot!

I am of slightly above-average height – 5’6” – and my dad is quite tall – 6’6” – so I’m used to being taller than some, and also being around tall people in general.

But!

This morning, in about a 15-minute span, I encountered 2 dudes whose legs came all the way up to my boobs. No. Lie. It was weird, and made me feel about 3 feet tall (which never happens). It made me want to get right up next to them to check for sure, but how weird would that be; “Hey stranger, come over here so we can see if my ta’s and your ass are at the same height.”

It’s Gonna Be A Good Day, Tater

This morning, like every weekday morning, I did my usual Starbucks drive-thru, “grande-nonfat-no-whip-mocha-with-a-sticker-on-the-mouthpiece-$3.83-at-the-window-thank-you” routine. I roll up to the window, and my favorite barista was working – she is pleasant and friendly but still strictly business (she also has the cutest tiny star tattoo behind her ear that I am totally jealous of). She doesn’t greet me with her usual rhetorical, “Hey, how’s it going?”, so I know something is up. I am waiting a bit longer than I usually have to, and I can tell she’s pretty annoyed. As she finally gets the handoff of my hot, delicious mocha, and I’m pulling out my fiver to pay, she says “No charge this morning, because I work with a bunch of idiots. Have a good day!”

Oh Starbucks Girl, I love you – let’s go steady.

I’m stealing a bit from Miss Allie and making a list of things you don’t know (and maybe never wished to know, but whatevs) about me, but I’m cutting it down to 30 because MY LORD, I don’t know if I can come up with a hundred.

1. The only 2 guys I’ve ever had sex with have the same first name.
2. I have 4 tattoos. The blog web address – twentythreestars – comes from my favorite piece: a cluster of red and black stars, in various sizes, snaking up my back/side. I got it nearly a year ago, but only recently did J count the number of individual stars for me, and Alas! It’s the evil prime number 23. This drives me nuts when I think about it, and when we go to Austin in a couple of months, I am seriously considering getting one more teeny star added to make it a nice, round 24.
3. My first tattoo was on a bet from J. He lost the bet, but DUDE, he got a wife out of it!
4. I have never, ever smoked. Anything. Ever. Pre-smoking ban, when J and I would go out and then come home reeking of cigarette smoke, the smell would make me nauseous – we’d strip naked as soon as we hit the back door (and not for Getting It On purposes). But! In my dreams, I smoke all the time, and there are some times when I smell one lone smoker’s cigarette, and the scent is totally delicious to me. Isn’t that so sick and wrong? It makes no sense to me. Maybe I was a smoker in a past life…?
5. I have a big thing for red hair. My first crush, Ryan W. in 1st grade, had red hair. My next significant crush, Marc M. in 3rd grade, had red hair. In jr. high it was Jim S. – red. J’s natural hair color (when it grows in – he started losing his hair at 20 and has shaved it ever since) is strawberry blonde. If I end up with a redheaded child, I may eat them before they reach toddlerhood – the cute may be too much for me to bear.
6. My favorite personal physical feature is my feet. I have really nicely shaped toes.
7. My secret dream job is to be a chorus girl in a Broadway musical.
8. My parents never noticed the extra thousands of miles on my truck from all the times I drove 3 hours (each way!) and snuck back into town to stay with J most weekends the 2 years I was away at school.
9. I work for the federal government’s manned spaceflight agency, which is why I never mention work stuff. (And by the way, never in a million, zillion years did I ever dream I’d end up working in such an industry).
10. I have a thing for kitschy 50’s stuff. I received 4 frilly, cheesy aprons (one vintage!) for Christmas, and I have them hanging up in my diner-style kitchen.
11. J and I talk really mean to each other. If you read our regular household dialogue like it were a script, you’d think we were headed for divorce. But while I’m calling him an arrogant asshole, or he’s telling me to quit giving him lip and get in the kitchen and make him a sammich like a good wifey, we are totally mugging down. It is weird but it works for us – we rarely have an actual fight, and when we do, we’ve made up within an hour.
12. As a kid, I was a member of the Mr. Belvedere Fan Club. I thought this was the coolest thing ever. I now have no recollection of the show, except that it was about a dude named Mr. Belvedere, and he was a butler or something.
13. I have an extreme aversion to chicken bones.
14. I am not exactly positive that I passed 8th grade. There was a big project for my advanced English class that I just…never turned in. My final report card for the school year never came. It wasn’t until I had walked across the stage to receive my BA that I felt like I could breathe easy, that no one was going to show up and say “She’s a fraud!”, and I’d have to go back.
15. When I go out with J, and I’ve had a few beers, when I walk to the bathroom (alone), I grab cute guys’ butts along the way. It is typically so crowded, and they are often drunk (or well on their way to being so), that they never realize it’s me. This makes me giggle.
16. I have a nervous habit of chewing the insides of my cheeks. All the time.
17. I am grossed out by the idea of other guys’ penises (penii? Hee!). Not that I would ever want to cheat on J, but even if I did, I don’t know if I could go through with it, because Ew! Where has that thing been?
18. I really, really hated my previous job. It was at a financial planning firm, and my boss was horrific – she was totally a Miranda Priestley. But if I won the lottery, she would be the first person I’d call, because that woman Knows Her Shit. Plus, it would be awesome to say, “Hey, remember me? Your Office Bitch that you paid less than $12/hr.? Well, who works for who now?!?!”
19. I am much too vain about my hair. It’s very thick, and naturally wavy/curly. I dry it and straighten it every morning before work, and it usually takes me about 40 minutes. On just my fucking hair.
20. I hate lettuce. I’m eeked out by the idea of chewing on leaves.
21. I also hate root beer. Yuck.
22. I am a huge Lost fan. I have always, always liked the names Kate and Jack as possibilities for my future children, but now I think that if I used them, people would think I’m naming my kids after a TV show.
23. I have very few good girlfriends around here. My bestie is way on the East Coast for the next 18 or so months, until she’s done with grad school (and then hopes to boogie back to Texas). She and I chat and email frequently, but I miss having a real, live person to go shop or get coffee or just hang with.
24. One of my boobs is bigger than the other. By a whole cup size. I told J that once I’m done having and nursing kids, The Girls are getting reduced and lifted.
25. I am really, really shitty with money. If I were single and not accountable to anyone, I would probably have about a hundred bucks in savings. It’s not that I have expensive tastes; I just like to acquire stuff.
26. My biggest fear is not being able to have children.
27. I have an annoying habit of harmonizing with anything and everything – train whistles included. I was in choir every year in school up until my junior year in college. I think I would be a pretty good backup singer.
28. My least favorite color is yellow. Guess what J chose as the color of our office.
29. I spent way too much time playing Sims 2 on the weekends.
30. I can count on one hand the number of times in one month I refer to J by his first name. He can probably count on one hand the number of times in 6 months that he refers to me by my first name. It is usually “Baby”, “Hey”, or we…just start talking and expect the other to listen. Most often it’s a whistle – 3 short tones in quick succession means “Where are you? I need you!” or “Come look at the crazy thing the cats are doing now.”

Holy crap, that took like 2 hours – enough of that mess!

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Compulsions

So I have this thing I do where I constantly count letters in phrases.
Like my given first name, which is quite different than what I go by in real life, my maiden name, and my married name altogether, with no spaces, are 21 letters. I like for phrases to have a number of letters that are multiples of 3 or 5. So in order for my first, maiden, and last names to have a total number of letters that is a multiple of 5, I have to include not only the spaces in between the 3 names, but one space before my first name, and one space after my last name, which makes the total number of spaces and letters a very, very pleasing 25.

I admit this to you fully realizing that you will likely not understand it, and thing it is the dumbest, most convoluted thing you’ve ever heard of. And I don’t disagree with you.

I’ve done this letter-counting thing (and also random mental arithmetic with numbers I see while I’m out – example: gas is $2.55 a gallon [I wish] – this is a pleasing number, because it is a multiple of 3 and 5 [3 x 85, and 5 x 51]) for as long as I can remember. In 5th grade, we had a school project where the class was to be an ad agency, and one of the positions was a Copy Editor. One of the tasks of the copy editor was to count the number of letters and spaces in copy, to make sure it fit in the allotted spot, and I remember thinking, “Oh, that’s perfect for me, since I already do that all the time.” (I didn’t get the assignment, in case you were wondering.)

J knows about this thing I do, and gives me a hard time about it all the time. We went out to dinner the other night, and when the bill came, I told him to make it out to an even $54 with tip. He didn’t pay attention to me, and made the total out to $53.19 – he did this as an attempt to get back at me for something I’d teased him about earlier. He taunted me with the bill; “Ooooh, don’t you hate this? 53 and 19 are prime numbers and you hate prime numbers!” (I do hate prime numbers – they are evil.) But I nipped that in the bud when I pointed out that the sum of 53 and 19 is 72, which is a multiple of 3, so BUUUUUURN!!! (In your face, prime numbers!)

He expressed amazement at how I was able to figure that out so quickly, and how easily I can make up new rules in order to smooth my own numerically-ruffled feathers, and how much time and brainpower I waste in calculating such things, and I agreed with him. It’s not something I can control – I just start counting before I even realize what I’m doing. That’s probably why I enjoy my job – it is very much a “put the puzzle together and figure out a way to round out the edges” kind of thing.

I realize that it’s a really Rain Man-esque habit to have, and that, you know, it could be a sign that something in my brain is ticking maybe a little faster than it should be, but…it makes me really good at what I do, and I really do have a damn cool job, so Suck It, skeptics – love me, love my OCD.

I bought a new perfume this weekend, Euphoria by Calvin Klein. I’d needed a new perfume for a while, but hadn’t found anything that I liked and worked with my body chemistry (other stuff I’ve bought smelled great out of the bottle, but like ass on my skin. Nice.)
So I tried this one out early last week, on the recommendation of the lovely Francesca, and wore it home to test it out, and to see if J dug it (he does), so I went ahead and bought it.
It is yummy – sweeter than I would normally go, but it has this hint of, I don’t know, cotton candy, that makes me want to eat my own arm.

I am not at all a girly girl, but wearing this makes me feel grown-up and lovely and, well, pretty delectable (in more ways than one).