That Girl's Blog

La la love you.

Hey look, I have a blog!

Let's talk about some things I love right now:

I love Kim Deal. Everyone knows Kim Deal is so cool, of course. But we saw the Pixies live on Halloween (after a fucking snowstorm in October got the concert postponed from Saturday), and now I utterly adore her. Sure, sure, she's older now (50, in fact, though she doesn't look it), and she's put on some weight, and if you saw a picture of her and didn't know who she was, I don't know that you'd think, "That is one cool lady!" But that IS one cool lady. She just exudes something... cool... somehow... I don't know. And during the whole show, she is all smiles, this cool, awesome chick, grinning and having fun. And I love her voice; not just her singing voice but her speaking voice (Frank Black lets her do most of the talking). I don't know what it is about it, but I felt like I could listen to her talk all night. So, yeah, I love Kim Deal. I wish she was my long-lost significantly older sister, or aunt, or something, and we could hang out, and she could teach me to play bass (that's the Kim Deal awe talking; I've always wanted to learn drums but never bass).

I love the Pixies. Hopefully we can see them again sometime. They were worth the money and the 2+hour drive out of state and even the kerfuffle on Saturday (we started to drive to Connecticut for the concert, but the snow got worse as we went and after 35 miles it was clear that I was going to end up off the road, so we turned around, luckily to find out soon after that the show was postponed).

I love Surfer Blood. Well, that's an exaggeration, really, but whatever, I've got a theme here and I'm sticking with it. They were the opening band for the Pixies and they were quite good; I would see them again. I quite liked the lead singer, who was cute in a slightly awkward/dorky, but also slightly low-key cool sort of way. And maybe this is weird, but I found his movements on the stage (also sometimes slightly awkward) sort of endearing. (If you listen to them, for what it's worth, my favorite songs so far are Floating Vibes, Swim, Miranda, and Voyager Reprise.)

I love this song -- "This Year" by the Mountain Goats -- and I love Holly of Nothing But Bonfires who linked to it on Twitter.

I love Top Gear, which we only recently watched for the first time and I am now completely obsessed with. And I love The Stig, but mind you I especially love the second Stig, who is "my Stig" like Matt Smith is "my Doctor". The whole hullabaloo with how he (Ben Collins) was revealed and then fired and then villified makes me sad. And please don't ask how I can love one completely masked Stig more than another, because I don't really have an answer. Although the black suit of the first one did look kind of cheap.

I love Rory Flanagan, the new character on Glee, played by an Irish kid called Damian McGinty who apparently won this role on The Glee Project. The prize was a seven-episode arc, but my initial reaction is "please keep him forever". He is adorable, and I want to carry him around in my pocket all of the time. 

I love my cube. Recently the other admin got a promotion (only took 8 years), so we arranged for her replacement to take the front desk full time, and I got to move from the front desk to a regular cube. With a window! I can see daylight! And it overlooks the parking lot I use, so when it's cold I can use the remote start directly from there! And there are entire STRETCHES of UNINTERRUPTED QUIET! (I still have to cover the front desk when she goes to lunch or whatever, but that's not so bad.) I still don't love my job, but it is amazing how much of a difference this makes in lessening my hatred of it.

Hello, fall! I missed you!

I'm in the minority opinion around here, but this forecast makes me happy. Sure, if I were controlling the weather I'd go with unrestricted sunshine, and I probably wouldn't make the lows (not shown, around 40 degrees most nights) quite so low. But I quibble. The point is, I don't like East coast summers all that much more than the winters, but I DO like fall. And spring. Too bad they both seem to last about one week each.

 

I are a web security genioos!

At Priceline.com, where I tried and failed today to find a good deal for NYC for my birthday, I discovered this:

 

That's right, for your "security question", you can choose share with Priceline.com the password you use on all other websites. (Of course, you shouldn't have one preferred password you're using on all other websites, but that's not the point.) In addition to this being a data theft nightmare waiting to happen, there's also the fact that if you do have one favored password, you're probably going to use it on Priceline too. So if you forget your password... how the hell are you going to answer the security question?

Oh, Facebook.

Does anyone remember a while back when women on Facebook were posting their bra color as a status update? And it was supposed to be some kind of stupid breast cancer awareness campaign? But it didn't make any fucking sense because they gave no context, just said, e.g., "Blue!", and the messages going around about it focused more on how funny it would be to confuse the boys?

Well. It gets worse:

Ok pretty ladies, it's that time of year again, in support of breast cancer awareness!! So we all remember last years game of writing your bra color as your status?.....or the way we like to have our handbag handy? Remember last year so many people took part that it made national news and, the constant updating of status reminded everyone why we're doing this and helped raise awareness!! Do NOT tell any males what the status' mean, keep them guessing!! And please copy and paste (in a message )this to all your female friends to see if we can make a bigger fuss this year than last year!!! I did my part... now YOUR turn ! Go on ladies...and let's have all the males guessing! .. It's time to confuse the men again (not that its really that hard to do :)) Everyone knows it makes their brains work wonders on what we're talkin about!! The idea is to choose the month you were born and the day you were born. Pass this on to the GIRLS ONLY and lets see how far it reaches around. The last one about the bra went round all over the world. So you'll write... I'm (yourm birth month) weeks and I'm craving (your birth date)!!! as your status. Example: Feb 14th: I'm 2 weeks and craving Chocolate mints!!anuary-1week, Febuary-2 weeks, March-3 weeks, April-4 weeks, May-8 weeks, June-9 weeks, July-10 weeks, August-12weeks, September-13 weeks, October-14 weeks, November-16 weeks, December-18 weeks. Days of the month: 1-Skittles, 2-Starburst, 3-Kit-Kat, 4-M&M's, 5-Galaxy, 6-Crunchie, 7-Dairy Milk, 8-Lollipop, 9-Peanut Butter Cups, 10-Meat Balls, 11-Twizzlers, 12-Bubble Gum, 13-Hershey's Kisses, 14-Chocolate Mints, 15-Twix, 16-Resse's Fastbreak, 17-Fudge, 18-Cherry Jello, 19-Milkyway, 20-Pickels, 21-Creme Eggs, 22-Skittles, 23-Gummy Bears, 24-Gummy Worms, 25-Strawberry Pop Tarts, 26-Starburst, 27-Mini Eggs, 28-Kit-Kat Chunky, 29-Double Chocolate Chip Crunchy Cookies, 30-Smarties, 31-Chocolate cake

First of all: Too fucking long; did not read. Second of all: I hope English is not the first language of whoever originally wrote this. Third of all: What the fuck? So I'm supposed to post "I'm 13 weeks and I'm craving gummy bears!!!" on Facebook, so all of my friends and family think I'm fucking pregnant... and this supports breast cancer awareness HOW?

I hope this is actually someone's idea of a joke/social experiment, to see how much inanity they can get people to go along with if they just say it's for a good cause.

 

Would != Will

MakeupAlley.com is my go-to source for reviews of cosmetics and "beauty" items, but there is one thing that drives me batty when reading their reviews. (Well, two things — the other is the cutification of words, such as saying "lippies" instead of lipstick. That also makes me stabby.)

So, when you write a review there, the form asks you, "Would you buy this product again?" with a "yes" or "no" selection. Simple, right? And yet! And yet many reviewers say things like:

"I really do like this blush even though I said I will not buy it again, because I think the one I have is gonna last me for ages." (5/5)

or

"The only reason I said no to 'would you buy this product again?' was cause I honestly don't think I'll ever run out." (5/5)

Dude! The question isn't, "Will you buy this product again?" or "Do you foresee a likely need to buy this product again?". The "would" in this question clearly contains an unspoken "if", as in: "Would you buy this product again, if you did indeed run out or if you lost it or if it melted in your hot car or if your dog ate it or if you loaned it to your best friend and then that night she slept with your boyfriend while wearing your lipstick and you punched her right in the your-borrowed-lipstick-wearing mouth and the two of you never spoke again and the bitch never returned your lipstick?" The point is, if for whatever reason you no longer had any of this product in your posession, would you buy more, or would you just move on to another product and forget about this one?

And the thing is, when you search for a product or a type of product, the site shows you what percentage of reviewers said they would buy it again, and you can even sort the search results by this statistic. Except, what you're really seeing is what percentage of readers with decent reading comprehension would buy the product again.

LALALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU

A week or two ago, they were predicting around 4-6" of snow one night, and to everyone at work who kept bringing it up, I basically put my hands over my ears and said "lalalalalala it's not going to snow I can't hear you". I insisted that if I ignored it and denied it then it wouldn't happen. And you know what? It didn't happen. We got only a very minor dusting.

Tonight and into tomorrow, they are predicting anywhere from 4-12" (depends on which forecast you read and where exactly you live). It's fucking APRIL tomorrow, you guys. APRIL. Fuck that shit. So, once I again I insist it is not going to happen. Every time some helpful wannabe weather reporter in the office tells me how much snow we'll be seeing tomorrow, I tell them they are wrong. Nope, nuh-uh, not happening. IT IS APRIL.

April Fools' Day indeed!

Winter: It's what's in season.

My new winter coat, an L.L. Bean Baxter State Parka, is pretty damned awesome but for one thing: The feathers! Everywhere feathers! Every time I take it off I'm picking tiny feathers off of myself for the rest of the day. Sometimes the bastards work their way through my shirt or sweater and poke at me and itch me. Damn these feathers! I can't exchange it to see if I might get luckier with another one (very few of the reviewers mentioned feather problems) because it's sold out now, so I put up with it, because it's great otherwise and it's hella warm. Just today I was out in the snow and 22-degree cold for hours (okay, minutes, but quite a few of them) clearing the snow off my car with just a long-sleeve t-shirt under my coat, and I was cozy as could be. Alas, none of my boots are of equal quality, so my toes kept me well aware of the cold.

The snow is plentiful today, enough so that I took a snow day and worked from home. (What? There were hazardous driving conditions!) I don't know why, but I'm kind of finding myself hating the snow a little bit less this winter. Except when it's time to, you know, leave the house. It has to be shoveled, and cleared off the car, and despite the shoveling I always end up trudging through some snow and my boots don't really work for tucking pants/jeans in so the bottom of my pants/jeans get all snowy and cold and damp, and the snow plows push these walls of snow alongside all the parked cars so you have to trudge through that (I was in it up to my knees earlier today!), and despite the plowing the lane markings become difficult to see and the roads seem narrower because of the snow along the edges so you've got people making their own weird lanes or acting like there's only one where there should be two and two would still fit if people could just grow a brain.

But it is pretty. Except for the gross black snirt (snow+dirt) that accumulates along the roads and in the parking lots. That's fugly.

The other thing that makes me hate winter a little bit less is our car. It's our second winter with the Santa Fe, and I am continually pleased with how much better it is having 4-wheel-drive (and higher ground clearance). Don't get me wrong, it's not like I don't have to drive carefully or am immune to the potential slip-and-slide. But I can drive over snow, you guys! With the Taurus, we were forever having to dig it out of parking spots, or dig to be able to get into parking spots. With the Santa Fe, I haven't had a single problem yet. The aforementioned walls of dense snow that the snow plows create no longer stress me out - on bad days it might take a little bit of coaxing, but I haven't once had to help it with a shovel (let alone get multiple guys to push the damn thing as happened with the Taurus). Huzzah!

Heaven is a Spicy Milk Chocolate Mocha.

Possibly the best thing in Washington D.C. is this drink:

There is a Starbucks-esque chain there (and 14 other states in which I do not live) called Caribou Coffee, and for the holiday season they have the best hot coffee beverage¹ I have ever had. It's a mocha with cinnamon, chipotle, and ancho chili pepper. Imagine if a latte and a spiced Mexican hot chocolate had a baby. A warm, snuggly, sweet-yet-delightfully-spicy, delicious baby. This is the perfect drink for a cold winter day, and I can't look at Starbucks anymore without resenting the fact that they don't have this.

 

¹ The all-time best cold coffee beverages were the Mocha Nirvana from The Coffee Gallery on Bristol in Santa Ana, and the blended Kona Mocha from the Renaissance Cafe in Tustin Marketplace. Both of these places are now, sadly, defunct. (The Renaissance is a Starbucks now.)

Parents: Making their children cringe since 0000.

I wouldn't want to submit this to Oh Crap. My Parents Joined Facebook.... but I'll post it here.

 

 

Last meal

You know how they give you pretty much whatever you want for your last meal before an execution? That sounds all well and good, but I wonder if they bother to cook it properly, so it's actually good. Like, if I requested a filet mignon for my last meal, I'd be awfully disappointed if it was overdone.