Sigh. Anne Bancroft died today. What an icon. She was married to Mel Brooks longer than I’ve been alive. The universe is too small to hold all the laughter they must have had together.
Month: June 2005 (Page 4 of 4)
I am in the mood to knock people down. Knock them OUT!
Briefly noted: I think there are just groups of people that are destined to go after each other, like lions and hyenas: MORTAL ENEMIES. Herbert Kornfeld, I’m comin’ fo’ yo’ ass and I don’t like to lose. Your letter opener of death better be mighty sharp.
Now, the person who came closest to getting knocked out today was a clerk at Bath & Body Works. OK, you know what? If I need help, I WILL FUCKING ASK FOR HELP. I appreciate the effort to provide service. However, giving me a five-minute speech when I walk through the door, and then asking me EVERY FIVE MINUTES if “I’m OK” or if I need anything? I am about to grab a heavy jar of sugar scrub and pummel your ass to the floor. And really. It’s 900 degrees and humid outside. Let’s get some AIR circulating.
And if you’re standing in line? And you’re next in line? Don’t be thinking you can just wander over OUT of line, look at candles, pick up more stuff and then? THEN? come right back and step back in front of me. Good god almighty, if she’d had more stuff, I would have had to kill her. But I was already seething inside and I knew if I even said one thing, it would be like Mt.St.Jennifer and the lava flow would be firey, in vast quantities, and decimating. And while I contemplated just going home from the mall, I didn’t. Heads up, KC, I’m still out there, driving around.
Now I am preparing to teach some people to knit tonight, and reminding myself that it’s ever-so-hard to get blood out of fiber. So I’ll have to skip stabbing them with the straight needles & get my hands on some circulars for strangling.
Be glad you’re not my student tonight. I’ll be good, of course, but I’d rather operate like Vic Mackey on The Shield (yay that’s on tonight!) and pound some serious heads like a badass.
I had lunch last week with an old friend from the former job. He’s a good guy, and it was nice to finally have a lunch with him where I was happy & not bitching about management the entire time. (He’s part of management, but somehow I could still talk to him.)
He said he’d forgotten to bring a quote from me along, but he’d kept it since I’d said it – July 3, 2003. He emailed it over the weekend. I can still hear myself saying it, and can even see my hands waving wildly. Good thing I make myself laugh, otherwise I’d be upset that everyone else was laughing, too.
Words to live by:
“I think if I was self-centered AND selfish…that would be bad.”
Seriously, why did People magazine overlook Phil Spector for the “50 Most Beautiful People” list? He’s a sexy mo-fo, and obviously knows his way around the diffuser attachment on his blow dryer. All he’s missing is a few gold chains, a conversion van, a pinky ring and a box of wine. :: SWOON :: (Oh yeah, maybe gettin’ the murder charges cleared, that’ll help with gettin’ the fillies.)
sweeeeeet. 
It’s like life is a Disney movie right now – I expect a little bluebird of happiness to land on my outstretched hand, while I’m on the back deck singing about rainbows or something else pukeifyingly happy.
I offer this into evidence:
We were supposed to go to World’s of Fun yesterday afternoon for a company outing – but it rained. So we still got all our lunches brought in, and then we were sent to a bar next door at 4, for cameraderie & free drinks.
This new place has summer hours. Every other Friday off at noon. No extra work to “make up the time”. Some people wanted every Friday off (by then working longer during the week to “make up the hours”) – but hey. I came from a place with no Friday off. So I’m dancing in a fucking musical called “JOY”.
Then, a most excellent haircut. One should not drink heavily before getting a haircut, because you could make poor choices. Therefore, no Patron shots, sad as that is. I am wise beyond my years.
While getting my haircut, my phone would not stop ringing. Two friends from the old job at Missie B’s. (Missie B’s is the home of the drag queens, among other queens, and is a very melting pot of a gay bar.) Come meet us for a drink. Instead of calling, I just decide to show up and surprise the hell out of them. It worked. Very fun couple of hours, and I felt so nostalgic for all the years I spent in the gay bars – mostly Minneapolis and a bit in St. Louis. Then I got Thai House take out, and the owner refused to let me tip, I “made her happy just by coming in”. I started trying to listen for a soundtrack, because obviously I was in some kind of movie.
Kristin got engaged last night. Couldn’t be happier for her, and I wish them a lifetime of happiness.
Going shopping at SuperTarget this afternoon with Roger & David, followed by dinner at Angela’s tonight with all of us, and we’re having wilted lettuce salad. Bacon grease dressing = heaven, even if it sends you there quicker.
I love my job and I love my bosses. On Thursday one of my bosses & I went to a client meeting & we had a great conversation in the car, about the state of things & what we want to do & accomplish, and he said he saw me taking an ownership position within the company, (not like, Hey, Jennifer is gonna own the company) but just being a leader & effecting change & making the department a lot more solid & valuable to the agency. Jesus in the sky, it has taken 15 years to get here and even if it goes away, it’s finally come.
As with everything, there are fluctuations & ups and downs. I know it, and I don’t expect everything to keep rolling along this smoothly. It would be nice if, every time I walked into the back yard, a handful of Oompa Loompas appeared & we did a dance number in the grass together. But I’ll settle for the two black dogs to just chase each other & knock each other down with the joy of their play, and brace myself so they don’t knock me down, too. And without sounding too entitled, I would like to say I think I’m due, finally. I’m shedding the anger layers, the old resentments, the bitterness and lack of hope. Everyone deserves a bluebird of happiness, even if it has to fly off for a little while – sometimes a long while.
I’ll try not to pull a Fiona from Shrek and kill it.
I started thinking again yesterday about the question, “How much do you tip on carry-out?” I know I was told long ago, you didn’t need to, it wasn’t necessary, etc. And yet sometimes I feel guilty, and sometimes I straight-up tip, without even thinking much about it. With the increased opportunities for take-out as traditional dine-in spots add the service (e.g.,Applebee’s), it seems inevitable that the etiquette experts will weigh-in and tell us to shell out more money.
I got a carry-out salad yesterday from a restaurant around the corner, and it’s a mid-fancy spot, primarily a sit-down place, and I tipped a dollar & change (around $1.35) on a $7.65 order. Mostly because the bartender brought it to me, gave me a huge bag of bread & some butter (unexpected!) and he happened to be the bartender who introduced me to Patron tequila a month ago. I thanked him for that & we had a happy short conversation about Patron, including the $200 bottle I’d been shown at the liquor store a few weeks ago. He estimated the cost (in a bar) for a shot of that would be $40, and said the reason they’d never carry it in their bar is because the owners know the staff would drink it all.
Anyway. I did a search this morning to see what the guiding standard was on carryout tipping, and it’s all over the place, especially if you land on some of the bulletin boards I found. Some people get really wound up over it; I don’t really have the patience or energy to add carryout tipping to my list of things to get enraged and up in arms over, but I do think it’s incredibly subjective. I still don’t have it quite figured out – recommendations range from a little money into a tip jar (if it exists), 10%, the full 15%-20%, to nothing at all. And doesn’t the kind of place make a difference? (Sonic, versus white-tablecloth-dine-in?) How much of a “regular” you are there? (Thai Place? If it’s a big dinner order, I might, because it’s packing it up & all; but if it’s lunch &/or I had to wait/it took longer than they said, I usually don’t.)
What do you do?
It’s much easier to blog when you’re pissed off at the world. Some days I find myself just stumped, trying to figure out what to rant about or what stories to dig up from the vaults of my mind.
The good news, though? My jaw hasn’t been clenched in over two months now.
Yesterday at lunch, Kristin & I were talking about college courses, and I revealed how I never did well at anything science-like. I was a studio ART MAJOR. Despite this fact, my advisor, who later went through a sex-change operation, and never stopped calling me “Jenny”, continued to insist I take a science type of class, because, like, PAINT was based on chemistry and so it was a stretch and ok, fine, I fucking enrolled in CHEMISTRY.
The first day was a lab. That blew. I had plans for happy hour and this lab thing was cutting in to them. Sorry dad, your money for school was WELL SPENT if you include socialization and alcohol resistance training. Anyway, I broke my crucible. That was a sign. The next sign was the first full class day, when we were given a QUIZ. I failed. Lovely. I withdrew, and enrolled in Rocks for Jocks. Despite not being a jock, it was supposed to be extremely basic astronomy for non-science people. Withdrew Passing.
Thank god the Psychology department was a science. I enjoyed some of my Psych classes, and even did some independent study projects. But the worst, absolute WORST, was Psychology of the Brain. This turned out to be a very involved anatomy class that was chock full o’ science. And there were only four tests. No papers, no labs, straight up tests. I was performing DISMALLY in this class.
But there was one thing that could save me: The Coloring Book of the Brain. Don’t be glib and think this was a little workbook. This was a mammoth book, with diagrams you’d never imagine needed coloring. This is 320 pages of hardcore stuff, presumably useful to future neurologists and NON ART MAJORS.
I spent several days parked in front of the tv, coloring furiously while watching all of the CBS soaps, while drinking Diet Mountain Dew & eating brie with wheat thins. (This was my finals week diet every year, for some reason.) For if one completed the dreaded coloring book, it counted as another GRADE, thus reducing your test values from 25% each to 20% each. I had a very excellent box of high-end coloring pencils (because remember? ART MAJOR) and while I suffered some ridicule from my friends, spending all my time coloring, I was driven to get that fucker DONE, and have some semblance of hope of passing the stupid class.
Which I did, but good gravy, I don’t remember anything except the brie and the Young & the Restless. Maybe it explains how I ended up in advertising…..
