The worst came after I started in the workforce – and watching all the women in my department stream to the front desk to collect their elaborate bouquets of flowers….. I hated Valentine’s Day – it’s not like you could even go out to dinner with friends, because every good place in town was crammed with couples, drinking wine and eating polenta. (OK, that was just at one restaurant, but still. Oysters. Truffles. Mangoes. Pick your romantic dish.) But unlike one of those women I worked with, I never sent flowers to myself!

Now, it’s just more like another day, really. I am reminded how lucky I am, how much I love my husband – and tonight, we will go eat Thai food, with another couple, and we’ll talk about The Shield, which is about the most unromantic show on TV – but arguably one of the best. I put little FunDip Valentines in everyone’s inbox at work this morning, and that made me nostalgic for those gradeschool days, when we had parties & everyone gave each other valentine’s cards….. and someone usually brought cupcakes. Yum. And, whether you’re attached or not, at least it’s a good holiday with all the chocolate floating around….. skip the heart-shaped box of ordinary & buy a bar of something really top-notch! And, always be your own best Valentine first. I wish I’d learned that one sooner.

My apologies to Chingy & Snoop – but I do sing this to Polly, on a regular basis.

(Whachu doin?)

Just chewin’ at the Pollyday Inn

(Who you wit?)

Me and Suzyyyyyyyyyyy bring four of your friends

(What we gon’ do?)

Chew some bones and bite the postmen

One thing leading to another let the chewin’ begiiiiin

You know how cops take pictures after they score a huge drug bust? Neatly piled packages of dope, cocaine, whatever?

Yeah. It felt just like that. Practically illegal.

When Kristin hit her breaking point in their house-buying process, she turned to all her knitty friends here & said, “Friends? There is nothing left to do but to channel our good thoughts and hard-earned cash together & buy some fantastically beautiful hand-dyed sock yarn and hope that this house thing turns around for me.”

So we did. From this place called Blue Moon Fiber Arts. The yarn is called “Socks that Rock”. The colors as shown on the website are beautiful, but a pale second to what they represent in real life. (Click here to see the photos of the box being opened. Scroll past Polly & her bone.) I got “Queen Rock” and “Fire on the Mountain”, and they are each just STUNNING. Good thing I’m back in Crazy Sock Knitting Mode right now – finished one pair out of Elann Sock-It-To-Me last week, started a pair out of Opal over the weekend, am on the feet-parts right now (two at a time!) with no signs of slowing down. See, dear readers, even though most of the time I just bitch & screech on this blog, when I’m not at work or out eating Thai food, I’m most likely knitting!

So, yeah, that picture above? Street value of that yarn: $300. And man – oh – man, is this yarn spectacular. Like uncut cocaine, I’m tellin’ ya. (Though honestly, I have no idea what cocaine’s like, except Al Pacino made it seem REALLY energizing in that Scarface movie.)

Yeah, so AGAIN today I wake up before the alarm, and think, MMMMMmmmmm, yes, it’s Saturday! AWESOME! And promptly go back to sleep, only to rudely be re-awakened 8 minutes later. FUCKETY DUCK! And I’ve had something globby in my left eye all day and I’m about ready to start wearing a patch. ARRRRGH.

I have pretty well flatlined my day away, too. Except for a brief fight with the cable company. My DVR is recording programs partway, and then stopping. I can get past this behavior for my soap, like last Friday when it recorded only ONE MINUTE, but it’s doing like 47 minutes of CSI, and don’t you jack with my primetime shows. Good thing it didn’t screw up 24, I might have had to go down to the office in person. Anyway, I love their solution: unplug it overnight, just for tonight. Uh, ok. Tech-no-LOG-ical expertise at its finest. I smell another in-home visit for the cable company! yee haw!

Oh, and this afternoon, I imitated the laugh of a person I sat by at one of my former jobs, and I guess pretty much the entire office heard it. (Listen, this girl? She was really loud, and it loses something in the storytelling if you just titter.) The CFO called me and asked if that was me. Of course it was! I’m in management, doesn’t that frighten you? Or maybe I’m just mangey. I don’t feel real pretty today, what with the blinking eye and getting dressed in a haphazard Damn-It’s-Not-Saturday way.

In that same storytelling episode, I swore I would not become the crazy bosses I’ve had in my life – and fortunately for me, most of the super-crazy ones didn’t have any sort of a life outside of work. Me? I’m chock-full-o outside stuff. Like sleeping. And pretending to be a pirate. Mangey Matey! ARRRRRGH!

So, we are a household that reads the funnies. And since JWo’s always up before me, he leaves them in the bathroom, folded to the 2PG spread that encompasses the funnies. Because I gotta see what my man Bucky’s up to!

However, while he doesn’t really read the rest of the stuff in the FYI section, I do. And so this morning, in my usual routine, I finish with the funnies, start to unfold the paper, glance at the Dear Abby headline, and then commence to restore the paper to its original form, so I can go through it.

And then I screamed.

JWo came downstairs a few minutes later. “What were you yelling about?”

me: “SOMEBODY NEEDS TO WARN THE SWEETIE THAT HER EX-BOSS IS ON THE FRONT PAGE OF THE FYI!!!!! SOMEBODY NEEDS TO!”

JWo: “Oh, shit! I only saw the pots & pans on the bottom (beneath the fold). Is that her?”

me: “OH YES!”

And from there it was established that OH YES this would be a blog entry, former employer and all that crap be damned. This was the woman who left for hours at a time each day, couldn’t calculate net from gross, used company resources to develop her business plan (including employees to pull the research!), the business she left the company to start, and SHE wanted to fire ME. And because I know the phone lines alllllll across the metro are going to be ringing today. (and not all because of me. she made a lot of people unhappy over the years.) Now she runs a lingerie store & has a giant four-color photo of herself in the paper.

me, in the shower: “Oh, don’t you worry. THIS IS A BLOG. People are going to want to know what I think.”

And with that, I couldn’t have been any more Bucky Katz, EN FUEGO.

JWo: “Good thing you don’t have a computer in there.”

me: “GOOD THING. Dont’ worry. I’m writing in my head right now.”

Ohhhhhh. Who needs a cup of coffee to start their day? NOT ME! I might need some tequila shortly, however. Patron, anyone? BITCHES. AIGH. I just keep reminding myself that karma’s a bitch, man. You can’t screw over people’s lives and expect unbridled success and joy the rest of your life. Even if you make a bunch of money, I am convinced that unless you are completely without a conscience, there are times in the night, when you’re awake & alone, and the silence surrounds you to the point its deafening, you know in some tiny corner of your heart how your actions have hurt people in your life. For her, I can only hope for deafening guilt, and poor panty sales.

AIGH! I need a drink.

~Our internet at work is hit or miss right now, for some reason. I started frenetically clicking my mouse and making gutteral noises of irritation and pain this morning; it seemed to help.

~I have two hangnails that I ripped out on my right hand – ring finger & thumb, and I went to the breakroom & put neosporin & bandages on them, because they were screaming in pain. Said bandages are now greatly interfering with my ability to type – more gutteral noises – but if anyone asks, I’ve decided I’m going to tell people I’m learning to play the banjo. Which I just typed ‘banjoy’, and I kind of like that mistake.

~I have beautiful gerbera daisies on my desk from my husband, who wanted to remind me that he loves me, even when we fight.

~I am ordering a costco cake for tomorrow night’s knit night & my teeth hurt just thinking about it. That cake is so damn good.

~People on the internet can be so wonderful, and then some can be soooo mean. Even ones you know. I don’t understand it, and I view it as a drawback of the ‘net. People say things because the keyboard makes them feel safer, like it gives them license to be rude, crude & a bully. I hope they get hemorrhoids and paper cuts. Deep ones. For both.

~I am constantly confused by the one-line summaries on my Yahoo news that keep saying “X# dead in cartoon battle”. I know what’s going on, but it still reads bizarre to me.

~My boss threatened to go beat up someone & called the person in questio an ass-clown. I have never been this happy working for someone.

~I get to eat at McCormick & Schmick’s today, with my rep who does the best Gay Cuban voice ever. When we worked on the Project From Hell together at the last job, we eventually called the Miami market “MyJammies” and he will be my friend until one of us dies, because we forged a bond in the trenches of HELL and we both hated my boss and she was Stupido Gigante and we had ungodly miracles to perform, all the time. And then that beyotch tried to fire me. OH! I curse her tiny ugly ass with a banjoy and the hemorrhoids.

~I am terribly excited that Miss Kristin is moving into her first house. (Justin is, too.) Even with one wrong turn, I got to her house in 4 minutes. We will have the Underground Craft Railroad constructed on Wornall in no time.

Peeps, that’s all I’ve got. In fact, if you read the above fairly rapidly, it’s what it’s like to spend 5 minutes working with me. Random firing of pistons, thoughts, and ideas. I’m tired, I’m distracted by 10 things, and yet, I can’t NOT blog. So Orts it is. And banjoys.

Like most people, I remember my first kiss like it was yest-ok, three months ago. I have to admit, my memory and brain get a little foggier each year. But still. I remember what I wore, where it happened, so many details, and the biggest detail of all was how AWFUL it was.

I met my quasi-boyfriend after school, skipping the yearbook meeting I was supposed to be attending. Keep in mind this is 1983, as I describe my outfit, picked out especially for the occasion. Gold metallic cotton-blend tunic. Turquoise blue knickers. I am seriously waiting for the knicker comeback. We met -this is extremely romantic- at the cemetary just behind the Lutheran church. I have no idea who’s headstone we ended up at, I was just so excited to finally get to kissin’.

Unfortunately, this young man must have learned how to kiss from his dog. I had so much of his saliva all over the lower half of my face, I was completely grossed out & convinced that kissing had been extremely overrated by my friends. I kept sneaking big wipes across my face with my hand every time he’d look up & check to make sure we weren’t seen. Then, the pastor for the church pulled into the parking lot, and we froze, panicked about being caught. He went inside the church, and we got back to, well, he got back to lapping at my face like an enthusiastic bassett hound. I pretty much had had it at that point, and we parted ways shortly after that.

The good news is, I also remember my first kiss with my husband, if not more vividly (and it was only about 7 years ago, not 23). I practically had to hit him over the head with a club, he was so nervous about not being able to read signals and didn’t want to make a wrong move. I remember what I wore, the temperature, the light from the streetlamp, the noise of traffic, every moment. And the best news is, he doesn’t kiss like a bassett hound. :)

Well, I was rooting for the Seahawks, probably because they were the underdog, and also because I thought they’d beaten Denver. In the end, it was probably a similar experience for me, had the Chiefs gone to the Super Bowl – we’re used to a level of exhilaration followed by disappointment…

So, that brings me to the two things I really focused on – the ads! and then a mini rant about the halftime show. Good grief. Let’s start with the halftime show. I felt like I should have been drinking shots of Geritol. PLEASE. Bring back the Bud Bowl! Bring back Janet’s booby! Bring back – can’t believe I’m saying it – Britney Spears! Something, anything, inject some life into the production. I saw Keith Richards and that other dude & it was like Skeletor 1 & 2, rythym section. I was praying Mr. Jagger wouldn’t keep stripping. And, while we’re at it, how about the dorky banter all game about how all-American everything was? Uh, that’s great & all? But last time I checked, the Rolling Stones are from ENGLAND.

Now, on to the ads. I’m not referencing any of the trades (haven’t read ’em yet!) and I’m going straight off memory. Because you can spend $2.5 million to run an ad (not including production, mind you!) and if nobody remembers it, well, put a check under “oops” and think about spending it somewhere else next year?

1. Streaking Sheep by Budweiser. Hilarious. Loved it. Favorite of the game.
2. FedEx caveman – disturbing makeup, but funny. Captured CaveMan Management perfectly: “Not my problem”.
3. Michelob – touch football – ever since Terry Tate, I enjoy watching people get tackled with a vengeance.
4. Budweiser – baby Clydesdale pulling the cart? Absolutely adorable.
5. Budweiser’s Magic Fridge – moderately funny, but I’m not the target for that one. Clever concept.
6. Whopperettes – utterly bizarre & yet, memorable.

Now, the Ameriquest ads were interesting – even a little racy (Airplane spot), but I barely remembered the company & still have no idea what their point was. And then there was another spot that spent the first 20 seconds on a fake product, to finish with their own, and to me, that’s the stupidest thing you can do in a commercial – get me to follow along and watch something that you have to switch my attention from, tell me about something new & now sell me on the new thing, all in 30 seconds. I can’t even remember either product now, real or fake.

The big payoff: Gray’s Anatomy. And I’m so pissed it’s a two-parter.

Update: Bekah pointed out one I forgot, but was completely moved by: Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty – it really was excellent.

Boy, there’s nothing like a little late-night surfing on Craig’s List…..

Yes, despite my pride making the cake fall, and my error in grabbing cornstarch instead of powdered sugar, the cake turned out gorgeous & tasty.