Gone fishing

So you'd think I might have learned from her, but of course not. Guess who went and dropped her Metrocard in the toilet, in the EXACT same manner?

Yes, that would be me.

I stared at it, trying to decide what to do. On the one hand, ew, toilet! On the other hand, it was an unlimited monthly pass. On the other hand, it was about a third of the way into the month. On the other hand, that's only a net loss of about 45 dollars. On the other hand, it's Christmas time, and I can think of a lot other things I'd rather be spending fifty dollars on. On the other hand, that's exactly what soap was invented for. On the other hand, I was just bragging about how I never got sick, not even from touching the subway poles. On the other hand, I've run out of hands.

I took a deep breath, rolled my right sleeve up, and--dip--drip--there I had it! I ran out of the stall (this was at work) and without even buttoning my jeans, spent the next twenty minutes frantically washing my hand, metrocard, back pocket, anything that might have come in contact with the card.

Suffice it to say that I have not contracted any Deadly Disease of Death, the metrocard still worked this evening, and most importantly, no one walked in the bathroom to question why I was scrubbing a small piece of disposable plastic, or why my pants were undone.

And no, I'm not going to tell you whether it happened before or after I used the toilet. There are some things I'd rather keep between myself and the porcelain gods.

The holidays are starting again

I have just managed to break a third of my miniature glass bulb ornaments into a zillion dangerous shards and covered my floor with a quantity of dried lentils, to boot.

Happy Holidays, folks. At least the bookworm looks festive.

Game of the year

I met a girl from Kirkwood at a wedding two weeks ago, and when I told her upon leaving that we were going to beat them, she kind of looked at me blankly. Turkey Day? High school? Football? "Oh, I don't really follow that."

Blasphemy.

Martine

Oh, holy hell, these are funny. I never knew about the Martine books, since I was never a child in France, but I've heard about their rosy-cheeked sugary cuteness. I don't remember how I stumbled across this (oh yeah, I think it was through Polly-Vous Francais?) but I spent a large portion of my morning the other day going through the archives. I only wish they had an email function. Maybe some Martine e-cards? T-shirts?

These French, they don't know how to market ideas. I mean, they don't even have a word for entrepreneurship, as our grand leader says!

I type everything in Word.

Somehow things always flow better in Word. And there’s the helpful squiggly red and green underline thingies when you type something wrong, or when the paperclip decides that you didn’t pass third grade English class.

Anyhow, it’s a holdover from college. Do you always format your screen to "print layout," because it looks more like the actual page you’d be writing on if you were writing with a pen?* I can’t do the normal—I’d never know how many more pages to go until the "5-7 pages minimum length" was almost reached. The web layout? Really? And the outline version? Never used it once. I freak out if I accidentally twitch my wrist and select that one without realizing it. GET IT BACK, MAN! GET IT BACK!

(Also, hate the Reading layout. I can’t be bothered to move my eyes all over the screen. Must scroll as I read, with my eyes glued to the top half of the screen.)

My boss recently made me compose some new text for our website in Notepad. And then he said, "Well, you’ll probably be more comfortable writing in Word." And I was all, bitch, watch my work my mad Notepad skills! I can even put in the funny html tags that make hyperlinks and stuff!

Except I can’t, not really, and now I’m stuck with a bunch of .txt files that all tell me that my formatting will be lost if I don’t save it a in certain way, that is, with my thumb pressed to the top of my nose while dancing a jig. These formats, they are out to take my life or my dignity, whichever.

*I only just now realized the irony of this.

And to all the Microsoft haters out there, to ye I say unto you, get over it. Word works for me, works for the simple needs I have, and quickly responds to the emergency "shift F7" thesaurus-summoning. All I want to do is get my words down on the page, with perhaps a little column action, or some page breaks.

(Digression: Why does no one utilize the page breaks? Why do they insist on enterenterenterenterentering until they reach the bottom? Do they not realize that one more character inserted at just the right spot will screw up all their careful entering? And once you learn what the funky backwards P up there in the toolbar is, your formatting woes will be overcome, and this I say unto you. Soothly.)

Perhaps there may come a day when I am forced to learn a new program, when my sweet old graduate-school laptop decides to visit her undergraduate Gateway desktop sister in the sky. I do not want to learn new tricks. I can tolerate small incremental change, even welcome it, but major, all in-your-face change, I cannot handle it. There will be sulking on the day that I have to change computers and change my technological habits. I’m trying to delay this day for as long as possible, and this is why I freak out, honey, when you touch my computer with anything harsher than a feather, or when you spill beer on my keyboard. Ahem.

Word.