Audio books

I'm a self-professed suburban geek these days, so I might as well publicly humiliate myself some more. I am experiencing my very first audio book -- which I borrowed from my town library. Yeah, that's right. I said library and audio book in the same sentence.

I drive to work, so that gives me a 1/2 hour commute, 2 times a day, in a car with a CD player. What's a girl to do? I can only listen to trashy morning radio for so long before I feel like between my radio show habits, my reality TV habits, and my obsession with teenage vampire books, I'm sort of like the human equivalent of red jello.

So here I am, into my first week of a riveting Nicholas Sparks audio book, and I got a gripe. While I'm really enjoying the new found time management skills I've developed, I've got a bone to pick with 'management' -- Where do you find these narrators? The dude narrating my story is like a high school drama teacher after a scotch and a night of karaoke. It's really distracting and yet I can't turn away. His depiction of what these characters should sound like is bananas. Which got me thinking, how much does this guy get paid to sit in a sound room and read a book out loud into a microphone? And if he can do it, why can't I? Think of all the books that could benefit from my voice, and me from their big, deep pockets. So here's what I'm pitching myself to read for:

• He's Just Not That Into You...because I would totally insert my own side commentary -- I mean, I'm not naming names, but I've wanted to read this book to many a friend, and here's my chance.
• Pride & Prejudice...because I've never read it and I know I should, and it's super long which means I'd probably get paid a lot. Sweet.

Darn that Miley Cyrus

She got me loving this song. I normally can't stand the sight (or sound) of her. But when you have cute gay guys dance in unison to a super catchy summer song, well it's irresistible.

Everyone wonders what Victoria's Secret is...

I've figured it out -- with the help of my friend Kim-ette (thanks, girl). Her damn secret is that she makes bras that don't last, so you buy more. Girls with bubbies, we need to unite. This bra strap situ needs to be addressed. When I buy a 34D bra from you, Vikki (ahem, yes, I have no shame sharing my size, it is what it is), I deserve straps that accommodate that. I need enough adjustable room to account for gravity's work over time...not a 1" of wiggle room to tighten and lift. My bubbies have weight to them -- I like to say they are my heaviest asset (and I always account for such when weighing myself...those extra 15 lbs are just my bubbies...I'm really not fat). Thus I need and deserve some extra strappage to tighten my girls in and bring 'em up to where they belong.

So Victoria, now that your secrets been leaked, can you please give a girl some wiggle room with the damn straps? Or else I'm going to have to start attaching my bra straps to my earrings to keep the girls in place, and that's just not a good idea.

Random Thoughts

I just got forwarded one of those stupid random thoughts emails, but this one had some gems, so thought I'd share... I bolded the ones I especially agree with for your viewing pleasure.

• More often than not, when someone is telling me a story all I can think about is that I can’t wait for them to finish so that I can tell my own story that’s not only better, but also more directly involves me.
• Have you ever been walking down the street and realized that you're going in the complete opposite direction of where you are supposed to be going? But instead of just turning a 180 and walking back in the direction from which you came, you have to first do something like check your watch or phone or make a grand arm gesture and mutter to yourself to ensure that no one in the surrounding area thinks you're crazy by randomly switching directions on the sidewalk.
• I totally take back all those times I didn't want to nap when I was younger
• Do you remember when you were a kid, playing Nintendo and it wouldn't work? You take the cartridge out, blow in it and that would magically fix the problem. Every kid in America did that, but how did we all know how to fix the problem? There was no internet or message boards or FAQ's. We just figured it out. Today's kids are soft.
• There is a great need for sarcasm font.
• I think everyone has a movie that they love so much; it actually becomes stressful to watch it with other people. I'll end up wasting 90 minutes shiftily glancing around to confirm that everyone's laughing at the right parts, then making sure I laugh just a little bit harder (and a millisecond earlier) to prove that I'm still the only one who really, really gets it.
• Lol has gone from meaning, "laugh out loud" to "I have nothing else to say".
• I have a hard time deciphering the fine line between boredom and hunger.
• Whenever someone says "I'm not book smart, but I'm street smart", all I hear is "I'm not real smart, but I'm imaginary smart".
• How many times is it appropriate to say "What?" before you just nod and smile because you still didn't hear what they said?
• Shirts get dirty. Underwear gets dirty. Pants? Pants never get dirty, and you can wear them forever.
• I can't remember the last time I wasn't at least kind of tired.
• Whenever I'm Facebook stalking someone and I find out that their profile is public I feel like a kid on Christmas morning who just got the Red Ryder BB gun that I always wanted. 546 pictures? Don't mind if I do!
• Can we all just agree to ignore whatever comes after DVDs? I don't want to have to restart my collection.
• I'm always slightly terrified when I exit out of Word and it asks me if I want to save any changes to my ten page research paper that I swear I did not make any changes to.
• I like all of the music in my iTunes, except when it's on shuffle, then I like about one in every fifteen songs in my iTunes.
• I keep some people's phone numbers in my phone just so I know not to answer when they call.

I see your pee

I was walking to pick up lunch yesterday and I passed a tall, handsome, very well dressed guy who had a for real pee pee stain on the front of his pants. He wasn't carrying a cold beverage, it wasn't raining, it was an honest to goodness pee pee stain (which probably means he was going commando, but that's not the point) WTF guys?! I essentially wrap three rolls of triple-ply toilet paper around my hand to ensure I get every little drop of pee, and at the most guys give a little shake. Well guess what, that doesn't cut it. For one, my toilet seat is covered in little droplets of your urine, which get old and yellow and sticky, and two its all on your clothes - how freaking gross. If I have boys, I'm going to make them wipe it. Who is teaching these guys it's ok to piss and run. You need to stay in that bathroom and make sure all offending substances are properly stowed away, and not in your pants.

Sweet dreams might be made of the this

This sweet nectar is supposed to give you the same euphoria as the fuzzy, green, stinky, smoky stuff. And it's legal.

Who wants to chip in on a case with a sista?

Mary Jane's Relaxing Soda

Sweet dreams are (not) made of this

Dreams are ridiculous. How do they happen? Where do the ideas and scenarios and occurrences come from? I don't understand! Why do we have dreams about flying, and floating, and dreams that involve people we know in scenarios we would never find ourselves in with those people? I've been having ridiculously awkward dreams lately. One involved my teeth, which were each being held together by little wire twist ties. And most recently, hubby was missing his eyes (literally, empty sockets) and was chasing me around trying to gouge mine out with an ice pick. Wtf?

Why can't dreams be pretty and fun and clever? Like Alice in Wonderland journeys, or winning the lotto? Why do people use the phrase "In your dreams" as if they were full of sex and fancy stuff and rainbows? And who the hell decides what dreams "mean?" How does anyone know what it means when I dream about falling into a refrigerator and the door shutting and locking me in?

Counting calories

Most women I know make their food choices these days based on calories. Do I eat this delicious hoagie for lunch, or a grilled tofu salad hold the dressing. Brides who think their arms looked kinda tubby at their dress fitting the other day make the obvious, no taste salad choice. But they are cranky about it, let me tell you.

A totally regular, non dieting woman’s diet would normally consist of 2,000 calories a day. But to shed pounds you want to be closer to about 1,200 a day. Do you know what you have to eat – or not eat – to stay under 1,200 cals a day? Well it’s a not a lot. I fell off the wagon this weekend and think that the only way to really learn my lesson is to publicly humiliate myself. Here’s where I went wrong.

Saturday:

A.M.

I’ll be good, I’ll just go to Dunkin Donuts and get one of those egg white flatbread things (+290 calories). I rip off the top slice and feed it to my dog (-40 calories), except for that one piece that had some melted cheese on it that I took a bite of (+12 calories). To wash it down, I’ll have a medium iced decaf coffee with Skim Milk thank you very much (+35 calories) and a sweet and low (+4 calories) – no sugar since I’m dieting.

While I’m at DD, I’ll pick up a box of munchkins for Pant’s pool party – 50 please. I’ll just have two of these and then close the box up, no one will notice that there are 48-47 munchkins instead of the full 50 (+120 calories).

Noonish

Go shopping with Bro, expertly avoid mall food court. I should take off a few cals for the walks around the mall, but won’t because I avoided the gym all weekend and that sounds like cheating.

2 ish

Decide I’m starving, go to Wendy’s – favorite philly fast food. Get a single (+420 calories) scrape off some of the mayo and pickles (-15 calories). Small fries (+330 calories), but give 1/3 to dog and brother (-75 calories). Diet coke – cause I’m dieting.

Pool Party

Hard to tell, took a bite of Pants’ burger (let’s say +30 calories), ate some chips – full fat kind (+120 calories), had some spinach square thing – tasted good, so probably high-cal (+130 calories) about 4 more munchkins (+240 calories) couple diet cokes – cause I’m dieting.

P.M.

Didn’t eat anything at pool party basically, so starving by 8. Get a turkey hoagie (+800 calories) but only eat half (-400 calories) and one bite of my dad’s steak sandwich (+50 calories) and some chips (+70 calories). Diet coke, obvi.

So I’m about 900-1100 calories over my goal for the day – and this doesn’t even include the foods I forgot about. What that means is flabby arms are here to stay. Oy, today I'm eating only hard boiled eggs, cucumbers and weight watchers string cheese.

Gift ideas anyone?

You know what really grinds my gears? People who expect you to guess the perfect gift for them for their birthday. The nice thing about girls is that they make it extremely easy to get them the perfect present. We leave dog-eared magazines all over the house, we muse loudly about that great purple bag their friend had the other day, remember, the one we pointed out to you, remember?!, we linger in front of store shops, looking at a specific display as we walk by, we even freaking send you links of the earrings we want and when they are going on sale at shopbop. When all else fails we make sure our sister knows exactly what we want, so when you give her a buzz for advice, everyone is prepared. But noooo, Pants doesn't drop any hints, because he wants to be surprised.

How much freaking pressure do you think that puts on me?! Well it's a lot. Here were some of my ideas and why I ruled them out:

• Watch: Gave him one from the office last year that he never wears
• Engraved wallet clip: He likes separate compartments in his wallet probably to hide cards of women he meets
  
• PS3/xbox/Wii: Too stupid
• Weekend Trip: Saving for PR/wedding
• Camera: Got him fancy one last year that he never uses
• Clothes/shoes: He'll be pissed, he considers those necessities, not gifts
• Kindle: Makes him mad, he likes pages
• Puppy: We barely like the dog we currently have
• New Mac: Get real, I'm broke
  

So I'm fresh out of ideas. Pants if you annonymously comment on this post with a gift suggestion, then you can have what you want, and it will be like you're suprised because I won't know who suggested it. Smart right. Send in your ideas. Oh and happy birthday Pants!!!!

Thanks, Garrett

Cuz sometimes, come Monday morning, I got nothin', so I borrow from your creative stash.