The all Jane Austen, all the time blog post

(ok, not really, I promise)

So today's title comes from the movie (and possibly the book, I can't remember) The Jane Austen Book Club.  Lest I be accused of not giving credit where credit is due.  

I spend a lot of my time in bookstores, being a lover of reading and having to literally walk right past a Barnes & Noble on my way home (which I really needed in addition to my eBay habit and my Amazon habit.  Crap).  An ever increasing number of the books I see in my perusals are some variation on a Jane Austen theme, and many of them even have Jane Austen in the title.  To date I have purposely avoided these books, because I figure they will simply be fluffy stupid things that I will hate reading and I will just get mad that the book was even published in the first place.

Anyway.  Yesterday I was at B&N trying to use up the rest of my birthday gift card and I bought this book from the clearance shelf called Jane Austen in Scarsdale or: Love, Death, and the SATs.  I know.  Not a promising title, right?  Yea, I'm pretty sure it will be exactly the kind of book I described above, but here's why I bought it.  It's the only one of these I've seen that's based on Persuasion, which is my favorite Jane Austen book.  I feel like it's generally overlooked, which is unfortunate.  Everyone likes Pride & Prejudice or Emma or Sense and Sensibility (I like them too, don't get me wrong) and those are the ones that generally get adapted or "expanded" upon (have you seen all those books that are supposedly about Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy after they get married?  Ugh.).  As for me, I've always identified more with Persuasion, I'm a big fan of the whole second chance, fixing the mistakes of your youth, etc.  If you haven't read it, check it out.



So, I bought the book because it was $4 and even if it's terrible it'll keep me distracted on the subway.  I'll let you know.


My other story for the day is about this jacka** sitting next to HG and I at this restauarant on Tuesday.  I can't believe I forgot about him the other day, but it came back to me in full force today.  So we're sitting there, enjoying the nice evening and enjoying the patio atmosphere and after a fashion this really loud, abrasive sound comes up behind us.  It was this guy, shouting to his friends repeatedly that he couldn't see them.  He yelled it every time they waved to him.  It was like this:


wave
"No, I can't see you!"
wave
"Nope, still can't see you!" 


At that time I was thinking to myself, "oh geez, this guy is super loud and really obnoxious.  I really hope he's not coming here."


Well, obviously he was coming to eat at the same place.  With a big group of people.  Who had apparently been drinking for the last 4 hours.  They sat at the table next to us and this guy was seriously so loud that I couldn't hear myself talking, let alone HG.  They ordered like 4 pitchers of sangria (because clearly their level of drunk at 6:00 on a Tuesday was not drunk enough) and kept getting louder and louder, and louder.


And then they pulled out a deck of cards.  At a restaurant.  To play drinking games.  I don't know the game they were playing, but our friend Loud Guy was in charge apparently and he was trying to keep everyone honest.  It went something like this:


"Hey.  Hey that's two points.  Hey you got two points.  OH YOU HAVE TO DRINK!  Pick a partner and you both have to drink.  I'm going to explain the rules.  I have the same card as you.  Oh I have to drink. Oh man.  Oh hey let's play Euchre.  No, you can play with 8 people!  Everyone wants to play!  Everyone knows how to play!  WE'RE PLAYING!"

It was at this point that I turned to HG and said, "um, it's time to go before I turn around and punch this guy in his face.  Seriously."

And on that note, I hope everyone has a great Labor Day weekend! 

A distraction from the fact that I have nothing to say

Because I'm so clearly lame and so clearly have nothing interesting to say, here are some random photos to share with you:




My favorite flowers, white roses (which were given to me for my birthday and got better looking as the week went on - yes this photo is from June):

The State House, where the governor of Massachusetts does his business (wait, that came out wrong.  He works there) taken while sent out on an errand at work one day in July:

One of the cupcakes from a friend's bridal shower (they were both fancy AND tasty!  Also from July):

Hmm, maybe I should take some current pictures?  Maybe I should find my camera?



And there you have it.  This weekend we say farewell to HG who is returning to his favorite city to finish up school after an extended internship in Beantown.  He could not possibly be happier to leave, and I have to say I won't miss the constant comparisons between NYC and Boston with Boston always coming up short.  But I will miss him, the social circle will be noticeably smaller.




In other news, my brain is mush after work most days, which will probably continue for the foreseeable future.  Once things settle down a little, I promise, I will be better.  But at the same time, I don't have a lot to report because other than work I don't do much!

ugggghhhhh

I killed it.

There was beige stuff all over the flipflop when I was finished.  I knew it was some kind of mutant bug.  I had to hit it SIX TIMES.


I might never come into this room again.

Help!

Ok seriously another giant killer bug just started flying around my living room.  It's currently taking refuge behind my DVD shelf.  I'm terrified.  This thing could murder me in my sleep and in fact it may have been biting my feet in my sleep for the last few days.

If you don't hear from me in a few days, please send help.

I had a weird day.  All morning I felt like something terrible was about to happen, when in reality it just ended up meaning that work was going to suck.  So after work I went to see Tropic Thunder which didn't suck nearly as much as I expected it to and then I met up with HG for a quick slice and a beer.  I did get a free small soda at the movie, so that was pretty cool.

Alisa has the fabulous tale of my Friday night, which was pretty spectacular.  Saturday night we did more boy friendly things (read: watched the Olympics and drank gin) so we all hung out together.

And now I feel like I need to give in and write about the hyper addictive series known as Twilight.  If you look to the side at what I've been reading, you can see that they feature prominently.  I resisted and resisted them, I see these things all over facebook about them and I didn't know much of what they were about and it seemed pretty annoying and weird and I wanted no part of it.  But then I saw the trailer for the movie and I was like, welllllll....I kind of want to see the movie and so I should probably read the books.  So I bought them all on amazon and pretty much dedicated the last week and a half to reading them.  All.  Twice.  Yea.  I spent the entire day Saturday inside my apartment to read the 4th one and I told everyone not to bother me all day so that I could stay in my undisturbed cocoon of vampire love.  Yikes.


I don't know if they put crack in the pages or what, but wow.  Those are some crazy books.  I'm a little ashamed to say that I totally loved them, but then again, you all know how I love Harry Potter and other such children's/young adult's books so it can't be that surprising.

So, yea.  Read them all.  Twice.  In a week and a half.  And now I'm feeling a serious Twilight hangover.  Aaaand this is why I don't have a life. :)

Really weird bad luck

Over the weekend, I was taking a walk around my neighborhood and while simply attempting to step up a curb, I managed to somehow smash only the middle toe of my left foot.  This is especially weird because I have these freaky toes that are all the same length, so it seems as though if I were going to smash one, I'd smash them all, right?

But look:

(I told you my toes were freaky.)  Only the middle one.  Bruised, a little scraped and swollen on the side (which you can't see in the picture as it's hidden by my other toe).  Anyway, all weekend I continued wearing my flip flops or going barefoot and since it was rainy I spent a lot of time in my apartment reading.  Then today I put on regular shoes so that people wouldn't have to look at my freaky toes (except you guys.  Don't you feel special?).  Yea, it kind of hurt.  Stupid toes.  And I know you love the flip flop tan lines and the super bright toenail polish. 


After work today I stopped at CVS because in my obsession concern about my pores I needed to buy more pore strips (again, aren't you guys so happy about all the fun things I'm sharing today?), where I purchased both strips and a package of facial masks.  I was all excited about a deep pore cleansing evening until I opened the package of pore strips and SOME JACKASS HAD GONE THROUGH THEM IN THE STORE AND TAKEN OUT ALL THE STRIPS.  They left the little instruction packet in there so I could still feel stuff rattling around and didn't realize that it was empty.  It makes me so furious when people do stupid things like that.  So now I have to go back to the store tomorrow and convince them that I did not remove all the strips and then attempt to cheat the store.  Stupid stupid shoplifters.  And of course the thing that really gets to me is that I must have picked up like 4 boxes trying to find one that didn't look tampered with.  Of course.

Anyway, to round this out, here's another gratuitous picture of the view from my window on a sunny day, simply because we haven't seen much sun around here in the last couple of weeks and I miss it:

 

Yea, so...

So Tuesday at work I had my annual performance review.  I have to say I wasn't exactly looking forward to it because a) who looks forward to a performance review and b) I had gotten quite the verbal smackdown in the middle of June for my behavior/work/attitude/whatever.  I was hoping that it wouldn't just be a rehashing of all that business, but I couldn't be quite sure.

I would like to take the opportunity right now to also tell you that having to fill out your own self evaluation is both stupid and pointless.  Can you explain to me how my evaluation of myself will have any effect whatsoever on what my boss thinks of me?  Will it change my changes of getting a raise?  Will it change her mind if she thinks I've been slacking in a certain area and I think I haven't?  Will we even go over what I thought of myself?  The answer to all of these questions is no.  Self evaluation, while a good thing to do in your real life, is simply busy work when it comes to your job, in my opinion.

Anyway, I'm happy to report that I did not receive another verbal lashing, and that on the whole they still seem quite taken with me, which is always nice to hear.  

Then I opened my big mouth and said that I was finding myself with a couple of hours a week with not much to do, and that that was perhaps not the best use of my time if I could be doing other stuff to help take the workload/stressload off of some other people.  My boss took it under advisement and said that in the coming months she would see what came up and then see if it was something I'd be interested in.  I figured, fair enough, works for me.

Enter Wednesday morning.  Said boss says to me, "do you have a free minute?  Can you come into my office and shut the door?"  At this my heart immediately sank into my kneecaps and I said, "uhoh."  In my experience the sentence, "can you come in and shut the door?" has never been followed by something good.  Until now.  I shut the door and she offered me a new opportunity and a whole lot more responsibility.  I accepted, and I'm happy to say that it came with a fairly generous raise in my salary which is always welcome.

But seriously, I'm so incredibly tired right now.  That was perhaps the three busiest days of my working life.  Ever.  With no sign of a slow down.  Now, given the alternative of sitting at my desk and organizing things for the 2465754452th time, I'll take being ridiculously busy.  But at the moment I'm still sort of stunned at how quickly things changed, trying to figure out how this new role will fit into my old one, and basically just trying to catch my breath.

It's been a week, I'll tell you that.

yick.

Before you even start, yes I know that I have been a total slacker.  However I challenge you to write anything remotely interesting about going home after work every day for a week and sitting on your couch like a zombie and then having a weekend where the most exciting thing you did all in two days was go to breakfast on Saturday morning and then feel crappy for the rest of the day so you spent most of it in bed and/or on your couch. 

So there.

Now that I’ve concluded the ‘justification for being lame’ portion of this post, I will move right on into this week’s version of ‘why I have a bad attitude on Tuesdays’.  I know you’ve all been missing these posts.  Don’t lie.

The first reason I have a bad attitude this morning is because my day started off with a battle royale against a gigantic flying bug in my shower.  Some of you know how my shower is like the Axis of Evil of my apartment, but recently I had been getting cautiously optimistic that things were turning around.  Or at least, it was functioning properly for a change.  I should have known it would find a new way to try and ruin my mornings.  I have no idea where this thing came from, how it got in there, or even exactly what it is.  It looked like some kind of giant mutant moth/ugly butterfly or something.  As soon as I saw it sitting on the window sill (and can I please just interject here and ask whose brilliant idea it was to put a giant window inside somebody’s SHOWER?  And not up high where the water can’t reach it like you would think.  It’s huge, right at normal window height, getting soaked with water all the time and I’m sure the wood on the window sill is completely ruined) I started bombarding it with water because in my head it’s a universal truth that if you see a bug and you are near water, it’s better to drown it than squash it.  Plus, this thing was huge and I’m not sure smashing it with my shampoo bottle would have been terribly effective.

Unfortunately, the wings on this monstrosity acted like a suit of armor that protected it from most of the water.  Don’t get me wrong, I got a couple good shots in there, I held my own, but I’m pretty sure the thing is still not dead.  The best I could really do was get it to hide behind the blinds where I trapped it and continued to throw water at it for another couple of minutes, and then I got out of there as quickly as possible.  I’m going to have to come up with a plan of attack for when I get home from work to finish it off.  Oh my GOD I hate bugs.  It would be worthwhile to me to find a husband just so I never have to deal with another bug as long as I live.  But realistically that’s probably not a good enough reason for marriage.  Alas.  Also, you see?  You see how the bugs are out to get me?  The attack begins....

 

The second reason I have a bad attitude this Tuesday is every time I see a story about Brett Favre coming out of retirement I want to fly to Louisiana or wherever he is right now, punch him in the face and shout, “ARE YOU KIDDING ME?  YOU’RE APPROXIMATELY 95 IN FOOTBALL YEARS.  JUST STAY RETIRED AND STOP MAKING YOURSELF INTO A JOKE!!!!”

(have I mentioned that I’m excited football season is around the corner?  Because every week in the fall there’s something to do on Sunday afternoons.  Yee haw)

So, over the weekend I watched two movies I’d been meaning to see for years but never got around to it:  Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and Rushmore.  The first one was really weird, and I’m not exactly sure why it’s a comedy.  Didn’t really like it.  I like George Clooney as an actor, but I’m not so sure about him as a director (I wasn’t a big fan of Good Night and Good Luck either, but I know it was all critically acclaimed like this one, blah blah blah.  I think really it’s just further evidence that movie critics in general are strange people who are basically out of touch with reality and the general public.  Then again maybe I’m just not sophisticated enough to like it.  Which could be why I’m not a movie critic).  It’s like it was too weird to have an opinion about.  Rushmore was hilarious, but then again I like Wes Anderson and I think all his movies are pretty great.