The Special People Club

So my favourite soap opera here is called Eastenders. It's a long-standing tradition in the UK. I've talked about it before...it's a bunch of trashy, sad people from a fictitious neighbourhood in East London. It's totally refreshing compared to US soaps. The characters are poor, they're not that attractive, they talk funny, ridiculously bad things happen to them, and they're just generally miserable people. My current favourite story line has 60 something, overweight people having a hot, steamy affair. Pat is an Omar's Tent kind of chubby lady who wears the ugliest earrings ever and tons of leopard print. Her hair is peroxide blonde. Her makeup is applied with a trowel, and you can usually identify at least 4 distinct colours on her face. She's practically a clown. She used to be a prostitute and has a history of stealing husbands. Patrick is a West Indian man who wears wife-beater t-shirts made of white fishnet and who has a fedora on most of the ti

I received this email from a friend, but rather than filling it out and forwarding, I'm putting my answers here. If you'd like to reply, go ahead and copy this into an email and send to me. 1. What time did you get up this morning? 8:27 for an 8:50 departure for work 2. Diamonds or pearls? I want one big diamond in a funky platinum setting and I'll buy this myself since I've no spouse to do it for me. 3. What was the last film you saw at the cinema? Capote, which is excellent, FYI 4. What is your favorite TV show? The Daily Show with Jon Stewart rocks my world. 5. What did you have for breakfast? grapes and turkey bacon 6. What is your middle name? June 7. What is your favorite cuisine? Thai , sushi, and the occasional tapas 8.What foods do you dislike? pate, oily fish, and all organ meats. And that shellfish vein/sac. I hate that. 9. What kind of potato chips do you like? Thai Chili 10. What is your favorite music? I listen to everything, as you'll find out

The damn swans won't leave the pond across the street. And the ducks aren't any happier than I am. Today, I was looking out the kitchen window while I did some dishes, and I saw three ducks floating in a corner of the pond, like they were plotting. It was as though one of them said, "Break!" The three separated, kind of circled casually over to the area where the swans were floating, and they created a huge ruckus, actually coming near a swan's head as one of them took to flight, and the swans ended up getting out of the water. Meanwhile, I think the swans know I'm onto their nastiness and they're coming to get me. I found a giant goose-like poo on my sidewalk, and a huge mudprint of a webbed foot near it. Bring it on, you long-necked freaks.

Today, my valentine to you is a selection of a few of my favourite love musings. Happy Valentine's Day. -------------------------------------------------------------------- since feeling is first...e.e. cummings since feeling is first who pays any attention to the syntax of things will never wholly kiss you; wholly to be a fool while Spring is in the world my blood approves, and kisses are a better fate than wisdom lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry - the best gesture of my brain is less than your eyelids' flutter which says we are for each other; then laugh, leaning back in my arms for life's not a paragraph And death i think is no parenthesis ---------------------------------------- Love Sonnet XVII...Pablo Neruda I do not love you as if you were a salt rose, or topaz or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off. I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul. I love you as the plant that never blooms but car

Have had a productive weekend. Spent most of it working on school stuff. I am slowly beginning to make sense of my accounting textbook. I have a lot of work to do before I can successfully analyze the Body Shop's annual report for Friday AM, but I'm further along than I was. Somehow, all of my clothes had migrated to the guest bedroom. I think it was a combo of the laundry done when I arrived home, school starting, I took to piling things on the bed rather than putting them away, and then a closet cleanout last weekend to find things that fit me and get rid of things that are now unsightly big. So I spent a good hour today helping things find their proper homes and I have a guest bedroom again. I need storage in this house. For starters, I need to go through and pitch all the crap that's been left behind by others. There are partial gallons of paint, empty boxes, substandard furniture, and various useless kitchen items. I have permission to take things out of the house t

Cry uncle, you lovers of puppies and kittens.

Not to be outdone by Tom, Lauren, and Emma, I've decided to upload my own puppies and kittens tribute.

Anyone who knows me know that, in general, I'm pretty easy going. Sure I have my obsessive-compulsive, slightly neurotic subtext, but I'm not a high-maintenance, my-way-or-highway kind of girl. I know the difference between my opinions and truth, even if I don't always state it that way. I don't take myself that seriously and can find humour in most things. I live a pretty non-confrontational life about 90% of the time. Affable, I think they'd call me. But if you've known me very long, you also know that there is a threshold where the 90 is silenced instantly by the 10% bitch. (Stop quibbling with ratios...you know what I mean...) You can almost hear the door slam, and I go all aggressive business on you. What's your point? Substantiate it. Convince me you're not an asshole and that I should still be listening to you. We're moving on....are you coming???? I think of this person as the AlphaMindy. Tonight, my learning team met her with a vengeance

Tonight we had a team meeting at school to review the marketing proposal we're working on. My teammate, Adam, is an EngD student and lives at Silsoe, the research campus about 15 miles away. He needed a ride home and he had my accounting book at his house so I volunteered to drive him home so I can spend some time pondering accrual accounting (which sucks, FYI.) So we get in the car and go to leave campus. I don't know where I'm going and say, "Left or right?" He says, "Um.....left, I think." I guess I'm tired or preoccupied or something, but I didn't see the signs. So we drive. For forty five minutes. Around country lanes. Looking for Silsoe. Adam isn't so good with directions. He's a thoughtful guy and he has really good ideas about a lot of the work we do, but he's not a guy who spends a lot of time paying attention to the world around him. And other than the name of the little village, he doesn't know where he lives.

Some things don't change. I was up until 3AM last night writing my Marketing Paper, and then I cried uncle and went to bed with an unpolished, uncited draft that is nowhere near ready to submit. Some things do. It's not actually due until 5 PM on Friday, so there's lots of time to make it good.

Oh. And another highlight of this day....on Sundays there are new episodes of Rock School , a reality show where Gene Simmons of Kiss fame takes kids and makes them into a band. He was at a stuffy public (means high-end private, actually) school last season, and this season he's in a rough state school with kids with piercings and bad teeth. It's pretty funny.

It's been a lazy Sunday. I didn't roll out of bed until 1030. After my entry last night, not only did I get sucked into Along Came Polly , which actually does give PSH a chance to shine after all, but then I also ended up watching The Pianist for the final 35 minutes. I think I was wired from all that sleep and school. Have spent the day working on my research paper for Marketing and reading the news on the internet. Had a nice Skype chat with Soni. Went to the gym for a training session. cleaned a bit and did some laundry. One of those Sundays that we all need once in awhile to recharge. Now I'm listening to Billy Bragg (Worker's Playtime , to be specific, the merits of which I've extolled in earlier posts,) while I make African Peanut Stew. I'm pretty relaxed, and I'll be ready to plug in and finish my writing soon. I love days like this. I've gotten some things done, and I've had time to chill, and I didn't just sit on my can, either.

I am so busy, I've had trouble finding time to plan meals and get to the store to anticipate my grocery needs. Which means I eat crap or substitute ingredients in recipes or make up some ridiculous dishes in an effort to feed myself. So I've taken this time at home (two days off for this nasty flu crap I've got) to research my online options and placed an order that will arrive shortly after I get back from school on Saturday. I forgot how great online grocery shopping can be. Back in Saint Paul, I used to have Simon Delivers show up with groceries and I loved it. They'd save your grocery list staples and you could automatically load them to your order. They brought excellent fruit and veg, which I always worried about since I couldn't pick it out myself. And the drivers were always so nice. Twice they carried the bins up the steps into the house (when they delivered when I was home.) It made eating healthy and cooking-in so much easier. Here in the UK, online

Stayed home today with the flu. It's not just a possible case now, it's full-blown evil. Chills, throat, head, body aches, the whole thing. I know there've been a few people in the office that have fallen down with this, so I expect that it's just par for the course. The nice thing about England is that you have sick days that are not part of your personal day allotment. Within reason, a normal person can call in sick and not have to worry or take vacation to be out ill. Which means that you actually stay in bed instead of working sick trying to save holiday for real vacation occasions. Other than the 20 minutes I was up to call in sick and put my out of office message on, I have been asleep most of the last 24 hours. I got up at 5 pm today. Ran to the store for juice and now I'm safely back in bed to try to stay up for a few hours. I had some cod in the fridge that was going to go bad if I didn't use it so I made this: Zuppa di Baccala 11 oz of salt cod (soaked