Oh, Manchester, So Much to Answer For

Why I almost puked up my lunch today:

Manchester Passion

Thought number one: I really hope Moz and Johnny and Ian's estate didn't consent to this.

Thought number two: Can't Christians write their own damn music?

Thought number three: Wow, the Happy Mondays must be in one hell of a bad financial state.

Thought number four: If this was dreamt up by the Manchester tourism board, it is actually brilliant.

Timwatch 1/22

Tim had Barack Obama over the weekend. Via satellite, but I'll take what I can get. And James Carville has a book, but he's becoming a sportscaster. Mary Matalin really, really needs to lay off the Botox. Her forehead is smoother than mine and I'm less than half her age. Why is that shiny pulled unmoving forehead look supposed to be attractive, anyway? Um, so I'd say there were no revelations from anyone Sunday morning. Apparently politicians need to raise money to get elected! And partisan vitriol makes people say mean and nasty things! And the Democrats lost the 2004 election and are still dwelling on it!

Really, why do I even bother to wake up Sunday mornings? Oh, right. That pesky Tim-stalking thing. And I still like Obama. Plus, he's way more photogenic than Chuck Schumer, who totally reminds me of the Joker. And I even like him!

The South Street Bridge, aka that bridge over the damn Schuylkill that I walk/drive/bike across at least once per day, aka the bridge that sometimes like to drop chunks onto I-76 below, got another hole in it. A big one. And in the driving part, not the sidewalk this time. I mean, I'm totally used to looking down at the river through the holes in the sidewalk but I imagine people in cars aren't so used to that.



It is much scarier at a different angle, the hole was wide and pretty far across. How did they fix it? Why, they just put a big ol' piece of sheet metal over the hole! Problem solved!

The bridge is the main reason I don't bike to lab much. It is narrow, there are no bike lanes, part of it is a metal grid that is bumpy and really scary when wet, and you have people entering/exiting 76 without regard to, say, traffic laws. People apparently have to get back to Jersey so fast they can't be bothered to check to the side and notice that they're turning directly into a person on a bike. Maybe it is because left turns are an exotic new experience to them, they're so busy watching the left lane while turning right they forget that the right lane is where bikes go.

Of course, if they actually close the bridge to fix it I'll be screwed as the Walnut Street bridge is really, really out of my way. I am so not walking the extra five blocks to get to lab. Those are really long blocks. Really. Also, I hate lab and simply cannot expend any more precious energy to get there unless I can get some sort of guarantee that my experiments will actually work.

M-E-H. Meh.

So I listened to the Alito hearings. Face it, we're fucked. The NSA is already listening to my phone calls. Luckily they're mostly about sex and coffee but really, isn't that what eavesdropping is for?

Science sucks. Specifically, doing lots of science but not getting pretty statistically significant differences between your groups no matter how you try and manipulate your data is no fun. The thought of a committee meeting makes me have panic attacks and want to kill myself and puke all at once. Since they're just going to tell me to give up and try something else. And I'm never going to finish graduate school.

My obsessive nature is causing me to...obsess about nothing. Well, not nothing. More like everything.

Things that are good:
Belly dancing is fun but I swear my hip flexors are sore now.

New perfume is fun too. I smell really good, whenever I catch a whiff of myself I totally want to make out with me.

Burmese food can be good.

New standard for proving your devotion to me: hire a coffee cart to follow me around. I promise, I'll love you forever.

Smelling and Clapping

Random Philadelphia odors of late:
-Every time I'm driving on 76W right before the South Street exit, I notice it smells like a bakery. Like donuts, really. But all there is is the river, 30th St Station, and the big post office. Where is the smell coming from? Seriously, I smell it every time. And unlike most other Philadelphia odors it is really really good and always makes me hungry.
-All week on my walk home there is this one spot on the bridge where I smell Windex. Huh?

I'm low on perfume and I went to get more but they've discontinued it. Ack! I tried another one that I like but I don't know...I need an impartial person to smell me every day and tell me what works. This is when not having a roommate really sucks. Plus I like really girly sweet perfumes and I've noticed they sometimes smell great in the bottle and then turn all grandma on me. So I'm kind of annoyed about the discontinuing thing because it means a lot of trips to Douglas trying stuff out.

Maybe I'm getting all poppy in my old age, but lately I'm a total sucker for any song with handclaps. Why is it that clapping makes songs better? Like, would "Boy With the Arab Strap" be so much fun to bop around to without the clapping? The handclaps just make me want to toss my hair and bounce around which is embarrassing as somehow that's always when someone comes into my office.

So Are We Gonna, Like, Spoon or Something?

I survived a week at home, mostly by staying at my mom's and rediscovering the joy of having cable. Christmas was profitable: Not only did I get Mastering the Art of French Cooking, I got a shiny new Le Creuset skillet to go with it. And a whole bunch of other stuff. And I had Hanukkah too, though we're very bad Jews who don't manage to light the candles every night. I mean, no wonder I love bacon: we can't even take five minutes to light the menorah for a few days each year.

My sister brought her boyfriend's cat back with her as apparently he hasn't told his parents he got a kitten. Now, I hid (and still hide) all sorts of things from my parents but in the grand scheme of things "Mom and Dad, I got a cat" seems pretty innocuous. But what do I know - maybe he is from one of those cat-eating families on Long Island. Anyway, the cat is maybe four pounds and is very cute but has that habit that cats have of totally disregarding such human commands as "get off the counter!" and "for fuck's sake, the plant is not a litterbox!" But I like her because she totally rules over the dog, who I've never liked. Anyway, as proof of both cuteness and misbehavior I offer this photo of the kitten in the fridge, happily residing in a nearly-empty 12-pack of Molson:



Conversation with my sister while she was introducing me to the crack-like mind-numbing phenomenon that is Laguna Beach:
"They, like, totally go on really nice dates all the time on this show."
"Yeah? Like what?"
"Like, you know, dinner and stuff."
At which point we both start laughing since apparently neither us goes to dinner, at least not with boys that are, you know, actually taking us out to dinner.

I spent New Year's Eve at Kathy's NYE/going-away party and got drunk on no less than four different types of alcohol. Not a bad way to start the year, I guess. On my drive home the next morning, I saw a horse in a yard by her house and then ran into the Mummers parade and despite living here a few years I still don't get Mummers at all. The horse, the freaks, and the raging hangover made it a rather surreal morning. Here's to more randomness.