I wish I didn’t have such a Pavlovian response to people crying on TV! 

Google has some interesting ideas about my relationship…

Its ads preferences ideas about me are pretty accurate/banal…I’m a 25-34 year old female interested in “movie research,” “recipes,” “health and fitness,” “shopping,” and…New Jersey.

Sigh.

However! It’s pretty sure The Husband is 65+

How did he ever get a hot young thing like me?

…it must be our mutual love of “shopping.”

I have some work event tonight that my coworkers have taken to calling the “mystery party.”* No one’s entirely sure what it’s for, or what’s going to happen. All we are fairly sure of is that it’s not so much optional as it is “optional,” so, we’ll all attend.

This isn’t the end of the world, of course. I mean, there’ll be food (and there are rumors of chocolate, which are almost as good as actual chocolate), and the word “celebration” has been bandied about, so how bad could it be? Celebrations and chocolate!

Except.

We all just got a corporate memo with our mission statement and a reminder of the school’s “visions and goals” so that we can start preparing our talking points for tonight.

Um.

I think someone needs to look up the definition of celebration.

And possibly chocolate.

*I resist that label, because it makes me think we’re going to have some Miss Marple-style sleuthing going on, and then my hopes get dashed. Relatedly, does anyone want to throw a Miss Marple-style mystery party and invite me? Thanks!

Well, that’s embarrassing.

I recently remembered that I have a google analytics account. (Is that even the right term? can one even have such an account? Whatever. The point is, I have the google thing that tells me how many people are looking at my tumblr)

I rarely look at my google analytics account (or whatever), because there’s no point: “1.2 people have looked at your blog for less than 5 seconds in the past two months! Are you interested in monetizing your blog? haha, don’t bother!” But, because I remembered I have such a thing, I decided to look at it today. And it has a new feature! That lets me see who’s looking at my blog right now! So, after staring at the “0 active visitors on site” alert for a bit, I got bored and started to hunt around. I found out that one person spent 10 minutes looking at my blog today!

So exciting!

Who could this person be? How did they find me? Do they find me super charming and entertaining? Will we be best friends?

Oh. Wait. No. I opened my blog today, and then forgot the window was open for a bit.

Nevermind.

It is fun to see what bizarre google searches bring those 1.2 people to my site for half a second though. At least I still have that!

The Not-So-Retiring Barney Frank

coldplums:

Andrew Goldman: You’ve long argued for the decriminalization of marijuana. Do you smoke weed?
Barney Frank: No.
AG: Why not?
BF: Why do you ask a question, then act surprised when I give an answer? Do you think I lie to people?
AG: I thought you might explain why you support decriminalizing it but don’t smoke it.
BF: Do you think I’ve ever had an abortion?

auto reblog—Barney Frank! the love of my life!

(Source: The New York Times)

I went to the gym last week with one of my friends from work (she’s trying to stick to a New Year’s Resolution, and I’m a child who can’t do anything even vaguely good for me (or, let’s be honest, anything that isn’t watching tv) unless I have someone holding my hand and/or guilt-tripping me every step of the way).

I didn’t die, which was very nice, and I was feeling pretty pleased with myself. That is, until I remembered that this is my usual pattern. My body likes to play mind games with me, and usually gives me a free pass on my first workout back after a ridiculously long slothful stretch, luring me into a false sense of success slash physical fitness. “Oh hey, everything’s fine! Still got it!” Then, of course, about 20 minutes after my workout, I lose my ability to move like a normal human, and give up all hope of a second workout until the statute of limitations runs out and I’ve waited so long that my body can play its trick on me again and I can have another reasonably successful workout.

I mean, this isn’t great, but hey, whatever, it’s not like I’m the only person in the world who isn’t in as great shape as they’d like to be.

Except.

I think I’m supposed to be a very hands-on track coach in about two weeks.

Ugh, nonplussed indeed.

There are a handful of words whose definitions refuse to stay in my brain. Bemused is one. Nonplussed is another.

For the million and twelfth time, I looked up nonplussed today, and, oh, that’s right, it means surprised and confused…

but wait, what the fuck?

“In standard use, nonplussed means ‘surprised and confused’: : the hostility of the new neighbor’s refusal left Mrs. Walker nonplussed. In North American English, a new use has developed in recent years, meaning ‘unperturbed’—more or less the opposite of its traditional meaning [emphasis added] : hoping to disguise his confusion, he tried to appear nonplussed . This new use probably arose on the assumption that non- was the normal negative prefix and must therefore have a negative meaning.”

This is the worst!

Why does North American English want me to be North America’s worst English teacher??

uh oh.

None of my students knew that Dickens created Scrooge, which, I mean, fine, whatever. As the husband pointed out, he is a well-known duck…

But!

They also all thought (think? It’s unclear how much they actually listen to me) that Sherlock Holmes was a real dude.

A very eventful night!

The husband and I went out to dinner last night for very poorly defined reasons (“uhh…it looks like the food in our fridge won’t rot for another couple of days?”)…

While we were there, we saw a girl I used to work with, the cross country coach of a school my school runs against, and a guy who bore a passing resemblance to Einstein. Quite a successful expedition!

It was only after we left that we learned (from some very excited gawkers) that Steve Buscemi had been eating next to us the entire time.