Worst blogger ever

I'll post this weekend, I promise!

Happy Friday!

Just do it

I was driving around yesterday running errands. I do all my best thinking in the car--when I'm not taking pictures of random people and trying to avoid rear-ending the person in front of me, I mean--and I was just thinking about all the stuff I want to do someday. I want to do EVERYTHING, I swear. Not everything, everything, but a lot of stuff.

So here's my question, because I'm curious: What have you always wanted to do? Learn another language, bake a pie from scratch, run a 5K, become tech savvy, write a book, decorate your house just the way you want it, go on a trip by yourself, tell someone you love them, play an instrument, meet Brad Pitt? What?

And ...

What's stopping you?

Stalkerazzi returns!

(Previous installments here and here.)

So ... I'm driving down the road yesterday and I see this RIDICULOUS car. It's got, like, the little shark fin things, whatever they're called, and huge red letters on both windshields, and a spoiler the size of a kindergartener on the back. There's also a series of mirrors going down the driver's side. And you KNOW the bass is thumping like two elephants having sex.

"Nice try, dude," I say out loud. Because I know EXACTLY what kind of guy drives this kind of car. (The chance of a woman being behind the wheel of that car, by the way, is roughly the same as Patrick Dempsey moving in next door.)

I pull up next to him and he's everything I imagine and then some. And since a picture is worth 1,000 words (trust me), I'm like, I SO have to take a picture of him and his car. So I grab my camera out of my bag, look up ... and he's totally slowed down. He's like three cars back now. So I strategize. I move into his lane to let the cars behind me pass, then I get back into the left lane and slow way, way, way down, until I'm going 20 miles an hour in a 50. I practically put on my brakes and park in the middle of the road to wait for him. And finally, he pulls up next to me and I make my move.



Ahhh! Crap! I only got the very front! I'm suffering from premature picture taking! I go to try again and he SEES ME TRYING TO TAKE A PICTURE OF HIM. And he's PISSED. He speeds up and then CUTS ME OFF as I try to get onto the highway, glaring at me the whole way. So I have to go up to the next light and turn around, and by the time I get on the highway he's miles and miles away.

But then I think, HA! He thinks he deterred Swishy, but I am toooooo smart for that! Because I have his car in my side mirror! I can crop the picture and zoom in and still have a pretty decent shot of the front of his car. The gist of it, anyway. So that's what I do.



That's when I realize that, not only am I a complete menace on the roads, I'm an IDIOT, too, because that car in my side mirror is the one BEHIND his. OBVIOUSLY, because, duh, his car is right next to mine.

I was so proud of myself, too, for my amazing ingenuity. Ha ha.

Anyway, I know this guy who has a similar car. My friend says every time she sees him pull away in it, she wants to yell after him, "I'm sorry about your penis!!!"

That's basically the moral of this story.

I'd go in his trailer, too

I have lots of little things but nothing big, which means a) I'm boring and b) one of the random catch-all posts I'm notorious for is in your future. In the meantime ...



This is one of my favorite Grey's scenes ever. Since there have been like two decent Derek-Meredith scenes all season, I watch it often, along with the other 15 favorited clips like it, to remind myself of what once was. Ahhh ...

The Swishy version of this scene:

All right ... my mother's maiden name, Post.
I have three brothers, two sisters.
I have no nieces, no nephews.
I like cookies and cream ice cream.
I like chocolate malts and butterscotch ... occasionally a good candy bar.
I used to have two fish.
And I NEVER cheat when I do the crossword puzzle in People magazine.
And I never dance in public, either, but I dance up a freaking storm in my bedroom. Favorite novel ... how about a top five?
Favorite band ... might need a top five there, too.
Favorite color's green--I don't like lime green, I mean the kinds of green that aren't artificially manufactured in a Crayola lab somewhere.
That scar right there on my left hand? That's why I don't use the oven very often.
And I live in a two-bedroom apartment. All of those magazines are mine. I have no idea what I'm going to do with them, because I take them to read when I work out and I have been the worst worker-outer ever lately (although I did go tonight!).

So ... that's it. That's all I've got for now.

(P.S. I LOVE the song that plays during this scene ... "Fix You Up" by Tegan and Sara.)

Overheard

I'm at my coffee shop today, and there's a man, a woman and a little girl sitting next to me.

Man, to the little girl: I'm going to go potty now.
Woman, very loudly, as he gets up and starts to walk away: Make sure you hold it with two hands, or it'll go everywhere!

I ASSUME she was talking to the little girl, but, I mean ...

I'm just saying.

House arrest

I'm not allowed to leave the apartment today until it's super organized and clean. I decided this yesterday, when I heard it was supposed to be warm-ish and sunny. I had visions of throwing open the windows and twisting up my hair into a messy but quasi-hot pile on top of my head and getting all Martha Stewart while the early tournament games played in the background.

Instead, I wake up and it's SNOWING. It's freaking snowing. Five days ago, I was at the lake by my house reading in 77-DEGREE WEATHER.



And now it's snowing. Who wants to spring clean when it's cold outside? I'm still not allowed to leave the house until it's clean, though, because that's the rule, so I'm all about the procrastination instead. I'm sitting on my couch in my pajamas, going between the Friday Night Lights marathon on Bravo and the SUPER AWESOME (for real) Ohio State-Xavier game. And now blogging.

Because life isn't that exciting when you're under house arrest, I'm going to tell you about my hair. Remember when I said that my hair got fried during the hellacious Power Outage of '07? It happened again yesterday! I'm sitting at my desk, minding my business, when a freaking CHUNK of hair falls out.



(It was actually more than that, but it fell apart when I picked it up.)

OK! That's my HAIR! Falling OUT! Do you see the weird-looking thing at the end? That's what made me finally realize what it was: I switched to a boar-bristle brush about the same time I switched to a hotter blow dryer. I got another new brush last week, and the FIRST TIME I used it, the bristles started coming apart. I was like, WTF?!? I think what happens is, the bristles melt when the dryer's too hot, and take whatever hair they're touching with them.

So the upshot is, my hair is a little bit of a mess right now. I can kinda make it blend together, but basically, it's a mess. It's a little stressful. Now I have to get a new brush AND new hair.

Girl Scout cookie watch: I just ate the last four! The cookies are GONE! The other day, I was leaving work, and my friend was all, "Give my regards to the Girl Scouts." I laughed about that all night. As I, you know, continued to pile the Samoas into my mouth. Now I just have to work off the three pounds I've gained. Fun times!

OK, going back up to the lake and the 77-degree weather. I'm reading Jodi Picoult's new book, Nineteen Minutes, right now, and it's really good. It's a little hard to read--hard in the way that sad books are hard to read--but good. I'm almost done.

I have to go clean now. Freaking Xavier. Greg Oden's a bitch.

Everything but the kitchen sink

Freak me, I'm tired. I'm not kidding when I say this whole daylight savings crap is messing with me something fierce. I'm always up late, but I've been up CRAZY late the past few nights. It's KILLING me! K-I-double L-ing me. Big time.

Ugh. Anyway. I'm gonna try to go to bed early (translation: midnight), but first a big mess of random ...

* The birthday. It was very, very fun and my presents were awesome and everyone was super nice to me. I feel like it's lame to give a complete rundown at this point, since it was, like, a week ago now and I'm really not trying to make my birthday last all month, but there is one kinda funny story to tell. I did the usual stuff--you know, went to dinner, that kind of thing--but I wanted to do something random and fun, too. Something like ... bowling! (I know! I SAID it was random! I was reading US Weekly, and Drew Barrymore was talking about how she went out bowling with her friends, and I was like, oh, my gosh, that sounds fun. Go ahead and laugh at me all you want, but hello, it's true. How do you NOT have fun bowling?!? And I hadn't been in forever. So I decided I wanted to go bowling.)

OK, so I go with a bunch of my friends last weekend. It's a nice day out, and I don't wear socks on nice days, because, as we've established, I'm a Pisces and my feet need to breathe. So I'm wearing sandals, but it's OK, because I've brought a pair of socks with me in my purse. I get my hot little bowling shoes. I walk over to the lane, I kick off my sandals, I go to pull out my socks ... and there ARE no socks. They might be in my friend's car. They also might be in the parking lot or back home on my living room floor. The point is, they're not where they're supposed to be, which is in my purse.

So what do I do? Do I go look in the car? Do I rifle through my purse again? Do I go up to the counter and (duh) buy a pair for $1.25 or whatever? No, I don't. In a moment of panic, I frantically look around, make sure everyone else is distracted, and then slide my feet into the bowling shoes. My BARE FEET. Into shoes worn by roughly 23,476 people before me.

OK, I am not even kidding, it felt like acid was eating away at my toes. BUT I'D ALREADY PUT THEM ON! What was I going to do, take them off and let everyone see that I'd actually put them on in the first place? Then they'd KNOW I was disgusting! I know it's sick, I know, I know, but I left them on and bowled two games even though I knew it was totally nasty. I HAD to! And then when it was time to turn them in, I hid my feet behind a purse while I took off the shoes so no one could see that they were sockless.



Sure enough, when I came home, the socks were right on the floor by the door. Ha ha.

* Don't ask me how, because I don't remember, but I ended up on this website the other day. It reviews beauty products. I clicked to see what the most popular one was, and it's not even a product! It's a mask you make yourself with honey and crushed-up aspirin, and people rave about it. They absolutely RAVE about it. So you know I went out and got honey and aspirin, but I'm totally scared to try it now. I'm gonna, because what else am I going to do with a bear full of honey, but I haven't yet. Maybe this weekend.

* I went crazy the other day and tried to do some spring cleaning/organizing. I save everything. Every last bill, every last receipt, everything. And it had been a VERY, VERY long time since I'd gone through it and filed it all. So I decided to sort through everything and box it up to make room for 2007.

Three and a half hours later, I was totally, completely worn out. And STARVING. So I stopped. Only, I wasn't done. Not even close. Right now, the entire floor in my other room is covered with paper, and I CANNOT get up the motivation to finish! I took a picture and was going to post it, because it really is ridiculous, but the last thing I need is for some psycho to come across my blog and zoom in and steal all my account numbers and leave me homeless and begging to watch Grey's Anatomy in a bar somewhere. Trust me, though, that it is an insane mess.

* I laughed so hard all day today. I was laughing so hard I could hardly breathe. I LOVE that! I wish I could remember everything that made me laugh. I'll have to try, because it was sooooo funny.

* Deadline is noon ET Thursday for the Swishy bracket challenge! I'm going and filling out my very scary and intimidating bracket (ha) this very second. The next two days will be especially fun. Yayy for March Madness!

These

are seriously going to be the end of me.

That, and the time change. I don't care if it is psychological. It's KILLING me!

Let the madness begin ...

Thank you so, so much for your nice birthday wishes, everyone! The birthday was good. I'll have to tell you about it later (like, tomorrow), though, because ... drum roll, please ...

It's Selection Sunday! And in honor of the official kickoff of the funnest time in sports EVER, I'm doing a Swishy bracket pool. You don't have to pay to do it, just fill out your picks and talk a little smack and make sure you don't beat me, because my ego's fragile and I can't handle it (juuuust kidding).

Some of you might be like, "Swishy! I don't know what March Madness is!" or "Swishy! I hate basketball!" (cough ... Manic) which is why I'm dangling a prize. It's not a HUGE prize, but it's still a prize: The winner gets a $10 Amazon.com gift certificate, which I'll have emailed to you at the end of the tournament. Sooo ... spend 10 minutes making a Yahoo! ID and clicking on a bunch of teams, maybe win 10 bucks to spend on Amazon.com. I believe they refer to this as a no-brainer.

We're using the Yahoo! game because it's pretty user-friendly. YOU NEED MY GROUP NUMBER AND PASSWORD TO SIGN UP, THOUGH! I can't decide if it's OK to post them here or not, so I guess just email me for now (or leave a comment with your email address) and I'll give 'em to you.

Happy Selection Sunday!

Birthday girl

That's me!

A lot of people hate birthdays, or say they don't care about them. Not me. I am not ashamed at all to say I love birthdays (everyone's birthday, not just mine) because it's the only day all year that's YOUR DAY. I especially like having a birthday in March. It's finally starting to not be so freezing cold outside, it's right before the NCAA Tournament, which I love (and attended when I was two weeks old!) and it's just long enough after New Year's that I can kick my butt back into gear for the other "new year" if I'm slacking on my resolutions. It just feels like such a nice, fresh start. I always think about how I want my year to be defined, and I'm pretty clear on what I want this year to be all about. I usually like my odd years better than my even years (I know that sounds weird, but I MUCH prefer odd numbers over evens. I was born at 7:23 p.m. on 3/9 of an odd year ... see?! It was programmed into me!), but I'm determined to love this year anyway, even though it's an even one.

It's already off to a good start. I had a lovely pre-birthday dinner, and the bestest BBFF in the whole entire world, Manic Mom, sent me a super fun package that got here today (and maybe, just maybe, included a Tim-Tam or two!!) It totally got me all giddy and excited.

I'm in a good mood. I really, really like my birthday. I know I probably should have gotten over that when I was, like, 12, but I don't care.

(Speaking of getting older, though, I am SO going and putting a mask on my face right now. I do love birthdays, but I swear I get a new baby wrinkle every day. Fortunately I have a nice freaking ZIT on my chin to distract everyone from the little lines on my forehead! HA!)

(OK, one more P.S. Like, NO CELEBRITIES have the same birthday as me. Hardly any. No big names. People like Bobby Fischer and freaking Emmanuel Lewis. But I looked up my birthday on Wikipedia and Barbie was "born" on March 9. Barbie! That's pretty big time. Also, the Ford Mustang. If only I had Barbie's 38-18-34 measurements and a Mustang convertible to park them in, then we'd be talking.)

Someone stole my karma

My lucky numbers: 08 18 37 39 48 38

The winning numbers: NOT MINE!

I think this is CRAP! I PUT the dollar out there with intent! I held it out in front of me and said, "OK, my little dollar. I hope you bring someone else lots of luck." I said that OUT LOUD, and I said it with lots of niceness and tenderness, too. And what do I get back? LOSING NUMBERS!

Maybe it's a test. Maybe my good fortune is supposed to come to me another way.

Or maybe the whole thing's a CROCK!

I guess the shopping sprees and Swishy plates will have to wait awhile, huh?

Welcome to Bizarro World

Part 1. I walk into work this morning and I see this at my desk:



There's a chocolate chip cookie cake, too. Which is SUPER nice and SUPER thoughtful except that ... TODAY'S NOT MY BIRTHDAY! Ha ha ha ha. At first I was like, should I pretend it is so they don't feel bad? Should I not say anything? What??? I'm like, "Um ... guys ..." and then everyone starts laughing, because they'd figured it out by the time I stumbled in five give-or-take-a-couple minutes late as usual. It's someone ELSE's birthday today, and they got ours mixed up. It was sooooo funny. I thought it was really sweet--I'm not sure how the other guy felt when he took a piece of cake with my name on it, though. Ha ha.

OK, Part 2. The FREAKY part! So I go to grab a sandwich for lunch. I order my very boring plain turkey on wheat with mustard on the side, which is an unnecessary detail, I suppose, except to demonstrate what a totally basic thing I ordered. I step off to the side to wait. I look around, and I see it: a dollar bill, folded in half, on the ground in front of me.

Several thoughts go through my head:

"Is that mine? No, it's not mine."
"Ooh, a dollar! I want it!"
"No, I can't have it. Someone will see me pick it up and it'll be totally embarrassing."
"I should pick it up and give it to the cashier and tell her someone dropped it."
"Why isn't anyone ELSE picking it up?!?"

Seriously. TONS of people were walking by and looking at it, and NO ONE picked it up. Little kids included. Everyone just sort of looked at it, went, "Huh," and kept walking. Then a guy who works there comes by. He bends down, and I think, "FINALLY! Someone's gonna pick it up!" Instead, he touches it, looks up at me, and says, "I just wanted to make sure it was real since no one was picking it up." Me: "So why don't YOU pick it up?" He looks at me and shakes his head: "I'll just leave it."

By now, this whole thing is starting to get weird. Really weird. For one thing, I've been waiting forever. It does NOT take that long to make a plain turkey sandwich. For another, WHY WON'T ANYONE PICK UP THE DOLLAR BILL? Me included?!?!

And then it gets a whole lot weirder. I hear a voice off to the side: "Pick it up."

I turn, and there's a guy in a black leather jacket perched on a table against the wall. "What?" I say.

"Pick it up."

"YOU pick it up."

He shakes his head. "It's yours."

I laugh. "How do you figure?"

"Because," he says, all matter-of-factly. "Do you ever wish you had more money?"

"Well ... I mean ... yeah. I guess. Doesn't everyone?"

He gives me a look. "Well, there it is. There's your money."

"A dollar?" In my head, I'm seriously like, you've got to be kidding me.

"Just pick it up," he says.

"I'll split it with you," I say. "I'll give you 50 cents."

"Pick it UP already," he says again.

"All right, fine." So I pick it up, and he walks over to me and tells me he's a love and attraction coach, and if I bless the dollar and think of what I wish for right before I spend it, it will come to me.

"I can't keep it," I say.

"You HAVE to," he says. "It's YOURS. It came to YOU."

I look at the dollar. I look at him. I look at the dollar again. "So I have to make sure I spend it on something really special?"

"No," he says. "You just have to make sure you put it back into the world with INTENT."

I look at the dollar again. "I feel like I should buy something meaningful with it or something."

He shrugs. "Buy a lottery ticket."

And then he grabs his food and sashays right past me, but not before leaning in and saying, "Congratulations on your big win!"

I'm not even kidding, it was like something out of a movie. Like he was a ghost and I was the only person who could see him or something. It was SO WEIRD!

But I am still totally going and buying a lottery ticket tonight. How can I not? The jackpot is, like, 370 MILLION FREAKING DOLLARS, too. If I win $370 million, I will give $50,000 to every single person who comments on this post. For real.

Spoooooooky!!!

Hiding

I went into hiding this weekend. Sometimes I just need to hide from the world. I came out today because I had to work, but I kinda want to go back. I can't, because I'm an adult and I'm supposed to act like it occasionally, but I want to.

I didn't really think about this until today, but I used to hide a lot when I was a kid. I'd take a flashlight into bed with me and pull my blankets over my head and it was like no one could see me. I'd build myself little lean-to forts in the woods, too. And my favorite thing of all was to set up folding chairs and drape blankets over them until I had a nice, dark little house to hide in. That's kind of what I did this weekend. I live alone and I STILL made a little cave out of blankets and hid inside of it so no one could see me.

I used to just bring soda and a treat with me to my hiding places, but this time I brought Friday Night Lights (the TV show) with me, too. They showed two episodes on Bravo yesterday afternoon, and then I went online and watched a bunch of episodes in reverse order. They have the entire season free at NBC.com! I'd heard it was good, and I saw the pilot, which was pretty good, but for whatever reason I just hadn't watched it. But it is SO good! I totally got into it.

What else ... the radio thing on Friday was good. I was very nervous and pretty much freaking out leading up to it, but then I pulled myself together and I think it went OK. They asked me back, so I guess it wasn't too bad! I'll have to see if there's a link somewhere or something and then you can hear the infamous Swishy laugh. Ha.

Finally, a couple random thoughts on People.com's headlines tonight:

--Jared Leto is a freaking tool. Seriously. Every night at, like, 2:17 a.m. I see his stupid video on VH1 and I'm like, "NICE EYELINER, JORDAN CATALANO!" Now, apparently, he has broken his nose by diving into the crowd at one of his concerts. Good. GOOD! I can't wait to see pretty boy Jared Leto walking around with white tape and a splint on his nose. HA!

--Mark Ruffalo is hot. I bought 13 Going on 30 the day it came out because of him.

--I know a lot of stuff, but I did NOT know Mary-Louise Parker was dating Denny from Grey's Anatomy. Hmm. I'm not sure what I think of that yet.

--And then there's this headline: "Gwyneth Paltrow Reveals Her Kids' Famous Friends." I am not EVEN going to start with that one. I WANT to, but I will be here all damn night if I do, and it's already 2:03 a.m.

(Oh, yeah--I am also LOVING this season of Amazing Race. I just got done watching it. I wish these teams could race each other over and over. Best quotes of the night: 1) "Security!!" 2) "Rob is not Jesus" and 3) "Charla should like him." Ha ha ha ha.)

Blue jean baby

I want new jeans. I found this website, SeenOn.com, that tells you exactly what clothes the actors are wearing on your favorite shows. It tells you what episode everything was worn, where to buy it, EVERYTHING! (It also has other stuff, like the dishes they use, the music they use, stuff like that.) So, anyway, you know I went through all 500 entries for Grey's Anatomy. I didn't even bother looking at Ellen Pompeo's clothes since she's a bony little thing, but I looked at a lot of Izzie and Callie's stuff and it made me want a cute new pair of jeans SO BAD! But it's so hard to tell how stuff really looks, because everything gets altered to fit them perfectly.

So this is my big question: What's your favorite pair of jeans, and where did you get them? My favorite pair are these flare jeans from the Gap, but unfortunately they were DISCONTINUED last year. (Bastards!) I dry clean them to make them last longer, but obviously I need to branch out since those jeans no longer exist. So help me! (BTW, I do NOT wear straight leg pants. EVER! I like wide leg and flare.)

In other news, I've been asked to be part of a two-hour in-studio radio show tomorrow afternoon. I don't really want to do it. I've done radio interviews before, but those are only, like, 10 or 15 minutes. They're a breeze. TWO HOURS, though, is a little scary. I mean, seriously, I can talk forever, but TWO HOURS! I just hope it's not a train wreck. If it is, I'll have to figure out how to post audio. Ha.

The switch is in the off position

I'm having an off couple of days. I'm very good at handling certain kinds of stress; others not so much. Like change. I am very, VERY bad at handling change. I want everything to stay just the way I like it. And when it doesn't, I guess I show how unsettled I am by getting snotty. I'm not really TRYING to be snotty, that's just how I show it. But then I feel totally guilty PLUS I'm still unsettled, so basically all I do is complicate things for myself. Sigh.

I've already decided that I will have an outstanding day tomorrow if it kills me, so I guarantee I will have something better later. Until then ... not much to see here.

(Oh, wait, there's this: Last night, the thing that finally got me to chill out was to get in the tub with a popsicle and US Weekly. The popsicle? Edy's tropical fruit smoothie, only the most DELICIOUS guilt-free popsicle ever. Consider that my PSA for the day.)