Random and In No Particular Order, 2/23

1) On the recommendation of the good people of SUNY Optometric, after I got my extraordinarily expensive new progressive eyeglass lenses, I also bought a pair of drugstore cheaters, and damn if I don't think they have made my eyes worse.

2) The SUNY folks also showed me how to use these progressive lenses the "correct" way. So how come, every time I wear my eyeglasses, I still end up pushing them down to the end of my nose in order to read instead of casting my eyes demurely downward to read through the lower part of the lenses?

3) It's been my experience that people will trade the illusion of forward movement for actual forward movement. You can usually see this in rush hour traffic, with the folks who constantly change lanes while you trundle along in your slow lane -- you always seem to end up right next to them, even though they've been bobbing and weaving through traffic with gas-wasting bursts of road rage and acceleration. You can also observe this in airport screening lines as people swing wide on the in-and-out turns even though it's not going to get them through the line any faster. I like to infuriate the people behind me by standing at the barricade pole and not moving until the people in front of me have moved ten or so feet ahead. That big gap is guaranteed to make the guy in the suit standing behind me huff and puff while I stand there, placid and all but chewing cud.

4) I am annoyed, however, by the people who get to the front of the security line and seem genuinely surprised when they have to take off their shoes, remove their belts, empty their pockets, take off their coats, unpack their Ziplocs, and put their laptops into a separate bin. Now, talk about your truly ovine -- haven't they been watching what the fifty people in front of them have been doing? Did they think they were going to somehow be *exempt* from their walk-on part in DHS Security Theater?

5) And that makes me nostalgic for the days of gate check-in. Imagine, we're the last generation who will have ever arrived at the airport a half our before our flights, tossed our bags on the belt, gotten our boarding passes at the gate and strolled onto an airplane. I remember I once overslept and got to LaGuardia fifteen minutes before my flight. And I made it onto the plane. I had to run through the terminal like OJ, but I made it.  Hmm.  We're also the last generation who will have walked off a plane directly into the loving arms of...anyone. Remember coming out of the jetway and seeing Mom and Dad's smiling face or a nice family member

6) Vertigo update:  The ENT says my "balance nerve" is probably inflamed, which is why I'm listing to the right. She's prescribed a week of steroids, and gave me some exercises which are meant to desensitize my brain to the vertigo symptoms. They seem to entail throwing myself down my bed on my side, then sitting up and doing it again on the other side, and doing this a whole bunch of times until my brain gets "used" to it. I tried it for a few minutes last night, and hey, you know what? When you know the furthest you'll fall is your own bed, the spinny stuff is actually, well, kind of, um, cool.  Trippy.  However, Miss Kitty seems to think this is a very nifty game, too, which means she may have to be banished while this daily fish-flopping is going on.

7) Even though I haven't seen Dood in nearly three weeks, and we don't know when we will get to see each other again, I'm remarkably okay with that. And not in an "I'm suppressing my frustration oh what a good girl am I" kind of way. More of an "I'm really okay with it" kind of way.  It's as if visiting him twice at the beginning of this month solidified my confidence in the relationship in a way that his prior visits to me hadn't done.  Now I'm feeling quite okay with how things are. And when he's ready for another visit, he'll let me know. It's finally sunk in for real, somehow, that these separations are temporary, and itermittent, and how things are, and October is only seven short months away.

8) Teaching myself how to retouch photos, pixel by pixel, on the pre-loaded, prehistoric paint program on my laptop.  It's kind of fun, actually. And I don't believe it's false advertising to freshen up a photo for Facebook. I'm pretty good at it, because you'd be hard pressed to find exactly what I'm retouching. Blemishes, super-dark under-eye circles, wrinkles...the key isn't to eradicate so much as it is to soften. So I still look like me, but without the giant zit on my chin.  Call me a cheater. G'head.

9) I met Dood's brother when I was in Texas, and apparently he really likes me. Extolled my good qualities to Dood thusly, "She's well-spoken, she's not a drug-addict, and she loves you."  I have to laugh, but you know, NOT being a drug addict shouldn't be a selling point. To paraphrase Chris Rock, you're not supposed to be a drug addict! Still and all, the brother likes me, but the real gauntlet is going to be the sisters. Dun-dun-duhhhhhh....

For the Record...

For the record, 2010 wasn't all bad...

*  I wrote 363 posts in 2010. Granted, most of them were written in a two-month self-exsanguination that took place from mid-May through mid-July, but I averaged a post a day. Yay for me!

*  By the end of 2010 I had chiseled and whittled and ramen noodled my IRS debt down to less than $15,000.  No, that's not a typo.  I didn't misplace a comma or add an extra zed.  I know 15K is a lot, but if you knew how much it was when I started at the end of 2008, you'd be really impressed.  Let's just say, over the last two years, I've paid the IRS close to $30,000.   I'm putting this out there because in my travels I've learned that one in FOUR Americans has an "issue" with the IRS.  That's 25% of us. Go out to dinner with three pals, look around the table -- one of you is having an "issue" with the IRS.  So, my advice to everyone, well, at least to the others in my 25% of the taxable population, is this:  File your returns.  Even if you can't pay what you owe (and trust me, if you are middle class, you WILL owe. Quoth Leona Helmsley, only the little people pay taxes), file your returns.  I guess I'm lucky I wasn't marched off to the pokey with Wesley Snipes.  Because trust me, the IRS WILL find you. And they do have a way of  making it as uncomfortable as possible for you -- for me, they cleaned out my bank account two weeks before Christmas.  That'll sure get your attention, lemme tellya.

*  I did lose a shitload of weight, so I look decent in clothes again. It's like discovering a whole new wardrobe in my own closet!

*  Most importantly:  Dood came into my life in sort of a happy accident.  Honestly folks, I'm not attributing it to kismet, or the stars aligning, or to anything other than this:  I was in my office on Saturday, July 24th, getting ready for another one of my summer trips out west, and I ended my day by dicking around on the internet. I opened my okCupid account, changed my settings to "anyone from anywhere," and hit that button named, "Roll The Dice."  His was the first profile that came up, he was shirtless and hot, his profile was literate and clever, he was hot, he played the guitar, he was hot, he had useful skills AND he was from New Orleans. You know, now that I think about it, if I were a checklist-makin' gal, he's pretty much got all the toppings I would have ordered from the ice cream sundae guy, you know, the nuts and sprinkles and chocolate sauce and whipped cream. Maybe a little bowl on the side with pineapple.  Most of all, he seems to like me as much as I like him, at least enough to want to actually consider maybe relocating to a northerly, more Penguin-friendly climate.