Let's All Go To The Movies...

As I've mentioned in the past, I have a real love/hate relationship with the cardio cinema room at the gym. Some days it is my good and loyal friend who makes twenty minutes on the elliptical fly by in no time; other days it maliciously casts me down into a sea of six-month-old economic and motherhood magazines. Just the other day I was privileged enough to watch the closing credits of Swing Kids, followed by eight minutes of the main menu screen for Swing Kids (magnificent in its juxtaposition of imagery), then five minutes of the scene selection screen for Swing Kids (overrated, not a satisfying ending), and finally three minutes of Swing Kids. So it's a real crapshoot. Today I ascended the stairs to find waiting for me... The Shaggy Dog, remade Tim Allen version. Ugh. I almost took a pass, but reasoned that in a couple of years Molly's going to be forcing this kind of movie on me anyway, so I may as well build up a tolerance. So in I went.

Fortunately the movie was just beginning, so I didn't have to worry about missing any of the subtle nuances that provide context to the rest of the film. The stars appear to be Tim "The Tool, Man" Allen, Rob Lowe slumming it in pre-Iron Man days, and as Tim's wife, I'm mostly but not 100% certain one of the chicks from Sex and the City. No, not her, the hot one. I won't embarrass myself by clumsily trying to explain all of the film's layers (some things you just have to experience for yourself), but in the final stages of my workout we came to the part of the movie where Tim Allen does, in fact, begin showing signs of becoming a dog. Thus I was treated to a quick montage of Tim waking up curled at his wife's feet; shaking his body to dry off after a shower; lapping up his cup of coffee; and finally sticking his face into his bowl of cereal to eat. At this point I had to leave because my uproarious laughter was disturbing the other patrons, but with some regret, because Tim had just started getting affectionate with his wife and I was wondering if they would actually show him sniffing her ass. My disappointment at missing out on learning about the finer points of human woman/man turning into a dog relations is tangible, though I imagine it as something in the vein of: "Oh honey, where is this coming from? Mmm, that's good, I love when you lick my neck. Oooh, yes, that feels... wait, what are you doing back- hey! HEY! It is NOT our anniversary, mister!" But such is life.

So in hindsight, not my best move. And also a bit inexplicable, because it's not like Wednesdays are Family Day at Golds Gym, right? I looked around in that darkened room and didn't see a single elementary schooler, so what was with the movie choice? I can understand if they don't want to show Basic Instinct (dark room + Sharon Stone's bajingo = too much temptation for some people), but I think we can eschew Hotel For Dogs and Hannah Montana: The Movie in the future, thanks. Although not Labyrinth, because that would be boss.

Why I'm not allowed to do chores anymore

It should come as no surprise to anyone that Ann's and my already busy lives became infinitely more harried upon the arrival of Molly. Not that either of us resents her because of it for an instant- Ann absolutely adores the little squirt, as do I. But she has made our lives quite a bit busier, and Ann, an anxious person at the best of times, has been feeling stressed out for months now. This is not entirely her fault -- I'm a much more low-key, mellow person who figures stuff will work itself out and am in my element when handling things on the fly. Translated, this means that I have no organizational skills... if I were in charge of our vacations I'd be trying to book our flight online a week ahead of time while yelling on the phone at some poor hotel clerk about why there aren't any rooms available. As a result, by default Ann ends up handling anything in our lives that needs to be scheduled in advance, like doctor's appointments, family get-togethers, ritual sacrifices, etc. (Just kidding, the cult we belong to is totally non-violent, blessed be the Leader.) One notable exception- I do pay the rent every month. And I'm pretty good about getting it out on time, but I'd be lying if I said I'm not occasionally lucky our landlord doesn't assess late fees for a couple of days over.

Anyway, the long and the short of it is that the poor girl is stressed out. So the other night she went out for drinks with a friend on a night when I didn't have class, leaving me to watch Molly. Which I did, but I thought it would be a nice way to ease Ann's burden a bit by also handling some chores that she usually does. She almost always cooks, but I made dinner based on the instructions she gave me to use the hamburger before it went bad; once I was done I washed all of the dishes; and I threw Molly's dirty clothes in the washing machine, then after they were finished threw in a load of Ann's and my clothes, and finally put them in the dryer and tossed in the last batch of clothes. Once that was all done I sat down on the couch, feeling moderately proud of myself. When Ann came home she was similarly pleased and thanked me several times before going to bed.

Cut to the next morning, where in the course of an hour Ann discovered three things:
-The hamburger she had wanted me to use, in the fridge, I had not used; instead I thought she said the freezer and used some hamburger we had frozen in there. The upshot of this is that we don't have the frozen hamburger for whatever we were going to use it for, and the fridge hamburger has now gone bad.
-Comparatively minor, but when washing the lid of the pan I used, I focused solely on the bottom of the lid, the part that actually touched the meat. You'd think that'd be enough, but apparently grease splattered on the top, which I didn't wash. Oops.
And most importantly...
-I forgot about the laundry after throwing in the last load. Which means in the morning we had a dryer full of wrinkled clothes that had to be re-dried, and a washing machine full of wet, possibly mildewy clothes.

And that's why I'm going to run away and join the circus.

No-Longer-Teenage Mutants

This will mean nothing to 99% of you, but whatever, I'm stoked so just roll with it- in May my favorite superhero team of all time, the New Mutants, is returning. (Young Justice is a close second, but Young Justice never had any shapeshifting techno-organic aliens on the team. Instant fail.) This group was the balls back in the day, and even though I only discovered them in college, I've been waiting eight long years for them to reunite. My excitement is hovering somewhere around 110%, partially on the strength of these two sweet-ass covers:





Not much has been revealed about the first storyline, save that it's supposed to involve the return of old friend/enemy Legion (for he is many), but one thing's for certain: it will be awesome. Oh yes, it will.

The definition of mixed emotions:

Being really psyched that you finally got off your lazy butt and got HR to give you a new keycard to the building... and then noticing the heavy wear on it and wondering which of your recently laid-off colleagues it used to belong to. That is what we call "bittersweet" right there.

Different strokes

More grad school travails- after scoring a 75.5 on my Operations Management midterm (higher than the class average, believe it or not), we got a take-home exam today in Finance 2 ("The Bloodening"). It's a case study with pages upon pages of a conversation between two business people about whether to invest in somesuch or another based on projected zzzzzzzzzzz. I called Ann at the class break to tell her we'd gotten it and that the professor had told us to take 20 minutes to look it over. She asked what my initial impressions were, to which I replied that the plot was weak, the characters one dimensional, and the dialogue needed some serious work. Then she had the nerve to ask if I'd spent the entire time since we received the exam thinking of that one, and I mean come on, give me a little credit, it was only like a minute or something. God. She still has a lot to learn about comedy, I'm afraid. However, I'm once again faced with the sad truth that in an English class (see: things I'm actually good at), my noticing of the fact that one of the characters starts three consecutive sentences (and then two more later on) with the phrase "No problem." would be grounds for my immediately passing the exam, or at least win me some points with the professor. Here, I have the sickening feeling it would earn me nothing more than a blank look and a query about whether I had a question.

Sigh. These people may know how to predict financial models when working with a very defined set of data you'd never actually be able to get in real life, but they could stand a few more lessons about creative expression and writing interesting scenarios. Not once have I seen one where the company's stock suddenly plummets because the founder and CEO has a massive coronary while in bed with his mistress, forcing his long-suffering and inexperienced wife to take the reins of the company. And that's just sad.

Exhuming McCarthy

This week we had to fill out self-assessments at work, probably to justify the huge raises we'll no doubt be getting. It was an automated thing, broken up into various different categories. And I started to wonder: do you think the fact that, upon reaching the "Business Acumen" section I immediately thought not of anything work-related, but rather the following lyrics:

Sharpening stones, walking on coals
To improve your business acumen
Enemy sighted, enemy met
I'm addressing the realpolitik
Look who bought the myth
By jingo, buy American

...means I'm really not cut out for business?

Creative nursery rhymes

Of all the new experiences I've encountered since Molly was born four months ago, by far the most amusing has been Ann's ignorance of -- and steadfast refusal to learn -- the correct words to "Hush Little Baby." She can handle the first three and a half verses just fine, but anything after that, forget it... she's totally off the reservation. Where the humor comes in is that instead of just stopping the song there, she'll actually make up lyrics on the fly, like some kind of freestyling rapper trying to lull his daughter to sleep before the crowd boos him off stage. The following is a completely unedited transcription of what I heard her singing to Molly tonight after the squirt woke up crying from a bad dream:

Ann: And if that diamond ring turns brass,
Mama's gonna buy you a looking glass.

And if that looking glass should break,
Mama's gonna buy you a... garden rake.

And if that garden rake don't work,
Mama's gonna buy you a loin of pork.

Me: What the f-?!

Ann: And if that loin of pork's no good,
Mama's gonna bring you Little Red Riding Hood

And if Red Riding Hood runs away,
Mama will have to save it for another day.

Me: Okay, you need to stop now.


Give her credit, though- girl can improvise. I mean, "loin of pork"?