Addendum to nutty

I went to say goodbye to my insane student, took a sideways glance at one of his recopied handwritten emails, and saw that he had added backwards circumflexes to a couple of his Cs. He is not French.

Requiem for a nutjob

My insane student worker leaves on Tuesday. I've resisted writing much about him because I haven't wanted to die huddled beneath my desk in a vain effort to dodge his gunfire. But I've concluded that he probably doesn't possess enough computer savvy to track down my blog. (He just learned about the concept of a desktop trash can, after all, which would explain why five thousand documents have dotted his screen all semester.)

So I will now take the time to bid him proper adieu by recalling some highlights of his office sojourn:

-He rocks. Literally. Every day, all day long, he violently rocks back and forth in his chair while clutching his elbows.

-He's from Massachusetts and frequently wears Patriots and Red Sox garb. The day after the Pats won the Super Bowl, I said to him, "Great game yesterday, huh?" Come to find out that a. he didn't know the Patriots had won the Super Bowl because b. he wasn't aware that a Super Bowl had been played the day before. The fact that there was a sports entity called "the New England Patriots" also seemed to throw him for a loop.

-Every day he removes his shoes and socks, and almost every day he massages his bare feet.

-His primary responsibility is to help me compile a Word document comprised mostly of emails. His method, once he receives a forwarded email from me, is to copy down the email by hand, then retype his handwritten version of the email into the Word document. When I've explained the copy-and-paste phenomenon to him, his facial expression has all but accused me of Wiccanism.

-All of his email titles end in three exclamation points; all of his email body text is written in caps. Most of his emails are titled, "Hello, this is (firstname lastname)!!!"

-He works three days a week but frequently shows up on his off-days to pass along crucial information to me -- information like "I'll be five minutes late to work tomorrow." When I've told him that email or a phone call would be a more appropriate way to communicate such information, he's demurred, explaining that he only lives about a mile away.

So long, nutty. The recommendation's in the mail.

Yo Holmes, smell ya later

I should add that I think Li'l Miss Joey Potter had no idea what she was getting into when she agreed to join lips 'n' hips with Tom "ADD, homosexuality and Scientology don't mix" Cruise. I feel sorry for her.

I hate Toprah

Like most others who waste mental energy on celeb affairs, I was transfixed by Tom Cruise's puppy-dog-on-crack shenanigans on "Oprah" this week. Had he defecated and then reingested his poo as a token of his Holmes affection, I wouldn't have blinked.

But far more bothersome to me was his take on race issues as related to his biracial son. He trotted out the embarassingly reductionist "we're all a part of the same race -- the human race" cliche and was firm that race was "never discussed" in his household. That's nice. After all, every adoptive parent should work overtime to deny a child any sense of his place in the world.

Special kudos should go to Oprah for "uh-huhing" this crap. Guess it's hard to prioritize race relations when you're busy saving the world one free Pontiac Sunbird at a time.

Pee wees' big adventures

Is there anything more endearing than the littlest of little leagues? I walked by a tiny-kids baseball game a little while ago and saw the ump call time... to tie the batter's shoelaces.

Gee, didn't Cat Stevens write a song about this?

Saturday night and I'm home alone. Home alone and reminiscing about Saturday nights in college, towards the end of my university tenure when the need was no longer there to go out every Saturday night. Some Saturdays I would stay in, listening to Teenage Fanclub or Liz Phair or whatever (yes, it was 1995) and either emailing or talking to my upstate New York counterpart for an hour or three. Those were nice nights.

Tonight I'm sitting around wishing someone would call me. Someone with whom I could have a long conversation before drifting off to sleep. Current or long-lost friend, it doesn't matter. I miss those sorts of conversations.

A capital time, simply capital

Hubby's off to D.C. this weekend, someplace I haven't been in ages. My fondest memories of the city revolve around my best friend from college, the D.C. local with the Ivy League education and the day-to-day savvy of a doorknob.

As just one example: Post-graduation, I drove this friend and all of her possessions down to D.C. in a Ryder truck (she was too nervous to drive it herself). We had just hit the city limits when she realized that she had absolutely no clue how to get to her house. She managed to get us downtown and had me taking right turns from far left lanes for a while; then she had me driving in circles around the Capitol building for a good hour. In a Ryder truck. One month after the Oklahoma City bombing.

Eventually she directed me to the airport, figuring that she would remember how to get from there to her house. We circled the airport a few times because she kept missing the exit signs. Finally we took an exit that put us on 95 north heading back from whence we came. Fifteen hours into a drive that should have taken eight, we called her dad from a pay phone and got a bemused chuckle and exhaustive directions.

Here's to you, Stace. May your first born inherit all of your book brilliance and none of your street senselessness.

Hey Boo Boo, how 'bout a vacuum?

Last night was one long frustrating evening of yoga. My class was full of beautiful, pliant actress types all looking to outdo each other with the most regal headstand. I, meantime, fell down several times and was eventually abandoned by the (beautiful, pliant) instructor for being so physically immalleable. I spent the last half of class depressed and self-conscious, mentally repeating to myself a few times over, "You're no yogi."

Then, driving home, I passed this old man who sells vacuums out of his garage every weekday evening. Every night I drive by and every night he sits alone, but last night, for whatever reason, his business was booming. I was so happy for him I could have burst.

Moral of the story: Inner peace can be found outside of the yoga studio.

Sidenote: I sure do wish I could manage one stupid lousy headstand.

With age does not come wisdom

I just went to rub my eye but forgot to close it first. Poke.

Running very hot and awfully cold

Apparently my new office is actually a lab chamber designed to recreate the bodily effects of menopause. Fifteen minutes ago I was curled up like a pill bug trying to protect myself from the AC's artic blasts; now my deodorant's efficacy is being called into question.

I want to run out and get something to drink, but I'm flummoxed: do I get a latte or a Slushie? And why does there not exist a liquid version of the McDLT?

Still in my early thirties, still in my early thirties....

I turn 32 today. So far so good. Most of my friends have remembered and already called or written, I have no pressing work today and a hot dinner date tonight, AND I got carded last night (while my younger companion did not).

Still, my god, 32.... I think I officially hate getting older. Plus, could 32 really top 31, the age at which I got married AND saw the Red Sox win the World Series? Time will tell, I s'pose.

Two world travelers, one (tiny) brain

On my family's recent trip to southern Africa, we spent a day and a half at Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe. The falls themselves were gorgeous, majestic, transfixing and menacing.

And yet, being an idiot, I stood next to the falls and couldn't stop thinking about that episode of "Woody Woodpecker" where Woody keeps trying to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel. Mostly I was thinking about that boat of tourists at the bottom of the falls and how they would cheer every time the Irish cop went over the falls instead. When I was little, I didn't understand that the tourists were in raincoats; instead, I thought the boat was full of monks.

Finally I couldn't take it anymore and mentioned the episode to my sister. She immediately quoted the cop, brogue and all: "'So, going over the falls in a barrel, eh?'"

"Exactly. And remember how we thought the tourists in the raincoats were actually monks?"

"Wait... they weren't?"

I really, really love my sister.

He thinks it's candy

Today I was waiting at a four-way intersection with three other cars, and the guy whose turn it was to go just sat there because, well, he was picking his nose. So the rest of us sat there watching him pick his nose, until finally he finished up, flicked away the incriminating evidence and pulled forward.

Does no one pick their nose in the safety of a darkened bedroom anymore?

It's no "Dewey Defeats Truman," but it's just as memorable

Just went to check the baseball scores on ESPN.com and saw this "news" headline:

"Rusty Wallace flips Tony Danza's go-kart."

I will still be smiling when I go to sleep tonight.

Ha ha crazy

There are so many different types of crazies in the world: old-age crazies, drug-addled crazies, academic crazies, crazy for the sake of being crazy crazies.

Last night I was waiting for a take-out order and got cornered by a crazy whose pedigree was difficult to ascertain. Young, male, fairly pleasant-looking, he seemed perfectly lucid for the first few minutes of our interaction.

"Hey, do you mind if I sit here?" (I was leaning against an empty table.)

"No, go ahead." Not-uncomfortable silence for a while, then:

"I don't know why I'm even bothering to eat this burrito when I can't even taste it."

"That right?"

"Yeah, my dentist made me wash with peroxyl mouthwash and now I can't taste ANYTHING. Huh huh."

"Ah."

"I asked my dermatologist about it and he said it once happened to HIM too but that it was PERMANENT. That better not happen to ME. Huh huh."

"Ah."

"I'm telling you, if your dentist ever tries to make you use peroxyl mouthwash, you tell him NO WAY. Huh huh."

"Ah."

"And let me tell you, this hasn't been my week. Huh huh. The Arclight Theater across the street is showing Empire Strikes Back tomorrow night and I bought tickets and now I can't GO because my family is supposed to take a VACATION together! You see, I'm a really big fan of the movies...."

Ah. So you're that kind of crazy.

The frogurt is also cursed

Woke up this morning and went to acupuncture, which again did nothing to treat the problem I was there to treat.

Went to breakfast, ordered sweet when I wanted salty and left most of my breakfast on my plate.

Went to the dry cleaners to pick up a shirt. "Oh, you took a huge blue stain and turned it yellow? Great. Here's five dollars."

Got home in time to watch the Celtics shoot about 12 percent from the field in the first half. They have two quarters to turn this day around for me.

In advance honor of Mother's Day

I have to give my mom 100 percent credit for this one. When the Sox won the ALCS last year, she called me almost immediately to say that The Curse hadn't been lifted but rather had shifted. She predicted that come 2005, it would be the Yankees suffering misfortune after misfortune and indignity after indignity.

Don't bet against a $200 million payroll, I replied. But flash forward six months and lo and behold, my mother is a soothsayer. So I've amended my position: Don't bet against mom.

Sorry, got serious there for a second

A close advisor suggested I take down my long-winded post about work that went up yesterday. For the record, I never write about or reference anyone who I know reads this blog unless I have something positive to say; nevertheless, there's probably no real place for confessional material on this site. I'll stick mostly to the snark and the superficial self-mockery from now on.

On a scale of 1 to 10, this salad sucks

As Meaghan set about making herself some lunch this morning, she decided to clear out the refrigerator by making a kitchen-sink salad. In went suspect spinach, some iffy bamboo shoots and a few fishy tomatoes. Next came the canned olives, canned artichoke hearts and canned hearts of palm, all dripping in can juice. What else, what else, thought Meaghan. Ah yes, that leftover goat cheese. That won't immediately melt into all the can juice sitting at the bottom of the Tupperware container, thereby creating a disgusting milky residue that will coat everything and render an already questionable salad virtually inedible some hours later. No sir.

I need a hamburger.

Pot, come over here. I want you to meet Kettle.

A little while back, I ran across the column of an old co-worker; in it, s/he railed against the banality of blogs. His/her central complaint seemed to be that the vast majority of bloggers are self-consumed.

Fair enough (and duh), except... back when I knew him/her, this person found a way to insert the pronoun "I" into everything s/he wrote, be it a movie review, a restaurant recap or a news brief. And as an after-hours acquaintance, this person staggered me with the breadth, depth and, well, banality of his/her own self-absorption.

So I reference Biz Markie's "Just a Friend" when I say that after reading his/her column, I was very amused.

The Mustachioed Moralizer vs. The Suffering Sycophant

Dr. Phil interviews Pat O'Brien on a CBS prime time special tonight. A thousand washed-up pop singers could expose a thousand sagging breasts and not cast a ripple on the mile-deep pond of immoral sludge that this TV hour represents. And you can bet your britches that I'll be a'watchin'!

The mind reels

Right now I'm tracking both a Celtics game and Red Sox game online (while also trying to write a news story due tomorrow, but that's neither here nor there). Indiana just scored the first field goal of the basketball game and my initial reaction was "Fuck! How'd they score two runs so quickly?"

Have I mentioned that it sucks to be an East Coast sports fan on the West Coast, trapped in an office that requires I put in face time until well past 6 pm?

I weep for the future

Flying back from a weekend jaunt to Boston, the hubby and I were seated in front of two Harvard pre-froshes, girl and boy, who were returning from the school's pre-frosh weekend. These two were, to put it simply, comic gold. Some nuggets of wisdom:

On alcohol
Boy: I don't drink. I mean, I don't want to, like, open Pandora's Box.

On drugs
Girl: Like, if you want to do drugs and be stupid, that's your business. But if you smoke pot IN YOUR DORM, at, like, 3 AM, that's just dumb and uncalled for.

On music
Girl: And then we went to the A Cappella Jam and....
Boy: Oh my God, wasn't that SO awesome?

On humor and history
Boy: The guy I stayed with, he had like the greatest sense of humor. Like, he did this one thing where he put this drawing in his window so you could only see it from the outside and [pause for laughter] it was this ink outline of [pause for laughter] the guy who shot President Garfield!
Girl: Oh, you mean Charles Guiteau? I know who shot all the presidents.

On isolation
Girl: I mean, people in high school don't, like, hate me, but because my grades are SO good I think they're, like, intimidated by me.