Response-able

I’ve been spending a lot of time training Dingo Girl lately, with mixed results.  She is smart and learns quickly.  She enjoys learning new things, but after she’s learned something new, when you give her the command she looks at you like, “It was fun learning that, but don’t expect me to just do it every friggin’ time you snap your fingers, be-otch.” I’ll write more about this later, but the biggest problem is with Dingo Girl’s response times.  She’ll do something, especially if there is a treat at stake, but don’t expect for her to rush about it.  Yeah, she’ll come, but she has an itch she has to scratch first and maybe she wants to check to see if there is anything in the garbage can along the way. 

You may have noticed, if you’ve been following this blog, that the blog itself was experiencing this very same problem.  You would innocently point your browser to asiwassaying.com and then your browser would wait and wait and wait.  The website would eventually serve up the page, but it had an itch it had to scratch first and maybe it wanted to check to see if there was anything in the garbage can along the way.  In the time it took the page to load, you could have prepared and filed your taxes.  On a particularly slooow day, your refund would have already arrived and you would find yourself with enough time to lounge on a sun-drenched beach in Antigua sipping umbrella drinks and checking out the cabana boy before the first As I Was Saying pixel hit your screen.  This site is undergoing improvements and the first one I wanted to address was response time.  If you are like me I truly feel sorry for you when it comes to cyberspace, you know the angst any delay brings.  If a page doesn’t load within .2 nanoseconds after I click on a link, I twirl my hair, gnash my teeth, and bemoan the fact that valuable seconds of my already jam packed day are being sucked up by the cyberspace gremlins.  The option of backing away from the computer just does not exist.  I am convinced that whatever is on the other side of the computer screen fighting to make its way through is absolutely vital to my existence.  Vital! 

But you, dearest readers reader Mom, will have to wait no more. 

Did you notice the speedy response time today?  Did it impress you?  Did it make you happy?  Did it make you want to add As I Was Saying to your Google Reader?  If so, take a second, add me to your Google Reader and then come back and I will tell you how Mr. Dingo saved the day and how my old web host is now on my shit list along with idiots who wear Uggs in the summer, Rachel Ray, and people who unwrap hard candy during the tearjerker scenes in the movie theater.  (Oh, if we ever meet again, “Mr. I’m Too Manly To Cry During The Notebook But I Happen To Have A Brand New DVD With Me That I Am Dying To Open,” I’ll show you what it feels like to be a Twizzler.) What was I saying?  Oh, add me to your Google Reader.  Go on, I’ll wait.

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Mr. Dingo is not only a superfantastic cook, my own resident comedian, and the Dingo household late night, torrential rain, blinding snow, stars are not in alignment dogwalker, he’s also my very own personal IT guy.  Yep, all of the knowledge but none of the khakis with white socks and black shoes.  A few days ago when I started to receive emails from you gently notifying me that Social Security would be defunct by the time my page loaded, I asked Mr. Dingo to figure out what the heck was going on.  He said that it had something to do with [insert technical computer jargon here that I don’t understand even though Mr. Dingo explained it four eight twice] and our web host.  He contacted the web host via email because we all know trying to get in touch with a live customer service agent these days is like trying to squeeze into those chic winter pants you bought last fall that were so comfortable in the dressing room.  Their website promised a response within 24 hours.  Two days later, two whole days later, we still had not heard back from them.  When we figured moving at the speed of a garden slug was their standard operating procedure, we switched web hosts. 

The transfer has not been without its own adventures.  My posts did not transfer verbatim.  The punctuation apparently decided that it liked the old web host better, especially the commas and the periods.  With all the pausing and stopping they do, they found nothing wrong with the old ways.  So instead of ellipses, apostrophes, and em dashes, you saw ¤, ×, or ð.  No, I wasn’t trying to send coded messages.  There are no fragile vials filled with doomsday secrets; there are no creepy robed men; there is no flabby Tom Hanks in a bad toupee.  It was merely a freaky transfer issue that has since been resolved through my meticulous attention to detail and the magic of “find and replace.” So far, the only other issue we’ve encountered was brought to my attention by Lunanik from Secrets of a Black Heart, who emailed me to let me know the comments weren’t working properly.  Thanks Lunanik!  Your blog name to the contrary, your heart is not so black, merely a shade of cerebral grey.  Now, if I can just get Technorati to feature me on the front page, all will be fine in the world.  In the meantime, comment away, folks!  Comment away!

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Cold Turkey, Wild Turkey, It’s All the Same to Me

Sweet Baby Jesus, the last two weeks have driven me to drink!  More!  They’ve driven me to drink more.  I have to say that my good friends Jim Beam and Jack Daniels have been very supportive during this time.  Who was it that decided that I should quit smoking the same week that PMS was ratcheting up my moodiness to unprecedented levels?  Oh yeah, that was me.  Freakin’ moron. 

I decided to quit smoking while Mr. Dingo was in Miami two weeks ago to save him from the effects of my nicotine withdrawal wrath.  The first three days were miserable.  I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t concentrate, I couldn’t think of anything but not smoking.  At night, Marlboro 100s danced through my restless sleep like the ridiculous animated concession stand characters that are shown right before the previews in the movie theater.  Does anyone else find it disturbing that these advertisements show a soda, box of candy, and a bag of popcorn going to the concession stand to buy a soda, box of candy, and a bag of popcorn to eat during the show? 

Speaking of movies, I went to see The Other Boleyn Girl during the great Dingo Smoke-Out.  When I see someone in a movie smoke, it usually makes me want to light one up myself.  Say what you will about the anti-smoking lobby’s efforts to remove smoking scenes from PG-13 movies, but I think we have already established that I am a sucker for blatant advertising.  However, the only thing smokin’ in The Other Boleyn Girl is Eric Bana. 

On Day Four, I sorted through Cigarette Mountain (as we affectionately call the pile of cigarette stubs that overflow the cigarette bucket on our terrace) looking for any stub that hadn’t been smoked down to the filter.  It was a low moment, and not one of which I am particularly proud.  My frantic search was futile.  In anticipation of the great smoke-out, I sucked everything down to the gold stripe on the filter.  I was wondering why it was getting harder not to smoke instead of easier.

Day Five.  I was bitter about Mr. Dingo’s Miami junket.  I imagined him in the lush, color-saturated tropics basking by the pool in shades and suntan oil surrounded by long… lean… creamy… cigarettes.  And ashtrays.  I swear, by Day Five if we had any dirty ashtrays in the apartment I would’ve been licking them like a Tootsie Roll Lollipop. 

Day Six was so much better.  Mr. Dingo was returning home, Dingo Girl and I had a great session with her trainer (more about that in another post), and all was right in the world.  I think I have this thing beat.  Not counting the time I stalked the gaggle of women down Madison Avenue just to inhale their second hand smoke, I hadn’t touched a cigarette in six days. 

Day Seven.  Woohoo!  March 17th.  One week without cigarettes.  The entire world threw a party for me.  You may have passed by a few of the celebrations.  There were streamers, crazy costumes, and even parades!  NYC threw a huge parade for me up Fifth Avenue.  Mayor Bloomberg couldn’t attend because he was in Albany inhaling the fumes from Elliott Spitzer’s political career.  But dear readers, reader, Mom, I’m glad you were there for my big day. 

Today marks the second week since I’ve had a smoke.  The second week was much easier than the first, but it was no picnic.  There’s been a lot of stress this week with quitting my job (yes, I told the lying bastards to go fuck themselves), grading papers, grading mid-terms, working on my thesis, training Dingo Girl, creating lesson plans, blah, blah, blah, and there have been times when I just wanted a cigarette to help calm my nerves. But I resisted the temptation.  Instead of sitting out on the terrace smoking a cigarette, I sat on our bench hand in hand with my two greatest allies in this no-smoking campaign.  Jim and Jack.  God bless ‘em.

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Making It Work

I’ve used Mr. Dingo’s absence this week to catch up on my reality TV and fashion make-over shows.  They are not my usual fair.  No, really.  They are more like guilty pleasures that I watch when I need some mind candy.  Mr. Dingo tries to steer me away from these shows because I am living proof that entertainment as advertising works.  I can resist subliminal advertising but blatantly yell, “Buy this!” while holding up a pair of black suede pumps and I’ll respond, “Okay!” After these fashion shows I am convinced that everything I wear is not appropriate for my body type, personality, age, or color palette.  And the plastic surgery shows?  I think Mr. Dingo is looking into installing a V-chip on our cable box.  I can’t watch one of these shows without thinking that a little diet and exercise…and liposuction…and an eye lift…and butt booster…are completely acceptable ways to continue to eat Peeps and lose a few pounds.  Here are a few of my favorites:

How do I look? Finola Hughes, the Barbara Walters of the fashion make-over realm, likes to dig deep to the psyche to find the real reasons their target for the week wears paisley culottes with a plaid satin blouse.  The target always ends up in tears.  I don’t have a deep dark secret. I’m just convinced that I’ll fit back into my size sixes in a few months and I hate shopping.  My friend Sunny is my only shopping buddy. She has a way of making me enjoy shopping.  It’s not a leisurely waste of the day expedition but a “wham, bam, buy that m’am” extreme sport.  She has an eye for fashion, taste, and simplicity.  And speed.  We can hit Old Navy, Anthropology, Ann Taylor, and Urban Outfitters in the time it takes for a governor to be brought down by a sex scandal.  Maybe even faster.

What Not To Wear. I know what not to wear.  Anything in my closet.

Tim Gunn’s Guide to Style. This show is terrible.  I’m disappointed in Mr. Gunn but I’ve taken his words to heart. His words from Project Runway. 

“Make it Work” has become my motto as I try to find something to wear in the morning.  I fumble and grumble through my closet and pick out what’s clean, non-wrinkled, and can fit without camel-toe and gaping buttons. 

Make it Work to make it to work.  That issue may soon be moot.  My boss has decided, in spite of the agreement we had when I accepted the job nine months ago, that she wants me to work longer hours and take on more responsibility with no increase in pay.  It’s not in the budget.  What?  I already work for peanuts…wait, let me rephrase, I went grocery shopping earlier this week and I saw the price of peanuts.  Those things are expensive!  It’s more like I work for…dryer lint…yes, that’s right, dryer lint.  Actually, even if they would increase my pay from dryer lint to, let’s say, belly button fuzz, I still wouldn’t be able to stay.  Extending my hours beyond the 35-hour week I already have would conflict with my teaching schedule.  I love teaching.  With teaching assignments so hard to come by, I’m not about to jeopardize my placement.

Believe me, I like my job and I do it well, often going above and beyond the call of duty.  She needed her suit picked up from Bloomingdale’s during the only snow storm we’ve had this year.  I did it.  She wanted a venti-white mocha-skim-no whip-wet-cappuccino and the cappuccino machine at the closest Starbucks was broken.  I walked eight blocks to the next Starbucks.  In the rain.  Without an umbrella.  Other NYC neighborhoods have a Starbucks on every corner and sometimes even just across the street from each other. Our next closest Starbucks is in another zip code.  Another time zone.  Another dimension.  I can’t even tell you how many times she has had me traipse all over the city trying to locate a particular type of tulip, orchid, Japanese coin plant, or shrub of the moment to thank a colleague.  In the rain.  She seems to like assigning field trips when it’s raining.  I’m rather fortunate that I haven’t electrocuted myself as I typed her thank you notes and meeting minutes with my hair dripping onto the keyboard.  Did I tell you that I was an office assistant and not a personal assistant?  Yeah, sometimes I think she forgets that too.

She’s actually not that bad to work for.  She’s certainly no Devil Wears Prada.  She’s more like Mrs. Garrett Wears St. Johns.  In addition to Mrs. Garrett, my office has an interesting cast of characters.  There’s Juicy, our self-titled fashionista who thinks that Juicy Couture is actually that and can’t stop talking about her Juicy perfume, her Juicy purse, her Juicy jewelry and anything else she can append the Juicy name to.  Sorry, hon.  I don’t care who made your velour track suit.  Inappropriate for the office.  Oh, and Juicy, consistently coming in at 11am and then asking your already overworked office mates to help you with your work is not going over well.  How you get away with it I’ll never know.  I suppose it’s because your Juicy perfume is so strong that no one can get close enough to actually talk to you about your lack of punctuality.  Mrs. Garrett could send an email to you but I don’t think you are off Facebook or Match.com long enough to check your office email.  Then there’s Passive-Aggressive Pat.  I call her Pap for short.  She’s as intrusive as a gyno exam and as warm as a speculum.  Weezy, Sassy, and The Disappearing Man round out the crew.  There are at least ten other people in my office but they’re all normal.

There was so much to tell you.  Academia is not the civil environment you would think.  There’s enough backstabbing and political maneuvering to keep Wonkette blogging for days.  I will have to save my workplace musings for my tell-all memoir. Teaching and working on my thesis will keep me plenty busy, but now that I’ll never move from dryer lint to peanuts, I will have to put off wardrobe updates and plastic surgery for another day.  No matter, I can make it work.

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Was My Face Red!

Amanda at Shamelessly Sassy is hosting an Embarrass Yourself contest.  Since I embarrass myself on a daily basis my problem was not finding something to write about but narrowing down the options.  With Mr. Dingo vacationing in meetings in Miami I called Mom for suggestions.  She took to the task a little too enthusiastically.

Mom:  What about the time you fell off the stage in front of your entire high school?
Me:  Oh, that’s a good one!  I’ll write about –
Mom:  How about the time you almost drowned at the Sunday School picnic!
Me:  Mom!  That’s not funny, I almost died!
Mom:  It’s funny in hindsight, dear.
Me:  Um, not really.
Mom:  Oh! Remember when you wiped out on your rollerblades in front of the –
Me:  Mom! I told you to never mention that again.  You’re not being very helpful.  This is Embarrass Yourself for $100, not Embarrass Yourself So That You Can Never Go Out In Public Again.

We ended the conversation shortly thereafter with my realization that I am more accident prone than I cared to acknowledged.  I am a magnet for embarrassing spills (both liquid and gravitational) and while I am the only person I know whose yoga has not made them lithe and limber, I have the unenviable ability to insert my foot into my mouth with regularity.  I finally decided which embarrassing moment to post to Amanda’s web site.  You should take a look at some of the other entries.  Hilarious!  You can even post your own.  The contest ends today.  Here’s my entry:

Dingo Girl and I had just moved into a 5th floor walk-up and my legs hadn’t adjusted to the compulsory workout.  Around mid-afternoon on the second day we were there Dingo Girl needed to go for a walk.  I decided to multi-task and take down empty boxes and a bag of trash.  It was awkward getting down the stairs with the boxes under one arm and the trash bag in the other with Dingo Girl’s leash in my teeth.  We got to the street and had to go just around the corner to get rid of my garbage.  People waved and smiled as we walked by.  I figured we probably made an amusing convoy and was happy to see that people in my new neighborhood were friendly and had a sense of humor.  Dingo Girl, for once, did not try to dart ahead.  I could hear the click-clack of her nails on the sidewalk and it sounded as if she was happily prancing behind me.  I was so proud of my girl.  We’d been working on “heel” but Dingo Girl was more like, “hell no,” so this obedient stroll down the sidewalk was a major improvement. 

We made it to the trash bin which was on a busy side street and I dumped my things on top of the heap.  Taking the leash out of my mouth, I turned around to praise Dingo Girl profusely for her good behavior.  I just about died.  Apparently, Dingo Girl decided to “help” me take things downstairs and grabbed something from the dirty clothes pile on the way out.  My bright turquoise blue thong underwear.  No wonder people were smiling and waving — oh no!  They weren’t waving!  They had been pointing!  I made a hasty grab for my unmentionables which instantly turned into her favorite games: keep away and tug of war.  We continued to make a spectacle on the street with me trying to be as discreet as possible…”drop it, drop it”…yes, one more command we needed to work on.  I managed to get my hands on the delicate fabric but as soon as I had a firm grip on it the waistband broke knocking me a bit off balance which made me drop the leash.  This was Dingo Girl’s cue for mayhem.  She never moved more than four feet from me but she darted about like a hummingbird on crack waving her trophy.  It was at this time that a police officer who was walking to his patrol car parked near the trash bins walked up behind me and laughingly asked if I needed help.  Before I could say no and that I had it all under control (wasn’t it obvious?), Dingo Girl walked up to the police officer and promptly dropped the shredded thong at his feet.

I wondered if it was too late to break the lease and move somewhere far, far away.

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Me and My Peeps

Mr. Dingo left for a week-long business trip.  In Miami.  Yes, Miami.  I’m not feeling too bad for him.  It’s 40 degrees here.  It’s in the mid-70s in Miami.  Yeah, not feeling for you Mr. Dingo.  Part of me wanted to make this trip with him, but the other part of me, the part that can’t fit into my sassy pink bikini, is glad that I don’t have to put my ass-ets on display right now.  Mr. Dingo is a fantastic cook.  When he’s gone my dining options are limited to salads and sandwiches.  This is the perfect time to prepare for our trip to Vegas.  I’m going to use this week of salad and sandwiches to kick start my healthy living plan.  You know, the plan I talked about on Sunday.  You did read Sunday’s post didn’t you?  No?  Okay, I’ll give you a few minutes to scroll down and read it.

…Your’re back.  That was quick. Okay, so as part of my healthy living plan I’m cutting back on the sweets.  I’ve got a mad sweet tooth.  In the interest of full disclosure, Mr. Dingo left a Snickers Bar on his desk.  I snickered as I ate it.  But that’s it, I promise.  No more sweets.  Except for Peeps.  I love Peeps.  Those damn yellow chicks are sugary, marshmallowy, teeth-aching goodness.  Not only has the calendar screwed up my sleep with Daylight Savings Time, but it’s placed Easter and my healthy living plan in direct confrontation.  Good v. Evil.  Just between you and me, Satan would have had an easier time tempting Jesus in the wilderness if he had just offered him some Peeps. 

To thwart the confectionary allure of yellow chicks and pink bunnies, I stocked up on fruits and veggies yesterday.  I may pick at the fruit but I’m pretty confident that the carrots and red peppers will live to be an overripe old age in my rotter.  Admit it; you have a rotter in your fridge as well.  Oh, the Maytag and Kenmore PR machine may call it a “crisper”, but we all know that once those veggies hit that drawer, they never see the light of day.

I’ve also incorporated exercise into my healthy living plan.  I had to pick my dropped jaw off the floor at least one hundred times while watching High School Reunion.  That’ll do wonders for the abs.  Have you seen this train wreck show?  In a nutshell, fifteen high school stereotypes (the jock, the outcast, the spoiled girl, the popular girl, etc) are plucked from the 1987 class of a Dallas, Texas high school and whisked away to a beautiful mansion in Hawaii.  Drama ensues.  The drama is about as manufactured as my Peeps and not nearly as tasty.  You can click here if you want to know more but believe me, you don’t. 

What makes people attend their high school reunions?  I know I went to mine just to show people how much I had changed from the skinny, insecure, big-haired, brainiac they knew.  Isn’t that a dumb reason to spend two hundred dollars on a dress, more bucks on a plane ticket, and a sleepless night?  Why in the world did I care about the opinions of people I hadn’t seen in 10 years a long time?  I didn’t love high school but I didn’t hate it either.  I was definitely glad to move on.  I hadn’t thought about most of my former classmates in years, yet when the reunion notice came I broke out into a cold sweat.  Had I changed enough I wondered?  Was it a change for the better?  Will the pretty girl have just gotten prettier, making my carefully applied make-up look like spackle on a monkey?  Will the quarterback still ignore me, perhaps bumping my arm and spilling my watered down drink all over my new dress as he launches for a chest bump with his former wide receiver?  Will they think that I am still the brainiac and ask me questions to test me?  By the power of Peeps, I hoped not.  In the intervening years, I’d replaced vital, need to know facts about chemical formulas, historical dates, and word problems involving trains leaving stations and widget production with useless trivia:  elephants are the only land mammals that can’t jump, a mosquito has 47 teeth, Da Vinci spent 12 years painting Mona Lisa’s lips.  I could go on and on.  This info won’t help me on my English Subject Matter GRE, but if Alex Trebek calls, I may be able to forgo Ph.D. work altogether.  But I digress….

I went to my reunion.  It conformed to every stereotype.  The pretty girl was working on her third divorce and prowling the room to find her next sugar daddy.  The quarterback had reached manatee proportions.  He and the rest of the team sat in the corner nursing their beers and their broken dreams with constant replays of high school games.  The nerd made lots of money in the dot com boom.  What is the brainiac supposed to become?  I don’t know.  I think I defied their expectations.  I was voted “Most Improved”.  Most Improved?  Most Improved!? It was meant as a compliment and years ago I would’ve basked in the title and hoped it came with a glittering tiara.  But as an adult, Most Improved, my ass.  Who were these people to keep judging me and why did I fall for it again?  Hadn’t I learned anything in the intervening years?  Yes, I had.  And so I left the reunion snagging some chocolate-covered strawberries on the way out.  Snagging all the chocolate-covered strawberries on the way out.  Did you know that a strawberry is not a true berry because its approximately 200 seeds are on the outside?

So I watched High School Reunion, smug and snug.  Snug.  The tightening of my waistband as I performed another waist bend to scoop my eyes off the floor after a particularly robust eye roll — really, this show is that ridiculous — brought my arrogance crashing to the ground.  My healthy living plan — exercise and eating right was really a mini-plan (and, you may have noticed, not a very successful one).  A plan to make me sleek and bikini ready to sit by a pool in Vegas to be judged thin and pretty by people I don’t know.  And yes, this time I want to be judged Most Improved.  Apparently, my Peeps, in all their artificial flavors and coloring are the only things keeping it real. 

This hypocrisy is brought to you by the letter “H”.

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