The movie was just...meh

After much anticipation, I saw Sex and the City, the movie, yesterday after work. I thought I was going to love it! I was prepared to love it, I expected to love it... I was kind of disappointed and it was really long...2 hours and 22 minutes.
The HBO episodes were a half hour each, so this was like watching almost five of them in a row. I have watched three of them in a row before, but never five, and I think it was just too much for me. It felt really long, the character of Samantha basically had only enough storyline for one of the 30 minute TV episodes, and Carrie's story dragged way beyond the point where I cared anymore. I enjoyed some moments, some jokes, Charlotte, and the fashion (a montage of Carrie trying on gowns and another of her trying on her old clothes are just awesome!) but not enough.

There were hordes of homogenous women at the theater (possibly because of the area we were in, in addition to the movie itself), and about three men. DD was one of them, which was pretty funny. The theater smelled like pancakes because they serve caramel popcorn there. At first I was annoyed that the screen and actual theater were so small, because that can be charming and you accept it at an older theater, like the Piedmont Theater in the East Bay, but this is a brand new theater, so it was actually recently designed like that.

M.E.H.

The Men of Sex and the City

Tomorrow I go to see Sex in the City, the movie. We already have tickets for a 7:00 showing, right after work, and we're going to a theater walking distance from our work, so nothing can possibly go wrong! (Knock on wood.) My three favorite men from Sex and the City were Smith Jarrod, because he was pretty much flawless in looks and in character, and because he was open to dating older women. Hey, I take that very seriously now that I'm friggin' thirty-five.
The deliciously bitchy stylist Anthony Marentino was definitely one of my favorites. Every time he was in an episode it was so good. He was the bitch I want to be in my next life (just as soon as I finish my tenure as POLLYANNA REINCARNATE); to just act out and say what I'm REALLY thinking at any given moment; to be mean 'cause it can feel good.

My number one favorite man from Sex in the City is Stanford Blatch. He was adorable and loyal and insecure, and just so cheerful and perky. I'm so excited to see the movie tomorrow!

Felt Sew Good

I love Etsy; an online marketplace for handmade things. I got two pretty little felt roses, one red and one purple, from Felt Sew Good at Etsy. They arrived beautifully wrapped in pretty tissue, and I've already worn them several times over the past few days!

Another novel I recently read, from the ever-increasing category "Chick Lit", was Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl by author Tracey Quan. It's entertaining. It's summer beach reading, but it goes into interesting issues of sexual politics, attitudes about sex, attitudes about feminity, fetishes and power more than you might expect it to. The basic premise is that protagonist Nancy is a highly paid prosititute living in New York City and juggling a fiance who thinks she's a part time copywriter. The protagonist is Chinese American, which is unusual, because the novel had mass appeal and did so well that it's becoming a film! Even more unusual--the protagonist's family is from Trinidad. Like that other beloved Manhattan girl, Carrie Bradshaw from Sex and the City, Nancy can't save money, and though she earns plenty, she spends it all on shoes, purses and very expensive underwear. Also, like Carrie Bradshaw, the subplots involve a gaggle of archetypal women friends and archetypal men.

Several years old already, the book now has two sequels.

In a nutshell, I could have skipped it, but I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. Also, if you choose to read this novel, it will only take you a few days, max.

Daughters of the North by Sarah Hall

I read this novel a few days ago. It's a dystopian near-future story about a woman who escapes a society gone bad to live with an outlaw group of women who live "off the map" and who farm so well they're self-sustaining, even flourishing. Meanwhile everyone within the system is eating food out of cans and having their lives, work, and bodies carefully controlled and monitored. This is an awesome novel. It reminded me a little of The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood. I'm going to read Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy. The woman who did my tattoo recommended it to me years ago and I never read it, but always meant to!

Upcoming USPS Stamp: Bette Davis

The USPS is releasing a Bette Davis 42 cent stamp soon! YEAH! I love Bette Davis. The only thing better would be if they used a photo of her as Baby Jane for the stamp.

Other upcoming stamps that I'm excited about include
a sheet of Ray and Charles Eames stamps, and the holidays ones include a set of four scarrrry looking nutcrackers. They're nightmare nutcrackers. I love 'em!

The Metamorphosis: Chelsea Clinton

Until recently, I always thought of Chelsea Clinton as this horsey, kind of homely, probably really smart, nice girl. A lot of people considered Chelsea Clinton to be unattractive. I thought she was cute. She's not Barbie pretty but she was never ugly; I just never understood why people said so. She's a privileged girl, yes, but she seemed like she was a nice girl. A girl you would not mind having as your co-worker, sister-in-law, or as your young child's teacher. I always felt sorry for her because her parents are so much to live up to. It's like she would have to be super successful academically and professionally and marry someone very appropriate and live within a very narrow box of constrictions. People say her parents did a good job of keeping her from the public eye, and she certainly did keep a low profile. Till now!

All of a sudden, she's emerged, campaigning for Hillary Clinton and looking completely and FREAKISHLY different; she sounds like her mother and she looks like her, too. Chelsea is a little mini-mom! It looks to me like Hillary has had some procedures over the years, and now Chelsea appears to have had procedures, and her procedures look like they were designed to make her look like Hillary... post-procedures Hillary. Like the child is carved to match the carved parent, to further the illusion that the parent wasn't carved.

My mom had her eyes done about ten years ago. She had bags under her eyes and she wanted them gone. I didn't think they looked bad. They did the bags and the upper eyelids as well. Afterward, my mother didn't look "refreshed"-- she looked like a totally different person! She has those recognizable plastic surgery eyes. I'm all for plastic surgery if it enhances the you that's already there, or makes you look better but still like yourself. It all starts to freak me out when everyone's surgery just seems to make them look closer to a certain standard. I really think Nicole Kidman looks exactly like Naomi Watts looks like Sienna Miller looks like Kylie Minogue...

Behold Chelsea Clinton! I feel like they took the real Chelsea to the special hospital in Stepford and brought this... gynoid! It's upsetting. I don't know if any of these photos have been messed-with to enhance her weirdness... do a search for "Chelsea Clinton 2008" to see lots more.

Wildly Cherry M&M's

Back when I was a tiny tot, M&M's came in plain and peanut varieties, and their colored shells came in orange, yellow, dark brown, light brown, and green. There were hardly any green in each package, and green M&M's were rumored to make teenagers feel sexual.
(For some reason, I hate the word horny. It's almost as bad as "boobs". God, I hate the word "boobs". Boobs and horny are just two very ungraceful words.)

At the time, I was told that red dye was harmful and that's why there weren't red M&M's. I think a lot of people believed that. The truth, according to M&M's parent company, Mars, is that the candies never did contain the controversial red dye, but because of the controvery, they stopped making a red shelled candy and took it out of the color mix. In the late 80's, red was brought back due to overwhelming demand.

The newest M&M iteration is Wildly Cherry, a whole package of bright red and dark red M&M's that are subtly cherry flavored. They say these are limited edition. They taste kind of weird. If you're accustomed to eating really good chocolate, you'll probably think they taste really bad. At first, you get this little taste of cherry, and you think maybe it's going to turn into a medicinal cherry taste, like cough syrup. But then it doesn't turn medicinal. It certainly tastes artificial-cherry, though.

One Week Down!

Having completed one week at my new job, I'm feeling pretty good. The people are so nice! Maybe they just haven't had time to get annoyed with me yet...but I hope the honeymoon period lasts.

I miss several of the people at my old job, and I miss my old workstation, which was more ergonomic and private than my new work area. Other than that, the list of the "pros" of my new job is astouding. They have toilet seat covers! There are four toilets and about 12 people, and the bathrooms are clean! At my ex-company, there were four toilets for about sixty people. It's like peeing in Nordstrom's bathroom on a weekday versus peeing at the first Chevron on Highway 5 midway between Nowhere and Really Nowhere in the middle of summer while you're driving down to LA or San Diego from Northern California. I know I'm more than a little obsessed with the work bathroom issue, but if you worked at my old workplace, you'd understand. Not only was the old work bathroom gross, but I was also in charge of the company logo tee shirts, which were stored in a cabinet INSIDE the smelly bathroom. I had to stand in the smelly bathroom for long periods of time counting tee shirts.

I work less than 2 miles from my apartment now, and I work on the same block as DD. We had lunch together twice last week.

Best of all,Leggy doesn't work at my new workplace! OH MY GOD... I NEVER HAVE TO SEE HER AGAIN! And I'm finally free of the devil who wears fleece.

Work Drag

Each work situation requires a different wardrobe. Or maybe it's just that I've had such a hodgepodge of random disconnected jobs that it's been that way for me. A person's resume is supposed to look like that person has had increasing levels of responsibility all within the same or similar fields... I've been a high school teacher, a person who talks about sex and sex toys and dirty videos to customers on the telephone, a friggin' "headset specialist" (including headphones and conferencers! Must not forget those!), a receptionist, a writer... everything but a circus clown. A bad resume is kind of like bad credit. You're doomed, at least for the next several years.

As I recently mentioned, I managed to score a new job despite the resume that clearly says I don't know what I want to be when I grow up. My previous job involved a wet warehouse and frequent chores such as taking out a very heavy bucket of sludgy compost, cleaning catering trays of baked-on lasagna, frittata and/or polenta in a sink smaller than the trays themselves, the high probability of finding a dessicated mouse in a long-forgotten trap here and there. Even though I worked in the office, as opposed to in the warehouse, it was not a place for fancy clothes, although someone I worked with did come to work in ugly poly-blend suits that looked, from the span of the shoulder pads, like she must have acquired them in the 80's. She also wore pumps, which sounded like gunshots when she walked on the hard floors. My work clothes consisted of jeans, clean sneakers and Juicy Couture hoodies. If I had to do something dirty and wet I would take off my hoodie and sneakers and quickly change into the beat up fleece jacket and dirty sneakers I left there all the time.

When I was a teacher, I wore suits, because I was young and teaching high schoolers. I wore nothing that a nun wouldn't wear. I didn't even wear skirt suits. Only pant suits. My mom (also a teacher) was so thrilled that she bought me a bunch of nice clothes for work. I was also super skinny then, because being a new teacher was so stressful, and I think my mom was secretly thrilled about that, too, and enjoyed dressing me up like a doll.

At the sex toy company (after my teaching stint) we could wear whatever the hell we wanted. I favored short pleated skirts and an array of slutty, expensive shoes... the kind of shoes I always admired as works of art, but didn't buy many of because I could never wear them during the work week. I worked in a little office with only other women and gay men, so it felt very safe to dress however I wanted. It was for me, and not to impress or attract or make a statement to anyone else.

This has been my first week working in Business Casual drag. My bosses are more formal, but they have titles like CEO and Vice President of Business Development. The other women who have a title like mine ("Coordinator") dress "business casual". I don't want to spend a lot of money on clothes I wouldn't necessarily wear if I had my choice, so I bought a lot of them at discount stores like Nordstrom Rack. It's black slacks and little pink sweater one day. Gray pants and little baby blue sweater another day. Pinstriped pants and cream sweater Wednesday. To make it look like I have more clothes than I do, I plan to wear the same things next week, but add different scarves and necklaces! I think Fridays are "jeans day", because I was interviewed on a Friday and I do remember seeing more than one pair of jeans that day. So today I'm wearing my current favorite jeans, flats and a loose navy blue silk tunic thing that has cream, citron and gray chevron stripes. That said, it's time to get ready for work!

The Cheesecake Crust

I went to The Cheesecake Factory today for the first time in something like twelve years. Maybe ten years. I've only ever been to the one in Marina Del Rey, and the only thing I've ever had there was this pasta they used to have called Straw and Hay, and it was green spinach fettuccine and regular egg fettuccine with some kind of cream sauce and chicken sausage. I really liked it, and I didn't go to The Cheesecake Factory very often, so I would always get that. The last time I went to one of these restaurants, I was in my early 20's and with single girlfriends on Valentine's Day. What the hell were we thinking? Everyone else was coupled up in super straight pairings, and were acting sickly sweet, and although everyone had reservations for particular times, the wait was excruciatingly long. Especially watching the blowsy ex-frat boys try to cheer up the pissy, skinny ex-cheerleaders they were all with, as we all waited something like an hour and a half for tables. That was the end of me and The Cheesecake Factory, till today!


They no longer have the Straw and Hay, but I had some other equally rich pasta dish, and then DD and I shared a piece of strawberry cheesecake. I love cheesecake, and I remembered the Cheesecake Factory cheesecake fondly. Well, the weird thing about it was that the crust, although delicious-tasting, was oddly wet and glossy, and I think cheesecake crust should be crumbly and dry. The slices seem larger than they used to be, and they're now served with an enormous puff of real whipped cream. I fought off the desire to slap a spoon into the puff and watch the whipped cream hit the people I was dining with, but it kept entering my mind! I wonder who makes the best cheesecake in San Francisco? I've heard only good things about Zanze's Cheesecake, and now I can't wait to try it out! The quest for the most delicious cheesecake seems at odds with the quest to exercise more and eat better, doesn't it? That could be a problem.

A Sunny Week in San Francisco

My week was unusual in two ways. 1) I didn't work. All week! 2) It's warm and sunny in San Francisco this week.

I spent the week exercising outside, having lunch at the park with a new friend (got sunburned, which I'm mad at myself about, more about the strange shape of the burn from the sundress I was wearing than the fact that I'm burned and therefore speeding the process of premature skin aging), shopping for things to wear to my new job, making small home improvements, and going to the beach to read a novel. Jeez, life is so cushy when you're on vacation. Oh, I did make attempts to get a marketing reseach gig this week, but I disqualified myself when I stupidly said I don't have a GPS device in my car.

It's remarkable how quickly one can forget all about a job once you leave it. You can kind of forget it when you're on vacation, but you REALLY forget it fast when you leave it for good! Even just a few days later, you can think idly about two or three people, and even if it's the two or three most awful people there, who made your work life hell and routinely made your stomach hurt and your skin itch, it all just feels like the fuzzy memory of a vague dream or a movie you watched many years ago when you were taking cold medicine. That's what happened to me this week, and good riddance to it all.


Now it's Sunday night and I'm scared about starting a new job tomorrow. Bleh!

The Best Day Ever

I am unemployed for one week. I start my new job next Monday.

Besides some woman huffing and puffing and sighing passive-aggressively behind me at the Post Office because there was only one clerk and I was mailing a package to Ireland and I had to fill out a customs form (and she can just stop huffing and puffing, because I GOT THERE FIRST...her huffing and puffing only made me write slowly and carefully, adding a serif to every letter) my first day off was awesome. The weather is beautiful and cool and fresh, and a friend and I went for a super long walk-hike, part of it through a neighborhood and part of it out by the cliffs above the ocean. She saw a guy she used to date. Everywhere we go she sees a guy she used to date; it's pretty funny. She doesn't like her name used in public; she has a real thing about that, so now I just call her Killer. Killer has killered half the guys in this city. But she has lived here a long time.

I realized today that I never have to go back to my old job again. Oh my God, the bathrooms were really dirty, and, uh, not ventilated well. The linoleum was cracked and peeling up at the edges and blackened underneath. We didn't have toilet seat protectors, and there were 100 employees, and when some of us asked about toilet seat protectors, they acted like we were asking for a gold-plated bidet! I never have to deal with that again. Not only is there a nice clean bathroom at my new job, but right across the street is a restaurant with an amazing bathroom, and not only that, but I'm right by my boyfriend's work, too, which has about 1001 really clean bathrooms.
We try to keep our own bathroom at home really clean, too. My future is looking like 100% clean bathrooms 100% of the time!!! YES!

Eggettes

There are two Eggettes shops in San Francisco, where they make and sell these poufy waffle snack things. Instead of square waffle baffles, they're egg shaped. Eggettes are surprisingly unsweet and mild-tasting. They are pretty eggy inside... with a crispy outside. They just serve it in a paper bag, like this (you're looking down into the bag) without anything on it. I ate it by tearing off pieces and eating them, like tearing off pieces of bread. I was fascinated with the way they look, so I tried one. I still like the way they look, but they weren't so delicious that I'm dying to have them again!

Penta changed their logo design

Penta brand bottled water recently changed their logo design. The old bottle is the one on the right, with some kind of blue bubbles or water molecules, and the new bottle is the one on the left, with the diamond or crystal shape and more pink, and a more rounded typeface. I'm wondering if they're trying to make the bottle design more feminine, or something. I don't really think this design got better at all...

Bye, Bye, Bitches

I got a new job! It's closer to home (REALLY close to home!), more interesting, the office is nicer and cleaner, it pays more, and the people seem nice!

I gave two weeks' notice and at first felt on top of the world. I seriously felt like I was bouncing instead of walking. But then the owners are giving me the cold shoulder. These people are so weird. Instead of saying thanks for all your hard work, we're sorry to see you go, good luck, they are acting angry and hostile. I don't know why they have to take it so personally. The way they are behaving is so immature. Meanwhile, I'm plowing through tons of work to get them to a good place with all my stuff. I feel like I'm turning the other cheek, but getting beat up pretty badly...

Barack + Kiehl's 58B Lip balm

I'm not the first person to blog about Barack Obama, nor am I the first person to write about Kiehl's SPF 15 lip balm; however, I may be the first blogger to say I have found the perfect lip balm for Barack Obama!

The other day I was at the salon I go to, having my hair cut by my stylist, who is pretty quiet and reserved. The stylist in the chair right next to hers, though, is very bubbly, cute and talkative. So the woman who cuts my hair and I were more or less listening to the conversation the bubbly one was having with her own client. They were talking about how tired and drained Barack Obama has been looking, presumably due to the stress of the election. "I feel so badly for him!" she said, "I just want to send him a case of Chapstick!" We all about died laughing (not at Barack Obama, because from the sound of it, everyone in the conversation is an Obama supporter, but just because it was silly and unexpected).

I've long been looking for the perfect lip balm for DD. This is purely my own trip, since DD has several lip balms that he likes just fine. There are two events that jumpstarted my obsession with DD's lipbalm-- the first was that he used a lip balm he was apparently allergic to one night, and woke up the next morning with his lips swollen like balloons! It took about a week for them to go down all the way, and afterward, they were horribly dry and cracked. And for part of the recovery process, one SIDE of his mouth was a lot more swollen than the other side. It was kind of frightening. The second reason for my pursuit of the perfect lip balm is the fact that DD's lips literally turn blue if he's cold... and just lavender-gray if he's chilled.
Plus he has really big lips, so it's like these big blue lips... anyway, I've given him a lot of tinted lip balms, which he good-naturedly tries, but usually proclaims too greasy, too much like a lipstick, too waxy, or too shiny.

Enter Kiehl's Lip Balm 58B. 58B is the color, and it's a very slight brownish peach tint that doesn't really look like anything, but makes the lips look less dry. (They have one that's more red-pink, too.) The tube doesn't look like a lipstick tube, it has a slant-tip applicator (but I think it's better to squeeze it onto your figertip and rub it on) and it feels very soft and creamy. It's also not too glossy!
Might be the perfect thing for DD. And Barack Obama! And husbands and boyfriends everywhere.