"Go, greased lightnin', you're burnin' up the quarter mile" --Grease

[I watched the movie version of Speed Racer on a flight last year. Slick animation but BORRRRRRRing. They could have--and should have--lopped about an hour off it.]


I can be an ass. No, no, I can.

The other day I am sitting at a light, minding my own business, working out a plan to solve the economic crisis. I was this close to putting all the pieces together--something about turning all the foreclosed properties into Starbucks and harnessing the awesome power of squirrels--when...

An Expedition pulls up next to me.

Then, the driver pulls up over the stop line.

Then, while the light is still red, the driver does a false start.

Do I need more? I do not.

I wasn't in a hurry before but I sure am now. I hit the S on my gear shift to change into Sport mode and watch the light like my life depends on it. I'll be damned if this behemoth is going to get ahead of me. When the light switches, I leave the Expedition in the dust.

Why?

A) It's a flippin' Expedition, fergawdssake. It's ridiculously big, expensive, gas guzzling, and slow and here's my opportunity to drive home that point. (See what I did there? Drive home... nevermind.)

B) Why not?

and

C) I'm an ass.

My first husband was an ass, too. I can vividly remember us missing our exit because he had to prove that he wasn't going to get beat out by a revving car at a toll booth. And we had my parents in the car. Oh, that was a proud moment.

At least I never missed an exit because of my assiness.

Well, not yet.

Can I help it if I need to express this side of me?

...express... espresso! Squirrels on espresso! I gotta call Bernanke!

A quickie

After chili at the Hard Times Cafe Saturday, we go into the pool hall in the back.

Me: Can we get a table?

Bartender: I don't have the balls.

Me: *blink* I'm, uh... sorry...?

Bartender, pointing at the waitresses behind a different bar: The ladies have the balls.

"This kiss, this kiss" --Faith Hill

[The rare back-of-the-ear kiss.]


How do you tell someone you don't wanna kiss?

Before you jump to conclusions, let me say, my marriage is on solid ground and Hubby is a great kisser. (To the relatives who read this: sorry, if that's TMI.) Kissing him is fine, indeed. But this is the man to which I have cleaved my troth*. Even giving the relatives a peck on the cheek and receiving likewise is okay. These are blood relations or blood relations of the cleaved troth. (trothrodyte?) Anyway, there's a very established bond here.

My issue (and let's face it, I have a lot of issues***) is with friends. I am blessed with lots of wonderful friends that I dearly love but don't feel the need to kiss. I'm fine with hugging them but I'm not so much into the kiss-kiss cheeky thing. Fergawdssake, we're not French! But I have yet to come up with a graceful way to say, "Erm, let's skip the kissing part and just hug."

Yes, yes, I am a cold, unfeeling thing. No argument. If you've spent any time here at all, you've already picked up on that.

I hear you saying "What's the big deal?"**** Where this may seem strange to you, avoiding public displays of affection is quite the norm for me. I come from a long line of cold, unfeeling things. We are distant. We are standoffish. We are formal. We are private.

I've tried just refusing to reciprocate but that doesn't always get the message across. And, when you're in the clinch of a hug, it's hard to avoid a kiss. And sometimes avoidance maneuvers become dangerous to try because, sometimes, those avoided kisses land in weird places. Yeah, I've had my ear kissed, my neck kissed, my eye kissed... that's even weirder than just letting them plant one on your cheek.

I feel certain the "knee to the chest" maneuver they recommend for training dogs wouldn't be received well. I don't want to actually offend these lovely, caring people. I know this is my issue. Still...

Does anyone else come from a long line of automatons? Is there a way to bypass the kissing?


* You're eying my troth right now, aren't you?! Cheeky monkey.**

** And when I say "cheeky monkey", unlike the NY post, I say it with true affection and a hat tip to Mike Myers' Simon character.

*** You could simply decide to find the fact that I have so many issues charming. Endearing, even. *cough*

**** Your voice really carries.

"Here I am, stuck in the middle..."--Stealers Wheel

I am back. And still gainfully employed. (Suckers.*) The conference was okay. Just okay.

On the plus side:

• The rental car had XM/Sirius radio. Comedy channels! They have comedy channels! Yay!
  
• Even though the temperature was only getting up to the 50s and 60s while I was there, it was better than the 12 degrees at home. Of course, now that I'm back, it's a balmy 85 degrees down there.
  
• Palm trees. I like palm trees. If I say to you it "looks like a picture postcard", you think palm trees. They're tall and thin. They sway. They're green. Sort of like Lindsay Lohan on Sunday morning. Pretty.
• I'm an aisle gal. And I had an aisle seat until I switched flights in order to give the folks at the airport time to de-ice the wings. Call me crazy but I prefer my plane served "neat." When I got on the plane heading to the conference, there was an enormous man in the aisle seat, a reasonably sized person in the window seat, and me--stuck in the middle. The guy in the aisle seat was so big that he had put the armrest up because he simply wouldn't have fit with it down. So he was taking up 1.33 seats, leaving me .67 seat. He wasn't being a jerk. He was just being. So, why is this on the plus list? Because, before we took off, the flight attendant offered him a free upgrade to First Class. I hopped into that aisle seat faster than you could say "upright and locked position." Plus, had all three seats of the row to myself on the way back.

On the neither plus nor minus side:

• While there, I stayed at a Radisson. They are very proud of their Sleep Number beds. Not sure why. I adjusted the number up, I adjusted it down. It didn't make a bit of difference to me. Have you tried this? What am I missing? What's the big deal? I couldn't even find the slot for the quarter.**

And on the minus side:

• My talk would have hit the scales at solidly boring if I could have merely stood up there and clicked the mouse for the PowerPoint slides with one hand and flipped my notes with the other hand. But, since the microphone wasn't working properly when it was clipped to me, I had to hold it. So, I ran out of hands, making the talk a painful mix of boring AND inept juggling. Special. Well, at least it gave them something to focus on besides what I was saying.

* My employers, not you.

** Remember those vibrating beds of years ago that operated on quarters? Now, that's something to brag about in a hotel flyer.

"I miss you when I am away" --Scorpions

Hello darlings,

It is a crazy time. I am heading to Florida to make a presentation that I shouldn't be making. I an not the person to speak at this conference but, here I am, speaking at this conference. You understand?

It's not like anyone says "Gee, LA is the most well-versed person on this topic" or even "Gee, LA is such a terrific speaker it doesn't matter what we throw at her." No. We are five of us heading to this conference and everyone else is kicking back and enjoying a trip to Florida. Everyone except me.

Because in my case, they say, "Man, I don't want to do this and you don't want to do this and yet we have to have somebody do this. Do you suppose we could get LA to do this?"

And so they ask.

And I say "What the hell, I'll give it a shot" and I do it. Not because I should but because I'm willing. It doesn't bode well.

And meanwhile, I'm thinking that it's been over two weeks since I've had a normal night's sleep. By normal, that is to say, two weeks since I haven't woken up in a blind panic or spent 4 out of 8 hours lying awake with my brain churning. Crazy. Maybe more than two weeks. Who can keep track?

What I've really wanted to write about, but haven't managed to defrag my brain enough to write about, is that I am troubled by a few different trends in waitstaff behavior.

First, why is writing down stuff a bad thing? No, really, tell me why!

Remember when a waitstaff type person would write down your order and you'd get what you wanted and everyone would be happy? No, really... remember? Don't toy with me. It happened. I remember it. Fondly.

Yet these days, it seems any decent restaurant has a waitstaff person that would rather slit their own throat than write down your order. No, they'll just memorize it. Unless they can't. In which case, if you're lucky, they'll come by to ask "Did you have the filet of sole or the grouper?" because they just flippin' can't remember. Or they'll just bring you the wrong thing and hope that's okay. Why? WHY?? Why can't they write it down??!?!

And, as long as we're at it, what is this trend where waitstaff feel compelled to tell you what they like? This has happened a LOT lately.

Me: Mmm, I think I'll have the Shrimp Fra Diavolo.

Waitress: Ooo, good choice! That's one of my favorites! I love that!!

Um, okay. Why is that important? Why do I care if that's the waitress' favorite? It's one thing to point out what's a popular dish among patrons or the chef's specialty but I have had a waiter go through the menu pointing out every single thing he, personally, liked. As if this, in some way, will correlate with what I like. Oh, I was going to get the calamari but since you didn't list it among your favorites, that's right out now.