Drink the Kool-Aid and Nobody Gets Hurt

Each workgroup is to decorate a door in its area in the holiday spirit. Only one will win, and the winner shall feast upon the bloody flesh of the losers.

Whoops! Sorry, got a little carried away there. They'll get a box of peanut brittle.

I'm not participating, because I'll be off for the day (having worked the weekend - thus escaping, I might add, a lot more lightly than many of my coworkers who had significantly less pleasant duties during the winter storm, such as actually talking to people), but some have suggested that the recent extreme and difficult weather ought to tie into our office holiday observances.

For instance, Santa's sleigh could be locked in ice-bound traffic. Reindeer would be eaten by stranded, desperate travelers. (I think Norway already has a national dish based on this concept, so it's not without precedent.)

Better yet, the Kool-Aid guy could break through the ice walls with his refined-sugar-processed-flavor-product powers and bring peace and harmony back to a teetering civilization (which, I'm sorry, should really not be so wobbly after just two and a half days without unrestricted access to Wal-Mart) - but at what price? What would he tell us today? Is the inorganic, processed-food apocalypse foretold by his wanton destruction of our flimsy man-made structures? Isn't his jolly demeanor in the face of utter ruin the very embodiment of what commercial marketing is all about?

On a similar note, I began my holiday shopping today (it's Christmas shopping, actually, but I like to call it holiday shopping in order to offend the type of people who insist on spelling Christmas CHRISTmas, then spend obscene amounts of money on stuff nobody really needs and take down all their decorations on December 26) with an earnest endeavour to "shop local," as they say.

Have you spent much time in local shops? It strikes me that these shops largely exist to cater to tourists - which is fine - but does make them less than ideal in terms of a place for a local to buy presents for other locals. I mean, I want to support local business as much as anyone, but my boyfriend wants an enamel-coated 12-piece cookware set, and the closest I can find to that locally is a novelty shot glass that reads "Keep Austin Weird."

So shop local, spruce up your office, drive safely, and look out for the Kool-Aid Man. That guy is bad news.

Important Things

I know there's been a lot of talk about swine flu in the media lately, and it's sad and all, but I don't have time for that right now. I'm having a hair emergency.

What? It's humid.

There's this perfect product I really like, so naturally the manufacturer discontinued it. All you can find out there these days are pomades designed to smooth and straighten out your hair, or sculpting mousse and gels that make it all crispy. Soft, natural curls are apparently out. It's sad when what you have goes out of style, but I guess hair is the least of my worries, as far as that's concerned.

At least I know some straight men.

So I ran out of hair goo, and rushed post haste to HEB to get some more, tonight at about 9:15, figuring I'd pick up a fresh eyeliner as well. Alas! HEB has an odd policy of blocking off the makeup aisle after dark, and I haven't quite figured out the reasoning behind that. It's probably so that vampires, stumbling in sleepily to stock up for a long night of murderous debauchery, won't be able to conceal their true nature from their victims through the artful use of flesh-colored foundation (and will therefore have to rely on nightclub lighting and beer goggles like the rest of us). Or maybe cosmetics get shoplifted a lot. Whatever. At least the hair goo aisle was still open - you can't prohibit vampires from shampooing, that'd be discrimination - but my preferred brand no longer exists; so I grabbed a bottle of something that looked reasonably close and got in the 10-items-or-fewer line.

(The blocked-off cosmetics aisle pisses me off, but I do have to applaud HEB for their "10 items or fewer" checkout lanes. Signs that say "10 items or less" make the baby Jesus cry.)

There was a middle-aged couple ahead of me in line. Now, I didn't count the number of items they had, partly because I think that's kind of tacky and ill-natured, but largely because I wasn't sure I'd have enough fingers. They purchased their items and struggled a little bit with the card swiper - it appeared to be the first one they'd ever seen - and then, as the cashier was finalizing their transaction, the woman noticed the gum on clearance next to the register.

"That gum," she said to the cashier, "how much is that?"

"It's a dollar," the cashier responded.

"Let me have a pack of the winter fresh," said the woman.

Unfortunately, the transaction had already been closed out, so the woman decided to pay cash separately for the gum. But comically, while she was fishing slowly in her purse for a dollar, the cashier voided the transaction. So the cashier rang the whole thing up over again, became confused when the woman attempted to pay for the entire purchase with a dollar, they finally arrived at an understanding, and the man began once more trying to figure out how the card swiper worked. Meanwhile, the woman noticed the price of the gum as it flashed up on the checkout display and began bickering with the cashier because the amount was more than a dollar. The cashier attempted to explain the concept of sales tax. The woman wasn't having any of it. People in the non-express lane one over, who had arrived in line much later than I did, were finishing up and leaving. The haggling continued.

Finally they concluded everything to their satisfaction, completed their purchase, took their bags, and left. The clerk rang up my hair goo, I swiped my card and got my receipt, and I overtook the couple in the parking lot halfway to my car. I strode past them with rather needless flamboyance, I'm afraid. I wanted to make a point. Stupid slow people!

Karma will probably catch up with me either in the form of swine flu or of being sucked dry by vampires, but at least I'll have good hair.

Because Robbie and Kevin Said To

...and because Diane complained that my most recent post was making her want a kitten.

Oh, but she is a darling, sweet little thing (the kitten, that is - not to imply in any way that Diane is anything less than adorable, though I've never tried kissing her nosey, and suspect it would not be that favorably received if I did). Last night I woke up to find her (the kitten) sleeping soundly on my pillow, with her toes wedged up against my nose. I kissed her. She arched, purr-mewed, sighed, and fell back asleep in an even more impossibly adorable pose - taking up even more of my pillow, at that.

Hi, I'm Proto-Crazy-Cat-Lady. I'm almost finished!

But another great thing about the pillow-stealing kitten is that she wakes me up from dreams I really shouldn't be having. Last night I found myself in divorce court - peacefully enough, no problem there - but during a long recess I ended up alone in a waiting room with, with - oh, you know who.

At least in my dream he was willing to speak to me. "Hey!" I said to him, "I'm finally moving forward with my divorce!"

He displayed only polite interest, though, and after a few more minutes said he had to leave to go check his Facebook, and took off.

This isn't what is meant by the term "lucid dreaming," but it probably should be.

Robbie took me out on the town last weekend. We went and watched movies at Tony's. But first, Robbie had some shopping to do, which led to a totally new experience for me.

We went to the mall (you know, that place, with all the stores, where everything costs 800 million dollars and teenagers reach levels of inexcusable density) to buy cologne.

This may be more surreal than it sounds. Department stores have big glass counters, all under lock and key, stocked with every incredibly expensive men's scent you've never heard of, and staffed by young women who are almost, but not quite, entirely unlike Audrey Hepburn. Our sales representative, for example, did not know how to pronounce "euphoria." E-phoria, she kept saying. I think that's the sensation you feel immediately following cybersex.

We tested seven or eight different scents. The sales representative seemed less inclined to consider my opinion once she clarified that Robbie and I were not dating, because what do your stupid friends know? Still, we narrowed the choices down to one, Robbie purchased it, and we left to look at jeans. But there weren't any without aesthetically-placed holes in them.

It gets hard to find basic items of clothing, had you noticed? At work, I needed a blouse for our upcoming April conference. All four of us in our office wear the same one - we're the conference coordinators, so it's important that we can be singled out in the crowd, or so I'm told. This year two of us kicked up a fuss and insisted on blouses that don't have to be tucked in, because what could be more unflattering to your figure than chopping it in half?! Hello?!?!

We wanted a basic design: a tailored, button-down shirt, in a few different attractive colors, with a straight hem and three-quarter length sleeves. The four of us went at lunch last week to look. We might as well have gone shopping for emu-feather hats.

Not that this is informative or interesting. I'm only posting because Robbie and Kevin said to. And because Diane doesn't want a kitten. No matter how adorable they are.

Maybe next time I'll post some more pictures.

Needful Things

If this were a perfect world, IKEA would sell shoes. Alas! they do not.

Shopping can be a confusing and scary experience. I went to San Marcos to see Margie today. I was there for work during our Central Texas fam tour and learned that the Victoria's Secret outlet store sells bras for $5, and this piece of information has itched around in my brain ever since, accumulating layers of desire and temptation like nacre on a grain of sand, until finally today I gazed upon the flawless pearl and breathed, "Let's to to the Outlet Malls!"

Okay, maybe not so much, I realized after approximately 0.1 minutes of attempting to navigate the parking lot, in which some benighted architect, perhaps consumed with the same egocentric mania that makes the main character of Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead" such an irredeemable prick, only with a sense of humor, which I must observe Ayn Rand does not appear to possess, has placed a turning circle - that grand institute which embodies everything that is most anarchic and terrifying about Old-World driving. Miraculously, we made it back to I-35 unscathed, and settled for a nice visit to the playscape instead. You can't get $5 bras there, but you can probably get some good drugs, if you know when to go. Curfew's not till 11.

We did, however, make it to Bath and Body Works and to Goodwill. Clothes, cosmetics and shoes are the Holy Trinity of balms for a broken heart. So that's two down, and I'm going to IKEA with Robbie tomorrow, even though he complained that the bed be bought there over a year ago is now falling apart; and I had to point out that we were after all drunk when we assembled it. He needs a new coffeemaker, which hopefully won't suffer the same fate.

I figure if I pour enough margaritas into him, I can get him into a shoe store.

Time To Pay the Piper

Well, I can't put it off any longer. I'm going Christmas shopping. Oh God.

If I'm not back by nightfall, please - try to remember only the good times?

Good Will Shopping

Katie, Eric and I went to Goodwill today. Katie wants 70s garb for her roller skating party, since it's only 3 months away. Eric needs some respectable-looking pants, in case he gets a job, or at least an interview. And I need something professional to wear to Waco next week.

There's a sentence you don't get to read every day.

None of us were entirely successful. I bought a flirty little top with outrageous décolletage, Katie inexplicably picked out fur-lined boots and a sweater, and Eric found nothing at all. Apparently they were fresh out of pants.

Ah, but we did find this:

The best thing about it is the American flag pin, which seems to suggest that if you don't like this jacket, you must hate your country. Nice try, but no reasonable person would ever disagree that wearing this garment would be little short of an act of terrorism in itself; and in fact, putting a flag pin on it is roughly equivalent to using the real thing to wipe your, um, nose.

It's at the Lake Austin Blvd. location, if you're interested. You might want to hurry.