elborate ruse

I found out today that I've been victimized by an imposter. I had been writing back and forth with my friend on our myspace accounts, thinking the whole time that I was writing to my friend. But as it turns out, it wasn't her at all and the conversation we had been having was somebody else pretending to be her. The only reason I started to get suspicious was when this person started talking about cheating on her husband and then I knew something was up. But up until that point I had no idea.
PS-I got a library card today. YAY!

grumble

I bought the new Madonna CD on pre-order from iTunes. Steve and company pulled a fast one on me. Instead of releasing the cd with individual tracks, they released it as one long-ass cut. So I have one 53-minute file instead of like nine 4-minute files. Lame lame lame. I get it, they want to prevent p2p sharing. But I don't have fifty-plus minutes to devote to listening to one cd and because it's such a huge file I won't put it on my iPod so the end result it that I haven't listened to the cd or most of the songs. Not that Steve and Esther care, they already have my money.

bird flu

Only days after eating turkey and chicken, I have the flu. Coincidence? Probably. I should probably go get orange juice and other nourishment but I'm too tired. I miss having somebody around the take care of me when I'm feeling shitty. But at least there's room at the table for my pity party of one.

got game?

I realized the other day that I haven't dated or been on a date in eight years. That's a long time. My reintroduction into the dating pool, thusly unsuccessful. I'm definitely relearning by trial and error. For instance, while flirting with a cute boy, would it be considered bad form to point out he has a little booger hanging out of his nose? Yeah, I thought so. Another lesson learned the hard way.

fan mail

Dear Fergie,
First off, let me say that I can remember back when you were Stacy on Kids Incorporated. My cousin Stacy would pretend to be you, I would pretend to be Gloria/Martika, and my sister got stuck with the other girl...what's her name.
I even remember when you were in that group Black Orchid...or some other flower.
So though I haven't followed your career that closely, it's clear that I've mostly been a fan for a while. I mean I had never heard of the Black Eyed Peas until after you joined the mix.
That's why I feel like I can write this letter to you, we have history together girl.
Let's start with the props since most people like the good news first.
1. You have a bangin' body. The abs and the ass alone are worth the price of admission.
2. You have a smokin' hot fiance. Josh Duhammel...nice one.
3. You can sing, and not in a Britney Spears/Ashlee Simpson, "thank god for dubbing" kind of way...but you can work them pipes.
SOOOOOO, now that you're in the glow of positivity, I need to have a little talk about something else. See, I know you say you're beauty is all natural and sometimes a little delusion is good for a person, trust me girl...I feel you there. If you need to lie and say that power of the lip plumper is with you and not you know...surgically implanted fat from your ass...go right ahead.
But for the love of god, please please admit that you had some eye work done. Frankly, your eyebrows are scary. And scarier still, girls are starting to copy them. COPY YOUR EYEBROWS FERGIE!
Not good brows like Garbo or even campy fun brows like Crawford....your far too highly arched and way too penciled in eyebrows. Now it would be okay if it were just the drag queens doing it, but I've seen a lot of other ladies and it's just disturbing.
I know I can't be the only person having this guttural reaction to people copying your brows, so unless you want us to take it out on you by not buying your records....then just come out and admit that your plastic surgeon pulled a little too tight and that's why your brows are so creepy. You'll be doing a lot of sheep/girls a favor and helping me with the nightmares.
Truly,
Lisa M.

holiday wishes and holiday cheer

Happy Thanksgiving! Enjoy the ridiculous amounts of food, followed by semi-comatose television watching. While you're gnawing on your turkey legs, think of the poor souls like me who have to go in to work and handle jars of bodily fluids.

r.e.m.

No not the band. That mysterious magical time that happens during sleep, which has been eluding me again. I usually dream quite vividly but I haven't in a while. Either because I don't get much sleep or because I crash so hard from sheer exhaustion that I can't remember if I dreamt or not. I miss my dreams. I miss waking up and thinking, "What the hell was that all about?" I miss flying like Superman, kissing A-list movie stars, and growing that tail I've always wanted. I would even take a bad dream at this point. I read somewhere once that one of the most effective means of torture is to not let somebody fall into a r.e.m. cycle. That must make me a masochist.

noticable

I think that there are four types of people:
People who don't like attention,
people who could care less if they get it,
people who like it,
and then people who NEED the attention.

I'm always amazed when I go out how many people fall into the latter category. It's like they need some kind of outside validation to prove to themselves that they're pretty or interesting or worthy. For a while I found myself falling into that category, wanting attention to prove my worth. But after last night, I realized that I'm not that person any longer. I don't need somebody else's attention. I don't need to be told I'm beautiful or have guys crowding my space, because I'm going to walk away from that experience feeling as good about myself as I did before it. Because I'm learning to be fine with myself, a difficult journey for sure, and it just doesn't require somebody else's attentions to make it happen.

visitors

Remember the crackhead sized raccoons that REALLY were crackheads. Well last night they REALLY were raccoons. They were the biggest raccoons I have ever seen in my life. There were two of them and they were seriously bigger than my dog. And they weren't the slightest bit scared by me. They stared me down like they were ready for a bar fight. Chances are, they would have won.

like a fox

You never realize HOW crazy you are until you have the chance to comparison shop. Apparently my crazy runs along the lines of obsessive. Driving around in the middle of the night looking for a 24-hour Wal-mart (aka corporate SATAN!) so that I can buy a vacuum cleaner belt even though I intended to wait until the next morning to vacuum...not what normal people do. Normal people wait until the next day and go to the Target ten minutes away. But I've already rationalized it and blamed my insomnia.
On a completely unrelated note. I got this from Katie, who got it from her mother. For a change it was a picture that didn't have big nekkid boobs, but it does offer some good

fishlips

Yesterday I bought this.

Part of me was intrigued, fuller & poutier lips would put me dangerously close to Angelina Jolie lips.

Who doesn't want to be associated with that level of hotness?

The other part of me was repulsed.

Who wants a lip gloss with a warning label and promises to do exactly what herpes/fever blisters do to my lips.

But intrigue won out and I purchased the gloss.

So now on with the experiment...

Before the fatty plumping glossing (yeah, my lips are a wee bit chapped, it's winter):

So then I applied and within fifteen minutes there was a definite tingle and burn. But did it follow through with the promise of plumping and pinkness?

While I definitely agree that my lips got pinker, I'm not one hundred percent sold on the 20% size increase. Though I think they do look a little fuller, but that could just be from the gloss.

tidbit

So I guess I forgot this little piece of information about the guy in the break room. He wasn't wearing shoes. He had his boots in a bag and he told me it was because his feet hurt and his boots didn't give him enough ventilation. Now I told everybody that I thought he was on drugs. But the only part of the story that seems to get everybody's attention is the fact that he didn't have his shoes on and that I remembered what color socks he was wearing. So who exactly is missing the point here, them or me?

naivete

At work today, there was a pre-Thanksgiving/extended celebration of the Day of LisaM. potluck.
When I went to break there was this guy in the break room, a guy who I didn't recognize. Granted, I barely recognize half of the people who work in the other rooms of our lab, but I was really weirded out by this guy. Not only had I NEVER seen him before, but he set my alarms off in a big way.
Our breakroom is in a secure area and I had to put the code in to get in, so naturally I assumed that he got in via code as well. He was talkative and looked like he knew the place inside out, he knew where the get towels, he knew where we kept the spoons, he just acted like he belonged there.
So we're making some small talk and the whole time I'm thinking that something is amiss, so I ask him where he worked and he just brushed that aside and started talking about his shoes.
But I just kept thinking that something was off and so I paid really close attention to what he looked like and how he acted, I even thought that he was a tweaker and probably on meth because he just gave me that vibe.
After about ten minutes he left. So I just sit there dumbfounded, wondering what the hell just happened and who this guy was.
After my break I walked over to the supervisor's offices and saw him walking out. I wondered where the plate of food he had went, he couldn't have eaten it that fast. But he came out of the supervisor's office, so then I figured he must work with us because why else would he have gone in there?
As soon as I got back into the lab, I asked around...hey who's the guy with the goatee and somebody said, "Oh that's Dan."
Mystery solved right? Not even thirty minutes later, our manager has called security because somebody walked into her office (she left the door open) and stole a bunch of stuff.
And apparently I wasn't the only person who saw this guy and thought "What the fuck?" but I AM the only one who made conversation with him and saw him in both areas.
So I'm either naive, though the fact that I was suspicious kind of puts a small dent in that theory, or I am a totally jaded city person, the kind of person who would hear and see a person getting raped and murdered and not do anything about it. I'm a little scared either way.

lisa it's your birthday, happy birthday lisa

Happy Birthday to me! Though after today this day will no longer be known as the birthday, instead we shall call it the Day of LisaM.!

PS-I'm wearing Atomic Bombshell's t-shirt today! Yay for birthday presents. And thanks to Katie for the awesome gifts, including the world's biggest underpants. Thanks also to my Seattle and Lakewood peeps who came out and celebrated with me throughout the weekend. Now I'm just waiting for my sister and her plus one so that we can go indulge in a ridiculously sinful piece of cake at this chocolatier/bakery down the street. I might be wearing the world's biggest underpants yet.

whew

Definitely a rockstar weekend. I need a weekend to recover from my weekend. I would provide details, but I'm not sure how much of it would be accurate. Just two short days until I am no longer a twenty-something miscreant. The paradigm is shifting to thirty-something rapscallion. Although a girl at work did give me a good reason for turning thirty...you don't have to work as hard at the gym because you don't have to bring your heart rate up as much. Yay for less effort.

celebration time, come on

So the birthday weekend begins. I've got the hair, the dress, the boots...I'm ready to go. Expect drunken blogging throughout the weekend.

fast-track

Holy crap, it's only a matter of DAYS until the big three-oh. What the hell? I remember time coming to a grinding frickin' halt when I was waiting to turn twenty-one. I have to get myself out of this strange ripple in the space-time continuum that makes my impending thirties rush up on me like a homeless person after I've hit an ATM. It seems like only yesterday that I was deluding myself into thinking that a year from my 29th birthday was a long ways away.

ten ways to true love

o Always use the most shallow and superficial criteria for deciding which person you are interested in
o Make sure you choose one of the hottest people in the room
o Make sure that s/he knows s/he's one of the hottest people in the room, a good dose of megalomania is always beneficial
o Choose a person that is either moving out of town within the next few weeks or is already from out of town
o Misinterpret polite interest as true interest
o To ensure the above, be sure to NOT be at your most functional by consuming large quantities of liquor
o Get all up in people's space and make them uncomfortable
o Project an image of who you generally aren't, the overconsumption of alcohol is a big help in this regard
o Don't follow your intuition
o Try too hard and occasionally let the fact that you're feeling needy bleed through.

the great divide

TuI've been feeling very disconnected from people lately. It's almost like there's a short in my system that prevents any real connections from occurring with other people. Certainly there have been a lot of temporary connections, enough to gleen some momentary satisfaction. But it just doesn't feel like enough anymore. The more I experience these shallow connections, the lonelier I start to feel. It's like being incredibly hungry and then eating a handful of something and then just feeling that much hungrier after getting that small taste. And then of course, there's the rejection that goes hand in hand with shorted out connections. It's just all very strange and painful, I'm baffled. I finally stuck a pin through the bubble of self-preservation I made for myself for so many years and watched it explode, but now I almost want it back.

dress you up in my love

There was a line in the movie Mean Girls about girls and Halloween. I can't remember exactly how it goes, but it's something like "Halloween is the time when girls get to dress up like sluts." And it's true. Take any costume and no doubt there is a tarted-up, vaguely whorish version running around. I saw slutty geishas, slutty vampires, slutty nuns even...and then there were the girls that literally dressed up like whores or really cheap looking Victoria Secret models. I'm not sure I get the whole whorish-Halloween phenomenon. What's the appeal? Why do people think they have to be skanky to be sexy? The sexiest guy I saw was completely covered up in a costume that wasn't tight or revealing. And the sexiest girl costume was kind of tight, but not very revealing...but yeah, she needed to take some time off from the tanning bed. But that's another pet-peeve for another post.