But in my defense...

...the last time I went to a concert was in 1996, to see Michael W. Smith perform at the Billy Graham crusade when it came to the Metrodome.

And it was also technically my first date, although at the time a "date" was me and a boy, and another boy, and two other girls, and three or four parents. And we were at a Billy Graham crusade.

And instead of kissing, holding hands, or even making prolonged eye contact, we ran into the outfield wall padding repeatedly, pretending we were Kirby Puckett fielding a fly ball, while almost everyone else went up to the stage for the altar call.

And I was wearing a jean skort (they were in style for a brief period in 1996; you'll have to trust me) and a shirt I borrowed from my mom. I don't remember what size the shirt was but at the time I was very chest-poor so I can't imagine it actually fit me.

So really, all things considered, I have to go to this concert, to even things out.

...at least I won't be wearing a skort this time.

QED, Bitches

Prove: I am awesome.

If: I do awesome things   
Then: I am awesome.

Assume: Awesome things are best expressed as bulleted lists:

• I am sitting at home on Friday night in my underwear working on my resume.
• I am working on said resume for a class, not because I have any plans to find a new job.
• I'm having trouble with my resume because I don't know how to describe what it is I do. When I realized that, it made me think of the Bobs from Office Space in their efficiency meeting. I then spent the next several minutes reliving my favorite quotes from the movie and laughing to myself. 
• Thinking of funny things made me realize I was going to leave a quasi-outraged, quasi-offensive comment on a friend's blog. 
• Thinking of Office Space made me realize how sad my work life is. 
• I save condiment packets. That's how sad.
• I paperclip them together by type, too. Some I have too many of (e.g., Taco Bell hot sauce) so they get a binder clip.
• I'm not at all ashamed to admit that. You'd be surprised at how many foods can be improved with Taco Bell sauce.
• There is a bottle of fancy-ish wine downstairs with my name on it. I am going to drink it while I write my resume in my underwear.
• I just created a detailed, bulleted list proving that I am as awesome as I claim to be.
• I'm a little mad at myself for using bulleted lists incorrectly.

Hence: I am awesome.

QED, Bitches


(This is actual, sound logic. I took a class in deductive reasoning at community college and got an A+. That's another bullet point.)

Overheard

"I just want to get away from everything," says my boss, half jokingly. "Let's round up all the ladies and go to Hawaii. I bet we could fill a 747."

A coworker agrees. "Everyone would go," she says.

"And we could all get jobs there...as cabana girls. What do they do? Hand out towels?"

"We could be the girls in the airport, the ones who hand you the lei when you get off the plane."

"We could do that." My boss pauses to consider this. "But I don't think I could pass for a native. I couldn't pull it off. I'd have to hand out towels instead."

I spin around in my chair. "I'll go with you! I can pull off handing out leis in the airport! You can supervise me!"

She laughs, uneasily. " Yeah, I could do that. I'll just sit in a hut in back and tell you you're doing a good job."

"It would be an easy work day," the coworker adds helpfully.

"Everyone would come along," says my boss. "A whole plane full."


MORAL: If you don't want your conversation to be awkwardly interrupted, don't discuss situations that require an indeterminate ethnicity while you're within eavesdropping range of a biracial girl. That's like our Bat-Signal.

Better living through HTML

FUN FACT: You can look up anything on Google. For example, try searching "glittery MySpace text generator."

Go ahead, try. You don't even have to use Boolean operators. It's that good.

Done? Did you get a website that lets you do....




THIS??

The internet, it is an amazing place to be.

(I had my first Instructional Design class tonight, and the discussion was largely dominated by several middle-aged women who had no concept of how to keep a discussion focused. The instructor responded by looking bored while they spoke. I could have used this blog to complain about them, or even to point out the irony of in instructional design lecture being such an utter failure, but as you can see, I chose to take the high road. The high, pink, glittery road.)

Unoffically doing the best ever on my New Year's Resolutions

Unofficially I think New Year's resolutions are bullshit, because what is life if not a constant struggle to suck less than one currently does? But, every year I unofficially make them anyway. It's a bit like how I still hold my breath and make a wish every time I drive through the tunnel, except that I always say "Amen" at the end, and I don't believe in wishes anymore and even prayers seem iffy at times. But I am a creature of habit.

So this year my unofficial resolution was to do more things that are out of character.* I think I've succeeded in that respect, mostly because I've been hanging out with Heather, who is the queen of "Let's do this, even though we don't know what we're doing!" It helps to have an accomplice for whom shame does not seem to be an issue. And I mean that in the nicest way possible. Of course, it could be argued that since one's concept of self is constantly evolving (see first sentence), then everything one does is out of character. But this is not the place for such philosophy. Yesterday, I did not one, but TWO new things!


New Thing: Swimming
Actually, this has been an ongoing thing since two Sundays ago, but yesterday was the first time I really enjoyed myself. See, I took swimming lessons when I was little, but I had to drop out when I realized I couldn't dive. I don't have an explanation for that; I just couldn't do it, and I was at the point where I needed that skill to continue taking classes. It was also around that time I realized I didn't float well. Or, at all. I don't float. And because I didn't advance far enough in swimming lessons to get good at swimming...well, let me show you with an MS Paint illustration:

Key:
1. Head, barely above water, gasping for air.
2. Legs, kicking to no avail.
3. Largest concentration of body fat, doing fuck-all to help the situation.

So a couple weeks ago, Ryan convinced me to go swimming with him. Like, for real swimming, in the lap lanes at the Y. Naturally I was skeptical of his claims that this would not end in death. But he was right! I was swimming - not well, and not for very long stretches, but more or less keeping afloat and moving forward. It's a lot harder than I remember - I have been exhausted after each time I've gone. But, it's actually been fun.

And then, yesterday, this happened:


Now, I want you to remember those kids are like 1/3 of my size. Of course they make it look easy; they weigh like 60 pounds. But for the more pear-shaped among us, this is hard. Like, I was not able to get past the knob the kid on the left is hanging onto and everyone was laughing at me, hard. Pulling yourself out of the water is tricky, and you add in the angle of the wall, the aforementioned large ass which is doing its best to pull you down, and the fact that you're trying to grab the rock knobs with wet, raisiny hands...no good. I inhaled a lot of water falling off of that thing.

But the good news is, now lap swimming seems easy in comparison. And I found out that the Y has swimming lessons for adults, which i definitely need, because doggy paddling/frog kicking/wildly thrashing is not the most dignified thing to do, and probably not very efficient either.

New thing score: Awesome, worth continuing


New Thing: Fondue
To be fair, I own a fondue pot and Ryan has a chocolate fountain, so fondue is not really that new. But we went to The Melting Pot yesterday and got the full, 3-course fondue experience for the first time. Here's the quick breakdown:

First course: Cheese w/horseradish - good
Second course: Meat cooked in oil w/tempura batter - good, although logistically a little rough
Third course: Chocolate w/peanut butter - awesome

Besides the problems of logistics (which were basically me being paranoid about food safety - if I'm going to eat overcooked tuna I might as well stay at home and open a $0.50 can) all of the food was great. The only problem was that the meal was three courses of fondue. At some point, you realize that not every food needs to be coated in another food. I'd go back - everything did taste great - but maybe just for cheese or chocolate fondue and some drinks.

New thing score: I've done it, and now I can cross it off the list.


Bonus: Money shot!

(Clearly, Heather's shamelessness is starting to rub off on me. Resolution achieved!)


*I actually had a second non-resolution - to do things out of spite less - but I think that may directly contradict this first one. "You're going to do XYZ? You've never wanted to do XYZ before!" Yeah, you're damn right I'm going to do XYZ, especially after being told that. 


Edit: Ever since writing about my early troubles with swimming I've had Aqua Boogie (A Psychoalphadiscobetabioaquadoloop) by Parliament stuck in my head. If you did not understand that last sentence, congratulations, you are white!

The thinnest veneer of legitimacy

This semester feels to me like the buckle-down, come-to-Jesus, now-or-never semester, both in that my writing skills have been exhausted to the point of spouting cliches, and in that I'm taking classes advanced enough that they are teaching me skills I will actually use in my career. I had my first in-class meeting today for Document and Information Design, which I've been looking forward to ever since I knew I had to take it, because you are Someone when you know Design. Seriously, I am going to soak up everything in this class and name-check the shit out of it for the rest of my life. Heck, I already do it with the fact that I own CS5 and have seen Helvetica.

However, I learned today that this class was not just about making oneself comfortable enough with design to be semi-douchey about it. No, I go to a state school, and as such we are required to learn real-world things that will make us less douchey (and, maybe more honestly, less of a liability to the taxpayers). So today, with the threat of participation points hanging over my head, I was forced to do something I've been putting off for the last year and a half of my life.

Ladies and Gentleman, I present...my portfolio.

Okay, I made my portfolio today; I didn't fill it. And I'm still getting used to WordPress - after using Blogger it's a bit like making the PC-to-Mac transition. But developing the portfolio is part of the class too, and of course, the more work I do, the more I'll have to fill it with (Do you need me to do work for you? I'm a competent editor and less douchey than average document designer! Plus I'm cheap because I have no idea what the industry standards are!)

It's actually a bit unnerving to have my work on the internet where people can find it. I'm a little hesitant to show people things that I know are student-quality. And yes, I know that's a pointless thing to be scared of, especially since I constantly Tweet about being naked am a musician who performs on a weekly basis in front of a large group of people. The point is, developing a thick skin/shamelessness about a skill set takes time, and to be honest, I'm glad I'm being forced to do it now. My stage fright completely disappeared just months after I got a regular church job, to the point where I pulled off an entire Easter Sunday's worth of music with less than a week's preparation without thinking twice about it. I'm hoping something similar happens here. I won't be scared to post my portfolio, because I can't afford to be.

So stay tuned. Bookmark/RSS that shit up. Forward it along to your hiring manager friends, you know, once there's actually stuff in there (coming next week: my resume!). And please, be gentle :)

I'm like Ernest Hemingway, in that I overuse untagged dialogue and view women mainly as sex objects and/or scenery.

"Naomi, we need to talk."

"...Jesus? Is that you?"

"No, it's me. Your blog."

"Oh. Heeeey, Blog. I was totally just going to click over to you."

"Were you, Naomi? Were you really?"

"Well...yeah, I mean...I was going to comment on someone else's blog. That's pretty much the same thing, right? You use the same login and everything."

"Don't bullshit me."

"Sorry."

"It's been a while."

"Yeah, I've been pretty busy. School, you know."

"You were too busy going to school for writing to write in your blog?"

"Okay, well, I can see where you would think that's a lame excuse, but I was doing this big paper, and it was a group project, so I was writing a lot of emails, and then I got sick...you know, I wrote about all of this on Twitter."

"Don't talk about that website around me! You know how I feel about microblogging!"

"Okay, sorry! Sheesh. I guess now isn't the best time to mention I've been thinking about getting a Tumblr account."

"What?!"

"Forget I said anything. Look, blog, I'm sorry I've been neglecting you. I really am. I miss writing for fun. I miss posting pictures on you of cool things that I do. I even miss pretending I hate myself for shamelessly promoting you on Twi- on other websites. The thing is, you're a habit. I fell out of writing, and I want to fall back in. I miss you Blog, I really do."

"I miss you too, Naomi. I want us to be close again."

"Me too. 

"Hey, Blog?"

"Yes, Naomi?"

"Are you picturing me wearing a trenchcoat and holding a boombox playing Peter Gabriel above my head?"

"Of course."

"I love you, Blog."

"I love you too, Naomi."