Hot People Don't Get Lost in Potholes

I'm moving next week to a city I've never been to before. Therefore, my soon-to-be roommate and I thought it would be a good idea to take a little roadtrip up there to get the lay of the land. I'm sure you can imagine what kind of hijynx I could get into on this kind of caper.

The first snafu happened before we'd even left home. I got a call the night before from my soon-to-be roommate saying that her car had stalled in the middle of the road and we couldn't take it the next day. Because my roommate's mother gets a corporate discount, she booked a car in my name, necessitating that my credit card information be used for the most convoluted game of telephone ever (if I see that she's gone to Costa Rica on my credit card - unlikely, since it's maxed out anyway....). I was told we'd be driving a Chevy Cobalt or a Ford Focus, or something of the like...which was fine. Those are run-of-the-mill domestic cars, both of which I've driven before. When I got there, they gave me a Mitsubishi Galant. Hmmm. Instead of a $16000 car that didn't belong to me, I'd be driving at $28000 car that didn't belong to me. That's not the least bit stressful.

I took it on the road and it was a nice drive. You can tell by how excited I am.
The ride to our destination city was pretty uneventful. We checked out our apartment, got directions from our building manager in the smokiest rental office I've ever been in (seriously, we couldn't see each other from two feet away...our airways closed up in disgust!), and then headed to the gas station to fill up. That's when things got...funky. I pulled up to the pump, got out, and then realized I couldn't open the gas cap because there was no little pull-spot on the door. I got back into the car to look for a release in the driver's console...nada. I looked again on the door. I looked again at the console. I pulled away from the pump because, at this point, there was a small line-up of angry-looking motorists awaiting their fill-up while I was fannying about between the trunk and the driver's seat. Then I got the manual out - a trick I'd seen before during an hilarious "Are the lights on, or aren't they?" situation on a previous road trip. While I'm perusing the manual (I'm sucking my finger here because I bent my fingernail back trying to close the door of the car)...my roommate checks out the front console, then heads back to the gas tank to see what's up. She figures it out by accident. Apparently, you push on the wrong side, and the right side of the door opens. Genius. So intuitive.

Once we were filled up, we headed into the greater city to set up our power bill, tenant's insurance and figure out where a couple other essentials were (the gym, the grocery store, Cora's Breakfast and Lunch). Despite having a map and a small arsenal of Google Maps print-offs, we got lost like, a zillion times. To illustrate, we drove over the same toll-bridge twice. Once on purpose, but I thought we were getting on the bridge to cross the river back to our original point, and as it turned out, we had already crossed without my noticing (concerning, when you consider that I was the one driving). It did allow me some practice at tossing my quarters in the bin, though...which I'd never done before and it made me more nervous than driving in a strange city.

After a number of 87-point turns in strangers' driveways, we were headed back to our happy homeland (and we were happy to be headed back...we're moving to a dirty, dirty city...it's going to be a long summer). While I thought the worst was over, driving-wise, Mother Nature had something else in store for me. It had been threatening rain all day, but after a few hours in our destination city, it had seemed to clear up. However, once we were on the highway, we were met with torrential rains the likes of which would decimate a divinely-protected ark (our ark, which only had two of one animal in it, was obviously doomed). My roommate is a nervous driver, and moans with extreme urgency when she's worried we're going to hydroplane (also when she sees dead animals on the road, and when she's excited to see live ponies in the fields next to the road). The moaning surprised me every time, which meant I jumped to alertness every time, which meant I did a small fishtail every time, which meant she would moan again...it was a vicious circle made worse by vicious rains.

Even when the rain cleared, though, we weren't quite safe. Our next trial was to endure the giant potholes of Eastern Canada. Most of them were of reasonable size and depth, but since they're EVERYWHERE, it's useless to swerve to avoid them (otherwise, you'll end up in the ditch or the median). At one point, I decided to put my tires on the shoulder to straddle them - which frightened my roommate because she thought I was driving off the road. "No, I'm doing this on purpose!" I cried, just before a large-ish crater came into view. Totally unable to avoid it, I braced for impact, my roommate screamed - the car dipped - I prepared to be lost forever because surely THIS pothole was a portal to another dimension - but soon we were driving on solid ground again. We had conquered it! We braved the pothole and lived to tell the tale. All other potholes seem like pockmarks in the road in comparison!

I'm home now, safe and sound, despite the rains, the potholes, and the gale-force winds that met me at the Tantramar marsh (some of them nearly pushed me into the other lane on the highway...good thing it's twinned). I'm pretty sure my roommate will never drive with me again, or go out in the rain. And I'm definitely not looking forward to the move in a week.

Hot People Don't Have Visa Limits

Based on my friends' horror at my lack of makeup skillz last week, I decided to call in a professional. I got my colours done. For those of you who don't know what this means (I told one friend and she thought I was getting my hair dyed), getting your colours done means you have a professional...colour-finder?...tell you what season you are, and then they tell you what colours look best on you. The season thing kind of makes it sound a little voodoo-y, for sure...but my friend had hers done last spring and since then she's been wearing clothes that make her skin look slamming (she wasn't exactly leftover lima beans before, but she looks extra-smokin' now).

So I had my appointment and the lady told me, with such excitement, that I'm an autumn. Apparently, they're very rare. Awesome, I thought. I'm an autumn! I'm a diamond in the rough! I felt really special when she told me that. It also explained why I looked like I was dying every time I wore foundation - I'd been wearing the wrong colour. Observe (faces blurred out to protect my friends):









I am neither drunk nor deathly ill in either of these pictures...I'm just wearing foundation.

So you can see why I was pleased to learn that I could cover up my redness without also looking like the undead (Hot people look like the living living). Then she told me that autumns are hard to find clothes for. And then I remembered something about my Mom telling me I was a winter, and buying me all kinds of hot pink and ice blue and I thought, shit...this means I'm going to have to buy a whole new wardrobe. Balls. I'm already treading water in a sea of student debt with Ursula the Octopus Queen yanking me down with one of her slimy tentacles. Then the lady told me how much the makeup I agreed to buy would cost. I threw up a little in my mouth before she took my credit card. On the other hand, makeup makes me look smashing!

Just to pile on the debtor's remorse, I went shopping for sexy work clothes (new job starts in less than three weeks!) today. I took along my little swatch book that came with my consultation, and a list of absolutely necessary items. I had a budget of $200, not including shoes - but who brings along a calculator when they're going shopping?

The upside of the shopping trip is that three strangers complimented me on my dress/jeans ensemble, which I thought was kind of iffy when I put it on (it was, actually, a clever way to economize the fact that I accidentally bought a shress and forgot to take it back). However, the colour lady was right - autumns are hard to buy clothes for. My friend and I went to every store in town (I am very nearly being literal here), pulling out my swatch wallet (they give you a wallet full of little bits of fabric with the right colours for you on it!) and holding it up against the fabric of the item I wanted to to buy. YARGH!!!! The things I wanted weren't the right colour, and when I found the right colour it was too expensive. My Visa is now racked up to its limit...again, and I didn't even buy everything on my list. Jeez...being hot is expensive!

Hot People Get a Little Help from their Friends

I have great friends, who have been here for me through the whole process of singlification and I love, love, love them for it. They've also been really supportive of this whole hotness process and the blog that goes with it. Some have told me that I'm "hot already," but most of them really get that this whole thing is about pushing myself out of my comfort zone and airing my most hilarious dirty granny panties on the line in the process and they're cheering me on and encouraging me along the way.

Case in point - some of my friends were horrified to learn that I was anti-high-heel. They had noticed I rarely wore heels, but since the relative flatness of my soles did not come accompanied with pajamas to class (which, I shit you not, is regular attire for some of my peers), they thought little of it until reading the entry about my sad history with attempts at increasing my altitude.

"Never?" one asked. "For reals?!?!?!?" said another. And finally, "We're going to get you wearing heels!" one of them said. Normally, I would respond with a sound negatory - my feet are my business and I've already decided that hot people can wear cute flats. But since I'm in the process of a major life-change, I told her "Sure, it'll be good for the blog!" and we made a shoe-shopping date.

As we were shoe-shopping, we discussed the many rules of hot heel-wearing. For example, while chunkier heels certainly go a long way to keep your feet feeling like they're on solid ground, apparently, they make your thighs look fat. Obvi! And since I still eat far too many cookies , the skinnier the heel, the better! Also, pointy toes elongate your leg. Huh...who knew? So we decided on a cute black pair and we were on our way.

In order to mark the momentous occasion of heel-wearing (but really because we're all leaving school soon and we wanted to get our drunk on), we decided to get together at my place for some pre-drinks and close out the night with some dancing at a local drinking establishment. My mission for the night - Get these (sock-lines and all!):



Into these:

And keep them there for as much of the night as possible.

Because I can't dress myself yet (at least, not hotly), my friends decided on my outfit as well as my hair. I thought I could do my own makeup, but as it turned out, makeup was actually a three-person job. I've also recently learned that not owning a blending brush is an absolute travesty. I was proud that I knew what an angle brush was, let alone that I owned one - I guess I'm still a young grasshopper when it comes to hotness.

The result of this village-raising-a-child style makeover is that this:

Transformed into this:

In this last one, I'm crossing my legs in front because I heard that would make me look skinnier, or something. I don't know...what are your thoughts? Am I hot yet? I think I still need some work. For example, I've just realized that my only pose is hands-on-hips. Hot people offer variety, I'm sure. At any rate, the shoes are killer.

So after far too much to drink at home, we descended upon the downtown to a local public house where a musical group was set to be playing that evening. We got in for free in exchange for a picture of us to be put up on the establishment's website (which I thought was a good sign on the hotness front) and proceeded to the dancefloor to shake it to whatever the dj was spinning (interestingly, the dj was the dirty cook at an ill-fated soup café at which I once worked...strange career change, I thought). Soon enough, the band was ready for its set - at which point we discovered that this was not a college-rock type band, but a loud metal band. Not wanting to walk to another bar (because my feet were starting to get a little testy with me), I decided that I could definitely shake my ass to a little Enter Sandman and Here I Go Again, if not for its enjoyment factor (of which there was little), then at least for its kitsch factor (of which there was much).

Following that ear-bleeding session, we decided to head up to another rather large drinking complex that's quite popular with the kids in town, because the music there was reported to be a little more danceable - but on the way we met with a pretty awesome street performer, who took requests and played a lot of songs that I really like. When we first happened upon him, he was playing Bust a Move, which prompted me to do my one and only breakdance move on the street (this is something I pull out far too often when I've been drinking - on bar dancefloors, off bar dancefloors, the residence common room, outside Boston Pizza...). Although I have a sneaking suspicion that hot people can control their breakdancing urges, the street performer seemed to think it was good entertainment for other passersby, so that was good. It was good that I liked him too, because one of my friends remembered him from a fabulous birthday where he played a song for her and had a cute dog, or something and she subsequently refused to leave while he was still playing. We therefore spent the rest of the night hanging out with a busker, who was quite lovely and didn't seem to mind that we sang along, even though most of us couldn't remember all the words to anything.

The night did not end with as my friends had predicted, with an impromptu make-out session on the dancefloor with a stranger - but I did meet a pretty cool busker, and danced with a couple of nice young men on the street - although by then I had long switched from the new heels to the flats I had hidden in my purse. So my primary mission was a failure. However, I don't think this is the last time I'll face off with high heels. I'll break them (in) yet!

Hot People Kick the Habit

I have a pizza problem. Like, for serious. Pizza is like heroin to me (not to minimize the plight of heroin addicts - if Trainspotting has taught me nothing else, it's taught me that the life of a junkie is dirty and shitty, and rife with really sick-making hallucinations, all set to a killer soundtrack). Seriously, though. If I'm not eating pizza, I'm thinking of when I'm going to eat pizza next. When I run out of pizza, I'm hatching plans to get more pizza.

I think I hit an all-time low this past week. On Monday, I was at a luncheon at which they served pizza (does anyone else have a problem with the juxtaposition of a classy word like luncheon and a greasy, cheese-smothered word like pizza?). There were leftovers, so of course I totally took some home. I had it mostly for lunches - once for breakfast when I was in too much of a hurry to spoon my usual vanilla yogurt into a bowl and then spoon it into my mouth (it's the extra step, you see...I can just stuff the pizza directly into my mouth, bypassing the spoon altogether). Instead I just grabbed the last slice of Adriana Pesto.

I thought that was the end of it, too. But then I had a party on Saturday. In addition to the copious amounts of cake (copious! with hilarious icing-writing inscriptions), we also ordered enough pizza to feed the standing army of a small country like Andorra or Lichtenstein. The result of this overorder was that Sunday morning left me with almost three full extra-large pizzas. Extra-delicious on the second day, I had some for lunch, all the while fully planning on cooking an actual supper made from foods from the four food groups later that evening.

As luck would have it, though, my power went out at suppertime. No power means no stove means no wholeseome dinner :( But, there was still some perfectly good cheese pizza on the counter...voilà! Dinner for one! I had some more as a midnight snack. And then some more for breakfast the next day. I think I had consumed nearly an entire extra-large pizza when I realized that I wasn't sure if it was me or somebody else who had eaten the other half of the half-eaten slice of pepperoni I picked up off the coffee table to nibble on that afternoon. THAT's when I decided this pizza thing had gone too far!

I'm off pizza now. There's just no two ways about it. I don't think I can ever have another piece of pizza as long as I live. This is good, because it was just another one of those foods contributing to my inability to hunt down skirts in my size (and probably also pants and tops). Now when I think of pizza my stomach gets a little queasy. I can't think of pizza. I'm sure if I see another hot, greasy, tomato-ey, melty cheesy slice....mmm....slice....

A wedge or two after the bar isn't cheating, now...is it?