Hot in 6 Months

Everybody's Hot Sometimes

2011-08-27T13:55:00.000-07:00

I've struggled since the beginning with what the litmus test was going to be. Was I hot when boys liked me? Was I hot when someone told me I was? How was I ever to know when I finally got there?

Being honest, I've found myself less and less interested in reaching that pinnacle of inferno. Coming here to write about my quest for hotness has been more like a chore lately than the overflowing outpouring it was when I first began my journey. I was busting to get something out of me, and get that intangible "hot mojo" in.

So am I hot yet? Today? I don't think so. No, I don't really feel particularly hot today. Or lately. Somehow in the last little while I got away from myself. Doesn't my boyfriend tell me I'm hot? Well, yes. But that's his job. So do my friends. They're not really the point, though. At least, not completely.

Then have I failed? Well, no. I don't think so. Not completely. And not all the time. Because even though I know that I'm not super hot right now, I know that I have been hot at times over the past two and a half years. I've made my body hot. I've made my face hot. I've made my clothes hot. I've made my smile hot. I've made my dancing hot. I've made my words hot. I've made my thoughts hot. I've felt hot. Other people have felt my hotness.

And more importantly, I know I can do it again.

I've been feeling kind of down lately. It's been bothering me because, first of all, feeling down feels shitty. I think we can all agree on that one. But it's also bothering me because I know it bothers everyone around me. Yesterday, pretty much right when I needed it, a Facebook friend that I rarely talk to had posted a status update with an excerpt from an Audrey Hepburn quote.

"I believe in pink. I believe that laughing is the best calorie burner. I believe in kissing, kissing a lot. I believe in being strong when everything seems to be going wrong. I believe that happy girls are the prettiest girls. I believe that tomorrow is another day and I believe in miracles."

And I think this is the key that I've kind of been subconsciously avoiding the whole time and right when I needed it I was batted over the head with it. More than one person has told me over the last two and a half years that I should just do what made me happy, because that's what hot people do.

So, thanks to those people. You had it right all the time. And thanks to everyone who has advised, commented, commiserated. And to all 2000-odd of you who have quietly peeked in on this hot project. It has been unbelievably motivating to know that some, or all, of my journey has spoken to you in some way...if only because it was a little bit tragedorable to see what someone else was going through. But I think I've got this now. :)

Hot People Eat Muffin Tops for Breakfast

2011-07-31T10:28:00.000-07:00

I know it's been a long time when blogger asks me for my password. And then I get it wrong. Twice.

I REALLY know it's been a long time when I have to check my blog to see what I last wrote about. You may (or may not) recall that it was about finally being comfortable in my skin.

But some recent events have suggested to me that perhaps I'm getting a little TOO comfortable in my skin.

It's been a fantastic summer - lots of drinks on the beach, lazing about on the water, and I've just finished up a really awesome vacation revisiting the east coast with my beau. Basically, the last month-ish has been an excess of nothing-much.

And it's (more than) starting to show. I went for a bike ride to a nearby park with my boyfriend yesterday. Though he was quick to point out that the bike I used wasn't a performance bike, was not meant to ride up big hills, didn't actually have brakes or speeds on it, this was not really enough to comfort me after I found myself in a heart-thumping, panting heap on the grass at the top of a big hill. Especially since I had actually walked the bike up the hill.

I'm finding myself backsliding and I don't like it. I'm busy, and as a result I'm sitting too much and eating too much food I didn't cook and the result is that sweaty, panting mass I described above. I thought I'd made some pretty foolproof resolutions in January, and by God, I'm going to stick to them come hell or high water or (most likely outcome:) frequent relapse.

I've started already - I've cooked three meals in a row with actual foods that came from an actual grocery store. I even put some in the freezer for later use. This is huge, people. And even though I spent most of yesterday evening sitting and cursing at my sewing machine, in the back of my mind I was thinking about going swimming today. And again later this week. And MAYBE for a jog. And this is the big thing. That bike ride (if you can even call it that) was a big wake up call for me. I've never been so obviously (to myself) out of shape. I NEED to do something. Not only because muffin tops are definitely not hot (and I'm less and less able to avoid them), but also because heart disease isn't either. And I see a lot of heart disease these days.

All of this brought me to one big conclusion. I need to get on that "do less" thing. Stat. Which means I'll have to use a word I hate to use. "No." And I don't mean that I need to learn to say no, and to put myself first, and blar-di-blar in one of those Oprah Magazine kind of ways. Saying yes has meant a lot of awesome things for me. I have not consistently had so much fun as I've had in the last year and a half of saying yes to just about everything that's come my way. It just mean I really have to consider the impact of saying yes. Everything I do, I have to resolve myself to consider whether saying yes to doing it will allow me to 1. make and eat actual foods 80% of the time, and 2. sustain the regular movement of my body in ways other than rolling over in bed.

Ok - let's do it.

Hot People See the Light

2011-06-24T11:32:00.000-07:00

The last few days have been kind of a life clean-up in the aftermath of my major projects for the spring season. January to the end of May have been a series one-thing-after-another in both work and life. When I was in university, this after-the-crazy-subsides time was usually followed by a few weeks of listless depression and total lack of motivation in finding a summer job.

Well...the job keeps going (although, some days I wonder; I often take bets on Thursday for how many people booked on Friday will actually show up), so that's one problem solved. But last year, the sads had definitely set in around this time. So far this year, it hasn't happened.

So what's different?

Well...I think an obvious answer is the fact that I'm pretty comfortably attached right now. My lack of attachment was a source of major concern for me just about a year ago. But...a year ago, I kinda thought I was attached. Plus I really don't feel like it would be truthful to say that my lack of sads is entirely dependent on my being in a comfortable relationship. But it certainly helps.

No, I think that despite the fact that I've not been to the gym in an innumerable quantity of days, and despite the fact that I've not seriously worn makeup on a regular basis since...well, ever (how do people do it? I JUST DON'T HAVE TIME EVERY MORNING), I just feel more comfortable in my skin. When I first started this blog, I didn't know who I was. Without that knowledge, I couldn't really settle comfortably on anything or anyone. And I'm pretty sure that's where the sads came from. In the last year, I've found things I'm comfortable doing, and people I'm comfortable doing them with. It's awesome.

It's so awesome, I'm even doing a few things I'm not totally comfortable with. I played softball for the first time last week since I was in junior high. It went...well, about as well as softball did WHEN I was in junior high. So...pretty poorly. BUT, despite a little bit of pre-game anxiety, I always had in the back of my mind that the people I was playing with weren't hanging out with me because of my baseball skills but because they kinda want to hang out with me. And for the first time in my life, I don't doubt this (all the time).

Sure, I still have (many) moments of personality anxiety. And sometimes they're hilarious. And don't worry - you'll still get a full report of those activities. So stay tuned, kids.

***In other news, though I haven't learned to play guitar or be ab-tastic, I did have a counselling session with a client the other day almost entirely in (not entirely grammatically correct) French. Hurray me!

Hot People's Life Imitates Art?

2011-06-12T17:09:00.000-07:00

So, remember this?

I finally got my pictures and permission from the photographer. THIS is what all the fuss was about.
If this picture is to be believed, my boyfriend's mother should have been grandmother to octuplets sometime mid-March. Luckily, it isn't to be believed. The prosthetic belly used in this play was made by and worn by women who have never been pregnant. I stuck it on. We looked at it. We thought maybe it should look bigger. We put more padding on. And then we decided it was more for comedic value than realism.

Last week, one of my clients congratulated me on having gotten married recently. When I looked at her with this face...she said she'd heard through the grapevine that I'd gotten married. I have not gotten married and just magically forgotten to blog about it. I've not gotten engaged. I've not talked about either of those things with any party who might want, in future, to be involved in that with me. Trust me. If I had, it would have made the blog.

I'm quite sure, almost completely without doubt, that she thought I was getting married or had gotten married because of this:

And if this picture is to be believed, then one must also believe that I got married on four separate occasions to the same man, not wearing a wedding dress, but with one draped over me. And one must also believe that I would marry a man who's idea of a life partner is one who dresses like this:

With a pink, pie-patterned apron and clashing blue patterned knit cardigan, and matching blue knit stockings....AND thinks that THIS is the best way to do makeup:

Just look at the foolishness I've wrought with that lipstick and rouge.

One aspect of small-town life that's been difficult to adjust to has been everyone being totally and unabashedly inquisitive about my relationship status. It's totally legit here for people to ask you when you plan on marrying your boyfriend of 4 months. I handle these questions by responding with this face.

Like a hot person would?

____________________________________________________________________

Photos courtesy of Cal Knight Photography.

Hot People Have Quickies

2011-06-06T13:11:00.000-07:00

Nope, nothing hotter than a quickie.

And that's why this is a quickie post. Also, because I posted recently and I haven't got loads to talk about. So instead, here's just a quick update about what's hot and what's not.

Not hot: waking up late, cramming too much breakfast down, then realizing at 8:37 a.m. that you had an optometrist appointment at 8:30 a.m.

Hot: going to French class and discovering you got 97% on your most recent exam.

Not hot: getting this sunburn.

Hot: cute orange pedicure.

That's all for now folks!

Hot People Don't Shimmer (At Least...Not Like This)

2011-05-31T16:35:00.000-07:00

The daytime high today in my little northern town was 31C and it's still something like 29C.

One wouldn't think that I'd be one to complain. You know, given the fact that this whole blog is about WANTING to be hot (get it? hot. har-de-har!). But it's not just that. Don't get me wrong. I like summer. Summer means that I can swim and eat vegetables that might have had less travel time than I've had in my life and that the days last longer so I'm not suffering from totally unexplainable depression in the middle of February...AND no raised eyebrows at cracking a cooler in the middle of the day BECAUSE IT'S EFFING HOT OUT AND I NEED TO COOL DOWN, DAMMIT. And, given the fact that northern winters boast a chill that literally has it out for you...like seriously, the weather is TRYING to kill you...it's very difficult not to appreciate a little excessive sizzle in your life.

But there's one thing about hot weather that really bothers me, and that is the fact that no matter how hard I try, I ALWAYS look like I'm suffering from debilitating, corpulence-induced meat sweats. Once upon a time, I thought it was because I was fat, but even during my leaner summers I still look like I've been generously greased with a pastry brush. I don't understand how other girls can go through summer looking like beach goddesses with their tans and their sun-bleached hair and their short shorts without the chafing...the awful, awful chafing.

And let's just be clear here, I don't want to spend hours in a tanning bed or bazillions of dollars on just the right amount of bleach (though I could do without the chafing). I'm ok with being pasty and mouse-brown. I'm not ok with looking like a pit-stained fishwife.

Surely there are products and tricks that can help me in this regard. Some kind of grease-removing face wipe? Some kind of maxi-pad for my armpits? Has anyone invented these yet?

Also...my hair has grown out since that picture was taken. What do I do with that? Theoretically, it should just sweep back and tendrils of my naturally curly hair should fall out in just the right places to make me look tousled but not messy, right? RIGHT? THEN WHY DOES IT ALWAYS LOOK MESSY AND GROSS AND PASTED TO THE BACK OF MY NECK ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS?

Dear Blogosphere. Please help. So I can think about what to barbecue.

Sincerely,

Miss T

Hot People Can't Eat Just One

2011-05-15T13:26:00.000-07:00

If I was going to pick the psychological disorder I'm most likely to suffer from, I'd probably pick depression nine times out of ten. My last post, I thought, was a pretty good illustration of that (thanks, to my commenters on that one, btw. Nearly all the kick in the ass I needed. Plus this one, which pretty much pulled me up out of it.) Regardless of whether or not I ACTUALLY suffer from depression, this post is about what I think I'm not. I don't think I have an addictive personality. I don't think I have any personality disorders. But a sober(ish) inventory of my life this past weekend suggests to me that I'm both an addict AND a hoarder.

Problem 1

I'm addicted to having things to do. There, I said it. I know. It's a problem. Most of you are probably reading this thinking that I'm crazy (actually, that's my point...); having things to do is totally normal. I'm not going to go through the laundry list of activities I've engaged in over the past few months (because I've done it many, many times already). But I've said yes to so many things that,

a. in order to do my taxes and spend some time with my parents I spent approximately 11 hours in a car, 5 having dinner with one parent, 2 having a fight with another parent, 3 hours doing my taxes, and only 6 hours sleeping so that I could be back in time on the same weekend to rehearse with some vocalists whom I was accompanying in the local music festival. Please note the car to sleep ratio there...

and,

b. my involvement in so many activities in the last month or two was so intense that more than one person thought I might do actual physical harm to myself in the completion of these activities.

So...maybe that's not normal. And though things are winding down for the summer, I don't find myself completely ready for relaxation, beaches and drinks like this:

(even though my boyfriend has admonished me and instructed me that I am not permitted to participate in any sort of extra-curriculars until September). I'm actually getting kind of anxious. Surely, here's JUST ONE MORE THING I can do or get involved in. A community garden? A book club? A quilting class? ANYTHING?

I've taken up crafting to fill the void. And to further illustrate my pathological need for things to do, let me describe my latest crafting venture. I had decided to make flower brooches for my mother and my boyfriend's mother as a belated Mother's Day gift (yeah, yeah...this "things to do" kick also means that I'm chronically late with EVERYTHING). It's pretty, and that's all that matters. See? I had none of the materials or tools necessary for this job. The result was that after work, I went racing to three different stores to get all the materials I needed. Despite the fact that I live in a reasonably well-appointed town, amenities-wise, there was one item I couldn't find. This resulted in massive panic, manifested by a sweaty-browed, arms-flailing sprint to my favourite yarn shop to inarticulately gesture and holler for the missing item. She didn't have it and that was a DISASTER (though totally understandable, because the missing item wasn't yarn, which is what she sells).

The point is, even when my "thing to do" isn't a previously scheduled, organized group activity, I WANT TO DO IT RIGHT NOW. I need to have my fix. See? Problem.

Problem 2

I cleaned my bedroom yesterday. Not even my whole apartment. Do you know how many empty, opened envelopes I found in there? More than one. Like, a grocery bag full. WHY? And hole- and run-ridden pantyhose? Like, a MILLION PAIRS. I don't even remember when I decided that the best course of action for both of these items was to let them lie (on the dresser, on the floor, IN THE BED[?!?!]) rather than toss them directly into the garbage. Because that's what both of those things are. Garbage. Similar items include safety pins, hair elastics, hairballs (helpfully placed in the middle of the bedroom floor by my cat). See? Problem.

Does anyone know of a detox/intervention program for loonies with my kind of problems? Anyone? Yeah, thought not. Anyway, I figure I could quit anytime I want. I just have to subscribe to cable television again (because its hold is WAY more powerful than any community garden committee), and develop a further hoarding habit for attractive containers and dust bins. See? Problem solved.

Hot People Don't Smell like Failure

2011-04-21T09:20:00.000-07:00

I wish I could say my absence from the cyberwaves has been a result of my having reached my goal. I wish I could tell you I was superhot and I haven't been blogging because I haven't NEEDED blogging. However, saying any of those things would be a whole bunch of false.

I've been absent from the cyberwaves because I've been hilar-busy. And I've been absent from the cyberwaves because, honestly, I've been feeling like a big pile of turds recently. A big pile of failure turds. I have failed at being fit, I have failed at doing more, I have failed at doing less, I have failed in a house, I have failed with a mouse, etc.

And I have failed at writing actual words...to the point where my father points my failures out to me. (Normally, I wouldn't "out" an anonymous commenter, except that he already outed himself in the comment.)

...And that really is the last straw. I am nearly 30, and there are still numerous things that I can't do without my parents. This, above all, makes me feel decidedly not hot. Though I have a pretty reasonable income, I still feel as though I need to ask them for permission to do things from time to time...like take vacations with money that I legitimately earned and saved. Hell, I can't even string a sentence together without some input.

Now, I don't really know what to do about it. I've tried gently suggesting that I don't need their help. I've had screaming fights that, I think, more than gently suggest that I'd like a litte breathing room. But that's a thing I fail at also. I find it difficult to suggest to the people upon whom I was so dependent (for more than a quarter century) that I don't want their help anymore without feeling like a complete ingrate or a tantrum-throwing two-year-old screaming "No! I wanna do it."

But it's that attitude that's gotten me to this feeling of a big giant, steaming pile of failure-turds. My unrelenting attitude of doing everything that's offered to me that I have the slightest inkling that I might want to try has resulted in my having succeeded at only a few of them (since, you know, I can't be amazing at everything...like hot people would be). And now I feel like I'm frantically treading water and my limbs are burning with fatigue and all I want to do now is drown in my bedsheets. Sigh.

Hot People Don't Sit Down

2011-03-21T15:22:00.000-07:00

So, one of my resolutions this year was to "do less." I think my (I hope) notable absence from the cyberwaves is an indication that I've already failed at doing less.

That being said, I'm really quite proud of how I've managed to "do more." When I was in university, all of my energies were focussed on three things: doing well in school, drinking on weekends, and attending debate tournaments...mostly for the purposes of drinking on weekends (perhaps that's actually two things with one sub-thing...bahaha). In my first year post-university/post-employment, I've managed to do a whole heck of a lot here. Sometimes that means my cat becomes king of the apartment and I'm just some person who comes by to warm up the bed at night and leave some food in the dish in the morning. But it also kinda means that I'm a mover and shaker - which, considering my social resignation when I started this blog, is a huge deal for me. Not only have I become a participant in the social fabric of my community, I've also become a performer. I've moved from medicating my shyness with copious amounts of alcohol (with sometimes disastrous results), to putting myself on display for tens of people. I'm hoping to get some of the stills from the performance to post up here. I played a nine-month pregnant farm girl. They're pretty funny.

And I'm pretty happy with myself. But not completely. I'm just finding a little difficulty with the balance of happinesses. I love being involved...having my finger on a pulse, or what-have-you. But when I'm so engulfed in activity, it's really hard to be...active. Physically, speaking. Or, you know, eat foods made of food. And I've gotta say, it certainly doesn't make me happy when NOT A SINGLE PAIR OF PANTS THAT I OWN WILL DO UP COMFORTABLY. Of course, the play's over and in a month or two, so will all of my other extra-curriculars. I'll have the whole summer and miles of country highway sprawling before me and my bicycle. But I know the same thing's going to happen next year and I'm FINALLY learning that given the choice between being fun and being fit, I'm going to choose fun every single time. And I'm going to languour in my resulting corpulence every single time as well. So, the key is to find ways to make fitness fun. Seems like a no-brainer, huh? Halp.

Hot People...Guh...

2011-03-02T14:01:00.000-08:00

I've been here a year. My one-year anniversary at work was yesterday. Normally, I'd be celebrating how awesome I am.

However, I celebrated my anniversary by taking my first sick day, after having a tooth pulled in the most upsetting dental experience of my life. I'll continue the celebrations this week by cutting my cat's balls off.

I'm pretty sure I've done some awesome stuff in the last year, but right now it's hard to see through this funk.

Hot People Find The Fire

2011-02-07T14:32:00.000-08:00

I was supposed to go to the gym today. I have decided that I will not be doing so. Today was crap. So was half of yesterday, actually.

But it makes me worried. It doesn't seem to take much for me to want avoid expending some energy. Finding your motivation in February is difficult. There's no sun, and it's effing cold here. Back in September I had glorious notions that I'd be skiing and snowshoeing and skating...but now I mostly just want to curl up under a blanket and drink milky tea. In fact, if I could skip work to do that, that'd be even better.

So...how do I make sure that this isn't a permanent state of affairs? Well...I don't really know. But I've got a pretty good idea. Way back in September, when I was all dreamy about what a Great Canadian Winter life I'd be leading, I took some pictures of myself. They were meant to be "before" comparison pictures to illustrate exactly how successful I'd been with Plan Abtastic. Then, of course, that plan was an epic failure. I took another one today...an "after" shot...for comparison. Only, instead of the "after" meaning "after lots of exercise and sensible eating", it means "after overcommitting myself, being more or less sedentary, and eating a steady diet of microwave dinners, pizza, subway and candy for breakfast".

Before

After

Now, I don't want to get into the fine details of the analysis of exactly what's happened physically. And I'm sure my eyes are exaggerating the differences between the two pictures, but I think we can agree that one is preferable to the other. And it's not the "After" shot. In fact, I don't think the jeans I'm wearing in the before shot even fit anymore. But THIS. IS. MOTIVATING. This happened over a matter of months, and, frankly, it makes me frightened about what a year (or more) could do.

Now, I know I'm not supposed to be motivated by fear. I've been to several seminars given by highly respected behaviour change specialists suggesting that it's a bad idea to use fear to get people to do stuff. But I'm pretty sure the only thing that's going to work is to burn these pictures onto the insides of my eyelids and resolve to go. That's the only fire that's going to get me there.

...but not today. Today was crap.

Hot People Feel Dirty Sometimes (and not in the good way)

2011-02-01T18:30:00.000-08:00

So, I was absent-mindedly checking my blog analytics this morning. As some of you may remember from that cryptic post of approximately 5 months ago, my blog analytics allow me to see what search terms people have used to find me on google. Sometimes it's a no-brainer that they're looking for me - they'll search things like hotmisst or hot in 6 months blog or something like that. Sometimes, I'm not sure what they're looking for; when they search things like why did people use to ware capes and white tights male dancers, I'm genuinely unsure of what they hoped they'd find. Other times, I know exactly what they're looking for. Today, I found this (you might have to click on it to read it properly):

But, for those of you who don't read teensy tiny writing, what you're seeing there is big boobs red bra. Someone, somewhere in North America, was looking for someone with big boobs and a red bra...and they found me. And faithful readers will know, I delivered. In conclusion, there's a very good chance that someone in North America was jerking off to my boobs.

...

Yuck.

So, guys...does this mean i'm hot? Because if THIS is what hot feels like, I can do without it. I recognize that this is partly my fault for having a picture of my big boobs in a red bra posted on the internets, but my culpability in the matter is doing nothing to relieve this slightly sticky feeling I'm encountering right now.

Because if I get right down to it, this isn't really what I had in mind when I started talking about being hot. Sure, I wanted to have some sex appeal, but I was never really interested in being an object in this way. I wanted people to desire me (or desire to be like me) because of some kind of confident je-ne-sais-quoi, not because of an accident of anatomy.

I know I sound like one of those girls who looks like a model and complains because "she can't help the way she looks...she just wishes that sometimes, men would leave her alone," but I know I don't look like a model...and once upon a time even this kind of attention would have been satisfactory to me. Well...perhaps the fact that it is no longer satisfactory (it is in fact unsatisfactory) is a good sign. No?

Hot People Clean Up Their Acts

2011-01-23T13:16:00.000-08:00

Once upon a time, about a year and a half ago, I excused my drunkenness and the occasional resulting blackouts by saying that...hey, I remember the IMPORTANT things. I think I continue to excuse that behaviour in my slightly-younger-than-now self because it was occurring at a time in my life when I was emerging from a lengthy period of hazy mediocrity and the fun I was having on those evenings was bordering on legendary. And, to be honest, it was shortlived; I think that was the last (or at least, amongst the last) time that I blacked out.

Until last weekend. And for some reason, I'm not really inclined to excuse myself from that particular blackout. Perhaps because I'm slightly older...but probably not. It happened innocently enough. I accepted a few drinks made by a trustworthy friend (I say trustworthy to absolve him of any culpability here. Everything that happened here is my fault). I knew what was in them...including the sizeable shots of tequila. I also, in an effort to be gregarious, imbibed one or two shots of tequila. And then we cabbed to the dance bar. And then I don't remember anything afterwards. The rest of my night has been pieced together by a series of witnesses. And it causes me to shake my head. Vigorously.

A friend demonstrated my dancing (?) that evening. Face. Palm. I like to think of myself as a pretty good dancer. And when I'm in my usual state of comfortable buzz at the bar, I frequently enjoy myself by laughing at people who just haven't got it going on. Examples of this might include the cougars two-stepping to Will.i.am last Friday, or the trio of girls awkwardly grinding with each other when my boyfriend and I went to hear the final performance of one of the djs in the area we think is kinda fly. Those are the people I laugh at. And I became one of those people on that decidedly uncrowded Saturday night.

Also, I drunk-dialed my boyfriend who was sleeping soundly after a hard day of work while I pickled my liver and gyrated awkwardly. I think I did this from a snowbank I'd fallen in. I suggested that if he were awake, then he should call me. If he were not awake, then he should remain asleep and forego the phone call. Clearly, I'm a genius. I may have waited for him to call back for a few minutes. Thank goodness I gave up and walked home, because if I'd waited there all night, I'm sure the blue-haired biddies tottering off to church the next morning would have discovered a splayed-out Miss T Popsicle.

The pièce-de-resistance of the whole evening, thank goodness, was witnessed only by my cat. I vomited. But where? I'm actually too ashamed to say. Rest assured, though, that it was not in a garbage can or a toilet or any other receptacle appropriate for vomit. I don't remember the actual act of vomiting, but I was horrified to find it when I woke up. Ugh.

And this is what I KNOW happened. To whom did I speak? WHAT DID I SAY TO THEM? Gawd! When I was doing my undergrad, a guy I knew in residence produced a number of business-card-looking things. They were apology cards, with a generic apology to account for the usual amnesia associated with the binge-drinking. And I feel like I need a stack of them right now. And I don't think that's acceptable. Or hot.

Now, the general response to an evening like this is the ol' faithful "...and I'll never touch another drink ever again." I think we all know that would be false. But I think a certain amount of responsibility is in order so that I can maintain that comfortable buzz without the uncomfortable awkwardness I'm feeling every time I see someone who might have been there. I hate weeks like this.

Hot People Plan for the Future

2011-01-10T12:18:00.000-08:00

Ok, before you start thinking that my penultimate post actually had some truth to it, stop panicking (like I would be). It's just that it's January, folks. Time to evaluate the past and plan for the future, hotness-wise.

It seems I was once again a steaming pile of failure at keeping my New Year's resolutions for 2010. Of the 5 that I had made, I managed to ACTUALLY only keep one - be employed. I've already discussed my feelings about plan ab-tastic and how it will continue into the future, but the remaining ones were sorely neglected. I can neither speak french fluently, nor reliably play any songs on my guitar. And though I downloaded all album suggested last year, and enjoyed them, I still have a soft spot in my heart for the truly terrible. Matchbox 20 and Hootie and the Blowfish still command a few bytes of space on my ipod.

But instead of abandoning these resolutions and languishing in my continued failure at being hot, I've come up with a cunning plan for this year's resolutions. I had some drinks with a few friends just over a year ago, and one of them finally said to me, "You know, the only thing that all hot people have in common is that they mostly just do whatever the hell they want." As a result, I've come up with 4 new resolutions that will catapult me, hopefully by January 2012, to a state of extreme hotness (or, doing-whatever-the-hell-i-want-ness). They will also, I believe, help me achieve those failed resolutions from last year as well.

1. Drink more. I have a two-pronged attack here. First of all, drinking more really means drinking more things that I like (and consequently, less of what's just ok). So, no more Rye & Diet Coke at the dance club in town just because it's an easy thing to remember. 2011 will usher into my life more wine, hard cider, and vodka/soda/lime. Prong two will involve making more cocktails at home in an effort to find my own signature drink. Plus nothing's hotter than a well-stocked bar, no? My liquor cabinet already features 4 different kinds of scotch. What else is a must-have, I wonder?

2. Eat more. This may sound counter-intuitive; just work with me here. I've spent much of the last year almost literally run off my feet. As a result, I make very few of my meals at home. As a further result, I have no leftovers to take to work. And as a concluding result, I frequently eat gross microwaved dinners for lunch, thus consuming pounds and pounds of salt and chemicals on a daily basis. So when I say eat more, I actually mean eat more FOOD. Like, food in the Michael Pollan sense of the word. This will be difficult, since, as I've mentioned, I'm pretty much run off my feet. Sooo....

3. Do less. The last 10 months, since moving to Northern Ontario, have been a massive exercise in insinuating myself upon the community. I did this by not saying no to anything (except the pipe band...and a few dates). Unfortunately, when you say yes to everything, people continue to ask you to do things, and you are often expected to continue to say yes. And the result is that you have NO TIME TO MAKE FOOD OR SLEEP OR WASH YOUR UNDERWEAR***. When all of these things happen at the same time, the result isn't hotness, as I'd hoped. It's usually that you walk around like a cranky-faced zombie all the time. Therefore, I've resolved to commit to only 3 regularly scheduled weekly events at a time, and will evaluate one-time offers on an individual basis, giving preference to those things that I REALLY REALLY WANT TO DO (I'm looking at you, dragon boat festival). Hopefully, this way, I'll have more time for cooking real food, doing real exercise, and wearing clean underthings.

4. Do more. I know what you're thinking..."isn't that in direct conflict with resolution #3?" Well, no. This one is about something different. In searching for that quest for hotness I've really had to consider whether an item or an activity was generally regarded as hot, or if it made me feel hot when I had it/did it. And when I considered it, I generally found that when I felt hot, other people found me hot as well. The necessary conclusion here is that I should do more things that make me feel hot. Like this:

<---- And also ziplining. And also skiing. And also making brownies. And since I've set aside time by doing less, I should have more time to do all this stuff. In conclusion, I'm a genius and I'll be hot in no time.

SERIOUS FACE -->

***Note: I've not yet worn dirty underwear. I HAVE stayed up till 3 a.m. doing laundry on a weeknight so I wouldn't have to wear dirty underwear though.

Hot People Admit Defeat

2010-12-13T12:09:00.000-08:00

Alright - so you probably noticed a considerable lack of activity coming from this little corner of cyberspace. There are a few reasons for that.

But first, I have terrible news. Plan Ab-Tastic was a failure. I cannot say that my abs were rock hard by my twenty-seventh birthday. I can't even say they were on their way. I'm certainly not ready to post pictures. Sadness.

The good news is that I know why this has happened. The bad news is that I am solely and completely at fault here. In an effort to integrate myself into this community, a community I'm still reasonably new to, I took on a little too much. And by "a little too much," I mean that over the last two weeks, I've had commitments seven days per week. As a result, I've had little to no time for a. cooking actual food for myself, and certainly no time for b. moving my body any more vigorously than is required for playing the piano. Probably this has contributed to the anti-hardening of my abs, because if I want to be really honest with myself, my abs actually got softer in the last month and a bit.

Admitting defeat is harsh. I don't like it. However, if I consider the overall cost-benefit analysis, I think I gained so much more in terms of spiritual nourishment running around to rehearsals for eight billion different concerts and performances than I ever would have by losing the fat around my middle. So many people know my name now, and that was really part of the goal. I exceeded the legal capacity of my apartment with a party I threw for my own birthday. In the past month and a half I learned to play (quite well, also) 30+ reasonably challenging pieces on the piano - a talent I'd let go to seed when I was in university. So the time hasn't been a waste, even though I did waste a month or so of my gym membership.

And, really, just because I didn't succeed right away with this ab-tastic goal doesn't mean I really have to quit it altogether. I'm planning some trips in the spring and summer. Trips where I might be wearing bathing suits. Hrmmmm.....And I've also learned some valuable lessons about time management and saying no to things that I don't absolutely want to do. I am armed for the future, and a sweet-looking midsection is headed my way. Eventually...

Hot People Are Big News

2010-11-25T11:47:00.001-08:00

Ok - so I've been terribly errant in my posting. Please just believe that my life has been IN-SANE. I just did the dishes for the first time in about 2 weeks on Sunday, and the pile is getting big again. I found myself doing laundry after midnight last night. It's been that kind of November.

So, you can understand why sitting in front of a computer to hammer something out for you guys has been difficult. To put it in perspective, I'm totally at work right now (ok - it's a break - but I'm still at work.) To keep you all from chewing your arms off in anticipation, I have a hilarious story to break up the monotony of a lack of Miss T antics.

Big news: I have a boyfriend. A real live one. Last weekend, we had planned to enjoy the beginning of the festive season by watching the Christmas Parade in his very small hometown. We met up with a few friends and watched all the heavy machinery within a 40 mile radius of town drive down the main street decorated in lights and shrubbery while drinking heavily Bailey'd hot chocolate out of travel mugs as the first major snowfall of winter pelted down upon us. We followed this with drinks at friends', followed by drinks at the curling club, followed by drinks at the only bar in town. Needless to say, we were not in any state to drive the 40 minutes back home that night, especially given the snow. So we stayed the night at my boyfriend's parents' house.

In the morning, his mother insisted that we attend the local Christmas arts & crafts show. So, like good little children, we did.

On of the things that's making my life INSANE right now, is a play I'm performing in. My character is 9 months pregnant and, since I am not, requires some prosthetic costuming. I had a number of things planned for Saturday, and in my hungover stupor I needed to give myself verbal reminders. One of those things was to see the costume designer about my prosthetic. I told my boyfriend "Oh yeah, I need to go see that lady about my belly." The boyfriend looked at me, confused. "You know, my pregnancy belly." I remembered this AT the arts & crafts show. Beside my boyfriend's mother. Who looked at me aghast.

"Good God!" I exclaimed, realizing my tragic error, "For the play! It's for the play!"

She looked relieved. "Oh, you're in the play. The same one that he's in?" (I had roped my boyfriend into performing with me when our previous leading man dropped out).

"And do you play a couple?" We answered in the affirmative.

"And is the baby his?" We answered in the affirmative.

And then she SCREAMED "Oh my GOD! I'm going to be a grandmother!"

Six blue-haired ladies from around the arts & crafts show ran over. We tried to set them straight, but they were old and hard of hearing and we're sure that not everybody went home with the truth.

And that's the story of how an entire tiny town in Northern Ontario came to believe that I'm carrying the child of one of their favourite sons.

Further Miss T antics to come. I promise.

Hot People Unleash Their Secret Weapons

2010-10-02T16:46:00.000-07:00

WARNING: This post contains photographs of scantily clad women (me), brightly coloured undergarments and some coarse language. Also, I'm really bad at formatting when there are lots of pics. So it's kind of a mess down there. Small children and (possibly) my parents and younger brother should exercise their discretion.
___________________________________________
My period started yesterday. I know, too much information. However, I think many of the ladies out there will agree that very few things can so reliably make you feel gross and fat like Aunt Flo. I am no exception. My monthly inconvenience decided to coincide its arrival with some kind of clammy-skin-plus-fever-and-sore-throat plague and the result is that I want to lay about in my not-oft-washed sweatpants and watch chick flicks all weekend. Unfortunately, I had also resolved to go dancing. The obvious answer here is an attitude adjustment.

This whole thing has been about confidence. I know it, and many of my very helpful readers have suggested the same. It won't matter how hot I look, if I don't believe it, nobody else will either. But it's really difficult to just decide to believe you look smokin'. Sometimes you need a couple of secret weapons to give your confidence a boost. Especially when you've asked yourself to dance your ass off like it's going out of style and you spent most of your day wishing you could curl up into a fetal position on the floor of your office instead of actually doing your job. This kind of emergency calls for significantly more than just a few secret weapons and happens far more frequently than I'd like. As a result, I've gathered an arsenal of "things that make me feel hot" for just such occasions. Here's my top 10, in no particular order.

1. Mascara. I have really long eyelashes, but they're skinny. Mascara is like instant sexy-eyes. I derive a certain amount of glee from complaining about how after I've applied my mascara, my eyelashes transfer it to my eyelids because THEY'RE THAT LONG. My friends and co-workers are kind of getting sick of that, actually. That's like saying my boobs are too big.

2. Speaking of big boobs, this bra is also an instant confidence booster. Almost a year ago, I'd decided I'd had enough of shitty, ill-fitting bras from Sears. So I decided to get a bra-fitting. I always knew I was well-endowed in the mammary department...but turns out I actually have REALLY BIG BOOBS. Those puppies are F cups. That's right, folks, my bra size is 34F. Bet many of you didn't know those existed. As it happens, bras in size 34F are kind of like endangered species. If you've got big boobs and a small ribcage, you can't even FIND a bra at Sears in your size. No, no - you have to go to a special lingerie store. And special lingerie stores have special lingerie prices. I nearly peed myself when I looked at the ticket price on the first right-sized bra I tried on. It wasn't until a party a few months ago to which I wore one of my old faithful Sears bras that I decided I needed a change. My bra kept making appearances in the cleavage area of my v-neck. A helpful (and very intoxicated) friend tried to rectify the situation by, ahem, fluffing my pillows. As in, she put her hands IN MY BRA and pushed my boobs together. In the middle of the living room at the party. If my bra situation was so dire that my lady friends need to PUT THEIR HANDS ON MY BREASTS, I figured that the $200 I paid for that red number up there was totally worth it. And it was. See for yourself.

<-Old bra

And new bra->

3. This dress:

I always feel fantastic wearing this dress. That's because it feels like I'm wearing a giant t-shirt, but the cleavage is fantastic and the colour is hawt. I've had men carry my catfood and potting soil to my car from the grocery store when I'm wearing this dress. I went for a walk with my friend a few weeks ago and 5 out of 6 of the men we passed paid me a compliment. This dress is confidence.

4. Also, this dress:

I recognize that this dress borders on shress territory, so I always feel a little bit guilty when I wear it. But it was the dress I was wearing on that fantastic sailboat weekend, and I think the fact that I was comfortable wearing it is a sign that I'm much more comfortable showing a little bit more leg - a body part I've never been super happy with. This dress is a milestone, is what I'm saying. And I'm proud of it. I'm slightly less proud of my modeling abilities. Is my hand glued to my hip? And where are my irises?!?

5. Straight hair. And curly hair. My greatest assets in the hair department are my (now antique) ceramic flat-iron, and a good-quality (not necessarily expensive) curling creme. And conditioner. I grew up in a house with hard water and no conditioner. I can't even begin to describe the clown-hair I had growing up. Things improved when I began to dabble with 2-in-1 shampoos, but truly, my life was changed when I discovered the glory of conditioner. Having great hair is a huge asset when it comes to upping the measurements on my personal hot-metre. It also helps to have kissed hairnets goodbye for (I hope!) forever.

6. Brownies. I got this brownie recipe from my grade 11 English teacher and they are the effing bomb. I rarely give the recipe away because they really are one of my secret weapons. Everyone's happy to see me, because I bring it with the brownies. If EVERYONE could bring the brownies, I'd lose some of my magic.

7. Lacy panties. Especially these blue ones (Don't worry, they're clean). These are really my lucky panties. I wear them anytime I want things to go well. And usually they do. Related secret weapon: brazilian waxes. Every appointment day I wonder to myself if I'm crazy. The next morning I remember why I'm not. It never fails. It doesn't even matter that I'm usually the only one who sees the results of my painful quadri-weekly appointment. I feel like a million bucks wearing those undies in the week or two after my appointments.

8. Kick-ass boots. For several years I've mourned the fact that my calves are too "athletic" to fit into most boots with a shaft that comes up much higher than my ankles. The last couple of pairs I tried actually WENT ON MY LEGS. And they're supah hot. I bought this pair in Scotland, just off Princes Street. I really dig all the buckles. Then, I bought this other pair from a local foot-covering merchant. Not bad for rural Ontario, I think. A few friends say they're fuck-me boots. I'm not so sure, but I do know that wearing these boots, even though most of the time the awesomesauce is hidden under my stovepipe pantlegs, makes me feel kinda badass. Which I, at least, think is pretty hot.

9. Dentistry. Remember that hilarious story about my tragic front tooth? Having a dental plan made everything better. Before (note that I'm making NO bones about using a totally unflattering pic for the before - I'm at once hilariously jet-lagged, unmade up and moderately intoxicated in this pic): And after: Now that I look at the pics, my front tooth didn't look so bad before. But psychologically, it's made a huge difference. You have no idea how awesome it is to be able to smile with abandon.

10. Dancing. I switch on a little motown if I'm feeling blue. If I want to pump myself up, I turn to Gaga or Ke$ha. And if I want to feel super sexy, I'll toss on some old-skool rap. And do this:

Actually no, that's a joke. The point is, though, if I'm dancing, I feel awesome-tastic. In fact, once I shook off the crusty feelings of my flu and my monthly inconvenience, dancing last night made me feel so awesome that my night was, in fact, epic. More on that later, though.

Hot People Play Along (And if at first they don't succeed, they try, try again)

2010-09-17T09:18:00.000-07:00

Ok - so, I just commented on THIS blog because I thought I was invited to, and then got a comment back saying I had FAILED at accepting the invitation properly. I was supposed to post a selection of search terms that people use on google that wind them up here, my little corner of the blogosphere.

Most are search terms that have to do with my name or the name of the blog, which are clearly people who love me and my writing so much that they haven't added my url to their favourites. However, there are a number of super-funny ones that I'll share here.

1. Shress - Any loyal reader knows what this is. If you don't, just know it's the bane of my existence. A post about shresses early on in my blogging career brings continued traffic. Related search terms: what do you wear under a shress, wear stilettos and take it up the ass, 11 year olds wearing stilettos

2. Completely Hairless People - It makes me giggle a little to know that some poor schmuck looking for others who bear his terrible affliction of complete hairlessness happened upon my nascent concerns about waxing "down there".

3. White Tights Male Dancers - Not sure what this person was ACTUALLY looking for (or if it was academic rather than recreational interest that spurred their search in the first place), but I'm sure they were upset to find, not the answer, but the ramblings of a sexually frustrated 20-something who kept getting distracted from the skill and story involved in The Nutcracker Ballet by the bulges in the male dancers' tights.

4. Why did people ware capes - This person was so upset not to find the answer to his question that he felt the need to admonish me for my verbosity (rather than brush up on his google skills). On the up-side, talkin' ass bitch is my new favourite insult.

So...there...hopefully this time I got it right?

Hot People Keep on Truckin'

2010-09-12T11:52:00.000-07:00

So yeah...things have been going pretty well, lately. Things going well is awesome for me...but I feel as though it's way more awesome for everyone else when things are going wrong. Because wrong usually means funny. And funny means more people are reading.

On the other hand, this "Don't Analyze, Act" deal has been working out for me. And I feel like that's going to mean more ridiculousness is on its way. I'm joining a running clinic tomorrow. That's probably going to mean a lot of doubled-over pain. Same with the weight training clinic I joined last week...with all the bodybuilders in town. It's like...8 bodybuilders and me....with 1/4 the weights and 1/16 the attitude. I'm planning on playing basketball this year too...which I haven't played in over a decade. I think things can go very wrong there.

At any rate, I think the blog is still a useful tool for me - it keeps me motivated, even if it doesn't always keep you laughing. For example, the plan ab-tastic countdown is on - I only have 74 days left. That's going to mean loads of hard work in the next ten weeks. I also have yet to learn to play the guitar with any REAL skill, or speak French without the aid of an alcoholic beverage. So there's still loads to work on...and fail at.

And if all else fails (or wait...fails to fail), I just got a kitten. I promised myself (and therefore, you) that I wouldn't be that person who writes about how their pets are retarded, but he is kind of...special. He specializes in running into things headfirst. Like, today, he jumped headfirst into the toilet. See? Special.

Hot People are ON A BOAT

2010-08-29T07:08:00.000-07:00

It's time for some good shit, hey? I thought so too. It is for this reason that I am pleased to announce that I can conclusively say I recently experienced one of the top 20 weekends of life a few weeks ago.

So here's the deal. I have this friend. He likes to call me on the fly. This often works out for him because I frequently have very little to do. This one Saturday evening was no exception. I was all ready to settle in for ANOTHER night of DVD, wine and candy I don't need to eat. Then he called. Within 30 minutes we were speeding across the Ontario/Quebec border. Within an hour, we were eating delicious local food & wine under a giant tent.

The tent was hot, so we went for a digestive consitutional outside. My friend, while spontaneous, is also "a lifer," in that he's spent most of his life in the area. This meant we met lots of people he knew in and around the tent. One of them just happened to be a friend with a 29' sailboat. Well, you know how much I love sailboats? I love them even more when they have gallons of sangria on board.

We drank, we caroused, we went for a midnight sail...but that's really not the point of this story. I don't know if it was the sangria or my new "don't analyze, just act" attitude (probably both), but a lot of shit went down that I was really proud of.

1. I spoke French. For serious. Well...Franglais. But my friend said he was impressed with me, so I'll take it. I've discussed with my boss the possibility of keeping a jug of sangria in the insulin fridge at work so I can see our francophone clients (I think that's the magic). She's considering it.

2. I danced my ass off. I garnered what I think were genuine compliments about my dancing skill. This means I should keep doing it...which is good, because it really is my first love.

3. I made out with a delightful Quebecois stranger on the dancefloor. I saw him, he saw me, we had a moment, some skinny blonde chick (bitches!...they are my nemeses) tried to cut in on my moment and, for the first time ever, I said "NO! This my MY moment" and blocked her path.

Further to this, I declined his suggestion that we move on to more comfortable surroundings. And I'm proud of that. My usual attitude is that THIS might be the LAST guy ever to want to sleep with me so I'd better go for it (Dad, I know you're reading this and cringing...keep reading...I'm making progress!). THIS TIME I thought: what would I rather do? Have sloppy drunk-sex with an attractive guy I'm never going to see again or sleep on a sailboat? I made what I think is the obvious choice, SLEEPING ON A MOTHERF---ING BOAT! We exchanged numbers instead. Then I forgot his. I'm not waiting anxiously by the phone either, rest assured.

4. I went swimming in my underwear. The fact that I was willing to bare my midriff in front of people I just met made sleeping in my clammy undies totally worthwhile. I don't even care whether it was enjoyable for everyone around me. 6 months ago, I would never have let so many strangers at a time see so much of my skin. I guess that means I like it better. Huzzah!

...And the magic just kept on coming. Though I had to drive to Sudbury on 4 hrs sleep the next day, I got to see my cousin win gold in his event at the provincial canoe/kayak competition. Also, the radio keeps playing songs I dig.

Oh, and did I mention I went to Scotland right after that? No? Well, it was awesome. It had castles and shit. More on this later, I'm sure.

So, everything's coming up Miss T these days. Whoever's in charge of this: keep up the good work. Let the good times roll.

Hot People Like Diet Cherry Cola

2010-08-12T19:14:00.000-07:00

I've had two things on my mind lately. Well...three things...but the third one is really more of a private conversation than a public mind-drool, so I'll wait until the time is right for that one.

1. Stuff that I want.

2. Stuff that I like.

So, I had a wicked jones for a diet Dr. Pepper tonight.

***This is not the point. This is that thing I do where I talk about something mundane and then relate it to some deep part of my internal being and then blow everyone's mind (or, maybe just mine)

Anyway, I had a wicked jones for a diet Dr. Pepper tonight. I was eating some homemade shortbreads (be jealous!), and they were a little too short for the hot weather and I needed to wet my whistle with something other than expired milk. As I walked over to the Mac's, I thought the good Dr. might have a delicious blend 23 flavours that would do the job. I was really hoping one of those flavours was aspartame. Unfortunately, Mac's milk could not deliver. I knew I was asking too much; who am I to think that I should be able to get a calorie-free beverage in my preferred flavour at the only retail establishment open after 10 p.m. four nights a week? I'm currently drinking the full-sugar version, which is, as we speak, boring tiny holes in my teeth and then somehow depositing the excavation materials on my waistline.

The same thing happened when I tried to make hot artichoke dip a few months ago. Canned artichoke hearts? Hilarious notion! I had to settle for hot spinach dip. It was tasty, but not exactly what I was looking for.

Ok...so, what I'm getting at, is that this town just doesn't seem to deliver on exactly what I want. I can get what-I-want-adjacent, or two complementary halves of what I want...but never the genuine article, it seems. And I think you know what I'm talking about here. I've been pretty relationship-focused lately. Even when I let good ole rational brain in to say something cogent about trying to make friends and have a good time, underneath it all, I'm really hoping that every interaction I make is going to lead to something lasting (by this, I mean, more than a few weeks) and, let's face it...coital.

Alas, I recently came to the conclusion that this isn't going to happen. At least, not in the foreseeable future. All signs point to the apparent reality that I have entered a period in my life that I've lovingly monikered the ERA OF EFFED UP PLATONIC RELATIONSHIPS. A bird's eye view of my recent dealings with the opposite sex will show you this: it's LIKE we're dating...except we're definitely not dating. This is despite the fact that sometimes their self-described physical type looks an awful lot like me. This is despite the fact that sometimes their self-described personality type sounds an awful lot like me. And for a long time, this was really confusing to me. WHY would people more or less describe me, to my face, as the kind of person they really want to date, if they don't actually want to date me?

So, on the weekend, a friend of mine clarified it for me. I described one of these effed-up platonic situations, and he said, "Huh, so you're the incase of emergency, break glass girlfriend."

And then the lights turned on. And suddenly, I was enraged. I am the safety girlfriend. When all other options have been exhausted, they know I'll do a reasonable job as a pinch-hitter girlfriend. And that's why these dudes keep dangling carrots in front of me and then pulling them out of my reach just before I grab onto them.

On to the stuff I like. In particular, I mean stuff I like about me. I've been thinking a lot about that question my friend asked back when I couldn't cry (Problem solved, btw. This song did the trick. Bawled my face off).

I think it's an important question to be able to answer. So important that I was discussing it with a few members of my family. My mother disagrees. She thinks that people shouldn't be able to answer that question unless they want to admit they're full of themselves. In fact, her response was so visceral that she had to get up out of her chair, to illustrate that she hates people who haven't got a problem saying "I am SOOO great! I LIKE myself! I'm good at walking (she marched on the spot to illustrate this point), and I'm good at smiling, and I'm a good person!" And frankly, I think I wouldn't like them either. Because I'd be jealous of them.

But that's because I'm not very good at smiling. Observe. (In the interest of full disclosure, the drink beside me is mine. And it was tasty. The bottle of pills is not mine. That's cat medicine. I don't know how it tastes).

Seriously, though. I'm already full of myself. I have almost 100 pages of text broadcast through cyberspace devoted wholly to myself. Wouldn't it be great if that full-of-myself-ness had a positive spin to it?

So, instead of thinking of all the things I don't like about myself (like my smile, and my acne, and my fat ass, and...wait, right...that's what I'm NOT doing this time), I really should think about the things I like.

So, at first I thought I liked the fact that I'm 100% genuine. I do not know how to bullshit. But then I remembered how my 0% bullshit policy gets me into trouble A LOT. So, I scratched that idea. Then, I realized that the thing I like best about myself is the fact that I'm pretty effing resilient. I've had a lot of shitty life, and a particularly bad run the past few months, but I keep getting up and coming out swinging. I like a lot of other things too. I'm looking pretty curvy these days, and I have really nice eyes. And hair. And boobs. (Please ignore the mess on my coffee table. And my shitty furniture)

Ok - back to that back-up relationship thing. Yeah, that makes me mad. And I'm realizing that I ought to like myself way too much to be THAT girl. So, while a small bit of me still burns a candle for some of these dudes, when and if whatever emergency arises and they decide they want to break that glass, I've gotta think long and hard about whether being behind that glass is EXACTLY WHAT I WANT.

And in the meantime, I'm going to have to resign myself to going without exactly what I want. I can compromise on my chilled cherry-flavoured cola beverages every once in awhile, but I'm pretty sure I don't want to compromise on this anymore.

So, good sirs, I am pleased to be friends with you. But there's no need to continue to lead me on. I'm going a different way.

Hot People ARE your friends

2010-07-21T17:56:00.000-07:00

Well, I finally got that label I was after.

Friends.

I saw it coming; I'm kind of an expert at it now. The key is to listen for two words: interesting and fun. Death. Knell. These words are instantly translated in my brain to "I like you, just not in the way where I want to make out with you or rub up against you or touch your boobs." This is unfortunate, because I really enjoy making out, being rubbed up against, and having my boobs touched. On the other hand, I also like having friends...and could probably use more of them. If I had more, I might actually believe that I'm interesting and fun.

And that's my problem. I don't really believe it. So, when I meet other people that I think are interesting and fun, I feel as though I have nothing to offer them, and, more often than not, self-fulfilling-prophecy myself out of the relationship.

In the meantime, because I don't like being alone (more friends might help with this too, hey?), I just go crashing into anyone that shows the slightest bit of interest, hoping that one of these days, something will stick. This always results in regret, which makes me feel even less interesting and fun.

Sigh...

Ok - who here is sick of me waxing philosophical about myself? I feel like I've been acknowledging my shortcomings for long enough, and not just a few friends & acquaintances have grown weary of it. To you, and them, I apologise. Let these be days of action. And let interesting and fun MEAN interesting and fun, and not just code for friendzone.

Hot People Don't Paint Themselves Into Corners

2010-07-14T16:22:00.000-07:00

When I was a student, I learned a lot about behaviour change. That's basically what dietitians do, actually. We help people change one of the first (and therefore, most habitual) behaviours they adopt. If it was easy, I'd be out of a job. Or at least, that's what I tell my clients so they feel more at ease with me.

Well...the thing about hotness, I think, is that it's not really about the way I look. If it was just about that, I'd have stopped writing this long ago. Or at least, I'd have stopped around the time that I moved here...since my downstairs neighbour tells me on a semi-daily basis how good-looking I am. I do not tell him how much he looks like John Wayne's long-lost cousin from Hicksville in return, but I think it every time. Anyway, the hotness thing must really be about my behaviour and my attitude. And I know better than most how hard those things are to change.

Case in point: My discussion of my listing tendencies crossing wires with my romantic life really got me thinking about how the lists are kind of getting in the way of the rest of my life as well. Last week, I sat at home, mourning the fact that all of my friends had plans that night. In order to fill the time, I made another list. Actually, it's way more ridiculous than that. I filled in my brand-spanking new daytimer. Seriously. I spent my Thursday night planning each day of the next year of my life. And sometime midway through that evening, I realized that what I was doing was REALLY effed up. Really. This obviously made me really upset. I frequently lament the fact that I don't have the social life I wish I had. I don't think it's because I'm some socially inept creeper (although, I did spend 8 years doing intercollegiate competitive debate...so perhaps I'm entirely wrong about that). I think it could have something to do with the fact that when I get into a social situation (except, of course, when I'm already a little bit tipsy), I feel like I have nothing to add to the situation. When I realized this, I also realized that rather than keeping the daytimer as a contingency for a dry spell in my social life, I was doing it as an excuse not to get myself out there. This is a depressing notion, and I've been pretty sad lately as a result.

Let me tell you a seemingly unrelated story. I thought of it the same night, as I was chopping jalapenos to put in a delicious mango salsa. The last time (or at least the most memorable time) I was chopping jalapenos, I was home alone back in Halifax. I was making supper for me and my then-boyfriend who was working until 10 or so at a restaurant just around the corner. The knife I was using must have been kind of dull, because as I was chopping, jalapeno juice was flying everywhere. And a big juicy drop of it landed directly in my eye. I'm sure you can guess that the resulting pain was, well, excruciating. And I'm not even sure excruciating really covers it. It was...AAAAAAAUGH...pain. And I panicked. I didn't know WHAT to do. I grabbed an ice cube, stuck it directly on my eye, and staggered my way, depth-perceptionless, around the corner to the burger joint where my boyfriend was working. Since he was working for at least another half hour, and I felt as though this was something that needed to be dealt with immediately, I stole his tips for the night and grabbed a cab to emerg. I could have gotten the cab for free, as it turned out, because a girl holding ice to her eye and asking to be driven to the ER in the evening just begs to be pitied. Probably because she looks like someone's taken the boots to her, and not because she's a culinary dolt, though. When I got to emerg, the triage service asked what had happened and upon hearing my story responded with "Ouch, that's gotta suck." Yes, I thought, it sure does. Now please get me to some kind of eyewash station. Give me some kind of antidote to this burning, burning pain. I learned that night that there is, and I quote, "no medical treatment for jalapeno juice in the eye." This was the last straw. I turned, stomped out, possibly flipped the bird to the triage service for failing to take pity on me, and promptly began to sob. With the first teardrops to leave my eyes, the burning pain immediately subsided. Huh...so there's no MEDICAL treatment for jalapeno juice in the eye, but there is a perfectly natural, holistic treatment. Just start bawling.

As I was remembering this story, I realized I couldn't remember the last time I actually cried. I came very close, a couple of times, recently. Once was when a friend asked me what my favourite thing about myself was and I genuinely couldn't think of an answer. The other was when I considered that, though my current dating situation has hurled me into a kind of tumultuous tug-of-war with myself, it is immensely better than the given-up, dead-feeling person I was towards the end of my last relationship. And perhaps a good cry would be just the thing to release all this pent-up depression I've been feeling. But, I don't know if that would get to the root of the problem. I've got a (this time, emotional) burning feeling again, and I know something's gotta give if I'm going to get rid of it.

So here we are back at the daytimer. I feel like I need to break out of my protective shell of plans and lists. And I don't know how the heck to do it. I'm really not good at being impulsive, and when I am, it's usually not very good for me (I'm REALLY good at buying candy on impulse, for example). On the other hand, if I consider my romantic life - in an effort not to have that dead-feeling again I've been making a conscious effort not to do things the same way. In fact, I'm considering dating in ways I never, ever thought I would. See: not wearing the proverbial pants ALL THE EFFING TIME, and obviously, also, restraining from labeling and listing. And I think my strategies are working there, to at least some extent. Perhaps I can use this success to motivate me to change in other areas of my life. At least, that's what I'd suggest to my clients if I wanted to help them decrease their potato portion.

One thing I know for sure is that I have to break down some walls, or I'm never going to get out of this corner and get what I want.

Hot People Buck the Trend (Or, Hot People Post their 50th Post!)

2010-06-26T16:18:00.000-07:00

I've been feeling kind of bipolar lately - kind of like my life is coming apart at the seams. This is, of course, a ridonkulous notion. If I step back, it's totally obvious that my life is pretty excellent these days. I have no pants that fit me (they're all too big!), I've lived here for 4 months and I constantly astound my coworkers with the number of friends I've made and how I've jumped right into the thick of life in this surprisingly unsleepy little town, and I've started dating (?) someone really sweet and fun in the last few weeks. I am currently lying in my backyard letting nailpolish dry while I smell clover & cut grass, and soak up the late afternoon sun. What could I possibly have to complain about?

Well...there's that niggling little question mark in the parentheses up there.

I'll tell you all my worst-kept secret. I'm a list girl. I like making lists, I like reading lists, I like sorting list items using categorical measures. My listing tendencies are a huge family joke and have been ever since my uncle discovered me reading the local phone book and the national postal code directory for fun the summer I was nine. In university, I had a job doing data entry for one of my school's faculties. My task was to standardize the lists of current students, applicants and alumni. Every day I would cackle with glee that they were paying me $12/hr to do something I WOULD TOTALLY DO FOR FREE!!!

I have lists for everything - I don't choose a movie to watch, a book to read, a food to eat without consulting a list. I have lists to tell me what item of clothing to buy next, where to get my next mascara wand, and when I lived in a city with hundreds of restaurants to choose from, I was guided by a list there too, rather than what I felt like.

Any good list-maker knows that you can't make a good list without a well-defined category or two. Action, Romance, Comedy. Fiction, Non-Fiction, Reference. Italian, Sushi, Thai-fusion. Single, Taken, Married (very taken).

The whole point of the categories, and the list-making in general, is to reduce my time spent making decisions. The reason for that is that when presented with a choice, I tend to overthink things. Like, a lot. If I don't know the answer, it's cool. I probably have a list for that.

So, you see why that question mark is causing me so much grief. I don't have a label, I can't put it in a list, and as a result, I'm overthinking everything associated with it. What are we doing together? Where is this going? IS it going? Do I say "This is my friend..." when I introduce him? While it's true, I feel like it's not a completely accurate descriptor. Do I say "This is my boyfriend..."? Well, probably not. We're not there yet either, I don't think.

But, if I give the rational part of my brain a much needed chance to contribute to my thought-soup, I know the answer is that I can't stick this whatever-it-is in a list to avoid making a considered decision. Furthermore, I'm pretty sure this isn't a decision I make on my own anyway. He isn't MY anything unless HE decides to be. The only thing I am free to label is me. And I am his...

This decision doesn't have to be made tomorrow. It's just surprisingly (or perhaps unsurprisingly) hard to fight my natural label-and-list tendencies. In the meantime, I'll have to just enjoy the ride, even if it leaves me a bit listless.

Hot People Contain Their Glee

2010-06-12T14:33:00.000-07:00

First of all, I'm learning that not a lot of heterosexual males around these parts share my devotion to that television show. Alas, I indulge that guilty pleasure alone, ensconced in the comfort of a throw blanket in my office staring, eyes-wide, at my computer screen.

But that's not really what I mean. I had a date last night (this time I KNOW it was a date). I was pretty effing excited about a. the date in general...cuz...I mean, well, you know how it's been, and b. the person with whom I was having the date. He's pretty cute. And pretty sweet. And I'm pretty sure the date went really well. And...well, see here's the problem.

I am having a REALLY hard time playing it cool. I feel as though my previous experience hasn't really prepared me for this "dating" thing. Having had one major relationship spanning ages 20-25, much of my formative dating years were missed. And that relationship began kind of like this: First, we didn't know each other. Then we knew each other and we were (more-or-less) in a relationship. There wasn't really that getting-to-know-you dating period where you know you like each other but you don't spend every waking minute together, which is where I'm pretty sure I am now. Since that relationship ended, sure, I've had dates, but since I think REALLY highly of myself and have super high standards (maybe THAT's why I'm still single) I really just wanted those dates to be over and never happen again. So I can't even draw from previous fledgling dating experience because it nearly always flopped from the first moment.

I'm also a little concerned about the hotness goal now. I've been as much as told that I've "attained hotness," but as I've said before, I don't feel really good about deciding that I've reached a goal because someone (even a boy I really like) else told me I'd done it. That's not to say I didn't REALLY enjoy hearing it, but I think you know what I mean.

As a result, I'm pretty much totally at a loss. I am simultaneously deliriously happy, terrified, tentative and reckless. And I'd really like all those feelings to ensconce themselves within my psyche in a manner similar to my ensconcement of myself for private Glee viewings. I think they're failing at this.

Hot People Clutch and Shift Gears

2010-05-29T17:48:00.001-07:00

So, I may have been a wee bit dramatic last time about the world's flatulence, and more particularly, where it's been directing it. I think I really just had a whole bunch of reality check all at once and it was, as always, particularly unpleasant. I've always really enjoyed living a fantasy life.

Much of my non-work attention has been placed directly on my romantic life lately (yeah, still having trouble with that boys thinking I'm fantastic does not equal hotness deal), but I've gotta say, it's been making me kind of sad lately to focus so much of my time on that. Most of the men I've made friends with here are either taken or explicitly not interested in me, and even my attempts at booty calls with old guy friends elsewhere have turned into EPIC fails. But while all of this is kind of sad for me, and probably really entertaining for all of you, I've realized lately that I should be paying more attention to my (non-relationship-related) wins.

Case in point, I just graduated. And not only did I graduate, I did it with first class honours. And I won an award of distinction, presented to me by Halifamous person, Alexa McDonough (she shook my hand!) I don't know what makes me distinct (well...I don't know WHICH of my distinctive qualities was the winning one), but hey...sweet.

And I learned that I'm one of very of few of us graduating who has a job she's REALLY happy doing, and lives in a town she's REALLY happy with (for serious, move to Northern Ontario. Do it.) When I learned how many of the girls graduating were still looking for jobs, or were working in jobs outside of the field, it was like a huge pat on the back for me that I've managed what I have.

Most notably, plan ab-tastic has been in full swing for about two months now. A bunch of my friends made a point of telling me how fantastic I look. While my appearance wasn't the only "hot" quality I had originally been aiming to improve, I've learned that I respond really well to positive feedback, so it's nice to get that. I've lost several inches since I started sweating my ass off and pumping iron on a regular basis (the gown really shows off the results of all my hard work, no?) and I'm really proud of that - though it would be nice if I had a few pairs of pants that ACTUALLY fit. I can see my obliques now! I can say with relative certainty that plan ab-tastic is at the point of ab-tisfactoriness. Anyway, please keep noticing. It makes me feel like I'm ACTUALLY succeeding at this hotness thing, which makes me want to keep doing it.

After returning from my grad, I went to a fashion show put on by my personal trainer, featuring a bunch of ladies from our local ladies' figure and bodybuilding team (yeah, that's right, Northern Ontario is effing awesome). And while it's not as though I REALLY want to be a figure competitor or bodybuilder (two months of steamed broccoli, raw almonds and plain chicken breast is not my cup of tea, thanks very much - also, no cups of tea, which I cannot live without), watching these ladies, some of whom are grandmothers, strut the catwalk in bikinis looking TOTALLY RIPPED made me feel really inspired (although it might have been a buzz from the wine I drank and the fact that I got to merengue a little). I went on a 30 km bike ride today. Over gravel road. There were three unleashed, angry-looking dogs and a lot of very persistent bumblebees. It was really hard, but I had a new sense of determination that I've been missing for a long time. And this time it wasn't really driven by my sense of revenge, and I think that's a big step for me.

Hot People Have Some Principles

2010-05-26T11:26:00.000-07:00

I know it's been a while since my last post, and there's a very good reason for that. Fear not, dear readers. Though the positive attitude exemplified the last time you heard from me may have suggested good things on my horizon, the world farts in my face yet again.

The dearth of hilarious hijynx on the interwebs has been the direct result of my hard drive eating it sometime in early May. Procrastination and a timetable tighter than my junior high figure skating costume kept me from getting it fixed until mid-week last week. Anyway, perhaps the fates were keeping me from posting so nobody would miss my latest bout of ridiclitude. Every time I tell this story I feel stupider and stupider, but I'm hoping that blogging about it will serve as some kind of cathartic reset button.

I've made a few friends recently. This is not the problem (actually, it's kind of a huge win for me). I've made most of these friends through the FIRST friend I made here - he's been really great at introducing me to people and to the wonders offered by small-town northern Ontario. A week or two ago, he invited me to a party hosted by a couple of friends on a cottage property just outside of town. As the night progressed, it became more and more clear that we would be staying the night (the strongest indicator of this being the rate at which we were producing empty bottles). Towards the end of the night, we decided to change into our swimsuits and fire up the hot tub down by the lake. This may have been the worst idea in history. Hot tubs are a great way to relax and unwind, dehydrate yourself, and then become unbearably nauseous. My friend was one of those who discovered this. The hot tub time was cut short by a significant margin.

So, we all went inside and were shown our various accommodation options. When it came my turn, our hostess looked at me and my friend and said "You guys can either sleep in THIS double bed, or you can sleep in this other room with the double bed and bunk." This immediately set off my awkward situation alarm. She clearly thinks we're together. My immediate response was to quietly wait for her to leave so I could avoid having the "Despite appearances, I'm VERY single" discussion, which I hate with every fibre of my being, and then choose the room where my friend was guaranteed to concuss himself because I'm just a generous person like that.

Awkward point number two was when we both reached for the same doorknob. Being chivalrous (and only slightly less intoxicated), I allowed my friend to go into the room with the bunk - but having already COMMITTED to that room in my mind, I didn't have a second thought about sleeping in there even though he had also obviously chosen it and there was a perfectly good, empty bed in the next room. I am a dumbass.

Awkward point number 1000, we had changed into our suits in a different building on the property. This meant that once out of wet suits, there was really nothing to change INTO. My friend was completely naked under the covers, and once I took off my wet suit, I would be, ahem, "as God intended me" as well. While I'm generally in favour of co-ed nakedness, I feel as though this was a situation rife with opportunitues for Shakespeare-esque misunderstandings and ensuing sword-fights. It was awkward.

At some point several seconds into my descent into drunk-sleep, my friend groaned. As he was above me, and as most projectiles are subject to the forces of gravity at some point, you can understand that I was concerned for my general cleanliness over the course of the night. I also had concerns about my ability to get home if my friend, who had driven us both, died in his sleep. Awkward point 1000000, my mother-hen tendencies kicked in. You know how the drunk-faces LOVE it when people try to feed them water? I ALWAYS forget that! I wrapped myself in a towel (there was NO WAY I was putting on a wet bathing suit just to get a glass of water), got a glass of water, and tried to feed it to my friend in the top bunk. Drunkenly wrangling a very drunk, very tall man whilst holding a glass of water is REALLY hard. It was hard enough that my towel slipped. Not wanting to give up on the semblance of clothedness, though, I found myself more or less just pinning the towel against the side of the bunk bed with my chest...

And that's when awkward point infinity happened. My friend was mumbling some shit into his pillow. I was at once concerned that he might smother himself and that he was saying something of great import, so I leaned closer to hear what he was saying. All of a sudden there was an urgency in his voice, and he was yelling at me to "behave yourself! behave yourself! Your nose is touching mine!" Thinking that he was delirious and therefore beyond help, I gave up on him, turned the lights off and went to sleep. It only occurred to me the next afternoon that he totally thought I was trying to kiss him. And here we have our first Shakespeare-esque misunderstanding. If he's not acting super awkward around me, I'm sure as hell projecting my awkard feelings onto him every time I see him now.

This whole situation leaves my feathers a little ruffled too. Why, you ask? Well, it could be because he seemed super-offended by the idea of my kissing him. And I guess it would be legit to be offended by his offense-taking. I'm kind of fantastic (in an adorably eccentric and bizarre kind of way), and really - if it had been a lean-in for osculatory purposes rather than auditory ones, what up - it's just a kiss. But to be honest, that's not it.

What offends me is the idea that I would try to kiss anyone in THAT situation. As if stealing kisses from half-passed-out men who can't defend themselves is how I roll. For the record, I am not from the ends-justifies-the-means school of nookie acquisition - I'm pretty sure I'd rather get it the usual, consensual way even if it means I don't get it at all (which seems to be my track-record of late). I'm just too much of a hopeless romantic for anything else and I object to the notion of anything to the contrary.

Hot People Make it Fit

2010-05-05T16:15:00.000-07:00

I went clothes shopping on Friday - I bought some new jeans. While I love having new jeans, it was still a giant disappointment to learn that while (according to my personal trainer) my workouts have been working for me (for serious, I can see abs...well...two of them), I'm STILL THE SAME EXACT SIZE THAT I WAS THREE MONTHS AGO!

But this is like a lot of things in my life - except I'm trying to squeeze my fat life into the same amount of time as I've always had. Because of my pre-work life was disappointing, from an extra-curriculars point of view, it seems as though I'm making up for eight years of lost time. I'm also told that "being involved" is a good way to meet people, and since I don't know too many of those around here yet...but perhaps I've gone a little bit overboard.

In addition to my gym and choir obligations, I have also recently joined a film event society, committed to piano performances for a local poetry festival (and may read some of my own works...eep!), and have started accompanying a high school choir. I'm currently seeking opportunities to join a Dragon Boat team, and have recently learned how to catch frisbees (which, at one point, I would count among my greatest fears - up there with eating grapes and engaging in small talk with strangers) in an attempt to play Ultimate.

Reading over this, I am somewhat overwhelmed by the sheer volume of activity I've engaged in. I am also, all of a sudden, not at all surprised that last week I found myself embarking on a 3 hour drive for a work function through moose country at 11 p.m. in an effort not to miss out on my social life. Perhaps you have to be just a little bit crazy to ACTUALLY work hard AND play hard. This might also be why I arrived home from a trip to Ottawa at midnight on Sunday night and slogged my way through work the next day with a smile slapped on my face despite my inability to actually form complete sentences when providing instruction to my patients.

On a work-related sidenote, though...I recently went to my first drug-rep-sponsored networking event. It is a bizarre, bizarre experience to be offered unlimited amounts of free alcohol while being pumped for business from a salesperson and being under the discerning and critical eye of your boss. Deeply weird. Especially when the discerning and critical eye of your boss is a little tipsier than you are.

At any rate, strange ethical dilemmas aside, I seem to be balancing my hard work with my hard play reasonably well. But it means a lot of late afternoon naps - which makes me wonder if I'm doing it wrong.

Hot People Have Their Reasons

2010-04-17T13:28:00.000-07:00

Maybe it's the perpetual cycle of cruel teasing sunniness followed by inexplicable snow, rain and cloudy weather. Maybe it's the cosmic coincidence that I woke up both slightly hungover AND with my monthly inconvenience and could do little more this morning than haul my sorry ass from the bed, to the bath (standing up in the shower was just too much for me today), to the couch to watch a children's film and drink copious amounts of milky tea. Maybe it's because my new hairdresser alerted me to the presence of grey hair in my coif last week, and now every time I look at myself in the mirror, I keep thinking I see huge chunks of grey. Maybe it's the fact that, though I was invited to something party-esque last night (social life! huzzah!) and got pleasantly tipsy, tipsiness yesterday always results in feelings like this today.

I don't know what it is, but I'm kind of in an emo funk (imagine the fusion of THOSE musical genres...blech...well, that's how I feel). I've been writing this stuff for over a year now - and I think I have improved on the hotness front. I think I'm a lot more interesting than I was just over a year ago...for serious. It's been hard work, too - or at least painful - what with the brazilian waxes, unfortunate skin reactions due to experiments with makeups, face creams, and cleansers, and constant attempts to get my bicycle up hilariously steep hills in an effort to make my ass look sweet. But what am I doing this for? And for whom?

This whole thing started as a way to feel good about myself - and to a certain extent it's worked. But I still find myself feeling like this a little more often than I'd like. And what have I really got to show for it, anyway? A handful of slightly regrettable one-night stands (some only regrettable because they never got past that one night), a few pounds melted away (but really, only a few), a better handle on the application of makeup, slightly more flattering clothing and a seriously twisted co-dependent relationship with online dating sites.

And when feeling good about myself didn't seem to be motivation enough, I added spite to the mix - remember plan ab-tastic? I'm 100% sure that decision was all about making dudes who'd taken a pass on me experience palpable regret when they realize they missed out on the hot, hot bod I will, of course, one day have.

But now I'm pretty sure that I'm measuring my self-like by how much boys like me. And I think it's been that way for quite some time. AND I think that's not really very hot at all.

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Incidentally, I think I discovered, through observational study of behaviour, the secret to my not really caring if particular boys like me. Guy friends: if you suspect I'm interested in being more than friends with you and you'd like to leave that particular queue (cuz I'll be honest, there are more than a few of you out there), here's what you should do. Do something forgivably dick-ish to me. Seriously. I mean, not super dick-ish - unless you also want to stop being friends altogether. "Accidentally" tell me I look fat in those pants, then subsequently apologise. That kind of thing. I'm pretty sure this is a no-fail plan.
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So, back to the original question - why am I doing this? For whom?

I think it's kind of a cliché and sell-out-y to decide I'm hot when some guy I think is kind of cute decides I'm hot for me. It's got to be for some other reason.

In the last four months, almost 500 people have read this blog almost 1500 times. I'm not adept enough with my analytics program to know if that's a lot of people or not, but those are pretty astounding numbers to me. But why? Seriously, what are you reading this for? Because if I'm inspiring people, then I think that's hot. Even if it's just because I'm funny - that'd be ok too. Hot people are funny. Could I get some help with my crisis of conscience, or should I just pack it in?

Hot People Know the Score

2010-04-08T14:14:00.000-07:00

Ok - so life in a small Northern Ontario town hasn't been COMPLETELY boring these days (don't get me wrong...it's still pretty boring...but I'll take it. For now).

The more faithful readers will be WELL aware of my angst about aging. This may have been exacerbated by my compulsion to be friends with people 6 years my junior. Maybe. While life as a diabetes educator has not cured me of that particular angst completely (it's more likely now that I'm even MORE scared of getting old when I see what kind of health crap these people have to deal with), I am at least assured that I am not as ancient as my previous, friend-of-twenty-year-olds self had believed.

Score 1 Miss T

To add to this reassurance, last weekend I was carded not once, but twice. The first time was the more hilarious of the two. I was at the LCBO when the lady at the counter asked me if I had ID to go with my purchase of a mid-priced sparkling wine. I laughed, hauled out my brand-spanking-new Ontario Drivers License (disgusting picture, btw...the province doesn't let you smile...one more reason I miss Nova Scotia), said it had been a while since I'd had that request, and handed it over. At this point, there were three people behind me waiting to purchase their weekend's mind-numbing solutions. The woman checked my birthdate, but no, that was not enough. She also felt it necessary to further delay the line-up of people waiting for the sweet relief at the end of their work-weeks to hold the license up to my face for comparison lest I be the kind of rapscallion who tries to use someone else's face at a BRIGHTLY LIT LIQUOR STORE AT 6 PM. This process took at least 120 seconds. I enjoyed every one of them.

Score 1 Miss T

The other id check happened when I joined one of the gyms in town. A twig-sized girl, obviously no older than 17, asked me if I was over 18 when I was filling out my PAR-Q. I'm pretty sure the force of my laughter mussed up her hair. But hey...when the kids think I'm one of them, that can't be bad, right?

Score 1 Miss T

I joined a choir two weeks ago. It a. is not completely (or even slightly) populated with blue-haired old warbling women, and b. a step in the right direction if I want to diversify my extra-curriculars so my life isn't just about failed debating. And I'm pretty good at it. One might say I'm an asset. Or at least, I might. Because I'm fly like that.

Score 1 Miss T

After the first choir practice, I had pizza with a guy in the choir. It was kind of spur of the moment, but he sprung for the pizza. We talked for about an hour and a half. We seem to have a lot in common. When we left and went our separate ways, we parted with an awkward hug.

Score...shit. I don't know.

Did I just have a date? There was food and good conversation and someone treating, but it wasn't pre-planned. Does that make a difference? If it WAS a date, how'd I do? I wasn't prepared. Can I have a re-test?

Also, what do I do with that awkward hug? The post-analysis has been shot to shit by that hug. Does it mean I'm in the friendzone (which would be fine...I'd just like to know), or what?

Here is what I know about the romance-calibre of date endings:

Kiss > Awkward Hug > Handshake > Watching him run away screaming

But THAT. IS. ALL.

Surely hot people know what dates are (I have several friends who have suggested to me that this is the case. They DO know).

Anyway, the limbo I'm feeling on the romantic front kind of echoes the limbo I'm feeling everywhere else. My life isn't super exciting right now, but hey, at least I look young and fresh, and to some people LIKE A CHILD. Huzzah?

Hot People Don't Believe the Hype (An Open Letter to E-Harmony)

2010-03-20T19:32:00.000-07:00

This isn't my first brush with online dating. Unfortunately, it probably won't be my last either. But I've got a beef that I've just gotta get off my chest.

Dear E-Harmony,

I object to your claims about compatibility. You cannot match people up based on their personalities. At the risk of sounding ghetto, you don't know me. And I doubt you really care to anyway, as long as you can keep automatically charging $30/month on my VISA***. What you CAN do is match people up based on their own impressions of their personalities. And let's be honest, here. I'm pretty sure most people out there, especially the single ones ('cause Lord knows, we're all still single for a reason!), don't have enough grip on reality to TRULY know themselves. The result of this is that the people we ACTUALLY are is almost never the same as the people we THINK we are. Some people THINK they have a sarcastic sense of humour, but a lot of the time, people just don't really know what sarcasm is (except that they're pretty sure it's something that people find funny...and attractive in others...).

Secondly, your *claim* "When attraction is ignited by TRUE compatibility...", first of all, is not even a sentence. (Weren't you founded by a DOCTOR? Who had to go to SCHOOL?? Where you learn how to WRITE SHIT?!?!?!?). But it also requires that the average tv-watching consumer not be duped into thinking you can also guarantee that attraction. I wasn't duped by your slogan with the poor sentence structure, but I WAS duped by the pictures. And I say duped because it doesn't take a genius to know that everyone posts the MOST flattering pictures of themselves and never the ones where they've lost the game of angles. For some reason, the fact that I play the game had no bearing on my expectation of how others will play.

The only thing you CAN claim is that you're pretty ok at figuring out if people will be decent friends. And when people are desperately lonely because they live in brand new towns and don't know anyone except their co-workers and the girl at the express checkout at the grocery store, and because they quit debating because they're old ladies and are missing the National Championships for the first time in eight years and don't know what's happening there because THEIR FRIENDS DON'T TEXT THEM WHEN THEY SAY THEY WILL (ok, I forgive you guys. I know how crazy busy it gets there...I'm just sad and lonely here), making a decent friend should be good enough. But when you also show clips of impossibly beautiful people who are deliriously happy with each other and give people the impression that there was just this spark of love immediately, it makes us believe we SHOULD want more than a decent friend and it makes us sorely disappointed when that's all you can deliver.

So, I wonder, E-Harmony, what do you have to say to me in response? And more to the point, what do you have to say to the poor fellow sitting at home right now who thinks it's just great that he's met a girl that FINALLY he can have a conversation with? And what about the fact that I feel like a complete douche right now because YOU DIDN'T DO THE JOB YOU CLAIMED TO BE ABLE TO DO??? Well, I can find decent friends on my own, thanks. And I guess I can decide who I'm compatible with too. This is what I have to say to you, E-Harmony. Oh, and keep the $30.

Love,

Miss T

***In other news, apparently all those years of having a VISA limit that was exceeded whenever I bought more than a stick of gum has paid off. When I went to the bank to alert them that I was no longer a student, they told me my credit rating was like, A plus plus plus star and now I have more credit than I know what to do with. Hilarious.

Hot People Aren't So Sad and Lonely

2010-03-06T08:53:00.000-08:00

Alright, so the title may have been a wee bit dramatic, but I've been in this new town for about two weeks, and it's been a week since I last saw someone I actually know (and I've run out of the lasagna my Mommy made when she was here. See? Sad!). This is no way to mark the approximate one-year anniversary of Hot in 6 Months.

All resolutions have been put on hold until I get my feet wet at work and, more crucially, get my first paycheque - though that's already earmarked for professional fee renewals and car payments (crippling ones!). In the interim, I've been getting practice with the manual transmission on my new automobile (Why did I think THAT was a good idea?) by going to Wal-Mart to buy odds and ends like paper towel and windshield scrapers, watching movies (note to self [and others]: Mamie Van Doren, though busty and beautiful, does not make good films. Period.), going to bed before 10 p.m. like a 73-year-old, and eating far more candy than is reasonable for a normal person, let alone a dietitian who counsels diabetes sufferers exclusively. Basically, I'm a lazy, sleepy person who eats garbage - but at least I've got a brand new
car (note that under my coat and boots, I'm wearing pajamas and haven't brushed my hair)!

No guitar-playing, no French-speaking (yet!), and only slightly better taste in music. And of course, plan ab-tastic has been put on hold once again. It's hard to get rock-hard abs if your most vigorous exercise consists of walking from the bedroom at one end of your apartment to the bathroom at the other.

And, if that weren't enough, my relative laziness has manifested itself in significantly more internet-surfing. And that's when I came upon this! Hottest Blogging Babes 2010!?!? And I'm not one of them?!!?!?! This is, truly, a failure.

Obviously, something must be done about this. Luckily, despite living in a pretty teensy town, it's relatively well-appointed in the amenities department. Apparently, there's a gym here with personal trainers. It is my plan to meet with one of these trainers as soon as financially possible. It is my further plan to relate to this trainer my quest for hotness and plan ab-tastic. I will do this by telling him or her that my fitness goal is to "look good naked." Hopefully the not-so-thinly veiled reference to one of my favourite movies will not go unnoticed.

The knowing-more-people problem is not so simple to rectify. Like I said before, I don't know what the cool kids do around here for fun and I don't know how to find out. I'm seriously considering going to church tomorrow just so I can get to know some people who HAVE to be nice to me. Has it really come to this?

Hot People Turn Over New Leaves

2010-02-24T18:42:00.000-08:00

I alluded (ok, more than alluded) to a new job and a subsequent need to be adult, yes?

Ok - so I've moved (for the third time in the last 12 months) to a small town in Northern Ontario for this new job. And jeebus I'm scared.

Forgetting that my next paycheque is going to multiply everything I earned last month by infinity (and any paycheque I made in the last three years by a factor of approximately 25...for serious), I've had to do so much adult stuff in the last two weeks that all I want to do is sleep for the rest of time.

It's been a big jump:

Occupation

Last month: Layabout
This month: Registered Dietitian

Transportation

Last month: bus, when I could afford tickets...otherwise, feet
This month: a brand-spanking new car (but feet most of the time anyway - hot people are environmentally-conscious)

Housing

Last month: mooching off my very generous relatives in exchange for my portion of the grocery bill
This month: a two-bedroom apartment in the downtown core (ok...in the interest of full disclosure, the downtown core should just be called "town")

Finances

Last month: couldn't buy bus tickets on a regular basis
This month: just got approved for a credit card that would more than cover a year's rent in 2006.

Ok - so I think most people will agree that most of the above is pretty awesome. But moving has been scary for a few other reasons as well. It's very strange to be the only person you know somewhere. When I was a student, this wasn't such a big deal because there were social constructs in the university environment that made it very easy to make friends. So far, the most familiar face to me has been my insurance broker. I've been seeing a lot of her, but that's because getting auto insurance has been something akin to being repeatedly beaten with a blunt instrument (note: it is NOT GOOD to be 26 and never to have been insured on any vehicle).

I almost feel like I'm starting from scratch with the hotness thing. I mean - I have to learn what hot people do here (I'm hoping like hell it's Wednesday night karaoke at the local watering hole). It could take a while, especially considering that my neighbours have homecare workers and names like Duke and Smitty (not that you can't be hot with names like that...I just feel like possibly there are age categories of hotness).

Then again, I've come a long way so far. And I should never underestimate the big fish/small pond phenomenon. 'Cause this is definitely a much smaller pond than I've been in for a while, and I'm a big fish, right?

Hot People Win, Even When They Lose

2010-02-01T20:57:00.000-08:00

I've been noticing (mostly because it is completely obvious) that the growing up/goodbye to my youth process has involved a lot of "one last debate tournament"s. I know, I know. Nerdz!

But for serious - debating has been an invaluable and defining part of my life for almost a decade (yipes, I'm old!). Many readers will know this, but my main focus is actually judging the debates, and I've gotten pretty good at it over the past few years. So this past weekend, I was strong-armed at the last minute by some friends to judge at a pretty major tournament. Although geographically, I found myself in Toronto, I also inexplicably found myself (metaphorically) in a place called, by those in the know, the bin. The bin is where the bad debates happen - the ones devoid of reason, organization or articulation, let alone any sort of panache. It's a place I haven't found myself in a few years, and I've gotta say, it put me into a bit of a tailspin.

First of all, I've had some...exchanges...with a few of the people in charge. It was almost as though they were holding something against me. Like perhaps I had written some scathing and untoward things about them on a public internet site or something...hmm...so for a while I thought it was just vengeance.

Here's where, in retrospect, it gets a little cringe-worthy and unattractive. Soon after I came to my senses and decided nobody could be so petty (right?...nobody would be...) as to seek vengeance for a blog post from months ago in which all parties (except myself) remained more or less anonymous, I started to have a small (Seriously, it was only tiny. And I definitely kept it to myself as well...) personal crisis about my skillz as a debate judge. There might have been some moist eyes threatening tears at a few moments. This is cringe-worthy for two reasons:

1. Who likes emo-girl traipsing around like a 17th century poet? I don't. I'm pretty sure I could have dealt with things a little more gracefully (although shit, I saw some bad debates this weekend). For example, I might have avoided referring to the complete injustice of my shitty weekend to everyone I met, or at the very least avoided opening every conversation with that topic. I might also have opted NOT to require everyone to list my accomplishments at top volume, in unison, before I unlocked the door to our accommodations and allowed them to enter.

2. It points to a greater problem with my life. When someone gets uppity because they've lost a debate, I go on an oft-ranted tirade about how the outcome of a debate round has no bearing on real life and nobody in real life is going to care whether you won your fifth round at the 2007 eastern invitational. Despite this firm belief, I've really made debating THE major priority in my life and I've done it for too long. Although my success in the field of debate judging (which, frankly, only a select few would even count as a REAL success) has served me well, it has been something I've cultivated to the exclusion of all other things and I think this is a little bit alarming. Like, I used to be good at other shit. I used to be an awesome lip sync artist (at high school dances, with my thumb-rophone), and I would kill at trivia contests (Reach for the Top FTW!) but I haven't done either of those things in like, forever. In conclusion, I really need to diversify my talent portfolio. Learning to be a french-speaking guitar hero is obviously already on the agenda...but I need to think of some other things to incorporate into my life so I can one day be awesome at them. Ideas? Anyone?

On the other hand, my relative abandonment of all reason and sense of purpose meant that, on balance, the rest of the weekend was pretty awesome.

First of all, I learned that I am effing amazing at playing damsel in distress (it helps when the distress is real). A number of dashing young men came to my aid. I think I only paid for half my drinks and I wasn't allowed to leave the dancefloor (in fact, I was forcibly removed from areas not technically dancefloor on a number of occasions). I also had one of the nicest and least "pressure-y to do more" makeout sessions I've ever had, and that was really refreshing.

Secondly, I drank my face off. The results of this were epic (although, recognizing that I already used my last chance to drink stupid amounts of alcohol, the hangover on Sunday was just as epic). I definitely danced like a rockstar that night. I also definitely fell out of a bunk bed. The resulting bruises (reflecting the pattern of the carpet) and rug burn are totally badass. My successful attempt at mounting the bunk bed ladder post-fall without the help of my two very concerned friends was just as badass. And I definitely spent the rest of the night spooning my friend's girlfriend to avoid a second fall.

In conclusion, while daytime Miss T wasn't very hot at all, I feel like my Saturday night was burning up just a little (at least, I felt sorta hot...). Now, how can I keep that fire ablaze?

Hot People See the Signs

2010-01-18T16:55:00.000-08:00

No, that was not just a reference to another hilariously bad song of my youth (oh...Swedish Pop...so campy). I was back in Halifax over the holidays and over the time I spent with some of my friends I realized that I really do need to be a big girl soon. Last time we chatted, I was talking about how I really need to be a big girl...and I've gotta say, I'm off to a bad start.

Although my resolve to have better taste in music has gone well thus far (I've downloaded all but one of last installment's suggested albums...I'm listening to one now...I am such a hot music-listener), my first instinct when at HMV was to make a beeline for the Glee soundtracks. Not that Glee isn't excellent television viewing...but for serious...how many 14-year-old girls also bought not just vol. 1 but vol. 2 as well? How many? I mean...Finn's just so dreamy, so how can you blame me, but still!?!

But my hilarious taste in music isn't the only thing I've been having trouble shaking. I've spoken a few times about my penchant for debating (and also my complete acknowledgement that it's a sport for NERDS!!!). Without going into the details and the ins and outs of parliamentary debate, it is an activity that has been with me since my first day of frosh week (when I was accosted by a girl telling me I looked intelligent...she had me at hello) and has continued for the last 8 1/2 years. Some of my best and oldest friends were made through this activity and I owe it a lot. Unfortunately, the trade-off that comes with having these great friends is that I find myself the oldest person (by far) at social gatherings, telling stories of debating debauchery past, only to realize that I'm talking about a time when they were still in junior high (and increasingly, under the age of 10...eep). To illustrate, I was invited to an illicit New Year's Eve party. I only discovered the host's Mom didn't know about it the next morning, after a significant amount of destruction had occurred. It's really an "I get older, they stay the same age" kind of thing...which would be find if I was just contributing my time and expertise to the craft of competitive debate. Unfortunately, I sometimes find myself attracted to boys who make me feel, when I think about how old they are, like this:

(Get it...I'm a cougar...hilarious!).

Sometimes, it's hard to remind myself that I am not impervious to the powers of time and that I DO get older, despite my best efforts. Sometimes this results in childish behaviour in hilarious attempts to recapture my vigorous youth, like buying Glee soundtracks, or kissing boys with ABANDON.

My friends say that hot people do whatever they want, and I've gotta say that I definitely wanted to do both of those things. But I also really want to be an adult. Stat.

Last week, these colliding desires faced off in real life. It was kind of messy. I agreed to judge at a high school debate tournament hosted by my old club...you know...just one last shot in the arm. Although many of my very best old friends were there, I found myself increasingly surrounded by people reminding me of how old I was...like...I was alive when the Berlin Wall fell or I remember a time before the widespread use of cellular telephones. Truthfully, they were just being evil. At the same time, I knew that in three days I had an interview for a big girl job.

It was super difficult to reconcile my wish to stay an adolescent forever with my wish to actually grow up and do something constructive with my life. So difficult that it actually made me sorta depressed (and cranky...sorry guys...). At some point over the evening's post-tournament social, one of the party-goers reminded me of something that's just amazing for drowning ones' sorrows. This was my first of the evening:

To be perfectly honest, I don't know how much I had to drink that night, and there are some patchy parts of the evening. We know this is not a completely new phenomenon for me.

I am sure of a few things.

1. I definitely drunk-dialed my Dad's girlfriend. I did this for two reasons. For one thing, I thought it was 12:30 a.m. and not 2:30 a.m. I was wrong. For another, I thought she was out with my Dad and not at home sleeping. Wrong again.

2. Drunk Handsy Miss T made an appearance. My old friends are familiar with her; she's the me who gets in her cups and then puts her arm around everyone and stands too close and leans on people. Especially when they're boys. Typically I just cite drunkenness and an inability to control my extremities due to the extreme liquor-soakedness of the motor control parts of my brain. But let's be honest. I'm flirting. I've always been flirting. I've always known I was flirting. I've just never admitted it. On that evening, though, I was called on it. However, instead of sputtering about how it's the booze, I came clean. I said it was fun. And that it didn't mean anything more than that. And it was true. And super liberating to say it. And I felt pretty smooth (perhaps in real life it wasn't smooth at all...but my memory of it is the most important thing). I feel like hot people are unapologetically flirty, and often without an agenda. Even the grown-up ones.

3. I grossly overused a number of stock phrases. I need to stop saying the following: "You're my faves" (said to anyone who amuses me...pluralised so other faves don't get jealous...whispered to people for extra effect when I really want them to know I appreciate them) and "Fair..." (response to any statement for which I have no adequate response, or any statement with which I disagree but for which am too drunk to formulate an articulate counterargument). I hope nobody was following me around with a tape recorder that night.

I'm not entirely sure how I got home, though I'm sure it was at the hands of a very understanding and benevolent cab driver (or, at least, I was missing a cab-fare-ish amount of cash from my wallet in the morning). I'm sure you're expecting that the next day was distinctly unpleasant for me. Not so. When I awoke, I was, though a little slow on the draw, miraculously unhungover.

I take this as a sign...or a gift...or a gift-sign. That was the last time I am allowed to do that. It was my last hurrah of ridonkulous drunkenness. The powers that be are trying their damnedest to make my coming-of-age as painless as possible, despite my best efforts to make it hurt so bad.

Incidentally, when I did go to that job interview, I did act particularly adult. So adult that they offered me the job. And I'm gonna take it (resolution #2, complete within 20 days...score!). This means another move...but probably not for a few weeks. In the interim, I'm taking this time as a period of last hurrahs. Just as that night was my last night of sloppy drunk Miss T and the Glee Soundtrack was my last bad music purchase, the next few weeks will be spent enjoying the now guilty pleasures of my late teens and early twenties, so I can say goodbye to them in style and embrace my new life as an employed, adult (and hopefully, one day) hot person.

Hot People Continuously Improve

2010-01-05T10:09:00.000-08:00

Just after Christmas, I was sitting in the airport waiting for my flight with Porter, wearing the hat I had just knit for myself (it's hilariously too big, but I guess that's how the kids wear them these days) and an American Apparel bandeau under my carefully colour-coordinated scoop neck and cardi, with my well-used bags and my brand new ipod.

As I was sitting there, engaging in self-reflection, I realized I had achieved something special. I SO want to be the kind of girl who wears American Apparel merch and handmade outerwear. I want to be the girl waiting at the gate of an alternative discount airline (where the flight attendants wear pillbox caps), listening to music on a $300 piece of digital genius.

The only thing that wasn't quite right is that I was definitely listening to Aerosmith (circa 2001, no less...embarrassing) and not Belle and Sebastian (or some way indie-er indie band that I'm too out of it to have even heard of).

So in the spirit of never quite being perfect, I started thinking about my New Year's resolutions.

1. Plan Abtastic. Obvs. This must start in earnest in 2010 (I know it's already started, but I'm on vacay...so by 2010, I mean January 12th, 2010). This may mean I have to stop eating Brie wheels like one might eat an apple. It may also mean that I can't pretend that kissing boys is a reasonable alternative to actual exercise (although I keep finding myself making this justification, despite the ill-advisedness of the kissing in general).

2. Be employed. Ok...so I've been working on this since late November, but it's one I desperately need to fulfill. Desperately. I've been a student for 8 and a half years, and while I would never say I was "starving" (see: plan abtastic), I'm starting to feel the pinchy, and I'm starting to feel like I want to be (gasp!) an adult. One with adult furniture and plates I bought myself and haircuts I didn't get in somebody's basement.

Interestingly, yesterday I kind of got a job offer. It was an interesting paradox, as I was getting a ride from my Daddy to meet my friend so I could stay for supper, and talking on the cell-phone I needed help from my Mommy to get (yes, even at the tender age of 25!). As I was talking, my father kept whispering at me to say "Yes." instead of "Yeah, uh-huh, awesome, etc."

I'm pretty sure I'll be employed by year's end, but this adulthood thing is concerning to me. I can't even stop TALKING like a 14-year-old.

3. Learn to speak French. My Dad's a French teacher. It would then follow that I can speak French. Not so. I remember being cornered in grade 10 by a student teacher while I was waiting outside my French class (taught by my father...yeah...high school was kind of messed), and she asked me in French if we spoke it at home. She was super disappointed when I answered, in English "No, we don't. We're English," as my classmates snorted at me with ridicule. Well, it turns out my unilingualism is finally biting me in the ass. It'll be difficult to attain resolution 2, job offer notwithstanding, without achieving this goal. but French is the language of love, yes? So I should think of night-school French classes as hotness lessons, right?

4. Learn to play the guitar. Last year, I kept only one resolution, but made about ten. The only one I was able to keep was learning to knit. Anyway, I feel like hot people play open mic nights, and lead the chorus at beach bonfires, etc. I also feel like a guitar is way more portable than my piano (which I actually play very well, thanks). So, I'm going to learn to play guitar (at least a few songs). Step 1, get guitar. Step 2, learn to play it. I feel pretty confident because my track record with "learning to" do stuff has been pretty good. Like, 100% success over one year. The hidden advantage of this is that I also kind of feel like guitar instuctors are hot (since they also, obviously, play guitar), and this is obviously a score for me.

5. Have better taste in music. I was actually super-ashamed to say what I was listening to in the airport just after Christmas. There is really no excuse for my embarrassing taste in music. I know it's bad. The worst of it is I have a number of friends who are musicians and one who is actually quite a well-respected music critic. I must listen to better music. I must.

In that spirit, I have opened up the comments section of the blog. Please contribute to the late music education of this girl who has extended her adolescence (including its music) far too long, by posting your personal hot people can't live without this album pick. Please.

Hot People Just Look Away

2009-12-17T18:13:00.000-08:00

So, I've been pretty busy with my last few days of work (It's my last week! As of tomorrow I will be, for the first time, legitimately unemployed)...so I've let the exercise slip a bit. Also, I like to do it outside, and it's effing cold out, which has made even the outdoor WINTER sports unbearable.

One of the INDOOR exercises I've taken up this year is something called Zumba - I think it's supposed fuse Latin rhythms with easy-to-follow steps so working out can FINALLY be fun. And for a long time, I thought it was fun. I thought it was fun because I was in a big room with a bunch of forty-ish women who weren't really that fit (you know...the one I'll be when I'm forty-ish) and had little to no sense of rhythm and couldn't really follow along with the steps (in their defense, the instructor is pretty terrible at calling out the steps ahead of time, but still...). I had rhythm, and my hips were shaking...I thought I looked like a hot mama...especially in comparison to the forty-ish crowd.

But last week, my Zumba class was moved to a smaller facility. Not only was I hampered by the fact that someone with no rhythm (and therefore no way for me to predict whether their next step was going to be on my toes) could bump into me at any time, but there were also two large plate-glass windows at the front of the room. They were surprisingly reflective. This allowed me to see exactly what I looked like in my work-out gear, shaking my hips and trying to keep up with the delayed step calls. Hot it was not. To call it spicy would be laughable. After that, I spent more time worrying about how I looked than actually getting a great workout and having fun. Zumba was ruined by a window.

But that's not the only time I realized that I'm not so graceful when I'm being active. My uncle and cousin and I went ziplining for my birthday (btw, this is SO fun. Do it. Go out and do it now. Stop reading! [ok, don't actually stop reading...]). It was like flying - you're suspended over the tops of trees by a piece of cable. Birds look graceful when they're flying...why shouldn't I?
This looks pretty epic, doesn't it? Upon closer examination, though, THIS is what was happening:

Is that a sweater around my waist? A particularly wide belt? Is there some kind of canvas netting in the harness? Please for the love of GOD explain this picture!!!

Nope. That's my midriff. It's hanging out like a pre-teen at recess.

ALL of the up-close pictures are like this....feet ungracefully flexed and belly-button out to wink at everyone. Fan-effing-tastic.

And this made me think of all the things I really enjoy doing for exercise...and then it made me curious about how I looked doing them. Apparently, I look reasonably ok doing the "light" setting for DDR:

(Yes, that is the world's fattest cat, of World Weekly News fame. She lives in my house)

But increase the difficulty, and you stop being able to tell that the thing I'm dancing to has a beat.

It's especially attractive that I'm continually adjusting my bra straps. If only this habit were limited to vigorous exercise...alas...

Pilates is just as bad (if not worse). Observe:

My favourite part of that is the extreme panting at the end. I am out of breath due to the exertion of a single sit-up.

So, I think it's obvious that exercise has got to be a major part of Plan Ab-tastic. Otherwise, I'd have to starve myself such that the fat surrounding my current abs dissolves...and I have a wealth of theoretical knowledge explaining to me why THAT's a bad idea. But the glimpse I caught of myself in the plate-glass window has me worried...what if all those times I danced like nobody was watching, somebody actually was watching? I don't want to be some stiff-hipped girl with her midriff hanging out!

I need brain-bleach. Stat.

Photography and Cinematography courtesy of my 13-year-old cousin.

Hot People Are Impervious to Diversions

2009-12-05T21:04:00.000-08:00

Ok - Plan Ab-tastic is not going well so far.

The plan involves a two-pronged attack. The first prong is to be unapproachably attractive. I am not faring well on this score. Perhaps because I am less interested in boys of all shapes and sizes (I prefer now to focus only on boys of SOME shapes and sizes...), I find myself more attuned to the things that I do not enjoy about my physical appearance. I know I've complained about my complete and utter corpulence in the past, but the saga continues. I've also noticed that my face looks as though it belongs to the greasy boy from your grade 7 gym class...you know the one...he sort of lurked in the corner and ALWAYS dropped the basketball at crucial moments. It's kind of peeling AND acne-covered. SO fetch.

Also, there's my teeth, which I've noticed more and more of late. Let me tell you another hilarious story of my youth. Once upon a time, when I was seven, my family and I were driving home from the our friends' house in the early evening as the moon was rising. You know how the moon looks extra-huge as it's coming up? Well, we thought we wanted to make that magic last as long as possible. As such, my mother suggested we abstain from turning the lights on when we got home and instead go directly to the kitchen (which was on the moonward side of the house) to watch it continue rising.

Until I was in my early twenties, my Dad kept fish. For as long as I can remember, there has been some kind of fishtank in my house. For much of my young life, there was a gigantic fishtank in the front hall. As you may recall, fishtanks are made of glass, and are therefore more or less invisible in the dark. As you likely won't recall, the gigantic one in my house stood at about mouth height on a seven-year-old. And on that particular night, when all the lights were off, and I was (a little strangely) excited to see the moon rise from the back of our house, I ran directly into that fishtank, mouth-first. The direct result of this was that I broke my front tooth in half. And as if my front tooth had not suffered enough violence, it was broken again the following summer when my brother hit me in the mouth with a paddle. Because I was singing too much, or something.

As a result, one of my front teeth is made mainly out of amalgam. To my extreme dismay, almalgam stains easily and is impervious to the work of all whitening toothpastes, as well as the bleaching power of any white strip I've tried. In conclusion, it is at least two shades darker than the rest of my teeth. It makes me not want to smile, especially for photographs, and as the Little Orphan Annie taught me in that seminal musical starring Carol Burnett, you're never fully dressed without that. Lord knows, there have to be SOME photographs of me where I'm not in SOME state of semi-undress...so I'd like to fix my smile.

I feel as though ALL of my problems would be solved with the proactiv solution and Zoom whitening. Unfortunately, both of those things cost oodles of cash, and frankly, my Visa situation is more dire than the last time I mentioned it. Therefore, I will soon commence scouring the internet for home whitening and acne removal solutions. This will definitely not be a recipe for disaster.

Prong two of Plan Ab-tastic is to divert my attention away from boys. Because they ALWAYS make me sad. Always.

I've tried to do this by distracting myself with other things. One such potential distraction was also an on-the-fly attempt to inject some culture into my life; I got rush tickets to the Nutcracker ballet (could I just say, at this point, that $11 rush tickets are a perk of being a student that I will sorely miss once my current student card expires. SORELY). The Nutcracker is a holiday favourite, with music that is beautiful AND familiar, a story that is a timeless classic, and ballet, which is always fascinating to watch, especially when you're a person who can't actually touch your toes without bending your knees and grunting. Despite all of these things, I couldn't help but be distracted by the bulges in the male dancers' tights. Yeah...I spent most of the night staring at their junk. Or marveling at just how tight the tights were across their bums - seriously, I could differentiate between individual gluteal muscles.

So...after a week and a half, I am failing on all fronts. However, I just bought new pants, and they fit marvellously. This may be just the morale-boost I need to plough forward. We shall see.

Hot People Don't Have Tails Between Legs

2009-11-25T08:20:00.000-08:00

Just needed to share this. I am too stupid to live.

I apparently don't know how to read the diagrams on fax machines. I subsequently sent blank faxes to a number of establishments last week, including one that was meant to inform my university of my intention to graduate...on the last day they were accepting those forms, as well as my national professional association.

A consequence of this is that I spent part of today being blisteringly rude to a government phone centre employee.

We're off to a great start this year, aren't we?

EDIT:

While faxing the back side of the forms was a huge idiot-head move on my part, apparently my school lost $65 that I paid to them with my Visa. Best. School. Ever.

Hot People Don't Seethe: The Disaster Continues

2009-11-21T15:19:00.000-08:00

I think it's fair to say that I've been having a rough time lately. At the time of my last post, I felt shittier than I've felt in a long time - all my fault and my inability to keep the physical and the emotional separate. I learned a good lesson there, I thought.

So, on the advice of a number of friends (but mostly because of my hands-thrown-in-the-air attitude about my inability to keep things casual), I DID set up an online dating profile. My mother told me I was crazy, but many friends and relations said that this was a totally normal thing to do and some even cited their own relationships as successes of the online dating world. I had every reason to believe this was a valid avenue for seeking companionship with a reasonable probability of success.

I posted some relatively cute pics of myself, I thought. This one shows my sweet side (I Heart EVERYBODY!!!):

This one shows my classy side (cuz classy chicks wear fake pearls they bought for $7.49 at Bizou):

This one shows my outdoorsy side (cuz outdoorsy chicks stand near lakes):

I wrote an honest, charmingly self-deprecating, and somewhat funny blurb about myself and thus opened the floodgates for the sea of date requests from eligible bachelors that awaited me.

I should say that I expected this sea of date requests because my father once tried the same dating website and received approximately 200 contacts in the space of two days. Why should I be any different? I'm young. I'm moderately attractive. I can spell and write in whole sentences. I'm no middle-aged man with a mustache and an acrylic sweater, but I thought I'd do ok.

"Ok" is not the word for how I did. I might use the word "poorly," though. In the space of a week I received only four contacts. Of these, only one person had all of the following winning qualities:

1. The ability to write in full sentences with moderately good spelling.
2. A lack of inane interest in my tattoo history (I have none, for the record. No piercings either).
3. The appearance of not being morbidly obese (In my defense, if the site's body description "a few extra pounds" was actually used properly, i.e. in the case of ONLY a few extra pounds, I wouldn't be so quick to judge).

So we chatted this week. He said he was intrigued by my profile and thought we had a lot in common. He asked what I did for fun and I told him I was relatively new in town and didn't know what the cool kids did for fun here. He said he'd be happy to show me. I said "how about next Saturday?" and he said "Awesome, what time?" and I said "How about 5:30?"

It is currently 7:00 p.m. on Saturday and (unless I am concurrently blogging AND dating) I am obviously at my home computer, (not obviously) wearing my pilates clothes and drinking a pre-mix cosmo. Short date, you ask? Not so, I reply. 5:30 a.m., you ask? Not so, I reply. So what happened?

Well, I never received a reply to my proposed time and (public) meeting place. So yesterday, I thought I'd send him a quick message to confirm the time and place. And when I hit "send" my computer screen told me he had BLOCKED ME (?!?#$@!%#$!#$%) !!!!

Ok - can ANYONE tell me WTF happened?

My aunt has a theory that he's a creeper and was put off by my suggestion of a public meeting place. I think she's trying to make me feel better about my second pre-dump in the space of a month.

Alternatively, he found something utterly offensive in the following sentences: "Let's meet at the Mackenzie King Bridge entrance to the Rideau Centre. There's a bench there just to the left of the entrance. How's 5:30? That'll give me enough time to get ready after work."

Honestly, I'm not that upset about letting this guy get away. Aside from his obvious douchiness, his pics weren't that good looking, and truthfully, the best I was hoping for was a reasonably friendly first date so I could practice my dating skillz (which I'm guessing are considerably lacking since I've never actually been on a real date before. Truth.)

But let's just talk about online dating in general. In NO other venue can you be so frequently rejected in the comfort of your own home (which I generally like to reserve for non-rejection-related activities). I mean - this site tells you which people have checked out your profile and taken a pass on you, which people you've sent messages to and whether they've read them or not, whether they've deleted them, AND whether they've read and THEN deleted them (which means ALL your written and photographic charms were complete duds). It also comfortingly suggests that you "Find someone else" when you've been blocked.

In conclusion, my hands are now firmly thrown up in the air. I GIVE UP on this coupling shit. I just can't do it.

In further conclusion, I have a new goal. Let me give you some background.

I'm pretty sure I'm going to live to 100. I turned 25 almost a year ago and that birthday, which, without the cupcakes and hospitality of one of my greatest and steadfastest friends I would have spent alone, was one of the worst birthdays in history. Ringing in the New Year is supposed mean new beginnings. The only thing that began in January is a time in my life known by some of my friends as Crisis Meltdown 2009, culminating in February with my break-up. I've had deaths in the family, months of intellectual and cultural lethargy, and of course, the latest work angst. This has been a year-long quarter-life crisis. At the very least, it's pretty fair to say that I've had several misadventures, but this blog has been a great outlet and has reminded me what it's really all about. Hotness.

I think I lost sight of that about a month and a half ago and all of a sudden my primary focus was coupling myself. I'm pretty sure the last few posts have shown just how disastrous THAT idea was. So, new plan.

It's my 26th birthday on Wednesday. I have two wishes.

The first is the fulfillment of my new hotness goal. Up until now, "hotness" was referring to some intangible quality that made me feel awesome about myself. Well, I'm proud to say that I'm ready to stoop to a new and superficial level. I WILL be ab-tastic by the time I'm 27. I want to be unapproachably attractive (as opposed to approachably unattractive...which I guess isn't THAT bad either) - just to spite all those online daters who take a pass on my profile EVERY SINGLE DAY, who have pictures of themselves (or stock photos of anonymous models) with their ripped abs on display AND all those men who would give me fake phone numbers and pre-dump me. Douchebags. I WILL have ripped abs. You WILL bounce quarters off them.

The second is a wish of all my readers (all eight of you...). Make this shit famous. I want it published. Tell your friends. Email it to your entire contact list. Repost it on your facebook wall.

Or at least send me a birthday message.

Hot People Don't Have Crushed Souls or Phantom Appendages

2009-11-10T17:48:00.000-08:00

Warning: the following is going to get pretty emo pretty quickly.

Ok - life is a disaster again. Complete and utter crap. While I could handle it if it was just one of the two, having both of the following problems at the same time is uber-painful. Uber.

A. I hate my job. It eats my soul.

I guess I haven't really talked much about my job here, except that I have one. I am a dietetic intern, which means that one day, I'll be a nutritionist. If you don't think I'm crazy enough to want a job telling people how to eat food they don't like, you might be convinced of my craziness when you learn that to qualify as a nutritionist, you must complete 40 weeks of unpaid internship. UNPAID. I'm on my last stint of this at the moment and things are starting to get a little bumpy.

Right now, my actual job description is to complete projects given to me by my supervisor which will increase the efficiency, profitability and social capital of the retail and patient food services at a local hospital. Or rather, find ways of squeezing money out of sick people, hardworking healthcare professionals and taxpayers while at the same time giving them an artificial warm and fuzzy feeling about us. Right now, my functional job description is to do whatever type of kitchen-bitch-work this hilariously understaffed department needs done. This means that instead of doing projects that make me feel like a bad person, I'm pushing trays covered with the food scraps of swine flu patients through a dishwashing machine. So fulfilling. And, of course, there's that hairnet I've grown so attached to.

None of this would be so bad if my boss actually made me feel like I'm doing a good job at any of it. She has two qualities that make me feel like a super-failure pretty much every day. First of all, she handily neglects to inform me of important information regarding the operations of the kitchen or the deadlines by which she would like things completed. The obvious answer to this is to ask a many questions as possible, but when you don't know what you don't know, this gets kind of difficult. It also often results in my being caught having left something out of my project reports because I didn't know that she was expecting its inclusion. Secondly, she provides me with NO feedback unless something is abhorrent to her. I'm sure I'm doing SOME things right, but I'll be damned if I know which things they are.

B. Love hurts.

Recent epiphany: I can't hack this whole "casual" thing. It just makes me so unbearably emo.

After meeting someone I kind of dig, my usual thought process is as follows:

"This is great! No commitments or expectations. This is just going to be casual and won't lead to anything. It'll totally be fun."

After saying goodbye to someone I kind of dig, the thought process has changed slightly:

"That was totally fun, but it was only casual and didn't lead to anything. Now there aren't any commitments or expectations...great."

Of course, I never tell HIM that's how I feel.

In conclusion, I'm totally crazy. And lame. I don't know how I do this to myself, but I form ridiculous emotional attachments to men that give NO indication of wanting to be attached to me (clarification: I mean ridiculous insofar as I've made an attachment. I do not mean ridiculous as in ridiculously emotional, read: stalkerish). This might have something to do with me expressing a desire for nothing more than casual from the outset. Possibly.

A solution-focused person would tell me that the easy mitigation of this problem IS to tell the dude how I feel...but it seems that, nearly every time, I've chosen perfectly to make this effort futile as well. They almost ALWAYS live in a city several hours away from me and (I find out AFTER all offending deeds have been completed) have possible (their words) or suspected (my words) wives or girlfriends, and sometimes fake phone numbers. Although nearly EVERY movie I've ever seen suggests to me that they leave their terrible (ok - probably not actually true) ladies for the star of the show (clearly, this is me), I have a sneaking suspicion that this might be some kind of fantasy created by the film industry to keep women like me unbalanced (see: above contention that perfectly innocent and likely quite lovely girlfriends are terrible) and docile (see: the fact that I do this to myself ALL THE EFFING TIME). They almost always seem to be musicians too, but I think that's another issue altogether.

The result is that I spend weeks (!) being sad about how this completely one-sided relationship doesn't have a B-side, vainly hoping for some kind of contact, because, you know, it might work out between us eventually...see? I don't even believe myself.

In conclusion, I am THIS close to setting up an online dating profile. While some might say this is the last refuge of the desperate and sad, at least everyone's looking for the same thing on those sites (right?), and anyway, I think I've more or less illustrated my desperate sadness in the last several paragraphs. And if those E-Harmony commercials are to be believed, ALL the subscribers are impossibly good-looking. Score! Also, I'm pretty sure venturing into the world of online dating opens up a whole crapload of opportunity for blog-worthy retardedness.

Hot People Don't Get Hurt for the Cause

2009-11-02T16:05:00.000-08:00

Maybe this is just me, but it seems like even if I DO get past the pre-dump stage (yep, still bitter about that), something else happens to muck up my intentions for hotness. Including being TOO hot - this tends to cause injuries.

And when I say injuries, I don't mean in the metaphorical sense (although I'm told that, in the metaphorical sense as well, love hurts). I mean everything from hickies to heart stopping.

Hickies tend to be on the less painful end of the romance-injury spectrum. The main thing they're injurious to is your social life. Who hasn't been in this situation: you're having a conversation about current events or bioethics or some such with someone and your eyes suddenly stop on that tell-tale purple-yellow spot. And while your brain is telling you "It's only a bruise...just an oddly placed and strangely shaped bruise due to impact with a..." your eyes are doing their best to look anywhere else. Who also hasn't done a mirror check in the middle of the day to discover a previously unnoticed and exposed hickey, as well as a perfect explanation for why that acquaintance of yours from down the hall suddenly became very interested in the shade of the eggshell latex on the wall and less interested in your discussion of the staff gift exchange? I know I've been there.

Sometimes it really IS only a bruise - but the cause of the bruise is just as "unsafe for work". Luckily, most of these recreational injuries are covered by clothes most of the day - which is good, because if I had to explain every hand-shaped boob bruise I've had - well, that could get uncomfortable. Speaking of which, men: I know they're attractive, but they're not squeeze toys.

The longest-lasting, most visible romance injuries tend also to be the ones that make you the most unattractive immediately after the romantic activities. Anyone ever had makeout-burn? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Perhaps this is just me, but it seems to happen every time I find myself kissing anyone. The next day my face is rubbed raw from stubble and for the next several days my face is basically chapped and cracking and peeling like I have a third degree sunburn. Most recently, the end of my nose got caught in the fray, which means I look kind of like Rudolph the Raw-Nosed Reindeer. Nothing says "you want to see me again" like that, right? Men love girls who can't keep their skin on their face.

And who's not attracted to girls with limps? I guess the limp wasn't acquired so much by romance-related activities as it was in the pursuit of romance-related activities. I may have been dancing a little too provocatively (or maybe just gyrating a little too vigorously) at the Halloween showing of the Rocky Horror Show. I may also have stepped on the rice they throw at the beginning of the movie. That rice may have made the floor more or less frictionless and I may have gone ass-over-tea-kettle and twisted my hip in an uncomfortable manner (and possibly also flashed the underside of my slip to the adjacent audience members). The resulting injury may then later have been exacerbated by other activities requiring stealth and endurance. I now have a very obvious hobble, which is difficult to explain even leaving out that it was acquired in the pursuit of romance, and it certainly does nothing to add to my allure.

So, what's a girl to do? If I dial down the fantastic-ness, I may never get to the romance-related activities that I so enjoy. If I don't dial it down, it's entirely possible that I'll never get past the first activity (and considering the pre-dump a few weeks ago didn't make me feel SO fantastic, how much can I possibly dial it down?). It's certainly a conundrum.

Hot People Never Experience This

2009-10-21T19:07:00.000-07:00

My life is a disaster, I've decided.

I was out of town this weekend for a conference (truthfully, I was away this weekend for a debating tournament, but I was trying to deflect my nerdiness...and upregulate my togetherness). There are several reasons I found myself at this tournament.

a. I suggested, months ago, in a drunken stupor, that I would go, despite never having seen that particular style of debate and not having a place to stay.
b. I went to a local friend's party, and not knowing anybody, played wallflower for much of the night. Therefore, I missed my friends.
c. My friends reminded me, again in a drunken stupor, that I had said I would go. Therefore, I felt guilty.
d. I thought there might be dancing, which none of my friends in Ottawa seem to like to do.

Although the weekend was a success from a "winning stuff" standpoint, it certainly was also riddled with DISASTER on the hotness front. Here's what went down:

I was staying with a very good friend in the city while my friends from Halifax were staying in a hotel. We all (the whole tournament) planned to go to a bar on Friday night, but when I got there my friends from Halifax were nowhere to be found and were not answering text messages (as it turned out, the phone had died...forgiveable...I suppose...). Luckily, my friend with the spare futon happened to be there and I enjoy his company very much. He had previously been speaking to a friend of his, and we were introduced upon my arrival.

As we know, I'm TERRIBLE at making conversation with strangers, so this was a significantly high stress situation for me. However, the conversation flowed easily with only a moderate amount of SoCo and Coke (don't judge me! the bar didn't have Strongbow and I panicked and blurted out the first drink I saw) to grease the wheels. Huzzah, I thought! I'm getting better at social situations!

Fast forward to the following night, after a hard day of watching debate rounds, eating banquet hall chicken and cake, and making my friends feel bad for bailing on me the night before. We're headed to a bar that is so effing crowded that I actually can't walk without stepping on people's feet. In the shuffle I lose my friends, but the friend-of-a-friend from the night before happens to find himself at the bar next to me. We took up our conversation where we left off. I couldn't believe how developed my skill was at talking to semi-strangers..."I'm winning this hotness thing!" I thought to myself (since hot people aren't aloof and awkward in a corner, right?).

I should state at this point that I really hadn't any agenda for the weekend aside from hanging out with my friends and possibly shaking it a little in my swank dress after kicking off my heels (since you know I can't hack'em).

But THIS is when things get weird. Midway through a reasonably good conversation, all of a sudden he stops and there's this pregnant pause. And when I say pregnant, I really mean laboured. This was clearly a pause he wanted me to ask about. So I did. When I asked what was up, he responded that he was wondering if he should "prioritize his relationships".

Ok...W.T.F? Obviously, that pause was having twins it was so pregnant. And obviously I was meant to ask what THAT meant too. Then he went on at length about how he flirts with everyone (truth...) and doesn't really know why and perhaps he should just focus on hanging out with friends and having a good time with them. Being a supportive co-conversationalist, I responded by saying that we all think with our cocks (pardon me) sometimes (admit it, truth). Then he started asking me about why I was single, and what exactly caused me to be single and what kind of thing I was looking for now. So I told him my stock-answer about what went wrong, and then I told him I wasn't looking for anything too serious these days - although I certainly wouldn't turn down a few dates if they were offered by someone interesting.

His response to this is that I'm "girlfriend material" and lists a bunch of qualities I have, including "dignified" and "professional" (?!?). At first I'm thinking "Wow, great compliments, stranger-dude!" but as the list goes on, I realize that something's not right. Who tells a girl that she's dignified? I suddenly realize the horrible truth. I am being let down easy. The worst of it is that I am being let down easy from an expectation I did not have. He's turning down a proposition I did not make. I'm being pre-dumped!

Quel horreur! I don't even think I have to tell you how depressing it is that I can get dumped without even trying to hook up. It's pretty sad. I neither know what I was doing to give the impression that I was interested in something more than a stimulating conversation (because mixing up libido and conversationalism could get awkward FAST), nor do I know WHAT IS SO WRONG WITH ME THAT MY TOTAL LACK OF A CHANCE WITH SOMEONE MUST BE MADE CLEAR BEFORE I'VE EVEN THOUGHT ABOUT MAKING A MOVE???

Gah...so now a guy who wasn't even my type and I wasn't really that interested in has made me into this totally depressing bitter person who shoots dagger eyes at strangers if they seem to be in a relationship (because obviously people in love are the enemy [seriously, I think this old man who was kissing his wife goodbye in the mall yesterday thought I was going to mug him or something]). This will obviously increase my social capital immensely. My furor is compounded by the following "compliments" I got from my real live friends (truth):

"Wow, you actually look good tonight...and what I mean by that is that you look better than you did yesterday"

"Your hair looked nicer yesterday"

"How much do you weigh? I want to feel better about myself."

Also, there was no dancing to be had all weekend. Balls.

Hot People Aren't Hot (Messes)

2009-10-14T17:43:00.000-07:00

Do you know someone that has an innate tendency to draw awkwardness from far and wide?

For most of my friends, I'm that person. I don't understand how I can possibly do it so regularly, but I certainly manage.

Here's a little background on my current living situation: I'm boarding with an uncle and his family (including my thirteen-year-old cousin) on the outskirts of town while I intern at a hospital on the other side of town. As you know, it's a long bike ride. So, sometimes, I take the bus.

This means that I occasionally (or frequently) need bus tickets. Anyway, it was a Saturday, and I just happened to need bus tickets for non-work-related reasons - I had a social engagement that evening and since I could send a cab driver's child to a reasonably priced technical college for the fare value to take me from downtown home, I opted to take the bus. Unfortunately, I was out of bus tickets. My cousin also needed bus tickets, so I told him I'd drive him (in his mother's car) to the drugstore to pick some up. On the way there, I also remembered I was fresh out of a few other things...you know...deodorant, conditioner, prophylactics...

So when we left the car, I mosied on over to the requisite aisles - Hair Care, Personal Care, Family Planning, assuming my young companion had gone straight to the cash to pick up his tickets. It wasn't until I was holding the box of condoms that I noticed he'd been following me the whole time. He had a deer-in-the-headlights look. I'm quite sure that even my THOUGHTS were in slow motion..."Noooooooooo-o-o-o-o!!!!" We headed to the cash in silence, purchased our tickets and my sundries and went back to the car. Once there, I felt I needed to make this a teachable moment, so I turned to my cousin and explained to him that I didn't have a particular purpose for the condoms (except that at some point they would be used for that which they are meant), I just wanted to be safe, because you never know what's going to happen, and you don't want to find yourself without them when you need them and...

"Please, just stop talking!!!" he pleaded.

"I don't know how!!!" I exclaimed.

It was terrible. And I was sober. I can't count the number of times I've gotten the awkward turtle at alcohol-type parties. I'm pretty sure I had an argument a week ago with a friend about how he met his girlfriend, despite having only met her myself a few hours previous. At Thanksgiving this weekend, some of my family members wished fervently for personal eject buttons after just about every sentence I uttered (although, I think to a certain extent they'd made their beds and I just jumped on them and threw the pillows around, figuratively speaking...they know who they are...).

The point is, I can't stop myself. It's like crack or pizza or Glee. If there's a dime-sized opportunity to be awkward, you can be sure I'll wriggle my fat limbs through like a wharf rat in grocery storage. How do I stop this madness??!?!?!

Hot People Don't Have Bad Hair

2009-10-02T18:26:00.000-07:00

I often find myself torn between what is hot NOW and what will make me hot IN THE LONG RUN. My hair seems to have found itself in this sort of epic battle royale at the moment.

My entire life, hair-related angst has sent me into near catatonic states on an extremely regular basis. When it is curly (as it is naturally), I imagine that it kind of resembles an impressionist painting - you know...it looks nice from about ten feet away, but when you get up close to it, it's basically a mess (or at least, that's how Cher Horowitz would describe it). This "mess" problem was mitigated somewhat by the discovery of a $3 curling creme I found at the grocery store that works a ZILLION times better than anything I've ever purchased at a salon (for 5x the price), but when it rains (as it seems to be doing ALL THE TIME these days), it still definitely looks more Claude Monet than John Frieda. The advent of the ceramic straightener was a terrific boon to me. All of a sudden, if nothing else, at least my hair could be hot. Except of course, again, when it rains. Then it just looks like I rolled out of bed and forgot to brush it. At that point, there's really nothing for it except to resort to an "I-give-up" hat or pony-tail holder, lest I be forced to walk around in public looking like Eraserhead.

Much of the art and science of my hair has to do with the cut, and getting a good one isn't easy. My stylist in Halifax was fantastic, but since I don't live there anymore (and neither does he), obviously I can't get cuts from him. Instead, I was referred to the stylist of a friend. This woman works out of her basement. This was obviously my first red flag. The last time I got a haircut in somebody's house it was free and it was done my friend who cut my hair with her kitchen scissors and decided to give me baby bangs without taking into account that they might curl up when my hair dried. The previous time before that, it was for my prom, and the woman curled my hair, then decided one side was longer than the other, so she CUT IT AFTER IT HAD BEEN CURLED to even it out. My experience of home haircuts has been fabulous, you can tell.

Anyway, this woman had a sort of salon in her basement. Her dog kept us company, and she spoke like a sailor. I can see why a spa setting was not a good fit for her. However, the cut she gave me was fabulous, despite my concern about the venue. Truly now, if left to its own devices, or straightened, my hair can certainly add to my hotness (or at least, it is hot on its own).

Unfortunately, there are a number of things that get in the way (yes, that battle royale I referred to in the opening paragraph!).

First of all, I'm pretty sure most hot people are gainfully employed. I'm interning with the food service management of a local hospital. This means I work in a kitchen and consequently wear a hairnet all day. All day. As a result, I seldom bother with my hair because even if it did look fabulous nobody would see it all day. Also, the hairnet has a tendency, by the end of the day, to flatten residual fabulousness so that even seeing people sans 'net after work means my hair won't be amazing. It's a difficult choice to make: continue with an internship that will lead to future employment, or have fabulous hair EVERY SINGLE DAY?

Secondly, hot people are fit (or are, at least, trying to be). I'm still cycling, only now I've parlayed my leisure activity into a handy way to get to work (I say handy...it actually takes me upwards of an hour and a half to commute each way). Unfortunately, I've moved to a city FULL of cyclists, which means that on an almost daily basis I am reminded of how very BAD (read: painfully slow) a cyclist I am. I don't mind it when twenty-somethings zip by me because I assume a. that they have schmancy bikes that I don't have and b. they've been cycling for YEARS and I've only been doing it for a few months after YEARS of neglect, but when OLD MEN are zooming past me I start to feel a little demoralised. However, I press on in the hopes that it will contribute to my goal. But, I find that the combination of bicycle helmet and sweat-inducing cardiovascular activity ALSO results in a coiff that resembles the helmet for hours after its removal. Très chic!

So this is obviously a conundrum that has taken up a significant portion of my thinking time. I think I'll probably stick with being "hot in the long run," but this WILL mean endless complaining about the state of my hair in the meantime. Fair warning.

Hot People Move (or, How I Spent My Summer Vacation): Part 3, Bike

2009-09-18T19:57:00.000-07:00

As I'm sure any faithful reader has gathered, I like to cycle, and despite being in the hilly Canadian Shield, I'm finding these hills much more manageable than the ones in New Brunswick that begin at sea level. Again, make no mistake. I am not a "cyclist" (except, of course, when it makes me seem extra heroic or athletic to say so). I don't own any fancy shorts or spandex tops. I can't cycle 100km/d ad nauseom and I don't have one of those super hero-shaped helmets. Mostly, again, I like to go fast...usually downhill, because it's less work that way.

Cycling around here also comes with lots of scenery, and wildlife...especially if you don't mind seeing two-dimensional chipmunks and rabbits (helpfully flattened by the tire of a local F150), with occasional partial internal anatomy, or Jackson Pollock-esque renderings of leopard frogs. Sorry. That was gross.

Anyway, I've been cycling a lot here, training for my 20km commute to work this fall (yay bike paths!) and attempting to undo all the dessert-eating I've been doing with my grandmother. My greatest feat thus far has been a 37km loop. Hardcore cyclists (such as those I allude to in my illustration of the sort of cyclist I am not) will scoff at that, but it's my longest ride to date and I'm proud of it (so nyeah).

It was, however, not without incident. The trip started with some pretty, and familiar scenery. However, just before I turned into new territory, I heard a loud and unfamiliar sound. I soon realized I was being chased by three (rather angry sounding) unleashed dogs who appeared to believe that my ankles looked like they might be tasty. I had to ride for my life, and I outrode them! When I was sure I was not going to be eaten by a pack of rabid dogs (three's a pack, right?), I stopped for a rest and admired this cabbage patch.

I soon turned again into even less familiar territory, at which point the pavement ended. The dirt road that followed seemed to be covered with looser and looser sand...to the point where I amused myself with the notion that I was riding through the Guinness World Record holder for longest outdoor sandbox. Seriously, you could have made some sweet castles with that shit. My amusement was also tempered with the fear that at any moment I would be met by an Ed Gein or Michael Myers lookalike, brandishing a chainsaw, who would drag me to some cabin in the middle of the forest to carry out some sinister and unspeakable deeds on my person. Houses on this road, you see, were few and far between, so only the trees would be able to hear my scream (and, presumably, the rabbits, chipmunks and frogs not yet dispatched by the tire of a pick-up).

Fortunately, I emerged from the forest unscathed to the intersection of Rockingham (I say intersection rather than village or community because it consists of a stop sign and an historic church) From there I continued my thereafter mostly uphill battle (which I gave up on the last leg of the UP). While the view at the top suggested I'd reached lofty heights, the ensuing downhill, though fast, was not as satisfying as I'd hoped, and when I'd reached the last intersection of my trip, (upon which a stand of red pine once stood, until obliterated by the great tornado of aught-seven), my legs were more or less ready to fall off, despite (or perhaps because of) their knowledge that there were only five more or less flat kilometres to go.

Anyway, I reached home with the knowledge that this feat was also achieved...and it feels pretty good to have been a country girl driving on the 401 through Toronto without fear, and to have sailed my grandmother's Laser without falling out or getting stuck in a reef, and to have taken my longest bike-ride ever despite the (real) threat of hungry dogs and the (imagined) threat of chainsaw-wielding homicidal maniacs.

My return to a city (an unfamiliar one) is impending, and if my quest for hotness (I achieved some goals, right? Hot people do that...) seems to be going too successfully, I am sure my new habitat will provide me with plenty of opportunity for blunders and mishaps on the road to being hot. Fear not.

How People Move (or, How I Spent My Summer Vacation): Part 2, Boat

2009-09-15T19:53:00.000-07:00

I learned to sail when I was 12 or 13. I am not an expert. At all. I use the boat less as a means to get from point A to point B and more as a way to go fast.

And when I say I learned, please don't misunderstand the method. Most people I know who sail took very expensive lessons at very expensive (I imagine) yacht clubs with guys (I imagine again) named Chad and Landon who are dressed (and coiffed) like the cast of Saved by the Bell when they all worked at Malibu Sands Beach Club, and have hyphenated surnames. I've obviously spent a lot of time considering the sailing lessons of others.

I learned to sail by getting in this boat (which is ancient) and straining to hear by Dad and grandfather screaming from shore for me to "Come about! Come about! Pull on the rope! The other rope! The other, other rope! Go left! Not your left, my left!" and so on.

I've been spending the past three weeks or so (save for my trip to Hamilton) with my grandmother at her cottage. I am the oldest of her grandchildren but we're all really at the age where we have to work through most of the summer, so I think she misses the noise and the company. It's a pity, too, because it's beautiful here, even on freezing cold days such as this one. The result of her relative loneliness is that any time there is a glint of sunlight, it magically becomes "great swimming weather" (my mother and uncles recall a time when this meant all weather save for lightning storms) and any time there is any breath of wind it's "wonderful sailing weather."

The first time she told me this, (which I automatically translate to its true meaning: please go sailing now) it was actually TERRIBLE weather for sailing, unless of course, ones' boat had a motor. I actually tried using the rudder as a propeller (those of you who sail will understand the futility of this measure), lest I get stuck in the middle of the lake.

The next "great sailing weather" day proved more fruitful and was generally a success, in that I went fast, did not fall out of the boat (this has happened to me more times than I care to admit), and managed to steer clear of the lake's numerous booby traps, which include a reef, an old log sticking up out of the water (called, in my family, the dead head), numerous sand bars and cross-breezes, and I learned recently, an old logging crib.

Not bad for someone who learned by straining for poor directions muffled by the wind.

Hot People Move (or, How I Spent My Summer Vacation): Part 1, Car

2009-09-15T19:13:00.000-07:00

This is part 1 of a tale of my mastery (?!) of three forms of transportation.

I undertook to travel from rural central Ontario to the great mecca of steel and pollution known as Hamilton to visit one of my oldest friends (and the newest addition to her family). This caused my mother a great deal of stress because rather than using my normal method of complicated pick-ups and drop-offs, depending on the kindness of strangers, with train or bus interludes, I elected this time to rent a car, which meant I would have to drive by myself on the 401 through Toronto. The fact that I maneuvred her car (while she was in it to bear witness) through torrential rains that seemed as though someone was standing on the rof of the car dumping bucket after bucket of water on the windshield (turns out I was driving through a tornado...true story) was of no consequence to her. Nor were my repeated statements that I had driven in Montreal on countless occasions (unless, of course, you can count past two). All she would tell me was that it "wasn't the same."

Well, perhaps I'm foolhardier than most, and perhaps I timed it perfectly to avoid rush hour (more likely), but the trips both there and back were more or less uneventful (Except, of course, for the horrifying experience I had returning the vehicle, in which I uber-failed at backing into a parking space while my Dad watched with an expression of extreme disappointment in my driving skills). The visit was also pleasantly without incident. We ate, watched movies, and I bought this cute jacket for the baby.

...Because hot people buy hot jackets for their hot friends' babies so that they may also, one day, be hot. Incidentally, this picture had the only smile in the bunch, which was unusual for such a smiley baby. As it turned out, he had a diaper-full which when discovered explained the lack of grin. I wasn't grinning either. And, although he was lovely and made me less afraid of babies (since it appeared that simply wrinkling my nose would make him giggle), I also learned that I can certainly survive a few more years without one of my own...unless, of course, they start making odor-free models.

Hot People Road Trip

2009-09-14T19:28:00.000-07:00

Uninspired ramblings from my move cross-country.

Stop 1 - 3:59 am AST. Breakfast in Elmsdale. Still dark. So tired. Poured Tim Horton's coffee into the thermos.

Stop 2 - 4:04 am AST. Gas up at Elmsdale Petro-Can (in my head I'm saying Elumsdale). Mysterious 24-hr gas station in the woods with even more mysterious security system. Old bugs washed off windows.

5:11 am AST. Springhill, NS billboard: You should see us now! (What were you like before?!?!)

5:?? am AST. New Brunswick billboard: No small wonders! (or big ones?)

Stop 3 - 6:08 am AST. Gas up in Moncton/Magnetic Hill. CBC reports Stephen Harper eating seal. Bold political move, but no accounting for taste. Sun just coming up. Poured Tim Horton's coffee out of thermos. Into lap.

Stop 4 - 9:53 am AST. Gas up in Edmundston. Jeezly hot. In & out of not quite sleep. Pleased, since I missed most of boring NB TCH.

Stop 5 - 12:09 pm EST. Listening to Dion album. Man, nothing ever goes right for that guy. Driver nearly kills us missing a stop sign at the Laurier Station Ultramar. Getting very hot and very hungry.

3:00 p.m. EST. Discovered Ontario.

Hot People Take it Off and Take Stock

2009-09-08T09:36:00.001-07:00

I've been internetless for the better part of a month, so these are catch-up posts - for those interested.

Waxing is nothing, if not a journey of discovery.

All warnings that I would scream out in pain at my first bikini wax were false. While it certainly was not like Christmas morning (except perhaps the one where my parents thought it would be hilarious to stuff my stocking with coal-shaped black licorice - which was quite painful indeed to my four-year old self), it was significantly less painful than I had prepared myself for, although the esthetician did suggest that the services she provided were nothing more than a "good starting point..." (I thought that full pictorial disclosure was not necessary in this case)

The waxing appointment also provided me with the discovery that, despite being appropriately waxed, I am not ready for a bikini. I came to this conclusion whilst sitting, pantsless, on the edge of the spa table wearing a pair of disposable underwear (this is a place I never thought I'd find myself). I was waiting for the esthetician to return with a pot of steaming hot wax, and had time to reflect upon the rolls made by my stomach flubber. When I realized I couldn't tell which roll was hiding my belly button (Now we're ALL glad I decided against pictures, aren't we?), I decided I could compromise with a tankini (obviously, though, with boob support).

I still have some questions about waxing, though. While I understand that it requires maintenance, I'm not sure how much, how often...any suggestions?

More contemplations: I'm moving again...and once again I'm finding myself taking stock of where I am, what I'm leaving behind and where I'm going. Where living in New Brunswick felt like a kind of limbo, this feels like a new beginning. This is good because I don't really feel like I've attained that hotness goal yet (and if hotness is a state of mind, feeling as though I've not succeeded yet must mean I've not succeeded yet).

I guess that since it's been six months since I started this blog, now is as good a time as any to redesign my strategy...so I'll be hot 6 months from now.

No, now.

Ok...NOW!

You get it.

Hot People Cut Their Losses

2009-07-21T15:43:00.001-07:00

So, I never got that coffee date, and really I wouldn't mind except for the absolute DRAMA that went along with never getting that coffee date.
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Dear Single Men: If you don't really dig seeing a girl again, do not - I repeat - DO NOT immediately add her to Facebook. This gives her the impression that you are interested in her. Trust me. I've been there. Recently.

But if you do, and then she subsequently asks you for a coffee date, there are three acceptable responses.

A. Accept the coffee date since, hey, she may end up being the love of your life (please do not misunderstand - I do not want to be the love of anybody's life right now - certainly not when I'm only going to be living in this vicinity for another three weeks, max...I'm just trying to get across that it really probably wouldn't be SO bad to accept the date).

B. Say up front that you had a great time the other night, but you're just not that into a date right now (this, while initially hurtful, is probably your most gallant option).

C. Do not respond to the message, and several days later quietly delete her from your friends list (this is your second most gallant option, because while it will result in 3-7 days of false hope and incessant facebook-checking, at least you're not technically leading anybody on.)

The WRONG thing to do is to accept the date and then provide her with a phone number that does not actually belong to you. That is just hurtful. I'm OBVIOUSLY speaking in hypotheticals here and am not bitter in any way.

Love, Miss T
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Since I had kind of a shitty week, I thought I would indulge myself in a little bit of retail therapy. By shopping for bathing suits. Clearly, I am a genius.

So, while I have been riding my bike pretty regularly over the summer, and managed not to fail at getting up the biggest hill on my ride yesterday (it only took me two months!), I discovered today that there's still quite a bit of butter on my body. These pictures speak for themselves (Warning: I decided some months ago that the next bathing suit I bought WOULD be a bikini, so...yeah...avert your eyes if you wish).
I guess this isn't so bad except that I tend to do things other than stand perfectly still with my arms up slightly trying to hold a camera out of the way of the picture. I hate to think of the rolls and folds that might result if I ever leaned forward. Eep. More work on the bicycle is in order, I suspect.

Also - I never EVER thought I would curse my breasts. Sometimes they like to peek out of tops that I thought were work appropriate and suddenly make them work inappropriate, but they've never done anything terribly harmful to me. I suspect, though, that if I were to wear any of these bikini tops (most halter ties), I would have a half-inch-wide trench dug into the back of my neck due to the weight of my very ample bosoms. The suit on the bottom right actually made me afraid they might try to escape out the bottom. Say hello to my underboob.

I actually tied everything quite tightly for this shot, so you can see how little support this top had, leading me to the conclusion that nobody makes a bikini top with boob support for the affordable department store shopper.

Yergh. Cearly, I came home empty handed. In the meantime, I've decided that the next few weeks are going to involve much more intensive bike riding, possibly a trip to a much fancier bathing suit store (I already had a very serious chat with my visa on the bus ride home), and also some deep contemplation about whether this actually is the summer for a bikini.

As for coffee dates, I'm sure this wasn't my last chance ever.

Hot People Remember the Important Things

2009-07-13T16:30:00.000-07:00

Ok - so I may have to take something back I said in my last post. I've had some fun in New Brunswick.

But here's the thing - I have the capacity to drink like a sailor. This does not mean that I drink like a sailor every day (because I do not). Nor does it mean that I should exercise that capacity every time the opportunity presents itself (although I do perhaps a little too frequently). It's amazing, though, what a little liquid courage will do for you (or in Saturday's case, at least a bottle and a half of wine's worth).

As we all know, I have issues with meeting people. When sober, the idea is enough to make me stay home and watch chick flicks. However, recent reports suggest that drunk Miss T was dancing up a storm with half of everyone at Le Club (I'm being French again...can you tell?). Obviously, meeting people was not an issue for me last Saturday. Some girls from work that we happened to meet there even commented on it. They suggested they didn't know I had it in me. I didn't know I did either. In fact, I didn't know I had it in me until my roommate informed me sometime midway through Sunday afternoon (post-four hour nap).

It is very important to note, though, that I distinctly remember most things about the night - the IMPORTANT things, I should say. I have no idea how we got from my roommate's sister's hotel room to the bar, but I definitely remember dancing with this man.

I have no idea when or why we left this bar to go to another bar (actually I do - it had to do with a med student my roommate met and wanted to introduce to her sister), but this remedy to a garden-variety high heel problem (see, I'm not the only one who can't hack it!) was imprinted in my memory long before I turned on my camera midway through breakfast as a means of not falling asleep in my Banana Blast pancakes.

I do not remember that the band was awful, but I do remember that some creepo followed us from the second bar back to the first in the hopes of winning the affections of one of the twins..."whichever one was single". Charmant. Good hair, though.

And I do not remember how long it was between when I wedged myself between two men at the bar (very proud of myself for this courageous move) in an effort to make new friends, and when one of them found me on the dance floor. But I do remember that I felt pretty effing awesome to know that he was looking for me, and I felt really retarded every time I asked him what he did for a living...I think by the end of the night we had reached a total of seven times.
Do you think it affects my chances at a coffee date later? Hope not.

***Also Happy Birthday to my cousin, who may not be reading this, but turns 19 today and gets to enjoy all that night life has to offer.

Hot People Don't Need to Share Everything

2009-07-04T09:45:00.000-07:00

I was in my favourite city last weekend to visit friends, go to a house party, and more or less just bust out of here, when I asked my friends I hadn't seen in a while what they thought of the blog. Most of the responses were pretty positive, but one friend asked me about the frequency of posting...he seemed to think I had a schedule. Another friend corrected, telling him that the thing about blogs is you only write them when stuff happens.

And that's the problem with living where I live. My roommate calls it No Funswick and she's more or less correct. To put it into perspective, one of the more popular drinking establishments here is called "Cougars." To put it into even better perspective, our cougar-clubbing expedition did not include a stop at "Cougars." Yeah...that's where I live.

As much as I loved going to Calgary, and back to Halifax, it really wasn't good for me because when I returned here I realized how much I would much rather be just about anywhere else. But, for my friend who wanted more posts, I'll illustrate why I go for quality rather than quantity. Here's my last few weeks in the port city:

Happenings:

Work - this is actually going quite well. It's not actual work so much as a work term required in order to practice as a professional in my field. If this was not going well, nothing would be.

Bike Rides - continued failed attempts at getting up hills. I started this because I was going to ride in a charity bike tour (because hot people do nice things for other people) but decided instead that hot people don't embarrass themselves by attempting to ride 96 km when 20 km is a challenge, nor do they find themselves lost, alone and dehydrated on the sides of country roads. Therefore, I ride only because my roommate reminds me of my hotness goals and that bike riding is my only form of physical activity - and also because going downhill is the shit.

TV - most days I watch it. I'm particularly partial to the offerings on Slice, and Law & Order: SVU reruns.

Finding neat stuff - I realized yesterday that the ditches on the sides of the roads are full (FULL!) of wild strawberries. I ate one the other day and it was really good. I am a full-on daughter of nature. I also found $3.25 in change on the corner where the bus stop is, and nobody around to claim it. Somebody's lost bus change is now my load of laundry. Score. Today I found a cat's eye marble embedded in the dirt path to the grocery store. In my elementary school days, this would have been a prize of value second only to one of those super jumbo marbles. I'm not sure why marbles were such a prize at the time, since none of us actually knew how to play marbles. I only ever used them in our marble run, which, while awesome, did not require "special" marbles like a cat's eye to function properly.

Musings:

Is straight hair hotter than curly hair? I can have both, but straight hair requires much more work. Fewer people have really curly hair (uniqueness is hot, yes?), but I always get more compliments when my hair is straight. Is that just because it's a different style, or because it's hotter?

Is it cool that I'm a bit of an outdoorsy type (see Finding Neat Stuff: wild strawberries)? Is that a universally attractive feature, or does it appeal only to the similarly outdoorsy? Because seriously...I'm pretty proud of the fact that I know a bunch of different types of birds and butterflies, can tell you most of the time what berries are edible, and am pretty awesome at starting bonfires. I think the fact that I'm the resident bug-killer in our apartment takes away from any hotness I might have (perhaps I should start refusing...hehehe!), but I'm really not sure about that other stuff. Is reeling in a three-pound bass by myself something I should brag about? Would it be better to be more demure?

How the crap am I going to get out of here? I'm moving again (to Ottawa, this time) in a month and a half and I really haven't a clue how I'm going to get there. U-haul? Van? Rental car? Sell my stuff in a yard-sale? Stick it on the side of the road? Thumb my way? Help!

AND - is it ill-advised to look for jobs out west solely because I think I'm hotter there? My friend is moving to another city, one where his girlfriend lives, but the GF is actually his fourth-place reason for moving (meaning that really she's his first reason, but he wanted to have other very good reasons also). Hrmm...
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And now you understand my dwindling post frequency. Although THINGS are happening, and I'm having actual THOUGHTS, I'm not sure any of them are really worth writing home about. Unless you found my marble story REALLY interesting...

Hot People Get Hotter with Altitude?

2009-06-22T13:46:00.000-07:00

I was away this weekend for a conference, and I have to say, it's pretty close in the charts to the best weekend of the year so far.

Granted, it's been a pretty rough year - obviously beginning with my previously mentioned break-up - but there have been a few other things that had suggested a continuous stream of shittiness was headed my way. Therefore, I was not looking forward to this conference. First of all, last year's conference was abysmally bad for me - I was so sick I was coughing up crunchy stuff, and a lot of people were not very nice to me. Secondly, the conference was in Alberta this year, home of big oil and our Prime Minister, with the eerily close-set eyes (clearly, he is not a hot person). I'm not a particular fan of either of these things, and automatically assumed that I wouldn't be a fan of Calgary, either. And yet...

The reason I was at this conference is because I am the outgoing president of a student chapter of a national professional association. It was a job I took reluctantly, and my bad time at the conference last year pretty much confirmed that I would hate it. While I worked hard at the job (or at least as much as I could given certain other stresses in my life), I was still pretty convinced I had done a bare minimum quality job. Awesome moment #1: Finding out I was wrong.

Granted, not all the moments were completely awesome. Most of my wake-up calls (coming no later than 7:15 a.m.) were decidedly un-awesome.

My continued loss in my battle with high heels also was not awesome (I wore them two days ago and I've not totally regained feeling in two of the toes on my right foot).

Explaining to the ladies from our professional branch that the tall drink of water (their words, not mine, though I would tend to agree...) I went to supper with was, SERIOUSLY, just my friend was also kind of sucky.

Wearing a rain poncho at Stampede Park was not awesome - first of all, because it was raining out, and secondly, because for much of that time we were actually inside - making us look like some kind of weird plastic (but patriotic) cult. The hospitality suites, hosted by branches from across Canada were not very awesome except for the copious amounts of free wine (of which I frequently availed myself), and the fact that many of the games resulted in pictures like this:

And this:And this gem, which my friends have captioned "Hot People Get Down on Their Knees (When Necessary)", which is unfortunate, since getting on my knees resulted in nothing more successful than not being on my knees had and also got me into a really stupid conversation about vector calculations and the skill involved in a ricochet (which happened by chance and involved what I like to call my anti-skill at hockey). Obviously, trying our best (which is what our team chant promised we would do), was not enough.

Other, more awesome moments, include unabashedly eating ribs and steak in the same meal, sleeping in a bed that was MADE FOR ME every morning, and of course, singing back-up on Mustang Sally for what looked like a very hard-working big band. I totally felt like a rockstar...which is awesome, because I secretly wish I was one.

The real awesome, though, is what I discovered upon partaking of some of Calgary's night-life and drinking establishments. I've been to a lot of bars before...a lot of them. And I've been dancing before, piles of times. And usually my friends, who are all totally hot (hot people hang out with other hot people?) get hit on by lots of men while I hold their purses. This weekend was definitely not the case, and it makes me wonder what exactly I was doing differently. Whatever it is, I'm totally hot in Calgary.

More awesome moments:

1. Getting hit on by (and making out with) an Irishman in an Irish bar.
2. NOT being the wing-girl who pretends our cab is here because some creepo won't go away (I mean, the creepo wasn't awesome...it's just that usually not even creepos are interested in me)
3. Getting free drinks because a friend at the conference knows the manager of basically every bar in the world.
4. No longer having erotic daydreams about the cable guy because, yes, I finally got some. A lot of it. And it was excellent. So excellent I seriously contemplated missing my plane home.

Slightly less awesome moment:

1. Doing a mirror-check after a pitstop an hour and a half into work the following Monday morning and discovering you have a hickey and no scarf. I'm totally fifteen and a half.

Hot People are Completely Hairless

2009-06-07T08:24:00.000-07:00

I waxed my eyebrows earlier this week, although I don't know why I waxed them. First of all, it wasn't exactly as though I had a couple of furry caterpillars crawling across my face in the first place, and secondly, I'm generally not doing anything where the state of my eyebrows really matters. The only men I've so much as SEEN over the past month have either been crusty old (or handsome, but married - OR handsome, but unattractively full of themselves) doctors, gay nurses (I know...not all male nurses are gay...just all the ones I've met), and of course, denim guy. Call me picky, but none of those guys really turns my crank.

Also, it hurts. A whole bunch.
This picture is of embarrasingly poor quality and was taken AFTER the esthetician had moisturized the area, AND I had bussed home. So really, it doesn't give the full picture. However, directly after, I looked as though I had some sort of tribal henna tattoo or cattle brand applied to my face...sort of like this:Now, my face is constantly exposed to the elements. Surely, in all these years of snow and sunburn and expired makeup, I've developed some sort of shield for the pain (And believe me, it was still very painful). But it occurs to me that some women wax other parts of their bodies. They wax parts of their bodies that (hopefully) are not constantly exposed to a constant onslaught of snow and sunburn and expired makeup...parts of their body that are very...sensitive.

The reason I'm so concerned is that beach season is pretty much here and I foresee having problems with "foliage." There's really no good way to get rid of it. I have a problem with shaving...first of all, it's a weird angle...and I don't REALLY want to be fooling around with a razor in an area with which I can't make DIRECT eye contact. There are creams...but again...sensitive area...corrosive creams strong enough to MELT HAIR??? The last thing any of us wants down there is a chemical burn.

So my last choice is waxing, which brings with it a few concerns as well. First of all, it pretty much necessitates that I allow a complete stranger to (A) stare at my "bikini area" (what a great "family-friendly" expression) for 30 to 60 minutes, and (B) inflict pain upon it in exchange for money. There's just something a little messed up about that. Especially since there are only a select few who have seen my "bikini area," and that was under the express conditions that they NOT inflict pain upon it (and for the record, I did not pay them).

I'm also still very concerned about that cattle brand. How long will it stay? How hard will it be to walk?

Obviously, I'm not quite ready for the goo, press and pull down there just yet...but I'm thinking by August, I'm going to have to give it a try. Pain is beauty?

Hot People Definitely Don't Go Cougar Clubbing

2009-05-24T06:53:00.001-07:00

While there's something to be said for being one of the five prettiest girls at the club, sometimes it just doesn't mean that much.

For example, last night my roommate and I were invited out by a woman nearly twice our age to go out with some of her friends. My roommate unknowingly accepted an invitation out to the club because she thought she was being invited for dinner...not one to pass up free food, she accepted before she knew what she was getting into. Since we've been pretty much caged up in our apartments for the last few weeks, I thought it would be fun to tag along anyway...you know, see the sights of our new city.

Ok, so I should start off by letting you know that we were looking pretty fine (I think so anyway...). Observe. I was pretty proud of my outfit choice and my continued makeup skillz (note my use of blending brush in this gratuitously narcissistic self-portrait)
Don't I look intense? Yeah...but anyway, I understand that I may not look hot just yet by many people's standards, but you really just have to understand where we were. First, meet our chaperone.
We were greeted first by her mushroom cloud of perfume (I say mushroom cloud because it was strong enough to knock us over when we opened the door to her car), then by her delightful hairdo. From this angle it looks almost reasonable, but let me tell you, from the back view you can see that parts of it stand a full four inches above her head. FOUR INCHES!!! It was amazing to behold...not to mention nearly impossible to smother my gleeful laughter at beholding it. She, and she alone, must be the driving force behind Vidal Sassoon's continued success in the world of hairspray.

Upon realizing who we were spending our evening with, I decided that there was really nothing for it but to get completely drunk'd. This may have been my greatest mistake. By the time we got in the cars to go from our hostess' fine abode (it really was quite nice) to "the club" I'm pretty sure walking (let alone anything that might involve any sort of gross motor skill) was more or less out of the question.

I said at the beginning that we were among the five hottest people in the bar. I think your introduction to my hostess has put that into perspective, but if it does not, perhaps the fact that the result of me trying to look sexy (at least I think that's what I'm trying to do here...the two drinks in one hand really adds to my appeal, no?) had only negligible effect on my standings in the hotness rankings.

That being said, I learned many things last night.

1. The DJs here will play anything you want if you first bait them about how the DJs where you're from do it better, then subsequently provide them with hugs (I'm not really sure that EVERY hug was worth the songs he played).

2. The stripper pole is harder to use than hoe-bags in shresses make it seem.

3. Even if you dance with the best looking single guy in the club, it doesn't really count for much if he's clad head-to-toe in denim. (I actually also danced with another man who was much better looking, but my roommate was too intoxicated to use my camera properly, so unfortunately, no record was kept of that delightful encounter). I'm not sure what we're doing here...

4. ALWAYS have a quarter in your pocket for when shit gets real (or in this case, you start to realize that you're not only among the prettiest, you're actually also among the youngest people around, by a sizeable margin). It's also helpful to remember a cab number or two.

So in conclusion, our first night on the town was a moderate success, but I think we'll try somewhere a little more age appropriate next time...and possibly will forego hearing Flo Rida's "Get Low" if it means I can keep my hugs to myself.

Hot People "Dear John" Their Vices

2009-05-12T19:09:00.000-07:00

Dear Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Ice Cream,

I don't know how to put this gently; it's over. We have to stop this on-again-off-again thing we have.

You have to stop "accidentally" meeting me in the freezer aisle while I'm looking for frozen blueberries. You have to stop pretending you need a ride to the check-out aisle in my basket. You REALLY have to stop showing up in my life during moments of weakness and depositing your life in my freezer, taking up door space and using up all the cold air.

Being with you is bad for me. You encourage me to lie on the couch all evening and watch Top Model reruns. You suck me into your lazy game.

Tell your friends Fuzzy Peaches and Chocolate Mint Rosettes to leave me alone too. I mean, at least they have the decency to be gone the next day, but they're toxic too and all they leave me with is empty cardboard boxes and torn up cellophane bags.

I know we'll both have to be strong these next few months. This hurts me too. I'll miss your creaminess, your bitter chocolate chips, and the slight saltiness of your doughy bits. But it's not meant to be. This has to be goodbye.

Miss T

Hot People Don't Have Inappropriate Thoughts About the Cable Guy

2009-05-05T03:34:00.000-07:00

I moved this past weekend, which explains my notable absence from all things internet (save for a brief sojourn thieving wireless from a gas station near my grandparents' house, in the home of the Canadian swine flu outbreak). I don't really want to talk about packing or moving too much, because as you can see, I enjoyed it thoroughly.

This is my response to our successful packing of our cargo van rental. The rest of my stuff was packed into a storage unit, which according to my Dad looks like "Bugs Bunny's closet"...I'm not sure what that means, and I can find no youtube videos to demonstrate, so you'll just have to understand that when I open the door, I might be buried forever under my chattles.

One of the many joys of moving is reinstalling the phone, internet and cable, which I'd been without for 6 entire days until yesterday. My roommate was especially excited because her stories (Big Bang Theory & HIMYM) were on that night. We watched from our third floor window to see if the van was coming down our cul-de-sac, fogging up the windows and making hand-prints on the panes like kids looking in at the animals in the pet store. Finally he came, but he stayed in the van for like...forever! My roommate went to her room to steal wireless from a neighbour, asking me periodically if he was coming. I kept saying no, until finally when I looked out, he was bent over into the back of the van. "I can see his bum," I said.

After we finished giggling at that, I thought...this really is the perfect set-up for a porno...two studious girls in the health professions and a repair man? Classic! I could hear the bow-chicka-bow-wow running through my head right away.

We giggled silently as he installed our cable in the living room. Then he went to my room to plug in the phone and internet. Here's where things get interesting: I didn't bring any furniture with me when I moved except for a bed and a collapsible table. Serously, my clothes are mainly in boxes on the floor of my closet because I didn't have room to bring a dresser. This meant that the handy spot for my trusty (and slightly mashed up) box of lubricated condoms was not in the top drawer of my bedside table (because I didn't bring one), but rather on the floor directly beside my bed, in totally plain view. Fab. Now it wasn't just an hilarious porn in my head, but also in the cable guy's head...only the biggest of hoe-bags keep condoms NEXT to the bed, ON THE FLOOR IN PLAIN SIGHT.

THEN, the cable guy was experiencing some "technical difficulties," so he had to call in a friend. That meant TWO repair guys, TWO studious girls in the health professions. For reals, now, the only thing keeping this from reaching traditional hardcore territory was that we were all wearing clothes, and none of us was wearing platform shoes or deep v-neck shirts.

Now, neither of these cable guys was particularly interesting, from a looks point of view. They were ok, but certainly not jaw-droppingly hawt. This can, therefore, mean only one thing about my current state of mind. To coin a tired "You know you [insert quality here] when [insert hilarious incident here] phrase," you know you need a little somethin' somethin' when you start having inappropriate thoughts about the cable guy.

Ironically, when I finally checked my email, there were 69 messages in my box. Do you think that's a sign?

Hot People Don't Get Lost in Potholes

2009-04-26T05:13:00.001-07:00

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

2009-04-17T17:00:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-11T14:38:00.001-07:00

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

2009-04-08T20:15:00.000-07:00

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?

Hot People Don't Run After Eating Indian Food and Ice Cream

2009-03-29T19:11:00.000-07:00

'Nuff said, I think. (But since this is a blog, I'll say more anyway)

The Indian food was ill-advised from the beginning. I've had this craving for samosas for-EVAH, and on Friday the urge was just too great. Unfortunately, living about a block away from one of the greatest Indian Restaurants of ALL TIME (possibly not ALL time, but it has take-out, so I'm not picky) does not help you resist this urge.

This would be fine if I had only ordered samosas...but since I knew I had a weekend in front of the computer banging out case studies and strategic plans, I thought "Why not? Why don't I order a full meal?" So I did...I got appetizers, bread, main and dessert. My reasoning was that, since I'm single, I can do whatever the heck I want. I only have myself to worry about. I'm not a slave to anyone else's tastes. I'm not a slave to anyone else's pocketbook, either!

(interesting fact: my pocketbook certainly can't sustain impromptu Indian food Fridays for more than...really...ever - therefore, I am a slave to my own pocketbook...a very bad slave)

Against my better economic judgement, I ordered a delicious full-course meal. Again, this would be fine - if this particular restaurant offered single servings - which it doesn't.

So I've been eating Indian food all weekend. My mouth is thanking me, absolutely. I love, love, love Indian food with its spiciness and its many, many aromas. My stomach, however, has been very angry at me all weekend.

Why I thought it would be a SUPER idea to shake up my angry stomach by going for a run is a mystery to me. Why I added ice cream to the mix is like a mystery within a mystery. A super secret mystery, if you will.

My extreme laziness over the past few weeks (see: Miss T FAILS to ride her bike EVER), as well as my relative office-chair-boundness over the weekend inspired me to go for a run this evening. When you read this and imagine my voice, it may sound nonchalant, as though I could go for a run anytime and it wouldn't be a big deal. This is not the case. When I go for a run, I work up to it. I tell people about my plan to go for a run in order to be sure that they know I'm a serious amateur athlete (if I were saying that out loud, I'd have trouble stifling my laughter - and you'd probably have to smother a giggle with a well-placed cough or two). I keep my used running clothes around until people come over in order to prove to people that I have, indeed, gone for a run (this is not true...but it is an idea I might try sometime).

While I was running, I was pondering the contributing factors to my recent purchase of the Indian food and my resulting discomfort and I realized that I bought it because nothing was stopping me from buying it. I bought it because I WANTED IT!

***Trite, uber-lame self-realization to follow - WARNING!!!***

And THIS made me realize that the only thing keeping me from reaching my goal of hotness is me, now that I only have myself to look out for. I'm the only thing keeping me from doing anything. Like with the Indian food, I can do whatever the heck I want. I just have to want to do it.

So now that I know that I am the only thing that can get in my way, nothing can get in my way (except, empirically speaking, me)! Naysayers, be damned! Laws of physics, be damned! Sleep, be damned!*

*For those of you who ACTUALLY know me...I promise not to become a speed freak so I can study all night to ace my finals while at the same time practicing for my audition for a spandex pop trio, although we all know that I would be so excited (and so scared) to do both of these things at the same time.**

**I cannot take credit for this fabulous SBTB reference. If you deserve thanks, you probably know who you are.

Hot People Wear Stilettos and Shresses?

2009-03-27T05:07:00.001-07:00

Ok - so I was innocently making my way to the very last debate meeting of my university career (I know what you're thinking, but nerds can be hot. This is a whole 'nother post). It is awards season on campus, and I imagine some faculty of hot people (like kinesiology or public relations) was giving out their pats on the back last night. Well...on my way to nerd central I found myself in a herd of girls in high heels and dresses so short they would still be suitable for a relatively comprehensive anatomy lesson.

Although most of these girls look like what I've wanted to look like since I was a tiny, tiny zygote, I question whether it is imperative for hot people to wear high heels and shresses. Because if it's a requirement, then I might have to pack it in right now.

I actually physically cannot wear high heels. I don't think the fates want me to. Here's a story (in five parts - well, actually three): When I was six, I remember watching Mary Martin's Peter Pan. For those of you who haven't had the pleasure, I definitely suggest you watch it (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbQqH3c_Uwg). You might notice that it is obvious that she's being held up by some elaborate rope and pulley system. It was not obvious to my six-year-old eyes. Knowing that fairy dust is the means by which children get their bodies into the air, I asked Santa for some fairy dust (asking Santa never goes wrong - see Red Ryder BB Gun). Obviously, Santa couldn't just give me a vial of fairy dust, though - he'd have to disguise it or everyone would want some - in the bottle of perfume I found in my stocking. So, armed with my complete conviction that I had a bottle of fairy dust-infused perfume, I doused myself in it, donned my little brother's magician's cape (we had a bizarre childhood, he and I), and leaped from the top bunk of our bed with the firm belief that I would, in seconds, be floating through the air with the greatest of ease. Instead I merely fell the five or so feet from the top bunk - directly onto my ankle. The resulting EXTREME pain was fate's way of telling me that my feet were meant to be firmly on the ground, not elevated some inches above it.

I didn't listen. Every subsequent ankle-turning incident involved a set of shoes that was specifically designed to simulate levitation in some way. One summer, I tumbled down my friend's front steps wearing these:A year or so later, I slipped in my neighbour's icy driveway wearing a similar set of shoes meant for the winter months. This resulted in a sprained knee along with my ankle. I had gone too far and REALLY angered the gods.

This led me to the conclusion that I should tempt fate no more. And really, I don't need to lift myself off the ground any higher than I already am (since I'm 5'8"). Therefore, I only wear high heels of any sort for VERY special occasions.

Surely the abstention from one particular type of shoe does not exclude me altogether from, one day, being a hot, hot mama. Mamas can be hot wearing a pair of cute flats, right? Right?

I'm not even sure I believe myself.

On Shresses:

For the uninformed, shresses are dresses that could easily function as shirts, provided pants were worn beneath them. A reasonably conservative shress is shown here:

Maybe I'm ancient (I could very well be), but I don't think it's necessary to wear clothing that leaves NOTHING to the imagination. Why do people need to know that my vag is literally an inch away from the hem of my dress? Why is it ok that there's even a small possibility that it might come out to say hi to everyone if I dance extra-vigorously one night (or on a platform, or in an elevated cage)? There's also just something a little extra-trashy about the idea that NO CLOTHES need to be removed in order for access to the general vag area to be had. I mean, presumably, if someone has a chance at getting vag access, one could easily remove the vag-covering clothes in a private (or even semi-private) area, thus allowing access only to one person at a time (or two...or whatever - I don't judge - orgies aren't the same as public displays of vag).

Ok - perhaps I'm jealous that I couldn't pull off a shress even if I wanted to - but the principle still applies. And I refuse to wear them on this principle.

So do I have to give up my quest for hotness on principle? We'll see in six months, I guess.

Hot People Avoid Tempting Fate

2009-03-24T18:03:00.000-07:00

Proving once again that I can always find a TOTALLY legitimate excuse not to exercise - it was snowing today. And I'm jet-lagged.

When the snow melts, I'll go.

For reals this time.

Hot People Acknowledge Their Limitations

2009-03-16T05:11:00.000-07:00

Okay...so I know I said I would bike come hell or high water...but my knee still really hurts and it's really cold out. I don't want to overdo it.

So...when I said Monday, I really meant next Monday. And I also really meant next Tuesday, because I'm out of town on Monday.

Cool?

Hot People Don't Eat Cookies

2009-03-15T06:05:00.000-07:00

So I went to the mall the other day to buy a skirt because my summer job requires business casual attire, and until lately, I've been erring more on the side of extreme casual attire. Anyway...not a single skirt fit me properly. Not one.

Ok...one did. But ONLY one.

When did I get so fat? I can actually grab WHOLE HANDFULS of flesh from my stomach! It's RIDICULOUS!!! How did I not notice this happening?

One might ask how I could possibly let this happen. Well...I can certainly think of a few culprits (although there are fewer and fewer of them every time I go back to the box...hmm...).

At any rate, I've had a solution to this for some time, my bicyclette. In fact, I had resolved to ride my bike more often from the beginning of this hotness journey, but it was too cold, or my bag was too heavy that day, or the roads were covered (I shit you not) in SHEETS of ice. There's always SOMETHING.

Case in point: I'm injured right now. Seriously. Here's how it happened: I was coming out the library to catch the bus home (it was sunny that day...so I'm not sure what my excuse was for not riding my bike...), only the bus had already arrived when I got out the doors. This usually means (and it did that day) a one hundred metre dash in whatever unsuitable shoes I am wearing. So I ran. But when I was almost to the bus stop, the bus started driving away. "Fine," I thought. I just stopped running and decided to wait for the next one. Except then I noticed that the bus was slowing down. The bus driver was looking at me. The unthinkable had happened! A bus driver was being courteous to a passenger who had been a few seconds late for the bus (I've seen some drivers actually shake their fists behind them as they drive off into the sunset while some person who is clearly late for a job interview or the birth of their firstborn child kicks at the dust left in the bus' wake). So, not wanting to spit in the eye of unprecedented generosity on the bus driver's part, and in order not to delay the bus any further, I started running.

So, here's some important information. It's just turning into spring in Eastern Canada. This means that EVERYTHING is wet right now. This also means that the chances that I was standing in a flat of mud when the bus slowed down were very good. As it happened, luck was not with me.

So, I started running...or rather I started doing that thing the Road Runner does when it's winding up to speed away from Wile E. Coyote because I couldn't get any traction in the mud. Unfortunately, instead of speeding ahead in a blur onto the bus, I did a faceplant into the mud. The immediate result was that I was covered in mud and had to spend the rest of my day until I got home several hours later covered in a thin layer of muck. The end result is that I REALLY hurt my ankle and knee - injuries made inexplicably worse by a much less exciting bathtub cleaning incident a few days later. Seriously. I'm limping.

All this being said, hot people definitely can't grab whole handfuls of flesh from their stomachs (perhaps from other parts of their persons, but not stomachs), and the longer I stay off my bike, the more handfuls there will be. I cannot let my unending ability to come up with excuses (real or imagined) not to exercise to get in the way of my hotness. Therefore, in the spirit of bullheaded ambition, I'm going to ride my bike on Monday, come hell or high water!

But perhaps not if it's raining or something.

Hot People Don't Shit the Bed

2009-03-07T18:27:00.001-08:00

Okay - so I obviously don't mean literally (although I'm sure hot people also tend not to literally shit the bed either).

What I really mean is that hot people don't throw themselves at the first attractive guy they see on their first day out since becoming single. And they certainly don't have small, but public, meltdowns when things don't go right. I call the meltdown "shitting the bed" because really...it's all about making a stanky mess because you couldn't contain your emotional shit.

Clearly, I have recently shit the bed. It's especially bad to shit the bed when you've been drinking because you've got no sense of perspective when you're intoxicated - so you come home inconsolably upset (which is awful when there's actually nobody at home to console you because you just broke up with them), fall asleep, and then wake up hungover and TOTALLY EMBARRASSED by your public display of tragically unrequited flirtiness and subsequent emotional diarrhea. It's kind of like that pounding in your hungover brain is shouting "IDIOT! IDIOT! IDIOT!" at you. This feeling is amplified by the fact that you KNOW you've made everyone who was with you TOTALLY UNCOMFORTABLE. You know when someone you sorta know is crying, but you're not close enough with them to ask for the full details and you therefore feel totally unequipped to comfort them - so you just kind of stand there awkwardly while they cry. Yeah...THAT kind of uncomfortable.

But thinking back to a literal bed-shitting - you know...they're embarrassing, but they likely happened because something was going wrong internally and you probably feel a little better after you've had a hot, hot shower. The same is true for a metaphorical bed-shitting - while embarrassing, it's pretty cathartic - it's amazing how someone's douchebaggy decline of your advances can open your eyes to other douchebaggery (must use this word more in life) that you had been ignoring because you were blinded by his shiny prettiness. It feels kinda good to get that out of your system.

Hot People Set and Achieve Goals

2009-03-01T07:40:00.000-08:00

I just ended a five year relationship. It was my decision, and I think it was the right one, but I've just recently come to the horrifying realization that I'm single now.

I don't know how to be single. I've never known how to be single (this might explain a. why I was single for so long before my relationship, and b. why I stayed in the relationship for so long). But all these people keep telling me they love being single (you know...single and loving it?)...so maybe I should give it a try, right? Don't I look excited at this prospect?

Problem is, I'm painfully bad at meeting new people. I'm not good at making small talk, or being interesting. One might wonder, then, why I'm blogging. Well, here's why: I've noticed that hot people have no trouble meeting new people (mostly because new people are VERY interested in meeting them). So I've decided to become hot. I realize this is not a SMART goal...so I'm putting a deadline on it. I'm going to be hot in six months. For reals. I'm blogging about it because frankly, if there isn't anyone to keep me in line, I just won't do it (See: Miss T does the dishes every day) - and I also think that my misadventures (and they WILL be misadventures) in becoming hot will make for a delightful sense of schadenfreude (I can laugh at my own expense, right? That way it comes out even).

So, how am I going to do this. Well, I know I have piles of room for improvement. Par example (...sometimes I like to pretend I'm French), last night was my first night alone. I was very scared. Supper of champions: Pillsbury Pizza Pops, Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream, Smirnoff Ice. Obviously, hot people don't have this for supper. Nor do they go for the leftover ice cream for breakfast, like I did this morning. That would just be too indulgent. I understand this is a bad start...but I was scared to be alone, and there's really nothing like alcohol and trans-fats to make you feel comfortable. Dancing my ass off at the club (instead of sitting alone on my couch and watching chick flicks all night, which is what I chose to do) might also be a potential change.

So here I begin my quest for hotness, and we'll see where we end up in six months. I'm pretty optimistic about how this is going to go (but I was just as optimistic when I tried to do the dishes every day). I think my determination is obvious, though. Just look at me staring off into the distance, envisioning my future hotness and the wonderful life it will bring me!