Hot People Don't Seethe: The Disaster Continues

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

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

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

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

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

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 Get Hotter with Altitude?

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 Don't Have Inappropriate Thoughts About the Cable Guy

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

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 Get a Little Help from their Friends

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

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

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

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

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



Into these:

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

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

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

Transformed into this:

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

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

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

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