Hot People Definitely Don't Go Cougar Clubbing

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

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

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 Don't Have Visa Limits

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

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









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

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

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

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

Hot People Get a Little Help from their Friends

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

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

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

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

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



Into these:

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

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

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

Transformed into this:

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

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

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

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

Hot People Kick the Habit

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

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

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

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

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

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