Addendum to "Penguins and Itchy Boobs..."

Did I mention that thoughts like that are probably the reason I am single? What guy could handle sitting next to me while I am imagining skiing penguins on a stage floor? ...although most guys probably would have enjoyed the whole "feeling myself up so I could scratch my boob" episode.

Penguins and Itchy Boobs...

Tonight I attended a performance of the Whirling Dervishes. It was one of those spur of the moment ideas to attend. I had no idea what they were when I walked into the Pioneer Center but to inform my readers (the whole 3 1/2 of them) the Whirling Dervishes are an expression and interpretation of Islam. It focuses on love, tolerance, worship of God, community development, and personal development through self-discipline and responsibility. It really was an incredible performance; beautiful and truly odd at the same time. I still am not sure what to think about it. I didn't attend for the religious aspects of it, I attended because it is an interesting cultural tradition from Turkey, an area I truly know very little about. On top of the fact that I had nothing better to do tonight.

During the last half of the show the guys literally whirl around the stage. To assist their whirling, they place white powder on the floor in piles where the dervishes end up. However they move around in certain patterns, thus spreading the white powder in the pattern that they move. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the performance but after sitting in the unimaginably comfortable chairs (can you sense my sarcasm in my writing?) of the Pioneer Center for nearly 2 hours my mind started wondering. By the end of the show all I could think about what how the pattern the white powder had formed on the floor looked like a short, squat penguin wearing a scarf and how my boobed itched. My boob itched so much I couldn't handle it, my only distraction was the large penguin skiing across the stage.

I am a horrible friend.

April is a busy month in my life in terms of birthdays. I have 4 friends with birthdays within a 7 day period. Now I am pretty on top of it when it comes to birthdays and today happened to be one of my friends birthdays. I remembered all day yesterday and all day today I remembered it was her birthday but didn't want to call her early in the day to wish her a happy b-day because she works nights and sleeps late.

Fast forward to 7:15pm. I am getting out of my mom's car at the Pioneer Center to go see a show and this friend calls me. I am assume she is calling me about our plans for tomorrow night and just start talking about that. Finally she goes "Isn't there something that you want to say?"

I paused. I paused because for a split second I was completely, utterly clueless about what she was talking about. NO IDEA AT ALL. All the sudden it dawned on me. "Happy Birthday" I almost screamed. She totally knew that I had forgotten. The worst part is I probably only forgot for like 30 minutes that it was her birthday and she just happened to call me during that period.

So yeah, I am a horrible friend and now I don't know what to do because even though I've bough her a present and am taking her to dinner tomorrow night, I am going to get marked as the jackass who didn't even call her friend on her birthday.

The weather in Reno.

I have never understood the people who complain about the weather. It is one of the few things in your life that you NO control over, besides moving to another location. I relish in the changes of weather. The split personality of the weather in Reno is one of the reasons that I have come to love this town. People always joke that if you don't like the weather here, wait 5 minutes at it will change. This has never been more true than over the past few days. It was sunny, clear, calm and skating on the verge of 80 a few days ago; it is now snowing a mere 15 minute drive from town and was raining a few minutes ago, with a low tonight of 30 degrees F. On top of the bizarre makings of the weather here, we actually have seasons. And not seasons like they do in southern California where winter is like 70 degrees and summer is like 90 degrees. We have the changing of the leaves in the fall, wildflower blooms in the spring, hot and dry summers and winters that can dump 20 feet of snow in the mountains. I love the constant reminder that life has stages, that there is always a start and an end to those stages.

Ratty old shoes.

Something you should all know about me is that I love shoes. I probably own enough shoes to provide foot ware for a small country, that is if they were all ok with walking around in flip flops and stylish (aka uncomfortable) high heels and my 1 pair of ratty old tennis shoes. Here's my thing...I buy shoes on a regular basis. The reason I think it is ok to own this many pairs of shoes is because no matter what I weight (within reason of course) my shoes will always fit. That pair of jeans on the other hand may not. Even though I buy shoes on a regular basis, I have owned the same pair of ratty old tennis shoes for 5+ years. Yup, I walk my dog every morning in the same pair of tennis shoes that I bought when my grandma still took my school shopping. I have since then bought a 'smart' pair of tennis-type shoes for walking around cities when I travel, etc. but they are not actual work out shoes. Want to know the reason why I haven't bought a new pair of sneakers? What stopped me from buying new sneakers all these years is that I HATE THE LOOK OF NEW TENNIS SHOES. They are so bright and shiny, like glaring headlights on my feet. It drives me crazy to look down and see my shoes glaring back at me. Every time I try on a new pair I always go and look in the mirror and then I look down at my feet, and it's over, the shoe's are back in the box and I am out the door. Trust me I realize that this is a totally bizarre quality, but come on, you can buy broken in jeans, why not "broken in sneakers". I don't want some smelly feet smell infused in them but a little dirt on the front, some grass stains, maybe a drop of paint on the front. Just something to make them not so glaringly bright!

I finally was forced to buy a new pair of sneakers today (I can actually stick my little toe out the side of my old ones now). I bought them despite the fact that they were glaring back up at me while I walked around the shoe store. I think I only bought them because I feel like I am walking on marshmallows. Sure enough though when I put them on to take my dog for a walk, I stood there looking in the mirror with my shoes looking back at me. AHGGGG, I just had to walk away from the mirror otherwise I probably would have returned the shoes. Instead I went to the park and walked my dog. I think I am ok with my sneakers now...only because I might have rubbed a little dirt and grass onto them so they are not glaring back at me. I almost feel comfortable wearing them but I think I need a good muddy rainstorm to break them in nicely.

Possibly the best reason to love Easter.

Instead of sleeping I am flying on a sugar high and watching late night tv. I never watch late night tv, I am normally either sleeping or doing something more pleasureable at this time of night, however here I am watching late night tv and writing blogs. Disclaimer: I may read this entry in the morning and realize that what I am about to say is not really as funny as I seem to think it is tonight (either because I am delirious or am on a major sugar high) but here I go....

Possibly the best reason to love Easter is that it is the only time of the year that white people can say "peeps" and not look like idiots.

Yeah, I know, but you read the disclaimer so I gave you fair warning that it may not be as funny as I think it is right now.

The idiocy of the human race.

On Friday I was running errands for my mom (this is what happens when I take a day off, mind you I had an enjoyable first half of the day hanging out with a friend and even was slightly entertained when she proceeded to toss her newly pregnant cookies all of the bathroom floor of a foo-foo thai restaurant while we were at lunch). Back to the subject of the idiocy of the human race. One of my errands was to get some copying done for my madre at one of the fine office supply stores in the Reno area. I dropped the items off and went and ran some more errands (I know you could care less about the mundane details but blog readers don't have much choice now do they?). I returned to pick up the items and (1) the originals were missing and (2) I was charged wrong.

My first challenge was to obtain the missing originals. This is how the following event went:

Me: The originals aren't in here, I would like them back.
Office supply store guy (OSSG): Why do you need your originals back?
Me: Because I want them back.
OSSG: Ok, hmmmmmmmmmmmmm (it really lasted for like 30 seconds but I will spare you)...I don't know where they are. (with a look on his face like he didn't know that maybe the next thing he should do is LOOK FOR THEM).
Me: Maybe they got left in the copy machine???
OSSG: Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...(as he stands there staring at me like I AM THE IDIOT)....
Me: I really would like them back in case we have to make more copies. It looks just like these copies here (pointing the the copies of them) on WHITE CARD STOCK.
OSSG: (begins to walk around the 10 x 10 foot copy area shuffling every piece of paper around, picking each one up and asking me if it is it...first came a blue copy of something, then a pink copy of something, then a few random white copies of things. Mind you after each one he is asking me if this is it even though I specified it was on WHITE CARD STOCK).
Me: MAYBE IT IS IN THE COPIER STILL???
OSSG: Hmmmmmmmmmm....(as he continues to pick up the same pieces of paper he already showed me and I denied...finally he picked up a white piece of paper and asked me if this was the original. Want to know what was on the piece of paper??? Come on I know you do...NOTHING...absolutely nothing, on either side. He picked up a blank piece of paper and asked me if that was my original copy.
Me: Nope, that's not it (I held myself back from saying "Unless you have a magic copier that can make copies of actually documents from a blank piece of paper, that's not mine".
Me: I finally just stand there and hope that my passive resistance is enough to make him realize how positively stupid he is being...

Finally he walks over to the copier (does this sound familiar, like maybe it was suggested early on in the preceding events) and lo and behold, there is my original!

I won't bother going into my 10 minute discussion of trying to explain to a different OSSG why I was charged incorrectly (obviously beyond their mental capacity even though I am pretty sure my dog would have understood why the charges were wrong...then again she is a very smart dog!). Needless to say I paid $15.00 extra for my copies because I couldn't handle dealing with what is obviously the "Center for the Study of the Idiocy of the Human Race"...maybe they have cameras all over the store and geeky little scientists are sitting behind the walls studying how the true mental defects of the human race respond to normal stimuli?