In which I am groped.

After a bout of emailing that stressed many of our computers' infrastructures (Okay. Not that weird. If we had actually wanted to talk to each other it would have been one conversation.), had lunch with people today, which was massive amounts of fun.

I'm pretty sure Keelin is emotionally scarred, Kim is over all of us, and Derrick grabbed my boob and my thigh. This may disturb me/creep me out were he not a member of the Princess Tiara Club or something (his words, not mine).

So yeah, very good times.

One day we shall rule the world. And it shall be sweet.

And the reason he was on my thigh was he was admiring my kick-ass knee high boots. My stripper boots. I love them.

So it appears that the women in my family adore the (C)Kates. Colleen would have Cate Blanchett's babies if it were not a biological impossibility (She's not a lesbian. But she does love her Cate.), and I'm hopelessly devoted to Kate Winslet.

No, really. If I wasn't cheap, I'd rent Little Children from Blockbuster. But I am, and, well, she's not Johnny Depp, so my fandom will have to be slightly less complete.

But she was on The View yesterday, and she mentioned that she was now pitching Lancome's Tresor perfume.

And now I'm thinking about ordering it from amazon.com.

Because she's that awesome.

I'm also looking for a signature fragrance. But that's a whole other story.

So you know that test that put me into seizures on Monday? (Which one, you ask. Ha! Funny. Make fun of my neuroses.)

Okay, I'm not saying this for sure, because I really don't know.

But I may have gotten an 89%.

Maybe. For some reason, the super-secret code you have to come up with so no one will be able to tell your sad little grade belongs to your sad little self isn't listed, but there's the same number without a 0 at the beginning. Whoever had that number? Was .7% away from an A.

So either it's me and I ROCK, or it's not and THAT PERSON IS AMAZING.

Not quite as amazing as the person who got a 103.3%, but I'm pretty sure that was the professor taking it just to blow the curve.

He'd do that.

So someone called in a bomb threat to campus today.

And I'm really wondering why I've gotten sixteen e-mails about the business school's etiquette dinner, and I had to hear this on the news.

Also? Kinda hoping my class tomorrow in the building next door is cancelled. Please?

Insert Something Witty Here

I'm too tired to think of a title. My day yesterday-

1:06 a.m.- Answer phone that rings. It's the Empress. I don't know why.
1:08 a.m.- Yay Sleeps tiem!!!
1:10 a.m.- Shit. Can't fall asleep.
4:00 a.m.- Chuck Norris really should do more than advertise exercise equipment.
7:00 a.m.- Awake to squire the Empress to work.
8:05 a.m.- Big-ass McDonald's coffee awaits. Sweet.
9:00-1:50- Clean house/do laundry/stalk various celebrities online
1:50 p.m.- Arrive at the Empress' place of indentured servitude, early, as per her imperial request.
2:15 p.m.- Hmmm. Wonder where she is.
3:00 p.m.- *hums Jeopardy theme*
3:45 p.m.- Am told to return home by Mother Dearest, because it appears that the Empress will just be living at work from now on.
4:00 p.m.- Arrive at home.
4:02 p.m.- Another phone call from the Empress. Apparently someone has finally arrived to relieve her. I get back in the car and go back to Cedarburg.
8:30 p.m.- Culvers. Custardcinos are amazing.
9:15 p.m.- Arrive home and realize with some sense of self-loathing that I have listened to the soundtrack from Hairspray like eighteen times in the car today.

I was in no mood.


Having major eye issues, y'all.

Other than the color (No, the blue is not a contact lens! STOP ASKING ME THAT!!! It's the one part of my drivers license I *didn't* lie on. If I ever go missing, they'll be looking for a blond chick who's five five and weighs 120 lbs. I'll be so dead.), I really hate my eyes. My vision sucks majorly, like I can't even read without a prescription. Which is why I was forced to wear unattractive glasses from the second grade until I turned fourteen and realized that there was no way in hell this was going to continue.

Le anyhoodles, they are also very dry, sensitive eyes. Eyes that probably should not be subjected to contact lenses for upwards of sixteen hours a day.

Unfortunately, alone with my dry, sensitive eyes, God also saw fit to bestow me with an inflated ego, major sense of vanity, and the complete and utter inability to see past like, this week to any major implications (i.e., blindness) that anything I may be doing will cause. So I wear contact lenses all day long.

About a year and a half ago, my eyes got so red an scratchy that I had to wear glasses for two weeks and go through this whole long thing that involved steroid eye drops and two different eye doctors and blah blah blah. You don't need to know that. Suffice to say, I found a prescription and a lens solution that worked, and life was all peachy.

Until Memorial Day weekend, when they discovered that my brilliant solution was causing minor issues like infection and blindness. Now, I may be in denial, but I'm not stupid, and I switched to another sensitive, dry eye formula that I assumed would work as well.

Turns out, the gods of Complete own my soul, and they were not pleased with my defection, because I can barely blink now my eyes are so aggravated. Ugh. And now I have to go back to using the "Um, no, we totally retooled the formula and I promise (but am not legally bound) that you won't go blind" Complete (yes, that's what I'm calling it now), if I want to continue wearing contacts.

*sigh*

But hey, the brilliant optometrist at Stein Optical said it's okay, so it must be, right? I mean, they don't give those "degrees" out to anybody.

Now, I know you really don't care about the books I read, because Mickey refuses to read, well, anything that Walt Disney didn't deign to sign, Imladris is so distracted that she had trouble getting through a page of a kids book, and Rockford's poor drug-addled mind doesn't seem very focused on reading, but I promise I'll just talk about this one.

While sitting in front of the Diner Where Colleen Works Whose Name Has Been Changed To Protect Her Privacy, I finished Bitter is the New Black, by Jen Lancaster (her blog- hilarious- can be found here), and Oh My Lord it's like my life if I entered the business world and got laid off (am I the only one with a filthy mind who thinks that's a funny term???).

Well, you know, except I'm apathetic about most things concerning work, and I was never that thin, but other than that.

She even talks about playing the Sims!!! I play the Sims!!!

It was so funny. Everyone should buy.

You may have noticed that all the iconage today is Snape. Or maybe you didn't, because most iconage most days is Snape, because I'm a teensy bit weird, but whatever.

I'm a little bit excited for the release of the last book. After further review of the craziness fan stuff out there, I kind of totally ship Lily/Severus, if only because it would explain the whole hating-Harry thing much much better than "OMG, your dad was mean to me once and it screwed me up for life." which just seems trite and stupid to me. Maybe if the rest of the later books were trite and stupid like most children's literature, but they're not. There are incredibly mature themes of good and evil in the later ones, and again, the teasing thing? It just doesn't do it for me.

It would also explain why Dumbledore was so convinced that he would never actually hurt Harry. If the woman you loved died protecting her baby, and then you got the chance fifteen years later to protect that baby, wouldn't you? I think so. I mean, you might be really bitter that it's not *your* baby (and hell, if Lily ever saw An Awfully Big Adventure, she might be kind of bitter, too) thus giving the illusion of hate, but you wouldn't kill it.

Anyway, that concludes my rambling for day. Almost. It's exciting *because* of the excitement. YES I agree completely.

Okay. That one just makes me laugh.

As you may have heard from the screams of woe coming from my house, Mandy Patankin is leaving Criminal Minds. In a huff like a big dumb girl, apparently. That's not important. What's important is that IT'S GOING TO SUCK NOW!!! Gah. I loved that show. Also, it's not a completely sad story if only for the numerous pop culture references that it's given us.

Where would we be without the Princess Bride and Mandy lyrics??? Where indeed?

I'm sorry, I can't help it.

This post has been far too long, and it is over now.

Hey Mom, why can't Buster pretend to be your escort? That's the way he's got it in all his cartoons.

My relationship with summer has hit that peaceful plateau that you get after about twenty years of marriage. We've gone through the rough first years (What? It so horrible that I want to have my own life??? I don't think so!!!), weathered the seven-year- itch (Maybe I want to go outside. Did you ever think about that?), and have gotten to the point where it's just comfortable and it doesn't matter so much if he beats me because divorce and finding something better would just take too much effort.

I did not mean for that to sound like I was condoning spousal abuse. Even though it totally did.

Been reading a lot lately, like hundreds of pages a day. Some random book by the women who wrote The Nanny Diaries, one of my favorite books ever. Eh. Not their best effort. Not that you would know it by reading the glowing staff pick I was guilted into doing by Manager Who Shall Remain Nameless, a woman who is obsessed with the staff picks and will accost employees who so much as look at a book, regardless of whether they read and/or enjoyed the book.

One I really did enjoy was Whistling in the Dark. I wasn't really expecting too, and only read it because, well, I can, and the author is doing a signing/talking thingy later this month that probably three people will show up for. I felt like I should know what was going on. It was very engrossing, and very sweet. I loved the two little girls. Kind of like To Kill a Mockingbird crossed with The Lovely Bones. Everyone should read immediately.

Now on to A Thousand Splendid Suns. Wow. I'm very pleased that I'm a little white girl from the North Shore and not an illegitimate baby girl in Afghanistan. Because that clearly sucks.

The greatest social injustice in my childhood was that the Murphy's had a computer before I did.

Being stoned sucks WAY more.

Massive amounts of fun this morning with the Empress and Mommy Dearest. Went out for coffee at Smith Bros. Officially my Favorite Coffee Place Maybe Except For Cedarburg Roastery (which has the inestimable advantage of hot guys working there).

I'm still personally wounded that it took away pretty much the only restaurant north of Mequon that doesn't have arches or a taco out front, though.

Oh. Wait. We had Ferrantes, too. Until they closed for no reason other than that their bathrooms were haunted. No, really, they were.

But I digress.

Mom and Colleen tried their darndest to convince me that I would get into grad school, I would not still be working the same job ("Receipt in the bag all right???") in ten years, and my life would have meaning and NO FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY YOU WILL NOT STILL BE MAKING COFFEE!!! I think they were a little bit sick of me by the end.

I don't care. As the only resident of Chez Morena without neuroses, magical pills that make everything okay, or plastic sheeting, I reserve the right to go a little bit crazy about my future.

Oh, and Colleen made Mom promise not to shop at Costco. You know, like we weren't going to shop at Target, Best Buy, or Borders. Umm...

After coffee we went to see a model home. The same model home, indeed, that Person Who Shall Remain Nameless is building his/her house after.

(I honestly cannot keep straight what I am and am not supposed to know at this point. I swear to God, my family is like the mafia. But we're pasty, Irish, and poor. And without guns. So basically we just have a bunch of bordering-on-unethical secrets University of Minnesota calls, everybody graduated!!!. Hmmm. Mafia actually sounds better.)

And I'd just like to tell Person Who Shall Remain Nameless that I adore the model home, but I think the TV and the piano in the living room might make things a tad claustrophobic, and that he/she should reconsider his/her negative take on the whole kitchen/family room/morning room, because it is absolutely adorable and if I was going to be jealous of one thing in the house, it would be that part.

Also, good call on the bay window.

But oh my God the flashbacks. Not until today did I realize that spending so much of my childhood in model homes must have done some serious damage.