Vanilla Sky

Joelle said at some point on August 16, 2007

taken last night at sunset from the streets around my apartment

Four Things About Me

Joelle said in the early morning on August 14, 2007 while listening to Michael Jackson - Want to Be Startin' Somethin'

It’s Tuesday and we all know that’s just Monday Lite.  I’m swamped, so I leave you with this riveting meme I lifted from my trainer’s myspace bulletin. Try not to faint from the excitement!

Four jobs I have had in my life:
1) Florist
2) Perfume Ninja
3) Model
4) Visual Merchandiser

Movies I could watch over and over. (We just covered this, but I’ve since added a few.)
1) When Harry Met Sally
2) American Beauty
3) Secretary
4) Sideways (OK, it’s a repeat. Sue me. I love that movie!)

Four places I have lived:
1) San Diego, CA
2) San Francisco, CA
3) Dallas, TX
4) Daytona Beach, FL (Kind of. Only one day, but I did technically move there.)

Four things I did this weekend:
1) Installed a toilet seat
2) Took photos in the park
3) Hopped around my living room like a fool
4) Sleuthed a mystery smell

Four places I have been on vacation:
1) England
2) Hawaii
3) Jamaica
4) Cabo San Lucas

Four of my favorite foods:
1) fish tacos
2) Hob-Nobs
3) cherries
4) cheese

Four places I would rather be or go:
1) England
2) Belize
3) Italy
4) Spain

What are your favorite activities?
1) singing
2) getting a pedicure
3) laughing
4) creating cocktails

Your favorite non-alcoholic drinks?
1] coffee, coffee, coffee
2] Pellegrino
3] Diet Pepsi Black Cherry Jazz (I can’t believe I’ve become a Diet Pepsi drinker)
4] water

Your favorite alcoholic beverages?
1] slightly dirty vodka martini
2] wine, red or white
3] good beer (Guinness or Stella Artois, most often)
4] champagne

Favorite scent/smells?
1] the ocean
2] amber and vanilla together
3] sauteeing garlic
4] night-blooming jasmine

Favorite colors?
1] pink
2] orange
3] light blue
4] whatever, really. I just love colors. Purple isn’t a huge fave, though.

Favorite Flower?
1] hibiscus
2] gerbera daisies
3] orchids
4] oriental lilies

Favorite TV shows?  (I think I watch too much TV lately)
1] Seinfeld (yes, still.)
2] The L Word
3] Weeds
4] Mythbusters

4 Hopes for the future?
1] write more books (and hopefully land our own series)
2) travel Europe
3] weiner dog!
4] road trip across the U.S.

4 bad habits?
1] being too hard on myself
2] skipping the gym
3] impatience
4] not putting the toilet paper back on the roll holder thingie

Hottest profession of opposite sex? (What? What the hell kind of question is this?)
1] musician
2] fancy landscapers? Ground cover and irrigation makes me crazy? I don’t know.
3] dog walker (dogs are a great lady-lure)
4] anything someone does well with confidence is hot, I don’t really care what one’s job is. Just have one.

If you do it, trackback, so I can go read it!

“Listen!  Do You Smell Something?”

Joelle said around lunch time on August 13, 2007

I have a kind of… situation.  There is a mystery smell in my apartment.  Now, before you start assuming I’m a crappy housekeeper, I assure you my home is quite tidy.  All the garbage has been emptied, the disposal has been run extensively and deodorized.  My sink was recently rooted… twice.  My bathroom is immaculate (I even installed a new toilet seat yesterday), I burn smelly candles and all of my pilot lights have been checked.  Nothing died in the fridge and from what I can tell, nothing is dead or dying in my home.  There are no dead hookers in my mattress. None of my plants have root rot and there are no half-eaten anythings hiding anywhere.  Fans are running in every room of the house. And yes, I did consider that it’s me. I’ve been assured that it’s not.  *sniffs*

So… what gives?

Here’s the deal: I don’t smell it in my house at all until I leave.  I can have the windows and door open all day long airing the place out or I can keep it shut up all day with no change in result.  When I come home and unlock my front door, even if the windows have been left open, I smell what I thought at first was ammonia, like a litter box, but now has been determined to smell more like fuel or gas.  This sent me in a wild panic to check all my pilot lights, but no, that’s all good. 

Also, the smell never really enters my apartment. Once you’re in, the smell is gone.  Once you’re a foot past the front door… poof! Disappears. If you try to go back and smell it in the same spot you just stood, it’s also gone. It’s like this strange scent that lives in a 1inch field of space just in the jamb of my front door.  I don’t smell it when I’m outside, only as I swing the front door in to go inside. Once inside, the smell is gone.

I feel like I’m taking crazy pills here.  What could it be?  Airplane fumes?  Car exhaust?  Electrical problems with the building?  Olfactory haunting? What is it? 

Stick a Scalloped Sugar Spoon In Me, I’m Done

Joelle said at some point on August 10, 2007

I think it’s high time I bought new flatware .  Forks and knives are not usually something I think about and it’s really not the kind of thing anyone really think about replacing all that often, do they?  At least I haven’t. The set of flatware have in my drawer I got in 1991 as a gift.  It’s Pfaltzgraff, so it’s not like it’s bendy, but after (quick math in my head) almost 17 years, I think it’s time to bid it farewell. Those spoons fed ice cream to soothe many broken hearts, the knives moonlighted as screwdrivers, putting together more crappy furniture than I care to count… this flatware has seen a lot.

Wait a minute.  I’ve had my flatware for almost seventeen years?  I don’t think I’ve had anything seventeen years besides my jaded perspective. Things like yearbooks or family photos, your baby shoes… things like that, sure.  Those are things you expect to have seventeen years, but forks you got when you were 18?  Not so much…

Anyway.

I realized this morning that I needed new flatware when I reached for something to stir my coffee with and grabbed the butter spreader. You know, the little one with the beveled edge that you use with fancy-shaped balls of butter at restaurants.  I chose it because I realized I was down to only two spoons left in my set, the rest victims of the garbage disposal or the former office desk. I figured I should use the scalloped sugar spoon or the fancy butter spreader before I wasted my only two spoons.  How ever would I eat my sorbet later?  I wouldn’t want to do anything extreme like dishes.

Do you ever hang on to a piece of silverware even though you hate it?  I have a fork that has a bent tine. No matter how I try I can’t get that tine bent back into place, but do I throw the fork away?  No!  I curse at it and throw it back in the drawer and pick a different one.  Why do I do that?  It must be the same gene that makes me keep pens with no ink.

2Sweet 2B 4Gotten Jones

Joelle said at some point on August 8, 2007

I was skimming my Google homepage for my morning dose of news and found this little gem out of New Zealand.  Apparently, a couple had decided to name their newborn baby “4Real” because they saw the ultrasound and knew the baby was “for real”. But, because it was rejected by some sort of New Zealand baby name registry for including numbers and not using consecutive characters, they’ve decided to formally name the baby “Superman” while still referring to is as “4Real”.

I’m sorry, but are you fucking kidding me?  Stupidity this grand deserves profanity. These people are breeding?  I think the movie Idiocracy is right, smart people are over-thinking their procreation, being too cautious, waiting until it’s too late or they’re too old or they only have one baby. (And believe me, I feel that way, too.) Meanwhile, we’re being out-bred by miscreants who want to name their kid UB40 or whatever.  Jesus H.  Smart people!  Put down the Nietzsche and start shagging.  I implore you.

Pat and Sheena Wheaton say they will get around the decision by the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages by officially naming their son Superman but referring to him as 4Real, the New Zealand Herald newspaper has reported.

The Wheatons decided on the name after seeing the baby for the first time in an ultrasound scan and realizing their baby was “for real.”

“No matter what its going to stay 4Real,” Wheaton told the Herald, “I’m certainly not a quitter.”

[read full article]

Stay in school, kids.