Just shoot me. Shoot me now!

Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow.

I survived a five-hour workshop today by a teacher from the Suhaila Salimpour School of Dance. Barely. If you don't know who Suhaila is, she is a phenomenal bellydancer and teacher from California. Her mother, Jamila, is essential the mother of bellydance in America, and Suhaila has taken Jamila's technique, and added her own diverse dance background and bellydance experience, to create the Suhaila Salimpour Technique.

And it is that technique which has me feeling like I've been run over by a truck.

This is not good, because the workshop ended less than two hours ago. My usual bellydance teacher, whose classes kick my butt on a regular basis, doesn't give me that hit-by-a-truck feeling until the next morning. I'm so screwed.

Suhaila's technique, from what I learned today, is designed to teach you how to control various muscle groups (glutes, abs, etc.) in such a way as to create a desired movement. To watch someone doing the technique, you might think "what's the big deal." I'll tell you what: It is a big deal. Huge. It's hard. And I hurt! These muscular contractions are combined with ballet- and jazz-style footwork. The footwork alone isn't too hard (although it didn't help that I hadn't taken ballet since early grade school, and then only briefly). But combine it with glute squeezes or ab contractions in a prescribed pattern, and that's something else. I hobbled straight home and popped my copy of the "Bellydance Superstars" DVD into the player, to watch Suhaila herself in action. Damn, that woman can move!

A glass of red wine has only slighly dulled the edge of my pain (and I find it important to not that this is not the bad pain of injury, but the "good" pain of muscles truly and thorougly worked), so to survive, I invoke this mantra: "That which does not kill me makes me stronger."

Ouch!

I swear, it wasn't the drugs

So I've done it. I've applied to culinary school.

Can I just mention that I didn't miss filling out applications and financial aid forms? And that I don't relish the "mandatory loan meeting" that I will have to attend if I am indeed offered student loans. What are they going to tell me that I don't already know, as someone who had student loans in her younger life, and paid them off some time ago? That the loan money cannot be used to finance a trip to Paris. That I must begin repaying the loan within six months of graduating or abandoning my education. That there is (gasp) interest on the loan. That if I default on the loan, government agents will hunt me down and kill me. (OK, I totally made that last part up.) No, I understand why every loanee has to attend those meetings (sigh). It's because there are enough stupid people who don't know the difference between a grant and a loan, and you can't always tell who the stupid people are just by looking at them. So everyone must suffer.

I have to get a food handler's card, too. Which apparently requires that I sacrifice two hours of my life for a class and test. ("What? Raw meat can't be stored at room temperature? Color me shocked!") Never mind that I once had a food handlers card...literally half of my lifetime ago. Egads!

One bright point (perhaps): Because I was neither a priviledged nor difficult-to-handle child, my parents decided that public schools were quite sufficient for my educational purposes. Translation: I never had to (got to?) wear a school uniform. That is about to change! We're talking white chef's jacket, ubiquitous black-and-white checked pants, chef's hat, and little neck kerchief thingy. He Who Puts Up With Me is quite jealous about the hat and kerchief. Hee!

As part of the taking-up-time-I-don't-have admissions process, I had to have my former university (Go Ducks!) send the culinary school a copy of my official transcript. Just for fun, I had the university send me one, too. And can I just say...there are classes on there that I have NO recollection of taking. And no, I don't think the university is lying. And no, I wasn't in a drug-induced haze when I was supposed to be going to class (I pretty much avoided illegal substances in college). Apparently, in winter of 1991 I took a geography class...and got a C+. Yikes. I did, however, remember the C I got in calculus winter term of my freshman year. But I blame that on the case of mono that slammed me two weeks before finals. (Incidentally, I hated calculus. I only took it because I didn't make it that far in high school, and it was like some stupid badge of honor that I take it in college.) Hmmm...I'd forgotton how I totally kicked ass in almost every single one of my sociology classes (that was my minor). All in all, not too shabby.

In other news. 56 days until U2!

Will you take a check?

A 26-year-old hunter who pled no contest to accidentally starting a Northern California forest fire in Fall 2003 has been sentenced. The sentence? Banishment from the Mendocino National Forest for five years. Oh, and an $18 million fine.

$18 million? He's a 26-year-old hunter, not a 26-year-old heir to some huge fortune. How does the judge expect him to pay this fine...ever?

Now, I agree completely that getting lost in the forest and falling asleep next to an illegal campfire that subsequently got out of control is a dumbass thing to do, and I agree that it is a criminal thing to do, even if it was accidental. But still...you can't get blood from a stone.

The end result of this little story will surely be that the fine is never paid, which means that taxpayers will foot the full $33 million bill for one moron's mistake (6,058 acres burned because of this bozo), instead of just the $15 million difference.

This irritates me to no end. Just like it irritates me every time I hear about some stupid, bull-headed hiker or rock climber who is warned not to take a certain trail or climb a certain mountain because of an impending bout of nasty weather, but who goes ahead anyway. Then they get lost, or hurt, and rescue crews have to go rescue them. And who foots the bill? We do. I really don't appreciate paying for the whims of stupid people.

Hello, hello...hola!

I'm in a place called Vertigo. Or at least I will be in exactly two months! That's right, the official countdown has begun for U2's April 24 show in Seattle. Whoo-hoo!

My tickets arrived in the mail on Saturday, resulting in a happy dance that was surpassed only by the moment almost one month ago when, after struggling through the T-master system to try to get tickets during the U2 fan club pre-sale, I secured the tickets I was vying for: two GAs. (And those tickets are now tucked in a safe place, although not so safe that I forget where I hid them, resulting in me screaming like a banshee the day before the show, "Where in the @$%&*# hell did I put those %&*$@# tickets!?!")

The fact that the tickets are GA means that I will be spending many hours in line on the day of the show, to try to get as close to the stage as possible. But that is a small price to pay to be near four men who I have loved for 23 years. In fact, from time to time I see fit to remind He Who Puts Up With Me that I have loved them longer than I have loved him. Of course, I had loved them for nearly 10 years before I knew that HWPUWM even existed, but I digress.

HWPUWM is refusing to park his ass in line with me for untold hours, but I'm not concerned. I will be amongst other die-hard fans. Plus, my sister, whose U2-lovin' fiance (it probably goes without saying that I highly approve of him) got good-but-expensive reserved seats for the show, has offered to keep me company, too. I think's she's just hoping to meet Bono.

As for me, I would die happy if I got to meet the Edge. I love that man. Luuuuuv him. And let me take a moment to sent good, healing thoughts toward his little daughter, Sian, who, if the rumors are true, is quite sick. I'm hoping that the fact that they are touring at all means that she is getting better.

I am so excited about this concert, that I can hardly stand it. I haven't seen my boys live since 1997. The tour was Popmart, and the venue was Giants Stadium. I really hate stadium concerts. Even though we had pretty good tickets, it still felt like we were miles from the stage...and from my boys. Before that, it was 1992, Zoo-TV tour, Tacoma Dome. I hate the Tacoma Dome. But now, now, I get to see them in a smaller venue (yay!), and if I play my cards right, I could be close enough to grab their ankles (double yay!). Not that I would, of course. Security might frown on that.

Ohhhh! Ohhhhh! Almost forgot...my official U2 T-shirt arrived in the mail yesterday. Got tickets, got outfit. Yay! He Who Puts Up With Me was home when it arrived; I was at work. He called me, opened the package, then asked, "is this supposed to fit one of the cats?" I was a little nervous...I had heard the T-shirts run small, and because I'm between sizes, I'd ordered up. But what if it was still too tiny. So I tried it on the nanosecond I got home. It's snug, but not uncomfortable or obscene. I'm good to go...yay!

Bad, bad employee!

After my supervisor's disgusting Tuesday display of, let's see...nastiness, rudeness, two-facedness, inappropriateness and boneheadedness...work became a very different place in my mental landscape.

On Wednesday, I could hardly stand to look at him, let alone speak to him. His drama king-like behavior, his almost cliched depiction of "little man syndrome," "Napoleon complex," or whatever name you like, sickened me. I managed to avoid speaking to him for much of the morning, between his meetings and conference calls. I was not up to idle workplace chit-chat, and I did not want to hear him laughingly tell me about his supervisor's response to the snotty e-mail he sent. He clearly wasn't fired, that was for sure. Although give him time, and I'm sure he'll conjure enough rope to hang himself.

Thursday, I managed the morning chit-chat, but spent as much of the day as possible with my iPod on, a nice little musical buffer.

Today came freedom. The boss was away all day. To celebrate, I started my morning right with a pain au chocolat from Le Panier, something I rarely do, but should do more. Yum! And then, as a bold-but-silent statement of my temporary emancipation...I was a very bad employee. In fact, I hereby proclaim today "Bad Employee Day." (Kind of makes up for the fact my company doesn't give us President's Day off. So there!)

And what did I do that was so very, very bad? Did I embezzle? Did I steal office supplies? Did I send prank faxes on company letterhead? Well, no. But I didn't do much work, I'll tell you that (just finished up a few things that innocent coworkers were waiting for...including one person that my boss was so very, very nasty to on Tuesday). I surfed the Web. I read a baking book. I took care of personal business. I quietly bitched about my boss with my long-suffering coworker. It was glorious.

Do I feel guilty? Not a bit. Because in between bouts of goofing off, I made a few decisions. If my boss ever tries to rope me into office politics when the players and the happenings do not otherwise affect me or my work, if he ever speaks nastily of the TWO people I replaced (when he's praising MY work, no less), if he ever dares to use his nasty tone of voice on ME...I will firmly but diplomatically tell him that it cannot happen again. Because he really has no power (which is why he acts the way he does, as any Psychology 101 student would attest to), and I'm sure he knows that I know enough of things he has done and said to bring him down if necessary. Plus, I have multiple electronic and printed copies of the e-mail he sent his boss...with the snarky little header he put on it when he sent it to me and his other underlings.

So who has the power now? Hahahahahahahahahahaha!

Coffee, tea and 'man, you're picky'

I know that American espresso drinkers can be a fussy lot (two-shot, half-caf, no foam, sugar-free, etc.). But tea drinkers?

I've been trying to go off coffee this week, but today, in desperation, I headed downstairs to 'bucks for a mid-morning java jolt (with the week I'm having, it was either that or start drinking the hard stuff at my desk). As I was paying, the nicely dressed gentleman behind me ordered a grande Earl Grey tea with three shots of peppermint syrup and four honey packets. I'm not sure why he even bothered with the tea part of that concoction.

I think I'm gonna boo...

Earlier this evening: I'm walking down First Avenue. As I approach a certain restaurant (Marco's Supperclub, for you locals), I see what appears to be a chunky yellow substance all over the sidewalk, from the front door almost to the curb.

My first (and most disgusting) thought is, "Ew, someone got sick and projectile vomited...I hope someone cleans that up soon." But just as I contemplate jaywalking to the vomit-free side of the street, someone walks out of the restaurant and off into the night, without hopping over the sea of yellow or even holding his nose. Hmmm....

Then I get close enough to see that it's not a replay of a scene from a "South Park" episode...it's a vertiable carpet of rose petals. Mostly yellow, with a touch of red. Still, I step over them, puzzled. Wasn't yesterday Valentine's Day? Most curious, indeed.

Booty call

Just saw the best bumper sticker that I've seen in a while:

"Asses of Evil"

Hee, hee!

Not my 'Idol'

So there's this guy. I see him every few weeks or so when I'm out and about. He's always jogging (badly) and singing (loudly, and to a degree of awfulness that makes him look as graceful as a gazelle by comparison). He sings along to music playing through his headphones, so I wonder if he has no idea how truly, desperately awful his voice is, or if he simply doesn't care.

The first time I encountered this anti-"American Idol," it was a lovely, sunny spring day in Myrtle Edwards Park. It took me a moment to recognize the song that he was so thoroughly slaughtering. Then, much to my horror, I realized that the victim of this crime-against-music was my much beloved U2...for this dark chanteur was warbling "Sunday, Bloody Sunday" ("...how long, how long must we sing this song...").

If that was my most horrifying encounter with this entleman. The funniest was one evening months later. I was walking Doofus, and in the distance I saw someone jogging. Then, BAM, the unidentified figure was down on the ground, rolling like a ball (or a sow bug). Then, BAM, the figure was up, jogging again. Then the figure drew closer...and I heard the (bad) singing. Oh, mirth and merriment!

The only reason I thought of this odd soul today, when I haven't seen him for weeks, was that I was out on a lunchtime walkabout when I found a match made in musical heaven (OK, hell) for Mr. Songbird. She was standing on a streetcorner on Pine Street, headphones firmly on, singing with a voice so purely awful that it should never, ever be allowed outside her shower. Maybe I should start MoodyBabe's Dating Service for Musical Misfits?

Drama king

I work in a very small department in the Seattle office of a national company. Which makes things difficult on days, like today, when my boss throws himself into the ring of office politics like a boxer hellbent on muscling his way to a victory. And that's not enough...he has to drag his few underlings into the fracas for the instant replays.

It's so infuriating to hear him be rude and almost nasty over the phone to a coworker in another city, then suddenly become all joking and friendly halfway through, as if to say "I've beaten you down, and now that I am clearly dominant, I can extend niceties to you from the security of my lofty position." I want to throttle him, truly.

So today, he sends a few rather combative e-mails to his boss, which he shares with his underlings. Very inappropriate. And then he goes a bit, well, manic, being extra-super-duper helpful and team-playerish to other collegues, as if he realized he'd gone a bit too far. It just makes me tired. It's one thing to be a drama queen, entirely another to work for a drama king. The prospect of working 24-7 to start my own business seems positively gleeful by comparison.

No, I don't want fries with that

I finally saw "Super Size Me" this weekend. While overall I wasn't really surprised by how the movie unfolded (eat fast food three times a day for a month and you will gain weight and trash your health), there were many moments in the film that I did find somewhat shocking.

I was disturbed by the scenes in a school cafeteria, where kid after kid went through the lunch line buying crap like fries, chips and candy bars. One of the cafeteria workers, who is clearly either extremely naive or extremely stupid, when asked if she thought it was a good idea that kids are eating nothing but junk for lunch, said something about how the kids are just buying that stuff as, like, a side dish to their brown bag lunch. So they track down some of these kids at their tables. There are no brown bag lunches. These kids are dining on lunches of chips, candy and soda! Let's see, how many essential nutrients might we find in such a lunch? Can you say, NONE! To quote one of my favorite lines in the film "Say Anything," spoken by Joan Cusak to her screen/real-life brother, John: "There's no food in your food."

It's not as if I and my friends were paragons of nutrition when we were adolescents, and certainly we consumed our fair share of junk, but we were never that bad. Perhaps that's because our cafeteria wasn't "brought to us by" junk food manufacturers.

If you saw this movie in the theater, it's worth renting the DVD for the bonus features alone. There's a nifty interview with the author of "Fast Food Nation," and a scary and quite disgusting experiement in which the film's hero/subject conducts a little experiment: He takes several glass jars, placing into each one a different McDonald's food product (fries, chicken sandwich, fish sandwich and various burgers). In two, he also places a burger and an order of fries from a non-fast food burger joint. The viewer is then treated to glimpses of how the various food items, um, biodegrade (or, in one horrifying twist, FAILS to biodegrade) over a 10-week period. Really, really gross.

In fact, this movie might be worth owning as a motivating tool to stay on the nutrition straight and narrow. Feel yourself sliding into unhealthy habits? Just pop this little baby into the player and you'll be back on the wagon in no time. If things get desperate, fast forward to the graphic footage of the gastric bypass surgery in action. Bon appetit!

All play and no work

As part of my quest to become a professional baker/cafe owner, I attended an open house this weekend for a local culinary program. I knew before I got there that I would likely be one of the few non-high school seniors attending; perhaps that's why I didn't get the memo about the de rigueur open house uniform of slightly sloppy flare-leg jeans, hooded sweatshirt, and studded leather belt. By comparison, I was dressed to the nines in my black Essential Trousers and pale green Perfect Fit T-shirt (both from Old Navy), topped with a black V-neck cardigan I got on sale at The Bon (soon to be Macy's) last year and nicely accented by my favorite lug sole mary janes from Nordstrom and a black-and-white silk scarf, also a sale purchase from The Bon.

Not only did my attire set me apart visually from my would-be future fellow students, but apparently my, um, advancing years did, too (let's put it this way...I could be these kids' mother, if I was several months pregnant when I graduated from high school). I received no attention as I stood patiently near the check-in desk, waiting for two young workers to stop chatting with each other. Finally, one of them looked at me, surprised, and asked, "Oh, are you here to...check in?" Indeed.

Far from being offended, I found this quite amusing (it doesn't hurt that I wouldn't be 18 again even if someone paid me...well, maybe if they paid me a LOT). I almost giggled, which I supposed might have made me appear younger. Or maybe just mental.

I truly relished being a full-grown adult as I listened to the youngsters' nervous questions about housing and other such details. But perhaps the single greatest comment of the day came from right behind me, when one young woman said to her mother: "I wish I could just go to college and then not have to work." Ha! Get in line, sister! If she feels this way at such a tender age, I wonder how she will feel once she actually has to earn a living? Maybe she'll become a throwback to a previous era and go for her "Mrs. Degree."

Of course, if He Who Puts Up With Me and I actually make it through the arduous process of launching our own business, I fully expect that I will be working roughly 14 hours a day, seven days a week. A far cry from the 40 hours a week I log now. Clearly I am not just moody, I am also insane.

Teach your children well

I just got back from walking my dumb-as-a-post golden retriever (who will from this point forward be known as Doofus), cheered by a conversation I overheard.

As we walked down the sidewalk, a family with two small children approached. As we got closer, I heard the mother tell her kids, in a patient, educational sort of tone, that "not all dogs are friendly." Now, Doofus is one of the friendliest dogs around (almost to a fault) and has a very gentle temperment, as do most golden retrievers (although, sadly, due to some irresponsible breeders tainting the gene pool, a bad-tempered golden does occur more often than it use to). But I cringe everytime we're out in public and someone practically lunges at him, hand extended. How in the hell does that person know that my dog is friendly? How do they know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he doesn't bite? The answer: they don't. They assume...and when you assume, you make an ass out of u and me. (Don't get me started on people who give Doofus FOOD without asking first!)

This sort of grabby behavior on the part of strangers happens more often than you might think. With both children and adults. Which is why I was thrilled to hear this mother's little sidewalk teaching moment. And why I am kicking myself right now for not taking a similar moment to stop and thank her. Oh, well. At least, when someone ASKS if they can pet Doofus, I never fail to say "Yes, you can, and thank you for asking first...I wish more people did!" (Along a similar line, I always thank cashiers when the actually ask to see my photo I.D., just like it tells them to in big black letters on the back of my credit card.)

So please, gentle reader, if you have ever reached out to a strange dog without first asking the dog's person, think about what you are doing. Even if a dog is generally friendly, it may be caught off guard by you, a stranger, and lash out. And, perhaps more importantly, remember to teach your children well.

Why MoodyBabe?

When, inspired by a friend's blog, I decided to get off the stick and start my own, the first thing I did was did a little Google search. Some wonderful advice ensued, including a few treatsies on the importance of choosing the right blog name. (I especially enjoyed the advice on Bad Example.) I considered choosing a name that tapped my two current interests, baking and bellydance. But what if those interests didn't pass the test of time? Becuase this blog would be about me, my frustrations, and my perspectives as an observer and participant of life, it needed a personal name.

How lucky, then, that in honor of Chinese New Year, my boss hopped onto a Chinese astrology Web site. He looked up my sign, the Monkey, and much hilarity ensued. Apparently I am "a worse bundle of contraditions and inconsistencies" than the male half of my sign. And, I have "numerous faces, each of them possessing its own counterpart." The rest of the lengthy profile only expanded on those themes, until my boss was laughing so hard he nearly fell out of his chair.

So fine. So I'm moody. That's a fact I've know for some time now, something I attribute less to any birth sign, Western or Chinese, and more to the fact that I inherited my mother's emotional nature and my father's impatience, stubborness and quick temper. I try not to take my moodiness for granted. I try to reign it in enough that it does the least amount of damage to those around me. As with most things, some days are better than others.

One small step...

OK. I finally did it. I created my own blog. But because it's after midnight and I'm tired, I'll have to figure out how to properly operate this puppy tomorrow.