Moving in Real Time

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Movin' on up, huh? In real time, of course. ;)

Drive Me Crazy

Those of you who know me personally know that my life is governed by a little thing I call "Allison law." It's sorta like Murphy's Law: anything bad that can happen, will happen. In my world, it's more like "anything insanely frustrating, irritating, inconvenient, semi-gross, mind-numbing, or of the highest unlikelihood that can happen, will happen." I have countless stories of evidence for this law, but my most recent I feel obliged to share.

I have a slightly unhealthy love for my Jeep. It's royal blue and (I believe) so freakin' cute. However, I had an incredibly strong desire last night to drive it into the lake. On a few occasions in the last few months, the car alarm on my Jeep has sounded off at random....usually only once or twice in a row and always in mid-afternoon. I usually just hit the alarm button on my remote and turn it off when this happens. However, this futile exercise was of no help as my typically-freakin' cute Jeep proceeded to sound its alarm constantly for about two hours straight at 3am last night. No jeep thiefs, way-ward cats, or crazy people in sight....it just apparently decided to make a lot of commotion for no reason.

Ya know how everything is more intense at night? Like, hearing a little noise can have you convinced that the world's worst serial killer is breaking into your house. Well, flashing headlights and a siren that would wake up people in Spain is a hundred times worse at night. I laid in my bed, remote in hand with finger poised on the only temporarily-silencing off button and pleaded with any available higher power to cease the insanity and allow me and everyone in my complex (whom I'm certain now hate me) to get some decent sleep.

There are two parts to the Allison Law that apply here: one, naturally my jeep's alarm decides to become positively unstoppable in the middle of the night, when nothing can be done about it. (If someone else was here that could have given me a ride back, I would have at least driven it out to the lake and left it there to beep it's freakin' heart out til morning.) Two, of course this inexplicable error occurs just three months after my factory warranty expires. So it will now cost me some crazy amount of money to fix/disable/remove-and-crush this annoying part that essentially serves no other purpose than to drive everyone in earshot to the brink of their sanity.

Car alarms should be outlawed. I'm starting a petition...

No Man's Land

I have decided that supermarkets and grocery stores are officially "no man's land." This is, apparently, the hangout of choice for the people that time forgot...when they are not, ya know, hanging out at the post office or the DMV.

During my last trip to the market, the dude in line behind me started interrogating me on "where the party was"...I bought 4 12-packs of coke (they were 4 for $10!) along with chips and a jar of salsa, which he kept inexplicably referring to as bean dip. "With all that bean dip (read: salsa) and coke, there must be a party going on...", he kept insisting. I"m not sure if this guy was attempting to flirt with me or something, but all I wanted to do was remove myself immediately from the checkout line with the creepy bean-dip-and-party-obsessed dude.

While at Costco last night, I found myself in an aisle with two other sets of people. One on the left and one on the right...thus blocking my way through. I was always under the impression that at this impasse, someone must take intiative and shuffle to allow for a clearing. Now, the lady on my left is off the hook for being oblivious because she was simultaneously shuffling a two-year-old and a gigundo case of applesauce. But chick-on-the-right...her ability to speak in some unidentifiable foreign language to her hubby is not reason enough to be oblivious to my need to pass. Granted they were in a pretty heated debate over tomato juice, but how long should I be required to wait for her to move her shopping cart to allow usually-polite-me to pass before it's acceptable for me to clock her with a nearby two-ton jar of pasta sauce?

While we are on the subject of shopping carts, I stumbled on this article on MSN the other day ( http://health.msn.com/dietfitness/articlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100165289). It states that the number one thing your grocery store doesn't want you to know is that the shopping carts have cooties. More cooties than public bathrooms, public phones, and escalators. Yuck. And while I have been known to push elevator buttons with my elbow and use all means possible to avoid touching public bathroom door handles, there is apparently no way for me to avoid the goo on the necessary-for-gathering shopping cart.

Note to self: Must look into online grocery delivery services....

1.2 seconds

How is it that, in some situations, the prep time and the payoff are wholly incongruous? For example, you plan...and scheme...and organize...and conspire for..... a birthday surprise party, only for the moment of surprise to last exactly 1.2 seconds...... a marriage proposal, which hopefully turns out well in 1.2 seconds...a contest award winner announcement, that generates clapping in 1.2 seconds (or shameful silence, one of the two). It takes exactly 1.2 eons to plan for 1.2 seconds of excitement.

This phenomenon unfortunately works in more than one direction. It also only takes 1.2 seconds for you to realize how big of an idiot you are....and 1.2 *indefinite-measurement-of-time* to reap the suckiness of your second. 1.2 seconds is all it takes to slice your hand open with a paring knife while chopping veggies (yea, I've done that). It takes 1.2 seconds for you to walk in your house only to realize that you forgot the one thing you went out for (yea, always do this too...do I remember that I went out for dish soap while I'm in the store? No, only 1.2 seconds after I walk in my front door with seven other sacks of stuff I didn't need).

And it only takes 1.2 seconds to slip on your front steps in your cute, if albeit uber-slick-bottomed, kitten heels. And bruise and cut both knees. And develop a baseball-sized lump on your ankle, minus one layer of skin, that requires a night of ice on your elevated foot. Yea, I did this. (I know, insert laugh-at-Al here.) So as I limped around today, and person after person asked me if I was sore from overdoing it at the gym, I had to admit my 1.2 seconds of idiotness. (And no, I don't lie about it and make up grandiose stories of mountainbiking and encountering a cougar or something...) Although I still maintain it wasn't my fault...damn those slick steps!

Drive-Thru Open....Sort of......

(Note: Prepare for a rant.)

Okay, so last week I pulled into a local fast food chain (I'll refrain from using the proper name, but the term "golden arches" comes to mind...) for a quick lunch fix for my and my sis. Now I realize this is the farthest thing from healthy I could grab for lunch, but sometimes a girl's gotta have french fries.

Anyway, I pull into the double-lane drive-thru and prepare to order. Every time I pull into one of those, I wonder what the point is. The double lane thing really just seems like an organized way for other people in the next lane to cut in line in front of you. I don't see how this is quicker for me really. However, this is not the subject of my rant today. I order extra value and happy meals for me, my sis, and her tots and wait patiently in line for our greasy, re-heated sustenance. I get to that third, or fourth, or whichever window where the actual food is present (sidenote: why do they have that first window when they always tell you to just go ahead and drive up to the second, third, etc window? Really this whole system seems off to me....) and I am told by window guy to "do him a favor and pull forward a bit to wait on our filet-o-fish."

I should preface this tale by saying every single time I've ever pulled forward to "wait," I've sat for about 6-8 minutes, watching a handful of other cars clear the line, until I finally give in and put the Jeep in 'park' and toodle into the place to gather the elusive, apparently un-deliverable, greasy, re-heated sustenance. This trip was no different. I marveled about how, without fail, the fast food people have managed to forget about that chick from the drive-thru waiting on a filet-o-fish again. Here is my rant: Doesn't this trip out of the car and into the restaurant sort of defeat the purpose of using the drive-thru line? After all, if I wanted to get out of my car, I would have just started this way. Just because the drive-thru system is totally inefficient doesn't mean I should have to be subjected to the same insanity of pointless exercises. This girl thinks ahead and generally chooses the more sensible approach.

And ya know what? Free, stale cherry pies doesn't excuse you people! I'm almost speechless by the insanity of it all....almost........

If It Rings True...

I have a lot of jewelry. And by a lot, I mean A LOT. Really more than I can truly keep up with...apparently.

Several months ago, I bought a red gemstone ring (it was cheap and most likely glass....but it was red.) I was so excited! I got tons of compliments because it was a little unusual. Plus, for some inexplicable reason, out of the 400 pounds of jewelry I do own, I didn't own anything red. And I thought I had solved this problem.

Until I got off the phone with my mom yesterday...

We were talking about jewelry, and I mentioned that I don't own any red jewelry---to which she responded, "Yes, you do...you bought that ring." (Sidenote: Don't ask me how she knows what jewelry I own...we often talk on the phone for five hours at a time...what else do you talk about?) I drew a total blank. What ring? I had no idea what she was talking about...until it hit me that I had bought a super-cool red ring I haven't seen for awhile. I have a really bad habit of shedding jewelry by mid-day and tossing it haphazardly in my purse, car, golf bag, on my sister's kitchen counter or a friend's coffee table. I knew this total disregard for careful placement could get me in trouble one day, but I'm a risk-taker so I guess it wasn't enough of a threat to change my behavior.

The worst part of this situation: losing the ring? Nope. Feeling like I have officially lost my mind given that I can't keep up with my stuff...or even remember it? No. It's the knowledge that I now own something to which I am clueless of its location. Finding it has now turned into my latest obsession--Investigating every pocket, drawer, shelf, crevice, nook, cranny and boytoy's coffee table for aforementioned missing ring. I keep having revelations of a place I haven't yet inspected while I'm showering or driving or waiting for a client. And I rush to check it only to come up emptyhanded. It's really quite sad...I will not have any decent sleep until this stupid ring surfaces...not cool.

I Knew It!!!

An article was published yesterday on msnbc.com ( Here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18805010/) about a study done at Miami University in Ohio which claims that it's easier to learn a person's name if his face matches it. Apparently we have built-in stereotypes of which facial features fit certain names.

All this time, I was a little worried that I was just insanely self-centered when I could not remember someone's name, especially in cases where I could only remember the name I subconciously assigned to them in lieu of their real name. There was a guy in one of my classes in college who suffered this fate; I had to bite my tongue to keep from calling him "Ryan" every time he greeted me. (I think his name was actually "Todd".) In my effort to avoid it, he usually only got "Hi..." from me. No potential name mix-ups there.

It's not just me!! I'm not just insanely self-centered (ok, maybe a little...but not because of this!). I now have scientific evidence that I cannot be held responsible for remembering the name you don't look like. Sucks to be you......