Good Facebook / Evil Facebook

This is a really long way for me to explain why I'm not sure Facebook is such a good thing....

I had a roommate in college. To be clear, she wasn't really a roommate in the traditional sense but our one and only foray into the world of subletting. My dear roommate from Seattle was my roommate for 3 years. She and I had the longest tenure in #5. This might explain why we were close to killing one another at various points. Then again, we could just as easily chalk that up to being female and our constant alcohol consumption. Anyway, some time in those 3 years she went back to the happy state of Seattle for an internship. We were sad to see her leave, but she came back with good stories and she had met a boy (who she later invited to her wedding, who I later got drunk and hooked up with, which I later found out she planned, who then interpreted my "if you're ever in town, look me up" as an actual invitation and invited himself to my beach house that summer. In retrospect perhaps that wasn't such a good use of her 6 months, but you know what they say about hind sight...I digress). So while she was off hooking-up with my future hook-up, myself and the other occupants of #5 had the distinct pleasure of living with the Sasquatch.

She was called Sasquatch because she had incredibly large misshapen feet. Feet are not easy to hide but she sure tried hard. Like many things, if you aren't a person of reasonable intelligence, your ideas generally don't materialize as planned. She would wear extra long jeans and let them hang down over her toes to hide her feet. As you may have guessed this didn't work very well and probably succeeded in drawing more attention, not less, to her feet. So now we've establish she's a bit backwards. Let's move on to flaky.

She also told us, almost immediately upon move in, that her nickname in high school was 31 flavors. Curious, but not alarming until she decided to elaborate. You see she was given this nickname because of the number of guys to which she had given head.

Hmmmm. Special.

Seeing her always made me think of this clip from the movie Clerks. Over the next few months we all had varied interactions with her. I thought she was an idiot but found her moderately entertaining. It was like sport trying to pimp her out to guys. At the bar where I worked I introduced her to the owner's son. He was a man whore and this meant she immediately disappeared to his home in NJ for a weekend of fun. I seem to recall this being the cause of a fight between her and our other roommate (who I'm sure will chime in when she reads this because she never forgets anything).

Another time I pawned her off on a guy we all knew well. He had to call us and ask that we come retrieve her after she overstayed her welcome. She had a nasty habit of turning the "morning walk of shame" into "the following evening walk of - I'm too stupid to be ashamed".

Then there was the time I made a bet with one of my guy friends that I could just mention to her that he was asking about her and she would be at his doorstep in under an hour. He took that bet and lo and behold she showed up. He couldn't get rid of her so he offered to walk her home. She accepted (but was likely confused about why he was offering considering she didn't want to go). Then as they were standing outside #5 she momentarily went upstairs at which point he begged me to help him get rid of her. I told him to run. He ran. Fast. That part was funny. The bizarre thing was her reaction. It went something like this:

Her: Where did Jeff go?
Me: Who? (feign ignorance)
Her: Jeff
Me: Oh. He had to go.
Her: Oh. (blink. blink.) Ok.

So it was no big shocker when we heard she finally got knocked up our senior year.

Fast forward 10 years. Against my better judgement I join Facebook. 372 friends later she connects to me. Apparently she started and couldn't stop. I count 4 children.

I email our other roommate.

Me: Guess who connected to me...31 flavors. You know she's going to find you next and connect to you.
Her: Why on earth would you have ever accepted her?
Me: Meh...she's 31 flavors...she's harmless. Stupid, but harmless.

So now we've established harmless. Let's talk about not harmless.

So for all my brother-in-law's ranting about putting my daughter's website up, I had to think of him when this happened. One day my mother called (as she always does when someone my age gets arrested in my hometown) and said, "Do you know a guy named Mike D.?". Of course I do (I graduated with just over 100 people). Well he was arrested for having 6 gazillion pictures of naked kids on his computer.

Awesome.

Guess who is on Facebook. Where I post pictures of my kid. Where everyone posts pictures of their kids. Where creepy pervert dude who looks at kiddie porn is connecting to everyone.

Ick. Evil Facebook.

Hitchcock's Birds ain't got Nuttin' on my Birds

We've all been grossed out at one point or another. The guy on the subway who coughs without covering his mouth or the one who wipes his nose with his hand and then grabs the same rail you're clinging to for dear life. People who only rinse in the bathrooms, people who don't wash at all, those same people touching the door handles that you touch. Chewing of pens. The hacking up of phlegm and spitting onto public streets where it gets on my shoes and I bring it back to my house. Oh dear....I think I just threw up a little in my mouth so now I'm going to stop. You get the picture.

Generally speaking I'm opposed to anything antibacterial. This may seem in conflict with my previous rant about people and their germs. If I were a real anti-antibacterial woman I would belly up to the dirty people and relish the opportunity to strengthen my immune system. I just can't do it, I'm too grossed out. So while I don't go out of my way to come into contact with bacteria and viruses, I also don't try to scrub every last bit away.

This is actually harder than it sounds. Have you ever tried to find non anti-bacterial hand soap? There's all of one option in the liquid hand soap variety. Every single cleaning product has started throwing in a little antibacterial somethin', somethin' for good measure. Another good reason to go natural. My husband carries those little antibacterial disinfectants with him when we travel. It must be a doctor thing - something about hospital germs and carrying illness from one patient to the next. As much as I like to make fun of him for this peculiar habit, it has come in handy more than once. As a result of incidents like those listed below I've relaxed the ban while traveling.

No soap in the airplane bathroom? No problem!
Big fat dude next to you just sneezed all over himself and then proceeded to touch everything around you? No problem!
A scary bum spits a half eaten gummy bear in your hair on the street in Chicago and then runs after you and throws her dirty shoe at you? No problem! (100% true, you just can't make this stuff up)

So now you understand that I'm sort of a germ-a-phobe at war with myself. My latest activity on the home front is to wage war against my neighbor two floors up. Not necessarily the person per se, but their bird feeders. This person has a collection of illegal (per our apartment bylaws) feeders that swing wildly from their illegal window boxes. For the life of me I can't figure out what pleasure they even derive from these since they hang below the balcony. We're now knee deep in discarded seeds and fallen feed on our balcony. As a result we now have a bird party on our balcony every day. The bird crap on our railing is threatening to take over and it's starting to pile up on the cement floor as well.

Hey! Don't let me hear any crying! These aren't cute little song birds, they're huge flying rat like pigeons. It's a damn infestation!

So my husband, being the helpful person that he is, happened to mention a while back all the nasty illnesses you can get from pigeon feces. I now imagine dried poop particles flaking off and flying into my nose, leaving me for dead. Think I'm kidding? Try one of these beauties on for size:

Cryptococcosis - causes acne like ulcers on the skin (bad rash? I think NOT)
Histoplasmosis - flu like symptoms, fever, death and in some cases blindness (at least 2 out of 4 don't cause permanent damage - right?)
Toxoplasmosis - central nervous system damage

and my personal favorite.....

Ornithosis - fever, chills, fatigue, a rash and lung problems such as shortness of breath and a cough. It can also lead to rales, which are small clicking, bubbling sounds coming from a portion of the lung.

Clicking sounds from a portion of my lung? Are we living in a 3rd world country?? Next thing you know the kids in the building will be kicking around a dead chicken in the courtyard and we'll all die from Bird Flu.

I have no idea who lives two floors up. With my luck it's probably an old woman whose only joy in life is waiting for the birds every day. You know what? I don't care. I can live with stealing her joy, I can't deal with the birds. Curiously though, I'm starting to sense that the birds have started exacting their revenge. Today as I was walking home from work, a bird took a big crap on me and missed my head by about 1/2 an inch. It landed squarely on my scarf, dangerously close to my mouth. Perhaps that was just a warning strike.

"Hey lady, there's more where that came from, back off the old broad who feeds us!"

All I have to say is, "BRING IT ON you diseased flying rats". I'm bigger and I can kick you with my impossibly pointy not-so-practical shoes.

When Bad Suits Go Worse...

I would like to ask a simple question, "Do some people not own mirrors?". Sounds silly but it's a question I ponder because it's the only reason I can come up with that would explain some of the atrocity I see walking to work, walking around work and in the actual office. This question is second only to, "Are you blind?" and "Have you no common sense?".

At one point in my life I had a large staff. During my tenure HR established a business casual dress code. Enforcing this thing was like a living nightmare. It wasn't so much explaining to people the difference between a shirt and a t-shirt that was challenging, it was the conversations about wearing a bra, off the shoulder shirts not being work appropriate, your pants shouldn't be so tight I can see your underwear (or lack thereof) and my personal favorite - if your thong is hanging out of your pants that's not good....yes, even if it only happens when you sit down.

I came from the consulting world where life was easy - wear a suit - all day, every day. If your client is business casual, wear a suit anyway. You can never go wrong in a suit. As a result, I had a closet full of suits and so I found this new environment baffling. I didn't know how to dress myself so I turned into my grandmother and wore sweater sets every day. Sure, I'll admit to the guilty pleasure of "Jeans Friday". There's nothing better than pulling on a comfy pair of jeans and rolling into the office. I've since moved back to a corporate environment and I was sad about Fridays but I thought at least I wouldn't have to look at thongs and sloppy cleavage.

No such luck. It seems my old partner was mistaken - you can go wrong in a suit, very wrong. Especially when said suit has a skirt that barely covers your ass and the little shred of lingerie under the jacket is the only thing preventing you from a Janet Jackson like wardrobe malfunction. I wonder if these people look around and think about that old Sesame Street sketch about One of These Kids is Doing their Own Thing.

I decided to think through the possible reasons for looking like a tramp at work, other than 1. not having a mirror, 2. being blind or 3. having no common sense:

1. You didn't bring a change of clothes with you to the bar last night and your one night stand didn't have an alarm clock to get you home early enough to change.
2. You had a massive house fire over the weekend and all of your suits went up in flames. The only place open the next day was Forever 21 and so you were forced into that thing that many little polyesters had to die to produce.
3. You're sleeping with your boss and looking like a tart is part of your yearly performance goals.
4. You're part of a new reality television show and your immunity challenge is to get some unsuspecting chump to violate the office sexual harassment policy.
5. You've just been diagnosed with an incurable disease and with 24 hours to live you're looking to go out with a bang!
6. Your "office" IS actually the street corner.

So now that I think about it there really are some legitimate reasons to look like that. I'm glad I took the time to think about it. Perhaps it will make me more tolerant of such visual assault in the future.

Note to Self: Wear Practical Shoes so You Can Run from the Bad Man

I just walked home from work. It's less than 10 blocks and since I was in not-so-sensible shoes I was concentrating on not tripping on the pavement and knocking out my teeth (a phobia of mine stemming from early childhood, story for another day). Somewhere around the 5 block marker a weird guy looks over and says "Hey, how are you?". I say "Fine thank you" and check my left hand to make sure I've remembered to wear my wedding band. Ring on - check. Next I thought he had mistaken me for someone he knew. My hope faded as the blocks passed.

Block 1: I learned he'd had a long day and now had to go to school

Block 2: He has off for Columbus Day but he was bummed because he had to paint his house. However his friend was coming over to help. He hasn't had off for Columbus Day since high school.

Block 3: Are they giving you the day off? he asks. I said "who?". (I thought this might be a good way to point out that we don't know each other) He said "your work." (No luck, he is fully aware he is talking to a stranger) He works for PNC. I asked him if Blackrock was still in the same building or had they moved to the Merrill office. He asked me how I had known that (in a weird accusatory way like I knew industry secrets); he's going to check his notes from the last meeting (uh, didn't that happen like a year ago??)

Block 4: He wants to get into securities or foreign trading.

Block 5: He was saying something, I wasn't listening because I was fast approaching my front door and I didn't want him to see where I lived. I decided at this point to walk past my front door and around the block. I said good-bye and tried not to run (not that it was possible in my 3 inch heels anyway).

This was the second time in less than a week that someone trapped me to tell me weird things about themselves. This past weekend I went to a bridal shower. Everyone knows that even the nicest shower is painful enough. I made it though, won a prize at shower bingo and thought I was home free. Then enters the groom's father. I now know the following:

1. Times were tough in '67 when he got married, no one gave him nice stuff like this, the best gift he got was $10.
2. He hasn't spoken to his brother in 10 years
3. His mother died and screwed up her will
4. He bought his brother out of his share of the mother's house for $70K
5. His real estate agent took a commission on that of $3500 (criminal!)
6. Same real estate agent had the house on the market for 9 months, advised him to take $250K
7. Had to pay capital gains on the house the following year because it was "bought" for $70K when he purchased it from his brother and sold for $250K
8. New owner sold the place for over $500K only a year later without making any improvements
9. His mother didn't gift any of her money to him or his brother and they had to pay tax on all of it.
10. He bought his first house for $32K and put $18K down but because his father paid him in cash he couldn't prove his income and the bank wouldn't qualify him for a colonial. He had to take a bi-level but in retrospect this was a good thing because he only has a few steps now.
11. After paying mortgage payments for 2 years he went to the bank to see how much he owed and basically hadn't made a dent in the principle. He was angry about the interest and so he went home, got the cash and paid off the loan.
12. And finally, his mother shouldn't have died. They brought four ambulances and none of them had defibrillator paddles on them. Had she not died he's quite certain she would have sorted out the will, the money and the house in time to die.

About 45 minutes later his wife intervened and told him he had to go home. I walked back to the house and found his three children and the bride-to-be laughing hysterically about the fact that he had trapped me for 45 minutes. He apparently chooses one unsuspecting female at every event to corner and torture. They also told me that their mother gets insanely jealous of him talking to young women. They also described their parents as Archie & Enid, if that gives you any perspective. Great.....making friends already.

Why do people feel the need to share their lives with total strangers? I guess I could ask myself the same question since I'm here blogging away for the world to see. I think the difference is I won't likely see all of you at a wedding in 3 months.

So when you feel tempted to do the "over share" just remember that the person on the other end may have a blog and your bizarre behavior will be forever memorialized on the Internet.

Technology is the Devil

Good god, technology is the DEVIL. Yet another installation of the stupidity that abounds in my life. (see earlier post on the cell phone incident). Anyway, a few weeks ago I got this idea from LinkedIn that I could find friends by searching for their email address. Since it's the one thing that people really can't avoid in the silly little website we call myspace. So after spending way too long looking people up I started snooping. *Insert cliche about curiosity and the cat.* I decided that it would be a good idea to see what this person who we'll call SWM was up to (protecting the identity of the not so innocent)

The problem was I couldn't remember which email service they used. I go to that nifty search feature and I enter one address and nothing comes up. Then I click in the box, delete the first .com and put in the second.com. This is where it gets ugly. Myspace, much like Microsoft, automatically does things that one might ordinarily find helpful. It assumed that because I couldn't find the email that I might wish to invite this "friend" that I've searched on. And so my trigger finger being faster than my brain hit the button to the right thinking I'm searching again on the new email address and instead I end up clicking invite. As soon as it happened I realized what I had done and freaked.

So what does any normal person do, they email the help site to see if there's a way to stop it. Alas, it takes myspace about 20 days to respond and needless to say I was out of luck. So then I think, "well, perhaps it wasn't the right email address, maybe nothing happened. Maybe, just maybe there is a kind God out there who will prevent this email from reaching SWM and I'll be spared the problem of dealing with the aftermath".

No such luck.

Weeks go by, I forget about it until one day a little note appears that I have a new message. SMW is indeed out there and he has now responded. I damn near had a heart attack. After hyperventilating, I sent a polite message back saying "oh, just wondering how you're doing, blah, blah, blah, hope all is well". To the casual observer this may seem like not such a big deal however if anyone recalls my story about a series of incidents involving SWM, you'll understand why this is disturbing on a whole new level.

So the moral of the story is, don't go looking for something...you just may find it. Oh, and technology is the devil.