Barb’s Burblings

If you want to visit a site that you make you laugh until you cry, check out Hyperbole and a Half. Seriously, it brings me nothing but joy. And insight into my life. Seriously, this spiral (from “This Is Why I’ll Never Be an Adult“) happens to me on an all-too-regular basis at work:

The longer I procrastinate on returning phone calls and emails, the more guilty I feel about it. The guilt I feel causes me to avoid the issue further, which only leads to more guilt and more procrastination. It gets to the point where I don’t email someone for fear of reminding them that they emailed me and thus giving them a reason to be disappointed in me.

Then the guilt from my ignored responsibilities grows so large that merely carrying it around with me feels like a huge responsibility. It takes up a sizable portion of my capacity, leaving me almost completely useless for anything other than consuming nachos and surfing the internet like an attention-deficient squirrel on PCP.

Do yourself a favor and check out the archives. Made of awesome, and perfect for a Sunday night.

I am what is wrong with this country.

I realized this yesterday, as I sat in my car, shoving a Quarter Pounder in my mouth. I drove from Silver Spring to Bethesda to drop off some work during my lunch break and stopped at McDonald’s on the way back. There I was, sitting in my car, combining our love of our cars and fast food with workaholic tendencies. Huzzah!

Well, it was a nice break in the day.

Usually when I’m back home after a vacation, I’m looking forward to going back to work. I like the routine, I like having stuff to do, I like what I do, I like my coworkers.

I spent the last week in Bethany Beach, Delaware. And man, I did not want to come back. And now I’m at home, and…I want to go back to Bethany. I had a routine. It involved getting up around 9:30 and then figuring out whether to do the beach or the pool in the morning. It involved a lot of reading and watching baseball at night. It involved hanging out with my sister’s family and my parents. It involved not thinking about work, which has been stressful lately.

In 12 hours, I’ll be at the office. But until then, my mind is still at the beach.

I had been happily ensconced in my air-conditioned office. And then I had to leave. Oh, that was a mistake. The brain forgets unpleasant things, so I was unprepared when I walked outside and into the sauna of this heat wave. “Unpleasant” doesn’t really do it justice. And the breeze? Not helping. I was standing on a corner by an idling bus and wasn’t pleased with the waves of exhaust bearing down on me.

And then I crossed the street. That wasn’t exhaust from the bus. It was just the wind. Yay!

(Later, I was hit with exhaust from a couple of busses. Ugh.)

I’ve been pretty busy lately. For instance, I recently went to San Francisco for a conference. I became obsessed with the fog, and took approximately 100 pictures that look like this:

And yes, this IS from my hotel window

Also, I had cupcakes!

The smores one was FANTASTIC. I highly recommend Cako Bakery if you’re in town.

At some point, I may start to post more regularly again. Whee!

A guy at the First Ladies exhibit totally made my day. In the first room of the exhibit, there’s a picture of each First Lady, her name–including her maiden name, and the years she served as First Lady. Most people ask about the women listed as “daughter-in-law” or “niece” (generally because the wife of the president died before he took office; the exception is James Buchanan, the only president who never married), but I always want someone to ask me why Eleanor Roosevelt only has one name*. And this guy did! I was SO happy.

Of course, he also made my day when he explained that he wears Yankees gear in Rhode Island not because he’s a baseball fan, but to annoy Red Sox fans. “I don’t care about baseball,” he said, “I just hate Red Sox fans.” Man, if this guy wasn’t there with his wife and kids, I would’ve given him my number.

Also making the day exciting was the presence of vomit hiding in the corner of the exhibit. Fun! I got to track down security to have it cleaned up. Apparently a docent was there when it happened and told the folks at the information desk, but didn’t actually do anything about it. This was the perfect counter to yesterday, when someone at Ford’s had a medical emergency and we had to call 911, and I spent intermission telling people to using the bathrooms in the balcony or the museum. Never a dull moment!

* Her maiden name was also Roosevelt; she and Franklin were fifth cousins. Teddy Roosevelt was Eleanor’s uncle, and actually gave her away at her wedding. So, really, she should be listed as Eleanor Roosevelt Roosevelt.

I was in downtown DC on Monday and Tuesday for a class, and since it was so nice, a coworker and I went for a walk during lunch both days. The classes were only a couple of blocks from the White House, so we walked over to Lafayette Park, where I bored her with descriptions of the history of Washington and the presidency. On the second day, we were talking about cities that we liked, and I was talking about how much I like DC and why–not intimidating, good theater scene, free museums. “Plus,” I said, “you never know what you’re going to run into when you’re downtown.”

We arrived at Lafayette Park and found a policeman moving people away from Pennsylvania Avenue into the park proper. There was a mob of cameramen and sound guys, and we saw a reporter talking intently to the police officer. We tried to figure out what was going on; there was a line of people in military uniforms right at the fence, and a truck by them. Our initial thought–before we really noticed the service members–was that maybe President Obama would be driving up or something. (The last time I had a class at that location, I ran into his motorcade.) After asking around, though, it turned out that the service members had chained themselves to the fence to protest Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. We hung around for a bit, then went back to class.

Like I said, it’s always something when you’re downtown. And then I found a mention of it on Politico; apparently the whole “pushing the media away from the protestors” thing wasn’t supposed to happen. You can actually see me at the end of the video, if you know what I’m wearing. And recognize me from the back. Whee!

When I woke up this morning, my first thought was, pretty much, “Thank God I took tomorrow off.” It’s been just a crazy weekend. I took Friday off, too. (The only thing that makes the gap between Presidents Day and Memorial Day manageable is 4-day weekends.) But in the past 48 hours, I’ve been to two baseball games, gone to a parade rehearsal, been in a parade (which involved waking up at 5:45 Saturday morning), volunteered at the American History Museum (during peak tourist season), and hosted my dad. I actually got home from the museum this afternoon and took a quick nap–otherwise, I wasn’t making it through the day.

It was one of those weekends where everything has been really, really fun…but totally exhausting. So it’ll be nice to have a day to sleep in, hang around the house, watch some tv, play with the Internet-enabled Wii (yay!), and go to another game. (Oh yes. Three games in four days. Maybe the third time will be the charm and they’ll actually win tomorrow?) (Although I’ll have to distract myself from the sorrow of my boy going on the DL.)

God bless my large vacation day reserves.

I have a cold. Well, I guess that’s what you’d call it. Luckily there’s no coughing (I left that to the half of my department who have some upper respiratory infection; they were out the end of last week and have been in the office this week, walking around like zombies); it’s manifested itself mostly in an insanely stopped up nose. I’ve been living off of Sudafed nasal spray, which works so well that I feel fine, so I’m convinced that I’m no longer sick, so I stop taking it…and then I lack the ability to breathe. And then I get winded walking to the elevator at work.

But after a couple of weeks of this, concerned about the warning on the bottle that I shouldn’t take it more than 3 days and convinced that really, this thing has to have run its course, right?, I decided to stick to my regular Nasonex. So the past couple of days have involved me blowing my nose a lot and having brief periods of being able to breathe normally. (Huzzah!)

The strange thing is, even though sometimes just walking around makes me feel crappy, I was still able to go to tap and dance to a medley of songs from High School Musical over and over and over and still feel pretty good.

I don’t understand my body.

Growing up, we always called our parents’ friends by their last names–Mr. and Mrs. Whoever. A few years ago, the wife of my dad’s best friend passed away. In a couple of months, my dad and I are going to go to an O’s game with his best friend and the best friend’s new lady friend. And I just realized that it’s going to be strange–not only meeting her, but…what do I call her?

The best friend will always be Mr. Best Friend to me. There’s no way I could call him by his first name. I can’t change after 31 years of calling him Mr. Best Friend. But I’m an adult now, and generally, when meeting other adults–even adults my parents’ age–I call them by their first names. I guess once you go to work and start having coworkers whose ages run the gamut, you kind of get out of the habit of the formal “Mister” or “Missus” or “Miss” or “Ms”. (Yes, obviously, there are times when I do still use “Mister” or whatever. Hmm, and I guess if I were to meet the parents of a future beau, I’d probably use “Mister” and “Missus” in that situation, too. But for the most part, it’s first names.) (I mean, really, a lot of my coworkers are near my parents’ age. Ditto people in my tap class.)

But I can’t imagine being able to call Best Friend’s Girlfriend by her first name. So I think I’m going to do what one does in this situation…just never address her directly as anything. Make eye contact when talking so I never have to figure out whether it’s “Girl” or “Miss Friend.”