Lockers!?

Once upon a time, there was a little girl who would watch a lot of English movies and sitcoms, read several high-school novels etc. And invariably she would end up thinking how cool it was that the American kids didn't have to carry huge loads of books to school. They just had lockers! Cool lockers with a lot of pictures on the inside. Battered lockers against which the school's jocks would lean and flirt with the eyelash-batting swooning female fans. Rigged-nerd-lockers that were waiting to spill out the awesomely gruesome stuff that the school bully had stashed in there as a prank. And invariably those damsel-in-distress lockers that would stay jammed until someone who you have a crush on (or vice versa) comes and opens it for you.. Ah, lockers.

But all that was once upon a time. Right here, right now, in la-la-land.. I stand looking at my locker in desperation. Face it, I've never owned a locker before! But the idea was so cool that I got myself one at work. To stash a spare set of clothes just in case I ripped/snagged my pant, or God forbid sprayed myself with a batch of epoxy like one of those B-grade-sci-fi-horrors at midnight. And then, 'Fly-style' or last-week's-episode-of-Heroes-Mohinder-style, I'd just mutate and wreak havoc on society, wuhahaha. (That’s my version of the evil-laugh, by the way).

Anyhow.. I got my locker - one of those styles where the combination lock is a part of the door itself. And you just enter the combination, shimmy the latch a bit, and voila, open sesame. But sadly, what happened was far from it. I tried, and tried.. add a dozen 'and tried's to the statement.. and I gave up. After a week or so, I caught hold of one of the women who share the locker room and asked her to show me how. She did it so easily. I watched and thanked her profusely for educating this locker-ingenue. And then once she left, I decided to try it again. And what do you know!! No luck.

Three months have passed since then. Today, with renewed vigor, I stood there trying to open up my combination lock. No success. I got back and researched it online.. Google, eHow, wikiHow. OMG, how tough is it to open a damned locker? And I still struggle in vain.

Its me against the bleedy locker. Me, in all my scrunched-up-face, hope-nobody-is-watching, I-have-a-Masters-in-ChemE-damn-you-evil-locker, fervently-Googling-"Tips to Open Lockers", getting-ready-to-kick-the-locker-door glory..

The score is 0-22.

Serves me right!

Sucker!

What do you tell someone after you're married to them? The minute the vows or garland exchange or whatever culturally significant act in a ceremony takes place? I don't know what the Etiquette Book or something like that says. I know what I did say though.. I looked at B, straight in the eye, and said: "SUCKER". Of course, only loud enough so he could hear :)

But I'm running ahead of myself here; a month has elasped since my last post.. In a gist: two weeks of frantic preparations for a wedding ceremony (this includes me barking at B like a rabid dog 70% and vice versa 30%), invitations, make-up trials, dress shopping, airport pickups, accomodation for out of town guests, and what not! In the end, it all flashed right before you in a matter of hours, and it was done!

End result: One small wedding ceremony with 75 of our close friends and family, a lot of color and fun, some goof-ups here and there, and quite a few good pictures from the photographer!

But no Nan :(

What is it?

The end? Or the beginning?

"The first one wasn't a mistake, the second one was, make sure there isn't any third whatsoever..."

Wise words, from two unbelievable people.

Heebie-jeebies

Rashes ALL OVER the face. Just great! Now I look like some itsy-bitsy organism decided to plough my face and seed it! I look like an idiot. And I feel worse. I should book an appointment with the doctor, but what the heck. She is hardly going to do anything. Basically, life sucks, big time.

I hear this voice inside saying "Sssssslllleeeeepppppp.. ssssllleeepppp". My eyes are sinking into my head and I'm trying so hard to stay awake. My limbs aren't working in conjunction with each other.

Annoying people are asking me annoying questions. Everything around me is annoying right now. The phone ringing, the stupid central air vent making its standard noise, the sun being so bright outside, it glinting off my fugly violet shirt today, plus the fact that it is only 2.53 and I cannot leave for the day just yet. Enough with today already. Come on!

Finally, the car.

I know what I said in my previous post. I did decide on the Mini Cooper, and was about to book it. Almost there. BUT, they have a 2 month plus lead time.. Imagine that! No car for 2 months after you order it. Blasphemy. So I tried everything. Calling up every dealer in Chcagoland, Cincinati, Milwaukee, and Detroit! NO MINI COOPERS ON THE LOT. Sucked. And then I gave up.

Walked in to the Honda Dealer (gave him a heads-up in the morning that he simply MUST save atleast one car for us for the day) and saw this baby. The only remaining car for the day. And until whenever the next lot came in. And it was love at first sight. Not the red I had imagined, not the sleek black, not boring greay or beige. A sleek and classy "Royal Blue Pearl". Sigh.. I test drove it, and decided then and there to take it!

Forget the hassles with financing. It was all worth it :)

Mini love.

I am in love. With the Mini Cooper.

What a car, what cuteness :) Such a class act, in such a small package. I'm so leaning toward this as my final choice that I'm very surprised. I'm side-lined by the fact that I went in to check out the standard Hondas and Mazdas, and now here I am, hung up on the Coop.

Itching to test drive it come Monday. Woohoo.

To falling off the theater seat.

King Julian, what are they? What are they!

They are aliens. Savage aliens from the savage future.
They've come to kill us! And take our women!
And our precious meadows!

Get up, Mort. Do not be near the King's feet, okay?

Shh! We're hiding. Be quiet everyone. Including me.
Shh! Who's making that noise? Oh, it's me again.

~

Presenting your royal highness our illustrious King Julian the self proclaimed Lord of the Lemur etc. etc. Hurray everybody.

- He's got style!
- What's he like, King of the kiwi pigs?
- I think it's a squirrel.

Welcome, giant pansies! Please feel free to bask in my glow!

- Definitely a squirrel.
- Yep, a squirrel.

We thank you with enormous gratitude for chasing away the Foosa.

- The Hoosa?

The Foosa. They're always annoying us by trespassing, interrupting our parties, and ripping our limbs off.

- Yes, sounds good. Look, we're just - We're just trying to find where the people are.

Oh, my! What big teeth you have! Man!
Shame on you, Maurice! Don't you seethat you've insulted the freak?
You must tell me, who the hack are you?

- I'm Alex. The Alex. And this is Gloria, Marty and Melman.

Say just where are you giants from?

- We're from New York and we...

All hail the New York Giants! New York Giants!

- What are we doing, somesort of inbreeding program? I say we just gotta ask these bozos where the people are.

Excuse me, we bozos have the people of course.

- Hey, the bozos have the people!

Oh. Well. Great! Good! They're up there. Don't you love the people? Not a very lively bunch though.

- So do you have any alive people?

No. Only dead ones. I mean if we had a lot alive people here, it wouldn't be called 'The Wild', would it?

- The wild? Hold up there a second. You mean like the living in mud hut? Wipe yourself with leaf type wild?

Who wipes?!

Gallon goons.

What IS it with the gas prices already?! Can it BE any worse? Looking at how things are, I believe they can.. I just received this interesting e-mail from all major airline companies put together, imploring their customers to sign a petition against all this “futures trading”. The aviation industry sure must be feeling the pinch. Forget the freebies and the expensive air-fare; they don’t even start the planes at the gate anymore. The tug pulls/pushes them out to the runway before they even switch on their engines!

To think that the price of oil is this high because some nitwit decided that he would “predict” what it would be on paper and it keeps changing hands, again on paper. And the final delivery by the barrel is done ages from now. It was interesting to learn that trading regulations that were put in place to avert such an instance in the very beginning have become lax over time, and they have been bent to accommodate all these people who have driven us to this stage today. Face it, these people are smart – they are making money off a commodity that they have no direct use for, and are not even end users who are going to take possession of the barrel. Such price hikes driven by market manipulation are affecting the general economy as a whole. And people who are actually doing all this are not feeling the pinch, that’s for sure. Makes me wonder why I cannot apply myself to learning the tricks of the trade and be more knowledgeable about how the finance industry churns.

Until then, I keep reminiscing about the day when gas was $1.75 a gallon at the pump. Sigh, those glory days have long gone.

1:37 am

I'm losing what little hair I have. Yes, it is completely true, I'm not making it up. It started with that awesome pixie-ish cut Alexa gave me last year. To complete the look, she reduced the thickness of my hair around my neck. And it has never gotten back since. So here I am, blogging at 1.37am about my hair, or the lack thereof.

What a wonderful world!

Something sure is wrong though.. Every morning I think my hair has disappeared overnight. Poor me, the stress is getting to me. But now that the unpacking is all done, I should technically be lounging around on my awesome orange leather couch, sipping fresh fruit shakes and watching the extra HBO channels that Comcast threw in to save themselves a customer! Alas, this is far from the actual picture.

Am I doomed to accounting for every strand of hair and having a mini heart attack everytime I look in the mirror? Or can my awesome brown and pink (yes, pink) shower curtain damp my morning shock? Speaking of pink, someone was selling this pink puffy phone on CL. And you wouldn't believe how pink and furry (yes again, furry) it was. Omg. Girly? Monstrous, more rather. In fact that pink fur on the phone was as shaggy as the hair that the lead monster in Monsters Inc had..

Someone please get me a dresser and some guest room furniture soon. Before I shoot myself in between the eyes from an overdose of CL!

A new house

Starting from the hassle of finding a new place, to the botch-ups that happened in the process with the different leases, the crazy move-weekend, missing out on Stevie Wonder's concert (which I had been counting down to for like one whole year!).. all the way to trolling Craigslist for small pieces of furniture right now. I'm home..

Yay to that. Now comes the more interesting part of getting everything together, and unifying my decor etc. Ideally, someone would do this before they buy different pieces of furniture, but come on, I'm just grateful I'm in my new house. The "ideal" part can come later. Of course it'd be way easier if you blindly swipe your credit card at IKEA and pick out a whole range of stuff that is co-ordinated. But whats the point in furnishing your temporary home with all new stuff. Used will do for now, I guess.

And I still haven't gotten around to all the wall-art parts of it. Not have I re-stocked my fridge. Its B.A.R.E. Open it up, and you'll find a bottle of Tabasco sauce and one Hazelnut-Chocolate wafer. Oh, and that one bottle of milk. How nice. That is the next one on the list to take care of. Oh, and the guest room, and some additional furniture hunt as well.

It is going to be a busy year. How I hate 2008! More about 2008 when we come to the end of the year maybe. I can do this "2008: In retrospect" special like I'm some famous and important movie critic or something! For now, back to whatever.