Corgi Meatballs

Well I wish I could tell you the above title was a euphemism but in fact it is fact. Some crazy British guy dined on - gasp! - chunks of corgi all ground up with apples and spices because apparently corgis taste icky.

Oh, also, it was in protest of the Queen's husband being cruel to a fox.

I sent this article to McMumsy, who is on her third corgi (not as in third hamburger but as in third beloved pet) and she refused to read it. Personally, it didn't bother me too much, as said corgi died of natural causes, but it did make me rethink for a minute my nickname for Chauncey, the latest McPolack pet corgi.

I like to call him porkchop.

Cheery

Been feeling kind of meh after my chat with the second architect last night. After I got off the phone and ate dinner I wrote about it and then I colored my hair. Oh, and felt bad for myself and cried myself to sleep.

In all honesty, it wasn't all about the architect, but more about stress relief because I'm doing a lot of work in a lot of areas that's challenging (which is great!) and that I realized this weekend while driving to NH to jump in Dublin Lake on Saturday night that I am really lonely. I want someone in my life, someone special, and I don't think I knew how much until I started this dating thing.

So many feelings.

: )

But luckily my mush face kitty cat is helping. Right now, as I get ready to dive into more work, she is sitting like a little fuzzy meatloaf in a shoebox at my feet and giving me the squishy eyes.

Aargh

Just got off the phone with the second architect. I had asked him to go hiking on Sunday. He hemmed and hawed his way around the fact that there is someone else he likes only he hasn't asked her out yet but he's going to but he still wants to go hiking and feels weird about going out with two women at the same time.

Well of course I would SO prefer to be in his shoes with more than one man I am interested in but alas I am not. This doesn't really make me all that comfortable but then if I get more offers of dates from other men I like I will (and was planning) on going on them.

I did get that he does find me attractive and interesting and I assured him that the fact that we are hiking on Sunday does not mean that we are also getting married on Sunday.

That's next Sunday.

Kidding!

But honestly it hurt, in that icky deep way romantic pain hurts to hear he wasn't all about me. Still and all I'm forging forward and staying cool.

Survey Says

Just got a call from a survey company asking if they could send me the May issue of Real Simple which I am to read on, and only on, next Monday, for a minimum of 10 minutes, and then tell someone who calls me next Tuesday what I think. I said I'd do it because, hey, free magazine. Maybe if I do well the things I'm asked to test will get upgraded and eventually they'll messenger me something cool like a cheese platter or an iPod or a VW Beetle.

There's no escaping the war

Went for a hike up Mount Monadnock yesterday with JoyceFrances, Mike, and OSB. It was gorgeous out; everything was blooming and sun-dappled and green, green, green. Some old guy touched my butt. Nothing new there.

What was new was watching the mountain get buzzed by a couple of anti-tank planes from the Connecticut National Guard, training for combat in Iraq. Apparently the terrain on the top of Mondanock is similar to what soldiers would find there. Now, mind you, this is information I got from OSB's husband, but he's a local and in the know, and from the looks of the planes (the screamed like fighter jets and looked just as big) they weren't out for a pleasure trip.

Oh my

So.

The third date with the second architect.

Left me confused.

We had a pic-a-nick on a lawn in the city and then went to a small club to hear some live music. I told him a bit about my past relationships and FOR GODS SAKES, I got a little leaky. As in, all of a sudden, I was crying. Just a smidge. A few tears. It was this weird, unbidden, out of my own control emotional response.

Then he told me his best friend is a former girlfriend who he broke up with after a weirdly and scarily aggressive snowball fight and now she thinks she's a lesbian. He's off on a trip with her right now and still in love with her but they work better as friends.

Now the practical part of me, the one I get from McMumsy, thought "Well she has got to go."

But honestly, it doesn't really bother me that much. I don't really know why. Maybe because I just need for things to go slowly, more slowly than I realized until I got into this dating thing, number one, and number two, people are just complex and messy and imperfect and so are relationships. And number three, it was just our third date. Not our 27th or our 50th or anything like that. OK and number FOUR my gut tells me it's OK and not to worry.

I'll see him again. I hugged him for a bit on the train platform before leaving and at the end of the pic-a-nic he was sitting kind of close and I liked it.

Holy Hotness

Well it's dang hot outside today but I've thus far avoided putting the a/c units in even though I'm working from home. Honestly mostly I sit at my desk so there's no much sweating. But I do feel bad for my very furry kitty, who has spent the bulk of today and yesterday splayed out on various spots on the floor around me. (Normally when I work at home she sits in a shoebox at my feet. Not for the whole day, mind you.)

Right now she's sacked out behind my chair. At night she does her long kitty layabout thing next to me on my bed.

She's a good girl.

In other news, aaaaa! date tonight. Then library tomorrow to work on story, interview in early evening. Sunday off for hiking. Transcripton Monday. Then back to the story plus a chat with some folks about writing about biodiesel down under.

Happy Memorial Day, everyone!

P.U.

A couple days ago I somehow ended up on a wild shopping trip. I got some Weleda baby oil because it was on clearance, some Stroopwafels, and some Tilsit cheese. I got the cheese because it looked pretty and wasn't too pricey.

Then I brought the cheese home and put it in the fridge and noticed my fingers were stinky. Reaaaaaaaaaaaaaallly stinky. The aroma was a mixture of stuff you hack up from the back of your throat mixed with feet and funky, let's say, beaver musk. But in a sort of a pleasant way. Like a car accident way where you know you shouldn't look but you look anyway, but less violent. I kept sniffing my fingers. I patted my cat and then she smelled like the cheese for hours. When I opened my fridge, I could smell the cheese, even through its plastic wrap and the cheese drawer it was shut in.

It was and is one hard-working cheese. I imagined it sitting in my drawer in my fridge, clenching all its cheese-y muscles and then just stiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinking. When I took the little overachiever out of the fridge and opened the plastic wrap up I was nearly blown across the room!

Luckily the taste wasn't as pungent as the smell. It's certainly a cheese you should eat in small doses. And smell in smaller doses, still.

Well, Hello, Life!

My, my, my how things do turn on a dime...

At the advice of McMumsy, I stopped by the chapel where I used to go every Monday night for an hour when I was living in Concord a few years ago. I ignored the big sign asking for everyone to pray the civil union law in NH wouldn't pass and the itch I had to write a prayer intention that it would and asked God about work and relationship.

And didn't God just deliver. I've got a third date with the architect this Friday night and a story assignment (due next week!).

I think God thinks I like a challenge.

I'm going to shine.

Lunch Lady

So I have recently discovered the wonder that is Fage (say it fay-eh) yogurt. It's creamier than regular yogurt, with nearly twice the protein. My lunch lately has consisted of a container of the 2% Fage mixed with a cup and a half of mixed fresh fruit (some variation of strawberries, pineapple, mango, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, and grapes) with agave nectar to sweeten it and crunchy Kashi cereal on top.

It's filling and delicious and looks pretty, too.

!!!

Well after having a long-overdue mini blubbering meltdown at my parent's house on Saturday night over a myriad of issues, Sunday dawned and I headed back to the city for a second date with the second architect. We went to the MFA and looked at things, and sat on benches and talked, then walked and had coffee and ran around in a fountain. (I had an umbrella)

It is a momentous occasion in that I like him and he likes me back. Yes, I have achieved mutual like-itude after a three-year drought. I am hopeful, and excited, and remaining centered on moving forward in everything I have going on in my life. Because really the second architect and I have hung out a total of like 9 hours.

But ohhhhhhhhhhhh I would like to kiss him. You know, just to see what it would be like.

Kitties

So no more man updates save that he may or may not be adopting a pair of kitties on Saturday and that I am going to stop sniffing around for ways in which he is the Chickenfucker because he is not the Chickenfucker.

In other McPolack news, I am just a busy little bee buzzing from flower to flower. I have been doing a lot of career-y type stuff, organizing contacts and researching, and getting ever closer to my ideal job, and even had a friend forward me a really decent-sounding opportunity that I am going to investigate further. On the yoga front, I am still chicken about forearm stand but I definitely am more flexible every week. And on the social life front, I am off to NH tomorrow to hang out with my parents and Dr. Moo and then she's coming to MA on Saturday for further hanging out and then it will be Sunday afternoon looking at art with the architect.

Oh and I am transcribing a wack-ass Finnish man who used to run a large telecom company. He stutters and bangs on his desk and says yah a lot. And he's being interviewed by two other Finnish guys so at one point the transcription looked like this:

A: Yah.
Q: Yah.
Q: Yah.
A: Yah.

Will...Not...Judge...

So I'm back from the meet and greet with Architect No. 2. I'm really trying to go about this process differently than I did the last time, and also to turn off, or at least turn down, my judgy-wudgy meter. I'm also realizing more and more just how shut off I am in terms of letting any man anywhere near me in a romantic sense. I did think this man was attractive, at times, but I just could not let him in, you know? I couldn't give him any sense of flirtation, at all. It's embarrassing, really. I'm like a stereotype, afraid to let love in. Blecccch.

Oh, I don't know. He is very cerebral, and I noticed we both like to talk a lot about ourselves although we did get into a lot of deeper discussions on things...he is an atheist...I paid for my own dinner but then I announced he didn't have to pay beforehand...he said he found me "curious" at the end of the night and patted my arm but again I wasn't letting him anywhere near me...finally, he did not walk me across the street to my T stop or see me safely on the train, and granted it was just across the street in a public place and I just don't know the rules for internet dating, you know?

So...I will see him again, and we will see what happens.

Picking a Good One

Would be what Little Brother did in choosing his bride. Now this story illustrates only one of the many ways in which she is Quality. I wrote to tell her, number one, of Dr. Moo's budding romance with an Asian engineer from LA who went to Philips Exeter, and two, of my latest architect.

Well didn't she just go and find out for me the firm he worked at, and some buildings they have both worked on together. (She is a mechancial engineer.)

Of course the poor gentleman knows nothing of me as I have not revealed my last name. But that's the way the cookie crumbles. I have also discovered he has quite the reputable background, female friends, and is tall and cute.

Oooooo boy I hope tomorrow goes well.

Mens

Well I have an EVER so tentative meet-n-greet with the NEW architect (he is not, thankfully, the same architect as before) on Wednesday. It's ever so tentative because I have yet to confirm anything, as he gave me a personal although possibly safety e-mail address to respond to, and I then created one of my own, and wrote to him from it, but haven't heard back yet.

Anyhoo.

I did go to Ho's 'n 'Mo's, aka H&M, and found for 10 american dollars a skirt and also for 10 american dollars a top AND for five american dollars, a necklace. Because unfortunately my clothes are getting a wee bit tattered and I wish to make a good first impression.

In all honesty, I haven't had that much response to my ad. Two e-mails, a few winks, most from inappropriate suitors. But I am remaining positive. If anything, it gives me more of a chance to furiously Google these anonymous men. Maybe I'll end up with a career as a private online dating investigator.

Or better, yet, maybe I'll end up happily married.

The Inappropriate Spectrum

I've been hit on, in the last two weeks, by both a 17 year old kid in Downtown Crossing all decked out like a rap star (he even had a CD he'd recorded), and a dirty old doctor in his 60's at a fancy fish restaurant in Fanueil Hall. The kid told me he'd "remember my dimples" and the DOD touched my ass.

Clearly it was time to take action.

So I'm back on the Internet dating pony. A friend took some fetching photos of me and I posted them. I've had two e-mails so far, one from a shorter than me programmer and one from a taller than me architect. Of course I am not writing back to either one of them until at least Monday.

And I got some great advice on how to get the man to pay for dinner, from a woman who lives in Miami and goes out with all sorts of fancy fellows. When the check arrives, I cross my arms and lean back in my chair, make eye contact with the man, and ask him a probing question, all the while looking just fascinated to hear his answer. If he doesn't end up grabbing the check after, say, half an hour, I say "Would you like a little help with that?"

Genius.

Crazy Neighbor

I just spent some time crouched in my living room window peering through a pair of pretty low-end binoculars at...




...OK, at a male cardinal who was singing away in a tree above the carriage house at the end of my driveway. He is in the mood for love and looking fine. I love birds.

One more thing...

I wore the three pedometers from the bio conference today, all at once, to test them, but it made me feel a little like a suicide bomber, what with all the electronic gear and the ticking.

The results:

Dana Farber Cancer Center's sucked -- maybe it needs a new battery but it recorded less than 300 steps.

Pfizer's was more accurate but still a little off.

The winner was the one from novo nordisk, which does a lot of diabetes work, so yay for them! It accurately records steps, plus miles walked and calories burned.

Five Positive Things

About my day:

1. Lilacs are starting to bloom which means we are heading into high sniffy time. I buried my nose in a couple of clusters today and enjoyed the scent of them on the breeze.

2. I found two great books in the library, nonfiction science writing on dieting and on how reproductive science is changing the world. I'm currently reading a great book on mummies.

3. Two of the mangoes on my counter were ripe, which is great because I was low on fruit and at the Downtown Crossing "Stwabewwies a Dollah" stand there were cauliflowers for a buck a head.

4. I shared some of my swag with others and I intend to share more.

5. I'm alive and healthy and loved and loving.

Wah Wah Wah

There are fucking flying ants in my apartment now, I just squashed six of them in the last three minutes, and I think I hear another one, and when I squish them with my flip-flop their oogy pus-y (Update from Dr. Moo: "purulent means containing or forming pus. Pussy is a term of endearment addressed to a cat- called also a moggy. directly from the vet dictionary ") guts squish out.

Also I am exhausted from yesterday. Exhausted. And overcaffeinated. And cranky. Really cranky. And did I mention tired? Oh, and whiny as well. Blech. It's hot outside. I can't get one of my storm windows to open because it's off it's track. I canceled having dinner and watching 24 tonight with friends because I'm too tired and I don't want ride the g-d bus.

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

Swagalagadingdong

Can I just tell you that I was entirely unprepared for the sheer hugeness that was the international biotech conference that I attended today (followed by a CEO dinner I worked at this evening).

I did talk with a lot of interesting people, and handed out a lot of copies of the guide I wrote and article for, and handed out and collected a few business cards.

Also I collected swag. We're talking a GINORMOUS convention center with hundreds of people giving away free shit.

Well sort of it's free. Really they want the very important people to talk to them. That is not me. The stuff is for people they can do business with. Again, not me. Althought I could sort of sell myself as a writer and someone knowledgeable about NE biotech. So, for the most part, I actually talked with people I got free stuff from because I just couldn't snag stuff. It seemed rude.

Here, then, is my chat 'em up before you grab their swag haul:

1 USB laptop light
2 panoramic sized postcards of San Diego with a hilarious image of Arnold Schwarzenegger on them
3 pedometers
1 stuffed lobster
1 tasty mint (eaten)
3 bottles of water (2 drunk)
1 nalgene bottle
2 umbrellas
2 boxes dark-chocolate covered marzipan candies
2 vacuum sealer thingies
(all of the above were graciously given me for working at the CEO dinner at which I was also fed very, very well, at a fancy restaurant)
4 tote bags
1 container Nevada steak salt, given to me by a man whose son went to Doane, alma mater of Polack Pappy
1 picture of me on a Harley and no I will not post it
2 Sees candy bars given to me by a wonderful friendly fellow from San Francisco
1 tin containing these two metal pill-shaped things that make a taser like noise when you bang them together (good for scaring protestors! said the lady handing them out. ha ha.)
2 sprayable hand sanitizer jobbies
1 carabiner keychain
1 stuffed squeezy star
3 t-shirts
2 hats
1 set of marbles
1 hand fan that spells stuff out in LED (?) when you turn it on
2 highlighters
6 pens
3 post it note pads
1 Band Aid container with Band Aids (Thank you PSNH)
1 NH magnet (Thank you again, PSNH)
1 set of retractable headphones

And in all honestly this was probably an eighth of what was being given away. Other interesting highlights included my angering the Northern Ireland people (well anger might be too strong a word) by continuing to just call them Ireland "No, it's Northern Ireland" and then telling them I didn't drink when they invited me back for Guinness and whiskey at five, watching Deval Patrick announce a billion dollars in funding, a lot of it for stem cell research, which I now know a fair amount about, and feeling bad for China, who surely are smarting from that cover article in Sunday's NY Times about their involvement in poisoning people with medicine that was supposed to help them.

Overall it was pretty swell. I wish I could go back tomorrow. And now I am going to bed.

Quickie

Just a brief post, as California Eating is on her way over for a visit and then we're off to dinner and then tomorrow I'm at a ginormous international biotech conference followed by a fancy CEO dinner at a Todd English seafood restaurant.

I'm a smidge cranky, in part because of the general state of things -- brokeness, lack of outfit to wear to conference, lack of time or money to get new outfit -- but did want to share that I watched some crazy-ass badminton matches this weekend at MIT, including one with one of the best players in the US, a bald, tall, skinny, pale-ass Polish guy who lives in Alaska and who doesn't speak very good English. L wanted to find a way to set me up with him and she was mad when I said no.

Jetty

OSB doesn't believe in God.

I love her dearly. I talk to her weekly (at least). But I rarely, if ever, mention the spiritual side of my life to her. It's an agree to disagree thing.

But if I felt more comfortable about it, I'd tell her this: I see God in jettys. There's just something about a jumble of rocks leading out to sea that speaks to people. I can remember being small, and looking forward to those summer Sundays when, after spending the day at Grammy's, our extended family would go to Rye state park, and after we ate, we'd all walk out on the jetty.

That my legs were too short to make some of the leaps from rock to rock thrilled me. I liked to get to the end first so I could stand there alone and see nothing but the ocean around me. I liked that when I got to the end I could turn around and clamber my way back.

I think Mira Nair sees God in jettys, too; there's one in The Namesake. It's part of what made me burble up so much at the end of the film.

And who knows -- maybe one day scientists will isolate the way specifically the shape of a jetty, the smell of the ocean breezes, and the feeling of being so small as to not matter and so infinite as to be unknowable at the same time all coalesce chemically in some fold of our brains.

Or maybe it's like Harold Bloom says, that religion arises out of the fact that we all die and are so soon forgotten.

But why then would I feel as a grade schooler something that seemed to speak to a part of me much, much older than seven while standing on a pile of rocks looking out at the Atlantic?

Distance Learning and Susie Rotten Crotches

I've been transcribing a tape in which a former female Marine, schoolteacher and current contract government employee interviews a current male Marine who is charged with revamping the entire Corps educational program from the "box of books" method where you get, quite literally, a box full of books plus a multiple choice test, then read the books, take the test, mail it back, and presto, you have taken the course, to a distance learning program that gives the 80% of the Corps that aren't able to go to an actual school to get graduate military education more of a classroom feel, a collaborative feel, et cetera, thus preparing them to be better officers in the future.

So in general they are working towards a more competent military, which is a good thing.

Which doesn't mean that everything has changed. When I was in high school, in Mr. "Fair Game for A Quiz Gang" Mitchell's class, we watched a Marine Corps training video in which screaming drill instructors yelled at the Marines "You just want to go home to your little Susie Rotten Crotches, don't you?" after sending them into a closed room full of tear gas and in general beating the holy heck out of them. SRC would of course be a lovely term referring to one's significant other.

While Mr. Marine Corps Distance Learning didn't refer to women in that way, he did say "ain't" a lot (he is a speech and communication specialist) and he and the woman interviewing him bemoaned the fact that when creative writing is taught students aren't given what basically amounts to a nice little box to put your writing in (and I agree with this in some form -- you've got to know the rules before you can break them). They were all, grr, where are the RULES!

But what made me laugh out loud and also think that, despite the years that have passed since I saw that video, the Marine Corps remains at its heart as it was, was this quote:

It’s the responsibility of the command, the commander, the boss, supervisor to support and ensure that the student is achieving those goals, and to provide the kind of emotional support – I don’t mean about hugging and junk.

Truthiness

McMumsy and my Aunt S were discussing baby names on Saturday night. Aunt S was relieved her daughter had decided not to name her child Chase. McMumsy mentioned that when PolackPappy's father heard that she was naming her first child Maggie he growled "That's an Irish whore's name."

I looked back and forth from McMumsy to Aunt S.

"Well of course he was right. Maggie is an Irish whore's name."

Ah, me.

Matchmaker

So it's coming up on three years since I left the chickenfucker, three years with nigh close to zero activity on the life partner front. If I go another six months or so I'll have been alone for longer than I was with him.

This really, really sucks.

But what sucks even more is having your 18 year old cousin, who is still in high school, try to set you up with his 26 year old boss at Gillette Stadium, a boss who has a scraggly beard, doesn't say much, and follows the band Mo around. What sucks more than that is to have your cousin then, before leaving, slip you his e-mail address and tell you his fee is 25 bucks, refundable if Mr. Wonderful doesn't show up for our date.

In the (paraphrased) words of Charlotte York: I've been doing everything I'm supposed to be. WHERE IS HE?!?