My week just improved by 110%. I took advantage of my lunch break to buy a new pair of headphones for my ipod, and let me tell ya... it's a whole lot easier to ignore everyone at work when the left as well as the right side works. If you could truly grasp the non-stop circus show I deal with in here, you'd understand. Someday I'll write about it, but not when one of the main attractions is sitting right next to me.
In high school I think I wore a coat twice to school. The 8º temperatures typical of a winter morning in Connecticut were nothing. I'll bet I could have been found each morning scraping ice off of my windshield - normally a 20 minute task - in a mere sweatshirt. During the next phase of my life, spent in Worcester, Massachusetts - legitimately one of the coldest cities of the northeast - I had no problem. Sure, it was damn cold... and windy, snowing and icy... but I'd go out to parties and bars at night just wearing a cardigan.
Things now are a bit different. I go into shiver-mode when the mercury hits 60º. Even 70º often calls for a jacket of some sort. I admit, I have been warped into a warm-temperature creature.
I hate being cold. I used to prefer being cold to being hot, but I think the year I spent in Sevilla completely altered my temperature gauge. I also think that the 20 pounds shed over the past couple of years has deprived me of the extra insulation that once helped to fend of the chilly temperatures. Yes, I just compared myself to a balleen mammal.
This, however, is ridiculous. Imagine the following scenario (and, mind you, this scenario has been repeating itself for the past month or so). I'm at work. It's 12:30 and the heat has yet to come on for the day. I have my knee-length knit winter coat wrapped mummy-style around my legs. I have my sleeves pulled down to my knuckles. I am wearing my scarf. Every few minutes I have to blow into my hands so my fingers don't stiffen and thus make me unable to type (ie work). I have microwaved a mug of hot water several times today just to hold it in my hands. I think I feel the effects of hypothermia coming on, and I fear I'll soon have to resort to snapping off my toes to avoid the spread of frost bite.
The "web team" has just been relocated from our former location to one of the newly renovated rooms. As we don't have to deal with people other than ourselves, do you think anyone would notice if I started bringing my frog-printed fleece blanket to work?
Contextual tid-bit #1
One of my favorite activities is googling people that I know to see if anything scandalous comes up. I would even be satisfied with some mildly interesting. Even a posted resume on monster.com or something would do just fine. Alas, my searches usually come up fruitless. This evening, I ran out of people at work whose full names I know and ended up googling myself. Guess what- my name actually came up right there in the number one slot.
Contextual tid-bit #2
During my college years - and this is before I dipped my toes in the sea of blogging - I would sit down and write random stories when I was a) highly caffeinated, b) procrastinating, or c) intoxicated. Chances were that at any given point during that last year at HC I could be found in one of those states of being between sleep periods. Moving along, I wrote the following story at the beginning of my senior year at Holy Cross, sent it to Joanne as a joke, and she then went and got it published in an annual bilingual / Spanish and Latin American-inspired literary magazine that Holy Cross puts out. Anyway, I'm going to plagiarize myself for this post.
"My turn? I’m first?,” said Paco, feeling increasingly distressed as five of his pals crowded around him in excited anticipation. His eyes darted from one friend’s face to the next. He knew something big was happening. Many of his relatives had made the big journey into the city for this very event, and he was finally going to see what the fuss was all about. He thought he was going to throw up all over the place, and it scared him to just think about how mortified he would be. Word on the street was that the royal family was even going to be making an appearance today. What happened if... Oh, he didn't want to think of what would happen if...
An older gentleman wearing a name tag that read “Manolo,” must have noted that young Paco was about to suffer the effects of a crippling nervous breakdown because he promptly left the room, returning moments later holding something in his hand. He smiled his harmless four-toothed grin and gently patted Paco’s back to soothe him. The sight of this innocent older man and his consoling touch already left young Paquito feeling relieved.
Paco jumped, his eyes bulging, upon seeing the needle that Manolo was wielding; it looked like a torture device! “Hey there buddy! Don’t be scared of this little needle, it’s only going to help you out in there. You’re gonna need it!” Paco couldn’t have agreed more. He could hear the hoards of people as they pushed through each other on their chaotic search for their seats. A few stray music notes somehow managed to make their way through the roaring cheers of the crowded arena, signaling that the band was warming up for the big event.
Boy, was Manolo right on with that medicine! Paco felt almost instantaneously calmer. He was in control of his emotions. His mind seemed just the slightest bit cloudy, which he attributed to his thoughts trying to get themselves back in order. His heartbeat had finally stopped assaulting his ears and had returned to his chest, where it should have stayed in the first place. His confidence was slowly returning as he thought to himself, “Hey, this won’t be so bad! I hope the royal family is here, I’ll show them what I’m made of!”
He was proud of the body he had built up over the past three years. He had been eating right, exercising daily, avoiding the lifestyles that had led to several members of his rural community being kidnapped by a mysterious pack of men, presumably to be killed. He didn’t want that for himself, and he wanted to honor the memory of his late father. Finally he had reached a point where his aunts told him that he was the spitting image of Paco Sr., which filled the young Paco with such pride and elation. He was in the prime of his life, and he was ready for anything.
His best friend, Javi, pushed him, reeling him back to the present moment. Back to the cheers, to the music, to the excitement that lay before him. “Hey P, are you OK? You look a little confused or something.” Paco shook his head back and forth trying to clear the fog. “Sí, sí. I’m fine... Just thinking about papá, ya know? I think he’d be really proud of me today.” Javi nodded his head. They had been friends since infancy because their mothers had become quite close when their husbands went missing on the same fateful day over two years ago. “Don’t worry, P, we’re gonna make everyone proud. We’ll have such stories to tell!”
All of a sudden the crowd went quiet, making way for the festive tunes of the band to set the mood for the celebration. Paco’s nerves set in again, this time making him feel more sluggish. Everything went into slow motion as he was welcomed into the large arena with almost deafening cheers, muffling the joyous trumpets. He glanced around at his audience. He was surrounded by smiles and floating, and had to chuckle at the irony: here he was, in the prime of his life, and half the people watching him were these crusty old men who looked about ready to die.
Paco quenched these feisty people’s thirst to see him by taking a quick jog around the place, showing off his muscular physique. Oddly enough, he was feeling increasingly tired and groggy. He shook it off. “It’s just the stress... I just gotta get my adrenaline goin’!” All of a sudden, everything got so much s..l...o....w......e......r. It all came together in the course of about half a second. His mind snapped into gear, panicking, while his body slowed down with fatigue. His father’s disappearance, the medicated syringe, his mother’s overly tearful good-bye, the dirt below his feet, the sweat pouring down his face, his clueless band of childhood friends waiting behind him, the slam as the door was swung shut and locked...So as part of the superstar "Equipo Web" - aka Internet Team - at the company that so lucratively employs me, I am little by little and subconsciously turning into a full-fledged internet geek. I can't help it, as it is now well beyond the grasp of my control. It's like a virus (Get it? Internet? Virus?) that invades your personality and effectively breaks down any traces of coolness and turns it into pocket-protectored, cowlick-sporting and technological nerdiness. In fact, I'm beginning to fear that it's a matter of days before I acquire headgear, a membership to the Dungeons and Dragons online forum and - the cherry on top of the sundae - a resounding snort.
After seven months or so, I know html code to a simple but nevertheless existent degree, I can cruise through Dreamweaver - an html program - like the Queen Mary 2 on a calm day at sea, and I am more than familiar with snazzy terms like "upload to the server," "template," "PHP" and "domain." Which brings me to the term "webmaster." My company's webmaster, and therefore he who is directly responsible for my employment, is a nice - though marginally crazy - French guy who speaks variations of both English and Spanish, both of which require careful decoding on the part of the listener. While meeting him that warm June morning of '06 yielded a job offer, it also altered the images that the word "webmaster" once invoked in my mind.
Every time I see the word, which over the past few months has exponentially increased up into the thousands, I can't help but imagine an old, bearded wizard named Merlin wielding an orb-topped sceptor and donning a star-spackled pointy hat- a la Mickey Mouse in the cinematic treasure that was and still is Fantasia. Every time the webmaster of my imagination enters a room, an aura of mystery electrifies the atmosphere as the lights dim and a deep-voiced British accented man straight from 1750 proclaims "hear ye, hear ye... 'tis the webmaster."
Some say that I have an overactive imagination.
I have long been a sucker for anything that is soft- stuffed animals, those squishy beanie pillows from Brookstone, fleece blankets. I lament having to wash new sweatshirts and sweatpants because the plush softness inside succumbs after a few bouts with the spin cycle. It also turns out that people get legitimately creeped out when I randomly start petting the inside part of their arm.
During my childhood, I had little - if any - control of my softophilia. For example, unlike my brother, I didn't have a blankie weathered hard with drool, filth picked up from being dragged across the ground and a few too many spills. Instead, I carried around an old, mustard-yellow t-shirt that was once my dad and that I'm fairly sure that he acquired free from a walk-in clinic or real estate firm. But believe me... it had this one spot just big enough for my finger to rub that was softer than the finest silk. If I'd had the income or a hefty inheritance at that young age to afford a velvet pillow, I probably would have used it to carry around the beloved t-shirt with style instead of draping it around my neck as to ensure that it wouldn't hit the ground. It was undeniably hideous and had without a doubt been moments away from being lost amongst the pile of rags destined to be put to use for car washing, checking oil levels, burying hamsters headed for a better life and a larger spinning wheel (RIP Peanut... you're still missed) and a wide range of other nitty-gritty household roles. But I, the Patron Saint of Ugly T-Shirts, salvaged the poor thing from such an unfortunate, undignified fate and - to my parents' dismay - insisted on taking it everywhere. It mysteriously disappeared a few years later. Information leading to its recovery and/or whereabouts may or may not yield a considerable reward.
When I was four (and five, six, seven, eight...) years old, I was under the self-involved impression that there existed evil people (alias: jealous meanies) who coveted my soft belongings and were on a quest to take them from me. So, to ensure that none of my soft friends fell into the wrong hands, I fervently insisted on either a) sleeping inside my closet with all of my stuffed animals, or b) piling all of my plush and bean-filled treasures on one half of the bed and covering them with a sheet. In hindsight, the fact that they formed a mountain rivaling Everest may have given it away, I thought myself particularly intelligent as these measures were sure to throw off robbers who came in through my window in search of stuffed bears, bunnies and other woodland creatures. But hey... hindsight is 20-20.
When I ceased fearing robbers and instead began contemplating the possibility of house fires destroying my menagerie of pals, I actually wrote a letter that I would leave at the foot of my bed in the event that I was trapped in my room by searing flames and thus required a heroic rescue by firemen. There were clear instructions laid out directing the East Lyme Fire Department as to which of my cherished companions to rescue as they pulled me to safety. While I was sure to write the letter in another room so as not to cause suspicion throughout the crew, the fact that I had to pick and choose the hypothetical survivors while leaving the others to perish wracked my early childhood days with guilt and haunted me for years. The Toy Story movies and their theme of forgotten toys being cast aside like yesterday's news were like daggers to my heart... and that's practically two decades removed from those early years.
I was not what one would traditionally call a quote-unquote "normal" child.
So I think I've really driven home the fact that I'm a people-watcher / creepy stalker. Spending a few post meridiem hours slouched back into a chair seeking out the world's more interesting creatures is pretty much my idea of a night out on the town, especially on a lucrative night of "sightings." Chueca, Madrid's gay neighborhood, is - for example - a veritable treasure trove of cross-dressers, awkward "real life" disco-dancing street performers and a wide assortment of other characters that never fail to astound me. Just throw in a cold beverage and some form of fried potato product - be it chips or fries - and it's quite possibly the ultimate night for this gal.
All this said, sidewalk cafes have a new prime people-watching hot spot rival. The gym.
A few months ago, I decided that I would replace a couple post-work hours each day in "active mode." A gym right down the street was having a two year anniversary promotional thing where joining was really cheap if you bought a year-long membership in the moment. Cheap is good. I like cheap, me and a girl I work with joined. I don't need anything special... just give me an elliptical and some weight machines that don't involve the possibility of crushing myself and I'm happy as a clam. However, this gym happens to be one of those techno-blasting athletic facilities to which pretty people go to not work out. Needless to say, a people-watching MECCA. Especially now that New Years and the annual semi-serious "I want to lose 10 pounds" resolution has brought a new crop of subjects. Here's a brief run-down...
The socializers. The first week that I went to the gym back in October or November, I was the sweaty oreo cream filling sandwiched between two perfectly composed cookies on the elliptical machines. Confused as to why I was the only red-faced slob of the trio, I switched into stalker-mode and decided to check out their stats. Sure, woman on my left. Your matching get-up and perfectly constructed ponytail are lovely, but treading on level 1 and burning exactly 112 calories over the course of a half-hour is pointless. Just because it makes your mascara run doesn't mean sweat is to be feared.
The metro or homosexual. In Spain, I often find there to be a very fine and unclear line that separates the two. A metrosexual, by definition, is a heterosexual man displaying female tendencies. I guess the stereotypical homosexual is thought to demonstrate those same tendencies, but switching the prefix and choice of partner. Either way, hairbands (and no, I don't mean Nike sweatbands) are quite a hit amongst the male population of Urban Fitness (ie my gym), as are waxed legs, fake-baking, hair products and snug, matching exercise outfits that can really only be classified as "cute."
The well-endowed. I will never understand why, when given the option, large-chested women opt to NOT give their girls some extra support. Boobs + gravity + treadmill = whoa, put those things away!
I will also never grasp why it is that Spanish women don't wear shorts to work out. Is there some sort of leg deformity that runs common amongst the "she" Spanish population that I am not aware of? When I work out, I usually feel like an overheating car... and that's with shorts and a tank top. Yet, I stick out as the only pair of female "I glow in the dark under a black light" legs in the place.
Annnnd that's my return to blogging.
