if you love something . . .

after a short conversation this weekend about snarkygirls, inga and i have decided to admit it: snarkygirls needs a vacation.

the girls will be on hiatus until one of the following parameters is met:

(a) inga gets a web connection at home (a cute, new home at that!)
(b) stella stops wanting to crawl under a rock to hide from all of her students
(c) the lottery winnings come in and stella and inga can snark full time

On a happy note, we will be back, and when we are, we'll let you all know off the blog -- via that "old people's" tool called email.

We'll miss you! Ciao, ciao.

lost rant

are you telling me, oh lost-makers, that our con-artist friend sawyer wouldn't know how to make friends with the beachies? that he'd need hurley to tell him what mothers like claire want to hear? that he wouldn't know from, i don't know, experience conning mothers like claire?

please, lost-makers, stop fucking up my friend sawyer.

that said, doesn't the island under the rule of sawyer vis-a-vis hurley seem like a much chiller place to hang? all we need now is a bit of papaya and pineapple cole slaw, and it's a party.

have i mentioned

that you should be watching extras?



if only there were time to show the patrick stuart, sir ian, orlando bloom, or kate winslet clips.... oh wait:









feel free to fast forward the awkward parts with andy and maggie.

fuck the tundra

when i left ____ on wednesday, it was chilly, but not the goddamned 27º it was back in the tundra. last tuesday, i used the air conditioner. tonight, i've got the heater on. wtf?

in case you've been

in a time warp. or without a tv. or without cable. or having better to do with your days:



and the original, for comparison's sake:




turns out alanis has not only extra time on her hands but a sense of humor. ironic?

how i bought two houses in one week.

last week i bought a really cute little house. it was kind of lavender in color. the front porch was painted red. it had a porch swing. the living room was divided in two by a fireplace. it was charming, quirky.

liv d.h. hated it. well, not the house, but where it was located. the street the house is on is the very first one in a historic district full of beautiful charming houses. the street prior to this one, however, is industrial. and ugly. and, well, kind of populated by transients. as a matter of fact, the very real directions to get people to this house go something like this "okay, so when you see the pawn shop on the right hand side? yeah, turn there."

as soon as i put the offer on said house, i felt funny. the day i looked at it and put the offer on it, liv was sick and hadn't gone with me.

as soon as i drove her past the house, i knew she was not thrilled. but she didn't say anything. i didn't say anything. we let our individual self doubt about the house kind of fester between us.

then. a glimmer of hope!

the people who owned the house kept wanted to push back the closing date. i stood firm. they signed the contract - but first they crossed out the original close date and wrote in their own! this gave me an out. 'liv,' i said. 'uh, i think i have an out on the contract. i don't think you like the house, i, uh...'

'don't sign!' she crie.d 'even if you lose money, don't sign!' so i didn't sign. liv declared her unhappiness with the neighborhood and fears for my safety. i swore her, from now on, to let me know when she thought i was making a horrible life-decision. she promised.

so i put an offer on another super cute little bungalow, recently rehabbed. it's adorable! liv loves it! i love it! the neighborhood is lovely. good for walking vivian.

i love, love, love the house. hopefully will close next friday. fingers crossed. it's adorable. much much much lovelier than the other. and all new appliances, to boot.

of course i'm married.

oh the week has been so much fun! let's recount, shall we?

I.
i stopped at the real estate office to sign my new contract (remind me to tell you about this later). as i was going in, super good looking young guy also going into the office says, in his lovely south african accent, 'hey, one of your front tires is low.' i look and sure enough, it is. i thank him. i sign said contact, then get in said car with the low tire and drive to the nearest gas station to put air in it.

lo and behold, big gas truck is parked in front of the air machine. guy is adding gas to the what i suppose is the gas station's gas supply. 'it'll be just a sec,' he says. okay, no problem. 'i'll wait,' i say. 'what seems to be the problem?' he asks (at this point i'm thinking to myself - well...i'm waiting in front of the air pump, so the likely problem is...needing air?). he moseys over to take a look see. 'oh, wow, that tire is nearly flat! i'll just finish up here and then help you.' help me? 'oh, no worries. i can take care of it,' i say. of course he won't take no for an answer. so he finishes doing the transfer of gas thing, rolls up his hoses, then squats down to take a gander at my tire.

nail is the verdict. a big ol' nail in my tire. 'you'll need a patch,' he says, 'not a plug.' then he proceeds to fill the tire up with air while i stand by apparently helpless.

'you from ______?' he has noticed my license plates, yet to be changed.
'yup,' i say, neglecting to correct his mispronunciation of the tundra.
'you and your husband just move?'

pause. i can't talk because my mouth is stuck in an 'O' formation.

he finishes up. "now your husband won't have to worry 'bout this til you get home.'

'thanks so much for your help,' i say.

he smiles broadly. he has not noticed the sarcasm in my voice. 'well, listen, if my wife was in need, i'd hope someone would help her out.'

i smile. 'well, my husband thanks you, too,' i say. he has still not noticed the sarcasm that's permeating the air we're breathing.

i drive away. quickly.

II.
so my new place of employment is awesome. we totally got a special before work pre-easter breakfast catered! who cares that not everyone in the world is christian? we got a spread of eggs, bacon, grits, TWO kinds of sausage, yogurt, hash browns, orange juice. rock on. this wouldn't happen in the tundra!

then, once we got back to our desks, our social committee (we have a social committee!), it turns out, had arranged an easter egg hunt on every floor! an email was waiting in our inboxes! 25 eggs. some with candy. some with GIFT CERTIFICATES!

so i finished my plate of easter breakfast food and thought, huh, i could totally do an egg hunt. what the hell? but before i can stand up to, you know, start looking aimlessly for eggs, i hear the women on the other side of my cubicle.

'yeah, so when i got here this morning, i found like six eggs.'
'really? you got six?'
'oh, yeah, walking to the coffee area, i just saw them all over, so i took them all.'
'yeah, i got some, too! but i didn't get the gift certificate.'
'oh, don't worry. so-and-so did. but it was a chili's card, not the really good target one, so big deal.'
'so did we get all the eggs?'
'yeah, i think so!'

but wait! our email from the social committee made it clear that, uhm, well, we should probably only take one egg each. and, uh, isn't it an unspoken rule that you should probably only look on the section of the floor that's your department's section? oh, wait. i'm rational.

back to the ladies.
'he he he, we got all the eggs!'
'yeah, some of the candy sucks, though.'
'why couldn't we have gotten the good prizes?'

i frown. then i hear the boys over in video production, on the other aisle. they are talking excitedly about looking for eggs. most of the video boys have kids. it sounds like they're going to take the eggs they might find home to the babies.

back to the ladies, who are cackling at having come in early and gotten all the eggs.

back to the video boys, who by now have searched hi and lo and can't find any eggs. now one of the video boys walks over to where the ladies are and says, 'hey, so i've been looking for an egg and can't find one! they must be hidden really well. this is hard!' to which the ladies all laugh. 'oh, we got all the eggs when we got here early,' they tell him and cackle some more.

'oh,' video boy says, sounding totally dejected. 'oh, uh, cool.' he walks back to his aisle and sadly announces the eggs were all found before the rest of us got in. he sounds sad.

so, yeah, listen. i could really care less about the eggs. liv d.h. and i agree on that - egg, no egg, whatever. sure, a chili's gift card would have been great. who doesn't love a free margarita every now and again? the target gift card? even better. crappy candy? still a bonus. it's just the fact that these GROWN ladies
(a) cheated. arrived early and found all the eggs before the other, oh, seventy people on the floor arrived.
(b) looked in areas outside of their department.
(c) bragged about taking all the eggs.
(d) showed no remorse, sorrow, or embarrassment that they'd done a,b, and c!

but as liv d.h.'s lovely husband pointed out - what? like easter is the holiday all about someone making sacrifices?

please.

yummy.

so everyone gets one guess as to what piece inga wants! it's like a big ol' chocolate easter bunny!

cubicles aren't so square!

so it turns out that working in a cubicle is kinda fun. sure, it's only been just shy of three weeks, but really, it is kind of fun! as a short girl, i can't really ever see over the cube when i'm sitting, but boy oh boy, can i hear a lot. for instnace ~

the courtin' boys. okay, so they aren't courting to date, but they are courting to be friends. it's so sweet! glasses-boy, who sits in my row, is young and married. good hair, who works across the hall, comes by on occasion and they chat. sometimes about biking (they're both bikers - on bikes, not motorcycles), about their wives, about investments (okay, that last part's kind of lame. sure, we're totally at the age where we should be investing, but it never sounds very cool, you know?). this small-talk banter has been going on since like the third day i started. well, today they graduated into full-on mutual admiration/can't we be friends talk! yea! today the talk turned to good hair's baby and where glasses-boy lives and the type of lawnmowers they use. yea! i think they've hit the going steady level of guys-making-friends. very cute. i can't wait til they actually make, you know, plans out of the office so their wives can meet!

so those two i can actually see. all i have to do is swivel around in my chair.

but the woman on the other side of my cube wall? she i cannot see and i kinda of don't want to. she's hilarious. she's from the islands, so she's got this nice little lilting accent. i imagine she's round and wears flower-print blouses. she talks lovingly of her husband. i can usually tell if i should go to the cafeteria downstairs for a salad or out ~ when the salads are bad, she goes on and on in great detail to her coworkers about why it was so bad; sometimes the lettuce is all wilty, at times the vegetables are kind of soggy, once in a great while there's not enough lettuce leafs. The best, though, is when she is either (a) talking to her deadbeat son or (b) about her deadbeat son.

when it's (a), the conversations go like this "well, you need to remember this: when you write a check, the money doesn't automatically leave your account right then. it takes awhile sometimes. you gotta remember to write it down" or "well, are you waking up in time or do i got to call that roomie of yours? why? well, to get him to poke you in the morning, poke you, you know, to wake you up so you aren't late" or "what do you mean you no got to go to work? it's a monday/wednesday/friday - everyone has got to work - do i need to call that roomie to poke you?"

when it's (b), it usually goes like this "hi, i'm calling to find out if xxx is at work today. no? oh. well is he scheduled? oh, he is? oh, my my my" (hangs up) "oh my god! girls, listen to this!"

in the meantime, i need a house. i am so still pretending i'm still visiting. i eat out at lunch. i eat out at dinner. all i want is a kitchen of my own so i can, you know, cook. i heart cooking! it's just weird, the idea of cooking in this kitchen that's only my temporary kitchen, not my real kitchen (plus my temporary housemate doesn't seem to eat. ever. all he seems to do is run. a lot. granted, he looks good. but he looks vaguely hungry, too). what's a girl to do? buy a house!

yo, which i totally did yesterday. yea!

housekeeping part two.

yeah. so last night i totally had some major snark going on and then? voila. moments before i was going to post, we lost power. not once, twice. yeah.

so let's try this again. in no particular order ~

poor liv d.h.! she's convinced i don't snark much anymore because she's my boss and i know she reads snarkygirls and wouldn't want to snark about her! she's wrong! i'd totally snark about her...if only there was anything to snark about, but there's not! liv d.h. is lovely! i haven't snarked because, well, we just figured out how to steal the neighbor's internet. okay, steal isn't the right word. borrow. but that's been taken care of.

i put an offer on a cute new orleans-style townhouse last week. townhouse? yeah. super cute. but my bid was rejected. rejected! rejected even though there's no yard. and it's been empty for months. and on the market for 6 months. AND the owners took the washer, dryer, and fridge!

but i put another bid on anothe rhouse today. so fingers crossed, y'all.

uh? what else? oh, so a boy in ___________ loves him some stella! stella came to visit over the weekend. yea! we heart stella! stella was excited because it got her out of hicksville. we went to the local roller derby (more on that later) and then to a party with lovely liv d.h. some guy whose apparently very nice, but, uh, well, a bit portly, took a shine on stella. so days later, when liv receives a request for stella's email because this boy likes her...i call and let stella know and she says "oh. he wasn't gay?"

roller derbies rock. a good, good, good place to people watch. there was a fabulous mix of nascar fans, punk rockers, grandpas wearing button up shirts, lots of babies, lots of mean looking girls on roller skates. during the derby lots of good ol' hard core american rock played. a friend's band played during breaks. beer was $5 a cup. the nachos came in pieces - cheese in a plastic thingy. peppers in a cup. chips in a cellophane bag. you had to assemble them yourself. there was one broken finger. by the time we left, during the last play, it was getting kind of rough. final verdict? totally going back. hells yeah.

sanjaya? really baby? bathwater? my money's still on beat box boy, lakisha, or miss melinda (?) doolittle.

my new home here in the south has rocking good vietnamese food.

my new home here in the south is warm. i say to folks from here "oh my god, i love this weather! it's so nice and warm and sunny!" and they say, straight-faced, "oh yeah? give it a few weeks. it will be brutal. dangerous. horrible." a side note to these people who are from here ~ when you meet the cute girl who has just moved her, don't shake your head sadly and say "oh, i'm so sorry." i am from the tundra! i heart it!

my new home here in the south has some good art going on.

it also has a high rate of poverty and crime.

a few weeks ago i went to a little film fest thingy in an old powerhouse. it was fun. we saw lots of short animation films from the world over. the best? the one, from england i think, starring dick and jane and the idol. you have got to find this. i wish i could remember the name of it! it rocks. everything you really thought dick and jane were like and more.