Pickles & Dimes

There has been no return of Car Spider, and I’m hoping it’s because the fantastically warm weather has turned the interior of my car into a death oven and fried him to a crisp, much like the sun-bleached, husk-corpse of a wasp that sat in the far, unreachable corner of my rear window for months until I finally hauled out the dustbuster to dispose of it. Hope you enjoyed your slow, hot, burning death, spider! (Will now probably be eaten to death on the way home.)

Things that are making me happy today:

- Early morning sunshine reflected in sprinklers and the birds who splash in the puddles
- Passing vehicles that have dogs sticking their heads out the window
- Good books, a comfy chair and plenty of time
- It’s payday, and the third paycheck for this month (not that the extra paycheck ever really seems to work out, but still)
- Shorty’s exasperated sighs whenever Sunny hops onto the bed at 6:00 a.m. meowing to be fed
- Receiving budget reminders from mint.com: You have exceeded your monthly hair budget (my hair now looks normal again, so it was totally worth the scolding, mint.com!)
- The stupid tick bite I got last weekend is no longer resembling a textbook case of Lyme disease (between the tick and the spider, I fear the bug/creepy crawly population is mad at me)
- Photos of exhausted camping buddies

How about you?

This morning, I was zoning out on my drive to work when I suddenly felt a hair tickling my neck. I absentmindedly brushed it off, and then I remembered the spider I saw hanging out on the inside of the passenger window yesterday.

A few seconds later, I felt something positively scampering up my arm. Driving 65 mph, I took my eyes off the road and saw a small brown spider speeding up my forearm in the direction of my face. I shrieked a curse word and smacked it as hard as I could. Based on the microscopic amount of time I saw it, I was convinced its body was full of poison and its legs made of miniature Ginsu knives. I hit it pretty hard, based on the soreness in my arm, so I figured (hoped) the crisis was averted, and I didn’t have to make a phone call to my insurance company blaming the cause of my accident on “an angry arachnid.”

Then I saw the spider running up my pant leg. I gargled a horrified, “HRRRRGGGHH!” and brushed it off, dealing with a monstrous case of Paranoid Goosebumps for the rest of the drive. But I’m guessing that if the spider survived my arm-smash, it sure as hell didn’t die from a weak leg brush-off. I fear I’ve just made it angry.

I don’t think I’ll like it when it’s angry.

I forgot to post about this and it’s almost June. I had made this masthead eons ago, back when I was using a different, and much smaller, masthead template.

Fast-forward to May 2009, when I realized the combination of New Job – Free Time = No Masthead, and I recycled this previously tossed-aside image. Of course, I lost the original Photoshop file (this only happens when I absolutely need a file, of course) and had to plaster the jpeg onto three different-sized backgrounds to cobble together this monstrosity.

I consider it my green initiative: recycling an old file into something new. Yeah, that’s it.

Now I realize I have exactly 5 days to come up with June’s masthead. CRAP.

I was a little nervous about posting my previous entry, because I’ve never met anyone who craves alone time as much as I do, and most of my real-life friends are outgoing social butterflies who crave lots of human interaction, so I thought your comments would be more along the lines of, “Oh! I have to hang out with people at least 10 hours a day or I DIE!” or “You are an anti-social freak who will die and rot undiscovered for two weeks because you have no friends.” So I was thrilled when almost all of you responded with, “I too crave alone time and when I do not receive it in an appropriate manner, THE WORLD SHALL PAY.” I’d suggest we all get together to talk about this, but, you know.

[Imagine a smooth segue here.]

In honor of today starting with a 7:30 a.m. all-employee meeting, followed by a lunch meeting, followed by me killing everyone in the immediate vicinity because COME ON, I present things that irrationally annoy me/gross me out for no reason:

Early morning meetings: WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY? And: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Followed by: ARRGHHHHH, SERIOUSLY.

Drinking milk with pizza: Maybe it was because pizza was the only meal where my parents allowed me to drink pop, but drinking milk with pizza = gross.

Deli meat: Maybe it’s just our deli, but they cut the meat in huge slices, fold the whole mass over, wrap it in paper and seal it in a plastic bag. But when you go to grab one piece, you have to undo the whole thing, and the meat tears into ragged pieces, and there’s slimy meat juice all over the bag, and EWWW.

Pants: Does that little part on your pants, the part right above the button, stick out? So when you pull your shirt down, the pants part points out like an angry, rogue belly button? It seems that all of my pants do this, and I act the appropriate amount of upset about it.

Songs that feature the chorus being repeated over and over: I’m not even going to list an example because then it will be stuck in my head for the next century, but I think you know what I mean. The song is clearly over, but because it’s only 2 minutes long, the artist decides repeating the chorus for another minute and half will act as appropriate filler. If I am alone when this happens, I will just angrily mutter “SHUT UP!” and turn it off, but if I’m not alone, I will ease my suffering with the healing balm of fantasizing about bludgeoning the band members with their own instruments.

Broccoli: Just the sight of it annoys me. See also: cauliflower, beets.

Spiders: I’m not afraid of them like I am of house centipedes, but whenever I see one, I act like it’s stealing a huge chunk of my day. Like grabbing a tissue and squashing it takes longer than 10 seconds, but man, I have things I could be DOING. (Little-known fact: spiders are giant productivity destroyers.)

What are some of your irrational pet peeves?