Category: weirdity

Genetics are an odd thing

A couple weeks ago, my best friend came out for a visit. As chronicled in these pages, we had a really nice time.

While out and about at the Japanese Tea Garden, I took quite a few photos. Beautiful trees, swimming Koi, flowing water.

Near the fabulous barrel bridge we stopped, and The Good Man took a photo of my friend and I.

I won’t publish it here since I haven’t asked permission, but seeing the photo doesn’t actually matter to the discussion.

Here’s the point: Later, when I downloaded the photo and took a look at it on my computer screen, I looked at my own visage and was a bit surprised.

You know who I look like?

My father.

Um. I’m not sure how I feel about this. I mean…as a woman, I think it might not be preferable to, you know, as you age…start to look like your *male* parent.

Growing up, I always favored my mom’s side of the family. I have the distinctive pointy chin. I have the body shape. Yeah, ok, so I’d given over to my genetics and was ok looking like my mom.

The first time I noticed I was starting to favor my dad was when viewing the proofs from my wedding photos. There is one photo where I have an expression on my face that is *exactly* my dad. In fact, The Good Man often teases me, “Don’t give me the dad look!”

It’s a sort of squinty eyed skeptical look, and I’d copied it to perfection. I remember the moment, the photographer was doing something weird, kind of annoying me, and I gave her that vintage dad look and click went the shutter.

Ok, so I own that. I was making the face.

In this recent photo, I wasn’t making a face! I was simply standing with my beautiful friend in a beautiful setting smiling at my husband taking a photo.

Something around the eyes, I think. And my nose. But damnit, I look like my dad! Ok, sure, I’m sure the faint whiskers now growing around my chin aren’t helping my “I don’t want to look like a man” cause, but sheesh!

I even sent it to my sister who confirmed that yes, around the eyes, I’m starting to resemble dear old pops. She said, “have you ever noticed you do that one eyed squinty thing?’

Gah!

It’s not that my dad wasn’t an attractive person, it’s just…..that he was a MAN.

Gah!

Genetics are weird.

Today: A Fable

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful princess…we’ll call her…Karenita. This lovely princess was married to the most handsomest prince in the whole land.

But unfortunately for our lovely princess, every weekday, she was required to go and toil away the hours at the Imperial Tower of Doom. Gray clouds swirled overhead while poor Karenita was tormented by her oppressors.

There was one oppressor who was particularly a thorn in the side of our beautiful princess.

See, our lovely girl arrives to work in the morning tired and in need of something for breakfast. The princess keeps some food in the Imperial Tower office ‘fridge, and also likes a spot of hot tea on the cold gray swirly cloud mornings.

Unfortunately for the princess, there lived in the break room a mean and nasty troll.

No really, this lady is like five foot nothing with a bad attitude and a chip the size of Texas on her shoulder.

For some reason, the Evil Break Room Lady can always sense when Karenita the Princess needs to have breakfast, and makes sure to hustle in there first, blocking the egress for our lovely girl to reach the ‘fridge.

While Karenita is there heating up her food, Evil Break Room Lady makes nasty comments about how people don’t clean up after themselves (despite the fact that Karenita scrupulously cleans up after herself) and self-importantly restocks the paper coffee cups (it’s not her job, by the way, she’s a very high paid executive admin) while dropping hairy eyeballs on the princess the whole time.

And then Evil Break Room Lady takes paper towels and cleans the countertops, sometimes pushing Karenita’s bowl out of the way while she does. Karenita finds this to be very rude.

It’s clear that Evil Break Room Lady doesn’t like Karenita, but Karenita doesn’t know why. The princess was raised to be kind and cordial and always says hello and thank you and excuse me.

Karenita believes that Evil Break Room Lady must be very unhappy with her menopausal lot in life, and all the hot flashes must make her cranky. Karenita thinks Evil Break Room Lady envies her still productive ovaries and plentiful estrogen.

The princess tries to be understanding, but it’s kind of hard when someone gives you the equivalent of the finger with her face every morning. Karenita is just trying to make it through the day.

The princess has tried to be nice, to make conversation, to say “yeah, it’s really bad when people leave water everywhere” but none of this works. Evil Break Room Lady has just determined that the princess is a lesser form of life.

And this doesn’t make Karenita feel very nice as she starts each day.

In other news, the nicest person to Karenita in all the Imperial Tower of Doom is the janitor. The janitor thinks Karenita rocks and will make it a point to wave vigorously from across the room and say hi.

Karenita likes Mr. Janitor. He’s a good man with a sucky job and he does it with life and verve and kindness.

So there’s hope. Maybe Karenita knows she’s not such a bad person after all.

And they all lived crankily every after.

Kids, just say nuh-uh

Much this week about bringing idols from my childhood to a demise.

No, not what you’re thinking. I’m not talking about that *event* held today in LA, which shall go unnamed on this blog as I don’t need to lend anymore kerfuffle to the well built pile already laying around.

No, I have something else on my mind.

Namely….how come drinking and driving makes your hair all jacked up?

Couple arrests this week.

First Joyce DeWitt, former hottie from Three’s Company:

And now, the guy who played Carmine “The Big Ragoo” on Laverne & Shirley.

I seem to recall he used to be pretty hot. I might have had a little “thing” for him, in the day.

And now? Yeeeow!

I need to go now and spend some time tending to my broken childhood dreams.

Images and story courtesy of TMZ.

Oh thank you…

God bless the Las Cruces Sun News for running only a regular sized and tasteful headline about the media event of yesterday. You know, the one that is blowing up all over the media and crowding out all the rest of the regular and essential news?

I’m already tired of hearing about it.

I have a conflicted

This whole social networking thing, I’ve been reticent about it. Then on further examination, I acquiesced a bit.

But I have a reticent again.

As you may know, I’ve joined the folks who are using Twitter. Sure, yes, I tweet.

Banal stuff I tweet, I admit. But I enjoy the challenge of 140 characters. Plus it’s fun to see what other’s can cram into such a small space.

Often I read stuff on there makes me sigh and shake my head. Example: a local sports broadcaster takes to Twitter to describe the quality of his bowel movements. A regular man, seems to hit him daily about eleven a.m.

*sigh*

Then there’s some good stuff, too. Local SanFran author Christopher Moore has the best tweets of my follow list, bar none. Example: “Steve Jobs had liver transplant. Glad he finally acknowledged the value of cut and paste.”

So okay, there’s fun stuff out there, it’s not all bad. I rather enjoy tweeting, heck, as you know, I even recently participated in a twitter story writing contest. So I’m on board!

Only, this weekend, I might have hit a wall.

I follow Ann Curry on Twitter. She’s been Tweeting pretty hard about what’s going on in Iran. I personally have tried very hard to keep a distance from all that. It’s horrible, and my heart goes out to the victims and their families, but I have a neurotic worry gene (thanks, Mom) and if I let myself follow what’s happening, I will lose my grip.

So, yeah, I have been reading Ann’s tweets, even though I’m not sure this is the best way for the news to travel, I read them to keep up to speed, a little, on the progress.

That said, on Saturday, Ann tweeted quite a bit about the escalation of the protests in Iran. Scary stuff, here’s some examples:

“Credible source was eyewittness (sic) to pepper spraying of about 100 protestors #iranelection”

“Iran state tv claims explosion at tomb of revered Ayatollah Khomeini. Would incite anger against protesters. Is it true? #iranelection”

“More reports of police using tear gas and water cannons to disperse thousands #iranelection”

Yikes. I was taking all of this in, feeling that familiar fear and dread…and then moved on to read more tweets on the same page by other twitter folks that I follow.

Here’s where my train derailed.

Along with scary stuff from Iran, here’s what else I found on the same page:

“just getting up, still drunk I think.” (from a local journalist for the SF Chronicle and a prolific author)

“Destroyed by dim sum and good friends.” (from the rather successful owner of a small business)

“I’m thinking of something like this for (my second house), so perhaps I’ll go to C&B and see how it looks in person. (furniture item, link redacted).” (from a blogger and editorial writer for one of Seattle’s independent newspapers).

So, look, I’m not following Buffy the Wonder Ditz on Twitter, I have thoughtfully chosen which tweets I see, but still, I was startled by the juxtaposition of the uses of Twitter.

Actually, The Good Man pointed it out as he read over my shoulder. I didn’t even see it. Perhaps I’m so twitterheaded it didn’t look strange.

I think Twitter can be used pretty well as a marketing tool. Heck, when I tweet a link to my blog, I can count on about 10 to 15 extra eyeballs that day. So that’s good, right? Blog traffic is really nice.

But is all this self-focused, self-absorbed social networking really meaningful? (asks the self-focused, self-absorbed blogger)

I don’t know, something changed for me on Saturday. I like Twitter, enjoy using it, but then think…what am I *doing*?!

I don’t have the answers, I’m really just talking it out here. But last week, I was kind of into Twitter and enjoying it. Now, I’m not so sure.

Anyhow…just some pondering for a Monday.