mardi, le cinq de decembre, 2000

Announcement: This entry would not be here now without the heroic recovery efforts of Catherine, Dawn, and Natasha. You girls rock. Many thanks.

Missing: Rudolph. I had book club tonight and completely forgot to tape it, which is sad and wrong. But since I also missed Frosty on Saturday night, I'm just going to go rent them sometime. Probably in January, after everyone else has finished renting them too.

Listening: Various and sundry Mannheim Steamroller Christmas albums. (Albums? Does anyone say that anymore?)

Watching: Dress to Kill. See main entry.

Wishing: I had someone to go see "The Nutcracker" with. They're dancing it at the theater that I pass when walking from my car to my office, and I would love to go see it, but I'm tired of going to stuff like that with just my family or girlfriends. My officemate went to buy tickets today for her and her husband, and I stewed with insane jealousy the entire time she was gone.

Random Fact: The man who sings the "You're a foul one, Mr. Grinch" song is the very same man who voices Tony the Tiger. (The Random Facts are no longer going to be exclusively about me because I think I've run out of things about myself that are interesting.)

~ & ~

The law is a sort of hocus-pocus science.
-- Charles Macklin

~ & ~

Link of the Day:

The Harry Potter Lexicon

A complete guide to all things HP. This guy has even put together a calendar of their class schedules. Very impressive.

At this very moment in time, just about 6:00 p.m. on Tuesday, this is an e-mail from my work address to my home address. I am off The Firm's clock, killing time before I go to a book group meeting for which I refused to read the book. (It was "A Child Called It," and just from reading the jacket, I could tell that it would not be something that would bring me holiday cheer. That kind of stuff gives me nightmares.) Having already read the X-Files and Buffy recaps over at MightyBigTV, I decided to facilitate the evening's entry and start writing now.

So, I'm kicked back, straining to see the screen because I've decided to type using the ergonomically correct thingie that slides out from under my desk, but in order to use it I have to sit so far back from my computer that it's hardly worth it, so I don't use it ordinarily. The door to the office is closed, the lights are off, the city lights are glowing although I can't see them because I don't have the window half of the office, but the string of lights my officemate strung up around the perimeter of our office are glowing as well, and those, I can see.

My officemate is the nicest person in the whole world. I'm so thankful I have her, and not the officemates of some other people I know here. She and I have developed a very comfortable space-sharing relationship, in that we don't have to say "bless you" each and every time the other person sneezes. We can work for several hours without speaking and it's not weird. Every once in a while I lob a dumb question over the partition and she always answers. She almost never goes to lunch, though, and there have been times where I wish she would go away for a minute or two so I can, I don't know, make a personal phone call or something. I mean, I can do that when she's here, but I don't like to be all chatty when someone else in the room is trying to work. But she leaves at 4:00 and I'm usually here until 5:30 or 6, so I have plenty of time to gab after she leaves.

Another person I love is my secretary. I am finding that it is taking a lot less time than I expected to get over my guilt about asking someone to do my mundane tasks, namely because I no longer have time to do my mundane tasks. And it's shameful, but I'll admit it... I love being able to drop something at her desk and say, here, Fed Ex this. Of course, I'm polite about it all the time, and we're all chatty people so we usually have some other conversation. But the fact that I don't have to be in charge of the Fed Exing or the copying or the binder-making... it's heavenly.

AND, I got my business cards today. If anyone wants one included in their Christmas card, let me know! (Just kidding. Many Christmas cards have been written and sealed and are awaiting a trip to the post office by their author to get some holiday-themed stamps, so don't ask for a business card now. But if you want one in the future, feel free.)

I was going to just put this in the sidebar, but the more I caught myself giggling at random places throughout the building today, the more I decided it needed to be upgraded to full body-of-entry status.

After watching a fairly lame episode of Ally McBeal (my Robert Downey Jr. fascination may be over), I was channel-surfing while gathering the energy to get off the couch and get ready for bed when I stumbled across my perfectly-legal-because-I-never-did-anything-illegal-to-get-it HBO. I saw this man, in full eye makeup and lipstick, wearing this dress-sort-of-thing with pants and clunky high heels, doing stand-up. I know I had heard of Eddie Izzard before he won an Emmy last fall, but that was the first time I ever really wondered what he was about, but then I never thought about him again.

Well.

I'm telling you, and people say this all the time to the point where it doesn't mean anything anymore but I'm telling you for real, I have never laughed so hard for an hour and a half straight, ever, in my life.

The funniest thing about him is that 95% of his show has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that he's a transvestite. He just stands there, talking in his perfect Queen's-English accent about how the vicars in the Church of England would never have been able to pull off an Inquisition ("You must have tea and cake with the vicar or you die!!"), and about how England had to return all the countries they had stolen once World War II was over, and how the American national anthem starts out strong and finishes strong but everyone gets a little hazy in the middle. He has a whole bit about the Heimlich maneuver, for crying out loud, and it's hysterical. Nothing crass, no unbearably gratuitous language, and suprisingly, considering he's wearing heels, very little sexual humor. He does talk about losing his virginity (most transvestites do "fancy girls," don't you know), but that's about it.

Not that sexual humor categorically bothers me -- it doesn't, at all, if it is actually funny and not completely disgusting. I only say that because the last time I remember laughing my ass off in a similar fashion, although not as much, was watching Chris Rock's "Bring the Pain." But I can do without the jokes about what men do to each other in prison, for example, or hearing the word "pussy" ninety-eight times in a four-minute bit. I know a lot of people find that kind of thing funny, but, well, the thing is, I don't. (I'm kind of a prude that way, so sue me.)

My point is, when somebody can go a whole hour and a half making my sides hurt without being gross, I don't care if he's wearing fishnets, he's got me. The one I saw ("Dress to Kill," which I think is what he won the Emmy for) isn't out for rent yet, but it will be on HBO again later in the month, so if you have it, watch it. You'll be happy.

And now, I have to go to bed, as everyone on the notify list knows already. It is waaaaay past my bedtime. Sweet dreams be yours, dears, if dreams there be.

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