ah ha

NO ONE got kicked off.

Not sure if it's because I was sleep-deprived or not, but that entire Idol Gives Back show made me weepy.

Of course, when I went to order a margarita the other night on a mini-dinner-break from work, I said, "I'll have a margarita on the rocks, no water. No ice! No--" The waiter kindly interrupts me. "No salt?" "Yeah. No salt."

it's a tiny miracle

Tuesday night when I got home from work around quarter 'til 1, I stayed up and watched Idol instead of going straight to bed as I should have.

Last night, as the hours ticked by and I was still here, I warned everyone against telling me who got kicked off like my dear friend Leslie did last week. Everyone kindly complied.

But then the hours kept ticking by and I found myself pulling into my garage aorund 3:30 in the morning. Since my 3 alarms were going off 3 hours later, I made the mature decision and, sadly, skipped watching the results show. (Then I slept straight through all 3 alarms and didn't quite make it to work in time for the 8:00 meeting.)

The good news? I somehow still don't know who got kicked off. My radio station didn't say it today. It hasn't been on my Google home page, and no one's said a word at work. So as long as I get to leave here at a decent hour tonight (I'll know really soon if that's going to happen), I can go home and watch it just like it's happening in real time. But first, I think a few drinks are in order.

la-la land

Lately I’ve been missing my life in LA. Not all of it. I’d erase the majority of the last year and a half – but not all of that, either, because even in the midst of some pretty successful self-destruction there were good moments.

I miss my friends there, even the ones who don’t live there anymore. I miss the weather. The way it smells in the morning. Lavenderish. Rainish. I miss being able to lie on the beach, listening to the waves crash, all while seeing the mountains in the distance. Even the day Kym convinced me we’d get super tan if we slathered ourselves in dark beer. (We smelled really delicious by the end of the day.) I miss my boxing gym that isn’t there anymore. Or at least not in the same place.

Most of all, I miss working in television. There’s nothing like it. Even when you work 16+ hour days for days on end, there’s an excitement to it. A camaraderie. And tons of good food. ☺

In fact, there seems to be something about LA in general that breeds camaraderie. A we’re-all-in-this-together kind of thing. An anything-could-happen kind of thing. Great success. Earthquakes. Who knows?

Of course there are plenty of things I don’t miss. The traffic. The smog. Having to buy a refrigerator to go with your apartment. Moving your car from one side of the street to the next every other day.

But even those things are easily erased with daily trips to the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf (vastly superior to Starbucks, and this from a Starbucks addict).

It’s like the opening from Pretty Woman – Everybody’s got a dream.

Here’s mine: I’m back in LA getting mani/pedis and going shopping with Carrie. Having sushi at Sushi Roku with Tania. Meeting the Good Jeff for breakfast. Talking with Anita over a long lunch in Beverly Hills. Going to the Rose Bowl flea market with Anthony. Driving fast around the curvy part of Sunset Blvd. Writing for television. And drinking 16-ounce Iced Blended Vanillas. Every single day.

ruined results

All night I’ve been dying to leave work so I could go home to watch the American Idol results show. I purposefully have not even gone on my Google homepage tonight for fear of seeing the results before I make it back to my Tivo.

My co-worker just announced to the entire office that Sanjaya has been kicked off.

Argh!

(And double argh that it's 1:07am, I'm still at work, and the end is not in sight.)

paying my dues

On Monday, I realized that my accountant’s filing of my taxes did not mean I didn’t have to actually write a check and pay them. Yes, I owed money. Mostly because I had quarterly installments last year and I thought they were optional and therefore didn’t pay them. They aren’t. I also somehow failed to connect that owing money and getting it to the IRS involved some kind of effort on my part.

As one of the cops at the post office said, I’m a procrastinator.

I spent most of Monday stressing about the post office experience that faced me. My boss kept saying, “You need to leave the office right now and go mail your taxes.” But I couldn’t leave, because I still had way too much work to do.

Then I got the awesome idea to spend a little more money and Fed Ex them. What’s another 13 bucks, right? I could even do it from work. This made me happy.

Until I finished filling out the shipping form and realized that Fed Ex won’t deliver to post office boxes, and the IRS uses post office boxes. I had no choice but to go to the post office.

First I worked until 8, then I went to dinner at Fireside Pies with some friends, so it was after 10 before I started following my Google map to the 24-hour post office. Perfect timing. The rush should have already gone home for the night.

When I exited the freeway, I saw a line of cars piled up, snaking their way into the parking lot. Then I saw the cops directing the line of cars. Great. Not so perfect timing. I steeled myself for a long wait.

Right as I got to the front of the line of cars, someone pulled out of the front spot and the officer waved me into it. When I got out, he said he saved that spot for all the pretty girls. I laughed and he said I was the only one who didn’t believe him which made me smart and pretty. I guess he had to entertain himself someway, because once I got inside, I realized it wasn’t crowded at all.

There were probably 15 people in line. One of the postal workers asked if anyone was paying with credit or debit card. I said I was. He whisked me out of line, took me to the automated machine, did everything for me – including fill out the certified mail/return receipt stuff. I was in and out in less than 5 minutes.

Perfect timing.

Now if only I could have kept that check that was heading to a post office box…

the need for speed (or lack thereof)

Yesterday I woke up at 6am to go to Nascar. Yes, 6am. I've even got the red neck to prove my redneck-ness (and half-red arms, half-red face... yes. super sexy.). Here's a good summary of the day. Jen, Jeanann & me 12+ hours from waking up:

More Nascar-ing to come...

it doesn't feel like friday

I just want 1 good day. I don't think I've had one in 2 weeks. Enough already.

no such thing as sick time

Work is kind of kicking my ass lately. It's not only been insanely busy, but also insanely fragmented. This past Tuesday I worked on 11 different projects. That's a record.

But today is the best example of how work is beating me down. I came home sick and worked almost as much as I would have worked if I hadn't left - and I still have more to do. The only 2 differences were that I did it in my pajamas and that it was more confusing without face-to-face communication. So I learned a good lesson. Don't get sick.

emtensgi

Sometimes I sit in meetings and the person running it is talking and I'm nodding my head in understanding but really all I hear is gibberish and all I'm doing is trying to remember my to-do list or trying not to fall asleep.

Celiacs Unite

Let night I met some of my people – some fellow celiacs.

I went to a gluten free cooking class at Central Market and had a delicious 4 ½ course meal. (I say 4 ½ because I’m not sure bread and marmalade count as a course.) The head chef was a woman whose husband and 2 of her 3 children have celiac, and they have a completely gluten free household even for herself and the child who doesn’t have it.

The food was awesome (except for the meat – I’ve always hated Salisbury steak. It’s disgusting, in my book) but mostly it was just cool to be in a room with so many other people either have celiac or have kids who have it. People who totally understand feeling crappy while doctors try to figure out what’s wrong with you. People who know what it’s like to go into a restaurant and have to ask a million questions that half the time aren’t understood (or you get called rude names in Spanish), and you end up eating a plain chicken breast while those around you eat hot, cheesy, delectable pizza.

I’m blessed to have friends and family who are extremely understanding and accommodating, but I know it gets annoying for them to have to go to restaurants where I can eat when it isn’t what they want. And, for some reason, it’s starting to get more frustrating for me while I would think it would start getting better.

But I left my cooking class kind of inspired. I bought the chef’s GF cookbook. And, when I got home, I made some gluten free blueberry muffins that were really yummy. It’s an actual possibility that I might even start cooking real food for myself… One step at a time.

Thanks to Elbow Room Boy for the muffin mix & the tip on the GF class. And happy almost birthday.

Cursed at Chipotle

Last Friday, a worker at Chipotle called me a whore in Spanish. Or maybe a bitch.

Here’s what I did to be deserving of such slander: I asked Worker #1 (not the whore guy) if he would change his gloves to make my food because of the whole gluten thing. Worker #1 – who recognized me from my eating there and always having to do the glove thing – happily changed them and started my vegetarian burrito bol. But he forgot that he had to take it all the way down the line in his nice, clean gloves, and thus handed it off to Worker #2.

I panicked a little bit and said that the first guy needed to do it. (Okay, fine, it’s possible I overreacted a bit. It’s what I do.) So the bol went back to Worker #1. But Worker #2 wasn’t very happy with me and I know this because he spat out a word in Spanish that clearly wasn’t nice. I tried to apologize and explain but he wasn’t interested.

When I got back to the office, I asked around to see if anyone knew what it meant. No luck. That afternoon, a bunch of us headed back down to Chipotle for post-work margaritas. (Worker #2 wasn’t there.) I asked this group if anyone knew what it meant. One of my co-workers kind of sucked in his breath and laughed at the same time and told me that Worker #2 had called me a whore. Or maybe a bitch. But more likely a whore. A whore just for protecting my health.

I don’t think this is very nice.

So I’ve been weighing my options.

Option 1: Do nothing.
Option 2: Complain to the manager.
Option 3: Learn lots of bad words in other languages to call him when I go back to he can spend the day trying to figure out what they mean.
Option 4: Kill him with kindness.

If I’m a whore and/or a bitch, I’m certainly not kind, so option 4 is out. If I’m a whore and/or a bitch and go to complain to the manager, I’ll likely be at least a bitch to him (hopefully not a whore), and I like the manager so option 2 is out. The backbone of someone who turns tricks is questionable, but a bitch doesn’t let anyone push her around, so forget about option 1.

It’s time to start studying languages. And by “it’s time to start studying languages,” I of course mean, “It’s time to start Googling.” Let the name-calling begin.

Gluten gets a call-out.

On Six Degrees:

Whitney: Can my assistant get you anything? We have these great chocolate chip cookies brought in fresh everyday.
Reporter Guy: No, thanks. I'm allergic to gluten.
Whitney: Who isn't these days?