Why can’t anyone design an underwire bra that doesn’t eventually poke you? They could very easily reinforce the places where the wire inevitably pokes through. But they don’t. They want to keep us constantly buying lingerie.

Well, I am here to tell you - I am not playing along. I would much rather suffer than be a slave to the corporations that don’t care about my comfort and support so much as parting me from my hard-earned dollars.*

You hear that, giant evil underwear corporations?

Poke me all you want! Helena is NOT going to do your bidding!

*OK, so yesterday at work I read Harry Potter for 4 hours. The point is, I was sitting at my desk and might have been working, in fact would have been working if anyone had been around and furthermore, there have been plenty of days, some as recent as last week, where I worked like crazy and had no time to pee or eat, even if I had found a way to clone myself, raise the clones until they became of working age and then hired them as my assistants.

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I did it. I forced myself to go to orchestra rehearsal last night. The music wasn’t as loathsome as I remembered it being, so I guess that’s something. My stand partner said she was a little jealous that I’d had the guts to go on strike last week and she had not. As it was, she ended up sitting with someone else and the two of them spent the whole rehearsal making fun of the music under their breaths. Other than that, she assured me, I hadn’t missed a thing.

She’s new this year and I wasn’t sure what to make of her, but I think I’ve decided I like her.

** I like the tilde. The poor, underutilized tilde. Let’s all start using them more often, OK? If you don’t speak Spanish, you’ll have to use them more as decoration, but still, I don’t think you’ll regret it. If we all band together we can make the world a more festive place.

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We had a very full weekend – spent all day Saturday shopping. Literally all day. And while we got some things out of the way that needed to be done, like taking about 97 boxes of books that I was sick and tired of looking at to Half Price Books (for which we received all of 10.00 – and we were happy to get it – and then turned around and spent much more than that), I am really not that into shopping, so by the time we were done, I was really, really done.

We had a nice lunch with squelch, who we don’t see enough of anymore, and I got a couple of CDs: Rush – Moving Pictures, because I never had it on CD, all I had was a taped copy of Mr. Barhop’s album; and a CD by a band called Twelve Girls band, which I have been told you are a very bad adoptive parent if you don’t own – it’s thirteen women from all over China, but twelve being an auspicious number and schedules being what they are nowadays, they only ever play together twelve at a time. They play traditional instruments but they put a more modern twist on their music. There is a cover of Coldplay’s “Clocks”, which I have decided is cool. It was almost Chinese Buffet Muzak Bad, but then I changed my mind. Oddly enough, The Man said that of all the things on the CD, hearing that song made him feel ready to go back to China. Go figure.

I also got the only two Isabel Allende books that I haven’t read yet – Paula and Stories of Eva Luna. Actually that’s not totally true. I got Zorro for Christmas but I haven’t read it yet. It’s next in line after Harry Potter.

We even went to some non-book stores (not as much fun, but what can you do?) and got a lot of other necessities that I won't bore you with - but, as implied above, I did not buy new bras, although I probably should have. Let me have my protest just a little longer.

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Is it bad that I really want to see that movie where Antonio Banderas teaches ballroom dancing to a bunch of teenagers?

No?

Good.

I didn’t think so.

I think I’d better wait for the DVD, though, so I can rewind all the truly sexy dancing bits and watch them over and over, like I did with the scene Grosse Point Blank*** when John Cusak was beating up on the bad guys in the hallway at his reunion. I am only slightly ashamed to confess that he really made me appreciate violence in a new way. I know I am not the only one, otherwise I would be really embarrassed.

***A-HA! There’s a John Cusak movie we don’t own yet!



Reading:
HP&THBP

Hearing:
Raised voices coming from my boss' office.

Needing:
Something to drink.

In My Car CD Player:
Pagan Babies, by Elmore Leonard