Monday, September 28, 2009

ISTJ meets INFP

Here's a semi-interesting story from my day (interesting to me, anyway) that gives a glimpse into how different my husband and I are. It's almost a typical day in the life of the Daltons.
 
This morning I got up and got ready for work like usual. I left on time, swung by Starbucks (yum) for a treat, and made it down 71 before the "oh my God, the roads are wet! Let's all go 5 mph!" traffic jam started, and I arrived at work at the usual time. In my mind, everything was going well until I reached for my keys to turn the car off and noticed that there was a much bigger wad of keys there than I am used to grabbing. Uhhhh, those aren't my keys...
 
Somehow, in my half-asleep, pre-caffeinated blur of a leaving-the-house routine this morning, I had grabbed Craig's keys and left mine on the table. Maybe for most households, this wouldn't be a problem, but in our case, the keys in my hand held the key to Craig's work truck. Problem. I then grabbed for my purse, certain that there would be like five missed calls on there, one for each level of panic as my husband nervously tried to alert me of my error before it completely screwed up his schedule for the day.
 
...Except my phone wasn't in my purse. I imagined on the kitchen table, lying innocently (or maybe smugly--I haven't decided) next to my keys.
 
Crap. I then grabbed my stuff and flew up to my office (well, "flew" might be an overstatement, considering I work on the 5th floor and spent a few minutes waiting impatiently for an elevator) where I threw it all on my desk and dialed Craig's cell number from my work phone.
 
Voice mail.
 
Are you kidding me? Aren't you wondering where your keys are? If it were me, I'd be glued to the phone. This was the first moment since we disconnected our landline a month ago that I wished we still had it. The only time that phone ever rang was (a) when a telemarketer was calling or (b) when one of us really needed to reach the other one but couldn't get through on the cell. Dang it. At this point, I left a frantic voice mail ("IhaveyourkeysI'msorryIleftmyphoneathomeI'mleavingrightnowIshouldbethereby8") and ran back down to the car (re: "ran," see previous disclaimer).
 
On my way home, all I heard on the radio was how the southbound lanes of both 315 and 71 were backed up almost to 270 (as I whizzed past the parking lot on 71 going the other direction...the direction I would soon be going on my way back to work), apparently because it rained overnight. Columbus drivers, you are seriously a bunch of sissies. WTH.
 
When I arrived home, sweaty and freaking out, I found Craig in the kitchen, cool as a cucumber. He actually laughed when he saw me fly through the door. "Forget something?"
 
It's days like today when I am grateful that I married a man with a personality nearly the opposite of mine. Some people might have been afraid of the wrath they'd face at home after a blunder like that. I was just worried that I'd make him late for his first job (which wasn't, as it turns out, until 10am, so the only thing he was "late" for was driving to the office to drink coffee and kill some time). And you know what, even if he had had an 8:00 job and I'd made him late, he still wouldn't have been mad.
 
I took the through-town route on my way back to work and arrived around 8:30. The whole debacle gouged a nice hour out of my morning, but other than that, it left me amused at my freaky-outy reactions to things and the contrast of my husband's mellow, go-with-the-flow approach to life. Yeah, we're good for each other. 

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

okay, let's attempt to blog or something

I've become a lame-o on the blogging front. I'm not sure what my problem is, but maybe I'll try to give it another shot before giving up completely. Although, I don't know why I'm even concerned with whether or not my blog is lame--it seems that a lot of people spend a lot of blogging time/space with concerns about their blog's quality, and honestly when I read that, my mental response is almost always "What are you worried about? I like reading about everyday stuff! That's my favorite kind of blog." And yet, when it comes to myself, I feel like I have to be some sort of masterful wordsmith, crafting these poetic and profound posts that make readers weep/laugh/think deeply about the deep things of life, etc.

I need to chill out.

Um, so what's been going on? Well, the Buckeyes lost last weekend, and that was sad. And I know the angry sports fans of Central Ohio are calling for Tressel's resignation with their fists in the air (or maybe that's just my husband) and scoffing at anyone who makes comments like "well at least we didn't get totally blown out," but I have to say that I was actually more impressed with the athletes' performance than I expected to be. The way people were talking before the game, you'd have thought the Buckeyes were going to take the field and immediately pee their pants and wave a white flag. Instead of that, they fought hard and kept it close. I thought they looked good, with the exception of a few mistakes (which USC matched with mistakes of their own--hello interception, hello safety). With my limited football knowledge, I'll probably have to agree that Tressel's conservative play calling kept the Buckeyes from winning a game that they proved, athletically, that they were capable of winning. And that sucks. But I'm still proud of them--they played a hell of a game and proved something to the nay-sayers who expected them to look like a bunch of weenies.

And that's my girlie football commentary of the week.

Other news? It's getting cooler, the days continue to get shorter, and that makes me sad. I'm trying to put on my big-girl pants, though, and get mentally prepared for the inevitable winter. God, sometimes I hate living in Ohio.

Labor Day weekend was nice. We went up to my aunt and uncle's place in Michigan and had a family picnic on Sunday. There was the typical quota of family drama and tension, but that's to be expected. The comedic tension-breaking winner of the day was my grandma, who interrupted an uncomfortable silence with uncharacteristic, too-funny comedic timing.

*tense silence following some loud scolding*
Nani looks up into the trees and quips, "It's so *peaceful* here!"

Win, Nani. That was awesome.

But tense moments notwithstanding, it was a good weekend. Craig and I slept in the yard in the sweet, retro camper (dubbed The Mystery Machine because of its resemblance to the bus from Scoobie Doo, although my aunt can never remember the name. "What do you call the camper? The Time Machine? The Hippiemobile?"). That was awesome, although neither of us slept very well (It's hard to sleep next to a 6'3" guy in a bed not much wider than a twin, especially when he's snoring an inch away from your face. Not that I'd know what that's like or anything.), and we got some quality time with my aunt and uncle and cousin, whom we don't get to see too often.

Let's see...other news? I'm still having some hair issues, this time with a color job gone wrong. I decided to stop the highlighting and just go back to my natural color. Now, my natural natural color is pretty dark, so i was prepared for a shock. However, the color my hair lady used was a shade lighter and definitely redder than what God gave me. It's a great color, and if I were going to continue cheating nature, I might stick with it. However, what I was going for was honesty, and this does not match my eyebrows. But the yucky part is that it doesn't really cover my highlights. So as long as I have my hair in a ponytail and you only look at the top of my head, it's fine. But if I have my hair down and I'm standing in the light, you might notice some odd streaks that look...well, kind of green. Um, no, this is not going to fly. So I'm going to try to get together with her soon to see if it can be repaired. We'll see how it goes. I'll let you know.

Oh, and speaking of hair, I never posted a curly-do picture on here, but I think I've sort of got the hang of it. Success requires a combo of products and a dryer with a diffuser, but the result is probably as good as it's going to get for someone whose hair is really only naturally wavy, not full-blown curly. Maybe I'll post a pic if I remember.

Oh, well here's one, sort of, although you can't see much of my hair. This is from our neighborhood barbecue (celebrating the completion of the patios Craig and his friends put in for us and our next-door neighbor) That is our friends' two-year-old "riding" one of the neighborhood dogs (a ginormous Rottweiler mix--we love him!)


Thursday, September 3, 2009

the devil's funeral

On my desk, I have a tear-off calendar of quotes from The Office. Since the year only covers one season (and 365 quotes from 20-something episodes), some of the quotes they've chosen are a bit of a stretch and not exactly the

crème de la crème of pure Office humor. Today's, however, I found delightful:

 
Pam: "You mean 'leaves' as in 'dies'? You want us to throw Toby a New Orleans funeral?"
Michael: "If the devil were to explode and evil were gone forever, what sort of party would you have?"