I really can’t believe I forgot to post this the other day, when it would have been oh so fitting, but ah well, better late than never.

I first heard about The Dresden Dolls on NPR about a month or so ago, and positively fell in love with their sound.

In particular, Backstabber (yes, I know, oh the irony) has this brilliant part at the end where the voice of the lead is just incredible.

Now technically, her tune isn’t the same as my tune, but it does have a particularly appropriate chorus:

backstabber! hope grabber!
greedy little fit haver!
god, I feel for you, fool…..
shit lover! off brusher!
jaded bitter joy crusher!
failure has made you so cruel….
rotten to the core

Anyway, I actually got several of their songs and they’re all really strong, so yeah, spread the love of the Dolls. 😀

I work in a very suburban-ish area, in the sense that it’s not a big city, but there are other businesses nearby.

One is a mid-sized building, shorter than ours, that I can see from my window.

And hear.

They’ve been doing some sort of construction on it and I swear to god, it feels like we’re in the middle of a battlezone. There is a constant percussion of noise, something akin to bombs dropping a few miles away, and our building shakes ever so often, causing Mickey and I to grouse.

Our IT guy just came up to finish installing a new computer. When the building shook yet again, he looked over at me, winked, and said, “My, my, you rock my world.”

And then he chortled.

I don’t know whose expression was more dismayed and disgusted, mine or Mickey’s (he truly loathes the IT guy).

(The IT guy, you see, is well into his 40s, quite unattractive and highly irritating. Seeing as how this is a building full of women, he fancies himself a “ladies man” and attempts to flirt with all of us, and therefore has an irrational need to one-up Mickey whenever he can.)

He grinned at Mickey, who simply responded.

Dude…. Seriously?

And shook his head.

With the Porkchop out of town, I’ve been spending some time catching up with friends… friends who I’ve known ever since I moved out here, who have since graduated and moved. So today I went up to Boston for some shopping and dinner with E.

We met her “boyfriend” for dinner. I put it in quotes because according to her they haven’t decided what to call this thing that they are doing… they like each other, they spend all their time with each other, they basically live together, but calling it something would be just too much, too soon, lol.

At dinner, her guy and I ended up laughing over which of her friends don’t like us (me, for no real reason, and him because he’s apparently a little “crass”). During this conversation, I brought up his old roommate, who, if you remember, did this to me last May.

He looked at me, stunned.

You mean you don’t.

I in turn, looked at him, stunned.

Are you kidding?

You don’t have it? I thought you did. E said..

And we both looked at her.

E, what’s he talking about? What does he think I’m sick? You did tell her [his roommate], didn’t you? You told me you told her and to stop lying about it and that you talked to him [her guy] and that..

OK, it’s my fault. You shouldn’t be mad at her [the roommate], I thought you were. I heard it from such-and-such professor and..

What? I told you. We’ve talked about this. You know that I had an allergic reaction. E, what’s going on?

At this point she claimed sickness and headed to the bathroom.

I stared into my drink, wondering if this is what shock felt like.

I’m really angry right now, he said. I don’t know what’s going on, but I guess now isn’t the time to talk about it.

I’m so angry right now, I said, but I don’t really know what to say. I’ve talked to her, she knew, I asked her to set your roommate straight and she said she did. I don’t really know what to say right now.

She came back, claiming to have thrown up, saying it was the tequila or the fish tacos, and we paid and left.

He and I talked on the way back to the car, about mundane things, the weather, the walk and the crazy streets of Cambridge.

She was mostly quiet.

As I drove home, I felt an unbelievable sense of loss.

I am devastated, crushed and still in shock.

I guess I always thought I knew how to pick good friends. We’ve known each other for almost four years. We traveled together to Ireland, I’ve seen her through three boyfriends and the loss of a good friend, and while I knew she had a tendency for embellishment, it never occurred to me that she would so blatantly lie to my face.

And not just once, but several times.

I’ve been running a list of questions in my mind all night… did I make her mad somehow? did I embarass her? did I hurt her in any way? Every answer I have is no.

What I do know is that those who lie always have a reason. Not a good one, not even one that makes sense, but a reason. And in cases where it’s so incredibly hurtful and false, it can only be because that person is trying to not only hurt the other, irrevocably, but to discredit them as well.

I don’t know what I did, or why she is jealous? or angry? or just plain mad? But I do know that at that moment, when I realized that she had been lying to me and about me for months, I felt completely and utterly alone.

My dad just called in a panic.

My Ipod is frozen. There’s a little lock symbol in the top corner and I’ve tried all the buttons I’d normally use and it’s not working and…

Dad, just look at the top, where the headphone jack is? There’s a button up there, move it to the other side.

Well that’s just… yeah, OK. I feel pretty stupid right now.

Um… you in the OR [Operating Room] or something?

Yeah, getting ready to be.

Don’t let them hear that you feel stupid right now, OK?

Cute.

Yeah, I get that a lot.

Seriously, my favorite phone calls are the panicked ones I get from my dad when he thinks he’s broken his iPod and he’s about to go in to surgery with NOTHING TO ENTERTAIN HIM.

I get that from his side. 😉

hehehehe.

For the first time in six months last night, I had to sleep by myself.

And let me just say… that completely sucks.

Especially in the freaking winter in freaking New England.

The Porkchop is back West, handling the rest of his life, and will be gone until Sunday.

Which basically means all sorts of parties and drinking and dancing in the streets for the next three days.

Or ::cough:: rather, all sorts of snuggling in blankets with coffee while reading and watching girl-y movies and POSSIBLY making cotton candy and not watching any sports at all.

Oh the bliss.

This is my day.

I almost ran out of gas on my way to work and learned that when the little gas light comes on, I can travel almost 20 miles before it sputters and dies.

Fortunately, it did that just as I was gliding downhill to the gas station. Which, incidentally, I would’ve been at sooner if there had been a GODDAMN SIGN. But noooo, that would’ve been way to easy.

You see, the little light came on just as I entered a 20-mile stretch of nothing-at-all-Highway. So I thought ahead and remembered there’s a giant shopping center area at the last exit before the one I take to get on the next highway to go to work. So I got off there, and went toward the center.

And was there a gas station? No, no there wasn’t. But I kept going, until somehow I crossed over the damn highway I had been on, four miles back the way I had come.

So now I’m freaking out and promising all sorts of things to the gas gods, seeing as how it’s 16 degrees, there’s snow on the ground, more is falling and I’ve had my heat off to conserve gas.

I see a fellow Jeep-driver and turn toward her, rolling down my window. She informs me that had I gone left off the highway, I would’ve seen the gas station.

I follow her the four miles back, swearing the entire way, positive I’m about to stall and certain I won’t know where to tell them to come find me because at this point I have NO FUCKING CLUE WHERE I AM.

Obviously I made it to the gas station, and then to work, where I got to deal with a very, very annoying French Canadian woman who will no doubt call me 10 more times today to torture me.

It’s cold; I’m numb; I wanted it to snow.

It didn’t.

I hate winter.

So I’m catching up on my blogs, and I’m reading this, and all I can think is “a dozen of our most relevant war plans?”

We have a dozen? and They’re relevant?

Who came up with them?
What do they include?

Bearing in mind, this piece is about the Pentagon’s Doomsday Plane, so we’re assuming here that the USA is getting seriously attacked, probably via nuclear bombs, so what, did they come up with a dozen plans to launch our own nukes?

I mean really, a dozen? We don’t need that many.

Plan 1: Launch all nuclear weapons at threat, laying waste to the entire country.

Plan 2: Go home.

Sometime last week I heard a piece on NPR about the Oxford English Dictionary, and how they publishers put out an appeal every year for help dating certain slang words.

The list is quite long, but includes such gems as “arsey” and “as if!”

My new favorite?

“Gordon Bennett!”

As in, “Gordon Bennett! I slammed my finger in the door!” or “Gordon Bennett, a GIANT bug just fell on my desk!”

Yes, Gordon Bennett is apparently a word you should feel free to use to replace all manner of curse words, like “shit,” “damn” and “fuck monkey.”

In all honesty, I should point out that up until I just heard the piece again, I thought it was “Gordon Elliott!,” not “Gordon Bennett!,” and the Porkchop and I have been saying “Gordon Elliott!” all week.

And since it’s so much fun, I think we should ALL say “Gordon Elliott!” and get it into the vernacular.

Who’s with me?

A disturbingly large bug just fell from the ceiling.

It landed on my keyboard.

I screamed “son of a fuck monkey” so loud the people in the office across the hall heard me.

I’ve now been deemed “colorful.”

Lovely.

Also, it’s apparently now the talk of the office, as I’ve had two phone calls and one email laughing at me.