Santa baby

Starting a new relationship around the holidays is a high-pressure situation. Adequately gauging your new flame's approach to give-giving takes considerable time and thought, and normally is enough to send this girl into a pre-holiday tailspin.

I usually try not to spend too much, because that makes a girl seem too invested and overbearing - and I am so not that girl. Conversely, an inexpensive gift rarely seems thoughtful enough to be worth the trouble. Plus I love giving gifts now that I'm financially independent, it's one of the best ways I can think of to spend my earnings.

If this were 6 months from now, I would love to give him tickets to a Mavs game, since he used to both play and coach basketball. The good seats get pretty pricey, but that's the beauty of a gift of sports tickets: it's potentially as much a gift to him as it is to me! Far be it from me, though, to dictate how a gift is used, so I would of course have to be prepared for him to take someone else. It's too early in the game for such a financial gamble.

To make matters worse, this year, I may be stuck with the double-whammy -- the pre-Christmas birthday. I'm familiar with the pre-holiday birthday lament, those poor souls born around Easter or Father's Day or what have you, and I would never, ever commit the dual-purpose gift offense. Under normal circumstances I would need to come up with not one, but two, gifts to cover this one.

It would be a SWEET excuse for floor seats versus the Lakers, though.

Of course there's the very real possibility that he doesn't want to exchange gifts at all, and I'm fine with that -- as are my bank account and my sanity. In fact, I almost prefer it. I think I'll just go with that and hope for the best! And come up with another excuse to watch basketball.

Momma said knock you out

On Sunday morning we were watching the 1971 Ali/Blin heavyweight fight, and the announcer mentioned that they were broadasting from "the most famous sports venue in the world." The building appeared still to be in one piece, so I quickly discerned that it was not the Colliseum. Madison Square Garden? Must be. Then the byline came on at the bottom of the screen: Zurich, Switzerland. The three of us were puzzled.

A completely whacked out high school English teacher of mine once asserted that there's nothing in life that you can't look up, including your name. Always one for shortcuts, I took this theory and ran with it, earning esteem among my friends as the most efficient Internet searcher ever. With my mad Google skills, I ran a search that eventually turned up the name of this supposedly world-renowned venue.

Hallenstadion Arena. Anybody? (Bueller?)

Under pressure

So I haven't been posting a lot, mostly because I'm buried in school work. Oh, the life. Here's some free-form thinking for your reading enjoyment.

The other day we had my coworker's going away luncheon. Now the guy was only working here for a whopping 9 months before he quit, so hardly anyone in our fifty-person group really knew him. However, a grand total of 25 people showed up for lunch. He and his napoleonic complex were, of course, thrilled. Most openly admitted that they were just there for the food.

I love when professors really go above and beyond to give their students guidance. Last week my group was told that our final paper was topically correct, but "crude". When we inquired how we might remedy this grave error, we were told, "Make it less crude." Aren't language barriers fun? By the grace of God we will all graduate in three weeks.

Lisa got eliminated from America's Next Top Model on Wednesday, and much of the free world rejoiced. Me? I can't help but love her, the whole peeing-in-a-diaper-in-front-of-20-some-odd-people thing aside. Her portfolio is fantastic, and whoever said models were 100% classy anyway? Kate? Naomi? Janice? I'm talking to you.

Well since I'm in the office on my off-Friday, I may as well start doing some "real, actual work." Back in a few days when I'm a little more coherent!

Love is a battlefield

On Tuesday I received an e-mail from an ex-boyfriend, asking for money for a concert ticket from back in September -- to be exact, the weekend before we broke up. Now in discussing this incident, we'll disregard the fact that this guy took me out on a total of 2 dates in 1.5 years. We used to split the meals, I paid for one, he'd get the next, which is perfectly agreeable to me in most cases, except every once in a while you've got to treat a girl.

We'll also disregard that last year he dropped a couple thou on new wheels and tires for his second car, or that he called me last weekend to ask what brand of $200 jeans he'd contemplated buying two months prior.

Perhaps I should refrain from noting that, at said concert, he completely (and noteably, as others commented on this at length) ignored me in favor of speaking with some client of his about whom he'd talked incessently over dinner early in the week: "T, this girl is just so awesome. Really, she's the kind of girl you see and you think, wow, that girl must be a model. But she also speaks fluent Korean, and is a black-belt in Tae-Kwan-Do." Fan-effing-tastic, isn't she? I'd do her.

And yeah...we'll also not mention the fact that he broke up with me the very weekend that I drove out to Dallas to help him install $3000 hardwood flooring in his brand new condo.

But it probably IS worth noting that he saw me and the new guy I'm dating canoodling in a local, late-night taco establishment last weekend. Coincidence? Perhaps...but at least I'm on to bigger and better things.

Congratulations, Ben, you are officially a "Dallas guy."

...

And yes, I'm aware that putting up with the above-mentioned and other of his idiotic "romancing" not once (for 1.5 years when I first moved here), but twice (for another month this summer), makes me an absolute moron. Consider that lesson painfully learned.

She blinded me with science

One of my biggest office pet-peeves is peoples' inane tendency to drag their fingers along the cube walls as they walk by. It really hearkens back the days of 3rd grade, and those kids who used to absent-mindedly touch everything around them as they wandered through the halls.

You know that kid, the one with the thick eye-glasses and nasally voice. He'd pick his nose and then smear his finger along the wall, not even aware that such behavior would inevitably lose him a seat at the cool kids' lunch table.

I guess it can be inferred that 30-something years of being eschewed by most everyone makes the computer an attractive companion, because everyone here is that kid. Or is it the other way around: a scientfically curious mind precludes any consideration for the subtelties of human interaction? Nature versus nurture, I guess...at any rate, stop touching my shit!