Conversation between two Georgetown University protesters:

A: Okay. We've got our "Hoyas Against the War in Iraq" sign. You want to just put that up on the side of a building and march in front of it?
B: Nah. We'll be out there all day -- I'll get too tired. Let's just lie down instead.

And good news for you KKK members: even you can be seen in the season's latest looks.

posted by paula 3:02 PM

I’ve been dreaming of mice as of late. Rather frequently I might add. At first I thought the contents were pretty obvious:
Last spring when the weather got warm and then dropped again, we had a horrible bout with some mice coming into our apartment. I originally discovered it because week after week I would find dog food stacked on the floor in the corner of the pantry. Obviously, I blamed Ryan for spilling the food (as he’s quite prone to do). The food on our kitchen counter is sealed well, so I had no idea that there were actually quite a few mice that had made our way into our kitchen. When we discovered the perpetrators and set out traps, I’m sure you can imagine my horror when I realized that there wasn’t just one or two, but a whole family and they’d been there for weeks and invaded the great majority of the kitchen, including the stove, oven and cupboards under the sink.
Following suit like most of their projects, our apartment management was less than speedy on ridding our home of the pests. I called several days in a row, filed numerous work orders and after catching over seven mice by traps they had yet to list my problem as anything more than ‘resident thinks she saw a mouse in the kitchen.’ After a few days of hearing traps snap in the middle of the night, they left me no alternative than to haul out the tears and cry on the phone, demanding them to call an exterminator the following morning or else. My demands were met. But we continued to catch mice for the next week, bringing our tally of dead soldiers up to about 15, last I checked. Ryan argues that it was less, but I have documents that prove otherwise.

Naturally, the management did nothing in the way of ever making sure the problem doesn’t happen again this fall. The dishwasher was never pulled out where they were coming in, the cabinets never sealed and in my book the problem was never fully resolved. They threw down some ‘long lasting’ poison that would actually draw the mice in and then kill them after ingesting it. Horrified that I naively cohabitated with the little beasts for so long, I’m keeping an eye out this fall now that the temperatures are plunging. So I didn’t think twice about having dreams that mice were again invading our space. But about six weeks into it, I’m still having dreams and I’m pretty sure that the mice will not be coming in if they haven’t already.

The dreams vary by nature. One alarmed me so much that I actually woke up in the middle of the night and asked Ry to hunt the little bastards down for me. Sometimes they’re invading my home, sometimes they’re running through fields and sometimes – like last night – it’s just the idea of them that makes me hunt them down; I’m tearing apart my apartment while talking on the phone with an acquaintance.

Sure, this could be my little form of PTSD or paranoia setting in, but I rarely think of them during the day so it causes me to wonder why I should dream about mice so much. Dream dictionaries (which are usually a bunch of hooey) say that dreaming of mice means discord among friendships. I can’t say definitely whether or not this actually the case. I do know though, that sometimes having your thoughts constantly invaded is almost worse than having your belongings invaded. We tend to fear the unknown much more than anything definite.

posted by paula 10:38 PM

My dog is the neighborhood slut.
No, really. Friday lays down for just about everyone, unless he outweighs the other dog so much that humping is nearly impossible, in which case he just forgets about getting any at all. His best customer is my friend Katie’s French bulldog named Hercules. Fitting, I know. Humping is not a problem for Hercules.
Friday was neutered as quickly as his little parts could come off; just after six months old. I’ve only seen him hump once in his life and he lacks the aggression that other dogs have which makes him the target of just about every other male dog’s desire. Hercules although neutered, was done so late. Katie acquired him from a ‘frenchie farm’ down south when he was a year old and the testosterone had already been surging through his body for quite some time.
Like parents, people with dogs get together so that their pets can have ‘play dates’ and run around and do all that stuff that kids and dogs are supposed to do. And with Katie and I living in the same building, Friday and Hercules are probably the equivalent of best friends in the doggie world.
What takes place on these play dates though is somewhere between a steamy Cinemax film and night on Playboy. Hercules is of course the aggressor, biting and hopping all over Friday and giving good name to the position that was named after dogs themselves. Then he gets tired of it and tries to switch positions, flipping himself around and humping poor Friday’s head. Oddly enough this behavior happens on such a regular basis that Katie and I are almost oblivious to it. We chat, drink heavily or watch TV while John Holmes and Ron Jeremy engage in their near-scandalous behavior. That is, we didn’t notice it until yesterday.
Yesterday things were as usual. I had finished cooking and we were in the living room chatting when Friday had finally given up and let Hercules have his way. Apparently the dog anatomy doesn’t work as smoothly as the human anatomy and while in an extra hard workout, Hercules lost control of his bladder and began to urinate all over Friday’s back.

I don’t think I need to elaborate on our surprise of the whole situation.

Come to think of it, we both were a little relieved that the fluid wasn’t what we originally thought it was. But again: I don’t think I need to elaborate on our surprise.

In any case, the carpet’s been cleaned. Friday is getting a bath and Hercules is taking a break from him for a while. At least until I can figure out what I need to charge if I’m going to pimp my dog like this.

posted by paula 5:16 PM

Conversations heard over the cubicle wall.
The cube farm has revolutionized the workplace. In college, I thought large companies with massive cube farms were cool, because they treated every employee as an equal. After sitting back to back with a few managers and one boss, accumulating some friends in HR and enduring embarrassing and hushed phone calls to schedule OBGYN appointments, I realize just how stupid the cube farm is. And driving past the coveted new Best Buy corporate offices in Bloomington the other day (yes, they’re Bloomington although technically it’s on the north side of 494 which is Richfield) I noticed that there will be virtually no private offices in the building, with little in the way of actual conference rooms.

The horrible thing about cube farms is that they give you the sense of privacy without actually having it. Thus, conversations that probably should not be heard or had in the workplace, take place. I can’t describe how many times I’ve heard someone talk about a private problem of their co-worker, with disclaimer attached that “I try not to listen, but they’re my cube neighbor and I can hear everything they’re saying.”

Obviously, I’m not condoning the luxurious expanse of a broom-closet sized office for everyone. With commercial real estate prices as they are, I know better. And in fact, moving from a cube to an office environment actually builds character in the corporate structure – something like the movin’ on up Jeffersons. What’s unfortunate is companies that leave their managers in the midst of the worker-bees, assuming that those managers know the difference between confidential and public information. In a previous job, I sat back to back with my boss, also sitting privy to a world of knowledge that should not have even reached my ears, regarding employee problems, employee relations and even some discrimination of my peers.

I long for the days where I see an office rather than three gray half-walls – no matter how beautifully patterned those walls may be. Oh how I dream of a door to lock and safeguard all my personal affects that I may bring into the workplace to personalize this wonderfully dull space! How I wish to have chairs so that people may come and slump in my office as they please! Walls that I may hang a plethora of the same old Successories posters so that everyone may read them until they’re burned in their subconscious! A slit of a window to the neighboring cube farmers, so that I may choose to cover it with paper as to appear detached and more important than those that I manage!

Come to think of it, my cube farm – and an occasional game of over-the-wall-ping-pong - is just fine for now.

posted by paula 11:46 AM

Now this story is irony at its best. Why have gun control when evolution and natural selection will just take care of the problem?

posted by paula 10:22 AM

This past weekend we took a trip to illustrious Wausau, WI to see my family for the first time in a few months. My parents technically qualify as the ‘retired’ type but their lifestyle is anything but. Instead of spending their weekends playing tennis and shuffleboard, they seem to be busier riding their Harleys and flying around the country, which make them hard to catch. So when we can all be in the same place at once, we tend to take advantage of the situation.
We also went to see the most photographed child on earth: my niece. I’m usually the perpetrator of the actual photography, down the floor, getting a worm’s eye view of the amazing little thing simply because children are so easy to photograph. They’re always in their natural state, never fixing their hair or flashing a lens-blocking hand, complaining about how horrible they look. Children are never self-conscious about their photogenicity (which is a word that I apparently made up to suit my own needs), yet somewhere along the way we teach them to be. So with my niece, I’m getting while the getting’s good.
Truthfully, I can’t say I’m very fond of children. While I imagine myself with them someday, I’m currently soaking up my twenty-something’s right to be without them and even remotely irritated at other’s bratty and misbehaved offspring that you see screaming without reprimand in your local grocery store or retail shop. Of course I’ve convinced myself that my clan will be better disciplined than their peers. What I fear the most though, is that my children will not be so fortunate as my niece and be the subject of only their mother’s love because they’re born bald or with oversized ears or a lumpy head. That my children, in their early years, will be showered with awkward and half-hearted statements like “Oh, s/he’s so cute” when inside the complimentor is not quite sure what sex the complimentee is. Yes, my niece has it quite easy; blessed with her parents’ thick and wavy brown hair and shimmering blue eyes. And she’s smart as a whip, I might add. Looking in her eyes, you can tell she’s already deciphering your particular place on the food chain and how that pertains to her relationship with you. Then she lets out a little laugh, as if she’s already got you all figured out and how she’s going to manipulate you into playing another game of ‘airplane’ with her. Yes, this one’s going to be a rocket scientist all right.

The rest of the weekend was spent in various modes: eating, sleeping, chatting and discovering what has all changed in the growing metropolis that is Wausau and surrounding area. We spent some time browsing the best local flower shop; Friday chased a goose and 50 of his closest friends off a field on my parents land and ate goose droppings like it was going out of style. We drank a little, laughed quite a bit and watched a movie or two. Eventually it all gave way to a rather long and painful construction-laden drive back to the Twin Cities and here we are starting the week all over again.

posted by paula 5:29 PM

By no means am I any forensic psychologist – regardless if I’ve been interested in it or not. But let’s look at something here:
1. Sniper makes first few hits.
2. Media and police report that the sniper is working in a small area.
3. Sniper starts shooting people outside of said 'small area'.
4. Media and police report that sniper is shooting from a long range.
5. Sniper decreases shooting range on future victims.
6. Media and police report that sniper must be ‘a family man’ since he doesn’t attack on weekends.
7. Sniper makes first weekend hit on Saturday.

Anyone see a pattern here?

More later on what we’ve been up to this last weekend. . .

posted by paula 12:18 PM