No one wants to be defeated.

I'm cranky.

A woman rather unceremoniously hit me over the head with her bag as she got off the bus this morning and couldn't be bothered to apologize or even notice. A whupping upside the head rarely heralds a good day.

Spent 3+ hours in the cleanroom today and had to scrap everything I did because the materials that one of my labmates graciously let me borrow turned out to be defective. Of course, there was no way to know about the defect until I had done 3 hours of work. It's really fun watching your entire morning's work literally wash down the drain, in the form of little flakes of gold. Ooh...look how failure sparkles.

Cleanroom time means I can't wear makeup, am wearing crappy clothes, and am guaranteed a bad hair day post-hair net. Add in the fact that there is a monstrous zit on my chin that I unsuccessfully tried to pop last night (it seems I was, however, successful at angering it) and that I'm feeling incredibly bloated and gross today due to my having spent the weekend figuring out that a) I am, in fact, mildly lactose intolerant now and b) coconut apparently contains enough fructose to make me sick (which wouldn't be a colossal bummer if it weren't for the fact that I just made a MASSIVE batch of granola with extra coconut that turned out v. tasty)...this set of circumstances should all but guarantee that I will run into the VGLM today. So far, no sign of him, but it's nice to know that, should he show up, the taller, thinner, prettier, younger undergrad that I have suspected he had a thing for since I met him seems to have resurfaced after several months of being somewhere else blissfully far away from me, and is currently wandering around looking effortlessly cute.

Oh, and yesterday I finally conceded defeat and packed away all of my impractical lingerie. It was consuming valuable real estate in my underwear drawer and I was tired of it mocking me every time I went looking for clean socks. I figured that since I have now officially passed the 1-year mark since the last time I got any action whatsoever, I have suffered enough. A couple of weeks ago when I spent a Sunday afternoon curled up on the beach with my Harry Potter book, a guy who was just the right amount of attractive (i.e., cute, but not automatically out of my league) came along, sat right beside me, and cracked open his own. The approach and body language were reasonably encouraging, so I kept waiting for the pickup that never came - I mean, come ON man...there is a blonde...in a bikini...reading THE SAME BOOK THAT YOU ARE. EASIEST. OPENING LINE. EVER. But, like I've said before, I never get hit on, and girls who don't get hit on have no immediate need for lacy ruffly underthings.

(Actually, it's not quite true that I NEVER get hit on. I occasionally get drive-by pickup lines. The day before, I had picked up some fish & chips on my way home from the park and was eating it while waiting for the bus. Since there is no such thing as a delicate manner in which to eat a deep-fried side of halibut with one's hands, I was sort of holding the whole box up to my face in order to take each bite without making a complete mess of myself. As I did this, a guy who had just pulled up to the intersection in front of me called out his window at me, "That's a big bite!"

Really? THAT'S your opening line?

I kind of laughed and nodded.

"Can I give you a lift somewhere?"

I politely declined. But I had to wonder, does this approach ever actually work? Are there women out there who are so phenomenally stupid that they either a) find nothing wrong with getting into a car with a complete stranger or b) actually find comments on their eating habits so irresistibly charming and witty that they simply must continue the conversation over dinner? And considering I was wandering around on this particular Saturday afternoon in shorts and Tevas, with no makeup on and carrying a backpack - short of wearing pigtails, I couldn't have looked more like a 12-year-old if I'd tried - okay, maybe I do occasionally get hit on, but I don't think I should have to count the drive-bys by potential pedophiles.)

Mika didn't even help my frame of mind (although Jonathan Coulton may have - it's impossible to listen to "W's Duty" without giggling at least a little bit). So, I think there's one word that pretty much sums up my mood on this beautiful, sunny Monday: defeated.

However, I do have one final side note (can I still call them that if the amount of parenthetical text comes dangerously close to the amount of regular text?) - the titles of my posts are often lines from movies or song lyrics, and I'm actually pretty proud of today's. Whoever figures out the source first will officially be the first (and possibly only) person, place or thing to make me giggle AND clap today. Oh, you know you wanna. I'm adorable when I do that.