On a scale of 1 to 10...Round 2

So the other section was less interesting, but there were some highlights:

Talk too fast: 5
Enthusiasm = good: 6
SO HOT!: 1
You like me. RIGHT NOW, YOU LIKE ME!: 11, if we're including aforementioned enthusiasm = good folk
Yeah, well, I didn't like you either: 2
Phone numbers to call to discuss ranting evaluation: 1
Rhyming couplets consisting of one compliment for me and one insult for my colleague: 1
Incessant test whining: there is no incessant test whining. Okay, there's actually quite a lot of that, but if a student whines in an evaluation and no one cares to read it, does it make the tests easier?
Marriage proposals involving extended chemistry puns: 1

Yep, that last one takes the Tina Fey award for most entertaining evaluation. In its entirety:
"M., WILL YOU MARRY ME?
YOU'RE SO ELECTRONEGATIVE. I am not...
deltaE > 2
We can form a STRONG ionic bond!"

Oh, Cyrano de Einstein...if only that read deltaEN, we might have had a chance...

Missed Commutercation

First of all, if you were dying to comment on my "Irresistible Bitch" entry below, the comments have now been enabled. Not sure how they got disabled in the first place, but it's been fixed. I would hate for you lovely people to think I didn't want your feedback. ;)

That being said, on to today's entry:

This morning I was enjoying my morning commute - weather warm enough to not wear a jacket, rereading the book from which this blog takes its name, wearing a new shirt and no socks (I am, deep down, a barefoot redneck, and I hate that my lab is kept too cold to wear sandals in the summer - any time my tootsies can get a little fresh air is a Red Letter Day, even if it is just my heels peeking out from my mules). On the last leg of my trip, I change to the yellow train to travel the last couple of stops to work as I always do, and I notice a rather attractive man on the car. He's about my age, dressed casually but quite well, just scruffy enough that I feel confident that he's not gay...just a generally very appealing fellow. Approximately the same type as the VGLM, actually. Feeling good and confident in my new-shirted/sockless high, I stand near him, hoping to make a little harmless, flirtatious eye contact before we get to Queen's Park.

Unfortunately, he had his earbuds in and never once lifted his eyes from his paper.

Damn.

I remain convinced that the iPod is the single worst thing that's ever happened to random flirtation on public transit.

And it's times like these that I really wish I were the kind of girl with the balls to slip a random hot guy my number as I walk off the train. That would have been badass.

On a scale of 1 to 10...

Okay, actually, it was a scale of 1 to 7, but I got one set of my student evaluations back today. While I'm not really comfortable with the fact that they rated myself and one of the other instructors (the one who took over after me) on the same sheet, thereby ensuring that I have now read all of her evals and she mine, I have to admit that it is more informative that way. Someone rating you "adequate" on a particular question may actually be raving about you (if they rated your colleague "very poor"), flaming you (if they rated said colleague "outstanding"), or genuinely never noticed whether it was you delivering that lecture or merely a surprisingly articulate hedgehog. And yeah, I'm taking a little bit of petty comfort in the fact that a healthy number of them rated me a notch higher, sometimes more, on most of the questions (although there were definitely some that went the other way, but I seem to have won the popularity contest). Even if that notch is just a matter of "poor" instead of "very poor," a little perspective helps soften the blow.

However, It's the blank area on the back where they are allowed to write anonymous comments that is always the most informative. The current standings, keeping in mind that I have only received the forms from the morning section, are as follows:

Some variation of "M. is hot/soo hot/I love you M.! Hot!": 3 1/2 (see below)
People who appreciate my enthusiasm/sense of humor: 6
People who are not amused, or at least not at 9AM: 4
I talk too fast: 5 (am expecting this number to be lower in the afternoon section, as I tend to talk faster when people are not amused, and nobody warns you about the adverse effects of immediate post-morning coffee exposure when registering for morning classes)
People who think I am a cat lover (???): 1
Uses of the word "incompetent": 1
Stick figure drawings depicting me using what appears to be a 3-foot twig penis (or possibly lightsaber - it's longer than my leg, yet juts straight out from my stick crotch) to cut my colleague in half: 1
Number of whiny little bastards that complained about the tests/grading/labs being too hard: oh, lost count and don't really care
"Raise the roof, nigga!!!": 1

And my favorite:
"M. was fun and quirky. She was a good lecturer who reminded a few of us of Tina Fey."

I enjoy that comment for a few reasons, aside from the obvious:
a) I do love me some Tina Fey - I happen to think this qualifies as the extra 1/2 in the "hot" tally - and kind of wish we could be best friends. I mean seriously, how awesome would my wedding be if my bridesmaids were #1, Em, and TinamotherfuckingFey? Wahoowa!!! FYP RULES!!!
2) The use of the phrase "a few of us." That implies that an actual conversation has been had to this effect, and a consensus has been reached.
iii) The word "fun." I believe I've said this in a previous post, but my ambition as a teacher is not to make chemists of these kids. Some of them love chemistry, some of them are only taking it because their parents still believe they're going to get into med school someday. I'm not idealistic enough to think that, in a class of 750, I'm going to help every last one of them see the light and discover a hidden passion for quantum mechanics and colligative properties. But I can feel pretty good about myself if I can manage to make the process a little more fun.

So I'll update this after I've seen the other section (I've seen the numerical report and indeed, it does appear that they liked me better than the morning section...I just haven't seen the actual comments yet) but to sum up at halftime: they think I'm hot but at least as of my latest Facebook search they are not yet stalking me, the amuseds outnumber the not amuseds, me = Tina Fey, and I apparently wield a mean penis/lightsaber. I think I'm going to go ahead and call that a successful semester.

Raise the roof, indeed.

Irresistible Bitch?

The other night, I was having dinner with a couple of friends. One of them asked, "What's the worst pickup line anyone has ever used on you?" And I couldn't really think of one - I have friends that have heard some AWFUL ones, but I couldn't think of a truly bad pickup line that's ever been used on me.

Today the reason occurred to me: I never get hit on.

Now, I realize the primary reason for this is that I don't typically go out to the places where guys hit on chicks. When I go out to bars, it's usually with my guy friends, and guys don't hit on you when you're hanging out with other guys. Fair enough. And on the rare occasion that I've been out at a club, I get randomly groped without fail (one of the perils of knowing how to effectively shake one's ass is that every guy in the club associates that ability with a girl that wants to Get Down. Dude...I do, as a matter of fact, enjoy Getting Down, but just because I know how to shake The Booty doesn't mean that grabbing it is an acceptable means of introduction.), but actual pickups are hard to come by. The only line I ever seem to get is, "Can I buy you a drink?" and those are even few and far between - I've gotten quite accustomed to picking up my own tab.

I'm not sure why this is. And don't try to use the "men are intimidated by a smart and attractive woman" argument. That might hold for people that know me, but strangers don't know I'm smart, and while I understand why men might be intimidated by a woman who is 5'10" and drop-dead gorgeous, I'm 5'3" and still look like I'm 16. I should be about as approachable as it gets - I'm Cute, but not Hot... maybe pretty, but not Beautiful.

I just don't get it.

Later in the conversation with this same friend, I was telling him something about another friend of mine, and he made some comment about how said friend is probably scared of me. I joked, "Why, do I scare you?" and his response was, "You scare the crap out of me!" That answer was entirely too quick and earnest to have been anything other than a gut response.

I caught him on IM later and asked him why. Scaring men - particularly smart, attractive, sweet ones such as this particular friend - is not something I want to do. He thought carefully about his response, and said, "It's just that you have very strong opinions. You need to be with a very confident guy who will have equally strong opinions and who can hold an intelligent debate. A less confident guy would just get run over. You wouldn't mean to do it, but it would happen nonetheless."

Now, this guy is one of my crushes - has been, pretty much since I moved here. He is incredibly smart, easy to be around, and very intriguing. He may or may not be reading this, which is why it has taken me a few days to write this entry - I wasn't sure whether or not I wanted to talk about this on the off-chance that he might read it. But the fact remains, I now have proof that I scare men.

More importantly, I scare the kind of men that I would really like to date.

I've been told by people (among others, my parents, who make no secret of the fact that they are dying for me to settle down and procreate already) that I am too picky. And sometimes I wonder if they're right. But at the same time, over the last year, the grand total of men with whom I have gone out on anything that even remotely resembles a date comes to approximately:

...two.

It's not like I'm beating them off with a stick - they never even get within striking distance.

So I'm thinking I need to make a change of some sort. Obviously, I'm putting something out there that scares them off, and I don't want to do that. After all, you can't reject them if they're too scared and/or turned off to approach you in the first place. I need to find a new balance, because the one I'm currently holding is getting me nowhere; something is clearly out of whack, I just can't figure out what. The incredible guys without much confidence are scared of me...the incredible guys who ARE confident scare the crap out of ME. The guys who fall somewhere in the middle just... aren't that interesting. (shrug)

Last night, I was having this conversation with an old friend. He just said to me, "Beth -- just be yourself....you have a natural balance...don't try to create one."

Easy for you to say. You've known me since I was an insecure, 15-year-old weenie, and as an adult, you're one of the major reasons I don't trust men or my own judgement (this particular friend is a whole 'nother entry all his own). You think I'm balanced because, as far as you're concerned, I haven't changed since 10th grade.

I guess in a lot of ways I haven't. It's just that I've gotten very good at hiding that. Maybe that's the problem.

Alert

Because I'm sure you're all dying to know, and I haven't posted anything about him in a while, the VGLM is looking particularly attractive today. We now resume your not so regularly scheduled blogging, already in progress.

The Truth Hurts

Tonight I was slapped in the face by a series of harsh truths. I'm not going to go into detail here - suffice it to say that they came from a variety of sources, regarding a variety of different topics: who I am...how I am perceived...who my friends are. Over the last month or so, I've been feeling like I need some sort of change - not like a new job, a new apartment, or a new hobby, but a change from within. I'm feeling a little off-kilter...in need of an emotional tune-up of sorts. I'm still not sure what that change needs to be exactly, but maybe tonight will set the gears in motion.

Bear with me, folks.

Huh huh...That's what he said...

...Much as I would LOVE it if my blogger profile read "69 posts" forever, I have a couple more pics to share with you guys. More exist, but these are the least incriminating.

If you tilt your head and squint, you can kind of see the interesting parts of my dress in this shot. There are a total of 8 straps criss-crossing my back there, and I LOVE the hem, even though it looks better from the front. My shoes are also fabulous, but you REALLY can't tell in the picture. Suffice it to say, the mileage I covered that night in those 3 1/2-inch heels SHOULD have left me completely immobile the next day. Steve Madden is a god.

Please ignore the poor posture. It was cold and I was rather intoxicated. Snuggling up to your date enough to keep warm without making him uncomfortable is a highly underrated skill. Not one I'm entirely convinced I possess, but he was equally intoxicated, so it's all good.

By the way, to those of you who are currently judging him for not giving me his coat: he offered. I declined.

I did, however, steal it from him an hour or two later.

And I feel the need to include this one as well, just because I think it's adorable:
That's BNL's girlfriend. We love her - she's a doll.

Okay, I believe I am officially done being all annoying and girly. I promise to post something more bitchy and/or butchy soon. But maybe not right away...I've been watching WAY too much Sex and the City lately, and the weather has been rather warm, so I find myself wanting to wear skirts and heels and be all ladylike and shit.

What?

In case you were wondering...

...It DID fit her like a sausage casing.
Since some of you spent the better part of last week asking, nay, DEMANDING to see pictures from this formal, here's what I looked like:

Unfortunately, the pretty parts of my dress are the back and bottom, and I don't know if anyone actually managed to take a full-length shot of me. At any rate, I have been assured that more pictures will be headed my way a little later in the week, so those fit for public consumption may make it up here temporarily. That's my date on the right - one of my non-Chemistry labmates, and now quite proficient in The Box. If he can make it work (he even got so advanced as to open the box, take out a smaller one, and proceed without ever missing a beat - don't try that one at home), anyone can. Despite the disappointing assortment of music, a truly good time was had by all. I managed to drink red wine all night (while dancing) without spilling any on my flesh-toned dress - If that doesn't spell success, I don't know what does.

Oh, and by the way, if you didn't recognize the title of my previous post, it's a song by N.E.R.D. Track it down and give it a listen - I am seriously contemplating making it my new theme song. Not to the exclusion of Sexy M.F. necessarily, but it has definitely earned a prime spot on my soundtrack. And that's the Original Life Soundtrack, not the lame-ass Music From and Inspired by the Life Album.

She Wants to Move

Something I have suspected and now confirmed about myself:

I am not white enough to be Canadian.

To look at me, I'm about as white as they come. My German/Irish heritage has left me with fair skin, blue eyes, and a rather uninteresting ash blonde haircolor. Physically, I fit right in with most of white Canada, and if it weren't for my general American obnoxiousness, I could probably pass myself off as a true Canuck if I really wanted to.

Until you get to The Booty.

I'm not sure where it came from - you don't often hear about the lusciousness of German asses or those kickin' Irish curves. But I was born with it, and many many years of dance have honed it to the point that it's one of my standout features. It has converted more than one professed Boob Man into an Ass Man.

The Booty is the one part of me that is Black.

Okay, maybe just Latina.

Friday night, I went to the Chem Club Spring Formal. The DJ came around during dinner, asking for requests once the dancing began. The people at my table requested things such as Madonna, salsa music...the funkiest it got was Justin Timberlake and (eye roll) Nelly Furtado.

(Side note: don't get me wrong...I love me some SexyBack. Favorite conversation of the night:

Me: [Friend], are you bringing sexy back?
Friend: Yes. It didn't work for me, so I am returning it.

And while I do enjoy some Nelly Furtado now that she's found the Funk, she gets way too much play here because she's Canadian. It's like going into a club in St. Louis - while I love me some Nelly, Chingy, etc., you leave desperately wishing they would play someone...ANYONE...who can pronounce the word "here" correctly. There are only so many times I can listen to Maneater and Promiscuous without screaming, and that threshold has been passed several times over since I moved here.)

Then the DJ got to me, and I decided what the hell.

Me: Do you happen to have Da Butt?
Lame-Ass White DJ: Um, what?
Me: (singing) Doin' da butt...ow, sexy sexy!
L-AWDJ: That's OLD...like, 70's?
Me: (completely appalled)

Dude, try 1988. You are about the same age as me, and while I am used to people not recognizing that song, YOU ARE A FREAKING DJ. But you are WAY more White and Nerdy than Ridin' Dirty - I should have known you would be too hopelessly white to play it for me. Even if it WERE that old, it wouldn't have killed you to at least play some decent 70's funk. Your throwback choices were ABBA...the Bee Gees...you could have at least thrown me the Brick House bone.

If I had asked for Pussy Control, you would have given me the Pussycat Dolls. (shudder)

Even some of the better choices were obnoxiously predictable...the aforementioned SexyBack...Golddigger...he played Drop it Like it's Hot, and the people I was with had to ask who sang it.

In a sea of white and Chinese chemists and engineers, The Booty stands out. My date at one point said, "You can dance...you've got some MOVES!" When you're born with a big butt and you go through school with a lot of black kids, you adopt a certain....style. In those days, I listened almost exclusively to hip-hop and R&B - rock didn't really have much of a presence on my playlist until I went to college. Even now, my favorite "rock" groups are those that have a funk element - I usually feel rock in my chest, hip-hop and funk in my hips, and my all-time favorite artists are those that can blend the two. And while my tastes have changed over the years, and groups and singers come and go from my rotation, The Booty never gets tired of classic funk, old-school rap and hip-hop. Proper dancing should make you sweat - it should make your thighs, butt, abs, and shoulders WORK. You can't DO that to Nelly Furtado.

I mean, even The Wedding Singer knew to throw in some Rapper's Delight every now and then.

The Booty has recently reconnected with an old middle/high school friend that lives in town. He remembers it from as long ago as 7th grade. As much as we have tried to avoid the club scene, I think it's going to have to cave and call him to get some help seeking out some quality ass-shakin' music in the Great White North. It had pretty much been hibernating for a long time, trapped in small-town Indiana for years...only putting in perfunctory appearances at weddings and such...but Friday night awakened it.

It's back, and this time, it's pissed off.

The Bigger the Cushion, the Sweeter the Pushin'

So, I went out with the eHarmony guy again tonight, and while it was a thoroughly meh date (to be fair, I'm PMSing pretty badly at the moment, so it may be entirely my fault that it was meh, so I'm debating whether I owe it one more try before I drop the Friend Bomb), it involved post-dinner coffee, so I am currently still too caffeinated to sleep, even though it is about midnight and I still have to get to work at a decent time tomorrow. And I am reminded that there is nothing...I mean NOTHING on TV at 11:30. This is why if I am up at this time, I am usually washing my face...moisturizing...doing all of those things girls do before they go to bed, and I usually finish just in time to snuggle up and watch Arrested Development as I doze off to sleep. But I'm too wired for bedtime rituals just yet, so naturally, I turn to you, dear blog.

Anyway, this weekend I decided that, since I was set to start tap classes this week and the weather is finally starting to be somewhat consistently nice, it was a good time for me to start keeping track of my fitness level again. Last year around this time, inspired by Celebrity Fit Club, I started doing a set of fitness assessments on myself. Nothing big, just keeping track of the time it takes me to do a short run...number of pushups I can do in a minute... crunches... weight, and some miscellaneous measurements and my body fat content. I kept this up for about two months, but when I left my apartment in Lafayette I no longer had my running trail, so I had no way to relate any further progress to my original baseline. Plus, I was eating and drinking pretty much whatever I wanted, since I was moving back in with Mom and Dad for a while and they are a really bad influence on me. Once I moved here, I was focusing entirely on correcting my bad eating habits, and I find I do best if I focus on either diet OR exercise - if I try to do both at the same time, I just end up blowing them both off in an alarmingly short period of time.

So now that my eating habits are under control again (mostly) and my weight has pretty much stabilized, I can focus on just generally getting healthier. So I figured out a short running route around my neighborhood that will serve as a good test for me - it's short enough that I'll eventually be able to run all of it, but it doesn't take very long and therefore doesn't kill my knees. And I set my new baseline on Sunday. Some things I noticed in the process:

1. As I had always suspected, my old complex TOTALLY lied about that trail being a mile long. Because I refuse to believe that I could be that much slower now, when I'm pushing around 15 fewer lbs.

2. Either nobody in my neighborhood jogs, or I looked REALLY good in my baggy track pants, because every single person I jogged past kind of stared at me. I think it was the former - I almost never see joggers unless I'm downtown. My neighbors get enough exercise chasing their kids and dogs around. But I ran about 3/4 of the loop, which was more than I thought I'd be able to do my first time out, so I felt pretty good about that.

3. Now this one I knew was coming - my calves are NOT used to running. Every time I go for a jog after a while of not doing it, I know to expect at least a couple of days of nearly incapacitating calf soreness. The other muscles in my legs might be sore, and the pushups usually leave me a little rough, but nothing debilitating. Once I go out one or two times, I'm fine and my calves adjust but DAMN does that first time suck. Especially when the next day you're going to tap class, where you spend an hour DELIBERATELY ISOLATING YOUR CALF MUSCLES. They didn't really start to seize up on me until I was walking back to my office after class - it took me until I got home to figure out why I was suddenly so much more uncomfortable. I've been hobbling around the lab for two days now trying not to wince every time I get up from my chair. I have not been succeeding. I think the worst of it is now over, so maybe tomorrow I'll go out for my second try. On the bright side, my poor tight calves should look fabulous in the heels I'm wearing to that formal next week.

4. Eh, whatever.

5. While my number of crunches is the same as it was a year ago, my pushups have improved - again, you gotta love having less mass to actually have to push up. This and the run time are the numbers I will be watching - my situp ability has been pretty much the same ever since I started taking ballet as a kid and we had to do psychotic ab exercises.

6. Now this is the part that blows my mind - I already knew that my weight was down, and as it turns out my body fat percentage is down about 6%, which makes me really happy. And when I did my measurements, my waist and hips had each lost about an inch or so. But get this - I lost not one, but TWO inches ON EACH THIGH. How the HELL does that happen??? Seriously??? While I think my legs look better than they used to, I'm having a hard time fathoming how they could have both had two extra inches on them a year ago - what were they then, country hams??? My mom has been saying that my legs look better now than they EVER have, and in the face of this evidence, I think I have to admit that she's right.

Now, you may be asking why I've just written all of these things down. The reason is quite simple - I need you folks to keep me honest. This is only helpful if I do it regularly so I can see my progress. So these are the rules of the game (they are ridiculously simple):

1. I have to do my little run/pushups/situps routine at least 3 times a week.
2. I have to actually take the stats once a month.
3. I have to report back to you people - I don't have to provide the stats, just comment so you all know I'm doing it. If I see improvement in myself, I'll expect you all to congratulate me, if I don't, I'll expect you to call me out for clearly not following rule #1. And if you don't hear anything from me on this topic around the beginning of next month, then I expect you to call me out for clearly not following rule #2. And #3.

If I can lose 5 more lbs., that will officially put me into the "fitness" range of body fat content instead of "acceptable," and that would be really cool. I may not be training for marathons or century rides (coughcoughWILLandIANcough), but I would still appreciate your support in achieving my meager little goals.

How NOT to make a first impression.

I went out with a friend this evening for a little happy hour type thing that she goes to every Tuesday - just a couple of random people that she meets for a couple of beers, onion rings, and wings. So my friend introduces me to the two people we're meeting... typical small talk ensues... she mentions that I am, like her, from the States, so the natural next question is, "Oh? Where are you from?" My standard answer is "Virginia." Now, considering recent events, I probably should have gone with "Washington, D.C." in order to avoid the awkward nod of recognition that results from EVERYONE having heard of my home state in the last few weeks in a less than positive light (I used to avoid telling people I was from D.C. for very similar reasons).

Now, that being said, there are a number of ways you can respond when someone says they are from Virginia.

"Ahh...Virginia...I hear it's easy to...buy guns there" is NOT one of them.

I pretended to laugh because, contrary to my previous entry, I am not a complete bitch, and the person in question did seem to begin to realize what he had just said - he actually followed up with, "I'm sorry...that's probably...not even a little bit funny."

Then why are you still laughing, asshole?

50 Ways to Slap Your Labmate

So this morning I'm working at my bench, making solutions for the experiments I want to run today, and Labmate comes in. She says hi, settles in at her desk, and promptly comes over to my bench with an expectant look on her face.

Me: What's up?
LM: Oh, nothing.
Me: (crickets)
LM: So, how was yesterday???
Me: What about yesterday?
LM: Where did you go???
Me: I...didn't...go anywhere(?)
LM: I thought you went out.
Me: I went...to tap class, but that's it.
LM: Oh, when I came back at 6:30 and saw you were out, I thought you had a date or something!
Me: If I'm not here, it's probably safe to say the last thing you should assume is that I'm on a date.
LM: I thought maybe you'd met some cute guy or something!

I know it's asking a lot of her to allow me to have a life that doesn't involve her, but shit like this is seriously starting to get on my nerves.

Oh, and if you think I'm being a bit unreasonable in finding her annoying, here's a little anecdote for you. A couple of weeks ago, Labmate informs me that her boyfriend is supposed to go to a salsa competition (as in the dance, not the tasty condiment) on what is supposed to be their first anniversary. Keep in mind that LM MET the boyfriend through salsa - it's something he's very involved in and passionate about, and to my knowledge his only hobby (and I know all too well how lifesaving a hobby can be when one is in the final throes of graduate school). She was very adamant that if he went to this competition instead of spending their anniversary with her, that she was breaking it off. Seems to me an anniversary is about celebrating each other, your love, and your ability to survive whatever life has thrown at you in the last year. The actual date on which you celebrate is pretty meaningless, as far as I'm concerned, so I told her I thought she was being a bit extreme about it.

LM cannot be swayed, and a few days later gets into a huge fight with the boyfriend, and delivers the very threat she has told me she is going to.

He caves.

Not only did he cave, but this is the anniversary itinerary, as gleaned from the PHOTOS SHE POSTED ON FACEBOOK:

1. Snacks in the Distillery District - fantastic (and fairly pricey) chocolates, pastries, etc.
2. Dinner at the revolving restaurant on top of the CN Tower. This is NOT a cheap dining experience - my major excuse for not having been up in the CN Tower yet (aside from my massive fear of heights) is the exorbitant cost of admission just to get up there. And they did it right...appetizers, desserts, etc. - I mean, I get it, it's your anniversary, you want to go all-out, but dude...on a grad student's salary??? Oh, and while LM was making little jokes in her captions about the boyfriend's etiquette classes paying off, apparently those same classes taught them that it's perfectly acceptable in a nice restaurant to MAKE THE WAITER TAKE YOUR PICTURE. REPEATEDLY.
3. Pastries from LM's favorite bakery (i.e., the bakery she discovered a week ago and is now suddenly her favorite) and icewine back at home to end the evening. Again, special occasion or no, icewine is a luxury item that any grad student I know has no business buying.
4. If there was a #4, I sure as hell don't want to know what it was.

Any one of these alone would have been plenty to make me happy were I celebrating an anniversary. Frankly, a quiet dinner at home would probably have been preferable to any of them. But this is apparently what I'm doing wrong, because apparently I SHOULD be making completely selfish and unreasonable demands, so that some man can go ABOVE AND BEYOND my already unreasonably high expectations. And then maybe I can post photo albums on Facebook with lots of exclamation points and excitable misspellings that make people stop articulating sentences and just make "phffffft!!!" noises at their monitors, accompanied by all manner of rude gestures.

Don't get me wrong...she can be very sweet. I just don't understand why any man would put up with her shit.

If God has a sense of humor, that little red dress she bought for formal and has been "dieting" to fit into will look like a sausage casing.

Some Fantastic

I've been staring at a blank screen, trying to figure out how to start this post.

Let's just start with the facts - maybe it will just flow from there.

Went to the last LFOTM (last friday of the month) party last night. Managed to get a couple of my labmates to go with me...even the Boss. The four of us had a great time, drinking cheap beer, scavenging snacks, and inflatable bungee cord racing (yes, you read that right). Now, I'm not gonna lie - ulterior motives were at work. I was hoping to also drag the VGLM with me, and/or run into the new friends I made the last time I went to one of these things. But the VGLM was nowhere to be found for most of the afternoon, and when I got to the party, I didn't see the people I was hoping to reconnect with, so I was glad I had brought fun people to hang out with so I didn't end up looking like a total tool. And I actually beat the Boss in one of our three bungee races, so I was feeling pretty good about myself.

Our group dwindled, and got down to just myself and one of my labmates. I'm not sure I've ever talked about him on here before, and I'm too lazy to look it up and see if he already has a nickname, but he resembles Stephen Page of the Barenaked Ladies, so I think we'll go with Barenaked Labmate. BNL is one of my closest friends in Toronto - we bonded from the first time we met, and I often liken him to the annoying little brother I never wanted. He drives me insane sometimes, but he is a kindred spirit and a true friend to me. So we've had a few beers at this point, which leads to the inevitable venting and honesty that can always be found at the bottom of a plastic cup with your name written on it. BNL and I always have our best conversations over beer, and last night we both had a lot to unload.

So I finish my last beer, and we get ready to head out, and guess who finally shows up? I have no idea why the VGLM decided to come to this thing so late, when it had already wound down for the night, but sure enough he did, just in time for me to say hi, make a little bit of what I'm sure was truly ridiculous and highly embarrassing conversation, and introduce him to BNL before we left. Now, as you're all painfully aware, I like to whine about the VGLM. And if I've had a drink or two, my filters shut down and I whine at will. It's an obnoxious habit of mine, and it was in full effect as we relocated to a pub. So BNL asks wherefore all the whining, and the conversation somehow ends up revolving around me and my romantic life for the rest of the night.

Said conversation consisted of the following topics on a repeating loop:

1. I don't just think the VGLM is hot - I actually like him. As in, have FEELINGS for him. This was news to BNL, who thus far has thought he was just teasing me about a little crush.

2. Whether or not the VGLM likes me. BNL kept trying to convince me that, while he just met the VGLM for the first time that night and thus does not know him at all, he noticed him "light up" when I walked up to him and was far more interested in talking to me than in the gorgeous blonde he was talking to before I came along. Hmm...yeah, not buying it, but nice try. We agreed to disagree on that one.

3. My attractive qualities. This is the part that I can pretty much thank the beer for - it was incredibly sweet and flattering, but would have been weird during daylight hours. But in a dark pub over a platter of wings, it was completely fine and almost appropriate for BNL to refer to me as the "Holy Grail for Canadian men." Now...do I believe him? Nope, sorry. I believe I'm something of the Holy Grail for HIM (the big three qualities that apparently comprise the sacred chalice are Smart, Funny, and Good-Lookin', three of the first words that I would use when describing his girlfriend), but I am not willing to concede that he can generalize for the entire male population of Canada that their Type is...well...me. While I believe him when he says that little things like my Ph.D. aren't as much of a turnoff here as they are at home, I don't believe that everyone else thinks it's as big a turn-on as he does. I like myself a lot - I think I'm pretty mad cool. But I'm not for everyone. I get on my own nerves with some regularity, and there's no way I'm the only one. So no matter how hard BNL (or any of the rest of you, for that matter) tries to make the "of course he likes you...how could he NOT like you?" argument, it's just not going to fly. Some people just don't like you that way, no matter how good you might look on paper or how fantastic you happen to think you are. Yes, I am, as one of my readers is so fond of saying, all that, a bag of chips, a cookie, and a discount coupon, but that gets you nowhere if the person in question is in the mood for pizza. Love is not a rational act; it is ruled by far more mysterious forces than logic.

4. There is no #4. Maybe this is where I was wiping wing sauce off of my chin. Because even a Holy Grail kind of girl is completely incapable of eating wings in a ladylike manner after 4-5 beers.

5. I should tell the VGLM I like him. BNL is pretty adamant about this, and I have to say that for once, he's right. I SHOULD. BNL seems to think that there's no bigger turn-on than for a Holy Grail kind of girl to tell you she likes you. Not sure I'm buying that one either (because again it's based on the idea that Holy Grail status is the same for everyone), but I do know that I'll never resolve all of the questions raised in items 1, 2, and 3 unless I tell him how I feel. He
obviously isn't going to just sweep me off of my feet, or I think he would have done so by now. So yeah, I guess I need to take this one to heart.

Here's the problem: I suck at expressing my feelings. I write this blog precisely because I am so bad at expressing myself in real life. Some would say I'm not very good at doing it on here either, but that's beside the point. The people who might be reading this thing fall into one of two categories: my closest friends and complete strangers. I can say whatever I want on here because those in the former category know me and love me regardless of what I say, and those in the latter - well, I could really care less what they think of me, because if they don't like it, they can just click the "Next Blog" button and move on. I have no problem telling The Alchemist how I feel about the VGLM, but how can I tell him? I can't even ask him to go to a stupid end-of-year formal - I've decided several times that I would do so, and every time I get a chance to speak to him, I completely lose what little nerve I've managed to work up. Any time I've asked him to do something, I've gone the chickenshit route and done it via e-mail because that way I don't have to face him if he says no. And now I'm supposed to a) ask him to go do something with me AND b) actually confess that I like him instead of just like him.

I just really don't think I have it in me to do that. As much as I would like to say that I do...as much as I really, REALLY do want to put myself out there, I don't think that I can.

When I have feelings for a guy, I don't tell him until I know how he feels about me. It's a defense mechanism. I am that girl that WILL NOT say "I love you" first in a relationship. The reason is quite simple - any time I have confessed feelings for a guy, worked up the balls to ask one out, etc., I have gotten completely clobbered. In my last couple of relationships, I flew under the radar, managed to get the guy to like me, and never let on just how long I had been interested before they finally came around. I would love to say that when I profess my like for a friend and he doesn't feel the same way about me, that he's cool about it and just remains my friend while I feel the relief of the emotional purge. Or better yet, that the confession is reciprocated and we live happily ever after in a land of flowers and puppies where I am a pretty, pretty princess.

HOWEVER....the reality is that the most common response is to take advantage of my feelings, followed by weeks...months...years...and counting...of not speaking to me. I've heard, more times than any girl should, "I've always wondered what it would be like to sleep with you." Guys, that is not an appropriate response. Unless you plan on emotionally investing in me, you can keep that information to yourself. I lost one of my best friends by acting on unreciprocated feelings - we haven't spoken in several years now and I still miss him and regret that anything ever happened between us. During and after one breakup, I made it clear that my feelings for the dumper were still strong but I would just be his friend if that's what he wanted. A couple of months later, when I was just starting to heal, he got lonely and decided to get back together with me. That lasted about a month... just as I started to trust him again... well, the second dumping was even more fun than the first. I could keep relating my anecdotal evidence, but they're not really very interesting stories and I think you get the general idea.

So I don't do vulnerability well. It has not served me well in the past, so I don't see why I should be trying it again any time soon.

You may be thinking, "Hey, you're selling the VGLM short. He sounds like a great guy, and he'll probably be cool about it." The others were great guys too. Yet somehow I still wound up scarred.

I no longer trust people with my feelings. I want to think that the VGLM is worth letting my guard down for, but I don't know that he can be trusted with the information. With great power comes great responsibility, my friends, and when I care about a guy, he has a LOT of power.

So where does this leave me? I still want to tell him how I feel, but I don't know how to make myself do it. I've spent so much of my adult life single, and lately I feel like I've gotten pretty good at it. Being in a relationship used to be my comfort zone, but now being alone is, and we all know how hard it is to venture outside of what is Comfortable. I'm still mildly freaked out about signing up for tap classes, for God's sake, and I've danced since I was FOUR YEARS OLD. Yet it's still taken me months to work up the nerve to sign up for a 6 week dance class.

To say I'm at a bit of a loss here would be just a touch of an understatement.

I didn't know how to start this post, and I also don't know how it ends. The title I chose is the title of a Barenaked Ladies song, so I'll end on the verse that made me pick it:

Some day I will find the secret
to your social chemistry
Then I'll print it on a t-shirt
and it'll make you want to be with me
If I wear it past your work
you'll see other guys are jerks
Much like pheromones for flies
you will not avoid my eyes

There's a lot I will never do
Some fantastic, I know it's true
But none as much as my want to be with you

Bye-bye self-respect
I haven't had much of it since you left
I missed out on the best of you...

The Sound of One Hand Clapping

In the tradition of, "If a tree falls in the forest, and there is no one around to hear it, does it make a sound?" I present the following question:

If I send essentially the same goodnight IM to a gay man and a straight man, which one responds first?

Did I mention the gay man has ADD?
And that I know for a fact that the straight man thinks I'm wicked hot?

Yet for some reason, the gay man responds instantly, and sweetly. The straight man...(crickets)...

This...THIS is why women like gay men.
They may not be attracted to us, but yet somehow they manage to PAY ATTENTION.

(rolling eyes)

Alchemy Miscellaneum

Okay, just a few random items/observations for you today:

1. God bless the folks at mental_floss for tipping me off to this. It's from A Concert For Life, the tribute concert/AIDS benefit held in honor of Freddie Mercury in 1992. It's the only time David Bowie ever performed "Under Pressure" live with Queen. Granted, it's not the same with Annie Lennox singing Freddie's part (not BAD, persay, just not the same), but when the audience starts singing it for her, I swear I almost started to tear up.



2. As of today, I am officially registered to start tap classes next week. I bought the shoes on ebay and am hoping they get here in time for my first class on Monday. I am WAY excited, but also slightly terrified. What if the other kids don't like me?

3. This morning, a rather...shall we say...fragrant? gentleman sat next to me on the subway. I can't really describe the odor, but it's one I became all-too-familiar with while working as a camp counselor for adults with severe mental retardation. It's not the smell of someone who does not wear deodorant, or the smell of someone whose diet consists of large quantities of unfamiliar spices and/or aromatics (both odors observed with some regularity on public transit)...it's the smell of someone who can not, or perhaps WILL not, bathe oneself properly. It's unpleasant, even if you're not already suffering from an upset stomach, as I was this morning. And, since my sinuses have done me the favor of trapping some of it for later use, it's been coming back to haunt me ever since. Things like this never happen to Carrie Bradshaw.

Ah, crap.

I am so screwed.

There's a new girl around the 4th floor today - not sure who she is or what she's doing here, but I hope her stay will be brief.

Why, you may ask?

Because she is TOTALLY the VGLM's type. Tall, blonde, young, athletic, beautiful with her hair in a ponytail and no noticeable makeup on.

Lord, if you love me, you will make her a lesbian.

Pop Culture Confessional (Cont.)

Okay, pardon me while I get WAY too worked up over a couple of things that aren't the least bit worthy of my attention:

1. America's Next Top Talentless Skank. [SPOILER ALERT] ASIA??? REALLY???? The way I see it, there are two ways this could have gone. a) you're looking for someone to replace Nicole Scherzinger because, let's face it, she's the only talented Pussy you've got and she was smart enough to sign a contract that guaranteed she could record a solo record after she did one shitty record with the group... or... b) you're just looking for another random backup dancer to shake her goodies behind Nicole with the others. If a) is the reality, then WHY THE FUCK DIDN'T YOU PICK CHELSEA? She has a vastly superior voice to the others, and while yes, she can't dance to save her skanky little ass, the other Pussys can easily dance around her while she does her very best Christina Aguilera impression for anyone that will listen, which is, oh, approximately a gazillion little skanky 13-year-old girls with allowances burning holes in their pockets. If, on the other hand, b) is the reality, WHY DIDN'T YOU AT LEAST PICK A GIRL WHO DOESN'T DO THAT ANNOYING QUIVERING FINGER BIT WITH THE MIC AND WHO DOESN'T HAVE HAMSTER VIBRATO, AKA MELISSA R.???? I know, I know, Asia looks good, but seriously, she couldn't have more annoying vocal tics if she tried. Melissa would have blended effortlessly with the rest of the skank pudding, and would have at least sung on-key without hamster vibrato, even if she does apparently require boob pads to properly embody Girl Power (tm). Seriously - HAMSTER. VIBRATO.

(deep breath)

Okay, now on to the other one:

2. Dancing with the Stars. [SPOILER ALERT] THANK YOU AMERICA, FOR SENDING HEATHER MILLS HOME AND RESTORING MY FAITH IN ALL THAT IS GOOD AND HOLY. I am so sick of hearing the judges call her "incredible" and "inspirational" and all that crap. Fact of the matter is, Heather Mills is a frigid bitch and I have always hated her, handicap or no. If anyone else had been putting motherfucking WALKOVERS into their routines, you would've ripped them to shreds. I'm talking to YOU, Bruno and Len!!! You people claim to hate gimmicks, but only when employed by Joey FatOne. Get over yourselves and judge everyone based on merit. John Ratzenberger is engaging, enthusiastic, and sweet, even if generally uncoordinated. Heather Mills has the stage presence of an atlantic cod left steaming in the sun for a few weeks, and does nothing but bitch about her transatlantic commute (dude, after that divorce settlement, you can AFFORD to relocate across the pond for a few weeks, bitch), while Billy Ray Cyrus clearly wants to return to Hannah Montana. And you, Ms. Mills, have the audacity to whine about how the judges have always made the same critique about you -that you need to pay more attention to your upper body - but you CAN'T because you have to pay SO MUCH attention to putting your feet in the right place because you have an artificial leg...BULLSHIT. A leg is a leg. If you can walk on it, you can dance on it, and that is no excuse for having absolutely no ability to coordinate your upper body. The mark of a performer devoid of talent is receiving the same note every week - your arm lines and movements are horrendous, and you deserve to be called out for it.

Wow. THAT was unnecessarily militant. But I seriously don't like her - never have, never will. And I've dealt with enough people with handicaps to know all too well the difference between being disadvantaged yet inspirational and being just a plain asshole with a disadvantage.

Asia... I am, at least, happy that you will be able to support your daughter on your new-found Full-Time Skank salary. Just please learn how to eat real food before you go on tour, or I WILL have to smack you.

Seriously...you people should know better than to let me drink during the week.

Thawing

The last week has been weird.

Thursday was sort of the climax - had to present group meeting...lots of stress trying to get as much data and as many movies edited as possible to work into my presentation...low on sleep...in addition to all of the crap going on in the world, I was just generally worked up into a tizzy. Presented group meeting - everything went over really well, the boss was thrilled with what I had done, general good feelings abound. Oh, and according to Labmate, the VGLM totally checked me out in a most blatant manner, but who can blame him? The pants I was wearing made the Booty look pretty damned good, but I was too busy to notice him walking by. (Okay, not really, but the man does seem to respond to Aloof, and I am so rarely busy and/or tired enough to successfully pull off the appearance of indifference so when I CAN swing it, I go with it.) So Friday was my decompression day; the weather FINALLY felt like spring, and I spent most of the day finding excuses to get into the sun and generally avoid doing any actual work. Even got the boss out for a good hour or so of Frisbee action, then had appetizers, beers, and a surprisingly earnest and meaningful conversation with another labmate.

When I came home Friday night, I got the chance to talk to a friend of mine from home for the first time this week. This friend is a Virginia Tech alum, and an athletic director and former football coach at a high school in the county we both grew up in. It had been a far rougher week for him than for me, to say the least - while he didn't know any of the victims personally, he does have passing memories of two of the professors killed, and he knows about a dozen current VT students, three of whom have been in and out of his office all week when they needed to cry and talk to someone who would understand (two of these lost close friends in the shootings). As I asked how he was doing, and he told me how every time he thought he had gotten his emotions under control one of these kids would come in to his office or he would see the shooter's face or video on the news, and how he needed to understand why this happened, wanted to drive down to Tech to go to Mass this weekend and welcome the students back, but he wasn't sure his body could take it since he recently had back surgery...I finally started to feel tears well up in my eyes and the familiar knot in my throat.

I gave myself permission to cry. I waited for the wave to come over me.

"I walked along the road with two friends - Then the sun went down - Suddenly the sky became bloody red (and I felt a breath of sadness - a sucking pain beneath the heart) - My friends walked on and I was left trembling with fear - And I felt an infinite scream go through nature."
-Edvard Munch

Except the tears never came. They passed, without ever falling from my eyes. My body reclaimed them.

My lovely Friday gave way to an even lovelier weekend - I spent yesterday downtown, in good company, doing as Torontonians do. I wandered St. Lawrence Market, the lakefront, watched a hockey game and a truly awesomely bad Samuel L. Jackson movie. Today I took a baguette, some cheese and smoked meat, a tetrapak of wine, and a loaded mp3 player down to the bluffs and had myself a little dinner picnic. And again, as I listened to my music and sipped my wine while looking out over the lake glistening in the sun, my eyes welled up.

And again I didn't cry. And this time, I even had wine.

All of the sunshine and fresh air, coupled with the decompression that comes with the realization that my job is basically done for another semester (and apparently done well), has put me into a kind of euphoria for much of the last 3 days. Unfortunately, if there's one thing the murky emotional waters of the last couple of years of grad school taught me, it's the difference between an authentic good mood and a manic state. And I'm afraid that this euphoria is reeking of the latter. There is something just under the surface - that infinite scream - that's still trying to find its way out.

I was numb, and now, like the Toronto weather, I am thawing. All it takes is a shift in wind direction on the lakefront to be reminded that winter has not truly left us just yet. The lake hasn't forgotten us - it takes over again in another day or so - I just hope that I don't turn cold and clammy again with it.

Numb

In case you've been wondering...

A lot of people have been talking to me about this over the last 24 hours or so. It's not just all over the American news - it's made the cut for the headlines run across the little screens in the transit system, which makes it pretty big news. In the case of my Canadian friends, they don't know many Americans, let alone Virginians, so I guess it's natural that they think of me when they hear the story. The problem is, I just don't know how to feel about it. Like any national tragedy, as far as I know, I don't know anyone personally involved in the shooting - I didn't attend Virginia Tech, and even if I did, I graduated college 8 years ago. But probably around half of the kids that graduate from my high school every year are headed to Blacksburg - there isn't a town in VA that doesn't send a significant portion of its youth to Tech. So I'm sure we're all feeling like we should be feeling SOMETHING, but aren't quite sure what. Don't get me wrong, the whole situation is devastating. No matter where you are from, the senseless slaughter of dozens of people that did nothing wrong that day except get up and decide to go to class instills very real feelings of sorrow and loss in anyone. And the fact that it happened close to my home makes it that much more real and sad for me, I guess. But I'm having a hard time coming to terms with the reality of it. This morning, on my way to work, I was running late because I didn't want to turn off the news, and I couldn't focus on reading my book during the commute because I couldn't stop thinking about those folks in Blacksburg. And one of the feelings that I hadn't been able to put my finger on yet became clear:

Homesickness.

Lemme 'splain...
Tragedies are always easier to handle when you can be around other people who are feeling the same emotions you are. I know I personally find I can't properly accept and grieve a loved one's death until ALL of the family members are together. When I was in grad school, a couple of major tragedies happened in the span of a little over a year: the 9/11 attacks, the anthrax scare, and the DC sniper shootings. All major national news stories - events that, while grieved by an entire nation, had a unique resonance with those of us from the Washington, DC area. On 9/11, my father had been sent home from work early, but couldn't get a bus right away and was thus sitting in a restaurant watching CNN when that 4th plane was still in the air and headed for DC. One of the DC sniper shootings occurred the night before my brother was flying out to see me - he and his girlfriend had gotten gas at that gas station that evening, about an hour before the shooting. Now, do I think that my fear on 9/11 was worse than that of someone with a loved one in New York or on one of those planes? No way. Do I think it was different? Absolutely. The same thing goes for the anthrax and the sniper shootings - the random nature of the attacks made it impossible to know my mother, father, brother, and friends from home were safe. I made the comment to people at the time that it had been a bad year to be away from home, and the response was usually something along the lines of, "seems like a GREAT year to be living anywhere BUT home." But it doesn't work that way - when you're away from home, and something awful happens there, you want more than anything to be with the people who are going through it.

This latest tragedy, I'm a little more removed from. As I said, as far as I know, nobody I know personally was involved or directly affected by the massacre. I know that my family was safe at home, all a good two or more hours away from the gunman. But I still want to be there with them, to grieve with my community, with the people who MIGHT know people who were directly affected.

Maybe I'll sort out my emotions more with a little more time, but as I looked out the window of the bus at the Toronto skyline, all I knew was that it's been a long time since I've felt so far from home.

The Awesome Power of Music

"What kind of music do you listen to?"

That's a pretty loaded question. Much like asking someone's religion, or their political party...these are questions that people use to get a read on you. Your answer pigeonholes you and allows the asker to put you into a category of either "I agree with you," "I don't agree with you at all," or "I don't necessarily agree with you but am intrigued by you." These are questions I hate with every fiber of my being, primarily because I can't stand to be categorized. At least in the case of music, I can honestly say that I listen to a little bit of just about everything - even the genres I don't consider myself a fan of such as opera and country contain some exceptions that I truly love. I've often wondered what the common thread is among my bizarrely disparate tastes, and the best way I can think of to articulate it is that I love music that MOVES me. As with any art form, I happen to believe that anyone that is too good at articulating why they like one work over another is spending too much time talking and too little actually allowing the item in question to do what it's meant to do. But why do certain types of music, or particular songs, move me more than others? Why do they seem to reach to the very core of me and make me do or feel things that I normally don't or can't?

Case in point: I have fairly recently come to the conclusion that the song "Under Pressure" is arguably the greatest rock song in the history of mankind. I've listened to it many times now in an attempt to figure out why, and my reasons are as follows:

1. The interplay of very simple elements. That simple bass riff that starts the whole thing off (Vanilla Ice's sampling/imitation of which I personally believe has earned him an extra special room in hell), with a few piano chords, hand claps, snaps, and a few wandering guitar notes flitting in and around that framework. David Bowie's rich and grounded tone contrasting with the manic quality of Freddie Mercury's. Nonsense lyrics - sometimes the best we can manage, particularly in times of duress, is something along the lines of, "Um ba ba bay Um ba ba bay Dee day duh Ee day duh." Seriously.

2. This verse:

Insanity laughs under pressure we're cracking
Can't we give ourselves one more chance?
Why can't we give love that one more chance?
Why can't we give love give love give love?
Give love give love give love give love give love give love?
Cause love's such an old fashioned word
And love dares you to care
For the people on the edge of the night
And love dares you to change our way
Of caring about ourselves
This is our last dance

This is ourselves
Under Pressure

3. The changes in tone as we reach this point. This is a song with a plot - it alternately swells and recedes, soars and trickles. How many songs REALLY have a climax? A true beginning, middle, and end? A story is clearly told in these 4 minutes, but you'd never know it by looking at the lyrics. I can't speak for anyone else, but every time I listen to it, I feel like I've taken a trip...I've been through an emotional journey. It's an incredibly evocative song, and it always leaves me feeling relieved because it has somehow gotten into my heart and extracted some of the worry and pain that I've tucked away in there, far away from anyone's sight, including my own.

This is what I'm talking about. Music sneaks up on me all the time - how can a song that you've completely forgotten about instantly and unmistakably call up such vivid emotional memory? When I was in high school orchestra, I played many concerts a year, and I certainly can't remember titles and composers of every piece I've ever played, but when I hear a piece I once played come on the radio or out of an instrument, I don't just remember the melody, I remember how it felt to PLAY that piece. I remember fingerings, and bowings, and I feel the resonance of the notes in my chest as though my violin were on my shoulder, not packed away in my parents' house in Virginia. It's not hard to sympathize with amputees having phantom sensations in their lost limbs whenever I get that feeling - it seems like the most natural thing in the world. It's not my brain that's remembering the music, it's my BODY.

My body also tells me what does and does not constitute good dance music. Certain songs, when played on the radio or my computer, spontaneously make my ass shake. There's nothing I can do about it - it is an unstoppable force, as though my ass suddenly has a mind of its own and I take my life and sanity into my hands by attempting to deny it. At a recent family wedding, my mom marveled at my seemingly boundless energy on the dance floor. I can't seem to convey to her that when the right music comes on, I am physically incapable of leaving a dance floor. Culprits range from "Jungle Boogie" by Kool and the Gang to "It Takes Two" by Rob Base to "Hey Ya!" by Outkast. And should you ever be within 10 yards of me when "Da Butt" by E.U. comes over a sound system, I have two words for you: DUCK and COVER.

Sometimes it's more about a mood than a gut- (or ass-) based feeling. On Friday, I was watching a piece on the Today show about some dolphins that had been rescued from certain death after Hurricane Katrina, and they have now been happily living under good care and apparently have successfully delivered calves. At the point in the story where they related this tidbit of information, the editors of the piece cleverly inserted "Let's Get it On" into the soundtrack. I have proclaimed my love of this song on here before, but again, it's not about the lyrics - those opening notes say all that needs to be said, and in this case a fairly mundane story became vastly more entertaining through the judicious use of Marvin Gaye.

Soundtracks in general, when done well, do an amazing job of harnessing this phenomenon and using it against us. I have an ever-growing playlist of music from Scrubs, because I find myself saying to myself, "wow...I need that song" so often while watching the show. The TV soundtrack thing is often criticized now because there are so many shows using them as a cop-out - the addition of music so effectively elicits a reaction from an audience that it allows the actors to be lazy. Last night I watched the movie Goonies with a friend of mine who had never seen it as a kid. While I can no longer watch that movie with quite the same youthful abandon I once did - my inner adult can't help but notice that the product placements are incredibly clumsy, the verses on the map are written in Spanish but only rhyme when translated into English, and seriously, they HAD to know what they were doing when they decided to name the pirate One-Eyed Willy, right??? - when the credits roll and Cyndi Lauper kicks in singing, "What's good enough for you is good enough for me it's good enough it's good enough for me yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah..." I am 8 years old again and desperately wanting some pirate treasure to chase. A couple of years later, the Billboard Top 10 Hits of 1987 contains a song called "At This Moment" by Billy Vera and the Beaters. This song came out in 1984, but it's one of the top 10 hits of 1987. Why? Because it was prominently featured in an episode of Family Ties, when Ellen left Alex for a dance scholarship. Every time I hear it, I see Alex P. Keaton and that jukebox, and my heart still breaks for him, 20 years later.

In my work, I often record my experiments in the form of digital movies taken via a CCD camera hooked up to a microscope. As far as my boss is concerned, these movies should be short, sweet, and to the point so he can show them quickly during a presentation. But being the person I am, I always have to do two versions: the quick and simple one for the boss, and my version, complete with titles, credits, and, of course, a soundtrack. By the addition of a single song, I can make two moving droplets silly (Mahna Mahna), epic (the theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey - I got a bit of a God complex making that one), sexy (a little Isaac Hayes action), or romantic (When a Man Loves a Woman). I have great plans in store for the theme from the A-Team. I've gotten to the point where a song pops into my head while I'm doing the experiment - my droplets start to seem like little people under the microscope...or at least kind of like pets (of the disposable variety - you know, like goldfish or sea monkeys). It just goes to show how the right music can completely change the way you see something, for better or worse.

I leave you with one final example of the awesome power of music: yesterday I went to a Toronto Blue Jays game. Being a home game, every time a Jays player came up to bat he had theme music played for him. Most of the players picked one theme song that was played for every at-bat, and some of them were excellent choices. I decided yesterday that Vernon Wells, the centerfielder, is my favorite Blue Jay. Not because he homered in his first at-bat, but because he had a different theme song every time he batted.

The one that sold me?

The Humpty Dance.

I mentioned to a friend that I wish I had a theme song that would play whenever I walked into a room, and he asked what it would be.

I answered without hesistation:

Sexy Motherfucker, by Prince.

Seriously. Listen to it - REALLY listen to it sometime, and I think you'll agree it's a perfect choice for me. In the soundtrack of your life, there is always one Theme. It may change over the years, but it is always awesome, because it's yours.

Everyone has a theme song, but not everyone is lucky enough to know what it is.

So it goes.

Today is a very sad day.

From CNN.com:

NEW YORK (AP) -- Kurt Vonnegut, the satirical novelist who captured the absurdity of war and questioned the advances of science in darkly humorous works such as "Slaughterhouse-Five" and "Cat's Cradle," died Wednesday. He was 84.

Most of you know that when asked who my favorite author is, my answer is Vonnegut. I don't love everything he's ever written, but of the things I've read, all are at the very least entertaining, and of my top 5 all-time favorite books, two are his. I can't explain why I am such a fan, but his stuff speaks to something at the core of my personality...whenever I meet another Vonnegut fan, we always seem to get along. And whenever I find a favorite anything, I really take that to heart and feel a void when they're gone (I cried the day Jack Lemmon died - who does that???) because even though they never knew me personally, they touched me in a way that no one else has or ever will. I am just one of millions, but knowing that they will never know what they brought to my life makes me sad. I never had any delusions about one day meeting Mr. Vonnegut and becoming his new best friend, but I did harbor a little bit of hope that I might get to see one of his lectures once or have him sign one of my books...maybe tell him that Cat's Cradle was the first book I ever felt the need to stop reading, find a pen, and underline passages in.

"I, mud, sat up and saw what a nice job God had done."
"Nice going, God!"
"Nobody but You could have done it, God! I certainly couldn't have."
"I feel very unimportant compared to You."
"The only way I can feel the least bit important is to think of all the mud that didn't even get to sit up and look around."

I could quote Vonnegut all day, but I'll just leave you with a couple more choice ones:

"Welcome aboard, Mr. Pilgrim," said the loudspeaker. "Any questions?"
Billy licked his lips, thought a while, inquired at last: "Why me?"
"That is a very earthling question to ask, Mr. Pilgrim. Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is. Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber?"
"Yes." Billy, in fact, had a paperweight in his office which was a blob of polished amber with three ladybugs embedded in it.

"Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why."

...

"And if I should ever die, God forbid, I hope you will say, 'Kurt is up in heaven now.' That's my favorite joke."

For the Love of Science

Okay, it is truly shocking to me that I have been writing this blog for over 6 months now and have yet to write a post like this, but here goes:

Mythbusters...we need to talk.

I have lost count of the number of people I have humored as they say that they find this show "entertaining, but come on, it's not real science." Yeah, you go ahead and think that.

Somewhere around, oh, 4th grade maybe, you are taught the Scientific Method (tm). According to the Scientific Method (tm), you follow several steps when conducting science:

1. Look at the shit we know.
2. Form a hypothesis about the shit we have yet to know.
3. Develop an experiment that, through the clever use of controls and isolation of said controls from all possible variables, will either confirm or disprove said hypothesis.
4. Oh, come on, you should know how this goes by now.
5. Look at the data.
6. Confirm, debunk, or revise the hypothesis.
7. Rinse and repeat.

What many people say about the Mythbusters is that they don't really follow the Scientific Method (tm). There are too many variables...not enough controls, they say. They haven't taken every possible occurrence into account, they say. They never conclusively prove or disprove anything, they say.

And they would be right.

But there's a dirty little secret that most of you non-science types haven't caught on to yet: The scientific community does the exact same thing. Every day. I have spent a fair amount of time doing actual, real research - not the profit-motivated, fine tuning kind of research done in industry, but academic research where the end goal is the acquisition of new, hopefully groundbreaking, Knowledge. In this world, we do not employ carefully, cleverly crafted hypotheses with a very specific goal in mind for every experiment...we throw a whole pile of crap at the wall and see what sticks. Oh, sure, we start with a goal in mind, but any advisor worth his salt knows that the most significant advances made in his lab are almost without fail a BYPRODUCT of whatever that student or postdoc was TRYING to do. Case in point: I went into my weekly meeting with my boss on Tuesday, armed with all sorts of movies and data. One of my movies demonstrated something we already knew - that the enzyme I was working with would inevitably be deposited on the surface of the device I was doing the reaction on. But, upon seeing this effect in action, his reponse wasn't, "Oh, shit, now we have proof that this is a problem" it was "WOW....what can we do with that???" Now, Isaac Asimov said the same thing slightly more eloquently:

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka' (I've found it) but 'That's funny...'"

Forget the Scientific Method (tm). THIS is how science is really done. Above all, and contrary to popular belief, it is an intensely creative endeavor. It is sloppy, it is ridiculous, it is inconvenient and rarely wraps itself up in tidy little packages. I am constantly amazed at how many people I meet that think that science and creative expression are mutually exclusive concepts, much as they believe that science and faith (or for that matter creativity and faith) are. This is why so many people find me an enigma, while from my perspective I make perfect sense (side note: I find that most people eventually come around to my logic - at least, anyone who matters).

Which brings me back to the Mythbusters. I am a fan of the way they do things - there are always holes in their methods, but that's science. It doesn't mean their conclusions are without merit - anyone that's ever had a paper or grant proposal reviewed knows all too well that even the most well-planned experiment can be shot full of so many holes it resembles a block of Emmentaler (mmm...cheese...) by the time you get it back. This is why we teach a whole lot more in the way of theories than we do laws. Relativity is a pretty fucking cool idea, and there's a lot of evidence out there to support it and darned little to refute it, but we don't know enough yet to say it's definitely true. Gravity, on the other hand...we're pretty sure about at this point. We've had a few hundred years to try to disprove the latter...only a hundred or so with the former, and when Einstein first came up with it we didn't really have the proper tools to test it for a few more decades. So it's still a work in progress.

But tonight, the Mythbusters were using methods that even I have to take issue with. They were testing the famous 5-second rule. (In the process, they also took advantage of their new-found bacterial culturing skills to test the whole your-mouth-is-dirtier-than-a-dog's notion. For those of you that are wondering, it's totally true. However, I am rather peeved that they neglected to mention that this has already been studied by actual scientists in laboratories, and the reason has nothing to do with the number of bacteria that find their way into the respective mouths via frequency of ass-lickings and garbage-scavenges, but rather the fact that dogs have a stronger anti-bacterial agent in their saliva than we do PRECISELY BECAUSE THEIR MOUTHS ARE EXPOSED TO MORE BACTERIA. Ain't nature grand?) So I won't get into all of the different ways in which they tried to determine whether the amount of time spent on the floor affects the number of bacteria transferred - to sum up: they tried a dry food and a wet food, different areas of a floor, straight transfer from the floor to the petri dish, etc. etc. Here are my problems with the way they went about it:

1. They tried to come up with a "uniformly dirty floor." I won't go into the specifics - it was fairly disgusting. My point being, there's still absolutely no guarantee that it was uniformly dirty - bacteria grow in groups, and some areas will most definitely be more dense in cell population than others, depending on any number of fairly random factors (floor topology, for example). Which would be corrected for if you wiped the food across a larger portion of said floor, but that messes with the whole 5-second rule stipulation that the food remain stationary. But there was absolutely no control done that showed that the floor tiles being used were, in fact, uniformly dirty.

2. They didn't specify how many duplicate trials they did. As an analytical chemist, reproducibility is everything, and things like this give me hissyfits. I believe they did duplicates, I just don't know how many, and while I realize this does not make for riveting TV, I really want to know because again, we're dealing with cell cultures, and any variations between trials will be grossly amplified.

3, and this is the big one: the big control experiment that they did to eliminate the wet/dry food factor was to bring the petri dish in direct contact with the floor for the specified periods of time (I believe they did 2 and 6 second trials). The result from this trial was, not surprisingly, that the dishes in each case picked up so many bacteria that the individual colonies merged on the plate, making it impossible to count them to get a data point. One surface covered in bacteria looks just like another surface covered in bacteria - if you can't fit any more in the space allotted, they stop reproducing. From this, they concluded that you cannot tell the difference between a 2-second exposure and a 6-second exposure. WRONG. JUST BECAUSE YOUR INSTRUMENT (in this case, YOU) CAN'T TELL THE DIFFERENCE DOESN'T MEAN THERE ISN'T ONE.

This is the point in the show where I stop speaking in actual words and start making pft! pfffttt! noises at the screen.

Adam and Jamie, I still adore you. But please, no more microbiology without a trained professional on board. Hell, a trained microbiologist would probably be appalled by what I consider good science. To each his own. But as long as you stick to trying to blow shit up by improbable means, we can probably make this work.

Oh, and before any of you smartasses try to read anything into the fact that my "For love of science" entry is so much longer than my "For love of God" entry...just know that while I feel I am knowledgeable enough to have an informed opinion about what science is, I have no such delusions when it comes to God. Plus, there may have been a couple of intervening glasses of wine to blame.

For the Love of God

Let me just start this post by saying a big Happy Easter! to all of you. Among my friends who read this thing, I know I have everything from utterly areligious types to very devout Christians, so to the former, I say I hope you had a very lovely weekend and to the latter, a most blessed Easter to you, alleluia, alleluia!

Now, good Catholic girl that I am, I was going to make sure I got to church this morning if it killed me. I'll admit, I'm not THAT good a Catholic girl - I don't go as often as I should (especially considering there's a Catholic church a whopping 5-minute walk from my house) - but I'll be darned if I'm going to miss church on Easter weekend. A grand effort was made on my part to make sure that all of my celebrating and normal Sunday household chores got worked into the day - got up this morning, started the laundry while my cinnamon rolls (from scratch!) rose and baked...made myself presentable...ate breakfast and dashed off to church. Almost didn't make it - I got there JUST before the opening processional started, but my church is small and Catholicism is significantly less popular here than in the States, so I even got a seat (something that would be UNHEARD of at home at a late-morning mass on Easter Sunday).

Now, there are things that I think are really neat at my church - the music ministry is small, but the voices are extremely talented (even if their choice of music is a bit baroque for my taste)...the assortment of accents I hear in all of the responses from the congregation...the way I sound distinctly American in that rumble because I say ay-men instead of ah-men...the pastor and his very approachable and good-humored manner of addressing his congregation...but I saw something today that I just felt the need to bitch about. Pardon me for a moment while I hop up onto my digital soapbox....

As I looked around the church, I noticed a disturbing proportion of the congregation wearing jeans.

Now, I was raised in fairly modern churches, where on a typical Sunday the rule of thumb is come-as-you-are. I have certain standards for myself (i.e., while I might wear jeans or khakis to church, I only wear my nicest pairs and draw the line at ever wearing shorts), but in general, I subscribe to the belief that God is happy to see you regardless of what you're wearing. I figure as long as you show up attentive, clean, and generally respectable, you're doing okay. I have seen people show up toting teenage children wearing suggestive slogans on their t-shirts, or having clearly come straight from repainting their kitchen, and that bugs me, but I think my standards are generally fairly loose.

But for the love of God, people (and I mean that literally)...this is EASTER SUNDAY. It's the biggest. Day. Of the year. This is the day from which, regardless of denomination, all of Christianity takes root. For a great number of you, this is one of only TWO DAYS A YEAR you go to church. Is it really that much to ask that you dress up a little bit??? I'm not asking for frilly dresses in pastel colors and big floppy hats... but a decent pair of pants and a shoe a notch above a sneaker hardly seems unreasonable. I don't understand how someone can make the effort to actually GO to church, but never find it necessary to look good for God. It's not just an appearance thing - it's the mindset that at least today, going to church is Important. It's meaningful...even more so than on an ordinary Sunday. I just don't get how people can miss that.

But then again, I also don't understand it when people show up to a final looking like they're going clubbing as soon as they hand in their paper. There simply is no pleasing me.

Analytical Chemistry

So...I had a date tonight. For those of you on the edge of your seats, wondering how that whole eHarmony thing was going...this one's for you.

So, this guy came up as one of my matches, and at first, I was really wigged out because he bore some superficial similarities to a friend I had just recently met. Once I established that they were, in fact, two different people, I began the slow, plodding process of "guided communication." Frankly, I am of the opinion that you decide on the basis of the person's profile if you want to communicate with them - the "guided" portion is pure bullshit. No matter how much they tell you that this process is designed to elicit your "true answers" and "break through your barriers..." the fact of the matter is, you are every bit as capable of telling someone what they want to hear via a multiple-choice question as to their face. So they might as well get right to the open communication portion of the program for all the good it does. That's just my two cents.

So anyway, we got our eHarmony caps and gowns on and graduated to "open communication." Which led to the exchange of real-life e-mail addresses, and phone numbers, and eventually resulted in plans to have a drink after work tonight. I got to the meeting place...found he was not, in fact, a troll, and drinks went well so he invited me to go get some sushi. I was enjoying his company so I took him up on it. Now, it was about halfway through dinner when I had to admit to myself that I may be getting myself in trouble here. See, it had been becoming progressively clearer to me as the evening wore on that this guy was quite taken with me. Frankly, I sensed it from when I first walked up to him as he was waiting at the bar for me, but the sensation became stronger as the time passed. You know...there's a difference between a friendly smile in normal conversation and the one that crosses your face when you are talking or listening to someone who you happen to find quite charming. I started noticing him looking at my hands, as if he were thinking, "I wonder if I can get away with holding one of those yet? Nah, too soon." And as we walked back to the subway in the rain, he walked close enough to me that our arms touched, even though the sidewalk left plenty of space. He even tried to put his arm around me briefly, but seemed to think the better of it. In the subway station, I could tell he was stalling because he wanted a goodnight kiss, which he eventually asked if he could have. And when I let him kiss me, he did everything he could (within reason) to prolong it.

Now, I feel the need to say, for the record, that I like this guy. He's attractive, friendly, fun to talk to, and we have a lot in common. I can see why eHarmony would think we might be compatible, because all indications are that we will get along well and could happily spend a lot of time together. But here's the thing - I'm not intrigued by him. I need to be with someone who challenges me... someone whose moves I can't see coming from three blocks away. Even in friendships, I need to be around people who can keep me guessing - otherwise, I get bored. And this...THIS is why I hate dating and completely suck at it. Because I am apparently quite good at charming the wrong people. Perfectly nice, fun, attractive guys (that just don't quite do it for me for some inexplicable, intangible reason) are often drawn to the persona I present whenever I first meet someone. That same persona also works quite well on dad/grandpa types, some students, and theater people. The problem is that it never seems to work on anyone I have any vested interest in - I think not caring about what the person thinks of me is part of what makes me intriguing and attractive, so when I DO care, it loses something.

A year ago, I probably would've decided that the curse of maturity has ruled out that kind of spontaneous, thrilling chemistry on first meeting that I used to experience when I was younger. But that was before I moved here. Take the VGLM, or any of my crushes since I relocated: more often than not, those crushes initially took root during one particular encounter, where I simply couldn't learn enough about the person and no matter how long I talked to them they left me wanting more. So even if nothing ever comes of any of those, I at least know it's still possible to get that kind of charge. I have a hard time envisioning spending the rest of my life with someone who I never felt that kind of passion for. I don't expect it to last a lifetime - we're not built to sustain that kind of constant stimulation for very long, and at some point hopefully a deeper love takes its place, but shouldn't I at least have it at the beginning? If I were just looking for someone to date...a little companionship, like I have been for the last few years, this guy would be a perfectly good candidate. The problem is, that's not what I'm looking for anymore - I'm looking for someone who can rattle me AND steady me. A core-shaker.

I just have to find one I can rattle just as well.

Extra Ordinary Beauty

Last night was another one of those bizarre, inexplicable, yet fantastic nights out. You know the kind of night I'm talking about - you go out for something simple, like a drink after work, and you end up meeting strange and wonderful new people, having truly entertaining conversations. Eventually you find yourself eating greasy Chinese food at 1:30 in the morning, hoping your new friend can remember your e-mail address because you have nothing to write with and that's easier to commit to memory than a phone number, and taking the night bus all the way home because the subway has stopped running. As I waited for said bus, I was struck by how many perfectly ordinary, beautiful things had happened around me. So here's the list:

1. Honesty. I knew I liked my new friend because as soon as I met him he criticized my outfit. You might think that rude, but the fact of the matter is, he was absolutely right. His major point was that I am "obviously a very vibrant person" and my clothes didn't reflect my personality at all. Which is 100% true. And he didn't like my sleeves - neither did I. But my utter boredom with my wardrobe is a matter for another day.

2. The charge you get from meeting a group of people and feeling like you fit right in. Good interpersonal chemistry can be hard to find, and effortlessly blending into a new group dynamic is not something that I can do often. Of course, beer helps. ;)

3. Really GOOD hugs. In case anyone was wondering, it appears that the VGLM and I are snuggle-compatible (or at least it works on my end). But before you get all excited on my behalf - he had to be bullied into snuggling me, so it doesn't count. But it was some seriously high-quality snuggle - when he actually hugged me back and rested his head on top of mine, I could've died right there.

5. As I walked from my lab to the night bus, a couple of random guys passed me going the opposite direction on College, and one said, "You look great!" I had been lost in thought, so I turned around to see if that was directed at me, and it most definitely was. When you're feeling poorly dressed and unattractive (one of the people we had been hanging out with was a girl I would definitely classify as the VGLM's type, and girls like that ALWAYS make me feel inadequate), a well-timed compliment can do wonders. And "you look great" has always been one of my favorite compliments. It implies that you've managed to put yourself together into a good overall package, and just made a generally strong impression. It seems to be the compliment you get when you're not just wearing a cute top or having a good hair day, but are exuding some sort of attractive intangible. Of course, this guy was probably just drunk and said it to every girl he passed, but it was still something I needed in that moment.

6. The two adorable, heavily perfumed men holding hands as they waited to cross Yonge, and the two girls nuzzling and cuddling while waiting for the bus. I may be alone and bitter, but I still believe that love is a beautiful thing, and this was PDA that was far more sweet than sickening at an hour when most people are drunkenly groping their companions.

7. The guy waiting for the bus that was so drunk and/or stoned that stamping out his cigarette butt seemed to completely blow his mind. He was clearly on a plane of existence that I have never experienced, and frankly hope I never do.

8. The city at closing time, still brightly lit and sidewalks bustling with happy people.

9. The quiet of the 'burbs at 3am.

We live in a beautiful world indeed.

Whine and cheese

I've had this song stuck in my head for the last couple of weeks. It's my ringtone, but my phone rarely rings so I think it's on an endless loop for some other reason. So maybe if I lead off with some lyrics, it'll retreat. Besides, they're kind of appropriate for what follows:

You say I'm crazy
'Cause I can't make up my mind
But I won't let it faze me
'Cause if I leave all these thoughts behind
You'll see that you've got
Someone who's wastin' your time
But that's all right, 'cause I got
Someone who's wastin' mine...

It's in the way you move...
Baby, what you doin' to me?
Can't stand it, can't hold back
Every time I see you get beautiful, beautiful
It's in the way you do
Baby what you're doin' to me
The way you shine, strum your chords
The way you're mine, the way you sing your words

Cause you had me at first glance...

Oh honey, you're dangerous....

-G. Love and Special Sauce, "Beautiful"

Today was an absolutely gorgeous day. Started off cloudy and damp, but shaped up to be sunny, just the right amount of breezy, and basically just what spring should be. A friend who was lucky enough to have the day off invited me to have a drink on a patio somewhere after work and really, who can say no to that? When the sun began to disappear behind the buildings and it started to get just a tiny bit chilly on the patio, I headed back to work to pick up my stuff and head home. Normally, that would be a perfectly lovely way to wrap up my day.

But life never works out quite like you think it's going to, even in trivial matters.

When I got back to work, the place was mostly empty. Until I noticed that the VGLM was still there. (Yep, I'm whining about him again. And I'm sure you're sick of reading about it, but hey, it's my blog - you people just live in it. And it's too late to call or IM anyone to obsess to - this is the only safe place to ponder.) Fueled by my glass of wine on the patio, I wandered back to say hi. Turns out he had just gotten out of a rough 90-minute talk with his boss, so we went out for a beer and wing therapy session. Through the course of the hour and a half or so we spent together, I realized something: I am in serious trouble. I started noticing imperfections. Odd facial expressions, a goofy way of walking - things that make him real, and human. Imperfections are where infatuation leaves off, and real feelings start to take hold. As long as I'm keeping him on an unattainable, idealized pedestal, we're safely in crush territory. It's silly, it's girlish, obsessive, but fun. But sitting across the table from a guy who you are starting to really be able to see yourself with as he's telling you that dating is currently running dead last on his list of priorities...that. just. sucks. Especially since I've been in his position - when I was at the same point in grad school, I made a conscious decision to not pursue any serious relationships. And I'm sure I missed out on a couple of great things as a result - knowing what I know now, would I really have been any worse off if I'd dated someone really special...someone I could have had a chance at a future with? Of course, I'm not suggesting the VGLM would feel that way about me under other circumstances - I refuse to do the whiny obsessive girl thing, trying to analyze what's going on in his head when there's really no way for me to know one way or the other.

I just wish I wasn't feeling that way about him.