Charming, but single

• I have yet to get the blog working for Internet Explorer. Sorry! It's on my list of things to do, I promise. It works for Firefox -- www.getfirefox.com (I suppose I could have stayed in and fixed the blog last night, but there were beers to be had!)
• Re: The post about my low-cut work outfit -- I am NOT posting a picture of my rack. No way in hell. Also, to commenter Gordon, I read your blog and I don't think the pope would like you thinking about my rack, as we are not married. Rules are rules, my Catholic friend. Sorry! ;)
• The blogroll is in various stages of completeness. I love all of my fellow bloggers and being absent from the new blogroll is not a sign that you are uncool. It's a sign that I'm in over my head. (But, that's normal for me.)

• I love that everyone assumes sight unseen that I am so much hotter than all of my coworkers. So cute! I want to date you all.
• The Whinemaster over at www.guywhine.com wants to know why women judge other women so much, especially when it comes to one woman looking like a knockout or seeming to show off her assets. Some of it is obviously jealousy and insecurity, but I think a lot of it is a learned behavior. When it comes to men, many women are very competitive, so they're quick to judge the competition and brand her a skank. That way if a guy picks her over you, you can say, "Well, I'm better than she is and he was just looking for a quick piece of ass." Not all women are like this, but it's a pretty prevalent problem. I could go on and on about the prevalence of Girl-on-Girl hostility and judgment, but I don't have the time. So, um, rent "Mean Girls." It all goes back to the high school cafeteria.

• "Lonely No More" -- Damn you Rob Thomas!
• "Right to be Wrong" -- Joss Stone
• "Son of a Preacherman" -- Dusty Springfield
• "Hollaback Girl" -- Gwen Stefani (But only the part about bananas!)

Am working on new blog design. I wanted to go with a sidebar. (I am wondering why right about now.) Will get blogroll updated soon. (Don't worry if I left you off. If you were on my old blogroll, located at http://kinja.com/favorites/charmingbutsingle, you will also be on the new one. If not, comment and I'll add ya.) Forgive any glitches that may occur, as I'd sooner write a site in Cyrillic than html. Also, R.I.P. pretty green shoe. You will be missed. (I'll be adding a shoe and a purse and a martini glass as spacers in the sidebar. Just not tonight. Sorry!) Toodles! Update: Fixed the comment page so that comments don't appear in 150 points. Got rid of the Sagittarius Webring, because their link box was waaaaay too big. Anyone who wants to make me cute buttons so that I don't have to use the text links under "various blog things" gets a free gmail invite. (Or 10. I have, like, 200 of them. Do people even need gmail anymore? What the hell am I supposed to do with these invites?)

I was browsing in a store yesterday. I had gone shopping to buy a cute jacket I had seen online, but when I tried it on I looked like a linebacker. Not a flattering shape on me at all. At all. I stopped by the accessories before I left the store. I was looking at earrings and necklaces when a loud woman and a man came over to look at accessories as well. She would pick something off of the rack, hold it up and loudly ask his opinion. He'd loudly answer and she'd put whatever she was holding back. I had picked up a pair of coral-colored beaded earrings and was contemplating if they'd work with a shirt I have while the loud couple continued their shopping. I finally decided against the earrings and went to put them up, which unfortunately meant I had to come between the loud lady and the accessories. I was annoyed by her unwillingness to let me by and their loudness, so I slid my hand past her, and was pretty short as I said "Excuse me" and then walked over to the sunglasses. (Sidenote: My heart is totally broken that I can't buy some huge fabulous sunglasses this year, but I invested $100 in prescription sunglasses a few months ago, and they've made my life so much better and my driving more pleasant, but still ... sigh.) So I'm looking over sunglasses and such when I hear the loud couple talking about me. (They greatly overestimated their whispering skills.) It became pretty clear that I had wrongly assumed that they were a couple. The man was clearly using this shopping excursion to check out women under the guise of helping his female friend shop. I kept my head down while they talked about me. She asked him what he thought of me and he said, and I quote, "She's cute, but she looks mean." My head snapped up, rather involuntarily, and our eyes met. He gave me this, "Yeah, I was talking about you" look and I kind of rolled my eyes and moved over to another section of the store. Sigh ... I'm even started to LOOK like a hermit to other people. I'm going back to my cave to be alone.

... are what I am experiencing over the fantabulously cute apartment I just saw. I almost passed out when I walked into it. It was a semi-orgasmic experience ... I mean, the place has hardwood floors, natural wood ceilings, ample bedroom space, a refurbished kitchen, ceramic tile ... Sigh. This beautiful apartment has made much more happy than any man as of late. I'm giddy. Freakin' GIDDY. Told the landlady I wanted to think about it for the weekend. It's kind of like how you can't make big life decisions during the hour after gettin' some, when you're basking in the afterglow of your partner ... You wouldn't sign a lease during that hour, would you? I mean, the sight of perfectly-preserved hardwood floors in a place from the 40s was enough to send me over the moon. (Normally these older places have poorly-kept floors and crappy kitchens and bathrooms and the owner charges you beaucoup rent under the guise of the place being charming. Seriously. I always want to say, "Charming my ass! I know a few things about being charming. Lady, I write the book on charming, and this ain't nothing like what I consider charming!") Once I saw the gorgeous bathroom redo (New bathroom in an old place? The best of both worlds, baby!) I just KNEW I would love living there. Rent slightly more than I had wanted to pay? Nonsense! She had me at "remodeled." Must go call all of my friends and proclaim my love for the charming, single unit I just toured. May your days be merry and your floors hardwood.

Been out of town on business for a few days. It is very very nice to be back home. (There are so many benefits to home, the most important being that I don't get lost all of the time.) I was in a much smaller town in the middle of nowhere. No Internet access in my room, no decent restaurants or fun bars that would be acceptable to visit alone. Also, no coffee places. Now, I am not a big Starbucks fan because I think big corporations are evil and they're closing down locally owned businesses and erasing some of the cultural aspects of towns. (Just my opinion. Have your own.) At home I have several smaller shops that keep me in espresso and muffins. As I checked out of my hotel this morning, I asked a hotel employee to point me toward the nearest Starbucks or similar business. She looked at me as if I had asked her where the store that sold baby souls was or something. I had to settle for bottled Starbucks. (I refuse to drink gas station coffee because I don't trust anything that's been sitting in a scuzzy gas station for who knows how long.) And yeah, no Doubleshot, which is espresso and cream in that little can. Apparently, that's, um, tres uncommon in rural country. (Which is a shame, because I can drink two of those without blinking.) I am not quite sure how I survived. Well, I did, and I'm back. I'm worn out, but planning on going out and finding interesting things and fun boys. But the best laid plans ... And also, regarding the search terms I was mentioning in my last post, go search this: peeing videos "country bumpkin" (the first term should not have quotes and the second should) together in Google and see what site comes up. (Is someone just screwing with me now?) It's good to be known for something, right?

So I was looking at my site stats. They are paltry compared to some people's. To me, however, I've had about 1340 more visitors than I ever thought I'd get. I literally only slapped a counter on this thing because I got a random comment, which freaked me out. How could someone have found my blog, I wondered ... and then realized it was from the Blogger site. The counter was to ensure this didn't get out of control and to watch and make sure no too-close-to-home IPs popped up. I registered for some of those blog-surfing sites and did a few recipro links ... and it's funny, because I never thought anyone would ever comment or read or bookmark this blog. I'm a touch scared ... I mean, shit, now there's all this pressure to go on dates and such. (And I've been in such a drought too! Imagine if I never had another date! I would let down my seven readers. You would all be so disappointed if I ended up becoming the ubiquitous creepy cat lady who lives down the street!) It's crazy. Imagine how I'd feel if I got a large amount of traffic. Like, more than 50 hits a day. I'm shaking. This is starting to sound like one of those aw-shucks posts where a blogger is like, "I'm so itty-bitty and insignificant" in a fishing-for-comments sort of way. I didn't intend it to be. I was just thinking about blogging and how it can go either way -- it can either be a solitary venture or a communal one. I'll keep you posted on which one I like better. My favorite thing to look at is what search terms lead people here. There's this one person (You know who you are.) who must not know how to bookmark, because he/she constantly searches "charmingbutsingle" in Google to find the site. (There's actually more than one person who does that, come to think of it.) I've gotten some hits off of the term "sexual positions" and some hits off of some of the designers I talk about (Enzo!), but today I got the funniest hit ever. Someone searched for "Paris Hilton perfume" in Google and ended up here. I tried to duplicate the search, but without quotes I got more than 600,000 results and with quotes I got more than 2,000. So, to the cutie pie who ended here by searching through 50 pages of search results for that stinky Paris Hilton perfume, I say, "Welcome." Now get your smelly ass away from my virtual Manolo!

Remember that REM video where the people get caught in traffic and they're all stuck in their own problems and miserable and then they just get out of their cars on the freeway and leave, breaking free from their personal trials and uniting around the larger, communal problem of poor urban planning? (Or something like that.) Yeah, I had a similar experience today. Except for the part where we left our cars on the freeway. (Like that would ever actually happen.) I had a business meeting about an hour and 15 minutes away. I left two hours before the meeting -- enough time to grab a sandwich at a Subway about halfway to where my meeting was and park in a parking garage and walk a block to the meeting and still be on time. I eventually arrived at the meeting an hour and a half after it started, thankfully through no fault of my own. There was a wreck, one of those terrible wrecks that backs up the entire Interstate for hours. I must've only been a few minutes behind it, because I got caught between two Interstate exits, which put me in the awkward position of having to just wait out the traffic jam and hope I didn't miss anything important at my meeting. For a brief moment I contemplated jumping the median and making a U-turn to go the other way on the Interstate. The median sloped into a ditch about four or five feet deep and my SUV would've taken it like a champion. Unfortunately the compact company car I was driving was neither meant to jump medians or owned by me. (Also, I am pretty sure I signed something that said I generally wouldn't drive irresponsibly and specifically jump any medians in a company car.) So I stayed put and munched on about a million pieces of Orbit Whitening gum (the only food I had with me), drank all of my granita and two bottles of water. (Not the smoothest of moves, seeing as I was confined to a bathroomless car.) This left me hyper from all of the coffee (it was a large) and ready to explode because of all of the water. I didn't even have anything to read. I had literally packed my laptop and a blank notepad in my new big purse. I had printed a newspaper article (a short one, natch) and Mapquest directions on my way out, but neither of them really held my interest. I contemplated booting up my laptop and attempting to do some sort of work, but I didn't know how long the battery would last. So I sat. I changed the station. I cursed the CD player that wouldn't play my burned CDs. I watched people get out of their cars and walk around and grew a jealous of the people who exited their cars to have a cigarette. (I'm attempting to quit smoking altogether, even when I'm stressed out or drunk. This was quite a test. Fortunately I didn't have any cigarettes with me.) I watched men disappear into the woods lining the street and duck behind bushes to relieve themselves. After about 45 minutes, I wondered if anyone would notice if I did the same, but decided that urination on the side of the highway was definitely not something I was into. The wreck finally cleared and the traffic sped up and I eventually made it to my meeting long enough to hear the last two hours or so and head home. (I'm going back tomorrow.) I don't even know why I'm writing this, except to just write something. I didn't come into any big realizations whilst stuck in unbearable traffic. I didn't find any symbolism in the cars and the rednecks peeing on the side of the road or the annoying people who insisted on driving down the right-side median, only to be blocked from moving on by the police officers at the scene of the accident. Come to think of it, I didn't really stress that much once I realized that there wasn't a whole hell of a lot for me to do about it. I had my own little mini American Idol, singing along to every cheesy song that came onto the radio. (Windows down, of course.) It was, in a really odd sort of way, kind of relaxing.

I present for your reading pleasure a book review from the NY Times. It's of this book called the Hook-Up Handbook.

I haven't read the book because it has only been out for a month or so and because it's written by someone who works at Cosmo, and I don't read Cosmo because I find it to be a touch on the overkill side.

I'm sorry, I don't need diagrams of sexual positions and tips on how to make myself look beautiful after sleeping over at a boy's house. (Seriously, one article recommended things you should pack in a baggie to bring with you if you plan to spend the night out. Come on. We're singles, not boy scouts!)

Also, those lists of "52 ways to make him scream"? Always the same. (However, from what I hear, "You won't believe number 23!")

Also, in this day of independent single women, why are we obsessed with these silly lists of how to move your hips while positioning your hands, while arching your back to the correct angle with the right kind of hair and artfully applied eyeliner? Seriously, not that you shouldn't work at these things, but my experience has been that men are less picky than Cosmo's lists would have you believe. Showing up is much more than half the battle to most men, who are just excited to get to see a naked lady. I'm sure guys like Cosmo's cute little tricks, but I'm also sure that you can not read Cosmo and still have a satisfied man around the house.

But maybe that's just me. (Plus, I get jealous of all of the models because they get to wear uncomfortable $300 shoes in pictures. I want uncomfortable $300 shoes!)

The title kind of speaks for itself. I had a pretty boring weekend as far as my social life goes. However, I did get to relax a lot. (I slept until almost 9 today, which is a huge advancement.) Friday: My brother and his girlfriend both had birthdays this week, so we had a big family dinner thing Friday night. It was a blast. Many beers and glasses of wine were had and the weather was nice, so we all ate outside at my parent's house on the deck. It was very relaxed and nice. I had planned to hang out with some people after, but I was tired, so I went to sleep around 10:30 p.m. Saturday: Woke up around 7:30 a.m. Cursed my inability to sleep in anymore, but got up anyway. Went shopping with my mom, because she needed some help picking out an outfit for a luncheon. I teased her relentlessly because she shops in a terrible way that is not conducive to finding the right outfit. She only tries on things she knows she will like and she only likes about three things in every huge-ass department store. Needless to say, I had to get her to break out of the box a little bit as far as color and style and fabric and pretty much everything else. We found her a cute outfit and I finally bought a black everyday purse that I love love love. And I got a free lunch out of the deal. Not bad. Cooked a big dinner and cleaned a bunch of veggies and such for the week. Watched some basketball and made some plans to go out. I was finishing my makeup when my girlfriend (Birthday Girl!) called with change of plans. By the hesitation in her voice, I knew she knew that I was going to hate the change of plans. I did. There are certain restaurants, bars, clubs, etc. where I just do not like to go. Either I've been there and didn't have a good time or I don't particularly like the location (30 minutes from my house, through a not-so-safe neighborhood, etc.) or I'm not a big fan of the people there or I just don't like the damn place. I am 25 years old, and I do not feel like I should have to go somewhere I dislike just because other people want to. Ten of my friends are going to be there? Good, then no one will notice that I'm not. I am not heartless. Had this been someone's birthday or a special occasion or something, I would have gone. Had my girlfriend even asked me really really really nicely to go, or had it been terribly important that I be there, then I might have gone to this bar. But I wasn't dragging my cutely made up self to a bar where only underaged country bumpkins and sleazoids go. (Also, it is far, far away.) I wouldn't have a good time, I would have been pissed all night and my bad attitude would have pissed others off. Why bother going? So, girlfriend got really pissed. She told me she originally wasn't going to tell me about the venue change. She was just going to let me get to her house and then be like, "Oh yeah, we're going to [insert crappy bar's name] instead!" (Which would have been uber mature.) I apologized and said I wouldn't be joining her. (The people we were going with were her friends and not mine anyway.) I explained that I didn't like the bar and that I didn't feel like paying to go somewhere when I knew I wasn't going to have fun. She was a bit upset, but I didn't budge. I am an adult and no one can make me go somewhere I don't want to go. As I was telling her that I hope she had fun, I heard a click. She hung up on me. So not cool. So, I called around and joined some friends for drinks and someone's house. I didn't have a bad time, I just didn't have a really good time, so I went home early and watched that silly Lizzie Grubman PR reality show and wondered if my budget at work includes money for a red carpet. Also, some boy spilled beer on my skirt and didn't really apologize, which annoyed me. I wasn't expecting money for the dry cleaner, just, you know, a nice, "I'm sorry!" Blah. Sunday: Slept until 9 a.m. Was very excited. Ran some errands, bought a wedding present and groceries. Am about to go hang out with friends and watch more basketball. Have big going out plans for next week. Looking forward to some fun times. (Am taking applications for position of S's object of flirtation at big birthday celebration Saturday night. Must be intelligent, well-spoken, tall, cuddly and -- of course -- charming and single. Submit applications here.) Have a great week!

From S: Blogger hates me. This post was supposed to go up Thursday. Sorry! I was having regular martini night with a nice group of people last night, as is typical of my Wednesday nights. (Side note: My favorite little martini bar was playing the worst music ever last night. Seriously, they played a Lindsay Lohan song. Oh for the love of vodka.) So, I was teasing one of my guy friends ... (A good friend of the infamous T, who I would like to point out, I have done a very very good job of not obsessing over.) Now, I always tease this guy and he always teases me. We're about as different as two people can be and we make fun of each other's political beliefs, jobs, choice of drink, etc. So, I was teasing him a little, but I was being cute and obvious about it. I'd make a little crack about his job and then wink at him. We were with friends, so no one would have thought I was serious and I am not the only person who was teasing him, by any means. All of the sudden, his smile faded and he said, "S, you know, if you keep this up, I'll be forced to get even with you." He used a very serious tone. He was not joking. I, however, thought he was, so I said, "Dear, you have no dirt on me because there is no dirt to have." I am nothing if I am not coy. He shook his head in disagreement and said, "I could really embarrass you if I wanted to, trust me." Then, he was fine. He teased me a little bit, but I made sure not to joke with him about anything that might offend his sensitive little soul. Last night, after a martini and a Hoegarden, I took it with a grain of salt. This morning, I'm a little nervous. You know, if a co-ed group of mostly single, carefree, beer-swilling twenty somethings hang out long enough (more than four years for some of us), an indiscretion or 12 are going to be made. Someone's going to make out, someone's going to hook up, someone's going to get their feelings hurt. That's life, plain and simple. I know I'm not the only person in my social circle to participate in some extracurricular activities with a fellow circle member. (We went to college at a party school together, for crying out loud.) No, I haven't had dalliances with all of the men in our group -- just a few. (And, again, no more than anyone else.) The truth is, this guy really could embarrass me if he wanted to bring up details of past flings -- the kind of details that you tell a close friend and no one else. And I could embarrass him back. Maybe he knows I wouldn't because his indiscretions have been with some dear friends of mine. Maybe he was just messing with my head. Maybe he knows I'd never make public some of his embarrassing drunken moments because they were with dear friends of mine. Still, his little threat worried me. I still have fun, but I'm not the party girl I used to be. I made mistakes, I made poor choices. But they're MY mistakes and MY poor choices and as long as I own them, I don't think anyone should use them against me. I could forget about it and just sing, "I don't give a damn about my bad reputation." (Again, not that bad of a reputation.) But I do -- no one wants to be gossiped about relentlessly for every little thing they've done since they were 21. Raised eyebrows aren't what you want to have sent your direction. Still, tis better to have stories and regrets than a sinking feeling that you haven't experienced anything, right? To quote Billy, "I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints." From what I hear, the sinners are much more fun.