Wednesday, March 09, 2011

Ten Random Conversations in March

1. Drama on Sunday as Joe and I debated refinancing our mortgage. Should we go with the 30 year or 15 year fixed rate mortgage? What about PMI? Not the kind of romantic tête-à-tête I imagined as a newlywed, but responsible financial management is sexy, right?

2. Forced to listen to a very graphic and detailed story about a client's colon health. Her procedures, her diet and her deep desire to eat corn again. Seriously.

3. Eavesdropped upon two young administrative assistant ladies lamenting the drawbacks of upgrading to Microsoft Office 2010: "Why did they have to move everything and make it uglier?" "I miss my old tool bar, I want it back." "I hope I don't get fired, everything takes me twice as long now." "Why don't we have Macs? Then I could use my iPod at work too."

4.  Bemoaning the tragedy of women growing facial hair as they age and the best way to handle this evil new development. Razor, wax, bleach, go all Uncle Edna and leave it?

5. Does Charlie Sheen fit the legal definition of mentally ill or does he simply fall into the sycophant-fueled raving douche category? Do Americans have a well of sympathy for this man? Would he have been better off sticking with the Estevez name?

6. Grammar Debate Alert! Ongoing discussion with a board member about beginning a new sentence with "And" or "But." Bad grammar or creative license? I vote creative license.

7.  In trying to migrate my vast book list over from Shelfari to Good Reads (two reading websites that let you track what books you've read, want to read, and write reviews/ratings,) I had to map out and clean up a lot of spreadsheet fields with dates and titles etc. Almost three hours later, Joe is laughing and mocking my database and book nerdery. But Good Reads is a delight. Sorry, Shelfari, their iPhone app won me over.

8. The saddest call of the week when a frail, elderly gentlemen called our offices to ask where he was supposed to go in order to vote for the school board elections. I had to tell him that the elections had already happened the day before. I think he started to cry when I told him. Politics get me emotional too.

9. "Come on, you only get the chance to smoke black hash once in your lifetime." I had no response for this one. Does that even count as a conversation?

10. Repetitive singing of Rusted Root's "Send me on my way" and Phish and Grateful Dead groupie jokes, used in a valiant attempt to convince my 31 year old brother that dreadlocks are a bad idea, while he sits and twirls his hair into little tufts. Skype mocking is just as powerful as live mocking. We also encouraged him to watch this video, repeatedly.

3 comments:

bethany actually said...

Oh, I think #8 would have made me cry, too!

Your #1 makes me think of the episode of "White Collar" we watched last night, where a married couple are arguing about which kind of window insulation was more effective, or something, and the single man and woman there, who were on the verge of starting to date, were just staring at them in disbelief. It sounds like the show was saying marriage is boring, right? But then! They turned it on its head somehow and made the married couple cool. I'm still not sure how they did it, because one of the singles was played by Matt Bomer. I just love the writing & acting on that show. It doesn't hurt that Willie Garson plays a conspiracy-theorist con man on it, either.

AmyK said...

#1 - It was a similar conversation that led to us deciding to get married. Ah, romance

#4 - I've gone the laser/electrolysis route...almost all my stray eyebrows are gone.

#6 - I'm all for creative license. And sometimes it just makes sense. But be careful not to over do it.

#8 - poor guy

NLT said...

You are fascinating as ever, what a super fun post to read! I miss hearing the wackiness, thanks for sharing!

PS: #1 is hella sexy provided it's the house that contains the bed in which you'll be together in, later that evening :D

#8 - I've had 2 conversations with older folks that ended similarly...it was kind of you to listen. Poor thing!