I'm so so old.

I'm spending a lot of time with undergrads and it's making me feel old and used up. They're all chipper and fresh-faced. I have to work really hard not to point out to them how old they were when I was going to shows or to advise them harshly about their under-achieving boyfriends. I also try not to ask them if we're still wearing Sperry's or if it's still okay to wear boot-cut pants. I have the same student ID photo that I had when I started my PhD and, I swear to you, I don't even look like the same person. I looked like a freaking gelfling and if you know how that movie progresses, you can only imagine who I've cast in the role of the Skeksis. I guess it's really just time but I feel that the life has been sucked out of me. You know what other movie it reminds me of? The Princess Bride. The part where Westley is being tortured by Count Rugen on that machine that takes years away from his life. That or Rip van Winkel. Like I suddenly woke up as an old person. I guess that I'm only 31 and that's not really old but it's definitely adult status. And these other people are 10 years younger. I started my PhD seven years ago, people. The undergrad in my lab is on the Georgia Tech dance team. So, I say to her, "My freshman roommate was a Georgia Tech cheerleader." The undergrad says, "Really? What's her name?" I blink at her and say, "That was in 1995." She got a horrified expression and big eyes and said, "Oooooh....right..." The only things that can cheer me up are the following comics:


nataliedee.com


nataliedee.com

Have you missed me?...hello?...hello-o?

Okay, so, the chances that anyone is reading my blog or cares that I'm not keeping up with it...not good. I mean, I could just be emailing it straight to Emily (thanks, buddy). But, it's not really polite to send people emails where you just go on and on about some stupid life phenomenon, so, here's my next installment:

I'll start by putting up some comics that made me laugh all afternoon the day that I read them. It was actually sort of an embarassing situation, wherein I was washing dishes in the lab or walking down the hall or whatever, in front of people, when I would just burst out laughing in memory of these comics:


nataliedee.com


nataliedee.com


nataliedee.com

What's funny about these comics is that you scroll scroll scroll, just sort of mildly smiling, when suddenly you get to one that makes you fall out of your chair, it's so funny. And why? What makes it so funny? You show it to an officemate and they sort of smile, chuckle, can't figure out why you're having trouble breathing. What's worse, you burst out laughing while washing dishes so your lab mates want to see what's so funny. You waste everyone's time, logging into the lab computer, opening up Firefox, trying to find the right day ("Hold it, oh, yeah, that one's funny...it must have been in February...look at this one with the bear..."), and then, tah-dah, you find it, burst out laughing again, and the labmates are just standing there. The polite ones pretend to laugh. So, then you attempt to explain, "Look at it, it's squishing her eye...[interrupted by laughing/blowing snot]" Now, at this point, they're laughing, but it's not because of the comic.

I blame myself

Okay, so it turns out that my husband is not to blame. I had a very appealing New Years Eve invitation and I turned it down. I blame my thesis defense-related anxiety. My husband and I fell asleep on the couch watching football and drinking, what we like to call, "Cran-pagne." You can guess the ingredients. It was delicious.

The good news is we got plenty of rest so that we were all powered up for the day we had yesterday--sitting on the couch and watching home improvement/buying shows on HGTV. Also, I practiced my defense, Kevin went to the grocery store, and I went to Burlington Coat Factory and purchased two suits and some dress shirts for $150. Hooray!

The suits are fully lined and the price tag promises me that they should have retailed for 3x what I paid. PLUS, I got one of the $40 suits for and additional %30 off because the matching pants were missing and the pants associated with the suit were two sizes bigger than the jacket. The good news is, my ass is two sizes larger than my shoulders so, with a little tailoring of the waist, this may be the best possible fitting suit. OH! I also purchased accessories. A lovely "statement necklace" with giant plastic beads, matching bracelets, and a pair of earrings from a recognizable brand name. What was hillarious about the accessories section at Burlington Coat Factory is two-fold:

(1) There was a little girl there begging, and I mean BEGGING her mom for, approximately five separate consecutive items. The phrase, "Please, I'll do ANYTHING!" was actually uttered. Each item was discarded, and a new one chosen, as her mother said, "It doesn't fit on your head, Are you sure that's how you want to spend your money?, What about these headbands?, etc." until, finally, the mother said, "Do you want to go look at Macy's?" and the little girl said, "I want to go home."

(2) There was actually an entire jewelry line with a brand name written in very familiar script but designed by someone named, Christopher Klein.

Now, the final point I'd like to mention, before closing out my blog, is that I essentially watched someone's car get broken into in the parking lot and did, essentially, nothing. I didn't really know what to do. There was a super shifty-eyed man who was sort of sidling up to a car adjacent to mine. And, by sidling, I mean that he was sort of side stepping and looking around and pretending to check his cell phone. It was absurd, really. So, I'm giving him my best evil eye and he doesn't care. He just looks right back at me, clearly thinking the obvious truth, "What are you going to do about it?" I sort of stood there and watched him for a while but he didn't care. He again sort of sidled toward the door, looked all around while picking the lock, and sat down in the drivers seat and began pilfering. So, I drove around, looking for mall security, but I didn't find any, so I drove home. I feel terrible about this. I've had my car broken into several times and I sort of thought that "broad daylight" and "people all around" were inversely correlated to my problems. Clearly these things are irrelevant provided that the "people all around" are completely ineffective. I'm going to spend some time thinking about what I should have done. Maybe I'll put up a poll.

Christmas and New Year's

I find myself to be not as festive as I might like. Christmas had a lot of the regular things. Gifts, family, food. I'm actually sort of bored, however. I'm beginning to think that this may be why people have children. What else is there to do? The kids are the ones with all the activities, toys, etc. Plus, they get all excited about stuff. I got a camera and I really liked it.

Now, the next challenge is to decide what to do for New Years'. Unfortunately for me, Georgia Tech is playing in a bowl game on New Years' Eve and everyone I know is watching it. I hate football. Not sure what to do about it. Let me know if you have any ideas. It's depressing to think that I'll spend another new year going to bed early.

If you ever wondered whether or not my cat has it better than you...

Take a look at this day in the sun:



This day on the sofa:



In fact, being hugged by me is maybe the worst part of his day:

I have a Christmas song in my head but otherwise...

I keep being surprised how late in the month it is because I'm really not experiencing Christmas at all. We have a small aluminum tree with attached lights which we put up on a table near the front window so that it looks, from the street, like we have a regular-sized aluminum tree. I completed my Christmas shopping the weekend after Thanksgiving. Thanks to the crappy economy, it wasn't very crowded. Now I just get up and go to work every day...nothing has changed. This sort of depresses me. Also, it's kind of hot outside. I will continue humming my song. "Ding dong merrily on high!"

...and three more...and two more...

The title of my blog refers to the mantra chanted by my mother's Jane Fonda workout videos when I was younger. People say that the way diet/exercise are treated in your family growing up informs your lifetime relationship with food and I think my parents did pretty well. I'm not overly obsessed, I don't think, and I'm not unhealthy. We ate well in my house, not much restaurant food, always sitting at the dining room table for dinner. I'm not sure what it takes to be someone who is effortlessly thin. Probably bags of marshmallows are out, but I'm not much of a binger so that doesn't help me.

Not that any of you care much, but, along with the rest of the country, I've gained on the order of 5-7 lbs. in the past few weeks. It's a combination of factors, including: stress associated with turning in my thesis, Thanksgiving, and a wonky knee that is maybe tendonitis (i.e., jumper's knee). I've been enjoying cookies, ice cream, chocolate, etc. as surrogates for rest/relaxation. Also, I've been actually physically resting as a proxy for mental relaxation. The result is that I'm now stressed about weight gain, in addition to my job and the economy.

Fortunately and unfortunately, I already go to the gym kind of a lot. The result of that is that I need to make some other change, such as diet (ew, worst possible change), or adding cardio (ew, running...I'm re-thinking the worst possible change). I decided to try stepping up my swimming game by trying to do 1-minute laps, in order to make swimming more rigorous. My progress so far involves the fact that it rained on the day I had decided to swim and no one wanted to walk to the CRC...so I didn't go. Sigh. This is an eternal battle. I wish it weren't.