I now declare this week 'National Crazies Week'

seriously.

in addition to OrneryGirl's whack experiences this week, and my stalking girl group BFF ("SGGBFF")*, i just received another text from stalking real estate agent ("SREA"): "Hey you. How was denver?" this is in addition to the text i received on 4/29/08 asking: "How was denver?" to which i did not respond. i think i met this guy like 3 years ago. i went on one date with him 2.89 years ago. i think he has a calendar reminder set up to text me every .5 years. i have not responded to said text received between .5-1.5 years ago until i told him off .25 years ago...he is still texting.

seriously? what phase is the moon in this week??

*more to come about this one. stay tuned.

Bankers are Whack!

3 strikes and you are out folks. The pipeline is now officially closed down to anyone in the banking industry.

First we had to experience the jack assery of HP’s banker/client crush who turned out to be creepy guy that hits on her girlfriends and behaves inappropriately in social situations.

Then I acquired the mortgage broker stalker guy who still continues to text me EVERY SINGLE DAY, even though I have not seen him since my closing…8 months ago!

Strike three? The blind date I subjected myself to last night. This one started off with promise. We were introduced via email by a mutual friend and carried on some interesting and quite witty electronic banter over the last week until our scheduled meeting over beers last night. His extremely dry humor, sarcasm, and well… outright making shit up in the name of keeping me laughing was actually quite refreshing and had me looking forward to the date. I had pictured us sitting together over a few beers and making each other laugh until pants peeing or convulsions were involved. Oh contraire mon frair.

Enter Botox Banker. The man who I envisioned chuckling away at his desk whilst reading my charming commentary was a complete and utter stone face in person. We are talking absolutely expressionless for two hours. Not a single curve, down or up, at the ends of his mouth to indicate he had any sort of emotion going on inside that head. Not one crinkle of the eyes, furrow of the brow, or even a twitch to indicate the muscles were functional. I don’t really think he uses botox, I really think this is part of his intentional exterior presentation. Apparently he wants to come off as a downright bloody bore.

For me? It was infuriating to have absolutely no way of reading whether he was completely miserable or hoping to jump my bones later. He was still very funny…. I think… but with no expression I couldn’t tell if some of the incredulous things he was saying were jokes or serious. I had no way to appropriately allocate my reactions so I resorted to sitting there staring at him with a goofy smirk on my face while I pictured him with an alien head and robot arms.

This, on top of the fact that he is not into going out, not into music, not into movies, not into TV, and not into sports means that I am certainly NOT INTO HIM. What the hell does he do with himself if he is “not into” anything? …my guess is he stands in front of a mirror and works on his poker face.

I think I am going back on the musician circuit…

How Do You Dispute an Electronic Marriage?

Wedding Season is upon us. In the next 90 days I have:

-3 bachelorette parties
-4 bridal shower
-5 weddings
-Endless amounts of funds to be thrown at target.com, macys.com, bedbathandbeyond.com, etc.

So I decided to go to the trusty www.theknot.com to see if my friends (and those I've "lost touch" with over the years) have "Wedding Web Pages." Curiosity got the best of me and i searched for other "ke" "ol" brides who are registered. Low and behold, the(not-so-due-diligent)knot.com did not get the memo on the end of my engagement over 3 years ago. According to the(not-so-due-diligent)knot.com, I am a "newlywed for 668 days!" Wow.

Naturally, I shared the joy with my friends, including my ex-fiance (yes, we are still actually good friends), because lord only knows which email address we used to create our knot.com site. This could take ages to unravel and remedy. A dear friend even signed the guestbook today. You'll have to find it using the not-so-hard-puzzle outlined above to read it. She added:

Kat: i wanted to rsvp too
but unfortunately u have not activated that feature
me: LOL
damn me!
i'm such a slacker
Kat: no shit
how are your guests supposed to make plans??
me: how rude of me
Kat: terribly
me: that is some hilarious shit
i am still LOL
Kat: ur not gonna make a v good wife

touché!

learning the austin lingo

Business Rowdy (Austin term) - dress as if you were going to a nice bar in the Warehouse District on a Saturday.

You Want Mint for Pillow?

So I am sitting here on the couch in my hotel suite, watching "Don't forget the Lyrics" (guilty pleasure), eating room service, drinking a bottle of wine, wrapped in a blanket, laptop in its proper place (on lap)... when my phone rings. Not the mobile phone that is conveniently placed on the couch next to me, the room land line that happens to be across the room on the desk.

Me thinking: "What? Who the hell would track me down here? Should I ignore it? Crap, what if it is my client? Dammit."

So I set laptop aside, unwrap myself from blanket, put down my garlic bread, swallow a gulp of wine and run over to the desk.

Who was it, you ask? Fecking room service. Asking me how my dinner is. ARE you SERIOUS? They even asked me to rate it on a scale of 1-10. Bastards. If they hadn't interrupted my happy time they may have gotten a perfect score. Why do people not think? If someone chooses to order room service rather than haul their ass downstairs to the fecking restaurant it is typically because they are fecking tired and don't want to fecking talk to anyone.

Great idea, dissatisfy your customers so you can find out if they are satisfied. Brilliant.

SXSWhat the Hell Just Happened?

South By South West, South By South Sex, South By South Wrecks... all of these can be used to describe my last week in Austin, but right now I am just South by South Depressed because it is all over.

Let me just start by saying that I have bad karma. Not the kind where I have tragic things happen to me that scar me for life and cause me to lead an utterly depressing existence. But the kind of karma that you hear about in Alanis Morissette's "Ironic" song. I drop shit, I trip in front of strangers, I leave belongings in my wake everywhere I go, I can't keep a shirt clean more than 20 minutes and I get flat tires and run out of gas when I am in a hurry to get somewhere.... (I believe in Britain they call this faffy). BUT... all of this is made up for over and over again with my unwavering wonderful music and weather karma. When I visit Seattle in January? 65 and sunny. New York in July? Crisp and 70. It never fails. I have also NEVER failed at finding a way into whatever music show I am attempting to see and often stumble upon the most stellar musical acts in the randomest of places.

SXSWoah, was not an exception...

Day One:
HP and I had no set plans for this night. We just hit the town in search of SXSWord trouble.

After wandering about town to a few bars, we heard of a private party with none other than the Raveonettes playing down the street in an old abandoned brewery that literally had homeless people in it four days earlier. Leave it to Austin to turn a dump into a music venue in 72 hours.

HP and I showed up and were denied entry regardless of my super special premium badge. We looked in through a window, put on our sad pouty faces and had a fuzzyballs47, who was actually inside the party, take a picture of us being sad - then we went on our way. We stopped briefly to take a picture of a sign some idiot hung on the restaurant next door that read "Open Wensday Morning at 6am." (If you don't see what is wrong with that, you also have problems) Mid-picture some gentleman walked up to laugh with us and point out that the restaurant had literally just popped up in the last few days.

He then went on to say "Kind of like my club next door. There were homeless people in it four days ago. Now I employ them."

You can guess what happened next... We shared our tragic story of being denied from his club and showed him the sad face picture. Next thing you know, we are two feet in front of one of the most hyped bands of SXSW and drinking free booze with fuzzyballs47. Hello Music Karma and Hello Hell of a Kick off to a Hell of a Week!

Day Two: Living La Vida Rockstar

First let me remind you that HP and I DO attempt to carry on regular professional day jobs. Unfortunately, we have still not found a way to make bank being ridiculous and blogging about it. So, we actually had to peel ourselves off the couch/floor and show up at our respective offices after night #1. This did not stop us from continuing full throttle for nights 2-4.

HP and I get out on the town and decide to hit up Mohawk for a band I wanted to check out. Once I force badgeless HP to pay a cover, we discover the band I want to see is no longer playing. In their place? Horrendous hair band that we could stand for all of 30 seconds before kissing HP's $10 goodbye.

Next we headed to a rooftop bar at Blind Pig. Luckily there was an extremely hot bartender to stare at while another couple terrible bands shredded our eardrums and an extremely way too aggressive guy with bad breath professed his love to me. On to bar #3.

At this point, you are thinking that does not sound like good music karma, but au contraire mon frere. We hit up a place down the street that had a band I wanted to catch called The Ting Tings. We arrived at the door, but Alas! Badges Only. I didn't want to abandon HP and she was not about to give up. With the help of a 21 year old... er... friend... of mine that just happened to be one of the door men, we weaseled our way into the venue just in time.

We shook serious ass to the band, grabbed a drink and a couple of friendly rock stars at set break, then had a small dance party during the next act. At this point (2am) we were just getting started. We hit up the gay bar (closed), walked all over town looking for a dance party, then finally resorted to holding the dance party at my apartment.

Again, you can guess where this went.... dance party turned into high school make out party turned into SXS-SEX. Apparently the cute rock star I had grabbed is a bass player/comedian/actor and this second night I had unknowingly established a sex/bed/cuddle partner for the rest of the week. Score!

Day 3: What had happened was... we had gone to Cedar Street...

This was tough. After rock star dance party till 5am, I had to be at the office at 8. I went straight from there to catch more music at 3 then stayed out for the long haul. Lets just say we all hit a serious wall at around 7pm. Did that stop us?? Hell no. By the end of the night at Cedar Street, HP was telling my boss's boss's boss how she slept with a drummer the night before and we were all in vodka induced comas.

We met up with the rock stars again and headed back to my apt. Thank heavens I moved downtown recently because I was now running a regular SXSW Bed and Breakfast.

Days 4 and 5 continued on in the same fashion. See great music, drink through the foot pain, exhaustion, smelly people and knowledge that you have to return to normal life at some point, then pass out for a few hours so you can start allover again. We got to see our rock stars play on Saturday afternoon and they were actually really quite good. This of course means I was even more turned on, seeing the actual base being played by bassplayercomedianactorboyfriend (BPCAB)

The other bonus? BPCAB completely occupied my mind from the 24 year old hot but bitter lad I had been obsessing over. It is amazing how quickly we can snap to it and realize how many "perfect" people there are for us out there. After everything I have found out about "rock star" through stalking him on the Internet, I am now quite positive we are perfect for each other. Possible? Not a chance, but at least I have this moment to remind myself how many possibilities really are out there. Plus I had a freaking blast!

"We're not going to rest until you find love."

can i just say thank you match.com for your 7 day trial period? because i'm going to give myself 100% credit that i DID try match.com and i DID sign up for an actual account and i DID fully put myself out there and i DID read all the winks/messages i got. and label me whatever you want, but i was not attracted to any of the 12 respondents. plus my work internet kept giving me ACCESS DENIED when i tried to reach your site because "The category of Dating / Relationships has been blocked by your System Administrator." and i don't have internet at home because i REFUSE to give any cable or telephone company my money and last week i was only home for 2.3 hours during SXSW. which is a WHOLE other very long blog which will include pictures (YAY!). ok, disclosure over...

so last night i throw my hands in the air and just say OH FECK IT. and i click on "cancel my subscription." which match.com tries to change my mind and cause me to self-doubt myself:

match.com: "Can you tell us why you're canceling your account?"

me: "I didn't find anyone who interested me."

match.com: "We can help. You can attract more matches, or you can attract the right matches. The most common problem is in being too specific with your matches. Open your mind!"

me thinking: "Open my mind? Didn't you tell me to be picky and specific and tell you exactly what i wanted?"

match.com: "With 60,000 new profiles posted each week, your chances of meeting the right match for you increase every day!"

me thinking: "but if i'm living in one of the hottest towns for singles and going out 4 nights a week and involved in extracurricular activities with men's groups, aren't my odds already being increased by like 200,000? and if said odds are not working in my favor, aren't you maybe like just trying to take my money?"

match.com: "We're not going to rest until you find love. Opt in for Match.com by Mail and we'll email you interesting matches as often as you like."

me : "you're not going to rest? isn't that a bit dramatic? and i should've told you in my profile i am violently opposed to unsolicited mail, regular and electronic."

match.com: "The more emails you send, the more responses you'll receive. So, take the next step and start sending some emails. You never know where it will lead."

me: "actually that logic sounds horrible; like "the more you put out the better chances you'll have of finding a husband." And as for the "you'll never know where it will lead" comment...i have seen a few movies that have given me a couple of ideas where it may lead.

match.com: "Tell us more. In your own words, how can we make finding love easier? (1000 characters remaining)."

me: "Maybe not harass people with a million questions and broken promises when they decide to cancel their 7 day trial period would be a good start."

match.com: "How likely is it that you would recommend Match.com to a friend?"

me: "1 - Not likely."

match.com: "If you cancel now, you will lose these benefits once your subscription ends:

-You won't know who's viewed your profile
-No more sending and responding to emails
-You risk losing your current monthly rate

me: "and some people need this explained to them????"

match.com: "your account has been cancelled. Your confirmation number is xxxxxxx.
Now that you are no longer a Match.com member, here are a few things you need to know:

-Your profile and photos are no longer visible to others.
-You will no longer receive the Match.com email publications that you requested.
-You will receive an email confirming your cancellation.
-You may use your current registration information to sign in any time within one year.
-You may return and "unhide" your profile any time within one year.
-You do not have to do anything further to complete your membership cancellation.

Our 15 million members are going to miss seeing your smiling face. Good luck in love sucker!"

me: :L