Harry Potter got...hot!  Dan Radcliffe, the actor who plays Harry Potter, is performing in London in a play called Equus.  This play, by the way, is performed nude.  Seriously.  (And I didn't just research it because Dan Radcliffe is hot, I actually read it in college.)  The main character (Dan), has an "encounter" with a girl in his family's stable.  Overcome with guilt, he stabs out the eyes of all the horses who were in the stable and "saw" them.  Not a 17-year-old's typical reaction to that particular experience, but I guess a round of high-fives with your buddies doesn't make for a dramatic script.  Interesting though, if your average Joe wrote this play, it would be pornography (insert your own joke about potential titles here), but if you're a well-known playwright then it's apparently art.  They've released publicity photos for the play; here's a particularly good one.

I don't want to talk to you.

This is not a personal affront, because I don't know you, and I'm trying to keep it that way.  If I'm sitting next to you on a plane, waiting next to you in the doctor's office, standing next to you in the insanely long line at the post office*, and especially if I'm sitting in the massage chair at the nail place having my toes done, I don't want to talk to you.  I'm tired, I'm hungry, I'm probably annoyed at waiting, or if I'm having a pedicure I'm blissful, and I just don't want to chat.  If you ask me if I made my scarf, and I politely reply no, that I have no interest in crochet, that is code for "I don't want to have a 30 minue conversation about all the stitches that make up my scarf (since, again, I didn't make it), nor do I care about the knitted blanket your granddaughter got for her last birthday."  Like I said, it's nothing personal, but I'm never going to see you again, and I have my own thoughts to deal with. 

I don't know why people are compelled to make inane small talk.  Uncomfort with silence? The hope that of 100 people, maybe they'll meet 1 really interesting one?  I'm willing to take the chance I'm going to miss meeting a really interesting person, because talking makes me tired.  I want to read my book, work my crossword, stare into space and daydream.  But I don't want to talk to you.

*The post office, by the way, exemplifies every reason monopolies are illegal.  Illegal unless the federal government wants to have one, then of course it's perfectly appropriate.  I hate the post office.

Longer post (and pics) later about my weekend in Fredericksburg, but for now a quote I saw posted in a little wine bar we visited:

Men are like wine.  They start out as grapes, and women must pound the crap out of them until they become something acceptable to have dinner with.

Hee.

Perry didn't find it as funny as I did.  I can't imagine why.

Quotes from the night:

"Happy New Year.  Stephanie is my co-maid of honor.  Peace out, bi-atch."

"Don't ask Chris to get undressed.  It's not that he looks bad, but he is wearing argyle socks."

Someone explaining to Steph how to blow the party horns: "Stephanie, don't just blow the horn, seduce the horn."
Stephanie: "Is this why I don't have a boyfriend?"

And the first Darwin Award of 2006: On the drive back to San Antonio on New Year's Day, I saw a bumper sticker modeled after the yellow "Support Our Troops" ribbon.  But this one has marijuana plants on it and says "Support My Habit".  Now if that isn't begging for probable cause to have his car searched, I don't know what is!

See the full New Year's Eve party album here.

After editing 100 of 237 footnotes and wading through the citation of 47 of 132 sources involved in my law journal comment, I deserve a break.  A break to write a blog about shoes.

First, a simple question: Which pair cost $30 and which pair by a famous designer costs 4 times that? 

    ...or...

Answer: As the Suave commercial says, If you can't tell, why should I?  But I own the cheap ones, and they are fabulous.

Another new pair that deserves its own introduction:

You may look at these 2 recent purchases and think, Misty, you already have 9 pairs of black heels.  In a purely academic sense, that is true.  But I did not have fabulous designer knock-off peep toe patent leather platforms, nor did I have black leather pointy toe sky-high stilettos.  If you do not understand this fine, yet critical, distinction, you need to spend a lot more time reading my blog.

Up next: several more recent purchases, which were on clearance at Target, so I don't want to hear any financial lectures.  The burgundy patent leather and suede pair are likely to go straight to shoe heaven--I wore them once and nearly died.  If you doubt the pain they caused me, remember this is coming from a girl that routinely wears 4 inch heels without complaint.

And finally, a few pairs that have joined the pile in the corner to which I must say Goodbye, and which one day, when I have time, really will leave the corner and go somewhere productive like Goodwill.  They served me well, but, the passion has died.

I've been making an attempt to eat better.  Not so much for weight loss purposes, though if  5 or 10 pounds came off in the process I wouldn't complain.  But although I have a lot of healthy habits (lots of water, no soda, very little meat, no candy or other sugary snack foods), I have a weakness for anything made with fat and salt (I think I singlehandedly ate an entire pan of potato latkas at Ebony's Christmas party this weekend!).  My life is pretty stressful, and I'm often tired more than I should be, so I decided I needed to make some lifestyle changes--the type I can live with forever, not just a short term crash diet.  I did pretty well the last few weeks, mostly because I've been barricaded in my apartment studying. When you're by yourself and don't leave the house it's easier to eat well.  But put me in a social situation and I lose my head (well, the ability to quit stuffing things into my head at any rate.) 

To help me on my quest, I bought some really cool software from calorieking.com. The website has nutrition information for just about every food imaginable, including a lot of restaurants where it would be difficult to get the information otherwise.  With the software, you fill in your personal information, and tell it whether your goal is to lose, maintain, or gain (ha!) and it calculates how many calories you need and helps you keep track of everything you eat and how much you exercise.  It tallies your totals over the week and tells you what would happen if you contined at the same rate.  I realized perhaps I was missing the point of eating healthier (and spending money on software to do so) when I looked at my information from over the weekend:

You've recorded 2177 calories on this day (subtracting 457 calories burned through exercise from 2634 calories eaten).  Your target was 1279 calories.  On an average person, these figures would lead to a gain of 3.9 pounds over the next month.

I especially love how all the important (and most depressing) parts are conveniently in bold for my reading ease.

I don't have cable.  One, I'm broke, and two, I don't have time to watch it anyway.  And if I did have it, I would watch, even though I don't have time, and nothing good can come of that.  I would just use an antenna to get a few channels, but I live in the Medical Center and all the hospitals in the area prevent antennas from picking up any channels at all (weird, but true).  So I do pay for the basic 13 channels, and and extra $2.50/month to get TBS and WGN.  I love TBS; it shows sitcoms all day long and I love old sitcoms.  Unfortunately, watching TBS also means seeing the commercials for their original comedies 25 times a day. I love TBS; I do not love one of its new shoes, My Boys.

The reasons are not deep or particularly persuasive.  First of all, every time I hear the voice over talking about My Boys, I can't help but think of a guy referring to his, well, you know.  Could they not have come up with a better title for this show?  It's about a female sportswriter whose friends are all boys, and her name is PJ.  PJ?  Last time I checked that was a 5 year old's term for pajamas.  Between My Boys and PJ, I consider cancelling my 14 channels every time I hear the commercial.

One day I thought I'd face the beast and actually watch the show, thinking maybe it would be good and solve my irritation with the commercial.  No such luck.  PJ is cute, blond, girly, and not at all convincing as a sportswriter who hangs out with guys.  The guys she hangs out with are bland and not at all convincing as interesting people.  There is little to draw you to any of the characters (which is crucial to the success of a show like this--I mean, who couldn't identify with every single one of the Friends characters at one point or another?) and the end result is that now I'm even more irritated when I see the commercial, which they still air 25 times a day even though only about 4 episodes have even been made and they air all 4 of them ad nauseum, which really precludes the need for so many commercials.  I'm sorry that was a long sentence. 

Anyway, I'm watching Sex and the City on TBS as I write this and can I say that Aiden is just HOT.  Carrie, the stupid woman, spent 6 seasons complaining about being single, and then broke of her engagement with the hot furniture builder? She does look fantastic in the dress she's wearing when they break up, but it's very hard to feel sorry for someone who has the most perfect man in the world begging her to marry him and passes it up, just to spend 2 more seasons whining about being single.  I'm also amused that Samantha appears at all in the edited TBS (though still very un-family friendly) version, and even more amused at watching all her lines that have been voiced over with less, um, graphic choices.

Sex and the City has gone to commercial.  Guess, just guess, which commercial?

In so many ways it’s good that memories fade as time passes.  The hurt of a break-up, the embarrassment of losing your skirt onstage, the bitterness of rejection from a school or a job you really wanted—all fade into the tapestry of our long-term memory as we move on in life.  But every year I manage to forget that attempting to go to the grocery store between the Monday before Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day is enough to drive the most angelic among us to insanity (and I'm not one of them, so I get there a lot quicker), and every year I am reminded anew of the horror as I innocently make another weekly trip to the store and realize that the Season of Angst Irritation Exploding Headaches Joy has begun again.

I am not a patient person.  I am not an overly tolerant person.  I realize I lose a lot of karma points for this, but I figure I get at least ½ point back for admitting it and not trying to rationalize and justify why I’m that way.  I’m generally amazed the level of Stupid present in the world, and for some reason this is never more true during the crowded holiday season.  I know there’s a few more Scrooges out there like me (who just won’t admit it publicly), so I’m offering some shopping tips to help the Holidays be a little more Happy for all of us:

1.  You are not allowed to sit with your blinker on, with your big-ass (literally) truck hanging out in the throughway in front of HEB blocking THREE lanes of traffic, waiting on someone who has not even started unloading her groceries yet, because you are too lazy to take the spot that is four more spaces down.  I’m annoyed with you.  Everyone else is annoyed with you.  Santa has put you on his naughty list, and you’ve lost more karma points than even I have.  I’m too nice to actually say this to your face (though I do daydream about it) so I’m just going to yell at you in my car like a good little American with road rage, and then write this blog.

2.  Make a list.  Do not stand in a crowed aisle staring at the shelf trying to decide what you need.  It’s a grocery store.  You’ve seen it all before.  Get what you need and move it along.

3.  Do no bring all of your screaming children to the grocery store.*  I realize it’s too late to make an investment in birth control, but consider that for the future.  In the meantime, invest in a babysitter.  (Yes, I realize that children are necessary to the propagation of society and that I should be more tolerant of them.  But I’m less interested in the propagation of society than I am in once, just once, leaving a grocery store without a splitting headache.)

*Please don’t email me and berate me for my lack of sensitivity towards children.  In all reality I know I just have to deal with them, so please allow me the release of at least complaining about it on (my) blog (that I pay for).

4.  10 Items or Less means….10 Items or Less.  If you have 20 yogurt cups, that’s still 20 items, because they all have to be scanned and bagged.  I realize we’re in the midst of an education crisis in this country, but I assume you have mastered 1^st grade math.  Those of us who parked 5 miles away so as not to block traffic, made a list so we wouldn’t block the aisles, didn’t bring screaming children along, and are now standing in the 10 Items or Less line with 5 items (that’s less than 10—see how that works?) deserve to get out of this store as fast as possible.  (And frankly, if you’re buying a lot of produce, I think each item should count as 2 because the cashier has to weigh it and look up every single code.  So to the man in front of me at the HEB at Bandera and 410 last night who had 10 produce items and 20 yogurt cups: I’m really really upset with you.) 

5. On the flip side, if you only have one item, that SO doesn’t mean you get to cut in front of everyone else and go first!  I can’t think of a single plausible reason why you shouldn’t have to stand in line because you’re only buying one thing.  I might make an exception if impending death or voluminous blood loss is involved, but in that case groceries really shouldn’t be your top priority anyway.  I paid my dues in this line, and you’ll have to do the same.

It's 2 a.m. and I just finished working out if that tells you anything about how screwed up my schedule is right now. 

I also just got an email saying I won an ice cream scoop.  That probably doesn't sound like much, but I never win contests.  There's a TV gossip column I read on tvguide.com called Ask Ausiello, which is very funny, and written by the 3rd sexiest vegetarian (as voted by goveg.com.  The sexiest vegetarian is Kristen Bell, who happens to star in one of my favorite shows, Veronica Mars, which is totally Nancy Drew on acid.  I'm serious, if they weren't buried in a closet somewhere, I'd dig out my old Nancy Drew Files series right now [all 124 of them, of which I owned all, thank you very much] and read them all.)  I'm so off track.  That tends to happen when you get to a point where you're using brackets within parenthesis.  Oh, right: Ask Ausiello is also fantastic if you like spoilers, which I do. I fail to see the point of watching television if you don't know what's coming.  The anticipation of a thing really is better than than the thing itself, and I want to spend the week anticipating the completely unanticipated and shocking thing that's going to happen on Desperate Housewives that Sunday, knowing full well who's going to die.  Anyway, Ask Ausiello, in honor of his 100th column, announced a weekly newletter with extra gossip in it, and the first 100 people to sign up won a free Ausiello Scoop ice cream scoop (seriously, brilliant marketing, there).  This is a very popular column (where people actually sit at their computer at 11:59 Tuesday night and hit refresh, waiting for the column to go live at midnight) but I managed to be one of the first 100!  I hate email newsletters, and I'll promptly go unsubscribe now that I've won.  And I don't eat ice cream, basically, ever.  But still.  That's beside the point.  I won!

*As to the title, I don't even remember where this joke started.  But I can't help but say "weeeiner" in my head evertime I hear the word "winner".  Can someone remind me please?

First of all, thanks for all the input in the previous post.  I think they're all probably going to go.  Though some people liked a couple of pairs, it certainly wasn't overwhelming love--not enough to overcome the combination of unfashionable elements and pain.  I'll wear a killer pair of shoes even if they are, literally, killer--but if they're aren't cute, why deal with the pain?  I also realize that my taste is often a little more out there than some people's (I've maintained for a while that once your skirt has fallen off onstage in front of 2000 people, there's not much left to be embarrassed by, thus I'm willing to take more fashion risks than some.) so I'm sure there's a few pairs in the Shoe Box that most of you secretly wince at every time you see them, but I'm not ready to part with any others yet.

So, on to the cautionary tale.  Misty's a bit of an impulse buyer, says Obvious Man.  Last summer I decided I had to have a pink Razr.  No matter that if I waited till November my cell contract would be up and I could get one inexpensively by renewing my contract, I wanted one now.  I decided eBay was the way to go.  I am not a overly paranoid person (remember how I almost wired a couple hundred dollars to Australia for non-existent sunglasses?) and though some people won't buy electronics from eBay, I think that's silly.  I bought my last phone on eBay and it worked great.  However, I'm really not the best eBay shopper because I hate waiting, so auctions don't really work for me.  So I decided to buy one from a company that was just selling them straight out, since it was still significantly cheaper than full price.  This company was located in China, which didn't bother me too much.  The mailman thought it was cool I was getting a package from China, my phone had cool Chinese symbols on the keypad, and I got to exchange lots of emails full of Chinese characters and adorably fractured English..  Anyway, this phone gave me problems from the very beginning, which I rationalized away for a while until I realized that the whole point of a cell phone is for the person on the other end to actually be able to hear you when you talk.  Anyway, when my contract was up I bought another Razr (through Cingular this time), so now between the two phones I've essentially paid full price for one anyway.  My old phone died permanently (save an occasional pitiful flash from the screen) the morning my new one came in.  So I learned my lesson.  This lesson is very fact specific (going to law school and reading US Supreme Court decisions makes you very good at limiting things to their specific facts instead of applying perfectly good lessons to situations where they really should apply).  I'll still shop on eBay, I'll probably still buy electronics--but I will not buy cell phones from Chinese companies.