The Ankle Biter @ Quibbling.net

• Sick as a Dog? Don’t Blame Your Girlfriend. - washingtonpost.com
  Common myths about the common cold. I didn’t know that kissing doesn’t spread colds, did you?
  (tags: virus sick cold commoncold myth wellness health)

Oh, my poor, neglected blog.  Look at all the daily links posts standing in for real entries.  So sad.

I have hinted at some ongoing stress in my life, and I don’t think it would be too unprofessional to say that it’s job-related- there’s a lot of upheaval and uncertainty, to say the least.  The fact is, it’s sapping my energy for almost everything- hence the spate of WoW-related posts.  Escapism is fun.

So partly so I can stop boring y’all who are still around with that crap, and partly for my own benefit, I’m going to write about something I am actually pretty excited about.

Starting in the middle of next month, I’m going to take a stand-up comedy class through the DC Improv.  It’s a four week class, with a field trip to watch an Open Mic night, and then a graduation showcase in which the students will perform. 

I’m excited about this because I’ve loved stand-up comedy since I was a kid watching the “MTV Half-Hour Comedy Hour” with my dad, and have always secretly thought it would be fun to do.

So I’ve started walking around with index cards to jot down joke ideas as they come to me.  I’ve got a few cards now with some ideas, some more well-developed than others, of things that are funny to me, and with luck I can make them funny to everyone else.

I came up with something yesterday that I thought was hilarious, but it’ll be stale by the time I actually get around to using it.  So I’m going to share it with you now.

“I was so irritated that the State of the Union address was on instead of House. I mean, when I watch a jackass on TV, it should at least be a smart one who actually SOLVES hard problems.”

Yeah, I know, it needs a little polishing.  Whatever.

• Laugh, and Get to Work - washingtonpost.com
  suggestions for managing prolonged stress
  (tags: stress coping relaxation)
• The devil’s lexicon: Unspeak exposes the language twisters. - By Jack Shafer - Slate Magazine
  Unspeak: A word that implies an entire unspoken argument.
  (tags: language unspeak politics debate)
• Ten Tips for Effective Meetings - Top7-Or-10-Tips
  I hate meetings with the white-hot passion of a thousand burning suns. So any tips on how to prevent them from becoming giant timewasters are welcome.
  (tags: advice business mpoj meetings productivity management)

• Same Old Song, but With a Different Meaning - washingtonpost.com
  Music’s effect on the brain, particularly memory. Interesting study involving Vietnam vets, too.
  (tags: music brain memory science neuroscience)
• Get a First Life
  for all you Second Life-ers out there.
  (tags: secondlife second_life parody satire socialnetworking)

• Make money from your blog through print syndication » Brazen Careerist
  in case you were wondering how people become columnists
  (tags: blog blogging columnist newspapers syndication)

I had my spa appointment yesterday at the Sugar House (warning, site plays music). 

Oh, I feel so much better. 

The package Tom gave me- an hour of massage, and then the fancy spa mani/pedi- lasted three and a half hours.  Three and a half hours of oils and lotions and massaging and all that stuff.  *melt*

I arrived a few minutes early to change for the massage- the robe that was in my changing room was the small size and I found it… inadequate.  I mean, I realize that I’m only walking from one end of the hall to the other, but this robe didn’t cover me enough even for that purpose.  Not good.  So I got another robe and headed off to meet the massage therapist.

Fortunately, I got over my whole “naked with a stranger touching me” hang-up pretty quickly.  Getting a backrub from the person you love is great, but it does not compare to getting a proper massage from a professional.  The back massage alone was worth the price of admission.  Being the sort of person I am, though, I found myself a little preoccupied with the etiquette of the situation. When you’re lying on your back and the therapist is working on your hands (and therefore possibly in your line of sight), where do you look?  It felt a little creepy to look directly AT her.  Do you close your eyes?  Stare at the ceiling?

Yes, I am so neurotic that this is what I’m thinking about in the middle of a massage.

With that done, I put my clothes back on and headed off to the mani/pedi area.  Now, I’ve had a plain ol’ pedicure at Sugar House before, and it was very nice.  But yesterday, I was there for the fancy, upgraded, spa pedicure. An ordinary mani/pedi involves some soaking of the hands and feet in warm water, a little lotion, some maintenance of the nails and some pumice on the feet to exfoliate, and then your nails get painted.  Relaxing, and easy.

The spa version, on the other hand, involved like three layers of additional pampering in the middle of all this.  A salt scrub on my feet and lower legs, which were then wrapped in hot towels for a few minutes.  Then the towels came off and the salt scrub was rinsed away.  Then some thick moisturizer and a little dry oil spray.  Then a paraffin treatment, which of course was then covered in plastic bags and wrapped in towels to sit for a few minutes.  Once the wax came off, MORE moisturizer and dry oil spray.  And THEN she painted my toenails.  It was pretty nice.

But now imagine repeating the whole process on your hands.  And it was at this point that I learned something really important about myself:

I’m really freakin’ impatient.  I think I can turn it off, but I can’t.  I’m so impatient that I’m sitting there in the middle of all the lotions and paraffin and stuff thinking, “geez, enough with the lotion already.”  Now, to be fair, I had skipped breakfast and it was almost 1 PM at this point, so I was pretty hungry and that certainly contributed. But as I noticed this, I had to remind myself that I had taken the whole day off work for a reason, and that reason was so that I could go sit in a room and let other people fuss over me for a few hours and emerge all soft and sweet-smelling with pretty sparkly nails.

But aside from the disconcerting realization that I don’t know how to just shut up and enjoy some pampering, it was a lovely day.

C’mon DHL

Originally uploaded by tbridge.

I saw this at the office today and laughed out loud inappropriately.

We were very anxious to get our copies of the expansion.

The Big (for now) Ding

Originally uploaded by tjbax.

Tomatosauce hit 60 on Saturday, with three whole days to enjoy it before the grind to 70 starts.

Of course, then Blizzard promptly released a patch too early that kept most players offline for the better part of Sunday. Nice testing, Blizz.

• What are the jobs Americans won’t do? - By Daniel Gross - Slate Magazine
  (tags: mpoj jobs employment immigration h1b labormarket)

For those of you who are interested, which is about none of you, Tomatosauce made level 59 on Wednesday night, and got 40% of the way to level 60 last night on her first trip to Scholomance.

Four days until my copy of the WoW expansion arrives.  60% left until 60.  Yeah.  (When the expansion arrives, I’ll have to get back to the grind because the maximum level will become 70.  Oy.)