Owner: Let me get this straight. URL:http://meldraw.blogspot.com Join Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2007 16:07:25 -0600 Rating:0 Site Description: Life, and all its moving parts. Site statistics:Click here
Come here, go away. 2007-04-08 05:53:00 I’m borrowing the concept of “Come here, go away” from Sars. I believe she invented this handy blog structure shortcut, but I can’t be sure. “Come here” is for things in my life I enjoy so much that if it were feasible, I would clutch them to my person very tightly until they could no longer breathe. “Go away” is for things I would like to see on the business end of a Quentin Tarantino movie. Thanks for not suing me for copyright infringement, Sars.Come here, shiny, shiny Camry. You are my sunshine. You are sexy, reliable, roomy, and in no way possessed of evil spirits. You’ve got my back in bad weather, you help me find you in crowded parking lots, and you’ve even coached me to get over my irrational fear of drive-through car washes. I apologize for not having named you yet, but if it makes you feel any better, the VenJetta didn’t get its name until after I’d had it for several years. (Well, it did go by “Diablo” for a little while when I first got it, but
Where in the world...? 2007-06-05 22:30:00 I know. I know! I completely missed May, and most of April. But I’m back now, so let me try to catch up a little:I’ve been in Hawaii.My pin-up girl tan is the result of spending nearly two weeks lying on a beach. Most of my vacation was spent in a much-needed state of relaxation, lying in the sand or floating in the ocean. There were a couple of breaks for meals and…well, pretty much just meals.When I was young, my family lived in Hawaii for five years. These were my formative years, so I grew up straddling two cultures—the Hawaiian language, habits, and sensibilities were part of my daily life, and I’d forgotten how much I missed it all until I went back.This trip saw my mother, father, sister and me reunited (with the addition of my new brother-in-law) and revisiting our old home, Oahu. Not only did we stay on the same island, but we stayed on the same beach in the same cabins we regularly rented twenty years ago on weekends and holidays. Not much has changed, with the poss
Just like riding a bike. 2007-06-18 15:34:00 I’m not a sporty person. I enjoy the feel of nature and love being outside, but I’m usually happiest when I smell nice, so I prefer to be still-ish. There are a few high-octane activities that I will willingly hit my target heart rate for, but generally they involve horses or attackers. I’m not a couch potato, but I am sort of girly sometimes.That being said, I’ve made a decision recently to be more proactive about my health. I go through this every once in awhile, with the dieting and the determination and the questionable allies in exercise counsel. But this time I’m approaching my goals in a more general sense, with two simple aims: sensible eating and increased daily activity.It’s this latter aim that nearly killed me twice in one afternoon.Looking for a way to increase my daily cardio without involving anyone wearing spandex and a clip-on microphone, I decided to rescue my old bicycle from the depths of my parents’ basement. It was a good bike, but I hadn’t really
Meldraw’s Five Tips for Daily Living 2007-07-06 14:40:00 1. Never go to the Humane Society on your lunch break.No good can come of it. At best, you come away liking the human race a whole lot less. At worst, you wind up falling frantically in love with an irresistible face still filled with fuzzy innocence despite exposure to the worst of humanity. Finding yourself in this heartbreaking position presents you with only two choices: a) look into those sad eyes, pleading at you with diminishing hope from a tiny glass prison, and walk away with a new guilt complex; or b) take him home, cat lady.Let’s say you just want to donate some stuff. Maybe you have some milk replacement formula for kittens (from when your youngest cat adopted you, still a little bit too young) and an assortment of birdcage equipment (from when you tried desperately to keep your grandmother’s canary alive after your grandmother died, and failed). My advice to you is to just drop these things off at the donations desk and WALK OUT. If you see a few cute kittens in the wi Read more:Daily
, Living
...and by "guidance," we mean "smackdown." 2007-07-08 11:49:00 Apparently, my blog is rated PG (Parental Guidance Suggested). This rating was based on the presence of the word “dead,” appearing exactly one time in the space of whatever writing sample they examined.Huh.I’m pretty sure I’ve said worse things on this blog than that. Did I get this rating because lately I’ve started using asterisks (***) in place of real, live swear words, because of that one time my mother totally canned me for using inappropriate language?Oooooooh. That’s what they mean by “parental guidance.”
Getting Personal 2007-07-17 11:48:00 I really never thought I’d find myself here.I blame peer pressure. More specifically, I blame my friend JKeg, and I blame her hard. She managed to wrangle me into something that others have tried and failed to get me into for a long time: online dating.The idea of online dating is not appealing to me. I guess the concept is an old one, since personal ads have been appearing in newspapers for decades. But my generation grew up watching after-school specials (and later, Lifetime movies) that made it very clear: the interweb is populated entirely with nasty, middle-aged, greasily mulleted, psychopathic men with handlebar mustaches pretending to be young kids so that they can scam their way into an assault charge.Those ominous warnings about revealing any personal information on the internet have stuck with me; I don’t attach my real name or email to this blog partly because I want to remain a woman of mystery and intrigue, but mostly because I don’t want to be chopped up and put in Read more:Personal
Progress Report #1 2007-07-26 09:51:00 First, thank you all for your support (vicarious or otherwise) of my online dating experiment. I’ve rounded out Weeks Two and Three with messages from 18 different people in my inbox, and somewhere around 60 profile views.Of the 18 people I’ve had contact with, most of them approached me, although I did send “Icebreakers” to 6 of them. Here’s how Yahoo works: with a free account, you can set up a profile and photo(s), browse other people’s profiles, and search for matches. What sets you apart from your full-price counterparts, however, is your limitations for contacting people. With a free account, you cannot send emails in your own words. You can send “Icebreakers” and “Quick Replies,” which are prewritten one-liners that can be unintentionally hilarious (“Tell me more about your kids!”), but they’re generally useless unless the other person is a subscriber and can write back in their own words, or provide information on how to contact each other outside of Y
Progress Report #2 2007-07-31 00:05:00 First phone call with Triathlete:Length: 2 minutes, 30 secondsAwkward pauses: 3Dates arranged: 1First phone call with Shawshank:Length: 1 hour, 25 minutesAwkward pauses: 0Dates arranged: sort of still working on that, but if things work out, we've settled on at least 7 things we wouldn't mind doing together.First phone call with Military Man:Oh, shoot, I need to call him.
Stand-Up Guy. 2007-08-02 23:12:00 Here’s what I think: if you make a date with a girl and then don’t show up, you do NOT get a “do-over” for Saturday night. I’m pretty sure that’s written in stone somewhere.Triathlete’s stock just plummeted, in case you were wondering.We had a coffee date for 7:00 Thursday night. This led me to believe that if I arrived at the coffee shop at 7:00 on Thursday night, looking kind of fabulous, there would be someone there waiting to have coffee with me. By 7:40, I ran out of coffee and text messages, and went home.I had a message waiting for me on my machine from Triathlete. (There’s a long story in here about why he didn’t have my cell phone number, but it’s not enough to exonerate him, so I’m not going to get into it.) The message was time-stamped at 7:34. Here is what it said:“Hey, [Meldraw], it’s [Triathlete]. I think I said we would meet at 7:30 tonight. I’m running behind, though, so I was wondering if we could make it 8:00 or 8:30 instead? Give me a call Read more:Stand
Octopussy 2: the Cutening. 2007-08-22 21:33:00 Yes, I know: I'm behind schedule. I got your comments. And emails. And voicemails. And IMs. I owe you all a nice, big blog entry, plus interest.But hold that thought, because I'm not really here. This is a drive-by posting, courtesy of a guy named Chris and a guy named Craig.This is Chris:This is Craig:Now tell me you don't think Craig and his cat, Tommy, are the perfect James Bond villains. Tommy has murder in his eyes and world domination in his heart. He will Take. You. Out. And then he'll disappear with his twin brother, Craig, in a cloud of leave-in conditioner.Watch yo'self.
How many times do you have to get stood up in a month before you get a punchcard? 2007-08-29 16:09:00 Last I left you, I had high hopes for Shawshank and was really looking forward to our first date. That was about a month ago, and we never made it to that date. (Or rather, one of us never made it, but more on that later.) We’ve had numerous email and phone conversations, all of them intelligent and easy and fun. We’ve tried to go out several times, but the universe hasn’t exactly been subtle with us.Attempt #1:Several weeks ago, we scheduled our first date. Our schedules are difficult to coordinate, since he works extremely odd hours at the State Pen. His weekends are in the middle of the week, and his shifts are late in the day, whereas I work a typical 8-to-5 job. With the added complication of his living an hour away from me, there were only one or two times during the week (Tuesdays and Wednesdays) when we could possibly have crossed paths, so we picked one and decided to go for it. We didn’t have firm plans, but we had a date and time in mind, and I was looking forward to
My very own Prince Carming. 2007-09-27 00:28:00 In this episode of "Real people, real profiles". . .I recently changed the default photo on my Yahoo Personals listing to the reflect the most current photo I have. I took the photo because it shows off the new third-year-art-student highlights I put in my hair. It's apparently a very good photo, since my average daily profile views and messages have quadrupled.Tonight I received an Icebreaker message from a guy who, if I am judging his photo correctly, models for cologne ads.Here is what his profile had to say, verbatim:My name is [removed in everyone's best interest]. I am 34 years old. I am currently seperated. I love sports, movies, music, all sorts of other activites. I love to cook and I am really good at it. I am easy to talk with as long as you are not rude or ignorant to me. I like talking about anything I am even open minded about talking about issues woman have in general. I am great listener and I give really excellent advise. I am searching for a woman that is romantic, Read more:Prince
Things that suck. 2007-09-24 23:53:00 Do you ever get into that strange sort of funk where you're in no mood to be pleasant? Where you're just tired and inspirationless and would prefer to avoid other human beings for awhile? Where things are not going your way and the world has been kind of mean? Where the sunshine seems too bright, the sound of children laughing in the neighborhood is a bit nauseating, and you find it enormously easier to complain about things than to give them the benefit of the doubt?I get that way, too, sometimes.Things that suck:That unfortunate combination of insomnia and OCD (obsessive cleaning disorder) that runs in my family.Such a combination is the only cause I can determine for finding oneself scrubbing the kitchen floor while wiggle-dancing to “I’m Too Sexy” at 4:00 in the morning while one’s cats look on, somehow both mortified and unimpressed.Partial albums on iTunes.Okay, seriously, Steve Jobs? This is why you have not yet managed a completely successful takeover of the world. I
Garth Brooks, cancer, and illegal U-turns. 2007-10-09 00:18:00 I'm sending out a general S.O.S. on the off-chance that some of you might NOT make fun of me for this.I want to go see GarthBrooks
.Alright, please, go ahead and get it out of your system: "Dude, she likes...Garth...Brooks? Seriously?" Yes, I do, and so does my mom. Many years ago, she and I promised each other that if Garth ever "came out of retirement" to do another live show, she and I would go together. We've sung his songs extremely loudly and off-key on many family road trips, and it's kind of a thing for us. Nobody can belt out "Callin' Baton Rouge" while making an illegal
U-turn like the [-Draw Family] ladies.So now that Garth has suddenly decided to do eight shows in Kansas City next month (one's on my birthday!!), I want in. Naturally, tickets sold out in about a second. I'm not a fan of scalpers and I have moral objections to paying enormous sums of money for the tickets that are floating around the internet, so...Does anyone have two extra tickets (together) that they Read more:turns
Have a happy holiday! 2007-10-25 19:57:00 If there is one thing that defines America as a country, it is our ability to commercialize. (Well, and also our obsession with home improvement shows, but I fault Paige Davis for that.) We can take any aspect of the human condition and make a production out of it, making it into a reality show or a t-shirt or a holiday or an appreciation month. We are inventors of the inane, masters of the kitsch. And we will make cupcakes for anything. (see National Punctuation Day, below)According to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (and the other 187 websites I used to research this blog post), there are 10 nationally celebrated federal holidays this year, eight of which honor dead people. Beyond these days, on which we are all legally obligated to sleep in and watch marathons on the USA network, there are 28 federal observance days (designated by Congress, but which do not warrant a day off work), 9 federal observance weeks (including, I kid you not, “Safe Boating Week”), and 10 federal
Happy Halloween. Love, Photoshop. 2007-10-31 03:58:00 GenV: “Are you kidding me?”Izzy: “We look awesome!”GenV: “I am never letting you choose costumes again.”Izzy: “Come on. We are killing with this.”GenV: “Robin? Seriously? You made me your gay sidekick?”Izzy: “Well, you got all pissy when I suggested we go as Donny and Marie, so this is what you get.”GenV: “1972 called. They want their topical references back.”Izzy: “Marie Osmond is totally in right now. Your reluctance to watch Dancing With the Stars is not my problem.”GenV: “You made me your sidekick!”Izzy: “Primary colors look good on you!”GenV: “…”Izzy: “…”GenV: “This is so the last time we ever speak.” Read more:Happy
, Halloween
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, Happy Halloween
Party on, Garth. 2007-11-28 22:40:00 GB ManagementATTN: Garth
Brooks1111 17th Ave. SouthNashville, TN 37212Dear Mr. Brooks,I am a reasonably well-adjusted adult, and I respect the boundaries between celebrity and real life. I don’t make a habit of writing letters to strangers (unless I’ve hit their car in the parking lot) and certainly not in the genre of “fan mail,” which, while well-intentioned, generally does not carry much of a point. (I did once write a letter to Superman informing him of my intent to marry him in thirteen years, but I blame that on youth and spandex.) So I respectfully ask that you not consider this a fan letter, but rather a polite—if lengthy—thank-you note.Approximately 12 years ago, I was sitting on the torn vinyl seat of a school bus during my first high school field trip. I barely knew the people that surrounded me, and was largely convinced that high school was going to be as awful as middle school. But as we laughed and sang those insufferable bus-songs that we don’t grow to hat Read more:Party
Retail therapy. 2007-12-07 18:19:00 I went home to my apartment during my lunch break on Wednesday. The luxury of living within an eight-minute commute to my workplace is that I have the opportunity to make the most of that midday hour—I get a lot done during lunch without having to spend a lot of time in the car. Most days, I go home to grab a bite to eat, check my mail, scratch my cats behind the ears, and maybe watch a little TV. Often, I run errands at the nearby bank, grocery store, or shopping mall. It's not unusual for me to run to Westroads Mall during lunch to grab a cup of coffee and make a quick stop at the Clinique make-up counter in Younkers or, yes, Von Maur.I am thankful I did not choose to run that particular errand on Wednesday.I drove back to work from my apartment at 1:30 pm, entirely focused on the work that was waiting for me. My drive places me about one block north of Westroads Mall. At 1:42 pm, the incident began.There's very little I can say about the Westroads tragedy that hasn't already Read more:Retail
Poof. 2008-02-25 19:48:00 Let Me Get This Straight will get back to your regularly scheduled (and embarrassingly long-winded) content soon, but I felt compelled to share one of my new favorite places on the interweb.Q: What happens when you take Garfield out of the Garfield comic strips?A: Existential comedy gold.(It's easy to post drive-bys when you have visual aids.)
Caucus-blocked. 2008-02-12 10:39:00 I caucused on Saturday. I went to a caucus, proceeded to caucus, and when I was done caucusing, I went home.I really wanted to open this blog entry with a good caucus joke. Something classic, preferably of the “So a man walks into a caucus and says…” variety. But after searching the web for caucus jokes, I have discovered that there are no caucus jokes, provided you discount the actual caucuses themselves. I did, however, accidentally stumble onto this legitimate headline: “Vegas Strippers Seek Right to Caucus in the Workplace.” I laughed for ten minutes, until I remembered that I’m not 12 anymore.So instead, I’ll have to take comfort in the knowledge that the word “caucus” is pretty funny all by itself, and that will have to do.(But seriously folks, if you have a caucus
I like things to be story-shaped. 2008-02-06 11:11:00 “You’re aware you haven’t updated your blog since December, right?”“I was disappointed to see today that your blog remains quiet and kind of sad-looking.”“We're w-w-a-a-a-i-i-i-t-t-t-i-i-n-n-n-g-g-g!!!!!!”“What's up with you? Have you fallen off the face of the earth? Are you trapped under something heavy?”“Hope things
are ok, and your conspicuous absence is due to some super hot guy who wants to marry you and then employ you as his graphic designer/web girl/travel writer while the two of you travel around the world making millions while feeding the starving and saving the planet from greenhouse gasses.”“Dude. Blog. WTF?”***Hello, teeming masses.I have not fallen off the face of the earth. I have not been trapped under something heavy. I have not been whisked aw Read more:story
I believe... 2008-03-31 19:32:00 I believe
string cheese should be marketed in pairs, like Pop Tarts or Twix.I believe there is such a thing as a stupid question. The fact that one is usually paired with a stupid questioner is rarely coincidental.I believe the neti pot is man’s most frightening, uncomfortable, revolting non-nuclear creation—and also the most unexpectedly gratifying. Fellow neti pot users will agree that the temptation to carry one on your person at all times can be worryingly strong.I believe in collecting skills the way my father believes in collecting coins. (Or guns. Just saying, Shawshank.) You never know when you’ll be kidnapped and need to know how to drive a stick, shoot a gun, ride a horse, speak a foreign language, or tie a sailor’s knot. It occurs to me that I may have watched too much M
True love. 2008-04-11 23:22:00 I am a Scorpio, and that could be to blame.There's an aspect of my personality that some people describe as "passionate," "enthusiastic," "addictive," or "oddly thorough." My mother says I go through "phases." Most of my family and friends will vouch for my tendency to fall swiftly and completely in love with a person, place, or thing.If I find an actor, television show, author, musician, hobby, or product that I love? Then I loooove him / her / it / them / those instances.100%. The whole pie chart.Once properly enthralled, I go back and find everything they ever did / wrote / believed / sang / participated in / existed as. I absorb it all, and congratulate myself on enjoying what I like to think of as a "full experience."(I would like to state for the record that I don't mean "full experi
Maybe he's dying. 2008-05-07 16:25:00 Life still sometimes surprises me. As a product of my generation, I'm legally obligated to disdainfully point out life's general predictability and then feel vaguely supercilious while I jump into a swimming pool of iPods and Wii video game systems. But very occasionally, life surprises the crap out of me.Such was the case a couple of days ago, when I opened my email inbox to see a message from Shawshank. That Shawshank.I KNOW!Despite the unforgettable nature of Shawshank's actions last August, it took me a few moments to recognize the email address. After all, time makes everything better (except milk), and I hadn't given him much of a second thought since fall, save the occasional punchline in my blog. Plus, I kind of thought he was either dead or afraid of me.The email was an apology, o Read more:Maybe
Booty camp. 2008-08-19 11:47:00 I walked into the office today feeling kind of great. The woman behind me in line at Starbucks this morning complimented me on my hair, using phrases like "perfect haircut" and "sits beautifully." She may have wanted to touch it. I gave all the credit to my hairdresser of almost ten years, grabbed my coffee, and strode into my building feeling kind of rockin'.Coworker #1: "What up, M-skillet?"Me:
What I Did on My (Unintentional) Summer Vacation 2008-08-06 13:01:00 Gah! What happened to me?Where have I been? What happened to all the hilarity I was going to write? I really did have big plans and ideas for the blog; I took mental notes on all the interesting things that were happening to me. I was inspired to write whole paragraphs in my head. I just…seem to have dropped all the words somewhere between my brain and my computer. I’m sorry, you guys: I took Read more:Summer
, Vacation
What do I do now? 2008-09-09 17:58:00 I lost my job three weeks ago.Immediately afterward, I had exactly one question on my mind, so I did the only reasonable thing a person of my generation, resources, and sense of irony could think of. I Googled, "What do I do now?"The fact that the first search result I clicked on yielded an "Access Denied" page was neither encouraging nor unexpected, but it made me smile and I felt like that was t
Praying or preying? 2008-09-23 22:41:00 I haven’t seen a praying mantis since I was very young, and even then, I think it was in an aquarium in biology class. I knew precisely three facts about the mantis: a) it can change color like a chameleon, b) the female will bite the head off the male after mating, and c) a gigantic one ate an entire Eskimo village in a movie once, and could totally kick the collective asses of all those ants i
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