I love my job at the newspaper, but I hate saying the world “blog” all the time.

A few things:

Since I revealed that I might have a small amount of facial hair darkening my upper lip, a great outpouring of support has really given me comfort. Girlfriend is now bleached out, so my confidence is intact. Thanks for the sisterhood, friends.

I haven’t been doing a lot of blogging/judging the world via the safety and anonymity of the internet lately. The world is not ending, we just got The Wire on DVD and I spend my nights trying to mimic the Baltimore accent.

There are some SERIOUS PEOPLE moving to San Francisco this fall/winter/spring. And by serious, I mean people who are a lot of fun/really good looking/fans of my cat.

Brian’s car got broken into last week and they stole his guitar. Take a moment and console him.

I still hate the World Cup.

I’m going to Boston at the end of July. I am going to eat so so so SO many Christopher’s veggie burgers and ain’t no one going to stop me.

Suddenly, dogs are cuter, I want to get a bike and eat more eggs. I think the Bay Area is starting to get to me.

Something to look forward to:

My list of things I would never get tattooed on me. I’ve been following a few tattoo tumblr blogs because, well, I love the Internet and judgment, and I am keeping a list. I’m not sure why I am telling you that this is how I spend my time outside of blogging, but yeah. No song lyrics/gothic script/Alice in Wonderland references here.

I keep seeing ads on craigslist for bikes that are “perfect for Burning Man.” What does that even mean? A comfortable saddle so as not to mash your exposed genitalia? Has a basket in which to store your water bottle and LSD?

Help me out, non-squares. I’m from the East Coast, this is not a language I speak.

Triumph:

And also, from my Google Analytics stats:

You buy me one, that’s how. Thanks, Brian.

Are comments that are legitimate (as opposed to spam) really actually called “ham”? I find that incredibly hard to believe. Then again, stranger things have happened:

Don’t even get me started on pretzel M&Ms.

So much liquid.

Girlfriend is hydrated.

Since my bleak post a few days ago, I:

Got a haircut. Passable, not great, but not expensive, cut by a tiny Vietnamese woman named Desi Thong. Operation Baby Hair Abatement has begun.

Did a shit-ton of laundry. The amount was so embarassing I had to take it to the laundromat so Ginger Joel Building Manager wouldn’t judge me for my volume. I did catch him in front of the washing machine blowing his  nose into a gray t-shirt though, so…collateral.

Purchased, but have not executed a moustache-bleaching kit. Trying to reconcile the dichotomy of my appearance- a girl who was recently mistaken as a high school student by a truancy officer, but also has a very faint moustache that shouts “post-menopausal” from my upper lip.

Uploaded scads of pictures to my Flickr. BEWARE: LOTS OF SNUGGLING!

Also: check out my new bedspread ($25, Ikea).

I love social networking. Facebook, Twitter, whatever. I’m over MySpace and not interested in FourSquare but am fairly versed in both. We all know this about Marie McIntosh- she is a lover of all things TMI. I’ve been finding myself really irritated by these sites lately, though, people just gabbing on and on about nothing. It tends to magnify the things that I’d rather ignore about the people I know (or only know through FB): vegetarians become more militant, weddings get deeply complicated, dull folks think they’re witty or edgy or both. I like to keep it arbitrary, and state truths: I fucking love Raisinets. It’s true, I do. No one cares if I don’t and people who might remember this tidbit during the holiday season are given another stocking stuffer idea. I do generally alert my facebook friends when I update this here blog, but I’m stopping with that business because I think it might be annoying. But that’s an existential dilemma for another day.

I tweet here and there. Twitter is a program I’ve grown increasingly fond of. I love all my bloggers and their little bits of funny that can’t be stretched into a post are perfect fodder for Twitter. I don’t tweet too often myself, maybe once a day, if that. I like my new phone because it sends my twitter feed right to it, so I can catch up while on the BART or bus or whatever.

Speaking of BART: look how orderly we San Franciscans are while waiting for the appropriate train to arrive in the station:

Cool, huh? And you’re not allowed to eat or drink, and they politely ask that you don’t use your cell phone even though they get signal underground. It’s quiet, fast and there are monitors announcing how many minutes away the next trains are. It’s more expensive than the T, and it doesn’t go to as many  places, but all in all, it’s a better user experience. The T was a total nightmare to commute on a daily basis with, so I’m pleased with my AC Transit buses and the BART when I take it. Since I am a smug son of a gun, I decided to tweet this:

No hashtags, no @sign, the tweet wasn’t directed toward anyone. Just commenting on the joys of getting to downtown Oakland by public transit. NBD.

The next morning, Twitter alerted me to some tweets that had been directed at me by people I don’t follow, and who don’t follow me. Apparently a transit group that monitors problems on the MBTA felt a little threatened by my appreciation of public transportation that actually works and were worried that my Twitter readership (61 followers!) might get the wrong idea about the T. They must have Google Alerts set up to let them know any time a dissatisfied customer hates on the T on the Internet.

Luckily their readership is pretty much the same as mine (they boast 62 followers), so it looks like my integrity shall remain intact (or as intact as it ever was). The fact that they felt the need to take me down for hating on a Boston institution that deserves to be hated on is fascinating to me. Government disinvestment aside, the MBTA is ugly, screechy, unreliable and dirty. Not to mention billions in debt. And prone to disaster.

This is the thing I can’t stand though. Rebuttal from people who don’t really have much reason to rebut. Reading too much into statements made by idle thumbs on the train. Trying to placate an unsatisfied customer with meaningless excuses. Shut up, Transit Matters, I know that transit does matter, which is why I love the BART.

One thing I miss about MA is going home to Tewksbury for a weekend and coming back with clean clothes. Coin op laundry is the bane of my otherwise sunny, Californian existence. AND Brian came home from his morning street performing gig at a farmer’s market with $120 in one dollar bills, and this is the only cash I have to feed the change machine! It’ll take forever! I dream, nay, fantasize about having my own washer and dryer at my immediate disposal. Just so I can stick my pants in the dryer before work in the mornings.

Again with the first world complaints. Whew.

I’m here at the Alameda Laundry Time, waiting for my hi-capacity* washer to clean every shred of linen in my house. Brian’s brother and sister are coming to visit this week, and if word got back to their mother that my sheets weren’t starched and ironed, I may just die of embarrassment. Brian’s mom is by far the most with-it woman I know, the kind of housewife that I would love to have the patience to be. And by God, I am determined to have clean sheets for at least 2 of her children to rest upon (sorry Brian, you may wallow in filth with me).

*A technical term, or else I would spell it “high” and you know it.

Anyway. We’ve lived here 5 months now, and I think this is my third time visiting this establishment. Other times I’ve been surrounded by the Crazy Folk of Alameda. People washing their neon legwarmer collection, or their patchwork quilts made from scraps of underwear, that kind of thing. For the record, I am not judging these Crazy Folk. I’m sure they were thinking oh my god how does a person get that much vomit on a duvet cover? I walk amongst you, single-load-of-only-gray-socks-man.

Today, I am the only lady here. This laundromat is one big sausage fest, middle aged guys pairing their socks and watching the Celtics/Cavs on the flatscreens above the change machine. It’s kind of adorable watching these guys try to fold a fitted sheet.

One of these fellas, a burly Thai man in his late thirties, early forties, just handed me a small, heart-shaped lock (something one might close a diary with) and asked me if it belonged to me. I’m rarely in an environment where I am the only person who looks like she would accidentally leave a heart-shaped diary lock in the pocket of her…what? Apron? Bathrobe? I don’t know. It made me feel so ladylike though, like my clothes should smell like lilies or something.

I love doing laundry. I hate folding socks, but aside from that, I could probably comfortably make a living folding clothes (oh wait, 4 years at the Gap, right, statement rescinded). I like this laundromat. It has wireless internet, speedy machines and a cheerful Asian man who runs the joint, always willing to give me a five for five ones. And I can get 6 loads of laundry done in 2 hours. I wonder if I might make my fantasy come true- do you think they’d let me lease out the back room?

I haven’t had much time to levy judgement and offer commentary on things. I’m kind of a bad blogger in this sense, I suppose. I haven’t taken the opportunity to reflect on Things In My Life lately. I’ve been thinking a lot about getting another tattoo. I need a haircut. I need to find a local gynecologist. Things like that. Once something momentous happens, you all will be probably the third to know (my parents, Brian, you guys).

One thing I might need a little guidance on is this: I’ve started to grow a mustache. Not Magnum-PI caliber or anything, just your normal, dirty-upper-lip, something people would only notice if they look too closely. In January, just after we moved, I began having a difficult time remembering to take my birth control pills. After that, Rebecca over at Girl’s Gone Child had some discussion on the side effects of her Mirena IUD, which kind of got me thinking about the negatives vs positives of medical birth control altogether. When I was 18, I was diagnosed with some uterine ugliness (endometriosis) that caused me a modest bit of discomfort each month, so I’ve been on BC pretty much nonstop since then. So after having been on Ovcon, Levora, Depo-Provera, Necon and Seasonique for the last 6 years of my life, I quit. Cold turkey.

Turns out that having your period EVERY SINGLE MONTH sucks. I haven’t had that since freshman year of college. And I’ve never had acne until the age of 24, because all those extra hormones kept my skin supple and glowing. Perhaps the most irritating of side effects didn’t occur to me until a week ago- my hair had fallen out. I have suuuuper thick, curly hair, so it doesn’t show too bad if it thins out, and I had kind of just thought I was finally just getting older and my hair was thinning from a post-pubescent hormonal decrease. Not so. It’s been almost 5 months since I stopped and there all these and hair is growing out of my head at an alarming rate. Hence the ‘stache and the baby fuzz escaping from my ponytails. Sigh. Such first-world complaints.

Anyway, has this happened to you? Is it something that settles down? I sure hope so, I’m already mistaken for a high school student enough, and these new characteristics don’t seem to help much.

Anyway, that’s all that is new on this front. Job is good, Tim and Danielle visit next week, my company goes live the week after that, and then my parents arrive. Busy month, May.