I like for my toes to be free. I’m a big sandal wearer. Either that, or I go barefoot (but at work, I can’t really do that so much). If I could, I’d probably be wearing my sandals up until November. But, when you work with youth, you kind of have to set an example. Some of these guys wear tshirts and shorts in the middle of December snowstorms and I don’t want to perpetuate that (not that they’re thinking “hey that overweight fashion-unconscious bald person is exactly who I want to emulate!”) so I’m thinking I should probably get some actual shoes.
My problem with shoes is that, with the length of my feet? I’d probably take a size 9. An 8 1/2 even, but 9 will do. But, I have wide feet, so I always end up buying size 10, and then the shoes don’t pinch, but they flop around behind me. Even my sandals at the moment are like, an inch or two too long, and I have the straps all pulled tight and they’re still a bit floppy. I was at the Clarks shoes store in the mall recently, and they do have wide widths… but they’re not very cute shoes. So my dilemma is do I keep wearing nice looking shoes that flop around and don’t fit properly, or do I buy shoes that fit, but that remind me of the orthotic ones I had to wear when I was a kid (mine were navy blue though, and had laces, because it was the 70s and velcro shoes were years in the future)?
Or I could keep buying shoes off eBay (actually no, I couldn’t, because those NEVER fit, really).
Sometimes I don’t know how far into detail I should go with my health stuff. I mean, I could go on all day like an old lady about my aches and pains (or, as Rob puts it, “Oh my worries and torments”) and various malfunctioning body parts, but how interesting is that for people?
That being said, this is going to be a health-type post. Feel free to skip it if you like! Read the rest of this entry →
Forewarned is forearmed: This is a post about TV. Don’t read it if you don’t like (although skipping to the videos at the end might give you a smile).
I was a fan of Big Brother in the US for quite a few years. Actually that’s a lie. I watched it the first season, and part of the second. I didn’t really watch again until the eighth season, because I didn’t like the changes that CBS had made to it compared to the original format. I half-assedly watched this past (winter) season, but honestly? I was over it.
Back in June, Rob managed to find for us the first few episodes of this year’s Big Brother UK, and I was hooked, again. Everything I’d liked about BB in the first place but had gotten changed when CBS decided it wasn’t enough of a ratings grab? Back.
First and foremost: They had a show every day, for 93 days. Plus, they have all kinds of little auxiliary shows around it (they have a radio show dedicated to it, another show where the kicked-off contestants can go after they’re evicted, etc etc).
Secondly: They don’t have the stupid HOH/Power of Veto blah blah blah business.
Third: Housemates are not allowed to talk about nominations. I repeat. They are not allowed to talk about nominations. They get punished if they do. So all this “alliance” survivor-style bullcrap that happens on the US show? No. Every housemate goes into the diary room once a week, nominates two people, and whichever two (or sometimes three, or, once this summer, seven) people got the most nominations are up for eviction. And then…
Fourth: The public votes for eviction. It doesn’t matter how much you suck up to or try to make deals with your fellow housemates, because it’s the public voting about whether or not you stay.
Fifth: The housemates. The housemates! I have found over the past few years that everyone who has been on BBUS has been an aspiring-something-to-do-with-showbusiness. Like: “I’m a real estate agent -slash- model” “I’m a doctor, but I would love to have my own show!” “I have a restaurant in Hollywood… I will mention it all the time on this show so that the stars start going to it”. You know?
Now, I’m not saying that the people on the UK version don’t go on for the fame – they get magazine deals and some have parlayed their time in the house into very lucrative careers – but I just find that there’s a better, more eclectic mix of “real” people. Sure there were a couple of “part-time models”, and a few more, after they left the house, got deals with Maxim-type magazines to pose in bikinis, but for the most part, they were just regular, normal people.
Well, “regular” and “normal” might be taking it a bit far. Obviously if you’re the type of person who wants to be locked in a house for 93 days with a bunch of strangers, and have your every move scrutinized by cameras, you’ve got to have a pretty big personality. Plus, just the people themselves- some were not people you’d meet every day. I mean, just in the final 7, we had an albino black guy who could sing like anything. We had a cross-dressing blind Scotsman. We had a millionaire chef with three restaurants (or at least, his dad’s a millionaire). A chick who looks like Angelina Jolie, but sounds like a goose with a throat infection. A MoslemSomalian refugee who ate everything in sight. A girl who was a child actor until Hugh Grant told her that she should get an education as well, so now she’s a teacher (she says in the outside world she eats five bags of grapes per day). And then there was Kat.
Kat is from Thailand. She’s a masseuse. And she loves cookies. No, I mean she LOVES cookies.
My favourite moment of the whole season, though, was this next one with Mikey. Taking a page from DJ, I will try to transcribe it as best I can, because it is a mishmash of different UK (and Thai, and Somali) accents, and there’s a lot of background noise. You’ll get the gist, though.
So at around 5:30 this morning I wake up feeling a certain urge. Up I get, and start to make my way down the stairs, to visit the loo – and next thing I know I’m full-on falling, no clue what I slipped on, crashing into the wall on the way down and finally landing full-weight (and this? is a LOT of weight, people) on my left knee and shin. My knee is all scratched up and crazy-looking, not to mention painful and swelly and bruised here and there. My shoulder hurts, too, where I smacked it on the wall. But? I absolutely can’t miss work today so I will have to wait ’til this evening if I want to try and see a doctor about it. My solution? Vodka.
I am very jealous. Because I am hungry, but when I eat, it just comes back out right away. So I’ve decided that I won’t really eat (except for a cracker that I just had but it’s starting to feel come-backy). Why am I jealous? Because Rob, the boy who is NOT sick in this house, and actually does need to eat (I told him to) is having some of he best-smelling food ever. Is dildoes, toki.
It’s only fitting that my last day of vacation after a summer that was filled with rain, wind, disappointment and stress is… rainy, windy, disappointing (so far no stress though).
I started feeling really weird yesterday. After a day of fever/chills and re-viewings of my breakfast and lunch, I’m actually starting to feel a bit better today (granted I’ve only been awake for an hour). Still though… our Labour Day barbecue is off the table, as it were.
Speaking of our neighbours (I was!). Last night at around midnight, there was a knock on our front door. At first I thought it was Rob (he’d been doing some cleaning in his office, which involved some banging around) but then he asked me if I was knocking on the wall. No. Then the knocking came again. By this point I was starting to feel a bit better, but was still laying around on the sofa in case I had to get to the bathroom in a hurry. So I covered up my legs (my sick outfit is underpants and a tshirt, in case anyone wants to picture it) and Rob went to the door.
It was our neighbour. He had gone out to bring his dog for a pee, and his door had closed behind him. Could he use our phone to call his wife, who was at work? She had a key so he could get it from her.
So, he phoned his wife, and she said for him to come on over and pick up the key. He was going to walk over (she works at the hotel near our house – probably a five to ten minute walk), but I insisted on driving him. I mean, dude was in his bathrobe and slippers.
