elliptical v. yoga

a friend (read his blog) recently contacted me at work to discuss a very important issue...generally he sends me information on politics, world news, or societal concerns....and this time it was serious. he asked the age-old question,

"what is gayer...a guy in a yoga class, or a guy on an elliptical machine?"

my first instinct was to say yoga, no question. but then i thought, why be so hasty to stereotype someone who is interested in a legitimate form of exercise? yoga is actually quite difficult, so it's not a matter of a guy wimping out and doing something easy. that said, however, an elliptical machine can be difficult too (if you crank up the resistance, and make the incline a full 90 degrees...it's hard as shit). so what is the answer?

i informed my friend aaron of what i see as situational circumstances that can affect the answer. in isolation, a guy on an elliptical machine is not gay. but give him US weekly and a headband, and there's a solid chance he is. likewise, a guy in a yoga class is not gay just by being there. if he shows up in spandex, then - again - there's a chance.

i'd like to get some opinions from outsiders here...so cast your votes and let me know what you think.

dear today show,



i have enjoyed you for a long time...years at this point. you help me get out of bed with your weather and news. i watch you while i fix my hair, while i put on my makeup, even while i eat my breakfast. you bring me al roker (that funny guy) and matt lauer (even though you are going bald) and up-to-date news i could get anywhere else. i didn't even stop watching you when you let katie couric go. i stayed with you, and learned to tolerate meredith veira.

but this morning, today show, you tried my patience. i don't know if i can forgive having this girl on your show. i blame fox for putting her on camera, i blame sanjaya for being a creeper and hugging her, and i blame YOU for making me relive the entire experience over my frosted flakes. i can put up with tom cruise and his antics with lauer, i can put up with you clowns standing in the street telling bad jokes, and i can even put up with you sticking ann curry behind a desk. but this i cannot look past.

i'm not sure that you know it, but you ARE a news show. you are really supposed to talk about news. and though i do enjoy the occasional martha stewart visit or celeb gos, this demented little girl is not news. it is a ploy, and i'm not convinced she wasn't on drugs.

get your act together - or i'll move on to good morning america, and i'll never look back.

yours,

erin

what are the odds

i would like to give a shout-out to my alma mater, for playing a great game of basketball on friday. they totally could have won - and i'm a little nervous that i put oregon in my final four, after beating a 14 seed by only 2 points.

after watching lots of games all weekend, and checking my bracket semi-neurotically, i began to wonder, "what are the odds of picking the perfect bracket?" so i did some research.

this article was a good place to start. it's from '06, but the math stands true since the tournament holds the same number of teams. if every game is a toss-up, you have a one in 9 million trillion chance of picking every win correctly. that's 9,000,000,000,000,000,000, or as webwire calls it, 9 quintillion. one article said you are more likely to get struck by lightning while watching one of the games than you are to pick a perfect bracket. now that's funny.

just minutes into my research, i came across some surprising news. on friday, the three contestants on jeopardy tied. that's right, a three-way tie in final jeopardy. apparently mathematicians say the odds of this happening are one in 25 million. better odds than the ncaa tourney, but still, that's crazy.

now i'm interested. the odds of something or other happening is just simple math, but it takes the time of finding the numbers and calculating them. so i've compiled a few fun odds for you to enjoy....

Odds of...
...getting hemorrhoids: 25 to 1 (apparently they are fairly common)
...being on plane with a drunken pilot: 117 to 1 (um...scary)
...being audited by the IRS: 175 to 1
...getting a royal flush in poker on first five cards dealt: 649,740 to 1
...becoming a saint: 20,000,000 to 1
...a meteor landing on your house: 182,138,880,000,000 to 1 (that's a relief)
...catching a ball at a major league ballgame: 563 to 1
...striking it rich on Antiques Roadshow: 60,000 to 1 (i love that show)
...injury from shaving: 6,585 to 1

and my personal favorite...

Odds of dying from contact with hot tap water: 5,005,564 to 1 (how can you die from contact with hot tap water?)

it's friday

as the announcer said, "he is the fourth person bleeding during this game." duke loses, and all is right with the world.
this is why march madness is so awesome - just when you think you've got it figured out, some team you've never heard of comes out of nowhere and beats the team. not that duke was going to win, that's for sure.

definitely the best game so far (not counting miami of ohio's win to get into the tournament - go redhawks) and i'm sure there will be more. definitely in store for a fun weekend of basketball, beer and shamrocks.

happy st. pat's day everyone - you can find me tomorrow with a beer in my right hand and a corned beef sandwich in my left.

jordan catalano

last night, i went to the pageant to see 30 seconds to mars, jared leto's band. first off, the pageant is awesome - if you haven't been to a show there, you really should. it's big enough to feel like a good turnout (last night was sold out), but small enough to feel home-y. the definite plus is that 21 and overs can go upstairs, where there is much less crowd (aka less annoying 18-year-olds trying to start a mosh pit), so the bar is easier to get to. we decided to buy general admission tix, rather than reserved seating. luckily, we got there early enough to snag a couple of first-come-first-serve chairs that circle around the reserved seating area. if you can get these, you really have it made. no climbing over people next to you to get a drink and easy access to the bathrooms.

we hit the halo bar (located in the pageant) beforehand to have a few drinks, which was equally as nice. feels like a quirky bar where musicians and eccentrics hang out, but is clean, comfortable and right next door to the concert. they won't let you access the concert from inside the bar (this may have had something to do with the large number of underage attendees), but it was no problem.

being a big fan of my so-called life, i was pumped to see jordan catalano in the flesh. i had the biggest crush on him in my flannel-plaid-shirt/hiking boots/grunge phase of 1995. he was dreamy. now, he is very skinny, wears very tight pants, and mildly resembles a girl from a distance. their music is good though...it's not exactly my style, but it was a good concert. a bit short (they played for less than an hour), but good.

the best part of the pageant, though, was that amidst a sea of smokers (even in the bathroom), i barely smelled a hint of cigarettes on me afterward. they must have had 8 industrial exhaust fans pumping air out of that place to keep it fresh...and it was amazing. so if you are sensitive to smokiness, you won't have any problem there.

all in all, a great night...i'll definitely be heading back for another show.

and i think i might try to buy my so-called life on dvd. what a great series.

bathroom talk

the closest bathroom to my desk at my office is a very small bathroom with two stalls. it is so small, that it should probably only have one toilet and a lock on the outside door...but it doesn't. i'm not over-paranoid about being in the bathroom at the same time as someone else in most situations, but something about how small this one is makes me very uncomfortable. so, if i see someone walk in, and i have to pee, i'll wait a few minutes until they are done.

there have been a few times however, when someone has walked in right behind me. and i can't just walk out - that would be too obvious. but more than once, the person walking in behind me is my boss. in this instance, i most definitely can't just walk out and wait for her to be done, i just have to tough it out.

my boss is the type of person that decides to strike up a conversation while you are on the toilet. i realize that we are sitting less than 3 feet from each other, but do we really need to chat while we're taking care of business? but again, she's my boss, so i can't exactly ignore her. we talked recently in the bathroom about some very important work matters...but i can't help but think, "can't this WAIT until i'm done?"

the point here is this: if you are a bathroom talker (and i think this goes for guys and girls - i'm pretty sure you don't want to talk to your neighbor when you're standing at a urinal), respect your fellow public restroomers' right to pee in peace. it's just the polite thing to do.

slutbags on tv

since i'm such a huge american idol fan - and i stayed up after getting home from DC late last night just to watch this weeks episodes - i can't help but bring up antonella barba. first of all, if you haven't checked out the pictures of her online, you have to. they are actually kind of funny. she is obviously taking pictures to give to a boyfriend or something, and is in all of these poses with a white sheet as a makeshift backdrop...quite hilarious. the best one is of her imitating the jessica simpson-rolling stone cover, red high heels and all. she looks like a little girl (a little slutty girl, mind you) playing dress up. i just can't stop thinking about who she got to take the pictures. if i asked one of my friends to take pictures of my in my underwear so i could make a calendar for my boyfriend, i'm pretty sure that all of them would laugh in my face.

so anyways, the other thing you have to note is that she is 20 years old. i realize that i am only 24, but i still feel like 20 is pretty young to be stripping and documenting it. and the best part is that they interviewed her friend who auditioned with her...and she said "antonella is the least slutty person i know." does that mean that her other friends are super-mega-sluts? because last time i checked, putting on lingerie and posing for a camera is pretty slutty.

hopefully she goes home tonight...she sucks at singing on top of everything. but she has a $250,000 contract with girls gone wild waiting for her, so her career is just beginning.

so then, i was watching a few minutes of the new pussy cat dolls show. it's pretty dumb, which is to be expected. however, one of the girls who made it through, she's 18 and was talking about how she will be able to tell her daughter about this. um...what? i know that 18-year-olds can get pregnant, and they can have kids and they can be mothers...but on national television? i think that might be sending the wrong message.

sluts will be sluts...i guess that will never change, whether it's on tv or not.

ode to a fish sandwich

with lent underway, look forward to seeing more commercials for mcdonald's filet-o-fish sandwich. i think they've been running the same one for a few years now, and you never see it until lent starts. i bet if you go into mcdonald's in say, november, and ask for a filet-o-fish, they don't even have them. anyways, this seems strange, because, as a catholic, i feel like less and less catholics live by the no-meat-on-fridays-during-lent rule. old-schoolers, definitely. the people who grew up pre-vatican ii, and couldn't eat meat on any friday ever. but i think the new generation of catholics are more flexible about forcing down fish on fridays.



so i've come to the conclusion that catholics who eat filet-o-fish (or fish sandwiches from white castle, they are basically interchangeable) are actually using lent as an excuse to enjoy a tasty, greasy, fried fish sandwich. i mean, what other time does that sound good, except for the time that you can't eat any beef, chicken, turkey or pork?

i'd like to share with my readers a little bit about my new job. i really like it so far, so don't misinterpret what may come off as disdain.

for the past few weeks, i've been working on compiling information on zip codes. yes, zip codes. zip codes in orlando, austin, houston, virginia, maryland, st. louis, dallas, tucson, odessa, santa fe, sarasota, naples...you get my point.

luckily for me, today was supposed to be a big presentation, that would likely end my zip code research.

unfortunately for me, the meeting was cancelled and we found out that there are 15 more areas that need to be analyzed. so that's been my ENTIRE day. minus a lunch break for salad+soup+breadsticks at olive garden. $5.25, can't beat it.

needless to say, my brain cannot function anything other than zip codes right now, and it's really scaring me. i went online to kill a few minutes and give myself a break, and found myself looking up zip code maps to find out just how far some zips are from others. it's like i can't stop.

and the good news is that i'll be working on it all day tomorrow too. the meeting isn't for another 5 days. i might go insane.

but in case you ever wondered, Washington DC and surrounding areas are made up of approximately 2,000 zip codes. For reference, st. louis has a little over 200. what do they need all those zips for? it must be like one building is it's own zip code up there.

man - this post sucks.

AI is on tonight...at least i can look forward to that.

random thoughts for presidents day

-why isn't the entire country off on presidents day? i really think we should get our holidays straight, and make them mandatory. that means, if they government is off, everyone is off. because how can you do business when mail isn't being delivered? so take your pick of optional holidays throughout the year and make it official. the only benefit of working on a quasi-holiday is that there's no traffic.

-it would have been nice for the weather at mardi gras to be more like today. just can't seem to get that right...that's two years in a row of chilly-ness. that's why i prefer st. pat's.

-britney spears shaved her head, did you hear? it must be her overly stressful life, being a single mom (cause she can't afford any help) and going through a divorce (did she really think that was going to work) and being a major WT slut (duh). man is she ugly without hair.

-lent starts on wednesday. i'll be giving up skipping the gym 7 days a week. my goal? be there at least 3 days a week. and only eat lunch out once a week. we'll see how it goes.

i regret to inform my captive audience that the above unentertaining nonsense is the best i can come up with today. i'm sorry to have bored you to death. i will leave you with this picture, because it's effing hilarious. good ole' George + George.

generation tech

i've been thinking lately about how much time i spend online. this first occurred to me one day at work, i checked my gmail account, and saw that two people had posted comments on my myspace page. i could barely wait to get home to check what they had written (myspace is blocked at my work. made me very angry at first, but i've come to realize it's probably the best decision a business can make). then, i get home and check myspace, only to move on to facebook, watch an episode of grey's anatomy on abc.com, check my email, my bank account (all of which i had done just 3 hours before at work) and eventually sign off.

and at work, we were discussing when we started relying on email. i'm the youngest person in my department, and some were saying they didn't use email until college, until their third job, until they started at a different company, whatever. i chime in and say that i had my first email address in 8th grade. they looked at me like i was some kind of internet slut. feefee18@hotmail.com. that's what it was...i don't think it works any more though. (i remember when i got it too. i was into yahoo chatrooms and such - my god, that sounds terrible - and some kid that i chatted with for 5 hours told me about hotmail...and i was nervous to sign up, because i thought someone would be able to trace me to my house)

so after lunch today, i was perusing facebook.com, and found a group to join, made up of people that went to my grade school. i took a peek at the members, thinking, "i'll know everyone in this group!" low and behold, there are people in the group that are graduating high school in 2010. that means they'll be done with college at the earlist in 2014. i'll be 32. but they all have pages, and have pictures they've posted (some of the girls are really slutty looking too...i don't think i looked like that when i was in 9th grade) needless to say, i don't know any of them.

so someday, i'll be sitting at work, talking with my co-workers about my first email address at age 13, and someone 15 years younger than me will say that they had an email address when they were 7. and i'll feel just as old as the people i said it to.

depends, really?

many of you have already heard about the astronaut who was plotting murder against another astronaut, for having an affair with her astronaut boyfriend. (just the fact that i could legitimately use astronaut three times in that sentence makes me smile)

if you haven't, read this.

if you don't feel like reading the whole article, i've pulled out the best part below.

"Nowak, accustomed to wearing astronaut diapers during the space shuttle's launch and return to Earth, wore them on the drive from Houston so she would not have to make bathroom stops as she raced to confront Shipman at the Orlando International Airport, police said."

i'm not sure why #1) the daipers are necessary to the news story or #2) they tried to justify it by saying she's "accustomed" to it or #3) if we'll ever see adult daipers in a high profile news story ever again. i sure hope so.

world wrestling entertainment



last night, my very good friend miss forrest opened my eyes to the wonderful world of monday night raw. now, i have to admit, as a young child, i watched hulk hogan and randy savage wrestle on KPLR 11 on saturday mornings. this was accompanied by pretending our pull out couch-bed was a wrestling ring, and trying to do flips off the side of it with my brother. (note: he always got to be hulk hogan, and i had to be randy savage. jerk)


to my surprise, pro wrestling has not changed much at all. matter of fact, some of those old guys are still doing it. (see: rick flair, right) in case you weren't aware, he is 58 years old. he started wrestling when he was 23. that's completely insane. he started before hulk hogan, AND is older than him. part of me respects the guy for sticking with it, and part of me pities him for still doing it. and then another part of me is disgusted with his old man body.



so aside from ric flair, i had my first experience with 29-year-old john cena. now, as a newcomer to WWE, i have always pictured all of these wrestlers to be what they were when i was young: beastly, sweaty, sporting mullets...you get the point. low and behold, this guy is actually hot. he's even going to be in his own movie with the blond ex-pornstar from nip/tuck. it's a small small world. way to keep up with the times WWE.

moral of this story: thank you, christy, for bringing wrestling back in to my life. i dedicate this blog to you.

to pee or not to pee

the other day i saw a commercial for the new clearblue easy pregnancy test. remember when pregnancy test commercials were sappy and emotional, and showed a couple waiting for the results...and the girl said something cheesy like, "i need to know, it would change our lives (tear tear)."

well, those days are over. this commercial resembles the 6-blade razor commercial that debuted during the superbowl last year. it's all high-tech looking, sci-fi almost, and the voice over is a deep masculine voice talking about how advanced the technology is. then, the best line:


"The most sophisticated piece of technology that you will ever pee on."


want to see it?

hilarious.


_________

direct deposit m-f-ers

last week, i deposited three checks. two were paychecks from my new job, one was a paycheck from my old one.

so today, i see the check amount from my old job paycheck has been withdrawn from my account. and i think, what the hell? so i email my old business manager at my previous job - all pissed off - and say why was this money withdrawn from my account (, idiot)?

she replies with "i have no idea," and i curse her existence. then, i call the bank. i'm not rude to the rep i talk to, because i make it a point not to be rude to those people. i explain that i need more description on this transaction. she says that they only have record of two checks being deposited that day. then it hits me.

i used to have direct deposit, where you get the fake check (they really should make those look less like checks) that just shows how much was deposited. it dawns on me, as i'm on hold with bank of america, that i probably deposited one of those. man, am i stupid.

so i thought i was rich, it turns out i'm not. not only am i not rich, i'm an idiot.

happy f-ing friday.