is it just me?

oh, jeez. where to begin.

well, I will start with Monday becuase it's easy. I got on the bus in the afternoon and it was kind of crowded. I found a seat in the back next to a young man. This young man, like so many before him, has convinced himself that there is absolutely postively no way he can sit even with his legs in the same area code, therefore he has them spread apart, taking up approximately 1.3 seats. I sit down, figuring I merit at least 0.5 inches of concession space. But no. He sits there, taking up all his space acting as though if he were to move his legs even the tiniest bit closer together he risked massive injury to his giant member. Which, of course, is totally not the case and I don't need to do anything but look at him to know. But still. SO, I am sitting there somewhat precariously balanced half on my seat, half in the aisle thinking "what a douche". So I look over at him thinking perhaps I can shame him into ceding the part of the seat that is rightfully mine, and I notice he's wearing sunglasses. Which I always think is unnecessary on the back of a bus, but whatever. But they aren't cool sunglasses. They're risky business sunglasses. And on the side they are embossed in silver with the words "Sea Striker". At first I think I have no idea what that even means. But then I decide it means "I am trying really hard to look cool in dorky sunglasses. " Striker! And then I notice his sweater. It's atrocious. It's a cross between Mr. Rogers and Bill Huxtable. A multi-colored striped cardigan. That, in true 1993 fashion, is about three sizes too big. So then I am really annoyed by this guy because he's a huge dork who's trapped in 90s fashion and is being obnoxious. I sent evil vibes his way they whole way home.

So, I have a confession. I'm pregnant. I know what you're thinking: oh great, now this blog is going to get even MORE boring because she's just going to talk about her feet swelling and craving pickles. But I promise that I will try very very hard not to do that. But what I realize is that some things that happen to me now are funny because I am pregnant, so I thought it was useful to include. And I am already like five months so you have mercifully missed more than half of it. So anyway, given that I am five months pregnant I expect people to be nice to me about things like seats on a bus but let me tell you: it is totally not working. I heard that everyone is really nice to you when you're pregnant but so far I am finding everyone to be average nice, at best. For example, I checked in to a hotel in Washington, DC a couple of days ago and although I had requested a non-smoking room they gave me a smoking room with a window that looked out on another building and therefore did not get a single drop of sunlight and was in such a little fortress that my cell phone did not even work. Thanks. I really appreciate it.

Anwyay, let's just say that you can tell I'm pregnant. Especially if you knew me before. But, as I have mentioned, the people I work with are not the most socially adept. So a couple of weeks ago a friend of mine at work mentioned to a colleague, who has known me since the day I moved here almost five years ago, that I was pregnant. This came as news to him. He sees me every day. And he claims to be clueless. Then he says "well, I probably didn't hear about it becuase I left a day early for spring break". Spring break was about two weeks ago. Everyone here has known that I am pregnant for about two months. And I wanted to say "no, you didn't know because you are completely self absorbed and never bothered to look at me once during any of the five times per day you pass me in the hallway." Honestly. There's a grad student here who's about 8 months pregnant. She's giant. You can't miss it. Her stomach has its own weather system. She walked in to a room with this same guy, talked to someone, and walked out. The person she talked to had to TELL him that she was pregnant after she left. They said "Did you look at her? She's HUGE." He claims he doesn't like to judge. I say he is absolutely totally compulsively bizarrely not paying attention.

So then there's this other young female professor who's my age more or less. The other day she says to me "wow! you're really getting big" which is I guess supposed to be some kind of weird pregnancy-related compliment but if you're thinking of handing it out I would say, um, don't. Anyway, I said yeah, that it was getting hard because I don't fit in my clothes, blah blah. So she asked if the jeans I was wearing were maternity jeans, which they were to which she responded "Wow! Soon you're not even going to fit into those clothes!" So I shot her. The end.

Get this: I almost won my NCAA tournament pool. I cannot tell you how happy this would have made me. But, I fell one game short. I needed LSU to beat UCLA and I would have won. As it was, I came in second by 8 points which is really pretty friggin good. But still. To be able to win $140 for my obsession? How fantastic. But now I totally have new credibility with all the old ag guys in my building. They thought I was just another secretary until I whooped it up in the pool. So now they're all nice to me. Awesome. The guy who won didn't even know what he was going to do with his winnings. Clearly he doesn't need the money if he hadn't even thought about it. I was, however, able to convince him that he needed to bring us donuts which he did. I also invited him and some other friends over to watch the game. He brought homemade chicken wings. I dislike chicken wings in general, but this experience also firmly cemented my belief that there are certain things that you should just buy, not make. Like chicken wings. And sushi.

Last weekend we went out to a local bar for the hockey national tournament finals, as Wisconsin was in the game. I don't care much for hockey, though I couldn't say exactly why. But anyway, coming from a warm place we just really didn't do hockey. So we went to this bar and it was so much fun. It was like being at the actual hockey arena. The bar has all the music they play at games. Everyone does the cheers that they do at the arena. And every time they scored the place went absolutely nuts. And I have to say that it warmed my heart and made me love Wisconsin. Because truthfully you have to love hundreds of people packed into a brat house cheering in front of tvs like total maniacs, wasted out of their minds at 7pm on a Saturday for a hockey game dancing like fools to that song "Jump Around". So they play Jump Around at football games. And the entire student section literally jumps around. They made some renovations to the stadium a couple of years ago which changed the structure and some test indicated that maybe it wasn't safe to jump around anymore. They literally tested it for what happens when the entire student section jumps. So they banned it. They didn't play the song and people protested so they fixed the stadium and now you can jump around to your heart's content. And that is absolutely hilarious.

My friend emailed me to tell me he thought his girlfriend was cheating on him. So he asked her. And she was. But she said it wasn't just physical, she was actually attached to this other person emotionally. And apparently for him that somehow made it better. For me that makes it much, much worse. So now they are going to give it another shot. If it were me, there would be no more shots. Am I crazy?

I have a black thumb. I have slowly killed off every plant in my office save one. It's actually quite sad. Perhaps I should buy fake plants.