Upswing

I'm not going to get into my second bout of complaining about being female just yet. I'm in a good mood, and why stir up trouble?

Here are some of the things I'm in a good mood about:

1. A very nice young man (do I sound like a grandma when I say that?) came and finally unclogged my shower drain tonight. Someone was supposed to come yesterday and didn't (well, actually, when I first asked about it, it was two weeks ago), and then they were supposed to come today, and then finally I had enough of their "oh sure--we'll get someone in there right away" bull%*#$ so I called the maintenance coordinator guy at home at 7 pm and made him send someone over that very moment. I was getting pretty pissed at him--it'd been two full weeks I'd been calling and e-mailing him and he'd been putting off fixing this. Anyway, so I am appeased... for now. But they'll never know how close they came to THE WRATH OF BECKY. I was going to go down to their office, seriously, if it went on for one more day. Leave work early and everything. Not to scream and yell and throw a temper tantrum, but to twist their arm annoyingly enough they'd stop blowing me off. Stride in, sweet as pie, and talk and talk to everyone in the entire office, just set up camp for hours and talk about my shower drain in minute detail until they can't stand it anymore, and refuse to leave until someone physically went to my house and fixed it. Maybe I'd even make them drive me to my apartment right then, tools in hand.

Funny. You know, I don't like to yell, or throw insults, or make a big scene, but I get just as upset as anybody else. Well, mostly. I guess I don't have a whole lotta rage, but, you know, things can simmer.... well, anyway, it's my new strategy now. This direct, "This is not cool and you need to fix it, smiles, please thank you" thing that I'm trying. I like it, personally, because it doesn't cause my blood pressure to go up. I just hope it works as well as temper tantrums, 'cause man, I've been at the receiving end of some of those in my day, and they convert you into a blubbering mess who will do anything they want just to stop their yelling.

2. I went to a new grocery store tonight. I researched online first (what would we do without the internet? Seriously) and heard good things about Thai Grocery. I needed to get shrimp paste* and galangal (Asian ginger) to make curry. And oh, man--that place didn't disappoint! I got 2 whole bags of groceries for less than $16, including a huge bag of frozen potstickers (Oh baby!), bottled potsticker sauce (are you proud? I didn't attempt to make it from scratch! ...At least not yet..).... and I did find shrimp paste. But turns out I still need a couple things to make curry, so I settled for making pad thai from a box. It was good. Leftovers for lunch today. And the guy at the counter was so nice! As he was ringing me up, I explained that I was new to Asian cooking and was stocking my kitchen. So he threw a little cookbook in my bag for free (probably one of those promotional ones, so not like he spent money on it or anything, but still--thoughtful), and I explained how I was hoping to work my way up to making lots of Asian dishes but that tonight I'd cheat and go with frozen potstickers, and he smiled and said, "Ah, starting with the easy one!" It was cute. And then the lady behind me and he started talking about how the spices for curries in their two countries are different--he was, I'll assume, Thai, and I never heard the name of hers..... [I dunno. This is long so I will stop. I think you are bored.]

But anyways, it was a great experience. I love food, I love cooking, I love meeting people, international people are so fun, and..... I left the store quite content and enthusiastic about life. It was good.

*So, shrimp paste. ...YUMMMAY. If Thai Grocery is any indication, Thai food (and possibly Asian food in general) is comprised in large part of things that are fish-based, or fermented, or in the case of fish paste, fish-based and fermented. The store did not smell good, I'll say that (but actually the Mexican grocery is worse). But hey, while I'll I'm talking about fish-based and fermented things, I want to share with you a revelation. I think soy sauce is fermented, too. Because the only ingredients on a bottle of soy sauce are water, wheat, soybeans, salt, and sodium benzoate (a preservative). They had to have done something to those soybeans or they'd just taste like soybeans mushed up. Plus, isn't wheat what they make beer out of? If my theory is true, you may be interested in knowing what fermented soybeans look like. Not pretty.

3. My sisters are coming!!!!!!!!!! We are going to have ever so much fun. I took 2 whole days off work. In Beckyland that's like 5 for a normal person--I'm such a miser about that kind of thing.

4. I found the next dance class I'm gonna take. It starts after Labor Day, which is perfect, 'cause Summerdance goes until then and why pay for class when you can get it for free in the park? It's a combination of Rumba and Samba (oh yeah, that's the booty-shakin' Brazilian one).... that dance has always eluded me so I'll be glad to find out how it goes.

5. I saw a really good documentary on TV tonight--in fact, I was actually looking forward to watching it and planned it into my schedule (how nerdy am I?)--that was about little people. People of short stature. You know, dwarfs. You're not supposed to call them midgets, though, they said. It made me think. Like, man, we're spoiled, us average-sized people, having stuff we can reach. Such a production it was for them to do laundry, cook, load the dishwasher.... they had to use the stepstool freaking all the time, and literally climb onto the dryer to turn the knob. One couple, though, they were both dwarfs, they had their kitchen shrunk so that it was comfortably-sized for them. What was strange to see, though, was their son (who was average-sized) doing the dishes in the sink. He had to bend over to reach the sink which was about 2 1/2 feet off the ground. I could go on but to sum up: It was interesting and good. I will have something to say if I get into a random conversation with a little person now. Also, I'm newly grateful I'm average-sized and I don't have all the inconveniences I'd have to deal with if I wasn't. ...But also kinda mad at us for the whole human nature, "not in my backyard," "out of sight, out of mind," selfish thing that makes us need to watch documentaries to know anything meaningful about a whole section of the human race.

6. I went to bed at 12:30 last night and got 7 hours of sleep. I dreamed and everything. It was quite the luxury for a school night.

Question: If you were in a Miss (or Mr.) America contest, what would you do for the talent competition? Also, how would you respond to the question, "What will you do if you're crowned Miss/Mr. America?"

Big Event of the Day (tomorrow): Poker at John and Christy's
Percent Chance: 90%