Momma Told Me There'd Be Days Like This

My ghost town of a life these days.

Yeah, I've had a few pretty hard weeks.  Bad words with a douchey business associate where I just had to stand there and take a beating.  Found out something really SHITTY about my ex that he's hid from me for a year, oh, and my uncle suddenly died.

I wish there was something outrageously funny I could make fun of.

My dating life?  Crickets.  Shawn at the gym is a nice guy and pretty funny, but I think that's never going to go anywhere.  I saw him out last Friday night, and we bought each other a few brews, then he said twice he'd see me at the gym the next day, and I was at the gym the next day for 3 hours, and he never showed up.  There's a Louisiana energy guy in Wyoming, but he's almost three hours away.  Then there's Douchey Wyoming Artist, but he's nothing more than an occasional text.

In fact, that's all there ever is from the online world of dating--texting and disappearing.

Oh, and it's snowing today.  Yay, winter has been here from Oct. 4--almost May. 

Sigh.  Maybe I can be funny next week.  :(

The Revolving Door of Douchebags

Perfect metaphor for my dating life, a ghost town and a shitter all wrapped up in one.

 One new guy steps into the revolving door, just as I give yet another douchebag the boot.

Well, the Cute Wyoming Artist guy finally blew it.  1. he had 4 days off from work, Thursday-Sunday and completely disappeared on me.  2. He's been promising me we were going to meet.  YET after THREE months of texting-phone calls, just poof.  He's gone (TT, yes, I know you're right.  Her long standing rule is only a week's worth of texts/emails then you MUST meet or dump them).  I sent him a snarky text.  Nothing.  Called.  Crickets.  Finally, I sent him a text worried that maybe he was hurt/injured and just wanting to know if he was OK (his real job is dangerous), but nothing.   DONE.  I took him out of my cell.

Now, another guy is writing me.  This one works out at Ellsworth.  Seems nice.  We'll see.  There's plenty of time for him to bust out some terrific douchebag moves.

Then there's there the gym-guy, Shawn.  Now, he's the one I really like.  And he's so NICE and has nice friends, too.  And he's  REAL person (no flaky internet dating guys).  There's been some progress.

According to a keen bartender at Paddy's, he's single and not seeing anyone.

AND, get this, yesterday, he hollered my name across the gym and waved.  So I walked over and we made idle chit-chat for about 10 minutes.

Sooooooooo . . . the plot thickens.  Stay tuned.

Too Much Snow and the Food Network's Worst Show Ever

Besides shirking and emailing when it's snowy, Ben thinks you should also nap and read.

I missed the gym Monday, but I put in an episode of Northern Exposure and rode my training bike.  I had to do this again Tuesday, for it was yet again, snowing and too slick out. 

Sigh.  But maybe that's a good thing, having to stay in and watch Northern Exposure and ride rather than go to my gym.  This is because whether I go to my work gym, or my gym downtown, Ree Drummond is ALWAYS on Food Network.  And this show, The Pioneer Woman, is driving me fucking crazy.

Well, what's her show all about and what is annoying about it, you might ask.

Where do I begin?  Firstly, WHY is it ALWAYS ON?  If I work out at 9, it's on.  If I workout at 2, it's on.  If I work out at midnight, you guessed it, it's on.  WTF.

This would be OK, if this show taught interesting things like fusion cooking, or basic French cooking like Ina's show, or Simply Ming (yes, I know, I watch too many cooking shows when I start referring to chefs by their first names only as if we're bros).  But it's idiotic cooking.

Like, putting a scrambled egg in a tortilla.  Wow, I never thought of doing that.  Move over Julia Childs.

AND,

1.  she's got this squeaky baby-voice sounding like a seven year-old that makes my blood pressure go up.

2. she calls her "ranch" a ranch, as if everyone's stupid and doesn't know what goes on in a ranch/farm.  In reality it's a Trophy Home, and she's a Trophy Wife.  She never works, never: bails hay, scoops shit, pulls calves, slaughters animals, drives a tractor, throws bales, etc.

3. she refers to her husband as "hubby" OK, that's begging for an ass-kicking.

4. or she refers to her husband as "The Marlboro Man."  More ass-kicking.

5.  the whole show has this creepy 1950's Ward and June Cleaver/Stepford Wives vibe to it.

6.  the lingering question is what the hell is "Pioneer" about her show?  She lives in probably a $500,000 house with every amenity known.  "Pioneer" is PBS's reality show, "Frontier House" where 3 families had to go backwards in time, off-the-grid, and live exactly as pioneers did a century ago.  NOT THIS:

"Today, hee-hee, at the ranch we're going to discuss window cleaning techniques, make Bloody Mary's and my specialty peanut butter cupcakies and sit on my seven-hundred-foot deck and have a play-date (anyone who says "playdate" is itching for an ass-whipping), with my friends Marrissa and Jessica and their babies.  Hee hee."  What about that doesn't make you want to punch her in the face?

7. her recipes are lame.  Example: take tortilla out of bag, put cheese on it and canned sauce, put in microwave.  Culinary genius.  Seriously, who gave this person a cooking show?  I see in my most recent edition of Food Network Magazine, that they've asked many chefs what their favorite average ingredient from a grocery store was.  Ree was included.  Guess what her answer was?

Hellman's Mayonnaise.

Well, make room for Ms. Genius.  Who needs Lydia Bastianich?  What's Ree's second favorite gourmet selection, Heinz ketchup?

OK, I'll stop.  But if you don't believe me, go on Food Network and watch.  . . . Told ya so.

The Electronic Age, More Snow . . . Oh, and Dating

Ben likes to lay on top the couch and watch old re-runs of Northern Exposure, especially any scene with Alaskan Huskies or Morty the Moose in it.

What else you going to do on a SNOWY, GRAY APRIL DAY besides screw around on email, certainly not work (I'm so burned out).  Speaking of emails, I was writing this new dude who sort of reminds me of John Goodman, when in one fat-fingered click, the whole page went blank, yup, an hour's worth of typing.  This is one thing, of about a thousand things, I hate about computers and the people who design them.  Who sat around an engineering desk, and thought, "I know.  Let's put something in the computer where if they accidentally hit these totally random two keys at the same time, they'll lose everything that they typed up.  Doesn't that sound cool?"  Who is the offical Asshat who came up with the idea?   AND, who are the Asshat designers who keep this feature in place?

What if your car worked like computers do?  What if it lacked all reliability like the internet/computers do?

You'd open the door, get inside and sit down, turn the key and nothing.  The car just didn't FEEL like starting.  Or, say you're tooling down the interstate when suddenly the car just slows down to a stop.  You're left with nothing to do but shut the car off, along the side of the road, and turn it back on every 15 min. til it feels like it's ready to start again.

My computer's router will do that, just 'cause it feels like it.  And I get to merrily waltz over to my main computer on the other side of the house, where the router is hooked up on the floor, sit down on the floor, lay down on my back to get to it, turn the whole thing upside down and around and unplug it, wait for 15 min. then plug it in again.  Sometimes 4-5 times.  

The other day (and my computer does this at least twice a week), the cursor just sort of disappears acting all lazy and fat, as if it were a sleeping cat refusing to budge.  I couldn't see what I typed for several seconds.  After cussing at it, getting up and getting coffee ten times, it still was doing it.

Sigh.

Who's this new dude?  An engineer/architect from California who works in ND and comes down here frequently on business.  He's quite cerebral.  And as usual, I'm wondering if like Wyoming Cute Artist/Musician, if I'll ever meet him, or if he's one of hundreds that I have NOT met, who just like the IDEA of meeting, and would rather instead, text/write emails forever.  I'll think up a nickname for these kinds of men, in another post.

In the meantime, the sun had better get to shining and stop SNOWING, already.  We are SO DONE with the snow!

Stay tuned.