Airplanes should have separate seating for people who stink.

I should hqve revived the If I Ruled The World Thread for new rules for the hygienically challenged, but this connection is glacially slow.

I need a real, good baguette, dammit!

I know, I know, I can go to Pain Quotidien, Payard, Ceci Cela, Balthazar...but why isn't there one on my corner???

And don't say Vinegar Factory (which is 2 blocks away) - I bought one yesterday - their regular baguette is like cotton, and their "traditional" baguette was hard as a rock and I didn't buy one.

Should pet peeves go into the Annoyances thread, or do they deserve their own?

4 hours of sleep, two nights in a row. no idea why.

Five weeks of dieting, resulting in an unpleasant, cranky Robert, even more so than is my normal state.

Huge fly in my office dive-bombing my head, and me foolishly swinging at it with a legal pad and smashing the Venetian blinds in my office windows. Secretary just poked her head in to see if I was having a temper tantrum over something.

Dentist, bad news, get to do it again next week.

Red tide from Maine to Cape Cod -- where we are going for a week beginning June 11.

What's that, then? A "red tide"?

international socialist conference?

all-america menstrual championships?

Our chorus director singlehandedly caused our ad agency to drop us as a client. They were doing pro bono work for us and finally got tired of us treating them as a production house rather than a creative agency--our director pretty much has her own vision of things & is looking for someone pliable to execute them. This means goodbye to our branding and hello to much more work for all the Board members, yours truly included.

The birds living in our chimney keep throwing the runts overboard. I've had to clean dead bird fetuses off the porch twice now. Very, very gross!

Wouldn't it be "foeti"?

Anyway, I have awoken to nausea several days in a row, and have just resorted to pink medicine. Ulcer? Pregnancy?

a long cut right above the middle joint of my right thumb--the fucker won't close up.

also, have no idea how the fuck it happened.

The forecast for Sydney, and SE Australia in general continues to be for endless sunshine. The dams are down to 37% capacity. This lack of water is making me anxious (my roots are in the rather damp west-coast of Scotland).

skin guard, skin shield, something like that. After you apply it, as a liquid, it becomes plastic-cy.

I can't sleep!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Broolyn + MTA + weekend = nightmare.

Why do I ignore everything I learned as a Londoner about crossing water?

Hellish time on the subways after catching Basquiat at the Brooklyn Museum on Saturday. Closed platforms, no clear announcements, just trying to travel one stop to Aliseo. We could have walked, got a cab, but one stop should be easy, right? After going up and down the line and changing trains a few times, we eventually found out that there was no local service whatsoever. By that time, we were bound for Atlantic Avenue, so decided to fall back on Thomas Beisl. Might be a wait on Saturday night, as it was now approaching ten, but that was no problem. We could sit at the bar - whatever.

"The chef decided to close," said the waiter, turning us away. "There's no performance at BAM tonight."

So when you read that Thomas Beisl is open Fridays and Saturdays until midnight, what it actually means is that they are open at the whim of the chef. Nice hospitality.

Not just me, then. All told, took more than an hour just to get out of Brooklyn, and Atlantic Avenue isn't exactly a long way from Manhattan.

Our evening ended with duck, rabbit, frites, etc at the Fleamarket on Avenue A, with gentle choruses of "Never again".

I love summer, but did it have to go from cold and rainy to hot and muggy quite so quickly? It was 80 in Central Park at eight o'clock this morning. Twelve weeks of bad hair days coming up.

Competetive mothering.

And it's 91 and humid today. Ah, spring in Washington DC.

The LIE. Plain and simple...The LIE.

You gotta be crazy to live on the Island.

Fucking 92nd St. Y.

I showed up for the first session of my guitar class tonight, only to find out that it was cancelled due to under-registration. Nice of them to fucking call me. Second time this has happened with the Y.

Heather, I'll see your competitive mothering and raise you a paranoid-competitive-prospective-mothering. The following is an exchange between me and an otherwise sane friend:

Otherwise Sane Friend: Oh J, now that you're pregnant make sure you get rid of all your underwired bras right away and get unwired ones instead.

Me: Really? Why's that? I bought new bras after getting properly measured for my wedding, and they're still fitting really well. I'm a bit loathe to just get rid of them.

OSF: Because the underwires are really uncomfortable and could cause pain.

Me: So when my bras get uncomfortable and cause me pain, I should change to different ones?

OSF: Yes.

Me: Um, thanks.

You're pregnant? OMG, that is wonderful! A reason to be cheerful

Congratulations Ms J!

Might I suggest just not wearing a bra? Let your freak flag fly.

My annoyance this week is that one of my neighbors (who is an asshole) is subjecting everyone in the building to a long, drawn-out break-up with his current girlfriend, who is the most obnoxious, shrill, immature 18-year-old you can possibly imagine.

Seriously, try to imagine the most incredibly annoying person you can, add a strange body odor which you can not pinpoint*, then add three felony charges stemming from intent to distrubute ecstasy (people still take MDMA? what is this? 1999?), and you have this girl. Plus, she's not friendly. She is what you might call a biatch.

So anyway, last night, my girlfriends and I are sitting on the porch, enjoying a glass or eight of bubbly to celebrate the Pistons win, and this girl comes drunk-clumping up the stairs dressed in an outlandish outfit, boobies everywhere, screaming at us: "Where's Kevin?" (Kevin is the asshole boyfriend).

I told her that Kevin was probably in the same place she'd left the rest of her skirt, but I said it sotto voce, because by then she was throwing her purse and phone against the brick wall, screaming about how she just got an MIP (minor in possession of alcohol by consumption) and all she wants to do is talk to Kevin.

Of course, Kevin isn't answering his phone, so we got to listen to her shrieking out the story of how the cop wrote her the ticket in the first place: she threw a piece of trash out of a car window (which made me dislike her even more strongly than I already did) and he wrote her a littering ticket, plus the MIP ticket.

He should have added a third ticket, the little-known but devastating "Why The Fuck Are You Wearing That Ho Outfit" ticket, but he, unfortunately, did not do so.

Finally, she dials Kevin from one of our phones, and he answers and says "screw you, I'm not coming home until the bar closes," which made me want to destroy him with my bare hands, so of course we got to listen to her histronics for even longer. When he finally does come home, he throws all her shit out on the lawn and then spends the next hour earnestly shouting her down in the parking lot.

It was awesome. This is why I don't watch TV.

What is the most annoying about the whole situation is that she actually waited for him to get home. It disgusts me to see women behave that way, even women that I can't stand.



*But you think it might be a combination of dog piss, unwashed clothes, and "hey! I work in a smoky bar as a cocktail waitress, but never wash my hair!"

Sitting in my office working on my pretrial disclosures (and posting on MF ) when I know NeroW is lounging on her ass drinking cold beer.

But NeroW, without these annoyances, the rest of us would not have our amusement at your accounting of them.

I look forward to you getting all riled up: I need a good laugh. (And not at your expense.)

Rock on. I love your post so much I just broke my rule and added an unnecessary post to the Annoyances thread.

No milk in the house. I found this out after I poured the cereal into my bowl.

Had to resort to diluting heavy cream with water.

Oh I always pour the cereal back into the box. 90% anyway - you lose 10% on the floor, down the side of the cooker, etc.

Meanwhile, howling arthritis in left hip, thanks. But perhaps the temperature has finally stopped yo-yo-ing twenty degrees every couple of days - that might help.

Rain again.

Tried dropping into Virgin Megastore to make a quick purchase, only to find myself in the midst of a crowd awaiting a Shakira personal appearance. Worst of both worlds: all crowd, no Shakira.

Toddler's bowels are improving, yeah, but my new symptoms is vertigo. Discovered whilst driving, good god.