Uncategorized – Page 21 – The only certainty is bad grammar

appropriate things in appropriate places

December 2, 2009 Crystal Uncategorized

TMZ is seriously getting about 30,000 more clicks from me this week. I do not understand what defect I was born with that makes me give two craps about Tiger Woods’ car accident, but OMG, DID YOU HEAR THIS VOICEMAIL?

Tiger is supposedly calling his mistress all ‘Umm, ya, my wife found my phone records. Can you take your name off your voicemail so she doesn’t find out about us?”

Uh! TIGER!! Have these conversations in person. In some sort of body of water. Where nobody can wear a wire.

DO YOU NOT WATCH DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES??

Dude has so much to learn.

Moving on. I need a new sports bra.

The girls are flying all over the Jazzercise studio during that “Crazy Chick” song, and I swear that’s why the instructor always looks at me when explaining how to do the low impact moves, which don’t involve jumping.

I want to jump. I want to burn calories and lose 17 more pounds. I want to be FLAT.

I even went to Victoria’s Secret ready to shell out a week’s pay for what I needed, but the master of all things boob (can youth leaders say ‘boob?) let me down – they only carry sports bras online.

Who orders a sports bra ONLINE? How the heck could you possible know if it holds appropriate things in appropriate places? I need to test things like that folks.

I’d hoped that as I lost weight umm, things would get smaller, and I wouldn’t need as much support. Alas, even smaller things still need support.

Suggestions on this welcome folks, but only if you’re at least a C cup. If you’re smaller, you live in a fantasy world likely filled with tank tops and strapless dresses and could never understand my problems.

Speaking of smaller things, I’m REALLY EXCITED about how much weight I’ve lost.

Sometimes I feel like I’m bragging by talking about it, but whatever dude. And even though the doctors say the official total is 38 pounds since Aug. 1, I swear it’s actually 40 depending of the time of day I weight myself and whether I’ve worked out in the last two hours.

And 40 pounds is so much weight! (note: I tried to google things that weigh 40 pounds so I could impress you by saying things like ‘DID YOU KNOW A BLABATY BLAH WEIGHS AS MUCH AS I’VE LOST?? But I couldn’t come up with anything).

I teeter back and forth between wanting people to notice and feeling embarrassed when they do, but I decided that really, I just want people to notice. I want them to be all “Holy crap! You look great! And you’ve lost so much weight that I can hardly see you!”

Is that asking too much?

It’s hard to lose weight. Really hard. And you can bet your bottom dollar that if you’re noticing how my pants are too big, at that exact same moment I thinking about losing three more pounds in the next 10 days, so you might as well bring it up.

Now, excuse me while I got to bed at 8:30 so I can make it to the 5:15 Jazzercise tomorrow – I’ve got three pounds to lose by as soon as possible.

Fine. This one thing was cool about Halloween

Published: November 1, 2009 / Updated: November 2, 2009 Crystal Uncategorized

I was NOT feeling the Halloween spirit this year.

Call me a witch. Or a word that rhymes with witch. I don’t care.

A big part of it had to do with work-place festivities.

See, I’m in the midst of moving from a lovely, darling, mostly private office in McHenry, to our paper’s main office in Crystal Lake. The main office is filled with people and germs and noise.

To me, at least at first, this was the equivalent of switching from a lovely moisturizing, 7-blade, heated, vibrating, purple razor to a rusty nail pulled from a hobo’s back pocket for my shaving needs.

Awful.

It’s no secret that in McHenry, I was spoiled. I had a luxurious, quiet, writing environment where I could easily slip into “the zone.” The magical place where story ledes flow through my fingertips and words align like stars.

Not so much in Crystal Lake. More like the opposite.

And Friday was probably the worst day to jump in.

I had never been in the main office for a holiday. Or even a party. And there was CRAPTONS of Halloween stuff going on.

People were dressed in costumes, and blaring haunted music and eating more calories in a hour that I usually eat in a week – all while I was on DEADLINE! It’s kinda hard to find “the zone” when there’s rows and rows of hanging bats above the department next door and kids keep walking past looking for candy.

And when I went to work Saturday, I was kinda hoping it had all been a bad dream.

It wasn’t. There were still bats.

During my brief free time I started looking for a cartoon I could put on my work monitor to make me feel better.

I finally found one that said “Evil plans are best.” But I was unclear about how this whole, “working near bosses” thing worked and wanted to check with some co-workers to be sure that none of the higher-ups would interpret that to mean I was crazy and had an actual evil plan to like, hack our system (I don’t) or bring down the paper (Again. I don’t).

And someone chimed in that it’s unlikely that in the spectrum of employees I would fall anywhere near the “crazy” side. And that I’d probably have to bring in a life-size cutout of Johnny Depp (whom I love) for people to think that.

Then another co-worker was all “Speaking of which, there IS a life-size cut-out of Johnny Deep near the front desk. Someone brought it in for the pirate-themed Halloween area.”

OMG!

A LIFE-SIZE CUTOUT OF MY SOUL MATE WAS MERE DESKS AWAY!!?

woah.

I went to take a picture. (See below).

My co-worker than said it’d be “crazy” if I brought in a big bag of money. And just like that, the “crazy-makes things so” magic was dead.

But alas, knowing that at least one person in this strange new office loves Johnny Depp enough to buy a life-size cut out makes me thing this whole transition might not be that bad.

And now, without further ado – the photos. Feel free to pretend it’s the REAL Johnny Depp. I do. And tune in next week to read about my evil plan to steel steal him. (editor’s note: Such a plan may or may not exist).

meandjohnny

johnnyagain — Photo by the supa amazing Val!

Dear Bears,

Published: October 28, 2009 / Updated: October 28, 2009 Crystal bears, humor, long, Uncategorized

Dear Chicago Bears,

Wow.

Wha? Ha?

Why do you hate me?

Ok. I understand, this isn’t about ME. But seriously, you’re ruining my precious Sundays.

All right. Fine. I’ll take partial blame for that 104-3 (ish) loss last week. You’re right, I wasn’t watching, and you guys rely on my good-vibes to win these games. I’m sorry about that.

It’s just that I thought checking the score every three seconds via ESPN on my crackberry would be enough. I realize now, that it wasn’t. Umm, dudes, every time I loaded the score the other team had a million new points, and you guys had 3.

In the past, I might have taken this whole thing up with Jay Cutler. After all, he’s supposed to be Jesus Christ in a jersey – it’s in his contract. And his initials.

But I’ve accepted that he’s not. Trust me. He’s proven that over. and over. and over. He’s no where NEAR Jesus. or Favre. Or Manning.

I get it.

But a loss this horrid is on all of you. ALL. OF. YOU.

Call me idealistic, but I tend to believe that any team can get the W next to a game as long as they try hard enough and work together. It’s the American way. Any girl can get any guy. Anybody can become president. And any team can win any game. (See: Super Bowl circ. 2008)

But you weren’t even TRYING Sunday. I watched the lowlights. I know. See, I’m not expecting you to win all the time. I’m just expecting that you’ll keep it within a 30-point spread.

And that means you HAVE to try. Every play. Every drive. Otherwise the other team wins – as you may have noticed.

Now, don’t think I’m giving up on you guys. Far from it. I still have faith in Lovie Smith (with a name like “Lovie” how could I not?) And I still think you have potential. After all, you beat the Steelers and the Steelers beat the almighty Vikings. Basic math tells you that means you could, in theory, one day beat the Vikings. (I kinda hope that one day is two days – Nov. 29 and Dec. 28).

Also, you have some home games coming up, and they’ll be plenty of good vibes to feed off of (which I know you like).

But just in case you were confused as to how this whole football thing works – people start hating you when you lose by anything more than say, 3 points. And I don’t want people to hate you. I want them to love you.

So I will make a commitment to watch every game, if you, in turn, will commit to two simple things: Trying really hard, and drinking Red Bull at the half. And the start. And at the 2-minute warning.

I think it’ll work.

And if not, there’s always next year.

(A little less) love,

Crystal

p.s. None of this applies to Robbie Gould. He’s still awesome. That is all.