Fluffy

There are some things in foreign countries that I cannot fathom nor explain, such as the trend to print phrases of English jibberish onto baby t-shirts and sell for 20 Euros or 14,000 won. No kidding. Europeans have even stranger taste in music and get really excited about things like “Eurosing”. But the patriach of all things weird is…

Schnappi.

(das kleine Krokodil)

Late last year, I was driving home late at night and turned to my favorite radio station that has a much appreciation reputation of playing metal or at least enough hard rock to keep you awake. I heard the last snippets of a grungy song, and then heard a twinkling sound followed by the voice of a happy preschooler. For a moment there, I truly thought I was going out of my mind. But nope, the song “Schnappi” hit #1 on German radio.

Supposedly, a nice German lady wrote a cute song about a mischievous baby crocodile for her 4 year old niece. She recorded it and next thing you know, it’s all over Germany.

I must admit that the song is without question the cutest thing I have ever heard. Check it out for yourself at http://www.schnappi.tv if you think I’m smoking crack.

I know this is old news as it happened way back in 2004, but I mention it because a coworker burned me some CDs of popular German/European music. The compilation included a CD of “Schnappi” variations. Highly respected deejays spent goodness knows how much time creating “Schnappi” remixes.

Anyway, not much else to report today. Boring as hell week and twice I had to rush back home to change uniforms since no one has the forethought to mention uniform requirements ahead of time.

Off to Italy to meet up with Mr. Wednesday for the long weekend. We’ll see how this goes. If I come back in one piece without a sunburn and with my shoes, it will be a successful one.

I just wrote a beautiful long post about my experience in couch shopping and how I fell in love with an 11,600 Euro couch that I am seriously considering purchasing (I negotiated down to 5,900 for the floor model) but apparently this blog program didn’t understand that I wanted to post it. And it deleted the entire post!

Bah. It was boring anyway. I’ll come up with something interesting later this week.

Moral of the story: always make a copy before you try to post.

So there I was, minding my own business as I walked through the parking lot on my way across the street. A hooptie that had seen better days pulled up next to me and I heard a polite young voice say “Ma’am, could you tell me where the WIC office is?”

I peered inside the car and discovered a young man with a sort of small-town aura surrounding him, just the kind of guy who you know his entire family came out on Friday nights to watch him play second string kicker at high school football games. As I was giving him directions, I noticed his passenger.

I assume she was his wife. She looked as if she had not showered in a couple of days, wore a ratty sweatsuit over her chubby body, and had her chubby hands folded over her bulging stomach. Pregnant or not, that’s no excuse to fail to shower or do laundry, but perhaps she was not feeling well. What was unforgivable was the proud, smug look of satisfaction on her face that I remember pregnant girls from my high school displayed. The kind that says “HEY LOOK AT ME I HAD SEX AND GOT PREGNANT SO I MUST BE REALLY SPECIAL NOW”. Well, good for you. You managed to snag yourself a decent young man who was probably lonely and married the first girl who smiled at him twice, which happened to be you. Now the military has to take care of you, you who cannot figure out how to wash your hair, and now you are bringing a child into this world. You need WIC vouchers to assure that you can buy oatmeal and eggs because you don’t understand that you cannot buy a new stereo system for your hooptie every 6 months. Your husband will likely spend at least a year in Iraq, which three weeks into the deployment you will wail that you are unable to do anything on your own and annoy people like myself with your helplessness. You will then file for divorce, demanding as many of the military benefits as you can get without actually being in the military yourself. You’ll write checks in the express lane and file for disability social security at age 21.

But seriously, I see this kind of thing happen far too often. I am amazed at the number of 20 year olds here who are divorced with two children and are constantly fending off legal battles with their ex-wives. Even before they become exes, they are problem makers. Wives get upset because they are “scared to drive” and “can’t ship household belongings on their own”, yet hmm, they manage to make it to pottery shopping trips on the weekend.

Yeah, I’m cynical, but not mean. I wished the young man and his wife good luck and I truly meant it. Maybe it’s just the intense heat here that is getting to me. Apparently, only the South (back in the good ole USA) ever understood the value of air conditioning.

P.S. There is a guy sitting across from me with his shirt COMPLETELY unbuttoned. Another woman is parading around in a bikini top. Neither of them have hit the gym in the past 4 years apparently so it’s not especially appealing. I give the example only to explain how hot it is here.

Quick rant: this library computer is ridiculously slow. Retarded turtles crawl uphill backwards faster than this dinosaur of a machine. Okay, anyway.

Read this article if you are interested: http://money.cnn.com/2005/04/27/pf/blowout_0505/index.htm

And here I go:

For starters, this couple is doomed. Unless dire, life threatening circumstances are in place, NEVER accumulate unnecessary debt. A wedding is not a dire circumstance. If you want a $30,000 wedding but don’t have $30,000 readily available, then don’t get married until you do.

The article says these two imbeciles have a combined income of $200,000. So something is obviously extremely wrong with their spending habits if the bride still has $10,000 of credit card debt.

Now the $60,000 of student loans is slightly more understandable, key word being slightly. If this debt is out there, then this couple made in Stupidsville had no business buying cars that gave them another $60,000 in debt. What kind of cars were they buying? Range Rovers? Matching Z4s? They could have purchased reliable economy cars for maybe $30,000.

Now they get a house! $225,000 for a piece of Houston real estate means they bought a pretty nice place. There’s nothing wrong with wanting a nice place to live, but live within your means. Either rent a cheap place until you can afford the house of your dreams or elope (and use the saved money towards the down payment).

To go off on a tangent, I don’t understand why engaged couples look for some fancy hotel, botanical garden, resort, etc. to have their wedding. If you don’t want a church wedding, why not have your wedding at some place that means something to you? Why choose a place simply because they offer catering waitstaff that will serve guests lukewarm canapes at $8 a pop? Also, if the idea of a church wedding scares you, try the justice of the peace or Vegas.

So they’ve already wedding-ed themselves into an outrageous debt. A smarter person would have sold a car to pay for the wedding. A smarter person would have at least put the wedding charges onto a credit card that offers cash rebates! Yeah, use the freebies for a “bridemaids’” trip to Vegas. If they are true friends and worthwhile bridesmaids, the honor of being asked to be in the wedding should be reward enough.

$375 for a cheese tray? Someone’s walking around with $300 in his/her pocket.

$2,000 for a videographer? Betcha someone in the circle of family/friends would have done it for free, as a gift.

I cry to the powers that be: please, please, please, under no circumstances, allow this stupid couple to breed. Odds are that they’ll fall into the 50% divorce rate, no doubt brought on by their financial troubles, and no need to put a child thru that.

Okay, I can’t take the slow computer anymore. The mouse is sticky too. Fluffy out.

Two recent instances are puzzling me.

Friday, I ran into one of Token’s pals, who was on his way to a promotion party. I had a quick errand to run but told him I would meet him there. I showed up and got as far as the doorway of the ballroom, but there were just too many people, conversations, and clattered of beer steins for me to handle. I bolted out of there so quickly I bet there are skidmarks on the carpet (if that kind of thing is possible).

Today, I was supposed to go on a volksmarch with some coworkers. I woke up several hours beforehand but the thought of being with so many other people on a 5Km walk that ends in a smoky beer tent was too much for me. I fell back asleep and woke up far too late to make it on time.

This disturbs me because being reliable is my #1 priority. People who bail on me, even once, are written out of my book of “People I Like”. Okay, I might forgive someone that I really liked or had a really good excuse, but those exceptions are few and far between. Yet I did it twice in the same weekend. Yeah, I’m a hypocrite.

I have got to get out more. This is pathetic.

So there I was, dressed in ratty gym clothes searching for an empty cross trainer, when out of the blue pops Bunker Boy (christened as such on my old blog).

Backstory: I met him while deployed to Saudi Arabia over 2 years ago and could never really say more than short phrases in his presence because I thought he was such a hottie. Well, a mutual friend of ours, meddlesome but well-meaning, indicated this to Bunker Boy and I avoided him for the remainder of my time in the sandbox. And of course I had CE Boy #2 to keep me company so it really wasn’t that bad.

Grapevine told me he wound up in Germany and I saw him a time or two. My course of action was to promptly hide in the nearest corner, car, or tree to avoid running into him.

But not today!

He was so nice and just stood there talking to me for a few minutes, as if 2 years had not passed. I hope I didn’t blush too much. We later exchanged some email conversation. Not too bad.

Moral of the story: be not afraid to be friendly.

So far, life at the new office is a bit slow since I don’t know really what I am doing yet. I am posting from the library on my lunch break Yep, I can be a slacker.

Friday, one of my new coworkers (a nice lady,married, probably in her mid thirties, with an assortment of children per the photographs on her desk) asked if I had any children. I probably said “NO” a little too happily. She then asked if I was married, and again I replied with a “no”. Keep in mind that we work in a cube farm so there were plenty of people to overhear. She said something to the effect of “Oh it’s so good to see older women giving up marriage and family for their careers.”

WTF?

I think she meant it as a compliment but it amused the heck out of me.

For one, I am at least 10 years younger than her and last time I checked, 26 is not “old”.

I never gave up the idea of kids because I never wanted any.

I’m too paranoid to get married with the high statistics of divorce and my knack for attracting losers of all types (perhaps I will post about them at some point).

So a well-paying career is the only thing I can really count on, and unless we achieve world peace tomorrow, my job is secure.

I’ll stick with my framed photographs of my Mustang and motorcycle on my desk instead of generic chubby children any day, thank you very much.

I was planning to type out a whole blow-by-blow description of the recent parents + me trip to Paris, but since I am in an absolutely miserable self-pity mood right now, I’ll keep it short and sweet.

In my 2 visits to Paris, I have come to the conclusion that it is a city of contradictions. For example:

Right near the Arc de Triumph (where I stood for what felt like hours, spellbound by the 6 laned traffic circle with 12 entrances/exits) is the famous Champs de Elyssion (sp?) which h0uses a variety of expensive stores and of course the obligatory McDonalds’. Socialists must really cringe at that one. Outside of a ridiculously expensive designer shop that sells purses for $2,000 (you can get a quite good knock off in Korea for $30 without even hard bargaining) was a large pile of dog crap.

Yes, in my Mickey Mouse golf shirt, Sketchers, and Oakley knock-off backpack, I entered that store. I will not say the name because they are notorious for sueing. Beforehand, I was too nervous to go inside as there were very attractive men with wireless mouthpieces in delightful suits simply opening and closing doors, a la Agents from “The Matrix”. But seeing that piece of crap reminded me that the world is full of shit, literally and allegorically, thus giving me enough confidence to walk inside that store, gawk for a few minutes, and then go take photos outside of the Eiffel Tower. Viva le France.