July 22th, 11:30 | Am I the only one who still uses the goddamn dictionary?

Right. First up, I am banning the word "leverage" as a verb from my vocabulary forever more. Don't laugh -- this is harder than you think. Not only do I work in my company's flagship marketing building (and HQ), but they sell "solutions" (I kid you not; that's what the ads say). Any company that claims to sell "solutions" seems to also pride themselves on "leveraging" (by which they mean "bastardizing") the English language to murky new territories.

Nonetheless, I will be making my personal stand by refusing to ever use the word "leverage" except in that form, and only in reference to when there's a stick wedged under something heavy that someone's trying to move.

Foof. I've sure got my anal-retentive pants (fantastic image, eh?) on today, don't I? Sue me. Yesterday I took my first-ever course on technical writing (executive summary: as short as possible) and today I took another course (well, more of a rant, really) on the subject of common crimes committed (usually unwittingly) against the English language.

I know. My productivity knows no bounds! So how have you all been? I, personally, have noticed that my oft-spouted excuse for my complete lack of pop-culture ("Yeah, I don't watch TV") is becoming increasingly true; the only things I do watch are programs that my dad happens to be watching when I plop onto the couch next to him. This has limited my viewing to Jeopardy!, the programming on SpikeTV (namely CSI, VIP or RelicHunter), StarGate, or whatever (action) movie happens to be on. And that all suits me just fine. However, with the decrease in televised noise, my consumption of books seems to be on the rise. (And I'm not just talking about the eighteen feng shui manuals I half-read, half-skimmed.) My intake of, how shall we say?, Crappy Ironic Pop-Culture-Sendup/Analysis Books (henceforth referred to as PopLit (heh; PopLite?)) has increased dramatically.

Suddenly, I find myself struggling through Sex, Drugs and CocoPuffs (by Chuck Klosterman; fairly enjoyable), and not understanding the fifth page, because I haven't seen half of the movies he's making references to, and it's only on page six that I finally get this kid's reference to Lloyd Dobbler, because it's been so long since I've seen Say Anything. Didn't I get back into books so that I wouldn't have to "get" pop culture references? (In spite of my disgust, it's actually a fun read. I recommend it for anyone who's less of a dorky grandma than me.)

Also on the rise is my consumption of ChickLit. But this, at least makes sense. With the advent of last week's jarring rupture of the status quo, I fully expected an increase in three things:

the ratio of music from the "blue" (read: mopey/accoustic-y chick music) folder of mp3s
the watchage of shitty chickflicks
the amount of time spent sleeping

Shockingly, only the first of these has actually happened (the music is driving my dad bonkers; if anyone of you want to irk your fathers (assuming they have taste like mine does), buy a Lilith Fair cd and put it on repeat). Don't assume this means I'm well-adjusted and okay, though. Oh, no. Instead, I've replaced my crappy movies with crappy books (what else could prompt me to read the first of the horrendous Shopaholic books? Actually her style is pretty good, but the main character drives me into a murderous rage) and kept ridiculously busy (yay for intramural sports!) thus not allowing myself proper moping/sulking time.

I'm adjusting. Nevertheless, it doesn't change the fact that when my sister so cheerfully declares (a whole day after the news was broken) that an Extremely Eligible Guy in her workplace is available and Quite Possibly Interested, I am this close to whining "But I don't WANT to meet Potential Future Boyfriends! I want to watch shit movies, and mope and eat ice cream!!"

All things considered, I think I'm being quite well-behaved. I expect I'll be myself again by mid-August or so. I do have fairly long stretches of Being Me, with the occasional meltdown (today's was sparked when the lad in question bailed on our "let's try being friends" meet-up because he had a prior engagement with a... is there a polite word for fuckbuddy? How does one describe such a relationship in posh society?)

Well anyway. You get the idea. In the meantime, however, I'm making fairly good progress at designing a yoga program for myself to follow outside of the classes, that'll keep me learning new postures even if I don't sign up for the fall session, and I think that in general I'm healthier and have a firmer grasp on things that, if not now, will one day be Real Responsibilities.

I'm giving myself until mid-August to waver. After that, I had better feel good, damnit, because my life, right now, is fantastic.

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