Hacked

I hate to tell you all like this but unfortunately hackers have also posted MY (un)star studded T-Mobile address book online. In a strange twist, my friends report not one phone call from fans. I guess you all just aren't as important as Vin Diesel. Sorry to be the one to tell you.

Deadline, Literally

I'm helping to put together a new Code of Conduct and Ethics policy where I work and I got distracted by this article that was linked to the site where I'm researching other similar policies. Allow me to just preview a little bit of the article below:

Consider the events of April 8, 2003. Early that morning, Al Jazeera correspondent Tareq Ayyoub was reporting from the network's Baghdad bureau. He was providing an eyewitness account of a fierce battle between US and Iraqi forces along the banks of the Tigris. As he stood on the roof of the building, a US warplane swooped in and fired a rocket at Al Jazeera's office. Ayyoub was killed instantly. US Central Command released a statement claiming, "Coalition forces came under significant enemy fire from the building where the Al-Jazeera journalists were working." No evidence was ever produced to bolster this claim. Al Jazeera, which gave the US military its coordinates weeks before the invasion began, says it received assurances a day before Ayyoub's death that the network would not be attacked.

Just when I think things can't get more unbelievable, they do.

Oh how I love thee, Crème Brule

Here I am on Thursday night with nothing better to do. I had some humorous stories to tell but I wonder if maybe they haven't grown stale with the time that has passed them by. I've been busy at work with [gasp] work and after hours taking care of a boyfriend with stomach flu.

There was, for example, Friday night when apparently this city was out of fast food...or at least beef. I went to two Taco Bells (out of beef and tacos) and a Krystal (out of the signature Krystal burger). I briefly flirted with the idea of going to the Sonic or Wendy's but then thought the better of it and took my bad luck as a sign from God that I shouldn't be eating fast food in a city that's so grossly obese. (And now we know WHY. I mean, they ate the friggin' town out of fast food!) I was, however, able to procure a chicken sandwich from Burger King for lunch today and a Wendy's Jr. Cheeseburger Deluxe for dinner last night, so all must be right with the local fast food world. (We have a food shortage at my house right now and I'm just not mentally up to the challenge of facing my ghetto supermarket right now.)

There was also a delightful Valentine's Day double dinner date with China Girl and her German BF at the conclusion of which a plate of gelato milk came out as one of our deserts. The French chef was so mortified he bought us a round of cognac in the hopes, I guess, that we'd become so drunk (we'd already had cocktails, a bottle of champagne and a bottle of red wine) that we'd forget it happened. It wasn't my desert so I wasn't too broken up about it. I was sad, however, that they were out of the cappuccino Crème Brule I ordered. But they did at least have a replacement Crème Brule that was so good that I wanted to stick my face in the bowl and lick out the bits of cream stuck in waves of the dish. But I thought maybe that wasn't the last imagine I wanted China Girl and the German BF to have of me. They left the next morning for China. And I as I predicted in my last entry, my life has returned to the category of "rather boring."

Not to worry, though. I may soon have the stomach flu myself and then I'll have lots of disgusting vomit and diarrhea stories to tell.

Girl in the City

So I actually find myself with a little time today to write - my work for the day completed and it being after the hour that anyone will conceivably call me back. I've had quite the social life here recently, due entirely to several of my friend visiting from their wildly exciting lives in Asia. Also, a third friend has returned from her brief experiment of living in Oregon where, shockingly, she learned to love the South. Tuesday we went to our local (meaning fake) Pat O'Brien's to celebrate the Mardi Gras. That meant drinking too many hurricane but miraculously not passing out in our own vomit. Then last night it was a dinner for seven, followed by some very bad math and more drinking. However, after the weekend slush fest and Tuesday's excess, I stuck with water.
I was so busy this week that I totally missed The Gilmore Girls AND The West Wing. I don't know what's come over me. But I have been distracted by real life and TV just can't compare to the exciting drama that is the Jeff Gannon/James Guckert White House saga.

Don't worry though, soon this will all be over - the Thailand-based Peace Corps friend (heretofore referred to as "Thai Girl") has already returned home and her China-based twin (who, in an homage to David Bowie, will now be known as China Girl) leaves Tuesday - and I'll return to my normally scheduled home-bound life and resume my whine-o-blog, complaining about local drivers, television, food, work and anything else I can dream up while sitting at my semi-cubicle.