Yeah, right.

Summer in the Grand Tetons

This morning I stepped outside and it smelled like September. Even though it’s still August. Barely.

What does September smell like, you ask? Well, it smells like the anticipation of school and remembering that you haven’t done your literature assignment yet and shopping for notebooks and looking for that one, perfect backpack.

It also smells like (and this is the feeling that I always get) the college admission exams are in less than a week and you are still behind and you haven’t even read the chapter on World War II,  let alone memorize it like you’re supposed to in Romanian schools and what’s the point anyways, we now know that more than half of what was in those history books was fabricated and probably not true anyways or, at best, a very skewed, twisted interpretation of history.

September smells like the end of fun and the beginning of waking up at 7am because classes start at 8 and even though it’s 7:30 you’re still sitting on the edge of the bed staring into the air and unable to wake up. Somehow you make it to class, and wait for recess. Recess in our schools is every 50 minutes so the entire day feels like a series of 50 minutes with interruptions of 10 minutes in which you reconnect, you talk, you gossip and hope to see the boy in the Physics department and awkwardly exchange hi’s.

But more than anything, September smells like the summer is gone and what have you done to remember it? Gosh, I can’t believe summer is over…

I was at Yellowstone. A repeat visit, I’ve seen the park a few years ago and really, really enjoyed it.

It’s a strange thing when you’re there. You expect to see animals frolicking but you probably won’t for a while and then you see some tiny spots in the distance and you stop the car and pull out your long lens and try to get a blurry picture. After a while you see animals closer to the road and get more and more excited and then, all of a sudden, there’s a bear or a bull or an elk right beside your car and all those other pictures become laughable.

So this one time we see a buffalo on the side of the road and, of course, what usually happens, there’s a huge backup because everyone stops to take a look at the animals. So I get out of the car, since traffic is stopped, and run towards the bulls. I didn’t notice that, at the same time, the bull was running towards me. Yikes.

I finally see out of the corner of my eye this huge buffalo and stop just in time to see him cross the street right in front of me. This is one of the pictures I took. He was, well, big.

I’ve always found it weird that people say “Fine, thanks” when asked “How are you?”. In the months after I moved here and someone would ask me “How are you?”, I would actually tell them how I was. “I’m a bit sad, just had a phone conversation with my friend and her mom is sick but hopefully she’ll be ok” or “I’m stuffed, just got back from lunch, they had the chicken special today, did you know that if you eat the entire thing you get a bad stomach ache?” and so on. But now I know. Nobody gives a crap, it’s just a greeting and that’s that.

I’ve also noticed that people never say “really crappy” when asked “how was your day?”. They generally say “Oh, it was one of those days”. Ah. Got it. One of THOSE days. Yup.

I had ONE OF THOSE DAYS yesterday. As a personal rule, Tuesdays are my worst week days because Monday is right after the weekend and you’re still a little bit in that state of mind, Wednesday is Hump day, you’re past the middle of the week and Thursday and Friday is practically weekend but Tuesdays are hopeless. However, this time it was a Thursday that turned out to be extremely crappy.

It started out with no warning - I wore a nice dress and cool shoes to work given that I had to go to a client meeting across the street and the morning was sunny, traffic not too bad, and I wasn’t desperately late for work. However, soon enough I started getting seriously off track when I got stuck in meetings all day with barely any time to get ready for my meeting and when it was time to go, I step outside and the rain starts poring down as if it was coming from a bucket.

Got to my meeting soaking wet, the client was late so I had to sit there in my soggy dress and ruined shoes and then run the meeting as if nothing ever happened. Gross and cold. Yuck.

After getting back to the office, even more meetings (which gave me no opportunity to change, dry or at least warm up) and then finally time came for me to go home. I was soooo looking forward to my car’s heated seats to dry off my dress…

However, as soon as I get on the elevator, push the button, go down to P3 - the elevator stops and I realize I’m trapped three floors under ground with no cell phone signal and nobody else around. I did hear some noises outside the door and I started banging and yelling and actually thought that someone was coming but minutes passed and there was no reply to my ”hello! hello! can you hear me?” cries.

I sounded the alarm bell repeatedly but nothing happened, nobody answered. There was a “Call” button which rang to an answering machine asking me for the extension that I was interested in. You have got to be kidding me…

Eventually, I managed to get a tweet out from my blackberry (thanks iPhone for letting me down) “I’m stuck in the elevator at work.” My boss saw it and called the building manager. I later found out that they were getting ready to leave but he managed to convince them that, no, the elevator is not only broken but there is someone actually trapped in there. If it weren’t for him, I would probably still be in there. So thanks.

After over an hour, someone finally came and let me out of there. I was kind of dizzy because there was very little air in that place so I didn’t even have the energy to lash out at them, I just walked to my car and drove home. In poring rain.

And then I found that my dog has crapped all over the house. Welcome home.

Cookie, like every dog that I’ve ever met, loves to be outside. She loves to chase and fetch a tennis ball and tries to dart out the front door every time she sees an opening.

This weekend was no exception. Right after I took this picture of her (was testing my new lens), I stepped outside to see what else I can photograph. But because I knew I wouldn’t be able to watch her, I sort of slammed the door in Cookie’s face and proceeded to walk around the house, camera in hand.

A few minutes later, I wanted to go back in to download my pics and I found that the door was locked. By my dog.

She probably tried to get out and follow me and jumped on the door and somehow hit the deadbolt thus locking me and my husband out with no key and no way to get back inside.

Adding insult to injury, she was still jumping up and down and barking at us and acting extremely flustered and angry for being left inside while we were watching her through the little window and trying to coax her into undoing what she just did. But that is probably next week’s lesson (week 1: learn to lock the door. Week 2: learn to unlock the door) so all we had was a very confused dog.

We were eventually rescued by someone who had one of our keys but the conclusion is this: beware of your dog. He/she may act like an innocent little puppy but they’ve been taking lessons in locking you out of your house while you weren’t looking.

I’m not kidding. 

This was in my spam today. The title was “Free Botox” so I HAD to open it. You see, us gals react to that faster than we do to “enlarge your penis” emails. Yes, I get those too. They’re probably confused or think that I am.

Anyway, I see this email and I click on it and I’m still not sure if this is funny, sad, outrageous or all the above.

Let’s just go line by line here: the email says free botox to the first 50 unemployed people who show on such and such day at their office. OK? So, this event (you can click on the picture to see the details) is for men and women who are probably at least in their thirties, have no job and no money  (presumably) but are really, really worried about wrinkles and frown lines.

I would assume that if you’re unemployed you have better things to worry about than wrinkles, no? Unless you are, say, Kate Moss  and the reason for your unemployment is that you’ve done too much coke to be able to hide your lines (see the pun there?) anymore. 

I’m trying to imagine the entire process here. Notice that you have to PROVE that you are unemployed before they can give you the Botox.

You walk in: “Hello.” “Hello miss/mister/madam, etc.” “I’m here for the free Botox.” “Oh, that’s wonderful. May I see your unemployment check?” “Oh, of course, here it is”. “Thank you ever so much. Do you also happen to have your termination letter?” “Sure, here you go.” “Thanks again, I really appreciate it. I see that  you have been let go because of chronic lateness. Very sorry to hear that. Now please have a seat and prepare to be poked with painful needles in your face and injected with a bunch of poison” “Yay!”

Seriously???