hot coffee girl

Hi there.

It happens to the best of us from time to time. We get too visible, there is too much at stake, there is something we have to say but can't. Miss Ann knows. So do some of the rest of you.

So we go away. If we can't stay away...we go somewhere else.

Which is what I've done. If I haven't told you already where I am and you want to know, drop me a line here. If you are a friend of coffee (not a friend of Dorothy, although that would be a bonus) ... I will let you know.

And if not...it's been a lot of fun. I hope to be back someday... 

Well, The Road Trip of '08 is over and I am back at work. It's rainy and Monday and I am not happy about either. I am ready to go again, but I know that's not going to happen. Well, this week, at least.

In the meantime...I will share with you things that I learned along the way:

• Florida is full of sweaty, sticky children who like to eat candy.
• That Emeril can really cook.
• Savannah is a gorgeous city.
• Work is just a job and caring about it so much that you neglect other parts of your life/make yourself sick/think that it’s anything more than just a job is just really dumb.
• I love Thomas the GPS. He gets me wherever I need to go and I don't have to think about it. 
• The Appalachian Mountains are very curvy to drive on, but really really beautiful.
• I like to knit.
• There is something to be said for having two days of bright sunshine and good tunes and wide open road ahead of you.
• There is no place like home.

After an ass-kicking winter, spring finally arrives in Cleveland, and I am packing up my bags and heading someplace even warmer. I am not the brightest star in the night sky, folks.

Okay, so it's not like I have much of a choice. A conference next week for work is landing me in Sunny Orlando for a few days, and I took the rest of the week off to not have to be at work. Here's my quandary. I am done with the conference stuff Wednesday at noon. I booked an evening flight back to Cleveland on Friday, hoping to have a few days to kick around and do nothing. I wanted The Boy to be able to join me, but the two dogs and one cat kind of made that difficult to swing this time around. That being said, I was looking at rental car deals for when I was in Florida after all of my colleagues left. I found this stupidly great deal that Hertz is running that made me rethink my plans a little. They are apparently trying to move cars from the South to their Northern locations for the summer months, and I can pick up a small car on Sunday when I get there, and return it the following Sunday in Cleveland for ... get this ... $62 including tax for the whole week with unlimited miles.

Which means that I could jump in the car when I am done with the conference and cruise the open road for a few days while I made my way back home to The Boy and The Babies. Kind of like Thelma and Louise, but solo and without the messy, sad ending. I did the math, and the fuel costs wouldn't be crazy-high for the 800 mile jaunt. I wouldn't do it all in one day...but it's not THAT long of a drive anyhow.

What do you think? Do you think I should try to find some cheap hotel in Orlando and just kick around pool side until Friday, or should I hit the open road and enjoy a few e-mail and meeting free days? 

Call it, kids.

I was attacked this morning on the way to work.

It was quite brutal, actually. There I was, driving along, minding my own business. The sun was shining. And then…

This horrible, drooling, snarly green-eyed monster whacked me over the head and almost knocked me out. The sun was no longer shining, and all I could see was terrible shades of gray and green. (The eye-bursting type? Hmm. Be careful what you wish for.) He dragged me to the side of the road and proceeded to beat the living shit out of me.

“Your parents went to the casino this weekend and won a thousand bucks and the last time you went, you didn’t win anything!” Whack!

“Those cute new shoes that you wanted last week just went on sale and your best friend bought the last pair! Ha!” Thud!

“See that impossibly thin girl across the street? She eats whatever she wants and never gains a pound because of her amazing metabolism. She doesn’t even work out, fatty.” Smash!

“You can’t even cast on properly and look at that gorgeous scarf she knit in an hour.” Whomp!

I lay there…beaten. It all seemed too much to take. Then he started making fun of me.

“Awww. You feel so bad for yourself don’t you?! It’s not enough to have food in your belly and a roof over your head? You have to want stupid shit? You know those shoes you thought were so great? Well, they hurt her feet and she had to charge them anyhow. You don’t have a credit card balance and no mortgage or car payments.”

I spat out some blood and tried to protest.

“Shuttup!” he shouted. “You want that girl’s metabolism, and yet you are healthy while there are plenty of people who are sick and just want to survive. You want a vacation, but have a job that sends you all over the country for free…”

“Seriously?! What the hell do you want?” he growled.

I picked myself off of the ground and wiped my mouth. I looked that malicious, awful, nasty monster straight in the face, and said, “Your eyes are so green. Are those contacts? Really, I wish my eyes were some interesting color and not so boring brown.”

An excerpt from Phil's Proof:

The blogosphere is dead. Truly. I’m lazy when it comes to finding new blogs to read. I like to pick out a few comfortable places to settle down with, then ride ‘em out till the end. Unfortunately, it seems most of these wonderful blogs have slowly but surely lapsed into stagnation. I have to wonder though, what is the average lifetime of a blog? From experience, it seems to be under 2 years. Blogs with their own domain — indicative of perhaps more dedication by its owner — seem to last a little longer, but not much. My two gal pals have deserted me; enter Melodrama. Hot Coffee Girl has posted a few rubbish entries (yes, you heard me, woman — absolute rubbish!), and Rhys has more or left me for dead. Probably for her burgeoning webcam fetish business.

Hey, Phil, big talk from a man who left his Christmas Template up until well into the New Year.  

So, I am posting for shit about shit. What do you want to hear? That I get up, go to work, come home, and do it all again the next day? Yawn. I am boring. I have nothing to say. I am not miserable. I am just pabulum. Vanilla ice cream. Beige.

I want to be eye-bursting green again, I just don't know how to get it back.  

Maybe when I go see Avitable later this month, he'll have some extra lying around he can lend me.