First Day of Vacation

After a slacksterific day yesterday I found myself actually getting bored - which I consider to be a good sign that the tide of motivation is beginning to turn. We'll see what the festive season brings.

Last night I went to a "burgers and martini" place for dinner with two of my girl classmates, Kinase Girl and the Stealth Bomber, and another woman who plays soccer with KG. (We dubbed my friend Stealth Bomber one night when we realized we couldn't take her anywhere without her accumulating a fan club. She's this little, cute girl with big brown eyes and sleek seal-soft hair who looks quite innocent and demure - like Puss-in-Boots from Shrek 2 when he's being cuddly. Boys keep throwing themselves at her and behind the sweet exterior she is decidedly not demure. You also cross this woman at your own peril.)

We managed, maybe because there was a non-scientist present, to not talk shop all night. Not even a little bit! I was just as glad not to, honestly, because even though I am so happy for her, blah blah blah, I don't think I could stand to hear about Kinase Girl's Fantabulous Secret Revolutionary New Magical Kinase That Is Going To Cure Cancer. Or even bitch about Western blots with the S Bomb. The martinis were tasty and I had black cherry creme brulee for dessert and we mostly talked about boys . . . I'm sure we must have talked about something else, but I can't remember what.

[Pause to grin at moon-faced toddler who is running up and down the aisle of the cafe and is wearing a sweater with a moose on it. I am about to coo. Now he is examining his shoes. So cute.]

I keep buying jeans. Here's the thing about women's trendy-schmendy jeans, though: they are all made for seven-foot-tall Norwegians. Not only that, but they are weirdly sized according to waist circumference even though all jeans actually sit around the hips. This means that the number of the jeans may or may not have any relationship to whether it fits a person whose waist is that size, depending on whether she happens to have the same obscure waist-hip ratio they were using in the Vietnamese sweatshop that day. Gah!

I am average height for an American female and weigh pretty much exactly what height-weight charts (although I agree, Boomy, that those are stupid). My point is simply that I am about as medium-sized as it's possible to be in this country, aside from being short-waisted. I don't have long or short legs, or big or small hips; I'm neither chubby nor skinny. So why, why, why when I find a pair of jeans that fits are they always three inches too long???

Is this a conspiracy to make non-top model people insecure? Because for what these fucking jeans cost, they shouldn't give me a complex when I buy them. They should thank me and buy me flowers. Or is it that it's easier to shorten pants that are too long rather than make several different lengths in the same waist size? Because if that is the case there should be a jeans tailoring option at all trendy-schmendy stores so that people like me aren't having to go to Elegant Tailor or hack away at the hems when we get them home.

And while we're on the subject, my co-worker and I also think that women's shirts should come in a range of bust sizes, so that smallish people with significant boobage aren't always having that embarassing gape between the buttons of their shirts. Like, "Small A/B, Small C/D," etc. Would this be so difficult? Is the only answer to go to Thailand and have all of our clothes made for us? Don't even get me started on trying to buy non-boxy shirts for men in this country, but at least their dress shirts and jeans sizing has more than one metric!

Hm. I didn't mean to post all about clothes. I am going to finish my coffee and read the Dover Decision transcript now.

Happy Holidays, heretics.