Hump Day Wonders

Four innuendos on Hump Day:

"The male erection. Pitchin' a tent, sportin' a wood, stiffie, flesh rocket, tall tommy, Mr. Morbis, the march is on, icycle has formed, Jack's magic beanstalk, rigor mortis has set in, Mr. Mushroom-head, mushroom on a stick, purple headed yogurt slinger... oh, and a pedro."

Today I told a complete stranger that, "I like 'em really stiff. The stiffer the better. You couldn't make it too stiff for me." He didn't crack. Not one giggle. Once out of my mouth, I giggled. He just paused, then continued the conversation.

The color guy, John Kelly, calling the Avs game tonight said, "He just couldn't get it up...", which made me giggle. I'm guessing all my hockey friends giggled when they heard it, too.

The male facilitator on a work project said to me today, "Bettina, you make it so hard. Do you know how hard you're making it?" I laughed out loud. The rest of the group just looked at me.

Coach told me today, "Don't get on top of me!" I just giggled.

Makes me think the people I hang out with have dirty minds and the rest of the world does not. I think the rest of the world might be missing out on something.

Crazy things I learned on Hump Day:

A baby with two faces was born in India. She drinks from both mouths and blinks all four eyes. She only has one brain, though, so when she gets older, will she be able to have two independent conversations? The people in her village think she's a reincarnated Hindi goddess. What a fabulous culture to embrace her and worship her. I believe she would be shunned if she had been born in America. I may relocate to India. Love their food and they don't eat cows, either.

Chinese scientists serenade abandoned wolf cubs to help them learn to howl. One of the only two reasons I love Chinese scientists. That and the pandas.

The kitchen is the dirtiest room in the house. Not just my house, everyone's house. In fact, your cutting board (not mine, I'm sure) has roughly 200% more fecal bacteria than your toilet seat. You're not safe at work, either. There are about 400 times more bacteria on your desktop at work than on a toilet seat.

Here's a little known fact about laundry: washing your underwear with the rest of your clothing can cause hepatitis A and stomach flu from the fecal-borne organisms that burrow into clothing, even during washing. I'm thinking of going to disposable undies or just going commando 100% of the time.

In a study of cyclists who drank chocolate milk after riding until they were energy depleted, they were able to ride 50% longer than cyclists who chugged Gatorade or other sports drinks. Is it the milk or the chocolate?

Fat is the body's back up fuel system. The role it plays in the body is that when there is no carbohydrate around, fat will become the primary energy fuel. Unless, of course, your body is depleted of carbs. Then you burn muscle as fuel. This is bad.

SLEEP: Still not enough. At least I'm not this bad: One of the longest recorded sleepless stints dates back to 1964 (I wasn't even born yet) when a San Diego high school student, supervised by Stanford scientists, stayed awake for 264 hours and 12 minutes--a bit more than 11 days. It was previously believed that going without sleep for so long would cause serious mental damage. (I would argue that those who see me on 0-4 hours of sleep would agree with this.) It proved untrue, however, when the student, who sacked out for 15 hours, returned to his normal waking/sleep schedule with no noticeable aftereffects. That we know of. Oh, and clinical tests revealed that women need more sleep than men. That's because we do more in our waking hours than men do. I'm just saying.

"If I didn't wake up, I'd still be sleeping."

RAM: "Let someone else handle all the tiny details today--you've got bigger fish to fry. Somehow, you need to get a handle on the long-range plans for your family or workplace pretty soon."

Ram: 6

B: 2 (I'll fry 'em, but I'm not eating any fish. I've decided. Just. Can't. Do. It.)

Fish and Fetus

"Repeat after me: Fish are our friends...NOT FOOD!"

So I've taken to seeing a dietitian to help me sort out my inability to eat food and figure out what food I might be able to eat. Coach has me keeping a food log to try to track what works, what doesn't, etc. Today, after being force-fed an egg sandwich (with YUCKY mayonnaise on it!) I was told I basically eat too little of the right things, except for the fruits, veggies, and tofu, and not enough of anything else. (Apparently, protein bars are not meals. Neither are protein drinks. Hmmm...I'll make a note of that.) Then, I was told to EAT FISH. Um, what part of vegetarian are you not getting? Vegetarian - one who does not eat flesh, fish nor fowl.

I ate a couple bites of trout about 32 years ago. Heaved it into the river. Fish smells B-A-D. No getting around it. Fish is nasty. Oh, and it's not just any fish I need to eat. It needs to be cold water wild fish. What the hell is that? I wonder if there's a soy-fish-substitute out there somewhere...

And eggs. I'm supposed to eat the whole egg (with Omega-3), cooked, thank gawd. But yolk and all...ugh. Yolks rank right up there with fish. YUK. It's chicken fetus. I do not want to eat chicken fetus. I can get the whites down by not thinking about what they are and cooking them with a ratio of more salsa than whites, but the FETUS? I just don't know about this.

I also just don't like chickens so maybe that feeds into my dislike of yolks. They are mean-spirited birds. Nasty, mean, bitchy birds. One of my jobs on the farm (yep, born on a farm, most likely retarded...) was to get the eggs in every morning. You need to know, chickens do not fear children. Some of those damn birds wouldn't get off their roost to give up their eggs. Well, they'd get down right snippy with me and I of course, would chicken out. (HA!) Then the eggs would rot, bad things happened, dad yelling like a wild man, blah, blah, me in big fat trouble. So my grandpa says to me, "Just go in, put your hand on the side of the chicken on its roost, and say 'Shoo bird, shoo bird,' as you use your hand to up-roost it." Sure. Good plan for an 8 year old. The next morning my dad says, "Don't you leave one egg in that hen house or you'll be sorry." I sure as hell didn't want to be sorry so I knew what I had to do. I gathered all the eggs the hens had abandoned in their nests and then on to the evil hens who thought those eggs belonged to them. (Wait, um...yeah, they laid the egg, so, doesn't that make it their egg? So, I'm stealing their babies???? I had that very conversation with my crazy gram. She told me she and grandpa owned the chickens so anything they laid belonged to them, not the birds. My grandparents were slave-chicken owners!) The VERY FIRST hen I walked up to, I stuck my hand out, pursed my lips to say, "Shoo bird," and that f*cking bird flew (yes, flew) off her roost and PECKED ME IN THE LIP. "Plugged me clean through." There was a complete hole through my upper lip. I bled like a stuck hog. Needless to say, I dropped the entire basket of eggs and raced into the house, which was a good 200 yards from the coop. I looked like my face had been through the wood chipper: tears, blood (lots of blood) and snot all teamed up to make me a horrific sight that garnered all the sympathy I would need. I never had to get eggs again. I did have to clean the hog pen, though, so, good trade, right?

"So laying eggs all your life and then getting plucked, stuffed and roasted is good enough for you, is it?" "It's a livin'."

I really don't have any traumatic story about a fish trying to bite my finger off...I just think they smell like rotten ass and I'm just not fond of eating rotten ass.

All in my quest to build muscle instead of losing it week after week...fish and fetus. Yum Yum.

"Your ideals and values are on the table now, which doesn't mean that you're shifting gears -- just that you need to make some tough choices. Once you see it all clearly, you should know what to do."

Ram: 6

B: 1

DAMN THE RAM!

Sleep Study: I'm starting FOR SURE tomorrow night...I'm only looking at about 3 hours tonight so that won't work.

Confusion and Morals

Saturday: "You are often the one who starts the ball rolling and today is no exception. Your spirit of adventure is fully engaged and you are eager for new experiences -- so see what kind of good trouble you can stir up!"

Sunday: "You need to stick it out through the current situation, no matter how much you want to cut and run. Your perseverance will pay off in the long run in a big, almost unimaginable, way."

I'm getting mixed signals from my dear, sweet Mr. Ram O'Confusion. I'll give you Saturday but Sunday? I don't think so. I am more of a cut-and-run gal, rather than a stick-it-out gal. By now, he should know that.

Ram: 4

B: 1

Moral dilemma. Moral imperative. What's the gold standard? Who's morals are we being judged against? If it's our own morals and we chose the path we think isn't immoral but it's immoral to others, how can it be deemed immoral? Who gets to judge? Just wondering.

"Life isn't simple, it's complicated. We're all just thrown in here together, in a world full of chaos and confusion, a world full of questions and no answers, death always lingering around the corner, and we do our best."

"To the death!"

"No, to the pain!"

"I'm afraid I'm not familiar with that one."

"I'll explain and I'll be sure to use small words so you can understand."

Innuendo

"Someday, you'll have to make good on your innuendos."


A woman who just ordered a shot of tequila at a bar in Cherry Creek (Funny, it wasn't GKL...):

• "Just get in me and get it over with it."

On the bench at my last men's game:

• "B came but Will didn't." "I've heard that's a problem with Will!"
• "Boys, be harder on your sticks."
• "I couldn't get it up; too much rubber, not enough wood."

Coach: "I just can't get used to my knob."

Me: "Would some wax help?"

Coach: "Don't come on my face! Come across my face! So rude!"
Me: "Excuse me."

• Coach: "No way. I punch the clock, put my sack lunch on the nightstand and get ready for a full day's work. Sometimes I wear a scuba mask and fins."
• Me: "Wow. So much for research."

Three to 13 Minutes

Here's some light reading for you, from today's Denver Post. It's so delicious, I had to share.

Let love endure, but keep sex short
by Megan K. Scott, AP
Maybe men had it right all along: It doesn't take long to satisfy a woman in bed.
A survey of sex therapists concluded the optimal amount of time for sexual intercourse was
three to 13 minutes. The findings, to be published in the May issue of the Journal of Sexual Medicine, strike at the notion that endurance is the key to a great sex life.
If that sounds like good news to you, don't cheer too loudly.
The time does not count foreplay, and the therapists did rate sexual intercourse that lasts from one to two minutes as "too short."
Researcher Eric Corty said he hoped to ease the minds of those who fret that "more of something good is better, and if you really want to satisfy your partner, you should last forever."
The questions were not gender-specific, Corty said. But he said prior research has shown that both men and women want foreplay and sexual intercourse to last longer.
Dr. Irwin Goldstein, editor of the Journal of Sexual Medicine, cited a four-week study of 1,500 couples in 2005 that found the median time for sexual intercourse was 7.3 minutes. Women were armed with stopwatches.
It's difficult for both older men and young men to make sexual intercourse last much longer, said Marianne Brandon, a clinical psychologist and director of Wellminds Wellbodies in Annapolis, MD.
"There are so many myths in our culture of what other people are doing sexually," Brandon said. "Most people's sex lives are not as exciting as other people think they are."
Fifty members of the Society for Sex Therapy and Research in the US and Canada were surveyed by Corty, an associate professor of psychology at Penn State Erie, and student Jenay Guardiani.
Thirty-four members, or 68 percent, responded, although some said the optimal time depended on the couple.
Corty said he hoped to give an idea of what therapists find to be normal and satisfactory among the couples they see.
"People who read this will say, 'I last five minutes or my partner lasts eight minutes,' and say, 'That's OK,'" he said. "They will relax a little bit."

I have questions.

1. There's a Journal of Sexual Medicine??? How do you get a subscription to that?
2. More isn't better??? Clearly this guy a.) doesn't have orgasms, b.) has never tried Turkish coffee and dark Swiss chocolate, c.) has no addictions, and/or d.) was born on a farm and is retarded.
3. See? GKL, you had it right ALL along! Two minutes is just not enough! You didn't need a research study to tell you that!
4. 1,500 couples signed up to have SEX for research? Why do I never see that add in the paper?
5. Did they get paid for the research?
6. Does that make them hookers?
7. Does that make the researcher their P.I.M.P.?
8. The women were "armed with stopwatches?" [Okay, hon, on your marks...get set...OH! FALSE START!!! Do over.] Did they have starter pistols, too? Maybe just those into S&M got those...
9. "It's difficult for older and younger men to make it last much longer." So...we gals should just keep finding, what, 27-yr olds???? What's the magic age? 24? 29? 34? Is there a range to choose from?
10. There's a "Society for Sex Therapy and Research?" Are they accepting new members? Where do they meet? Hourly motels? How long are their meetings? Between 3-13 minutes?
11. "Most people's sex lives aren't as exciting as they brag about?" [Unless they are porn stars.] REALLY??? Brilliant. This guy is brilliant!
12. Relax. Have sex. Take as long or as short as you like. Why not?

I leave you with these quotes, also quite delicious.

"You know how they say to never drink and drive? Well, never drink and bone."

"Oops. That's not your vagina. That's your asshole."

"…and then your Mommy said, "Just do it already!" which was very confusing to Daddy, so I took the most literal translation."

"Do you want to do it doggie style? You're not going to fuck me like a dog. It's doggie style. It's just the style. We don't have to go outside or anything."

APRIL FOOL'S!!!

This was the BEST birthday, um, in a very long time. I was going to say EVER, but I think my 30th was perdy damn good, too. So was my 20th...I was in Vienna for that one...ah, good times...no foolin'!

39 Fun things to do/see/get when you're a fool and want to celebrate it:

1. Waking up to a GIANT pot of brewed NM Pinon coffee
2. Drinking all 48oz of #1---powered me through #s 3-39
3. Skate for 4.5 hours, 1.5 hours of that on your very own private sheet of ice (I should just stop there because it couldn't possibly get any better than that!!!)
4. Getting half an hour and a Sk8nSht comp'ed by rink guy because it's my Day! (Oh, that's almost as good as #3.)
5. Laughing hysterically with teammates at 5:15AM lesson...KB going ass-first over the pads, into the net...
6. All my fav songs played at the rink and volume at the max!
7. No other coaches & students during my lesson. (Very close to being as good as #3.)
8. Fruit basket from my mama (I knew I should have stopped with #3!)
9. Fruit basket with ONE York Peppermint Patty. (Things that make me go, "hmmmm...")
10. BOD made up for #8/9 by making me HOMEMADE strawberry cupcakes (YUMYUMYUM!)
11. Calls from all my fam and good friends
12. Target gift card
13. iTunes gift card
14. Archiver's gift card
15. Enchanted...Patrick Dempsey is h-o-t.
16. Straight hair, and I didn't put any effort into it
17. SWEET card from H...awwwwww.....that's my guy!
18. Framed pic of J-ML taking a wicked slap-shot (YES on the right foot!!!)
19. Gorgeous double ring silver necklace from TFNY'S (perdy, so perdy! LOVE the little blue boxes!)
20. Dinner (Thai food-yummy) with good friends in Denver, and they live in WY!
21. German Riesling x 2
22. Juicy Juice (thanks, SV!)...Let it Bee, tee hee!
23. St. Liberata (needed her Saturday night apparently!)
24. Taking #23 out with me to be my wingman every time I party. She can be trusted. Some guys, not so much.
25. Vodka/crans at the bar
26. Blues/rock bands at the bar
27. Dinner and drinks in Denver
28. Card from my boss that says, "Wishes for a great day to a fool...no foolin'!" He's a funny guy!
29. Basket of blooming perennial bulbs (my fav) from mama---to make up for #8/9? No! It was BOGO at the floral shop! No kidding.
30. Gift card for a spa-pedi from my staff! And it's at my fav salon! They are awesome!
31. Hearing my 8-yr old nephew sing, "Happy Birthday to you, you're a hundred and two, you look like a monkey and you live in a zoo...or maybe you smell like one too!"
32. Didn't care for the 102 part in #31...he's 8, what does he know?
33. Favorite work colleague singing to my voice mail box from her hospital bed, at the top of her lungs in her narcotic-induced state, at 3:15AM, "HAPPY, um, DAY, ah, BIRTHDAY, and...ah...oh, yeah, B-girl! Happy something, um...yes, right, HAPPY! HAPPY!" Don't panic. Narcotics are prescribed and necessary for horrific bike accident.
34. No management meetings at work for one whole day. (Nearly as good as #3, but not quite. Need more of #1 to get through them.)
35. Confirmation email from Nike...Team A-B is officially registered for the SanFran Women's Marathon. WOO HOO!!!
36. Finding a gas station with gas for $3.06/gal! It was $3.19 most everywhere else.
37. #36 was ON my way, not OUT of my way!
38. Avs clinching a playoff berth with
39. Peter the Great's first goal of the season!!!

Gift from my Ram: "You should find that people are more willing than ever to help you out with your various plans and projects, so don't be shy about asking! You may find that they're in need of some serious guidance, though."

Ram:4

B:0

Sleep Study v 2.1: if you only get a couple hours of sleep several nights in a row, it'll feel like you have a hangover without the fun the night before.

12 Things I learned the past three days:

1. Startling fact #17: I am too old for a babysitter. This is a harsh reality that I have to take care of myself. "I think if you wanted a babysitter, you should marry Mary Poppins."

2. Startling fact #17a: I need to take control of the outside factors to play better hockey.

3. Not-so-Startling fact #10: I don't like getting yelled at. "It makes me feel small and powerless."

4. I don't like interlopers at the coffee shop. [You know them. You're sitting there minding your own business and next thing you know they saddle up next to you with a vague, "Can I sit here?" and proceed to sit down, before you can answer, and unload their crap so you have to move your crap to make room for them. This happened to me on Friday. I was updating my calendar and was using about two square feet of space at the counter. I just wanted to be left alone in peace to drink my coffee. There were 11 empty seats in the coffee shop. WHY DO YOU NEED TO SIT NEXT TO ME???? I've had a rough morning!!! I just want to drink my Joe alone!!! The lady that did this also had some disgusting salad with fish in it. It smelled like ass-fish AND to top it off, she was a SMACK-EATER!! You know them, too. They eat with their mouths open and smack-smack-smack their food. HOLY HELL, GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME!!! At some point, I will say this to these rude strangers. I think the only reason I don't is because I'd most likely get banned from the coffee shop and then I'd be very, very sad.]

5. $9 for a salad is just too much freakin money to pay for rabbit food. I got a salad for lunch on Friday at Mad Greens. It was a "Small Build Your Own" and it cost me $8.69. Here were the ingredients:

• spinach (raw, leafy)
• grape tomatoes
• chick peas (canned)
• soy beans (boiled)
• tofu (raw, marinated in ginger vinegar)
• red onions (raw)
• broccoli (par-boiled)
• light on the light red pepper dressing

ALMOST NINE DOLLARS for a salad with a total calorie content of 305??? Outrageous. And it's not like it's the MOST tasty salad ever. It's alright and it feeds the beast, but, really, $9???

6. I got an average of 4.5 hours of sleep each night. Not enough to qualify for my unscientific sleep study and not enough to function well for long. That will be my Sleep Hypothesis #2.

7. The Red Rocks workout is a KICK ASS workout. I burned 2200 calories in the 2.5 hour sweat-fest. Check it out: http://www.redrocksfitness.com/. Holy smokes! It's my new favorite workout. You get to workout in one of the most beautiful outdoor theaters in the world: stairs, stairs, and more stairs, 300 pushups, more dips than I could count, sit-ups with rocks in our hands, resistance bands leashed around our waists as we ran UP the stairs, all to some rocking music to keep us going....whew! SO MUCH FUN! If you are in CO, you should check this one out. And, the guy does it for FREE!!! Just show up and sweat. Oh, bring gloves. That was a lesson learned the hard way...

8. I like drinking with my hockey friends. GKL is my good, good, vodka friend. I love her. Five vodka crans and five shots (give or take a couple...I lost count) are too much in one night, though. I am too old for that, I think. If you do drink that much, make sure you drink an Emergen-C before you go to bed. (Put one in your wallet now so you're prepared the next time because most likely there will be a next time, sometime.) Helps with the morning after.

9. Know what else helps? An EYE OPENER at the RFL. Yummy bloody mary. Possibly the best I've ever had. Highly recommend it. (When you get the "EYE OPENER?" invite on your car the next morning, you accept. It's the polite thing to do.)

10. I like drinking at bars that remind me of MT. RFL could be on any street corner in any town in MT. Cozy. Friendly. No crazy yuppies. And CHEAP drinks! Ahhhhh....the taste of home....

11. If you do drink too much, make sure your good friends take your keys, take care of you and drive you to their house to sleep. Don't try to take their picture though, because you're probably too drunk to hold the camera steady. Thanks He(a)rds for taking good care of me!!!

This is GKL showing me her "juicer."

12. Coach is a lightweight. I edited the other terms used when he left early.

Innuendo from BOD at our hockey game tonight : "I don't know if he's hard but he is coming fast."

A teaser for Friday:

"You're feeling pretty good about where you are, but you're just restless enough to want to look further. See what you can find out beyond your borders--you never know where the next big thing will come from." My beloved Ram of Aries, you big tease!

Oh, I have a perdy good idea!

If I go to sleep RIGHT now, I could actually get six full hours. Okay. Zzzzzzzzzz. See? Three hours last night makes it really easy to nod off just about anywheZzzzzzz.....

"Ze Germans are ze schmartest people in ze worlt!"

I love the German people, I do. But sometimes they make me say, "Was das Bumsen??" [Loosely: "What the f*ck??]

They name the dispensers in their bathrooms, in ENGLISH...crazy English at that.

Lady Killer: These are paper bags for feminine products, I'm guessing...I actually brought one back to add to my scrapbook. [The unused bag, moron!] I just didn't think anyone would believe me if I didn't have proof.





Big Willy: The toilet paper dispenser is my favorite, for OBVIOUS reasons...

Soap Susi: She's a shy, puckish thing with industrial strength soap that will eat the skin from your hands if you leave it on long enough. (The Germans are germophobes {Misophobia or Mysophobia} for the most part.)

And last but not least, Paper Jack. He's a straight forward, hard working, rough, 45lbs stock paper towel dispenser. Towels double as mid-grain sand paper.

These pictures were taken in a quaint, very pricey restaurant where we celebrated the life of my Oma after her funeral. She loved that little restaurant. The first time we went there was on her 70th birthday [but I don't recall the group of crazy dispensers in the bathroom---I'm sure I would have mocked them back then, too.] She called ahead to make sure the cook would make me a vegetarian dish. I overheard her telling him, in the typical direct German tone, that bread and cheese are not an acceptable meal for a vegetarian so he'd better come up with something substantial and tasty. And he did! [Everyone did what Oma told them to do. She had a way of convincing anyone to do just about anything.] He made me some yummy vegetable gratin that I've never been able to replicate. Oma always made sure I was well taken care of...at this meal after her funeral, I had my choice of cheese on toasted bread or cheese on sprouted grain bread. I miss her.

Here's a picture from that trip. [My relatives eating at said restaurant. I'm not even sure who all of those people are...random folks looking for a free meal?]
I swear, this will not turn into a vacation blog. I don't even take vacations unless, apparently, there is a funeral involved. Proof? In the past four years, the only time off I've taken was for 1.) Opa's funeral, 2.) Oma's funeral, 3.) Gram's funeral...in that order. Crazy. Oh, and I'm fresh out of grandparents so no more vacation funerals for them!

So I was thinking about these funny dispensers today because I heard a scientist on the radio talking about all the germs in public bathrooms, and how you can catch all kinds of shit (pun intended) just by WALKING into a public bathroom. Now, I am a germophobe from way back. (See reference above regarding German people.) It takes all my resolve and the past 38 years gaining the strength to even go into a public bathroom, let alone to USE one! [It's true. As a child, okay, up until about five years ago, I never used public bathrooms unless I was drunk; too drunk to even remember using them. But my friends were witnesses, so I guess I did.] I did not need to hear this guy yammer on about the diseases living on the sink, soap dispenser, towel dispenser, etc., let alone the toilet! Ick! My skin is itchy just thinking about it. Oh, and those paper seat covers? Don't bother. Basically, after going into a public bathroom, you should strip naked, burn your closes and shoes, go through haz-mat decontamination, and dip yourself in bleach.

I bring this up because at the Avs game last night I had to go into the Pepsi Center bathroom to vomit. (I warned you earlier that food does not like me.) I can't imagine anything worse than having to stick your face near the seat, as opposed to your bum. I made it about four feet away and couldn't go any closer. I should have tipped the cleaning lady, except I'm not sure anyone had cleaned that toilet in about a month. Bad Karma points for me: -12.

"Next time why don't you just give me a paper cut and pour lemon juice on it!"

SLEEP STUDY: Was das Bumsen! I don't have time to sleep! I can say, unequivocally, on three hours of sleep a night I can fall asleep just about anywhere throughout the day. That is B's Sleep Theory #1.

Is the freakin universe trying to tell me something??

"Now is the time to make your move -- even if you're sure you're not quite ready. Your positive attitude and energetic spirit are perfect for making things happen and you sure know how to improvise!"

Ram: TWO

B: ZERO

I need to figure out how to improvise in all areas of my life...especially with a stick and puck. Actually, I've always hated improvisation. Just give me the notes/rules/guidelines/script and I'll play/abide by/follow/read them! I don't want out of my box. I'm perfectly content in my box. (TEE HEE HEE! Totally unanticipated innuendo!)

"All right, you're a reindeer. Here's your motivation: Your name is Rudolph, you're a freak with a red nose, and no one likes you. Then, one day, Santa picks you and you save Christmas. No, forget that part. We'll improvise... just keep it kind of loosey-goosey. You HATE Christmas! You're gonna steal it. Saving Christmas is a lousy ending, way too commercial. ACTION!"

And here's a quote directed at me this week, "DO SOMETHING! Keep moving, fake a move, DO SOMETHING. Just DON'T STOP! DON'T YELL OUT SOMETHING! DON'T QUIT! " Little voice in my head, "That's a lot to remember." (And in rereading this quote = MORE innuendo!)

UPDATE to Nicknames:

• A sportscaster on the local TV station in Great Falls, MT, used to call me Funky Cool Bettina. No kidding. Of course, he was always drunk when he called me that, but so was I! (Thanks for reminding me, GKL!)


• Zack from PB calls me Snipe, after watching me nail the crossbar about six times in a row at a Sk8nSht.


• And how could I forget H's new name for me: Donkey Driver????? This refers more the sound he made imitating me, rather than how I actually drive, though.

Sleep Study Update:

Four hours a night is just not allowing me to draw any conclusions or form any hypotheses. I'm in study-delay mode. They said something about lack of sleep effecting memory, but I can't remember what it was...