Words to use when you feel like sweating the small stuff...

"Pole vaulting over mouse turds"

This phrase has great use when people ask you, "What you are doing?" and you would like to abruptly end the conversation. Also useful when the little things start to freak you the F$@k out and you need to divert attention from puffy cheeks and the fistful of your own hair poking out between your fingers.

It is a fantastic phrase that was given to me by my dad, who also defines oddities which occur from complex problems as the "Cosmic Crapshoot."

Colbie Caillat is dead to me...for now anyway

Last week I had the displeasure of enduring a poorly done concert. In fact, it was so poorly done, this was the first concert in which I have actually exited the building to remove myself from the experience.

I've been a Colbie Caillat fan since shortly after her album was available on iTunes. I've taken pleasure with her soothing voice and catchy lyrics over many Sunday morning mochas and danced to her song, Oxygen, at my wedding. So, when Jason told me he had bought us tickets, I was pretty jazzed. The fact that the concert was taking place the weekend of my birthday also added an element of anticipation.

So imagine my disappointment when the first thing I noticed when we entered the crappy little venue was the overwhelming stench of urinal cakes. This was quickly followed by an annoyance at the thicket of 12 year-old girls chomping gummy bears in the way of my view of the stage.

I don't know as that I've ever seen a larger group of brightly-lit cell phone screens with fingers frantically texting messages in my life. The combination of these things coupled with my smashing 5-foot-zero-on-a-good-day-with-big-shoes frame and I'm quickly becoming agitated. As if that was not enough to make me begin second guessing our choice of entertainment for the evening, I had some teenage guy push me aside, move in front of me and then begin pushing his ass into my stomach to make more room for his equally pimple-faced friend.

I tried to ignore the jeans covered flesh pressing into my recently eaten dinner. I pushed back, he pushed more. I leaned forward next to his ear and said, "Are you FU%$!NG kidding me?" He looked back...ok, back and down, saw the look on my face and moved away from my gut.

Still trying to jockey for a viewing position, I overheard a riveting conversation on 99-cent candy, another conversation about a girl playing two guys for nice Valentines Day gifts and decided I needed a drink.

I was pleasured by finding the location where adult beverages were being dispensed. This was better. A gin and tonic is just what I needed to put a different spin on the evening. We moved back into the concert area and again scouted for a place where I might see Ms. Caillat when she took the stage. When she finally did take the stage, I asked Jason, "Is she attached to that scarf I see through that hole over there?"

Then I listened. I listened hard, but was hearing a timid female voice that sounded like she was singing with marbles in her mouth. I strained a bit more and then when the chorus came, the only clear thing I heard was coming from the 14 year-old girls screaming the lyrics to the song.

Horrified, I thought to myself, surely this has to get better. But it didn't, it got worse. The teeny spot that allowed me to see the glorious scarf was covered by a gaggle of men wearing Patchouli and smoking cigarettes. I told Jason I wanted to go back to the kiddie section to see if I could find a place where I could see the stage.

This is where the crowd surfing skills I developed at metal shows during college would have come in handy. But, as I looked at the crowd around me, I knew that crowd surfing was clearly out of the question. Oooooooh, Colbie, why can't you sing just one song that would create a mosh pit that I could climb atop of? The closest she came to inciting crowd movement was when she sang a Bob Marley cover song, but that was so poorly done that I spun around, pouted and told Jason to take me to the liquor store so I could get my own bottle of gin and that I would rather listen to her album from the comfort of my own home.

The gin was fantastic. But I'll tell you, I've tried several times to listen to Coco on my iPod, all I can hear is those girls screaming the chorus to a song I used to love....

Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us

Kinda long, but a good look at where we're headed with the web right now

Life Lessons from machine things

Today I remembered there is a very fine line between "I'm rockin' this StairClimber" and "My legs just got so tired I hope I can make it back up to the control panel before this thing throws my ass on the floor."

Note to self...."Self, remember a steady pace is more effective when using equipment at the gym. Self, when you think you are beating the machine at it's own game, you will be swiftly reminded that the machine always wins."

I have had troubles with this before...Once on a elliptical I became excited at my quick pace. This was followed by thirst, grabbing my water bottle, loosing my balance on the machine, mishandling my water bottle and then watching that same water bottle shoot across the room and bounce off of three other pieces of equipment before it came to rest....

Riding in the desert, sans seat

I'm thinking of being back home today and how I long for a day of riding my bike in the hills. 

And I laugh at myself as I think of a the time I tried to ride my mountain bike with the motor cross peeps back home...

It is the story of a mammal. A mammal named Dani and her need to be free...

It was April 2003. Longing for a bike ride I skipped out of work early to get a dose of sun and speed.

I ride my bike about 3 miles from my house to the dirt hills where the motor cross people ride. I needed to feel the up-and-down, boing, boing, boing, sensation that only my bike can give. 

I was really enjoying myself on my bright green and yellow pedal powered machine when I raise up off the seat to take a bump and jump the bike. On the way down I keep lowering myself and when my ass touched the frame of the bike, I knew something was wrong. 

I pulled my body back up. Stopped the bike. Turned around and realized the seat was gone. 

G - O - N - E -! 

So there I am among a bunch of men on motorcycles in the desert on a bike with no seat. And to boot, the men are laughing at me and I have no tools. I need help, but don't want to wheel up to the laughing ones and ask for a hand.

I get off the bike, retrieve my seat and began trying to push it down into the frame. It's not working. I  started banging my fist on the seat, with a very forceful, "Damnit, damnit, damnit!" Still, nothing from the seat post, but plenty of laughing from the men on the hill above. 

I refuse to acknowledge them. Instead I gingerly balance my seat post in the hole it should be sitting tightly in and try to balance myself and try to pedal away. But my seat immediately falls back into the dirt. I try the procedure again without prevail. 

I put my seat in my hand and tried to hold my handlebars at the same time as I rode. Then I hit another bump and with my gears set to climb hills, my legs start to give. 

Clip in pedals, low gear, no seat...no good!

I clinch my muscles in fear of falling onto my back tire and really giving the men on the hill something to laugh at. Then, I spot a trailer, a disheveled man, two German Shepards and a really beat up truck. Hmmm, this guy lives here, among the motor cross people in the desert with his dogs. 

I don't care. I pull up to him, seat in hand, stop my bicycle and say, "Excuse me. Do you have an alan wrench?"

"What?"

"Do...you...have...an...alan wrench. I've lost my seat." I hold the seat up closer for him to see.

After searching the trailer, the man returns with vice grips to back the screw out so the post will fit back in. "Looks like you had the seat too high." 

No shit! "Apparently, yes," I mumble.

After fixing my bike I tell the man how appreciative I am and that he has helped me out because I'm a ways from home. 

"You're not down there?" he asks, pointing to the many trucks with trailers that haul the dirt bikes for the men who are riding in the hills.

"Oh, no, I'm a few miles from here. Thanks so much." 

I hop on my bike and began riding home very fast because: 

#1 It's kinda creepy out here at the trailer with the man who helped me.

#2 The men on the hill are still laughing

#3 I'm embarassed

This is the story of  a mammal named Dani and her need to learn that the bike tools go with her EVERYWHERE, EVERYTIME!