The Creature in the Couch: Part II

We've spent the past few days avoiding the sofa, hoping that maybe if we ignored it for awhile, all signs of life inside it would go away. It usually works with smarmy men making unwanted advances, so why not with small house rodents?

We sort of got our wish last night.

With the clever use of our collective noses, my roommates and I confirmed the presence of a dead and decaying creature in our couch. blechhhhh. Again, we briefly freaked out and then bravely resolved to call an exterminator to go fishing for the dead in the squishy regions of the contaminated furniture. Come on, there was no way I was going to do that.

Thank the Good Lord Above for exterminators. The hero of the story came to the house this afternoon, somehow extricated what was left of the sofa beast AND found another expired intruder under the oven. I don't even know his name but he saved us from a fate worse than Alberto Gonzales' career.

Hopefully the story of rodents in my house is not one with three parts.

On a better note, I met the newest crop of business school students tonight! They were as eager to please as I was, just one year ago -- it was so great. I guess this officially makes me a big bad Second Year student. The Thursday night drinking fests known as IPOs start up next week. I'm not sure I'm properly prepared just yet ...


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Now playing: John Legend - Slow Dance
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Make them go away

Despite the fact that I just spent a wonderful weekend witnessing the wedding of two wonderful friends (is there a 'w' word for friend?), I must blog about the creature in my couch.

As faithful readers, you all know about the black box of doom that caused the demise of two small rodent houseguests. The black box of doom was succeeded by the exterminator, who I assume disposed of the very determined mouse who chewed through the wall to get to the birdseed on the counter. All seemed to be well in the house.

Until tonight.

I was up in my room, trying to get some work done, when my new third roommate climbed up the stairs and asked, rather shakily, if I could come downstairs because she thought something was in the sofa. Incredulous, I crept down the stairs and sure enough, there was a small lump in the back part of the couch. Hoping it to be benign, I poked it with the remote control and it MOVED. Are you kidding me!?! Why is something living in my sofa?!?! We promptly screamed like the girls we are and then launched into a five-minute debate on whether it was better to kill the creature while it was in the sofa or try to get it out of the sofa and trap/kill it.

Having never encountered this type of situation before, we didn't really come to a conclusion so we brainstormed who we could call for help. But at 10pm, our choices were rather limited. So I whacked the lump as hard as I could with the remote. We're not really sure if the creature is still in the sofa or if it burrowed its way elsewhere.

This situation is so not okay.

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Now playing: The Beatles - Here Comes The Sun
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Are Pity Dates Okay?

I went on a pity date. I just felt like I should at least have dinner with the kid, seeing as he had courage just to ask. But it was boring as sand in a desert. Which then made me wonder ... what's better for the guy? To be shot down from the very beginning or to be given a small shot, even if it's seen as a pity date from the girl's point of view? There was some disagreement at work -- the guys collectively groaned when I relayed the boring story of the date. The girls shrugged. Thoughts?

Here's what I do know -- pity dates shouldn't count towards Operation 2012.



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Now playing: Jeff Buckley - Last Goodbye
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One year later ...

It's hard to believe, but this weekend, one year ago, I moved from Boston to Washington D.C. The past 365 days have been rather a blur. It's true, some of those days (and nights) were spent in a drunken blur, but I'd say most of them are a fairly lucid blur. But I thought that since my blog has picked up some new readers, it might be worthwhile to recap some of my favorite entries from the past year. A few themes jumped out at me as I combed through the writings -- 1) I have great friends. 2)My dating life sucks. 3)MBA students like alcohol.

Hm. Maybe I should work on writing about things of more noble character in this next year ...

Enjoy!

525,600 -- Back when I waxed philosophical about friends and how they make me better. Oh wait, I still do that...

There's beauty in the breakdown -- The novelty of a new town and new friends started to wear off. But I had friends back in Boston and elsewhere to put me back together.

Dating and Football -- My MBA girls, also known as The Four Seasons, decided to try our hand at speed dating. Heh.

Top 5 Reasons Why MBA Students Are Dorks -- I think this is when I became fully indoctrinated.

Rumor Has It -- The best night of debauchery for the Gang of 100 EVER.

A Whole Lotta Ugly -- The ugliest sofa you will ever see in your life.

The Big Bang -- Explains why you should never drink water from the Potomac.

Why My Mom is Better Than Your Mom -- it's true.

Girl Meets Guinness -- The only time in my life that I got mad at a pint of Guinness

A Nation Conceived in Liberty -- Thoughts on the zeitgeist.

Quantifying Online Dating -- I boldly go where no (sane) MBA student has gone before.

Why Comcast is the Spawn of the Devil -- Seriously. Comcast has been a plague on my life.

Possibly the Best Craigslist Ad Ever Written -- So great, I had to share it again.

Sake It To Me -- The best and funniest stereotype I've ever had thrown at me.

Operation 2012 -- My dating adventures continue with the launch of Operation 2012. It crashed and burned on the first day.

At least I made it through alive! I'm looking forward to what the next 365 days has in store...




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Now playing: Sufjan Stevens - The Tallest Man, The Broadest Shoulders: Part I: The Great Frontier/Part II: Come To Me Only With Playthings Now
via FoxyTunes

How about Pinocchio?

A baby giant anteater (hmm oxy moron?) was born at the National Zoo a few weeks ago. The zoo vets are evidently trying to give the new family some privacy, so they don't know if the baby is a boy or a girl. Therefore, they can't name it.

That's where we come in. The Zoo is holding a "Name the Anteater" contest and you can vote for your favorite male and female names -- choose from Aurora, Pilar and Isabel or Cyrano, Francisco and Ferdinand.

You can also watch the mama anteater and the Zoo's first-ever baby anteater online here. Be warned: The National Zoo website is strangely captivating. You might be stuck on it for awhile.

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Now playing: Toby Lightman - Don't Wake Me
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eHarmony is the devil

So there's this guy at work. No, it's not what you're thinking. This guy is not at all my type. I think he's really nice at heart, but he's just a little lacking in the smooth department. I hate to say it, but he's a lurker. ew. Turns out that Lurker told another co-worker that he's "crushing big time" on me. Luckily, that very gracious and thoughtful co-worker dodged the question carefully and responded without giving a real response. Whatever he said must have been good enough for Lurker because he hasn't confronted me yet. Yet....

But back to the topic at hand -- eHarmony. First off, any online dating site that rejects people should be illegal. You know those Match.com ads that ask if you've been rejected by eHarmony? Well, it actually happens. It happened to my co-worker, Sugar (another Operation 2012 operative). Granted, she admits that she wasn't exactly emotional stable at the time she signed up, but still -- no one should receive an email after taking the 40 minute personality test, saying "there's a certain segment of the population we don't feel comfortable matching." That's just wrong.

That should have been my first red flag. But no, I went ahead and completed the eHarmony profiling. I should have seen the second red flag when this devil site matched me with a friend from Boston after only a few days. But no, I kept faith.

Less than a week after I posted my eHarmony profile, I got matched with a guy who lives in Virginia, works for a Christian humanitarian nonprofit and, guess what, shares the same real name as Lurker. WTF?! I fell out of my chair, immediately deleted my eHarmony account and ran down the hall to tell Sugar. I mean, really!? How is it possible that I got matched with two men that I know? The whole point of online dating is to expand the pool of available men! I'm online because I don't want to date any of the men I currently know!

So I'm down to two online dating sites -- Match and Chemistry. Which are pretty much the same thing. I finally took the plunge and bought a 3 month subscription to Match a couple days ago. So far, not so bad. I've had 307 views, 14 winks, and 20 emails. Of course, eight of the 20 emails were from the same guy. He was immediately deleted from my profile. sigh.

But my online dating concerns don't end there. Back in October, the Four Seasons ventured out for a night of speed dating. It was a fabulous story, but unfortunately, it ended in a rather awful date with SpeedDateBoy. Interestingly enough, however, I had posted my profile through the speed date site and received an email from a guy that sounded pretty cool. I replied but then never heard back, so I gave up.

Well, lo and behold, this same guy stumbled across my profile on Match, recognized me, and emailed me the cutest note -- something along the lines of having run into me in another online dating life and hoping that he hadn't said anything to scare me away. Stalker psycho or kindred spirit? We'll see ... I think I'll email him back.



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Now playing: Hanneke Cassel - Miss Drummond of Perth's Favorite Scotch Measure
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Lessons from the weekend

I've learned a lot this past weekend.

LESSON 1. Capital punishment is not a deterrent

We have a mouse named Yoric in the house. I had named the mouse Yoric, just so I could recite "Alas poor Yoric" when we killed him in the trap borrowed from a co-worker. The trap is pretty simple -- a black box that has two metal plates on the bottom. When the mouse steps on both plates, it closes the electricity loop and gets zapped. You just flip up the top, dump out the mouse and reset it. Brilliant! (Okay, kinda gross too but brilliant). We caught Yoric in less than 24 hours and I duly recited Hamlet. Unfortunately, it seems capital punishment is not a deterrent for sinful mice because less than 24 hours after that, we caught a second trespasser. I was actually in the living room, talking with The Two Broads, my out-of-town visitors, when we heard "bzzzzzzzt" ... it took a few moments for us to identify the source of the sound. ew.

And a day later, a third rogue rodent chewed through the wall to get to the birdseed on the counter. Chewed through the freakin' WALL. I hate mice. I now also hate birdseed. I'm gonna get the hantavirus, I can tell already.

LESSON 2. I hate D.C. in August

Eager to show off my new neighborhood to The Two Broads, I hustled them over to Eastern Market for brunch and shopping. Of course, we walked everywhere and by the time T was done chatting with the Ukranian and R was done ogling the duvet covers from India, I thought I was going melt. Seriously, the air is so heavy here. It might even be worse than Houston.

LESSON 3. Nothing beats friends and community.

America just doesn't have community like it used to. Instead, we have suburbia where families stay locked up in their houses or their cars, kids don't play outside, and there's no such thing as the cornerstore. But in a few lucky, rare areas, you can actually find community, where neighbors walk outside and greet each other, you run into friends at the local coffee shop and the bus drivers know your name. Add to that mix two old friends in town for the weekend and it's close to perfection.