There is a tasty little Chinese Food place here in Oak Ridge that does take out from the buffet.  It’s very good; it’s always fresh, and super-dooper tasty! (Not to mention they always score well when the pesky healthy inspector happens to drop in unannounced).

Now our office has been in Oak Ridge for a many moons and my boss and I have traveled many miles, many times to partake of this sweet and sour plethora of tastiness.

They have garlic beef w/broccoli, sweet n sour chicken, general tsao chicken, and my personal favorite - mixed spicy vegetable. 

I go so often that when I walk in the door, the little dude says, “Ahh.  To go, right?”, and hands me my little environment-killing-Styrofoam container with which I am set free into the pasture of goodness.

I’ll graze for a few minutes, making my choices wisely.  I wander over to the sauces and get a nice ladle full of that hot-ass mustard (yah, that stuff that when you get it in your mouth it makes your eyes water and your nose run… that stuff that makes you beg Jesus for forgiveness for eating something so friggin hot).

All sounds like a beautiful lunchtime excursion in the making, yah?  Well, no.  I love the food at this place.  It’s marvy, but the folks that run the place and work there make me more nervous than a cat in a room full of rockin chairs…

So, my selections are made, my mouth starting to water. I close up my little lunch box that still has steam pouring out the sides.  I carry it to the front, so as to pay for it.   Let the uncomfortable state of affairs begin. 

FLASHBACK…

Now I don’t know if I’m just traumatized from being married to a man who’s mother and all of her friends are Korean and you know they talk about you in their language while you’re standing there… All the while they are looking at you, nodding their heads, laughing and smiling as the chatter on…   Bring on the cold sweat… I know those bitches were talking smack and plotting my untimely demise by way of extra spicy food.

Anyway… I am going towards the front to obtain my chopsticks, Diet Pepsi to go and to pay.  When I notice the gaggle of them standing there… looking my way…. giggling like school girls…    The skank at the cash register keeps covering her mouth and saying “sorry, sorry.”

Now the next phase of pissing me off at the tastiest place in Oak Ridge is as follows:

Don’t you expect to get a friggin fortune cookie when you have Chinese food?  I mean, you eat in, they bring you the bill with a fortune cookie.  You call for take-out, you go pick up and pay, in the bag you get your fortune cookie.

Well, not here. I think it’s just this guy’s way to annoy me.  A kind of battle of the wits.  He ain’t giving me no fortune cookie unless I ask for the fortune cookie.  And even then, it’s iffy if the fucker puts it in the bag. 

I’d start screaming to give me my fortune cookie or I’m going across the street to Wok ‘n’ Roll.  But those guys suck big balls and I hate their food, generally greasy as hell and cold…. but they give Diva her fortune cookie without her having to beg.

“When spies get fired, they don’t get a letter from human resources. They get BURNED… “

Now I’m not so sure about getting burned, but Jeffrey Donovan as Michael on BURN NOTICE give me hot sweats.   I’m honestly not sure what it is about dearest Jeffrey that does it for me.  Maybe its that smile.  Maybe it’s his insatiable wit.  Maybe it’s his handling of Fiona (romantic interest on the show). 

Maybe it’s the fact that he is shirtless a lot of the time…

Whatever it is, he DOES do it for me.

Here’s to you Jeffrey.  You make me weak in the knees, my friend.

Good God, I need another cold shower…

     Me:  Hmmm… This is a great plan, but how do I…

     Voice:  Start by not questioning.  Finish by doing it.

     Since Diva hasn’t done a Hottie of the Day/Week/Moment post in a while, I thought I’d take a stab at it…

     Admit it… You know The Bangles song, “Walk Like an Egyptian.”  And if you were male, you have to admit that when you saw the video, you went, “Oh, man, she is hot!”

     Now, I’m sort of a connoisseur of beautiful women.  I see beautiful women everywhere.  I have interesting conversations with beautiful women.  I have fun with beautiful women.  I date beautiful women.  I even marry some of them.
     I have a quirky sense of “beauty,” tho.  I tend to see women four dimensionally… I can look at how they look now, pick them out of the crowd in their elementary school photos, and know what they’ll look like as they get older…
     It’s a neat party trick, and it’s always surprising to see someone who’s gorgeous from day one to day zero… Most people go through the ugly duckling phase at least once in their lives.

     As for this particular 5′2″ hottie, here we are some twenty-one years later, and yep, she could still start a fire… at an incredibly young 48.  
     Yep… for real!  
     The sultry siren turned 48 in January… And if that’s not worthy of recognition, I dunno what is…

     But, I have to admit… That music still makes me throw up in my mouth a little…

Photo 1 courtesy of VH1.
Photo 2 23-Oct-2006 by Jessee Grant, Copyright © WireImage.com.

I have never been interested in meeting anybody in an online setting.  I crusied some of the sites and even checked out some of the adult type friend sites.  But, when it came right down to it.  I never met anyone because I’m too much of a chicken shit.

I mean you hear horror stories of people meeting in person and one or the other, or neither of them, is what they claimed they were.  Or look like that picture they sent you. 

Call me old fashioned, but when I was looking to meet somebody, I would rather it be over the cucumbers in the produce section of the local Piggly Wiggly, or maybe over a goofy “cooking for one” book at the library.

I joined MySpace last year to comment and cut up with my REAL LIFE FRIENDS.  I never accept “friend requests” from people who I have never met in MY REAL LIFE.  Nor do I ever randomly pour through page after page of people requesting them to be my friends.  No.  If I don’t know ya in real life, then you’ll never make it past the gate.

I know more than a few people who have met their significant other online (eHarmony, Match.com, MySpace…) and who have actually made it for a minute.  But I know of none who has made it for the long haul.  Why?

Well, in this day and age, it seems that those in the online dating community just shift around.  Maybe its because there are so many available folks out there just lookin for love in all the wrong places. 

It’s a meat market for reals.  But, it’s not like a meat market as a bar would be.  No.  Say you go to your favorite bar or club.  Yah, it’s a fashion show.  Yah, everybody is there hoping to meet someone unless they are there with someone.
But, at least you now when you are talking to them face to face, they aren’t sitting there browsing profiles of others while they are talking you up.

I don’t know.  I guess I was jaded, or tainted against this kind of crap.  I’m not a very trusting individual since a guy I was seeing in the last century was a total computer dork that (I found out later) was always looking at online personals and profiles. 

Now you’re prolly sitting there thinking, why is she going off on this lame ass tanget?  What the hell pulled her trigger today?

Well, friends, I’ll tell ya.  There’s a dumb-ass on AOL and yahoo who surfaces now and again thinking we’re the best of friends.  Before MySpace, he used to comb AOL profiles and email unsuspecting females.  I guess so he would have someone to talk to or whatever.  Anyway, I guess it was middle of last year, after he joined MySpace, he surfaced again, showing 198360876 (exaggerated for impact) friends, all of which are female.  Which proves my point.  Or maybe it doesn’t.  I’m sort of annoyed right now.

So, today on my little yahoo messenger thingy, I posted my status as “I’ll never paint again, swear to God!”    And I guess it piked his little curiousity button somehow.  So, he (out of the blue) decided to IM me…  Lord have mercy… 

The conversation went a little somethin like this:

Dork:  ok, I just gotta ask why won’t you ever paint again?

Me: Because I have no feeling left in my arms from painting over dark colors with white like I promised my landllord. lol

Dork:  see you should of called me you know thats whats i do for a living**** 

****NOTE:  Actually, I didn’t know that, but whatever

Me:  Nopie, didn’t know that.

Dork:  yes i told you when we first started talking i remodel houses for a living

Me:  How long ago was that though?  And how long has it been since we talked?  Prey tell, do you remember what I do or from what locale I hail?

Dork:  only couple days…lol just kiddon and in winter months

Me:  No, it was well before last summer.  And as I recall I wasn’t interested in talking to you because you find it to be wonderful to collect women friends online. 

Dork:  no it wasnt you must be thinking of that other man lol

Me:  I talk to no other men, other than the one I’m about to marry****

**** NOTE: That is not all together true.  I have REAL LIFE FRIENDS that are male and I certainly talk to them.

Dork:  see

Me:  See what?  You act like you know me.

Me:  He lives with me, I don’t talk to him online  (Also not completely true, he lives with me part time until we actually jump on the weddin train)

Dork:  well that’s cool

Then the dork went silent and didn’t bother me anymore.  I just get irritated that people have so little value for someone else’s time I suppose. 
Anyway, he is like every other person out there waiting to see some long lost person they added on to their buddy list, so they can feel important because they are chatting it up.

GET A LIFE!

     Well, last Tuesday afternoon, I felt really, really tired all of a sudden.  Zacque and I hit Barley’s for a burger and a beer, and by the end of that late lunch, I felt like I was ready to fall over dead.  I came home, and fell asleep until Wednesday.
     Wednesday, I felt like hammered Hell.  My throat was on fire, swollen, and no amount of anything would make it feel better.  Zacque drug me out to Sitar for an Indian feast, which made me feel quite a bit better that night…
     Unfortunately, by Thursday night, I required medical attention for a skyrocketing fever and an inability to swallow.

     Yep … Strep throat.  Bad.

     On Friday, my personal hotti—err, nurse, rather — showed up to assist me with the healing process.  On Saturday night, she looked me dead in the eyes and said, “Well, I may be a Kentucky Wildcat, but you’re always a Volunteer!” *melt!*
     Mmmhmm… So I was repeatedly mauled by said Kentucky Wildcat, but she took it a little easier on me than the last few weekends.  Resulting injuries were minor, and can only be described as an attempted suffocation followed by a near drowning.  *cough*  I mean, hey, who needs nose cartilage, anyway, right?  *cough*

     Anyway … *cough* Ahem! … she fixed me up as best she could, kept me hydrated, fed me well, made sure I slept (*snicker*), oversaw my medication (Advil & Penicillin), and took very good care of me… Right down to the point this morning where I hacked out a mass of infection from between my tonsils and adenoids that was damn near the size of a friggin’ marble… I mean, OMFG, no wonder my throat was hurting so bad!

     And so, in feeling a little better, and the fact that we both had lives that we needed to get back to, I was really heartbroken to see her leave today… :-(  *snif*

     And still, I slept some more…

     So, hopefully, over the next couple of days, I’ll get back into the swing of things.

     I don’t get sick often — discounting the maybe-once-a-year sinus issue or something — but when I do, I get damn sick.  And it’s almost always some kinda funky-ass, in-the-wild bacteria, which is probably a good reason for me to stop hanging out in the woods, eating raw meat and wild produce, washing it down with water from mountain streams… but…
     I’ve done it all my life, ya know?

There are two things I’ve seen women be ecstatic and smiling through.  One is planning a wedding.  The other is childbirth.

I’ve decided that unless you have unlimited fundage and a perfect body, planning a beautiful wedding is nothing more than a super big charlie-horse right in my ass.

I guess I really shouldn’t be complaining, because things have finally started to work out as they should.  With the exception of the minister backing out, of course.

But, today I was supposed to have my dress fitting with the alterations lady, Angenette.  Well, my underwear that we ordered was supposed to be here on Friday but it wasn’t. This is a thing which resembles an archaic chinese torture device used to suck the breath out of women to keep them quiet!  I have no idea where the fat is supposed to go once we get me into it, but supposedly it’ll smooth one out under a wedding gown.

So, I had to call and reschedule with Angenette for next Monday.  Great!  Problem solved.  Not quite.

Today, the torture device arrived in a pretty little box.  Apparently the people who sewed the size into this thing were smoking some good shit at the time.  Because not only was it too small, but it fit my boss rather snug and she’s a tiny chick.  Way tiny, like a size 8 girl.  Now I’m no rocket scientist, but I would think if something is supposedly my size, but it fits her and it fits her snug, what the hell size am I supposed to get????

That was the only thing that made me feel even slightly less like a cow.

As I talked to Anthony whilst he was out on a ring shopping spree, in tears, he said, “Piss on it! Don’t wear underwear!”

God bless his heart!

My attention was drawn to a NEWSFLASH today, that apparently isn’t such new news.

One of my three alltime favorite bands is reuniting for a reunion tour!!!

Who?

Why, none other than Van Halen. With the exception of base player Michael Anthony, all of the boys will be crankin out the tunes that made ‘em famous. Eddie Van Halen’s son, Wolfgang, will be providing the bone thumpin bass now.

As long as David Lee Roth sticks to the songs and doesn’t try to speak, I will be a happy girl! He has proven time and time again that he is a complete dip-shit, but buddy can he belt out the songs.

I’m sitting here having flashbacks to those wonderful days in the early - mid 80’s in which Van Halen ruled the radio waves…

Tour information… www.van-halen.com  

My darling Anthony has agreed to take one for the team, change up our honeymoon plans, and take me to Greensboro to see them rather than going somewhere tropical or beach like.

All I have to say is, for $125 floor seats, I better get to hear ICE CREAM MAN!

It strange. No matter who you talk to, eventually everyone is looking for someone they can relate to.  If only for a short moment, just a glimpse of someone who can relate is nice.

Atlanta, Georgia, is host to such an event.  DragonCon is an open forum for those who share a simple common interest.  A love of art, mass-media, science-fiction, music, film, fantasy and overall congregating just to enjoy themselves.

So whether you want to Save Darfour; If you want to stop the WARZ in the IRAQUE; Take a chance at  saving the Planet while you have the highest power consumption in your city; or realize that just hanging out and having a good time will accomplish about the same thing, come on down to the gathering Labor Day weekend.  Who knows what will happen, but at least you might find something else to occupy your time for a while.

**Heck there is even a Star Warts thing for you Mark… 

Everybody who knows me personally knows I am not shy, I am not quiet. I am not backward when it comes to expressing emotion. In other words, I am the complete opposite of my Anthony.

Anthony is shy and quiet. He would rather sit quietly somewhere and observe what’s going on instead of being what’s going on. Opposites truly do attract. Our tastes and personalities couldn’t be more different.

I like top 40, rock, southern rock… He is a bluegrass musician.

I like karaoke bars…. He’d rather be somewhere listening to a live band.

I like sushi & other exotic foods…He’d rather have Burger King or Taco Bell.

I drive like my pants are on fire… He takes his time a & enjoys the scenery.

The differences are many, but the love is the same.

Anyhoo… Anthony wasn’t 100% sure about me in the beginning. I think he had been convinced by various mutual acquaintances that I was a complete wild cat and was one to be reckoned with. That, my friends, is just an act.

Still yet, he was gun shy of me enough that even after he had fallen in love with me, he was skeerd to say it. Rather than saying it, everytime he’d come around, he’d have another CD for me and he’d tell me “listen to #8″ or whatever number the specific song would be. All of these songs would be lovey-dovey, oooey-goooey ditties. I got the message really fast and eventually he gave in and told me how much he loves me. What’s not to love, right? I just wanted to share the words to a song and the outcome of his profession of love and devotion to me, his Diva.

The song that captured my heart was: You Are My Flower - Flatt & Scruggs - Circa

It goes a little somethin like this:

You are my flower That’s blooming in the mountain so high

You are my flower That’s blooming there for me

When summertime is gone and snow begins to fall

You can sing this song and say to one and all

So wear a happy smile and life will be worthwhile

Forget the tears but don’t forget to smile

Now, ain’t that the sweetest thing you’ve ever seen in your life? What was the outcome of this?   Well, I went and got more ink.   I am his flower, indeed.