I'm looking online this morning for pants that I can wear to work because the pants situation in my neck of the woods is starting to look a bit precarious. I really only have three kinds of pants, just ever: Big linen pants, which I love and are comfortable, but they are really, really big and also wrinkly, so maybe not as good for work as some other choice; Polyester work pants, which are polyester and therefore they itch and bug me all day, but they're good for work and even some singing gigs that don't require a dress; and finally, Jeans and Cords, which are great but kind of casual and also kind of hot when I'm walking to work in warmer weather.

Anyway, that is neither here nor there.

I am looking at these websites, and I have discovered why so many people have such a hard time understanding what is office-appropriate and what is not. Heck, I have trouble with it myself sometimes. Manufacturers are labelling some things as "Office Wear" when they are, quite clearly, not.

Yep, sometimes websites have false or faulty information.

Case in point:  Short shorts. I saw a pair of very, very short white shorts that were labelled office wear and paired with a blazer. If you want to wear your shorts with a blazer, go for it, but there is no way shorts are appropriate in an office. Just, no. Never. For some reason, it's a little distracting, not to mention the fact that once the a/c is on all of the time anyone wearing shorts (especially those short enough the show the bottoms of your packets) is going to die from hypothermia. Just don't do it.

No colored skinny jeans, either. I saw several pairs that said they were great for the office. No. No, they're not. They don't make a person look professional and trustworthy, they make a person look like he or she is fifteen. Or at least way too old for skinny jeans. Either way, it's a lose-lose situation.

White pants are another bizarre choice. I don't know about anyone else's office, but if there's a day where I don't end up on the floor for some reason or another, it's unusual. You want to keep those things clean all day? Be my guest. But, seriously, it's not going to happen. You'll get ink or coffee on them in the first five minutes and then spend the rest of the day holding a folder over the evidence of your clumsiness. Don't try it.

I think there's a pretty wide range of what's appropriate in an office, but try to think about it this way: If it was cool in high school or college (depending on how long ago those things were), it's probably not a good idea for you to wear it in your office. Unless you work for some kind of company that encourages such things. In that case, by all means go ahead and try it, but I would be careful with those short shorts. Standards come and go, but office air conditioning can be deadly. Oh, and don't forget to shave all of the way up your legs, because we can all see that patch where you got sloppy.

I made some quinoa for dinner last night, and the following is a detailed account of my saga, no holds barred. Please avert your eyes if you are faint of heart, because it is truly terrifying.

In my quest to find more protein-containing foods for my carb-loving household, I have tried a lot of things: Greek yogurt, soy-based fake meats, cheese, cheese, cheese, cheese, and more cheese.

Did I say cheese? Because that stuff is a winner.

Anyhow, so many people have recommended quinoa that I was pretty excited to try it. High protein and, I quote (someone who is a dirty liar), "As easy to make as rice."

Malarkey, I say. Ma. Larkey.

Last weekend, I finally pinpointed my recipe for Parmesan Quinoa and purchased a bag of the finest organic quinoa at my grocery store, because I figured if I'm going to buy something like that, I should for sure go organic. You know, pesticides and stuff.

So I got things all ready, grated up some stinky stinky Parmesan and prepared all of the ingredients for the dish. I embarked upon the first step, which seemed simple enough: Rinse the quinoa under running water until the water runs clear, using a fine mesh sieve.

Well, I don't have a fine mesh sieve. I have a big plastic colander with 1/4" holes all over it. So I decided I could use my hand and a cup, and rinse little bits of it at a time.

That was not the case.

Quinoa is like birdseed, and it's super light and floaty. I lost the first quarter cup immediately and then proceeded to drop bits of it all over the floor in my panic. Then, I turned on the sprayer to rinse out the sink, shot myself in the face and then hosed down the front of my shirt.

No problem, I thought, I'll just go ahead and try again, but this time I'll use the strainer spoon I use for frying. It's small, but it's kind of like mesh.

Also didn't work. I thought I was being successful until I looked down and realized that the quinoa was so tiny it was seeping out the sides where the cup and the spoon met. It is, like, microscopic and also incredibly sneaky.

At this point, there was quinoa caked all over the inside of the sink, quinoa trails running down the front of my cupboards, and quinoa on my face where some had bounced off the sink and hit me when I first turned on the sprayer.

And I still only had about 1/8th of the clean quinoa I needed for my recipe.

Seriously, people, why would anyone have ever made this in the old days? People in olden times didn't have fancy fine mesh sieves. I bet the first person who ever made it said, "Hahahaha....I'm going to tell everyone how great this stuff is so they can have little dried bits of birdseed stuck to their cabinets, too! That'll show them!" And then he rubbed his hands together, threw his head back and laughed.

And I'm pretty sure some of my friends did the same thing right after recommending it.

Anyway, after wasting about a cup of quinoa, I ended up with enough for my recipe and finished it. The sad part is, it's actually pretty awesome.

Crap.

I think I need a fine mesh sieve.

I just read a post of mine from a few years ago where I said I was going to stop crafting or I was going to end up with a houseful of ugly pink baskets.

Seriously. Neither of those things has happened.

Actually, I have gotten quite a lot of use out of that pink basket (in a closet, though, because it really is a whole new level of ugly), and I have not stopped the crafting at all. As a matter of fact, I have made a ton of stuff in the last few weeks, all of which I will tell you about RIGHT NOW.

The first thing I finished was this blanket I've been working on since August. When I bought the materials for it, we still had a queen-sized bed, but then we got the bigger bed and I decided to make it for the full-sized guest bed, and it turned out that I had less yarn that I thought I did, so that worked out great. See?

I also finished a big old doily to use in the center of my table. I don't care what anyone thinks, doilies are not just for old ladies. They are also for old ladies in their 30s. So stay off my lawn. But look what I did first.

Yep. I made those. So as you can plainly see, I haven't stopped making stuff. I also made two hats and two pairs of fingerless gloves last week, and I'm about halfway done with a new doily for I don't even know what. For stuff. For just making things for reasons.

I think I'm going to enter the county fair this year, too, so that's also another indicator that I'm going to start wearing one of those full-body aprons and referring to myself as Holly Hobbie.

Or maybe I should just make another butt-ugly pink basket for more closet storage.

I feel as though I've really accomplished something: I learned how to create my own ringtone for my new smartphone. Also, the articles I read that told me how to do it gave me an average amount of time it should take, and it took me way less, so I feel pretty smart right about now.

But wait.

My new ringtone is so awesome that even my husband, who is not a fan of the custom ringtones, thought it was sweet. He did. Deep down inside. I could just tell.

I'm not going to say what it is, because I want the people who see me in the real world to get the benefit of surprise, but let's just say that it is one of my favorite songs ever, and that I bet more than half of the people who hear it will be like, "What? Is that a remake?"

But it's not a remake. It's the original. People just don't realize it because the remake of it was so popular. Probably because Muddy Waters did it; I don't know. If nobody calls me today, I may call myself just to hear it.

At any rate, I also got all of the icons on the home screen organized into neat little folders, and I downloaded apps and music so it's set up all nice and happy. Plus, I got my case in the mail yesterday, so I can now carry my phone with me without worrying about breakage.

Fingers crossed. I'm pretty good at dropping things.

The only thing I don't like about it is that it has a plastic screen protector, and plastic just doesn't clean as well as glass. I know it came in a five-pack, but I clean that thing like five times a day, so it's going to be super scratched within a week. Maybe I should just take it off. I don't know.

I'll have to think about that. 

So, it's still pretty exciting up in my neighborhood. I'm going to walk to work today, and I don't have to carry my big old iPad because I have my handy iPhone with my whole schedule right on it in my pocket. 

Yeehaw! I've joined the 2000s!

Alright. I did it. I have joined the rest of the world and gotten myself a smartphone.

Actually, it's an iPhone. A pink one.

I really like the pink color. It's more like a neon orangey pink, and when I was 12 I had a T-shirt that was that color and it had a wheel on it and said "Cherokee." I got to buy my own school clothes that year with my paper route money. I only got two shirts and a pair of pants, but none of them had previously been worn by my sister, so I felt like I was killing it.

At any rate, I can now check my Facebook no matter where I am.

Which is really the only point of a smartphone. Well, I guess email, too, but that's not as fun and sometimes it's nice to just say you can't check it until you get home so you can just be away.

No more of that for me, I guess.

Ha ha ha ha....that is totally a lie. I'm still going to tell people that. Because no one knows....

....wait a minute. I guess they do now. Crap. I blew my own cover.

However, I don't have a case for it yet, so I'm not moving it. I'm putting it on a table that is central in my house and I have the ringer turned up so I can hear it. It's sort of like having a home phone again, except I dropped my home phone all the time and I don't think this one will take that kind of abuse. So, until I get a case, it's going to be home phone time. This feels way more fragile and expensive than my dinky slider phone which, by the way, was supposed to be great for texting but it was the worst phone for texting I've ever had. Seriously. What good does it do you to have an entire keypad if all of the keys are microscopic and you have to spell everything out? It was so much easier using the number pad and having the phone decide what I was trying to say, except when it tried to do abbreviations, and I had to fix the dictionary in the phone so it would learn that I don't do that.

My texts are a little like this blog. I type everything out. All of the words. If one is misspelled, like "gonna" or "yup," you can bet that it's on purpose. For effect.

At any rate, I feel like a really grown-up person today, and I am going to look at all of the interwebs on my phone. All of them. Watch out.

Part of my job as a teacher is to listen to my students tell me about their problems. Yesterday was a big listening day.

I don't mind; I actually feel like that's one of the things I like the best about teaching, because it's really important to me to help people's brains feel good about music and I think sometimes they just have to get their stuff out and I'm being a part of that whole feeling better process. So yeah.

Yesterday, though, it was everybody. All of them. And I kind of felt like something was going around because it just got worse and worse, and none of these people even know each other.

So I have decided, in my über scientific brain, that bad days must be contagious.

It makes total sense to me. 

I have days where everybody is in a good mood because awesome stuff has been happening all day, and everybody's happy, and we get lots of singing done, and blah blah blah. Good. But there are lots of days, too, where everybody comes in with a bad day type of story and these people are not related or friends or anything.

It's weird, now that I think of it.

So maybe it's like a cold. And everyone gets it and then passes it on by being a turd to other people, so it really is contagious.

Or maybe it's just really early in the morning and I'm having these deep thoughts that I will look at in a few hours and be horrified that I put that crap on the internet.

But seriously, have you seen the internet? It's a hot mess. I feel no shame for my little corner of that.

I discovered something new this morning, and I think it may change my life: I love Cinnamon Chex.

If you read this blog frequently, you may have noticed how very much I love cereal, so this might not be a surprise to you. It was, however, a surprise to me, as I never really thought about Chex in that way before, as it's not one of the super-nutritious cereals, but it's not one of the crappy cereals either. It just sort of floats there, in the no-man's-land between the cereals that keep your intestines working and the cereals that make your kids bounce up and down on the couch for three hours, working off their sugar high.

And then I bought a box of Cinnamon Chex.

What?!?

All I can say is, I have partaken of the Honey Nut Chex, and I really, really enjoy them, so when I saw the box of Cinnamon Chex at my store, I thought, "Meh. It doesn't have too much sugar, and I do need a change from the mega box of Multi-Grain Cheerios I'm working on. I'll throw this in my cart."

Except I didn't really throw it in. I placed it inside, ever so gently.

And this morning, when I opened that bad boy and poured myself a bowl, I experienced some cereally deliciousness that I had not been prepared for, what with the lowish amount of sugar. It is like crispy bits of cinnamon, but there are some less cinnamoney pieces and some more cinnamoney pieces so there is some context for your mouth, and you don't lose sight of how delicious the cinnamon pieces are. And it tastes a little bit like Cinnamon Crispas, which are what they used to have at Taco Bell when I was a youngster, and I'm sure contained a ridiculous amount of sugar and chemicals in order to produce such sublime crispyness.

I really hope this isn't a limited-time thing, because if it is, I am going back to that store and clearing that stuff out. For reals.

I also hope that Life cereal doesn't hate me forever, but there is a new contender in town for my cereal love.

There are certain times when I know I'm in a really good mood right away in the morning. Sometimes I hum while I make my breakfast, or I think of something that's going on in the day that I'm really excited about and I feel like I want to smile. I generally know it's going to be good at that point.

However, when I cry at an online commercial while drinking my morning coffee, I know that there just might be trouble ahead. Today falls into the latter category, which is a wee bit scary.

I'm not a big cryer in front of other people. I hate it a lot. I also don't like anything that might be considered heartwarming, as it makes me throw up. But sometimes, in order to see the farting video, YouTube makes me watch a commercial and today's was a doozy.

It happened right at the part where the Dad picks up his little boy (who is wearing a hat and tie and is the cutest kid ever) and kisses him on the cheek and then the kid beams at his Dad. And his Dad looks at him like he just made his day.

And then I realized I had tears in my eyes.

That's when I know I need to not watch any more internet videos, especially ones with kids, puppies (really any baby animals), or old people. Really, really not old people, because those videos make me cry the most.

Watch out, today. There may be more. Good thing I don't normally wear mascara.

Could this be another public service announcement from Yours Truly?

Why, yes. Keep reading, won't you?

I want to inform people about a situation of which they may not even be aware. Car manufacturers do not regularly install super secret spy glass that makes the occupants of a car protected from the eyes of the general public.

In short, you're not invisible inside your car.

I know, I know, it's hard to wrap your mind around it, but it's time you knew the truth.

Yesterday, I saw several of what I like to call, "Moving Violations." (I realize the police use this term, too, and I think it's getting confusing and they should just choose another way to say it...it works so much better for me). They were primarily of the same type, which is why I felt compelled to warn the public about the lack of privacy in their personal means of conveyance.

So, please, don't pick your nose at a stoplight unless you are prepared for other people to see you. Because we DO see you.

I saw (and counted, because I totally do have a life, thank you very much) EIGHT nose-pickers. That's the most in one day for me. The closest up to that point had been five, so I felt like yesterday was kind of a big day for snot fishing.

At any rate, there were several good ones: There was a couple, both picking away and each looking out of his or her own window, so they didn't really see one another; there was a little kid, looking at me looking at him, totally not feeling self-conscious (Why should he? Go, little man, go!); there was a teenage girl doing it in a parking lot, sitting in the back seat and, I'm guessing, waiting for her parents while trying to avoid pulling out her ginormous nose ring (hope that worked out for her); and there were a few guys in suits (which is very boring, because I've seen a billion of those-guys in suits can't keep their fingers out of their noses-it's pretty much the law); and, finally, there was my favorite one, which I shall describe to you now, in great detail, because that's how the wondrousness that is the cavern of my mind works.

I was stopped at a light, and I was looking in the mirror at the lady behind me. I noticed her because she looked so ridiculously sad. Like, a kind of sad that makes me sad, because I feel bad for whatever just happened to give her that sort of human basset hound face. Oh, and I also noticed her because she looked like one of the patients at the office where I work, so for a minute I thought it was her, but then I realized it wasn't. Anyhow, I was watching her be sad, and feeling like, "Aw, poor lady. I hope she doesn't start crying, because if she does, I'm going to cry too, and I just don't want to right now." Then, all of a sudden, she points her finger towards the sky and just jabs it in there. Like, all the way in there. I was pretty sure she was touching her brain, and I couldn't believe there was enough room in her skull to fit that much finger up into the Bat-Cave.

She fished around in there for a good ten seconds.

The light still hadn't changed at this point. It felt like time had frozen, and I was hearing that dramatic music in my head that they play during gladiator movies in the fighting scenes. You know, those movies where there's fighting and boobs and no real need for a plot.

Then, with the most triumphant face of all time, she pulled out whatever it was that was inhabiting her nostril, looked at it for a second, and then...

...you know what's coming next...

...yep, she ate it. And smiled. And then went back to looking like the saddest sad I've ever seen.

The light turned green, and I drove away, never to see Booger Lady again. But I know she's out there, just waiting for another monumental booger harvest.

So, yeah, pretty busy day on the nose-picking front, and people need to be aware that I can and will watch them pick their noses in their cars. I can't help it. It's what I do.

Little PSA, from me to you.

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