It’s been in the works for a while now, but the FDA has finally approved Lybrel, the pill that skips menstration. This has involved a lot of discussion that has, in my mind, completely missed the biggest issue: pregnancy that is not discovered until well into the pregnancy. Whatever else it does, menstration tells a woman whether or not she needs to find out if she’s pregnant.

William Saletan of Slate gives this a rather short nod:

The other reason for the dummy pills was to reassure women that they weren’t pregnant. Never mind that the “pill period” wasn’t real. If you bled, you’d feel safe. At the time, this was understandable, since pregnancy tests were elaborate and hard to get. Today, however, you can buy a test at any drug store for less than $10. You don’t have to bleed.

Well yeah, but the problem is that without menstration a woman doesn’t know if she needs to take the test or not. Technically she should know if she missed the pill and had sex again before she should, but if she’s not paranoid about pregnancy it’s pretty easy for her to ask herself “What are the odds?” and skip it altogether.

I brought up the issue with Clancy, who announced that we’re not going to have a child in eight months just a few days ago, and she said that the news had hit the email circuit at her work. The fear there is that there will likely be an uptick in misdiagnosis of abdominal pain in women because the doctors won’t know that the woman is pregnant because the patient won’t know (theoretically doctors are supposed to check any time there are abdominal pains, but they often don’t). She mentioned a specific problem about the baby being in some tube instead of where it’s supposed to be and that there is the fear that this will go unnoticed and untreated.

(yeah, this post would be a lot better if I were the doctor instead of my wife, but if I were the doctor I wouldn’t have time to blog)

In any case, I think what ought to happen is that the pill ought to automatically come with a pregnancy test. If the woman has the pregnancy test anyway there’s no doubt that she would use it. It’s the act of actually going to the store and buying one that’s the big disincentive when a woman doesn’t have any particular reason to believe that she’s pregnant.

Meanwhile, I’m not sure that Lybrel will be taken advantage of in the Truman household. The status quo is unpleasant and inconvenient once a month, but she does seem reassured by the monthly reminder that she’s not pregnant. It’s actually a non-issue at the moment, though, since uses an alternative form of birth control from The Pill.

Q: What’s worse than having 80 hours worth of tedious paperwork to do?

A: Having 40 hours with which to do it.

Q: Is it helpful to have the aid who knows nothing about the product about which the paperwork is being organized?

A: No.

Q: Can it hurt?

A: Well yes, because either it looks like you’re falling behind because you fail to use resources that you supposedly have at your disposal or you spend more time telling him what to write than it would take for you to write it yourself.

Q: What if he comes through with some nice, but ultimately useless paperwork?

A: That’s not helpful.

Q: Even if he really meant well?

A: Particularly if he meant well. Because then you’re left with others having the perception that he helped you a great deal and the time you spend re-doing it will be seen as wasted or evidence of your slow work.

Q: Would all of this be easier if your boss had a good command of the English language?

A: Yes.

News Headline: Bird Poops On President Bush
Clipping: “President George W. Bush was busy praising embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales at a press conference Thursday when a bold sparrow swooped overhead and deposited a present on the commander in chief’s left sleeve. A sign of good luck?”
My Reaction: This isn’t exactly newsworthy, but it’s just one of those interesting things. We had a couple students that got birdbombed back in high school and junior high PE. The bizarre thing is that it never happened to the popular kids. It was already someone that was already an outcast. It was like the birds knew.

News Headline: Second impostor found at Stanford
Clipping: “Stanford University officials, for the second time this week, found themselves Friday dealing with an interloper who has managed to pass herself off as a member of the university community for months.”
My Reaction: Some people are wondering how this could happen, but that’s a pretty silly question. Universities are little towns where people are constantly coming in and out. Someone could have pulled this at Southern Tech for years before anyone found out, though their access to the facilities would have been limited. Seriously, their car (if they had one) would get figured out well before they would. A former bandmate of a friend of mine lived in the equipment room on the Southern Cross University campus for about six months after he graduated.

News Headline: Second impostor found at Stanford
Clipping: “The parent company of the Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s fast food chains sued rival Jack In The Box Inc. on Friday to stop TV ads that it says suggest Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s use cow anus to make Angus beef hamburgers.”
My Reaction: It’s a silly ad and a silly lawsuit. The only thing that I find most notable is that when I was growing up Jack-in-the-Box’s nickname specifically involved the anus. I was going to say something about glass houses, but JitB burgers have improved immensely since then. Maybe it’s more like the reformed outcast being particularly ugly and mean to his former compatriots.

News Headline: Cornishman sleeps after 11 days (but he’s in for a rude awakening)
Clipping: “Mr Wright believed he was battling to beat a record of 264 hours set by American Randy Gardner in 1964, as part of a high school science project into sleep patterns. {…} But before the ban was enforced, there was time for Toimi Soini, of Hamina, Finland, to set a new best of 276 hours recorded in the Guinness Book of Records from 1965 until 1990. ”
My Reaction: This guy is a reckless idiot… but it’s hard not to feel at least a little bit sorry for him.

News Headline: Top medical journal blasts “designer vagina” craze
Clipping: “”Our patients sometimes cited restrictions on lifestyle as reasons for their decision,” they say. “These restrictions included inability to wear tight clothing, go to the beach, take communal showers or ride a bicycle comfortably, or avoidance of some sexual practices.” ”
My Reaction: There are unseemly billboards and radio ads all over Austin on these things. They tend to emphasize the “damage” done down there by childbirth and a plethora of self-esteem issues. They mention almost nothing about actual physical discomfort, so I’m skeptical of that being a central purpose of the procedure.

A conversation at Half Sigma about whether men should tuck or untuck their shirts reminds me of a recent discovery.

I’ve almost always worn my shirts tucked in, whether dress shirts or golf shirts or T-shirts. Part of it is aesthetic. I believe that shirts are intrinsically meant to be tucked in just like I believe belt loops need belts. Otherwise it just looks wrong to me. My wife disagrees about both beltloops and tucked in shirts — she thinks I look better with my shirt untucked. Part of it is comfort. Because I always wear and I am not flat-stomached, I can sometimes feel the belt buckle on my tummy, particularly when I’m leaning forward.

Because I have a long torso, this is rather inconvenient. What happens is that unless a shirt I have is too big, whenever I lean over, sit down, get in my car, or do anything that requires my bending over or something rubbing along by back, the backside becomes untucked. That looks worse than a shirt that is tucked in or untucked. So I have to resort to buying shirts that are too big.

Recently, I’ve decided to start wearing undershirts under my golf shirts. So I went out and bought a bunch of V-neck undershirts. With an undershirt tucked in, I don’t have to worry about the belt-buckle on my tummy. And if Clancy thinks that I look better untucked, I figure that there may be something to it appearance-wise.

As many of you know, Mormons have a special undergarment that they wear. It’s not a V-neck, exactly, but it is low in front so it doesn’t appear in front when someone is wearing a button shirt. It does, however, appear along the side of one’s collar and you can sometimes see it through someone’s shirt, depending on what they’re wearing. So it’s not invisible. As best as I can tell, if a young man has the undergarments it means that he either went on a mission or is married (I can think of no one I knew out there that wore them that wasn’t one or the other). So I could tell by the undershirt line I could see by the collar whether or not a guy was a Mormon in good standing. I’m told that some guys at The Big Mormon University sometimes cut a regular undershirt to look like the undergarments so that it’ll look to nice young Mormon ladies like they went on their mission.

Besides the shirt’s failure to tuck in, there is an aesthetic difference that is strange. Along my collar is the white undershirt, and I swear when I see myself in the mirror one of the thoughts that flashes through my mind is that I am looking at a good Mormon soldier… until I realize within a second or so that I am looking at myself.

If I’d worn this in Deseret (particularly while my wedding ring was lost) I might have given some young Mormon lady the wrong idea. Luckily, the cigarette that was usually in my hand would have given me away.

I hadn’t seen Cecilia in years. We made a habit of contacting one another whenever we were single and looking for a relationship, but the timing was never right. Either one of us was in a relationship, she was out of the state, or some other external force would keep us apart. The last time I spoke to her was several years ago, shortly after my breakup with Libby.

She called me to let me know that she had quit college and joined the armed forces. Having just broken up with Libby and needing someone else if only to make Libby go away, I was sad to hear from her and then hear that she was going to be leaving. Had it not been for the army, it would have been as good a time as any to give it a try. But this time she wasn’t just leaving Delosa, she was essentially putting herself on a list to leave the United States. She was in Colosse for a couple days from which she would take a bus to wherever it was that she was going.

Though the timing was good, the timing was also really bad. She called me from a friend’s house in Ocania and on a voicemail gave me her cell phone number. I called her back, but the cell phone was off. I left a voicemail with all of my phone numbers and some directions to my house. Unfortunately, my apartment was somewhat hard to find so I said that she should call me beforehand so that I could walk her through it.

The last night before she was to leave was a Wednesday night. I remember it because Libby was over at my house. That’s what made the timing so bad. If Libby and I had still been together, ironically, it would have been easier blowing Libby off. She was so worried about losing me she constantly prevented herself from getting mad and impetuous. But after we broke up, she no longer had any real reason to behave herself.

Cecilia had called while I was at work. It being Wednesday, Libby had made herself at home at my apartment. She either answered the phone or Cecilia had left a message which she had erased. The only way I knew that Cecilia had called was that Libby was quizzing me on who the hell Cecilia was. When I realized that she had called I got my cell phone out. There was a message waiting for me there, too, from Cecilia’s distinctive Kanawha area code.

Ignoring Libby for the time being, I started to call Cecilia back. Libby snatched the phone from my hand and demanded that I tend to her instead of this Cecilia girl. When I explained who Cecilia was and why it was so important that I talk to her, she was unmoved. “I only ask one night a week from you and that’s tonight. She’ll have to call you from her army fort,” or something to that effect.

The phone rang a couple more times and in a fit of anger Libby tossed it, and the only place that I had Cecilia’s phone number handy, out of the window. The phone was easily repairable (and insured), but by the time I got it fixed, Cecilia was gone.

In the greater scheme of things the whole thing cost me a $25 phone insurance deductible and the chance to say goodbye to someone I hadn’t actually seen in a few years. I would have been more upset if it had been our only real chance at a relationship, but it really wasn’t. I haven’t heard from her since, though I did some investigation a couple years back and found out that she now lives in… Estacado, not far from here.

Just about every show I’ve been following has concluded it’s season. Here are some thoughts on each one as well as some thoughts on another I have yet to see a single episode of. Shows are in order of their conclusion.

Shows:
How I Met Your Mother
The Office
24
Lost

How I Met Your Mother

The breakup of Ted and Robin was rather anti-climatic, which is probably a good thing. They were two people headed in very different directions in life and there’s only so much compensating that you can do for that. It was the responsible breaking up of two generally responsible people. A refreshing change, actually, compared to the overblown misunderstanding that I thought would do them in.

The Office

I was actually caught off-guard by both of the late developments. I thought that they were going to fiddle with the Jim and Pam thing for a couple more seasons. They still might, but the conclusion of Season Three at least demonstrates that the relationship is fluid instead of a five season Will-They-Won’t-They. The mechanism that appears to have made it happen is not quite as good as what got their British counterparts together, but it’s close to it.

The other thing is Ryan getting Jan’s job. That is probably the best season closer that I have seen in a while. “You and I are done.”… priceless. MBA aside, it’s a bit of a stretch that Ryan would get the nod, but then again I can imagine him putting together an awesome presentation or something. He’s definitely someone bound for management. What’s interesting about Ryan is that he has no loyalties to anyone. He doesn’t particularly like even the likable Jim. Not sure where they’re going to go with this, but Ryan could make a very good foil or villain with Michael or the whole Scranton branch in his cross-hairs.

24

There is a movie theater in Santomas that shows live TV for both 24 and Lost. I decided to skip the former but catch the latter, but after watching the conclusion I wish I had watched both in the theater. The special effects for the episodes may be the best I have ever seen on a television show and would have looked great in a theater. That alone would have been enough to get my butt over the the theater.

I thought the confrontation between Jack and Heller was really solid. I was scared to death they were going to pull something where Heller was the mastermind behind it all. The only complaint I have about that is Jack somewhat abdicated his responsibility: he has consistently done a whole lot more than what people like Heller have told him to. Jack’s goodbye to Audrey was a little bit corny, but there ya go. I hope for a lot less romance next season. I wonder if they intended to have Josh be Jack’s son and backed away because so many people figured it out so quickly. I’ve heard rumors that they only brought Audrey back due to fan protest, but after viewing the season I don’t think that’s true.

And so concludes the worst season to date. And the conclusion was… surprisingly strong. Strong enough to have me at least keep an eye on next season (particularly if they can solve the Wayne Palmer problem). I’m actually curious where Jack goes from here. Since the writers of 24 seem to acknowledge that the season was weak, it gives me hope that they might fix what went wrong. In any case, I’ll probably take a wait-and-see attitude.

Lost

Turns out that I didn’t get to see this one in the theater, either, because I couldn’t get back to the city in time. Like 24, I really wish I had been able to make it simply because the episode was so spectacular.

I was not among those to realize that the “flashbacks” were from the future. About halfway through, though, I did start to get the feeling that something wasn’t right about them. I was wondering if maybe it was a dream. I honestly wasn’t sure that it was Kate at the end until it was explicitly said. I noticed what I thought was an uncanny resemblence. I’m remarkably dense sometimes.

For the first time since the show began, I really wonder what’s going to happen next. I’ve always been more interested in explanations than story trajectory, so I’ve been less interested in what’s going to happen next and more interested in what has happened before (and what is happening elsewhere). But now I’m really curious what’s going on.

Barry thinks that there may be time travel involved. I didn’t see any indication of that but I am a little dense sometimes, so he may be right. I hope not as time-travel is a can of worms that could wreck everything the plotters have so meticulously built.

Abel thinks that they may replace the flashbacks with flash forwards. Question: Are there any how-Locke-became-paralyzed types of questions out there or have they satisfied the fundamentals? Are they maybe finished with flashbacks completely or maybe they’ll just go back to normal and it’ll just be a blip?

The most obvious answer for the people on the boat is the Dharma Intiative coming back to claim what’s theirs. If that’s true, though, then there’s absolutely no reason for Ben and Locke not to identify them. There are already indications that the DI is not a completely benign organization.

The thing I’m most curious about is what Penelope was doing on the other end of that transmission.

—

And in the vein of Lost, CBS has apparently pulled the plug on Jericho - which I have not seen - with the cliffhanger. I don’t know how to break it to them, but simply telling the fans how it all turns out is not going to cut it. The networks are going to have a hard time getting people to invest in these kinds of programs if they’re more willing to leave viewers deeply unsatisfied rather than shooting a few extra episodes to help it reach some sort of conclusion.

-{Thank You For Calling I}-

Agent: Thank you for calling Dentex Dental Insurance Group, can I have your name, account number?

Me: William Sherwood Truman, 9941-1219-64

Agent: How may I help you today?

Me: I would like to know why my periodontal grouting was not covered. I explicity read that it would be.

Agent: We only cover periodontal grouting when it is performed three months after a periodontal maintenance.

Me: But I did have a periodontal maintenance three months ago.

Agent: Yes, sir, but you did not submit a claim.

Me: We did not submit a claim because you don’t pay for the periodontal maintenance cleaning. So why bother sending you paperwork?

Agent: So that we will pay for your periodontal grouting.

Me: Wait a second, last time I called you denied my cleaning because it was the second cleaning after the periodontal maintenance. So even though we didn’t submit it to you it must be in your records because you used it to deny coverage on my basic cleaning.

Agent: Yes, sir, we do have a comment on file that you recieved a periodontal maintenance cleaning, but we must be formally contacted and billed by the dental care provider in order for the periodontal grouting to be covered.

Me: So it’s enough to deny me one claim but not enough to grant me another claim?

Agent: That is correct, sir.

Me: You realize out of the $400 of dental work I’ve had so far, you’ve paid less than $100 of that?

Agent: That’s still more than we have you on record as paying in insurance premiums. So consider yourself fortunate.

Me: Well yes, I’ve had a lot of work done because nothing was covered by my previous dental insurance carrier, resulting in my not getting my teeth cleaned regularly, resulting in problems building up, resulting in dental bills like I’ve been having.

Agent: Well you’d have to take that up with your previous insurance company, sir.

Me: Except that by failing to pay anything, you’re giving me incentives not to go to the dentist, which will then result in greater claims in the future. You’re just kicking the can down the road to my next provider.

Agent: I’m sure that you will find their claims policies to be as generous or less generous than ours.

Me: Sadly, you’re right.

Agent: Thank you for calling Dentex and have a nice day.

-{Note: This conversation is a little less transcribed than the previous one. It’s more a telephone call representation of the back-and-forth I’ve had with them in paperwork form.}-

Over at Bobvis, another discussion alpha/beta/gamma/etc males and the functions of dating or “putting yourself out there” to date.

One faction insists that introverted males have it harder, because the onus is on them to ask females out. One faction insists it’s “just as bad” for introverted females, who may have trouble attracting attention or even signal “do not approach” when in public.

From my perspective, I think society needs cue cards. Everyone should just carry around cards that say “interested” or “not interested.” It’d be so much clearer than the current situation; I’ve been told by friends before, when out, that some girl was “signaling interest”; half the time, they turned out to be married (though on two occasions so far, they also were “interested” anyways, which probably isn’t a good sign for their marriages).

In seriousness, however - it’s a two-person scenario, but it cannot be considered an “equal” start. If someone thinks they are unattractive, they may find confirmation in not being asked, but for the girls, eventually someone (even someone with beer goggles on full-tilt) will ask them out. For the guys, this is not the case.

Will also notes the problems with waiting for “others” to ask you out; you’re taking what you get, rather than going for what you want. He’s had issues with that - the “goth-bisexual-pagan trifecta.” On the other hand, I was 4′2 in middle school and they held a “dance” where I wound up being chased around by a 5′7, 240-lb girl with Elvis-like facial hair, and thatwas just… well… eww.

It looks like the opportunity for an independent Quebec might have closed:

So what are the chances of a breakaway Quebec nation-state now that the Parti Québécois registered its worst election results in 30 years, leading to the resignation of leader André Boisclair?

Not great. In fact, it’s being suggested that the window for achieving Quebecois nationhood, socially and politically, has passed

It’s up to Quebecois what they want to do and I can’t say it matters much to me one way or the other. The downside to this from the US perspective is that (a) it remains one of the thing Canada obnoxiously points to in order to reiterate that they aren’t like us¹ and (b) it’s going to make picking off the western provinces to pull them into the US that much more difficult. Alas, alas.

¹ - Sort of like the kid who swears up and down like he’s never gonna be like his parents. Not that we’re Canada’s parents, exactly. More like siblings. But you get the idea.

I had a somewhat depressing conversation with my wife over last weekend. We were keeping an eye on the future. She’s going to be taking a couple months off when her current contracts ends. It’ll be great for her in a number of respects. She’ll get to visit family and friends, get caught up on a massive sleep deficit.

She’ll also get to spend time with me. During the conversation the thought crossed my mind, “It’ll be great to get to know this person that I have been married to for three years.”

Wonderful, and a bit scary. I have not known Clancy when she wasn’t a medical school student, a resident, or otherwise working resident hours. Her life and her identity have been on hold for years now. She hasn’t gotten to do many of the things she enjoys doing. We have gotten a total of two vacations together, including our honeymoon. I barely know what she’s like when she’s not stressed, sleepy, anxious, or mentally and physically exhausted. I don’t know what it’s like for a full weekend together to be something less than an event to be celebrated.

Of course, part of me worries. What if we’re only compatible when she’s around part-time? One of my strong points as a husband is the ability to be a calming influence, a friendly ear, and a sense of perspective in the wave-on-wave beachfront of her life. What if her diminished energy somehow helps give me a parity in the relationship that I might otherwise lack? Or inversely, what if some of her current weaknesses are not as much a product of her unbelievably harsh schedule as I have been assuming?

These are not the sorts of things that keep me up at night, mind you, but every now and again they cross my mind. It’s all part of the original deal that I accepted when I partnered up for her, when I chose her over Eva, and when I proposed to her. Nonetheless, it’s an odd feeling to wonder at this point what my marriage will be like once I get to know who my spouse really is.

Sometimes you see something like this and you wonder “What are they up to?”

Other times you see the same thing and you think to yourself “I don’t wanna know”.

I learned something new from Wikipedia today.

I was doing some looking into Law & Order and discovered that Hudson University, often mentioned on the show, doesn’t really exist. I suspected that was true of Stuyvesant College, another oft-used college on the shows, but HU fooled me. Why? Because in the Batman comics, Batman’s former sidekick Dick Grayson leaves Gotham City for New York to go to a college named Hudson University.

Recent conversations over at Bobvis and here reminded me of something that isn’t entirely on-topic for either conversation and deserves its own post.

When I was young, I did “put myself out there” insofar as I asked girls out. I didn’t do a very good job of it, but I did it. I think that it’s really bad advice to simply tell someone, young or older, only that they need to ask more girls out. Most likely that will result in a disproportionate amount of rejections and lessons learned that are either false or counterproductive.

What I didn’t realize in my younger years but was helpful as I got older is that you have to “put yourself out there” by making friends, particularly (but not necessarily) of the female variety. For someone introverted like me, that’s hard to do. It means going out in groups when you’re rather be alone. It means introducing yourself to people just for the sake of their getting to know you. Hard, painful stuff, but helpful in every walk of life. Most of the guys I know that have a lot of trouble with women either have relatively few platonic friends or they are in an insular group based around activities where males significantly outnumber females.

Costa Tsiokos posted a while back about an encounter he had with a woman where he stepped back immediately after seeing that she was married. Frankly I’ve done that myself more than once. Why waste the time and energy (which, if you’re introverted, is limited). As a commenter points out, meeting people like that is how you meet new people, some of whom are going to be single. Chances are that’s not going to happen on an isolated incident on the subway, but it is nonetheless important to try to extend your network. The easiest way to make new friends is through old friends, and one of the easiest ways to get a girlfriend or boyfriend is through a mutual acquaintance.

This sort of thing is really difficult to do while in K-8 (particularly because there is comparatively so little interaction between boys and girls), though gets a little bit less difficult in high school and even less so beyond. But for people like me it never gets easy. Thankfully, several years ago I went to a party that I did not want to go to and struck up a conversation with a brunette medical school student.

I’ve heard it before somewhere, but an interesting idea nonetheless:

The Santa Fe Police Department is considering the possibility of recruiting Mexican nationals to fill vacant police jobs. {…}

But Police Chief Eric Johnson said New Mexico Law Enforcement Academy regulations prohibit non-citizens from serving as police officers.

Alessio said the Santa Fe police force, like others around the country, is vying to recruit the same 21- to 30-year-olds as the U.S. military, whose need for recruits is taking a toll on the police department.

“Every day, we get approached by young men and women from Mexico who are in the country legally but are not naturalized,” Alessio said.

I have only one concern about the program: It’s easier to do background checks on Americans than it is someone that was raised outside the US. It seems like it might be easier for someone to slip through the cracks. Then again, the same could be said of American citizens born and raised abroad and Americans that have spent a significant amount of time overseas.

I also speak from a position of ignorance for what kind of background checks we do before we let people in the US legally. If they look as closely at people immigrating as they do at police officers, then the point may be moot. Maybe Logtar can provide some insights?

Throughout high school I kept hearing of this rumor of a short blond-headed girl that had a crush on me. At first I dismissed it, but enough unconnected people mentioned that this girl mentioned me that I figured there had to be some truth to it. The problem was that I didn’t know who it was.

My primary fear was that it was a girl named Andrea Carmine. She was a friend of mine that was short, blond, and strikingly unattractive. I met her while pursuing her friend, but when things didn’t work out with her friend I became friends with Andrew instead. It was a good experience as she was the first female friend I’d ever really had. I wanted to want more, but there was just something spectacularly unattractive about her face that made the thought of kissing her entirely unappealing even though I liked her a great deal otherwise (a lot more than I liked the friend I initially befriended her in pursuit of, actually).

Andrea may or may not have felt that way about me, but I discovered somewhere along the way that even if that was the case she was not the only short blond-headed girl whose attention I captured because Mystery Girl was still riding the bus. Andrea rarely rode the bus at that point and there was no way she rode the bus in particular that my informant rode. I went through the yearbook looking for someone fitting Mystery Girl’s description that I might know and had no luck.

Then one day my senior year my best friend Clint pulled me aside. “I found out who your admirer is. Get this, it’s Jessical Lambrey.”

I’d never had a class with Jessica Lambrey in high school and I hadn’t spoken to her in years. When I looked through the yearbook I must have just glided over her name because of what she said to me the last time we spoke. “I’m sorry, Will, I can’t go with you. My parents won’t let me see boys.”

Jessica Lambrey was the third girl I ever asked out. She said no, giving the exact same excuse that Number Two gave. Number Two, it turned out, was a liar (she was “going with” another boy less than a couple weeks later). I don’t remember what I said when Jessica gave me her excuse. I was probably polite enough to her (I was too scared of girls to be mean to them), though I had some choice words about that liar afterwards.

Though she dropped from my consciousness almost immediately after I asked her out, I didn’t drop from hers. As I would find out years later, I would be the only boy to ever ask her out (at least up till her run-in with Clint). Her father really did forbid her from becoming too close to boys and she hated having to say no. And being sheltered and dateless, she harbored feelings for me for years afterwards. Never enough to approach me or say a single word to me, however. Of course, by the time I found out about it I was spoken for.

There’s a conversation over at Bobvis that’s detoured briefly onto the subject of what exactly happened to some guys to make them feel unworthy of approaching a young woman and asking them out. I commented that the fact that the first seven (or nine, if I could just remember the other two names) rejected me. It reminded me of this little story.

The Nine Strikes when I asked out the first nine girls had a profoundly negative effect on my self-esteem, as one might imagine. Looking back I can see all sorts of things that I missed at the time. I was asking out the wrong girls in the wrong manner. I didn’t realize what exactly was required to get from Point A to Point B. Number One was out of my league by any measure. Number Five was too popular, even if she was fat. Numbers Four and Six were just weird. Number Seven thought I was playing a cruel prank on her by asking her out. And, of course, I was even more clueless than most kids are at that age.

If I had only believed Jessica when she told me why she couldn’t be my girlfriend, I would have been mad about it (”Stupid parents!”) but that alone would have put a serious dent in the hopelessness I felt for the longest time was me. And if nothing else I could have made my first female friend years before I did, learned about girls, and maybe have actually gone out with her whenever the time might have been better.

If only I’d believed what she told me and understood what she never found the guts to later tell me.

TBND’s offenses have become more numerous.

In addition to last year’s (most probably) self-set fire that “conveniently” got her insurance company to pay for a complete remodel of her home, and her floodlights, the problem’s even worse.

See, for a while now, I haven’t been able to have my windows open at night for two reasons. One has been the lights (I kid you not, I can see well enough to read a book if my windows are open), but the second is the birds. They’re loud, they scream as they feed on the bugs attracted in the light.

And they have now decided that inside our chimney wall is the perfect place to make a nest.

A few weeks back Spungen complained about pop culture’s tendency to give a free pass to nerds:

Books, movies and TV shows told me nerds were red-hot lovers once you got those glasses and Dockers off. When you’re 12, these things have a big effect. They can hardwire your brain to desire the unlikely, even the ridiculous. You behave consistent with the belief even in the face of compelling evidence to the contrary.

Something tells me that a new CBS sitcom will not alleviate her outrage:

The Big Bang Theory: A sitcom in which two mega-nerd super-geniuses share an apartment. “They can solve any problem except one—the hot new girl across the hall.” A) Nerds are in this year, so I’d like to inform the Nabokov scholars in the audience that, in the pilot episode, VN’s name appears as an answer in a crossword puzzle. Eight down, I think. B) If these guys are so smart and horny, why don’t they just invent Kelly LeBrock?

One of the downsides to our current abode is that our address is on one street (18th) but our place faces another (19th). This makes giving directions to delivery people somewhat difficult. Luckily, one of the local pizza chains lets us order pizza online and has a field where you can give special delivery instructions (Above garage around back off 19th Street). Fortunately they usually figure it out.

Last night the doorbell rang at about 10:00 or so. Wary, I answered. It was a pizza delivery guy. I told him that we didn’t order any pizza. He said that he’d gotten instructions to deliver it to 5015 19th Street but to deliver it around back. He asked if there was anyone else living back here. I told him no, but it was probably ordered by the frat boys that just moved in to the adjoining house. He nodded and said that he guess it meant deliver to the back door of the front address.

When he rang the doorbell, the guy that answered immediately asked that he come around front. The delivery guy started explaining but the answerer was kind of an ass and insisted that he walk around front.

As best as I can figure they’re keeping our address on file with a note to always deliver around back. Unfortunately, they didn’t attach these instructions to 5015-B 19th Street, which is our address, but attached it to the actually house number (which is the frat boys’ address).

Whatever system they have for knowing where to deliver is pretty cool. They’ve gotten it right even when I’ve forgotten to attach the special note. Unfortunately, since the frat boys are ordering from the same place, I suspect it’s now going to lead to confusion.

A couple months ago a few of us at the office went to the local bar and had a few drinks. I found out something from the HR Lady that I did not know: it is against the law to ask an applicant what their spouse does for a living. She told me that she was dying to know what kind of job she had that took me to Deseret but was unable to ask.

This is actually something of an issue for me because my wife’s occupation makes me something of a less desirable hire. When I was in Deseret the words “medical resident” meant that they knew that I’d only be sticking around until the residency was through. I could say “doctor”, but many guessed by my age that she’d most likely be a resident. So essentially I was forced either to admit that I was not hanging around or lie and say that I was. Neither was a particularly desirable option.

I’ve run into the same thing in Estacado. I have a little more lattitude in that I can say that she’s not a resident, but the question still comes up as to what kind of doctor she is. So I can either represent her as something that she’s not (a fully licensed doctor) or I can basically admit that she’s on a one-year contract and that I won’t be sticking around.

Unfortunately, even though the law prevents them from asking, most either don’t know or don’t care. Further, it would raise more than a few eyebrows if I refused to answer such a usually-harmless question. It would make me look like I had something to hide. I do, of course, but hiding it isn’t effective when they know that you’re hiding something. So unfortunately this law does me absolutely no good.

It’s not a huge issue, I guess. I’ve been evading it this long. I suppose there’s no reason I can’t evade it until we end up wherever it is that we’re going to end up.

My ex-boss Willard is the kind of guy that generally wouldn’t hurt a soul. More to the point, he is extremely accepting of all sorts of people from all sorts of backgrounds (which, thankfully, included us Gentiles). Willard did his mission in California.

Clancy and I finished watching the sixth season of The Shield on Monday night and bore witness to the steepest cliffhanger they’ve had to date (the seventh and final season comes out next year). No spoilers except to say that one of the big enemies of next season is shaping up to be the Armenian mob that plagued Vic’s Strike Team in seasons two and three.

The Shield mentions Glendale, California, which has a substantial Armenian-American population. Glendale happens to be one of the cities in California where Willard served out his LDS mission.

Of the Armenians, Willard — who wouldn’t hurt a fly — cryptically had this to say: “I can understand why the Russians and Turks wanted to wipe out their entire population. It would have been a moral atrocity, of course, but I could nonetheless understand and sympathize.”