Melicious Details

The worst of the wurst.

I was at the hair salon last week and had this conversation with my stylist.

Kate:  After standing on my feet all day, I get cankles.
Me:  Does everyone call you Hillary?
Kate:  My feet and ankles also get really swollen when I'm on long flights.  So I went and bought some medical-grade support hose.
Me: Don't you need to be somebody's grandmother to be allowed to purchase those?
Kate:  They worked great. But they are sooooooo ugly. 
Me: I bet.
Kate:  I got black. The only other color they come in is that weird color - it kind of fleshy...you know... it's like the same color as potted meat.

I have to stop here for a minute and say that I had never heard of potted meat, but since Kate's mom is British, I figured she was familiar with all kinds of bad cuisine.

Me:  Potted meat?  You mean like Spam?
Kate:  Actually more like liverwurst.
Me:  So you can buy medical grade support hose in two colors:  Black and Liverwurst.
Kate: <squealing with laughter> Right!

I had not thought about liverwurst for YEARS. But it all came back to me:  When I was 7 or 8 years old, I was playing at my friend Cheryl's house.  At lunch time her mom made us sandwiches.  I'm all ready for PB&J, but what is handed to me?  Wonder Bread with mayonnaise and liverwurst. One of my Top 5 Most Horrific Culinary Experiences. Ever.

Unnatural Disasters

My new favorite website is called Photoshop Disasters. It's a collection of mostly hilarious examples of what happens when amateurs try to use Photoshop to somehow "enhance" a photograph.

I'm pretty sure the conversation for this ad went something like this:

Marketing Person:  So the model will be wearing the black button down sleeveless shirt.  And jeans.
Photoshop User:  A button down shirt that is sleeveless?
MP:  Yes.
PU:  Seriously?
MP:  We want him to look cool and kind of edgy...let's have him holding a motorcycle helmet in one hand.
PU:  And in his other hand, his fingers can be entwined with disembodied fingers!  Now THAT is edgy.

Photoshop Disasters' posts are sometimes over my head when they show a photo that looks perfectly fine to me, but has a headline that says "clearly a vertical hold problem" or "terrible leveling". 

Which reminds me of the years when I worked for the company that makes Photoshop.  I must have had this conversation a hundred times:

Person I have never met:  You work at the company that makes Photoshop?
Me:  Yes.
Person:  Wow!  I've been using Photoshop since Version 3.
Me:  We're on Version 27 now.
Person:  It's a great product.  But I have a problem when I try to <insert technical words here>.  Do you know how to fix that?
Me:  No.

The other amusing thing about Photoshop Disasters is that it has actual examples of disasters created by the company who makes Photoshop.  What could be more ironic - a Photoshop Disaster featuring a photo of Photoshop packaging.  I thought this was so funny.  Like really laugh out loud funny.  But that might be because I am relieved to a degree you probably can't imagine that I no longer have responsibility for marketing Photoshop.

So You Think You Can Pole Dance

My friend Celeste decided to celebrate her birthday by inviting several girlfriends to join her in learning how to pole dance.  Celeste is the kind of friend who would do anything for you, so I felt I needed to do this for her.  I admit I was scared.  In grade school I always got hurt playing on the playground bars and poles.  But unlike grade school, this event involved drinking champagne, which is guaranteed to improve my dancing.  And also my "musicality".  Maybe it would help with the pole.

The first thing you do when you enter the pole dancing studio is put on pole dancer shoes.  Which are shoes you wear when walking around the studio.  And when attempting to pole dance.  I realized really quickly I would have to make a choice:  either I could guzzle champagne OR I could wear the shoes.  Even I - who's worn high heels since I was 14, who often said I broke through the glass ceiling with my stilettos - was no match for these shoes.  They scared me almost as much as the pole did.

Our dancing instructor's name was Brandy and she was obviously a professional.  At many things.  I think she may have gotten her name from the standard method of pole dancer naming whereby your first name is the same as your childhood pet.  In case you are wondering, mine would be Snowball. 

Brandy provided us with impossible to follow step by step instructions on how to dance with the pole.  She also told us we should concentrate on the person we were imagining we were dancing for, as opposed to watching the other women next to us who were grappling with their own pole.  But honestly, watching the other women was so hilarious, it's pretty much all I could do.  And anyway, my pole and I had like no chemistry.  At all.

As you might imagine, Brandy takes her pole dancing very seriously.  Her instructions included all kinds of graphic - and creative, by the way - ideas for how to "be sexy and uninhibited with your partner."  After Brandy's third eyebrow-raising suggestion, the woman next to me said, "If I tried that, my husband would say 'What is wrong with you??''.

Brandy also taught us lap dancing, which at first I thought was going to be so much better because we could take the shoes off.  Right?  You don't lap dance in the shoes do you?  Oh. You do?  Really?

When my husband was a ninja vampire.

At the dermatologist's urging, Clyde had a treatment using blue light to remove some pre-cancerous spots on his face. While the end result would be a less spotty face, immediately after the treatment he couldn't be in the daylight or be near a window where sunlight was coming in, or sit too close to fluorescent or incandescent lights for 48 hours.

The morning after the blue light special, I was awoken at dawn to this:

Me: What are you doing?
Clyde: I'm going to water the tomato plants before the sun comes up.
Me: Seriously??  I need to take a picture of you.
Clyde: Are you going to put it on Melicious Details?
Me: Absolutely.
Clyde: You don't need to take my picture.
Me: This would be hard to describe without a photo.
Silence
Me: So then are you going to spend the rest of the day laying under the house?
Clyde: First I have to go to the bank.

All Ears

If you are a person talking on your cellphone in public and I can hear you, I will be eavesdropping.  Because I'm just nosy that way. 

I catch people lying all the time. Like the woman at JFK in the bookstore with me.  We'd checked in for the same flight, and now had lots of time to kill.  Which explains why we were both standing around reading magazines we had no intention of buying.  She answered her phone and started talking about nothing very interesting.  But then she says, "OK, I gotta go, my flight is boarding now."  And I look at her like seriously?  It's not boarding for 45 more minutes.  If we're lucky. 

Or the guy sitting by me outside of Peet's.  He was slumped in a chair, his head back, staring at the sky while he talked on his cell.

Guy:  I already told you.
pause
Guy:  NOTHING HAPPENED WITH HER.
pause
Guy:  Well, she's lying.
pause
Guy:  (sighs loudly) I don't know.
pause
Guy:  I have to go.  My battery is running out.
pause
Guy:  My battery is RUNNING OUT. I'll call you later. Bye.

He then dials another number and talks to his buddy about sports for the next 15 minutes.

Speaking of eavesdropping, my best one ever was a few years ago at a swanky restaurant.  A man and a woman were sitting at a table close by. They started out having a romantic dinner but it began to death spiral during the entree.  I was straining to hear because oh my god, it was obviously so juicy but they were whispering through clenched teeth, which is especially hard to decipher.  Finally, the woman pushed back her chair and said, with exceptional clarity, "John, you're the one who came home with the disease!" and walked out of the restaurant. 

It's easier to pronounce than it looks.

When I was about 12, I realized that I would be able to - if I wanted to! - change my last name when I got married.  I never liked the last name I was born with because it didn't seem special or memorable, two things I desperately wanted to be.  For sure having a new name was going to make that happen.

I hated that my maiden name was always stuck smack in the boring middle of any alphabetical listing.  And it never, ever begged the question "how do you pronounce that?"  I wanted an interesting combination of letters, and something that was fun to write when I was practicing my autograph.

So did I hit the jackpot or what when I married Mr. Dyrdahl? 

Really I did not have a terrible last name before I got married. Nichols might be plain and common, but it wasn't embarrassing.  It wasn't bad at all, compared to a guy I worked with whose last name rhymed with dildo. Or some of the other unfortunate surnames I've come across like Peeps, Snakeshaft, or Clutterbuck.  Good God, living with any of those would be brutal. 

I've now been Melissa Dyrdahl for over half my life.  I've spelled my last name out loud a million times and have had the pronunciation butchered in countries all over the world, although Americans are the worst. Brain paralysis sets in when they're faced with an unusual combination of letters like D-Y-R. 

And funny stuff like this happens all the time. I bought tickets over the phone and the person I spoke to told me I could pick up them up at Will Call, but I would have to have an ID and the credit card I was buying the tickets with, or under no circumstances would I be given the tickets.  So, when I get to Will Call, I have this conversation.

Me:  I'm here to pick up my tickets.
Woman At Will Call:  What's your name?
Me:  Melissa Dyrdahl
WAWC:  What?
Me:  Melissa.  Dyrdahl.  D-Y-R-D-A-H-L.
WAWC:  I don't see anything under that name.
Me:  Try looking under D-R-Y.
WAWC:  Oh. Here they are. How do you pronounce that?
Me:  Deer-doll.
WAWC:  Hmm.  (She hands me the tickets).
Me:  Don't you need to see my ID and credit card?
WAWC:  No...
Me:  You don't ?
WAWC:  Honey, there is no way you could make that up.

But how deep is it really?

During my month of traveling all over the place, we visited Agra, India, home of the Taj Mahal.  Since you no doubt already know exactly what the Taj Mahal looks like, I am posting two photos of other things you will see in Agra.

I loved the colors and fabrics of the beautiful saris worn by the Indian women, despite the fact that they highlighted my lack of taste and elegance while wearing traveling clothes purchased at REI. I won't be posting any photos of those.

But this sign!  Our Indian guide blamed it on the British.

I know. I know. I KNOW.

Many (OK, like maybe 4) of my readers have been asking when? am I ever? ever? going to blog again?? 

First I have some good excuses about why I haven't:  I was traveling all over the place.  Then it was the holidays.  Then it was after the holidays. 

When I started doing this blogging thing, I had do idea the kind of commitment I was getting myself into. It did not occur to me that people would be actually reading it, and then wanting me to write more of it. Frequently.  So my New Year's resolution (which I have until the end of this month to declare, right?) is to be more regular.  And write more regularly. 

Speaking of my readers, two of them are named Desiree.  Seriously, I bet none of you can say you have TWO Desirees in your life.  The first and older Desiree, soon to be a Park Ranger, and also known as the Deadly Dwarf, has been my friend and co-conspirator in several Silicon Valley companies since...well, if the HP150 means anything to you, you know how long it's been.  The other Desiree is my niece, my first little girl niece, who use to sit on my lap and ask me to put "yipstick" on her.  She's now grown up and - is this cool, or what? - has her own blog where she too writes about her dog! And her life. And clearly we both just need to get focused and write more often.

He was big and ugly...

and he walked right next to my chair on the patio this afternoon, on his way to migrate straight through the back door and out the front.  I took the photo with my iphone, which I just happened to have in my hand, and waited till he got by the dog's water dish for scale.  I had to stand back though, because any second he was going to leap up, wrap several hairy legs around my ankle and sink his fangs in to me.

Making My Ears Hurt

It's that time of year when people talk about punkins.  I heard someone say it on the radio the other day and realized not only has punkin season begun, but it will soon be followed by Febawary.  Then I heard a woman say she thought Obama might be an A-rab (which made me want to ask her if she ate Eye-talian food).  This got me to thinking about all the college-educated native English speakers who scratch my chalkboard when they say something ridiculous like "Is that siren a fire engine or an amba-lance?" 

Irregardless, alls I want is a whole nother punkin.