Remember my funny & smart friend Jean Villepique? The one who was just a stitch on The Office last year? Well just in case you forgot, this is your week to gorge on Jean-ness because she’s going to be “appearing” on two of the best shows on TV in one week! I know! That’s what happens when you move to LA!

So TiVo the bejesus out of this good time, friends: She’s on 30 Rock tonight at 8:30pm on NBC, then she’s on Curb Your Enthusiasm this Sunday at 10pm.

In the meantime, it’s cold and rainy and I need new tights. Tights for tall people. Yesterday I walked around all day with kindergarten crotch. While yanking my tights up in a corner in Barnes & Noble I told the woman standing next to me I was sorry to be so awkward but I had kindergarten crotch and she was Fantasia from American Idol. Screw you, fancy Dim brand tights from France you’re going in the shitter and I’m going to try to find something Wolford-esque at a fraction of the price because yeah they’re good tights but they still rip just like every other pair.

It’s too much.

According to the Dan Levin, who interviewed me months ago about the construction workers who hang out on The Atrocity, staring in the window, yelling at 7am, and so on, until I’m dead, the Peck Moss group has BOUGHT UP THE REST OF THE BLOCK next to the hotel.

How do I feel about this? I feel tired. I couldn’t fall asleep last night due to a convergence of factors, one of which was my inability to put down Truth and Beauty by Ann Patchett, recommended by Professor Franny Key, whose book suggestion never fail to turn my life around in the best possible way, another of which was feeling rather unwell, so was up until 5am, at which hour I managed to fall asleep in the middle of the second book I’d acquired at Prof. Key’s suggestion.

Two hours later, I was awoken by what I could have sworn was someone speaking Welsh in my ear very loudly. In fact, it was someone speaking Welsh in my ear very loudly. The construction workers, not content to just stick to their turf 100 inches from my window, were ON MY FIRE ESCAPE, speaking what I am convinced was Welsh or English with a very heavy Welsh accent. The window was open, the guy is out there in FULL MOUNTAIN CLIMBING GEAR, I mean there are like three carabeeners involved in this get-up and not one of them was being used in a wholly inappropriate neo-hippie-type way as a keychain. Repelling off the building. Hooked to a 1″-diameter railing of the fire escape, which, as we all know, is made of dust. Like if there were a fire we’d all be dead not from the fire but because the fire escape would collapse beneath us.

I wasn’t concerned for his safety. I have to admit. I was concerned for my health. I was also still weirded out by someone singing into the rat-infested scaffolding and plexiglass hideousness of The Atrocity last night. It was late. It sounded like it was coming from inside the building. A man warbling some unintelligible dirge. It was creepy and not soothing and appeared to be a long song with no distinguishable repeating theme, so the cumulative effect was…annoying. Like every sound in these parts lately.

And like every sound for years to come it seems. The idea of another hotel going up is too much. I need to stress that the too-muchness comes from the noise and the construction. I don’t care at all about The Atrocity itself anymore. I just want it done. I want these men to go away. I want to be able to walk to the laundromat without being ogled or assaulted by the foreman’s repulsive six-week old cigar.

A fellow after my own heart, Carl Alvani, dispenses some — well — indispensable wisdom about your first job. His first piece of advice is one of my longtime favorites and harder than you think to master.

1. Be humble.

You’ll get the most out of your job by adhering to Socratic adage: “The beginning of true knowledge comes from accepting that we know nothing.”

And on it goes, really wisely, with some stuff I cover in the Girl’s Guide and other stuff that will definitely go in the next edition.

[via Core 77]

So I thought it would be a good idea to walk from 95th & Fifth to 62nd & Lex last night because it was nice out and I had the time because I now time all my trips with Hopstop so I am not late, I used to be very late always because I’d assume it took no more than 30 minutes to get anywhere and that’s a lie. Or so Hopstop will have you believe and p.s. it’s right. So it seems I bruised my heel.

I know this because I got home and found a bruise on my heel. I looked up bruised heel on Google and I found that this affliction is sometime’s known as “Policeman’s Heel,” which I find somehow hilarious–for all the obvious reasons–and maybe flattering. For all the obvious reasons. But what I cannot get over is the explanation of Policeman’s Heel (which, by the way, I have) on the very clinical-sounding website Sports Injury Clinic (dot net).

What is a bruised heel?

The heel bone (calcaneus) is protected by a pad of fat. Repeated pounding of the heel can cause the fat pad to be pushed up the side of the heel leaving less of a protective layer causing heel pain. This injury is also sometimes known as Policeman’s heel. It is common in sports requiring a lot of impact onto the heel and in particular soldiers marching up and down on the parade square.

[Italics mine]

What?!?! The parade square? Who wrote this? What copywriter on crack wrote this? Who marches up and down on the parade square?!? I know soliders have a lot of injuries to worry about. I wonder if I should send the Turkish troops some Dr. Scholl’s moleskin heel pads.

I didn’t intend this to go in this direction but COME ON. Another day, another totally unbelievable news story [via TimesOnline UK]:

The US Administration is opposed to the resolution passed last week by the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee branding as genocide the mass killing of ethnic Armenians in Ottoman Turkey during the First World War.

I mean, it seems so cut and dried. Yes it was genocide. What’s the problem? And then I read this:

Those who think this vote is about setting historic facts right aren’t paying attention to the present. What we’re dealing with isn’t some rogue, failed state housing sworn enemies but Turkey, the only Muslim country in NATO, a potential European Union country and the most-important front-line state in the struggle against Islamist extremists. It is the West’s leading bridge to and democratic model for the Mideast.

It also is the country through which 90 percent of cargo passes for U.S. and allied troops in Iraq. At the very least, U.S. logistical problems will increase.

Granted the second quote is from an opinion piece on Bloomberg.com.

Definitely should consider sending Dr. Scholl’s. Because insult has obviously already been added to injury, so it’s really the least I can do. Whose insult, whose injury, I don’t know. I’m just a confused private citizen with the heel of a policeman, after all.

Update: I continued reading on Sports Injury Clinic Dot Net and came across this zinger at the end, which is good colorful advice not unworthy of a Sports Injury Clinician Dot Net:

There is no point you stopping running for a week if you put up scaffolding for a living and are on your feet every day.

Things got a little bananas. That’s all. There were a lot of birthdays, there is a lot of work to do, there are a lot of people around and it’s been consuming. Sometimes I have to prioritize.

It’s always the paying work that emerges as first priority. I’d be a damn fool to let blogging detract from the time I spend researching and writing about obscure topics to earn my keep. Then there’s people. As in people should come before non-person things. Like blogging about whatever. Some truly magical person-related stuff, and then there’s just me, a person who needs about 48 hours of solitude without interruption a week.

I’ve heard that blog posts about why you haven’t been blogging are annoying.

My computer is also losing its mind. It’s really giving me the creeps.

How boring can I make it? I’m eating spelt bread. It’s surprisingly good. I cut my hair. I’ve been having intriguing neighborhood collisions. I got a new bike basket. My bike was vandalized. My phone has no dial tone and I’m using it as an excuse to threaten Verizon. Because I, like you, enjoy the delusion that threatening to change phone companies scares international conglomerates. That I am in some way capable of instilling fear.

People who actually believe that they can instill fear and/or do on any regular basis. I don’t want anything to do with you.