The ruling out of backup careers

Last night, I decided to play bartender. We have a strange assortment of alcohol, including airplane bottles from opening night gifts, random fifths brought to parties we've hosted, and quite a bit left for us when singer friends left town. Unfortunately, very few of our ingredients on hand actually seem to go together, so I was forced to get creative. This site is great for drink recipes, because you just enter all the ingredients you have and it tells you what cocktails you could make. I ended up making an "Erin's Sweater" for CameraMan, consisting of blue curacao and white chocolate liqueur. I renamed it "Smurf's Blood" (make one and you'll see why) and added a maraschino cherry for good measure. I followed that up with a chocolate orange martini, and then CM decided he was in need of another round of Smurf's Blood. I didn't drink much (because the drinks were gross, obvs), but poor CM woke up this morning with a headache and has now forbidden me from mixing cocktails.

I will probably never be a bartender.

***

I've been in an ongoing battle with AT&T for the past 10 days, trying to get them to set up DSL internet, convincing them to let me use a modem I already have, wriggling out of the shipping costs when they sent their modem anyway, and then (when they finally located my account and discovered that absolutely nothing had been done to set up service) finally giving up and canceling the whole thing. I have spoken to at least 15 people at AT&T, not including the completely infuriating fake person who doesn't understand the simple request "I want to speak to a person." I have called at least 6 different phone numbers, all of which led me to the exact same Customer Support line. I have heard Indian accents, Texan accents, and one excruciating Boston accent. I have been on hold for more than an hour, all told, listening to an ironic recording telling me over and over that most of my questions can be answered online. The many people I have spoken with have all been very calm (especially the fake one). I have not.

I will probably never be a customer support specialist.

***

I like to come fashionably late to trends as well as parties, so it took me a while to break down and buy the workout DVD that every other blogger was gushing about. The workout is 20 minutes long, and you're supposed to do it 30 days in a row, gradually moving through the 3 levels. I figured I could do just about anything for 20 minutes. I figured wrong. I made it exactly 8 days before giving up entirely. It's not that it was too difficult. Oh, it's difficult, but by Day 6 I could do all the push-ups (girl-style, of course), and I had graduated from 2-lb weights to 5-pounders for most of the Level 1 exercises. I just couldn't get motivated to do it. It didn't help that I was canceling out any benefit of exercise by eating whatever I wanted. Honestly, I have no excuse, except that I didn't want to do it anymore so I stopped. As the trainer at my gym who gave me my fitness assessment told me, "You are casual. You will never see results if you are casual." I'm sure he was right. And I think I will go back to casually treadmilling while watching episodes of Gossip Girl.

I will probably never be a workout guru.