Time out

I'm taking a break from non-work-related internet for a few days.

Please feel free to survive without me.

Happy New Year!

~g. mango is rejiggin' her priorities.

Earth, wind, and water

Seventy thousand people is a lot of people.

I encourage you to give of your time, support, and self to help the relief efforts. And if you're the praying sort, this would not be a bad time to send some prayers up.

The Candian Red Cross
Oxfam
World Vision
Unicef Canada

~g. mango

Trip back in time

I was feeling nostalgic for the music of my youth. So I started downloading legally purchasing various songs from the nineties and eighties. I found a multitude of songs by Kris Kross, SWV, En Vogue, Biggie, Janet Jackson, Michael Jackson, Sir Mix-A-Lot, Milli Vanilli, Gloria Estefan, the Fugees, even the Proclaimers!*

*I am so old.

But when I tried to dowload legally purchase some of my favourite U2 songs, Kazaa the major record store that I was browsing from the comforts of my own home repeatedly came up short.

Needless to say, I stiiiiill haven't foooound what I'm looking for.


~g. mango has no desire to be the mango who walked a thousand miles to fall down at your door.

Cleaning out my closet

I'm moving. Who wants some stuff? Specifically:

One (1) 1990 2-door Chrysler Daytona

• White with rad early-nineties maroon racing stripe.
• 2.2L engine.
  
• Far too many horsepowers than one could really use.
  
• New brakes, new gas tank.
  
• Great heating system. Will keep you warm and dry in the freezing cold winter months.
  
• Fold-down rear seats. I have fit an entire drum set, a guitar, three people, and three people's luggage for a weekend getaway thanks to this configuration.
  
• Fantastic stereo, custom built by highly advanced alien species.
• Really?
• Not really. But two cannon subwoofers in the trunk, four speakers in the cabin, and a very, very awesome CD player. Can rock entire downtown core if you crank it to eleven.
• Really?
• YES!

As is, $1000 OBO.

Six (6) Gmail invites

• Like boomerangs and venereal diseases. No matter how hard you try to get rid of them, they keep coming back.

As is, free.

Some (Ω) Other stuff

• Clothes. Like new!
• Textbooks. Like I spent $200 on one of the professor's friend's experimental forays into the written word, only to find out that I could never open the thing, skip half the classes, and still come out with an A in the course.
• More clothes. Like I have way too much clothes!
• Gay men. Like my closet is a haven for well-dressed men!
  

As is, ranging from cheap to free. Mostly free.


~g. mango will miss those gay men in her closet. . . well, only a little bit. they were always borrowing my jeans.

Mele Kalikimaka

FROM THE DESK OF GREEN MANGO

Dear, kind readers,

My very best wishes to you and yours this Christmas! I hope your holiday season is filled with joy and love, and entirely free of family dysfunction.

Much love,
Green Mango

~ that's the island greeting that g. mango brings to you from the land where palm pine trees sway

The Revolution starts here!

I do not like dressing up. I don't mind wearing something presentable and/or professional for important events like weddings, anniversaries, and funerals. And occasionally I may even wear a skirt in the summer. But I absolutely loathe having to get dressed to the nines everytime I go to work, or church, or any of those everyday type things.

So I don't.

I stopped dressing up for church when I hit 13. Which got me into a lot of trouble with my Dad. But he eventually stopped threatening to leave me home from church (which I thought was weird punishment, since most 13 year olds would have rejoiced at the thought of not having to rouse themselves on Sunday morning to sit through a three-point exegesis of 1 Corinthians 13:4-13). Anyway, so I've had long-lived liberation from church clothes. And since I was 18, and started working in environments that require business casual attire, I've been pushing the business casual envelope as far as it can possibly be pushed. That did not always work well, but none of my bosses have ever threatened to leave me home from church. I have tried to stay within reasonable limits.

This week, I decided that the whole business casual thing, even with all of this envelope pushing, was not working for me. So despite the fact that I have only ever seen one person in this whole office wear jeans ever, I declared it Casual Everyday. I thought I'd start the week off with a big, casual bang and wore jeans to work on Monday. And then on Tuesday the trend was catching on. People who I have never seen wear jeans at all since I got here were sporting their 501s. Yesterday, more folks were decked out in denim. And today all but two people are in jeans. And one of the denim-less wonders is wearing velour sweat pants.

Take that business casual.

~g. mango is also responsible for the revolutions that brought you peanut butter, umbrellas, dr. scholl's gellin' like magellan inserts, and every single one of the internets.

Brought to you by the letters M and F and C, T, D, K, F, and F again

I am very happy. I just thought I'd share that with you. I am too tired to be witty tonight, so I will just list the things that have made me happy in the last few days. And you will like it. Because you understand that I am tired and happy.

• I am done my Christmas shopping!
  
• My prodigal friends are back in town! YAY!
  
• Not only are they back in town, but they are flooding my home line, my work line, my cell line, my inbox, and every second of my freetime with tonnes of prodigal friend goodness!
• My non-prodigal friends are being so non-prodigal!
  
• None of my friends (prodigal or otherwise) expect Christmas presents!
  

~g. mango is exclamational and confrontational. and also she has lots of friends whose names start with F.

Shock and Awe (More Revelations and Hypotheses)

Today's Revelation

I should always sit down before I open my December Visa bill.

Today's Hypothesis

I should probablly invest in some heart medication before next December's Visa bill comes around.

Today's Revelation II

My entire pay cheque went Old Navy.

Today's Hypothesis II

I should buy shares in Old Navy since I single handedly boosted their last quarter sales out of the stratosphere.

~let g. mango be your financial planner!

Something about Korean BBQ. . .

Just makes you long for a vegetable.

And also an air freshener.

~g. mango is a carnivore and she's coming to get you!

Dressed to um, you know, impress. Or something.

When I came into this world my proud parents put me in pretty pink dresses. And though I was perfectly happy in those pretty pink dresses, I was twice as happy to go climb trees and play cops and robbers. To my parents defence, they quickly adapted to their little tomboy and bought me trucks and little green army men. And they were very understanding that one time when I got in SO MUCH TROUBLE at school for not changing back into my uniform (white shirt, blue cover-all type dress) after gym, 'cause I liked wearing shorts better. Because they are cool like that. But I think they are a bit disappointed that I never really grew out of that stage.

EXHIBIT A

When my dad saw me yesterday morning, dressed in baggy pants and a slightly wrinkled dress shirt, and generally ready for another self-declared casual weekday at work, he turned to my mom and with mock disappointment said, "You know, there was once a time when Green Mango used to dress like a girl.'

To which my mom, ever the realist, said, "No, there was a time when Green Mango used to look like someone who desperately wanted to get out of her clothes."

~ g. mango will wear a dress to your wedding. and a slightly wrinkled pink dress shirt to work.

By order of the Queen

Today is officially casual Wednesday.

~ thus saith the mango

I've lost that lovin' feeling

Yesterday I thought I felt the beginnings of a cold coming on. So I ate a bowl of brocoli with breakfast to ward off the germage.

I was obviously already sick, and delirious. What else could explain eating an entire bowlful of brocoli?

~ g. mango's adventures in zealous brocoli consumption didn't do much for this cold

Only by the grace of God

I have just finished going over prime factoring with my sister who is in grade 5. When I say going over, I really mean re-teaching. When I say re-teaching, I really mean trying to dissuade myself from talking tomorrow morning off to assassinate her teacher.

To refresh your memory, prime factoring is when you take a number, and break it down to its prime factors. . . oh, I guess I shouldn't use the term in its own definition. Basically, prime factoring looks a little like this:

18=2 x 3 x 3

Feel free to marvel at my ability to find the prime numbers that multiply to make up 18.

Now, I don't know about you, but I didn't do prime factoring until grade seven. And I definitely did not learn it all in one day. And after my first day of learning prime factoring, I wasn't given a photocopied sheet of 30 odd questions to tackle, along with thirty other questions each for English, Socials, and Science to do for homework. And had I been given a sheet with 30 questions on it, it would not have asked me to find the factors of numbers like 1179, 6225, 1001, and 279.

Tell me, kind readers, could you figure out if 1179 was even divisible by anything when you were ten. And then, could you do the work to find out the answers for thirty questions like it in a reasonable amount of time?

And would your teacher, after countless complaints from the parents of the nine grade fives in her 32-student class, most of whom, despite prior success in school, are failing their way through grade five, would your teacher insist that she is doing nothing wrong? She is, after all, teaching from the curriculum. And then would your teacher, knowing that your whole family helped you finish your Ancient Greece project last week, and continues to help you every. single. night. with your math homework, would your deeply devoted teacher ignore the fact that none of the grade fives can prime factor to save their lives, and go on to teach another concept on Monday that is based on the assumption that you know that 1001 = 11 x 7 x 13?

And that 1179 = 3 x 3 x 131.

They tell you in Sunday School to hate the sin, not the sinner. And I know railroading ten year old children is probablly not a bonafied sin. But tonight I was almost ready to give up and hate the sinner.

g. mango does not know her 131 times table off by heart

Biological Clock Rock

This week I decided that I will never have children for the following reasons:

1. Sustaining a family is very tiring.
   
2. In order to sustain a family, you need to have money. In order to have money, you have to work. I don't want to work, I just want to bang on de drum all day.
   
3. Previous employment experience shows that when I am working in a job that pays enough to sustain a family, and/or for enough hours to sustain a family, I am usually tired and/or grumpy by the end of the day.
   
4. I cannot fathom being tired and grumpy, or tired and tired for a twenty-year period of my life.
5. I cannot fathom a child enjoying spending time with a tired, grumpy Mom. Even if I will obviously take after my Mom and be the Best Mom in the Entire World.
6. My children might take after their father.
7. Worse yet, I might take after *my* father.
   
8. Worse yet, my children might take after me.

~Tune in next time when g. mango rewires the snooze alarm on her biological clock!

Fast forward

FROM THE DESK OF GREEN MANGO

Dear people that I love who send me forwards,

Please do not send me anymore forwards. Or else I will stop loving you.

Sincerely,

G. Mango

FROM THE DESK OF GREEN MANGO

Dear people that I love who send me forwards that you know I have already gotten because someone that we mutually love sent us the exact same forward thirteen minutes ago,

Please do not send me anymore forwards. I have already stopped loving you.

Sincerely,

G. Mango

~ g. mango says forwards are so 1996

Revelations and Hypotheses

Last Week's Revelation

The 5:32 bus never comes.

Last Week's Revelation II

Neither does the 5:47 bus.

This Week's Revelation

Neither does the 7:36 bus.

Today's Hypothesis

There is not enough soup in the world to make me to survive an entire day of working in this freezing cold office.

Today's Hypothesis II

But there might be enough vodka.

~g. mango is frozen and busless

My grown up Christmas list

The people I love have been asking me what I want for Christmas for weeks now. However, I was unable to give them a wishlist-to-make-shopping-for-me-less-impossible due to the precarious situation surrounding the Big Move and the acquisition of the Dream Job (first it was on, then up in the air, then off, then back on), and the emotional roller coaster I was riding due to all of that red tape (up, then down, then looking into what prequisites you need to become a certified alcoholic, and currently high as a kite).

Even after last week's fantabulous news, I still couldn't figure out what to ask for. I mean, I know I need all the regular house-related things that people need when they first move out on their own. . . But a) I'm moving into the staff house for the first few months, and it's stocked with much of the hardware that I'll need; and b) I cannot fit a dutchoven and a computer desk in my suitcase.

And today it came to me. What I'm really want is something practical and sentimental. Something that will remind me of all the wonderful homies I know and love in the Tdot. So, oh dear people I love, all I want for Christmas is a picture of me and you, placed in a cheap picture frame, wrapped in money. And world peace. Also wrapped in money.

~g. mango will also accept gifts of money wrapped in money

I have no blood left

This morning I went for my second blood test this week.

They took eleven tubes of my hard-earned blood. Eleven!

~g. mango thought blood letting was a discontinued practice

My job. . .

• Could be effectively done by an orangutan
• Is probably done by orangutans in countries where recent liberal arts graduates are not as plentiful
• Is only temporary . . .
  

I have to keep reminding myself of that last one.

~g. mango is off to find an orangutan

Drawbacks to being an effective worker

It is 9:55. I am already done all the things I was supposed to do for the day.

~g. mango is bored out of her mind