Release your InnerVibe

Ever wish you had the next big idea like Google, Bacon Salt, The Chia Pet, The Clapper (btw, I still want one of these) or some great fad that would make millions and you could retire at a young age? Hey don’t we all.

There’s a lot of innovation out there. Most of them, you could take it or leave it but every once in a while, you’re like, hey, I know I had that idea first. No lie, I thought of drive thru convenience stores when I was 10 years old and trying to ride my bike down the road balancing a gallon of milk on my handlebars, I was like, this is BS, they should do a ten item or less drive thru at the grocery store.

The Puget Sound Business Journal did a spotlight on these two entrepreneurial bartenders in Seattle that have designed a vibrating condom, InnverVibe. (Dang, I wish I would have thought of that, what a concept). Their first 30,000 orders sold out and this thing is back ordered on the website.

OK, I have to do some more research on how these things work. I wasn’t sure at first, does the condom have a little motor in it? Upon further investigating I learn it’s not a condom, it’s a condom ring which can be used with or without a condom. I think there used to be another name for these, think cocktail crossed with diamond ring, I don’t have to spell it out. Sounds like a winner, eh?

The burning question of the day, fellas (or ladies, I’m an equal opportunity researcher), do these things make a difference?

The check really was in the mail

Lately I’ve gotten really bad about not getting my mail. Probably because I’m broke right now and all I seem to get is bills. I’ve even taken to just going to my mailbox once a week. I know it’s lazy, but my neighborhood has locked mailboxes, so there’s no worry about someone stealing my mail. I’m paranoid about identity theft too, so I shred anything with my name and address on it – and am totally behind on shredding.

I pick up my mail and am flipping through it, bills, ads, credit card applications, the usual. I see this letter that looks official from my bank. I know I didn’t bounce a check, but think I’d better open it. Sure enough, it’s a letter saying, ‘Dear Ms. NoHostBar, you haven’t cashed a check from your escrow account from 5/29/08 (yes May, four months ago.)Please cash as soon as possible or call us. I’m thinking, hey, cool, it’s from selling my old house and probably a couple hundred bucks. I scan further, it says it’s for $1,084. Yes, One Thousand eight-four dollars – holy cow, praise the Lord, hallelujah! It was that lucky penny I found.

OK, next step, find said check. It is from May, right after I moved, so hopefully I didn’t shove a stack of unopened mail somewhere in my move. I find a big pile of envelopes and start rifling through. I see another official envelope from my other old home loan – open it up and it’s a freaking check for 300 bucks and change. Jackpot! I found the other check too, and you can bet I marched right down to the bank today to get them in there.

You’d think this would be a lesson to me, but I doubt it. I think I have so much going on at work, that by the time I get home, I really can’t bear to do anymore paperwork type tasks. I just found a $100 gift card from three years ago that I had put in a spot where I would for sure remember it.

Let’s just say the grand windfall completely made my day, plus I got hit on at a restaurant by a cute waiter, so it was a double bonus. Drinks are on me!

Sorry, wrong number

Text messaging is a great way to communicate. It is really handy if you just want to send a quick note to someone, rather than chatting on the phone. I see why it’s so popular with kids, but I know a lot of people who text all the time. However, there is a downside – texting the wrong person.

This has happened to me a couple of different times. One time I got a text from a girlfriend who lives in another city that said ‘I see you’. I was like what, are you in my town? Now, I know she had a boyfriend at the time, but it sure sounded like flirting to me. She was pretty surprised to realize who texted back.

So last night, I’m at a party. My BF and I had been texting all day, so when I got a text, I figured it was from her. Big surprise, it was from this guy I dated about six months ago – Deputy Douchebag.

Background: This guy was a real dick. We only went out on a couple of dates, the first one he conveniently ‘forgot’ his cash so I bought lunch. The next and last date was a road trip to the Mariners baseball game. We went over with his buddy & girlfriend the day before. He was working so I had to reserve our hotel rooms on my credit card. He tells me to get rooms at this one hotel, because we can walk to Hooters from there. (Should have seen this going downhill from that).

The trip over was fine, we get there, go to Hooters, and I’m not kidding, you’d have thought these two guys had never seen boobs before. They were gawking at the waitresses, and even got some of their autographs. It was embarrassing. We go to another bar and he proceeds to get sloppy drunk. Back to the hotel, I’m at least thinking it’s salvageable at this point if the sex is good. Well it wasn’t. It was the worst sex EVER. I mean ever. I can’t even describe it since I’ve completely blocked it from my memory, it was just bad. I’m counting down the hours at this point. The rest of the trip didn’t go any better, he acted like a teenager – calling his friends every 5 minutes at the game to replay the Hooters incident.

Another thing, this guy had no ass. You know how you see old men and their butt just goes straight to their legs – it was like that – completely flat, just two little crease lines. I thought I was going to die. When cops are wearing their uniforms, they always look more muscular, must be the vest. Even worse, was that he totally blew me off when we got back (which was a relief), but between he and his friend they stiffed me $200 bucks on the rooms, and he didn’t brush his teeth the whole time. GROSS!

So you can see why when I get a text message from him last night I’m a little shocked. Here’s how it went:

Deputy Douchebag: ‘Will call later. Will arrive 15 minutes.’

NoHostBar: ”I think you have the wrong #”.

DDB: ‘Where are you?’

NHB: At this point I’m thinking of all sorts of replies like ‘F&*cking your best friend’, ‘just left the party’, you get my drift. I even put in an emergency call to the BF, she thought I should say ‘at my f&*k buddies’.

I settle on ‘At my boyfriend’s house’.

DDB: ‘oops’

I dropped it at that point, but now I wish I had sent one more – “hey douchebag, quit texting my girlfriend’. I’m still cracking up about the whole exchange.

It serves him right for being an immature jerk. I could almost forgive the whole money issue if the sex would have been decent. I should have known better to go out with him in the first place – when my friend told me about meeting him, I googled him and his name came up on a ‘bad cop watch dog list’ – for getting a DUI, demoted and all this other disciplinary stuff. Nice…

Expensive lesson to learn but I’m a sucker for a guy in uniform.

Happy Hour

What is it about Friday that makes me drink too much? I think it’s the Happy Hour specials, I just can’t pass up a good deal. My drinking buddy and I started at 4:01, usually it’s our 5:01 club – Friday night we are out of the office as the clock strikes 5, so we’re at the bar by 5:01. Our bill was 17 bucks, we each had three pints and an appetizer, what a bargain! One of my girlfriends (that works for a very well known computer company so it will remain nameless), has a department ‘budget meeting’ every Friday that starts at 2:00 at their local watering hole. Nice…I’m a little jealous.

My whole philosophy has always been that I’d rather start drinking early, then go to bed early. First because I can’t stay up past ten o’clock, and more importantly, if you have a hangover, the extra sleep does wonders. I’ve never understood when people wait til like 9 or 10 to even go out to the bars.

Well after the bar I decide to go to Blockbuster to rent my new favorite HBO series to have an Entourage marathon. I don’t even have an account and the teen helping me must think I’m a big loser – big plans for a Friday night? I will say he was the fastest typist I’ve ever seen, even on numbers, he was only using one finger and was typing faster than I do on a 10-key.

I crack a bottle of wine and settle in for my Entourage marathon, but since I’d seen one, ended up reading more hilarious TuckerMax stories. (See my previous post for more on him). Well a couple (how many is a couple?) of glasses later, I’ve got to get to bed. I make my coffee so it’s good to go in the a.m.

Well I wake up with a raging headache, wander in to start my coffee and it feels like I’m walking in a sandbox, WTF, I must have opened my coffee grinder when it was still going because there are freaking coffee grounds everywhere. I’m like, holy cow, how much wine did I have anyways? I look over at the bottle of Pinot Grigio (p-no gree-zhee-oh) and the screw on cap isn’t even on right. How hard is it to twist a cap back on? Guess it’s harder than it looks. (No wisecracks about the screw top either, it’s not cheap wine). I made a pretty good dent in it, no wonder I have a hangy.

I continue on in the kitchen, stepping in a puddle of water. What the heck, must have been an ice cube from my waking up parched at 6 a.m. and thinking maybe that would help my headache. At this point, I the morning is not starting off too great so I decide to watch College Game Day, Kirk Herbstreit always cheers me up. On my way into the living room, I step in something wet…oh swell, my dog tinkled in the house, and it’s all my fault since I was crashed out and didn’t hear her need to go out. Nice mom.

In the meantime, I get a text from my BF telling me she drank too much last night, is nursing a hangover, and one daughter has a soccer game and she has to take the other one shopping for a dress for her first high school dance. Thank God I don’t have kids have to go anywhere until tonight, except for the store to buy carpet cleaner. We decide that we are quite the pair, she thinks a greasy burger would hit the spot, and I’m contemplating whether a red beer would be a good idea. To quote Homer Simpson, ‘Mmmm. Beeeeer.’

Did I say that out loud?

One of my worst habits is saying things before I think about it and then totally sticking my foot in my mouth and scrambling to diffuse the comment. We coined the term in college – ‘mint flavored shoes’, meaning we hoped we at least had our mint flavored shoes on when we stuck our foot in our mouth.

Have you ever caught yourself thinking out loud? Sometimes I’ll do this when I’m alone or talking to my dog – random thoughts that if someone heard you they’d think you were nuts or a complete moron.

Well, I’ve now found the ultimate ‘tell it like it is, say what you think and don’t mince words’ guy. I just finished reading Chelsea Handler’s first book, and laughed so hard my stomach hurt, so I was telling my girlfriends about it. They told me about this guy who had written a book and it was like a train wreck – he is a self-proclaimed asshole who lives to get drunk and sleep around – but you can’t help reading his stories.

Here’s the tip of the year from NoHostBar – check out TuckerMax.com. I’ve been known to exaggerate how funny things are (no, really?), but I’m not shitting you, this guy is the real freaking deal. Word of warning, he says exactly what he thinks and it is rude, crude, sexist, and obnoxious, but probably the funniest stuff I’ve ever read. I haven’t got his book yet but have been reading some of his top stories on his website. I was crying…I couldn’t even get through a paragraph of one of his stories without breaking into that hysterical, slient, sob-laughing. His book is titled “I hope they serve beer in hell”. [Aside, a friend of a friend met this guy in Vegas, he is just like he says].

Like I really can’t believe he says some of this stuff out loud, or on paper. Word on his site is that he’s filming a movie. I can only imagine that one. I can’t even put an excerpt on here, you have to read it for yourself. Guys, you’re going to love this. Trust me.

BF, here’s your 5-Star Depends Alert – you’d better have some handy, because you won’t believe it!

Another one bites the dust

All right, so this might be a little shocking for a hump day topic, but here goes. I just burned up another vibrator. Yep, the Pocket Rocket has bitten the dust. Normally, I wouldn’t think this was so funny, but those of you who have heard the story of the ill fated demise of the Rabbit, I knew you’d get a kick out of it. How does someone burn out not one, but two household appliances?

Not my proudest moment, but a lot of folks are still getting some mileage from the Rabbit story, (my ex-husband’s girlfriend included but that’s a whole different story). I won’t get into graphic detail for you faint of heart, but the rabbit done died about a year ago. If you’ve seen Sex and the City, you know which rabbit I’m talking about.

A few years ago at a girls weekend in Bend, Oregon we were very enlightened – there was a porn shop that was conveniently located next door to our hotel and we also listened to a band that referred to the Pocket Rocket – (and we found out later what it meant. This was before Passion Parties came around, so we learned a lot at the “Pretty Pussycat” (which we thought was a lube, oil & filter shop for women because it said ‘got lube’ on the readerboard).

Back to the story, you can just guess what happened. Without getting into detail, let’s just say the rabbit was involved, then there was some smoking, not me (although it was smoking hot at the time), but literally smoking. The rabbit caught on fire, not flames, but smoldering. I even asked my electrician brother in law to fix it, but he declined to help me out, thanks brother!

So the rocket has been handy since, and now it’s done too. I’m like, are you freaking kidding me? Is this a joke? My BF’s sister in law swears that the reason these things go bad is because they are made for cheap batteries, the good ones are too much for them too handle.

Well that’s just dandy, now what am I supposed to do? Seriously, it’s not that funny, I know you’re laughing. I now live 90 miles from the good porn shop, it’s not like I can go to one in my town, I’ve got to go on the road for this. My travel companion is gone, I’m a little sad, but luckily I don’t have another trip for a couple of weeks.

I wonder if you order these things online if they come wrapped in a brown wrapper like Playgirl used to? I’ll let you know…

Palin Shmalin

All right. This Sarah Palin look-a-like shit is getting old. The novelty has worn off. I’m starting to hear it every freaking day now, no matter what I’m wearing. I think I picked a bad time to try and change my hair color from Tina Fey brown, to what I thought was trendy, highlighted lighter brown, but apparently it’s now a lighter shade of Palin.

I’m at a party this weekend and one of my buddies stops the whole party to say the VP candidate is in the house. Then I go to an event tonight and hear it from no less than three people. Hey, has anyone told you who you look like? Um. Yeah, I think I’ve heard it. Tina Fey, right? The guys seem to love the look.

All right, so I don’t have much choice until this freaking election is over. Either I change hair color or just stick it out. I have bigger worries right now so it’s going to have to wait. So my question is…when I go to University of Idaho (Palin’s college for one year, allegedly) for Homecoming next month, do I play up the Palin-do and really go for it, or do I shun the look and wear a Vandals shower cap? (Note, a shower cap is what we call wearing a hat on those days when you don’t want to take a shower or do your hair.)

Please advise…

Step away from the Magic Bullet

Slowly…just back away from The Bullet…

My BF got a Magic Bullet for her birthday and is completely obsessed with it. Between she and her two daughters, they have been lighting up the kitchen making smoothies, spaghetti sauce, and who knows what other concoctions (is it me, or is that a funny word). Now they are totally addicted. I knew this would happen – I got the bullet a few months ago and it is totally awesome. The difference between our households is that they actually use it for food preparation, while so far mine has only been to invent new cocktails (surprise, surprise).

She sent me a text while I was at a party Saturday night to tell me she got one for her birthday. I turned to one of my girlfriends and was like, oh hey, my friend got the magic bullet for her birthday. She gave me this look somewhere between shock, being appalled, and then mildly amused – she totally thought I was talking about a vibrator. Which, is the exact reaction the BF had when I told her about my purchase. Geez, do we all have our minds in the gutter? Why, yes, as a matter of fact we do!

This is not an infomercial, but if you like blended drinks, or making smoothies, this is the best $50 bucks you’ll spend. We’re talking more instant gratification than a new sex toy. I was watching tv a while ago and this ad came on…hey, you…yes, you – try a Bailey’s Shiver. Just mix ice, Bailey’s and blend. I swear they were talking to me, I think they hypnotized me because it looked so tasty I had to try it. I whipped one up in less than 10 seconds, and they were right, it was delicious. Not quite better than sex, but close.

Can I get do-overs?

I survived the mandatory retreat this past weekend. Unfortunately it was 36 hours of my life that I’ll never get back. What an f-ing waste of time! I won’t bore you with the play-by-play, but I knew it was headed downhill when the leader of the committee in charge of putting it on said that he went through it a few years ago, and it was ‘the best experience of his life’. I’m sorry buddy, that’s just pathetic. If that was the best time of your life, then you need to get a freaking life! I’m hoping he was talking about his professional life. Even so, that’s pretty weak. It was pretty much as I expected. I went to bed when they broke out the Bingo game after dinner.

That retreat doesn’t even crack the top 100 fun things I’ve done. I’d have to say it ranked in the bottom 10%, right down there with being a street vendor in a parade or the year I thought I had an adult case of the chicken pox and couldn’t go out…on my birthday!

At least it’s over and I can completely wipe the experience from my memory. I’m off to a good start, must have been the painkillers I took, no wonder I was so tired. Do you ever wish you could get do-overs for a weekend? Or a date? Sometimes you just wish you could get the time back and do something else.

On another note, Happy Birthday to my BF! Milk it for all you can sister!

Adding insult to injury

Are you sexually active?

Geez, why don’t you just rub salt in the wound. What is this a joke, can you tell from looking at me? Is it written all over my face that I’m practicing for the nunnery? OK, I guess my new doctor was just being considerate asking if I needed a prescription for birth control at my check up today. I did the half-laugh, half-scoff of ‘I wish’. Then I realized she was asking me for real. No…I’m not, but thanks for checking.

I think I’ve desensitized from it right now. I’ve parlayed my attractions onto Entourage – I’m totally obsessed with this show. My BF and I were talking about the ‘toy’ that her friends stole from a passion party and left on her doorstep – she was wondering if I’ve replaced one of mine that perished in an unfortunate incident. (One of these days, I’ll tell you how the rabbit done died).

My point being is that I haven’t actually met, or seen for that matter, anyone that I’m interested in sleeping with anyways – and this has been in the last 7 months. I don’t know why, but no one is doing it for me. It’s like that Seinfeld episode where George stops having sex and all the sudden becomes this brilliant scholar – the thought being that sex was muddling his brain. No wonder I’m such a writing genius right now.

So I’m channeling my energies into reading and writing – technically I should be spending more time exercising or doing yard work, but what fun is that? Anyone secret crushes out there that really turn your crank?