No, I don't want mayo on that.

I love sandwiches. I eat sandwiches almost every day, and I frequent the many sandwich places around lovely Mycrappycollegetown USA. Every day I order a similar sandwich from many similar sandwich places. Many of these places have menus that go like this: "#1: Turkey Sandwich with lettuce, tomato, onions, italian dressing, and swiss cheese." Now, I hate tomatoes, so typically I order: "I'd like a #1 Turkey Sandwich with NO TOMATOES." Fine, easy, right? Well, when you say 'no [any ingredient here]' the person behind the counter *should* understand that this means no tomatoes but I'd love the rest of the other ingredients, because as a normal logical human being I have actually read the menu and understand what's on the sandwich. Unfortunately, the professional sandwich makers at many of my favorite restaurants cannot grasp this concept. Instead of simply making my sandwich I have to go through the next five minutes like this:
Sandwich Guy: "No tomatoes?"
Me: "Yes"
SG: "So do you want lettuce?"
Me: "Yes"
SG: "So do you want onions?"
Me: "Yes" (thinking "JUST MAKE THE FRIGGING SANDWICH")
SG: "Italian Dressing?"
Me: "Yes" (thinking "Thank goodness he's made it to the last ingredient he could possibly ask me about")
SG: Mayo?
Me: "Umm, no" (thinking "WTH the sandwich doesn't even come with mayo!")
SG: "Mustard?"
Me: "NO! Just give me what's on the sandwich now" (thinking: "Jeeze, I'm going to waste my whole lunch break saying no to ingredients").

Really, it gets old. And I hate mustard and mayo. This is why I order sandwiches that come without them. And the sheer thought that I would want to ruin a perfectly good sandwich with some nasty spread is insulting to my good taste. But that's an entry for another blog. So today I beg of all sandwich makers in the world: know what's on your menu and listen to my original order, it'll save both of us time and frustration. And I might not fill out quite so many nasty comment cards.

Hugs and kisses,
The Bitter Libertarian

Put on your damn clothes.

I am a runner. My boyfriend thinks I'm obsessed, but that's because he's crazy and doesn't 'get it.' Either way, unlike normal grad. students I am up at 7am. Like normal grad. students, I am not at work at 7am. Why? Because I'm at the gym, running like a crazy woman. Going to the gym is a fun way to kill 2 useless hours in the morning, I swear. A good chunk of my 2 hours in the morning is spent changing and showering and whatnot. Gym showers, by nature, are not scary things. In fact the gym showers here are the best showers around, if you can get past the whole lots-of-strange-women-shower-here-and-not-all-of-them-use-soap hangup. Unfortunately, however, there are a group of women who use my gym who make the shower room much scarier than necessary.

How do they do this, you ask? They prance around naked. Completely naked. Naked as the day they were born (but a wee bit heavier). The vast majority of these women are not real lookers, either. You'd expect young, good looking people with tone bodies to prance around naked to show off, but showing off is not what these women have in mind (unless they're trying to show the rest of us that big really is beautiful, in which case they should try a different approach). I find that the worst part of my morning involves going to my locker and being greeted by the 200lb naked woman who *might* be pushing 5'4", who always seems to be there no matter what time of morning I shower.

Now, I have no problem with nudity. I look great naked, trust me. And the people that are closest to me are welcome to find out how fantastic I look naked. And before I take a shower at the gym I do, in fact, get naked. And then I wrap my body in a towel like a normal person with an interest in retaining body heat who does not want to thrust her naked body on the rest of society.

Why do these women refuse to cover up? I'm not really sure. It's certainly not a lack of towel, because they all wrap their towels around their heads like turbans before strutting proudly to and from their lockers. In fact, the biggest one I've seen yet just threw her towel over her shoulder like it was a tail. Perhaps they like the feeling of stinky gym air wafting across their naked flesh. This might explain the one who not only walks around naked, but who also spends a good 5 minutes slathering herself with lotion before putting on her clothing. Maybe they have poor self esteem and think that men don't want to see their bodies, so they might as well force women to see them? Honey, even if I were into women I wouldn't be into women who prance around locker rooms naked. That's not seductive, it's called voyeurism. Perhaps the reason they don't wear their towels is because the towel is too short to encompass their bodies? The world may never know. And really, the world doesn't want to know. Put on your damn clothes.

Hugs and kisses,
The Bitter Libertarian

The snowday conspiracy

I live just outside of Washington DC, spitting distance from the DC beltway. Like most DCers, I hate the snow (even though I'm a transplant from Illinois, shhh, don't tell my relatives that I've turned against snow.). It's cold and wet and it's a pain in the ass to shovel off my car. Snow does have one advantage, however, and that is that everyone down here freaks out about it. And it always comes at the best times, like on a Sunday night when I have a huge paper due for work and I'm supposed to meet with my advisor in the morning to turn it in and I haven't actually started it yet. These are the times when snow is appreciated. Luckily, here at my fine institute of higher education, snow is no longer necessary to cancel classes! Imagine my surprise when I woke up on the due date of the afformentioned paper of doom, only to find out that the university was closed with less than a centimeter of snow on the ground and perfectly clear roads. Forecasters had predicted the biggest storm of the century (or at least the biggest storm of the weekend)and I woke up to a single cm of snow. Fantastic. And due to predictions of 6-8 inches of snow the university was closed.

This leads me to the only obviously conclusion: forecasters are in cahoots with students. They look so human, standing on TV and pointing at a blue screen with a floating cloud overlay, but really they're nothing more than automatons. And the evil geniuses behind these weather forecasting robots are none other than college students who want the day off so they miss an exam. Why do I know this? Because I'm a college student, and I know that I'll put forth way more effort on a project that gets me out of class for a day than I would for any project involving national security. And I'd be willing to bet that 95% of my classmates would do the same thing. It's the same concept between people spending 10 minutes searching for the remote when they could just get up and change the TV channel. Laziness (err, efficiency?) is the ultimate motivator! And to think the government has been trying to bribe us to work for them in exchanse for mediocre salaries and talk of benefits for some kids I don't have yet. What they really need to do is promise new hires less working time if we're more productive. So if anyone is looking to hire an engineer to work part-time for a full-time salary, you know where to find me. I promise I'll be efficient.

Hugs and kisses,
The Bitter Libertarian