I wanna buy these shoes...

Our neighbor upstairs is, for inexplicable reasons, blasting his music with the bass seemingly turned all the way so that we can hear it. And what is he blasting, you ask? The "Christmas Shoes" song! If you, like my roommate, are not familiar with this fantastically cheesy song, I will share it with you as I shared it with her... it's so bad it's good.

If you're intrigued by the story of the shoes, it was made into a made-for-TV movie starring Rob Lowe, and apparently it will be on Lifetime tomorrow. Yes, they drag the schmaltzy plot into a two hour movie. Time to set the DVR!

Snow Day

Sitting at my kitchen table with Chrissy Hynde crooning "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" coming out of the stereo, some fabulous hot chocolate with vanilla marshmallows, courtesy of Martine, looking out at what appears to be 3 or 4 inches of snow with much more to come. And at 4 pm on a Friday -- I'd like to thank my boss for letting us go at 1:30 when the flurries began for making this happen.

Deciding that today qualified as a nice day (and I know I am one of the few people who thinks a blizzard is a "nice day"), I got off at the Harvard T Stop today and walked 1.7 miles home. If it's snowing out, it can't be that cold. The precipitation freezes and doesn't come down when temperatures are below zero. Nothing like the stinging of snow as a blizzard picks up steam and then coming home and dumping the wet boots, coat, hat, and gloves into the bathroom to dry to remind me of home.

Office Gender Politics

For the first time in my life (save for productions of The Vagina Monologues), I am working in a group that is overwhelmingly female, although the lead doctor is male. The gender politics are also reversed from what I am used to. For example, there was this exchange in yesterday's group meeting:

Lead Doctor: So you're saying {specific drug} affects women differently than men?
Female Doctor 1: Yes.
LD: It must be estrogen related.
*Cadre of women in the room start laughing*
{The following dialogue was all overlapping chatter.}
Female Doctor 2: Oh, it's *always* estrogen.
Female Doctor 3: Why is it every time I'm a little bit crabby men attribute it to PMS?
FD1: Just because women have periods...
FD2: I know, right? Sometimes I'm crabby just because I'm in a bad mood.
FD1: Men are always so quick to attribute everything to hormones.
FD3: My husband does that too!

etc, etc...

Meanwhile, at the other end of the table...

LD (sheepishly): All I said was estrogen.

Finally!

The subject is, of course, referring to the weather. It always makes me nervous when it doesn't snow until after my birthday, because then I'm never sure when I should decorate the tree. This year, having been busy for most of the week, I kept putting it off. I finally had a free day today, and probably would have decorated it anyway, but it's so much more appropriate to do so when it's snowing out.

Also, I had to drive all the way to Sudbury this afternoon to find a Christmas present for my sister. (This was after checking a number of stores in Porter/Davis and then Beacon Hill and Newbury Street and Downtown Crossing and the Galleria and coming up empty handed.) While I don't think she ever looks here, she might, so I'll refrain from saying too much more. Except that she better like it.

You say what is your birthday?

I was, for highly appropriate reasons, just googling the phrase "The Beatles Birthday" because as of twenty-two minutes ago it is a timely day to find that song on YouTube and listen to it. (My mp3s are not on this machine, my external harddrive, which was the back up, is dead, my Zune speakers are in another room, and the White Album CDs which I, er, "borrowed" from my dad in 9th grade are in my car. YouTube is just faster sometimes, especially when you want to hear a specific single song.) And yet, instead of the first hit being the YouTube video, as is usually the case since Google bought them, Google seemed to think I wanted to know what the Beatles birthday was... and gave me "1962."

That is just wrong, Google, for so many reasons. (Okay, mainly three: 1962 is not a birthday, it's a year; the Beatles actually formed and existed as a group before 1962, so it's not even the right year; and finally, I'd bet good money that most people doing that search are looking for the song, not some arbitrary date.) Edited to Add: If you check Google's "source", they list the birth-"day" as 1960 (which I think is more correct because that's when they stopped being The Quarrymen -- seriously, my off-hand knowledge of this band is freakish). Google fails big time.

However, on the second hit, I did get what I was looking for...