Snappage

Britney is out of rehab now, so she’s back in the news. I want to share my thoughts on her breakdown.

The media seemed to really focus on how shaving her head and getting tattoos was a sign of destructive behavior and general “wigging out” (major wiggage that resulted in her need for wiggage). I don’t know what made her do it but I have a theory and it has not been widely reported in the media.

I think the girl shaved her head because as part of her child custody hearing with K-Fed, she was going to have to take a drug test and she didn’t want everyone to know the results of that drug test. The hair examination is one of the least intrusive and most revealing ways to test for drug use. I could see her throwing a fit about having to take a urine test or blood test, but it would be hard to throw a fit over having like, 100 hairs cut off your head. The hairs don’t lie when it comes to drug use.

I wouldn’t be surprised if she shaved off everything (and I mean EVERYTHING). The reason I’m up on my drug testing methods is because I’ve been drug tested for pre-employment screenings twice in the last 2 months (another blog entry coming soon) and both were the hair variety. A male friend who also endured hair drug screening shared with me that the hair on his head was too short to use so instead, the nurses cut tufts of hair from his flowing mane of armpit hair. I also knew of a guy who is a recreational drug user who buzzed off every iota of body hair except for his eyebrows, which he trimmed short, in preparation for his pre-employment drug screening. I think he was hoping they’d give him the blood or urine tests and he was confident in the drug masking agents he had ingested. Or something like that.

If we accept my theory as being true, the one part that doesn’t really make sense is why she shaved her head in public. You’d think she would do that in the privacy of her own home, a la Samantha Jones from Sex in the City after a round of chemotherapy. I can’t stand celebrities who whine, “Why do you keep paying attention to me?” Stop doing stupid things in public and maybe people will leave you alone! Until then, every idiotic episode will be noted and reported.

The thing is, Britney will probably look pretty cute with short hair while it’s growing back. I mean, she’s a pretty girl, she’s still young, she’ll be just fine. I knew a girl at Case who shaved her head once (a fun thing to do on a Friday night in Cleveland?). I always considered her to be pretty ordinary looking. Admittedly, the shaved head looked a little odd. But as her hair grew back, I realized she had gorgeous hair – really thick and wavy – and in about 3 months, she looked super cute. She worked that look and owned it.

What makes people snap? This is a topic that I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about, especially given some events that happened in the news recently and some things that I’ve observed in my own life. You have Stephen Grant, who killed his wife, chopped her up, and then scattered the parts in a park. There’s the married female astronaut who drove from Texas to Florida to stalk/threaten/kill her boyfriend’s girlfriend (on how many different levels is that messed up?). Then there’s Britney.

I wonder if any of the people surrounding the aforementioned people were not very surprised by their acquaintance’s actions. Maybe they exhibited signs of cracking for awhile. Maybe their downward spiral started slowly (but perceptibly), before exploding into a freefall. If you know someone who is exhibiting behavior of an impending meltdown, what do you say? What do you do? “Sweetheart, this is hard for me to say, but I think you might snap soon. Don’t ________ (fill in the blank: stalk your boyfriend’s girlfriend, forget to wear underwear, chop up your wife, etc.) before talking to me first. I care about you and don’t want you to do something you’ll regret.” I am open to suggestions.

Who knew that storm door latches can break?

Last week, the handle on my storm door between my condo and garage broke. I wasn’t even barging through or anything – I just pushed the handle in and the metal failed in my hand. After discussing the issue with some other people, I decided that Home Depot would probably sell replacement latches and I could swap out the entire assembly. (I assumed that option would be cheaper and less of a production than swapping out the whole storm door. I’m not sure if I was right.)

So I bring the broken assembly with me to Home Depot on Friday night and the place is a zoo. I couldn’t find anyone to help me and after carefully inspecting my options, I chose one that seemed to be the same size and have the same screw spacing. It looked like it would work. There were no measurements on the packaging so I assumed that my assembly was a standard size and that the assembly I was buying was also a standard size.

I get home and start working (you know me and my wild Friday nights!) and pretty quickly realize that I need another hole in my aluminum storm door because the new assembly is shorter than the old one. (I kind of got distracted by that and wish I had THOUGHT to check for other issues.) I had no drill and since I only needed one hole I figured I could just hammer a nail to make the hole.

One of my favorite magazine advertisements from about 5 years ago was for a full-sized truck (Chevy maybe?) and it said, “Sometimes you need a bigger hammer”. Turns out, sometimes you need a bigger nail. I was trying to make a hole in the door and the nails I was using kept bending. I got very frustrated.

So after a lot of loud pounding of the biggest nail I could find, I finally made an acceptably sized hole. I struggled to attach the new assembly to the door, even with the aid of some duct tape. I spent way too much time and energy, and when I finally finished, I stepped back to admire my handy work and realized that the distance between the latch and the cut out in the door frame that it’s supposed to rest in is like 2 inches. Oops.

At that point, I figured I had two options: 1) I could remove and return the assembly and see if there was a different size that I didn’t see or 2) I could buy a drill and drill some new holes in my door so that I could reinstall the new assembly. After sleeping on it, I decided that it was time for me to purchase my own drill.

I bought a cordless variety from Lowe’s (too peeved to go back to HD), charged it up, busted out my safety glasses, and had a field day on Sunday, drilling holes and installing the handle assembly (and almost locking myself out of my house). A job that I figured would take me all of 20 minutes on Friday night ended up taking almost 2 hours spread over 2 days but I don’t even care because I feel so satisfied for having done something for myself. When I start a project, I always have an idea of how and what I need to do to get to my end goal. It’s funny how even with a game plan, the actual route always involves some detours.

I always say, even though I grew up in a family that never had any tools (at least the mechanical variety), as a mechanical engineer I am committed to spending the rest of my life making up for my unmechanical upbringing.

Burrito dates, reading material, understanding

Friends from 3 different parts of the country ate Chipotle with me last weekend. Cheers! This burrito’s for you! Looking forward to doing it again soon!

At the moment, I have subscriptions to Shape, Newsweek, and Sports Illustrated. I also get random magazines mailed to me from Case. That’s a whole lot of reading material for the elliptical machine. I can tell when I haven’t been so great about putting in my cardio time because magazines start to pile up. Right now, I think I have 4 unread Newsweeks. Oops.

My mom and I were talking about this article we both read. It was in Shape and it was about amazing women no one has heard of and the amazing things they are doing with their lives. I remembered being on the elliptical and thinking how quickly the workout was going because I was so interested in the article. Turns out my mom felt the same way. And I’m not like a nazi-feminist or anything – I’d love to read about amazing men too. And amazing kids. It was so uplifting to read such positive material.

MSN had a similar article and they profiled a woman in African politics. Her former husband was said to have remarked at one time that they divorced because she was “too educated, too strong, too successful, too stubborn and too hard to control.” Cleary, legitimate reasons for a divorce.

Last week at work, I met a man from our Mexico plant. He introduced himself and even though his English wasn’t perfect, I understood everything he said. Later in the day, I met a man from our Canadian operations and I couldn’t understand what he was saying. What does it say when I understand the English of native Spanish-speakers better than the English of native English-speaking Canadians?

Are People Getting Crazier?

Maybe you’ve heard about the man in suburban Detroit who killed his wife (and mother of his two kids) and then chopped her up and sprinkled a little here and a little there. It’s been the big story in the local news every day for the last 3-4 weeks, especially because after he reported her missing, he accused the po-po of unfairly focusing their investigation on him. He did interviews with the media and made up a bs story trying to make it seem like she either ran away or got kidnapped. They finally got a search warrant and found her torso in the famiy garage while he drove to Northern Michigan. They caught up with him after he hid out in a forest without proper clothing for like 14 hours in cold weather.

I always want to believe people, so it irritates the hell out of me when people lie. I absolutely can’t stand it.

Their house was pretty close to where I work – like maybe 4 miles away? And he scattered her remains in the metropark near where they lived. It is a metropark for which I have a season pass. In fact, I’m pretty sure I’ve hiked on the trails where they were searching. The idea that I could be hiking when the weather gets nice and I might stumble upon a finger or toe or something is creeping me out. I hate that he’s tainted such a beautiful area with such a horrific crime.

All the media attention led my parents to an interesting discussion and they shared the details with me. This is the second murder/dismemberment in the metro Detroit area in the last 2 or 3 years. The first one was a small middle-aged woman, an award-winning kindergarten teacher, who claims that in self-defense, she axed her abusive husband to death. This happened in a gated community about 4 miles from where my parents live. She was tried and found guilty. The jury didn’t buy the battered woman story.

My parents now have an agreement – if either of them wants out of the marriage, there is no need to bust out the ax or hacksaw or knife. The other person will just leave, no questions asked. I guess that’s a pretty disturbing discussion to have but I’m glad they have a mutual understanding.

School Snobbery, Gift Receipts, Reversible Belts

I was talking this weekend to my friend Marcela who I knew at Case and went on to a medical school program that involved both USF and Cal Berkeley. We were discussing her future residency options and the pros and cons of various programs. She admitted to being an academic snob. “At my school, there are designated parking spots for Noble Laureates.” Very true Marcela, very true. But another way to look at it is that if you go to a school in the midwest, there is enough room so that EVERYONE gets a parking spot, not just the Nobel Laureates.

Gift receipts are bullshit. Just in case you don’t already know that.

Unrelated, right after Christmas, I bought myself a reversible belt from the men’s department at TJ Maxx. I heard that men’s belts are of higher quality than women’s and I just wanted something plain and classic. Embarrassingly enough, I never really understood how the reversible part worked so I only used the black side. The other day I was at work, and I broke the belt. I stripped the threads right off of the screw that controls the reversibility mechanism. My bad. It was only after destroying it that I figured out how it was supposed to work. I think they call that a destructive discovery.

Reversible belts are not so popular in the women’s section. I guess not enough women appreciate the genius of having two belts in one.