I hand selected them with careful consideration to group dynamics.

Social circles involve all kinds of horrific and annoying people. Not all are the same level of civil atrocity and depending on what person you are, "the worst" is always subjective. Over the years I've met rainbow of headaches in the form of people. I'm guessing most of you have met someone that could fall under one of these categories too.

The Escape Artist

He or she is a master of self-defensive maneuvers, and by that I don't mean a wicked set of karate chops and sweep kicks. This person has an excuse for everything. They've given stubbornness a face and it's staring you right in the eyes. These types have a million problems they have to share with you, but secretly like their troubles because of the attention they receive. Here's an example:

EA: "My foot is on fire."
Joe Schmo: "Throw water on it!"
EA: "I would, but I don't want to get wet."
JS: "Fire extinguisher?"
EA: I'm allergic to things that might help me. I'll just wait it out.


The Therapist

This Dear Abby will undoubtedly get tired of the Escape Artist's shenanigans quickly because he/she is an advice giver to the point of needing a real therapist. "Therapists" think their crappy experiences give them the authority and heroic calling to inform everyone that "What you need to do is..."

One-Uppers

Have a really great story involving dancing elephants and a tour bus breaking down in front of your house? Great, but the One-Upper had Dinosaurs in tutus drive a trash truck through a neighbor's window.

I'm naturally a bit of a One-Upper. It's not intentional or as extreme as most true OU's, but I do feel compelled to share story for story. I've met a new group of moms via meetup.com recently. They're normal. All pretty down-to-earth and even sometimes funny. More importantly, they laugh at my humor instead of just staring at me with a why are you still talking look.

Which is why I'm trying to mute myself every other conversational topic. Not everyone has to hear EVERY story I might have been reminded of. That's what I have a blog for.

Today's subject line quote is Hodges, "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" (2000) {Lab Rats (#7.20)}.

And Australia's still like "WTF, mate?

I am not dead! It's been an eventful and interesting week of which I will now address; however, Dom made me watch this again last night and since I, too, am le tired I feel like pronouncing everything with a Group X quality French accent.

So I have declared that le blog should be read today out loud with a French accent. Is funnier, no?

First off, the inspection I was yelling at the laundry about went fine. They have now registered that we have a "mostly outside" cat that "we made the mistake of feeding once." In other words, we never told them about Opie and instead of staying outside after I threw him over the fence in the back, he came back whining at the back door.

Also, our oven broke the day before the guy showed up. And since I'm still waiting for a call back, I'm going to have to contact them myself. We also must have been right in the middle of a light bulb kamikaze mission because they ALL burnt out the same day. No one has that many on hand unless they're Mormon or a Boyscout.

Then our internet got scared of all my yelling at the laundry and ran off again. After spending 2 hours on the phone with tech support with the cable company and a man in India that works for Linksys, my internet still didn't work. Well the net did, but the router was still effed up. I fixed it by myself without having to call another Indian man for 2 hours. I am le awesome.

You forgot to continue with the accent! Hm? It's ok, I reminded you. Come on "reminded" is an especially fun one to say all French and fancy pants.

Now for the better parts! Did (most) of our taxes and we will be receiving a large refund. I'm not surprised, we do have a walking rebate trying to poop in his diaper right now. But we've decided to pay off a credit card with it. We managed to pay off 2 in the last year! Now if we use our refund, that will leave us with minimal credit card debt and can actually eliminate that by next tax day!

So we celebrated by buying a few frivolous (do it French) items. We never really do that! We have a monthly allowance that often gets neglected because we're so frugal now. Frugal is just another word for "guilty about spending."

Anyway, Dom got a new Playstation 2 since the one we bought used a few years ago died a slow and painful death. It's been refusing to read discs more and more. Since we just bought an assload of Guitar Hero stuff at Christmas, we just couldn't bring ourselves to get another platform. We felt a bit frugal about it.

And guess what I got! Did you say iPod Touch? Why, yes! I did get an iPod Touch!! It's le sweetness. I'm totally turning into one of those people that's always on the internet via a mobile device. Prepare yourselves for me becoming a total asshole. That's why I'm having you pretend I'm French today.

Today's subject line quote is from "But I Am le Tired" by Group X.