Mama Said There'd Be Days Like This

What mama didn't say was that there would be weeks like this.  I speak with hesitance because it is not yet Friday at 5pm, so I am running the risk of this black cloud over my head lingering for another day or two.

 

Let's start with Sunday.  My husband was making meatballs for himself for dinner and I hadn't helped him at all.  Since he is recovering from foot surgery, while the meatballs baked, he sat on the couch with his foot propped like the doctor had ordered.  When the oven dinged, I decided to do my best Wife of the Year impression and plate his dinner and bring it to him.  Being 5'1, I didn't have far to bend down to remove the steaming hot meatballs from the oven.  How did I know they were steaming?  Because I stuck my face thisclose to the pan as I pulled it out of the 400* cooking box, and was immediately pelted with hot, stinging, flesh burning steam.  And in a move of further brilliance, I promptly put an ice cube on my burnt face to numb the pain.  Which it did, as it also created a bright red blister.  ON. MY. FACE!

 

When I awoke on Monday, I briefly forgot about the meatball war wound from the night before until I caught a glimpse of it in the mirror as I ran to the bathroom for a tissue to try to stop the massive amount of snot running out of my nose. If it was just a face blister, or just a runny nose, I could deal.  But somewhere along the way, I also picked up some sort of virus that caused one eye to swell, water uncontrollably, twitch, and fill with goop.  I'm a fundraiser by trade and therefore rely on working with the public and being charming and put together enough to sell them on writing checks to my organization with multiple zeroes in them.  You don't charm too many checkbooks by sucking up your snot in an attempt to give your chapped, Rudolph impersonating nose a break while also sporting a closed-from-mucus eyeball and a face blister.

 

Tuesday saw me armed with concealer, antihistamine, and tissues, and cowered in fear.  And by 'cowered', I mean attacked in full force.  After having a complete meltdown on the way out of the house because the living room was dirty, I declared that I was going to have a better day. I drove to work, where I received word that I had 1900 pieces of mail to get out of a co-worker's car and shipped to my volunteers in another town within the hour, or I would have to fold, stuff, seal, and stamp them myself.  The co-worker and I went to her car to load up and bring the letters inside, where we were greeted by our ever persistent protestors holding disgusting signs and screaming sexual slurs in between quoting Bible verses and telling me that I need to get to know Jesus (if I wouldn't get fired for responding to them, I would LOVE to tell them all about Jesus and how I'm certain He doesn't condone their sick actions).  Awesome.  Back in my office with the sea of bulk mail and the clock ticking, I sorted the letters and logged into my database to get the lead stuffing volunteer's mailing address.  I wrote her address on a post-it  and stuck it on the top box, loaded up the minimum of 40 pounds of boxes onto my weak girly arms, grabbed my purse, and navigated my way through 3 badge pass doors. The moment I stepped outside, I was welcomed by 28* weather and 35mph wind as I watched that sacred post-it with the all important address tumble and toss on the breeze through the parking lot.  I rushed to my car, set the boxes down on the hood and ensued on a seemingly hopeless mission to catch that neon pink office supply with confidential donor information on it.  Oh and did I mention that I forgot my coat at home?  No less than 7,000 goosebumps and 5 failed grab attempts later, I found myself 23 parking spots away from my car, clinging onto that sweet, sweet post-it.  I breathed a sigh of relief, composed myself, walked back to my car, and tucked the address safely inside one of the boxes.  After digging through my purse for my keys, I hit the unlock button and tried to get into my Jeep.  Hmmm, it didn't work. I tried it again, and again, it didn't work, so I decided I would open the door the old fashioned way and put the ignition key into the door key slot.  It fit, but it wouldn't turn left or right.  I removed the key and tried the sequence again with the same result.  So I abandoned that idea and tried the backseat door.  Locked.  Passenger front?  Locked.  Passenger rear?  Locked.  Trunk door that I was prepared to climb through?  Locked.  Freezing, defeated, out of breath, and arms scraped from the boxes, I collected all 40 pounds of them and walked them inside where, through tears, I asked another co-worker to keep an eye on them while I tried to break into my car one last time before calling a locksmith.  They agreed, and I ran out the door, set my eyes on my car, and immediately turned back inside and grabbed my boxes of letters.  Still standing where I had left her 15 seconds before, my co-worker looked at me puzzled until I responded with, 'That's not my car!  Mine is 2 spaces over...' Try walking out the door with dignity after that whole display was caught on 4 different security cameras.

 

After some more tears and a much needed lunch with my sweet husband who can make even the worst day better, I had a pretty quiet day on Wednesday and thought that my run of bad luck was winding down right along with the cold I was starting to beat.  And then it was bed time.  It has come to my attention that I am a snorer, and seeing as how I have never been able to breathe well through my nose, I decided it was time to try some breathe-right strips.  After my nightly bath, I adorned my nose with one of the ever so attractive strips, kissed my husband, and went to bed.  What seemed like hours had passed and I found myself in a terrible nightmare.  A bad guy had shot his way through my place of work, killing all of my co-workers and looking for me as I hid under a desk in the tiniest ball I could get myself into.  I could hear his footsteps.  Closer.  Closer.  Closer.  And then he GRABBED me!!!!  I screamed and karate chopped him with all my might, and then I could hear a distant voice saying 'It's okay!  It's okay!  You're okay.'  I opened my eyes to see that it was my husband who was soothing me, and it was my husband who I had just karate chopped in my sleep.  When I have nightmares, he says my breathing gets very heavy and erratic, and during this particular nightmare he said that I started to hold my breath in between the gasps so he had put his hand on my chest to make sure I was still breathing, and my subconscious thought he was a murderer who needed to be chopped in half and screamed at.  I'm lucky to have a partner who not only makes sure I'm still alive in the middle of the night, but one who also comforts me after I attack him for doing so.  It took me a long while to settle down after that, and my sleep the rest of the night was minimal.

 

So that brings me to today.  Still tormented by a face blister, too much snot in my nose, scrapes from the bulk mail I had to carry way too many times, and the latest and greatest - a giant bruise on my nose from the breathe-right strips and a guilty conscience from abusing my husband in my sleep. 

 

Tomorrow HAS to be better, right?  Right??  RIGHT?!!!

 

Wedding Diet 101

I've never had, nor will I ever have the perfect body.  Nobody does.  Well, except those people - you know the type...lean, muscular, less than 5% body fat, perky everything.  I have a few of those real life perfect body friends, and while in general I love and support them, today we are not friends.  For today is an ode to the not-so-perfect ones of us who had to work for 4 months to look fabulous in their wedding dress.  Today is a chubby girl party, and you are not invited.

 

It all started on June 17th, 2012 around 8pm.  It was approximately an hour after becoming engaged to the love of my life, and the realization that I was going to get married was starting to sink in.  I was getting married.  In a tight white dress.  In 4 months, 2 days, and 19 hours.  Game on. 

 

Having always been somewhere between average and chubby, and fluxuating often between the two, I made a conscious decision that I was going to shed those 10 annoying pounds that had been lingering on and off around my thighs for the past 6 years since I graduated college.  At 10 pounds lighter, I would look so svelte that I would probably get offers from bridal magazines to be on their covers.  But no more than that.  On my 5'1 frame, losing even as much as 11 pounds would probably make me look anorexic.  Now concerned that I'd have to answer endless "are you eating??" questions after my 10 pound thinner self debuted, I decided to look up my ideal weight on the BMI chart just to make sure I wasn't about to get too thin.

 

Oh. My. GOD!  That can't be right.  That CAN'T be right.  According to the BMI figures I had just googled, I was not only overweight, but I was 7 pounds from OBESE.  OBESE!  That has to be wrong, I thought.  Who came up with this equation?  Is there a glitch?  That's it, there must be a glitch.  Or maybe they're just bad at math...who among us hasn't been off by 23 in an algebra problem?  After re-examining the situation, and by re-examining I mean using every search engine ever created in hopes of finding a more favorable result, I came to the conclusion that perhaps I had put on a few more than 10 lbs over the last few years.

 

New plan: lose 15 pounds and don't look like the Michelin Man in a veil.  During my various seasons between average and chubby over the last 9 years, the only weight loss plan that ever worked for me was Weight Watchers.  Why?  1.) If you tell me I can't have carbs, I will eat pasta in my car at 7am just to spite you, 2.) Given the option, I would literally rather cut off a limb to drop quick weight than exercise for 5 minutes, and 3.) I call the shots - if I want french fries for lunch, I can have them as long as I ration my points for the day.

 

After deciding that Plan A (fattening Ryan up so I looked thinner by default) wouldn't work, I grumbled my way over to the weight watchers website (just the point counting - I didn't feel the need to sit in a circle and discuss why I give potatoes power over me) and started toward my 10 *ahem* 15 pound goal. For those of you out of the loop, the new Weight Watchers system, Points Plus, not only gives you more daily points to use, but all fruit is free!  Yes, I know it is a psychological ploy to make me feel like I'm getting away with something while actually making healthier choices, but I happily submit to the mindgame warfare if it makes me thinner.

 

The first 10 pounds seemed to melt right off of me, and the 15 pounds seemed more and more attainable. Once I hit 15, I decided I would stretch my goal to 20 lost, but that would be it.  At pound #22, completely pleased with my progress, I decided to treat myself to a day of eating junk food and then had ice cream for dinner.  The next morning, cringing as I stepped on the scale and nervously awaiting the results, I almost yelled with delight to see that I had lost another half pound the day before!  The euphoria of having lost weight while eating junk food was quickly replaced by the sinking realization that if you can eat junk food all day, have ice cream for dinner, and still lose weight, you're too fat.

 

So I continued my point counting and saw a dramatic slow down at pound #30, but pushed through to a final weight loss of 35 pounds for the wedding, landing me in my ideal weight range (the top of the weight range still counts as IN the weight range) on what I still believe to be the incorrectly calculated BMI chart.  And while I am certain that my sweet, loving, charming, wonderful husband would love me no matter what size I was, every uneaten french fry from June through October 20th was worth looking fabulous in my dress on our wedding day.  And I did look fabulous.  We don't have the original pictures yet, so please don't let the watermarks distract you from admiring how thin I am... 

 

 

 

Anyone else want to have some ice cream??

 

Bridezilla Doesn't Care.

It finally happened.  I cracked.  I became the bride I swore I'd never be.  A fuming, tantrum-throwing, at times sobbing, this-is-my-day-not-yours bride. And the best/worst part?  I still don't think I'm totally in the wrong.

 

While I was never the girl who dreamt about my wedding day, when I got engaged to the love of my life 3 months ago and it became clear that my vote to elope was being over-ruled, I quickly started making up for lost time.  I planned EVERYTHING.  And then I had to start defending my plan.  For everything.

 

Let me make a disclaimer.  A very large, heartfelt and 100% accurate disclaimer.  I am SO BLESSED to be surrounded by family and friends who care, and I know that everything that I have taken so personally was said/done without the intention of making me crazy.

 

Good intent or not, though, it IS making me crazy.  This day should be about Ryan and I.  Period.  Our love, our engagement, our life, our marriage, OUR DAY.  Where you sit should not be up for discussion.  Who I select to be in my bridal party should not be up for discussion.  How I wear my hair, what we serve at the reception, what color the silverware will be, and what dead relative's "something old" I will or will not be using should not be up for discussion.  They shouldn't, but apparently they are.

 

I never had any idea that so many people felt it was their place to question a couple's decisions, tell them they should be doing it differently, and/or make their own plans and expect the bride and groom to do it their way.  With all the love, respect, and maturity I can muster, I would like to scream at the top of my lungs that this is NOT YOUR DAY.  You either had your day already, or you will have a day some other time, or maybe you don't get a day.  That's not my fault, and I shouldn't be expected to change my wedding to please you.  Not. Your. Day.

 

If I want to wear a purple polka dot dress, put lipstick all over my face in the shape of unicorns, and serve cotton candy and peanuts for dinner, it is your role as a guest to tell me I look beautiful and get your own damn dinner on the way home if you don't like what we chose.   I have been to a lot of weddings, and there have been a lot of things at said weddings that I didn't love.  Did I feel the need to tell the bride or groom that I would have done it differently?  Nope.  Sure didn't.  I wore a color other than white, sat where I was told, brought a gift, and congratulated the newlyweds on their new life together.  Because aside from seating charts and cake cutting, I'm pretty sure there is a bigger point to this day.  What was it again?  Oh yeah - a marriage.  Our marriage.  MY marriage.

 

I have a dj who may or may not show up (don't even get me started on the e-mail I sent that resulted in a 20% discount!), I have people who mean a WHOLE LOT to me who can't be there, I have people who WEREN'T INVITED who have told me that they will be there, and I have spent a crap ton of money on this day only to feel like I am under attack for every tiny detail that we have decided about this day.  And the conclusion I have come to?  I don't care.  I don't care.  I DON'T care.  I. DON'T. CARE.

 

While it is not now nor has it EVER been my intention to hurt anyone's feelings, the fact that their feelings are imposed onto this day in the first place still baffles me.  It is our day and the ONLY detail that I even remotely care about is that when it is all said and done, I will walk out as a married woman.  So while I may seem like a self-centered, spoiled, monster of a bride right now, I can promise you that on October 20th, I will not stress over one thing.  The cake can collapse, the electricity can go out, and my hair can be set on fire, and if I walk out of that church as Mrs. Sloan, it will still be the happiest day of my whole life.

 

If nobody likes the music, or my dress, or the food, or any other detail that people so boldly invite themselves to be concerned with, I don't care. If that makes me a bridezilla, then I guess I don't care about that either.  

Baseball, BBQ, Bikes, and Baby Geese

I know it's been a while.  Here's the situation:  I have been thinking for months of something that I could blog about that didn't center around the boyfriend, because I refused to be that girl who could only talk about her significant other.  In an effort to be creative and only blog about things that happened without him, I had to take a little hiatus.  Mostly because everything interesting in my life these days does include him, and LITERALLY nothing blog worthy seems to go on when we are apart.

So from this point forward, I'll just be known as the used to be funny/interesting/entertaining girl who now can only seem to talk about how amazing her boyfriend and his family and friends are.  I've accepted it, and now you have to, too. 

Last weekend, said amazing boyfriend took me to St. Louis/Southern Illinois for the weekend to see his family and to meet some of his college friends who I had been hearing about for the last several months.  Our first order of business was an afternoon Cardinals game.  Always one who likes to be cute, I enlisted the help of my sister and had this fun shirt made for the occasion:

Looking adorable in my supportive girlfriend attire, we made our way to the stadium and found our super awesome seats:

No adventure of mine is complete without a photo-op, and my aforementioned amazing boyfriend has learned to be incredibly tolerant of my paparazzi-esque snapshot taking.  As a symbol of my appreciation for his participation, I try to keep it to a maximum of 5 shots per activity and with mugs this cute, we usually only need 1:



So with that out of the way, and sunblock thoroughly applied, it was time to settle in and watch some baseball!  I lucked out and the seat in front of me was empty so I got to sit like this all afternoon:

And now my feet look like this:

Apparently I wasn't as thorough with that sun screen as I had previously thought!

Sufficiently burnt to a crisp, tired, sad from a Cardinals loss, and starving, we headed to see his family at his mom and dad's house.  Like any good mama, his mom had a beautiful spread of delicious food waiting for us as soon as we walked in the door.  I didn't take any photos of dinner, mostly because I knew I would be embarassed to admit how much I ate - while we miss them dearly, our waistlines are very thankful that both of our moms and their yummy cooking are kept at a safe distance for most of the year!  I did snap a few shots of us with the folks and one with Ryan's Nan, too:

Family time in, we headed back to St. Louis for my first introduction to the infamous Pod 6 crew (at least the first time in mass numbers) from Ryan's college days.  We had some BBQ (well, I had some spinach/artichoke dip and luckily had a fellow vegetarian girlfriend of a Pod 6 member there with me so I didn't get judged too harshly for passing on what I heard were amazing meats.) and then spent the rest of the night listening to old stories, getting to know everyone, and laughing a whole lot.  While I have been informed that nobody ever really passes the test, I at least think that I have lived to see another Pod 6 outing, which I am counting as a win.

As always, the visit was much too short, but we left feeling very loved.  We even managed to come home with some loot.  Ryan scored some new shirts and I got a cardigan, jewelry, and my very own bike!  Ryan's dad had bought a bike and fixed it up and gave it to me so that I could ride around the trail at my house with Ryan. (Sidenote:  aren't his parents AMAZING?!  They are so, so, so wonderful to us!)  Once home, we could hardly wait to try it out, but since it had been well over 10 years since I had been on one, didn't have a helmet yet, and let's be honest I'm wobbly on my own 2 feet, I needed a few practice laps around the parking lot:

Sturdied, (well, sturdied enough to not kill myself) we headed out to take our first few laps around the pretty trail that is my backyard.  During our ride, we noticed that the Canadian Geese that live here had recently had babies and were out and about with their cute little yellow balls of fur.  We admired them from a respectful distance and went on about our ride. Three-quarters of the way into the first 2 mile lap, we noticed that one group was not really moving across the trail quickly so we slowed down thinking that they would keep moving and we could be on our way.  As you can see, it was feeding time, and Mama or Papa Goose was not real interested in herding the little ones to a new spot, opting instead to stop in the middle of the road and stare us down like a ninja duck:

Ryan tried to reason with me and insist that we are much larger than they are, and we're on bikes so we could continue on our way and probably wouldn't be chased by them.  'Probably' wasn't quite enough insurance for me, as I was slow and wobbly on the bike, had no helmet, was dangerously close to fish-infested water, and was having flashbacks to the cat/pepper spray incident of 2010.  So being the good man that he is, Ryan gave into my fear and turned around to ride home the long way in order to be certain that I not get eaten by any animals who are 1/10 of my size.

And that concluded our weekend adventure.  To family and new friends: thanks again for all of your hospitality and kindness, we really appreciate you!  To the geese:  I have a helmet now and only look half drunk while riding the bike, so BRING IT!  Stay tuned for what is almost a certain 'How I Was Almost Killed By A Goose' post...









How To Be A Stalker 101

I'm nosy.  I unabashedly admit it.  I am not a fan of drama in my own life, but I LOVE knowing all of the dirty details of someone else's soap opera-esque daily strife.  Maybe not the greatest quality to have, sure, but if you're reading this, I'm pretty sure you're in my boat-o-nosiness, so no finger pointing!

This being one of my qualities, I can hardly shame anyone else for wanting to know all of the juicy details of my existence.  I have left this blog as public for that reason - I've shared the link with my family and friends, and they are free to pass it along at their discretion.  I have readers from all over the world who I will never know, and I think there is something very cool about that.  If my silly little adventures can entertain someone halfway around the world, that's a good day in my book. 

Being the nosy little lady that I am, from time to time I like to check in on who is checking in on me. Blogger has a handy stats tab on the backend of the site that tells me how many readers I have, what country they are from, what post(s) they read, and from which referring site they used to find me.  Here are some highlights (forgive the horrible photo quality - my battery in my fancy phone with a flash camera died and the nearest T-Mobile store in this land of corn is a 2 hour drive, so I have ordered a replacement, but in the mean time I am stuck with my old 'in case of emergency' phone with a pretty crappy camera):

Top 10 Countries Visited From This Month:

Top 5 Posts Read This Month:

Operation Sugar Daddy

Dear Help Desk, You Suck

Who Hires These People??

The ABCs of Men

Bad boys, bad boys, whatcha gonna do?

Top Search Keywords Directing People To My Blog This Month:

Oh, that's VERY interesting.  Someone has searched some combination of my name and a long ago ex a total of 27 times in the last 20 days that has landed them at my blog.  There's another 5 in there that have been for 'Heidi Higdon Facebook' that I can only assume to be from the same person.  I'm feeling generous today, so I'm going to give you some tips about how to do this stalking more efficiently.  1.) BOOKMARK my blog so you don't have to search for it every time.  It's http://heidichris.blogspot.com/. 2.) If trying to find me on Facebook, why don't you try searching for me ON FACEBOOK rather than google? 

At first, these stats really freaked me out and I was thisclose to making my blog private so that people that I don't want to know how or where to find me can't have access to my life, but then I realized that 1.) I have nothing to hide, 2.) I probably am the most interesting thing to ever wander into that person's life, so can I blame them for wanting to live vicariously through me? and 3.) If you can't figure out how to anonymously stalk me or how to find me on the largest social networking site in the world, I probably have nothing to worry about in the way of super smart schemes to track me down. 

So with that, happy reading everyone.  And remember sweetie, stalking me won't make you attractive.

Heidi - Can I See You In My Office, Please??

Recently, my company has 'merged with' (read: been acquired by) a larger chapter and beginning on July 1, there will be some changes.  Being as such, our new Human Resources department made a 3 hour drive on Friday to meet with us and go over the changes.

Things were pretty run of the mill; medical/dental/vision coverage, don't sexually harass your co-workers (I'm going to have to make a note to myself on that one), wear appropriate clothing, notify your supervisor when you will not be coming to work, yadda yadda yadda.  I was on board with everything until we got to this all important page of the handbook:

Ahh yes, one of my favorite subjects.  Let's take a look at our list:

Anyone else notice anything missing?  Because I can't seem to find 'Day After Thanksgiving' on here.  I asked if it was a typo, and was reassured that no, that was an accurate description of our holiday time.  Seeing the impending hissy fit about to happen, the HR Director told me not to fret, because we get our birthday off so it evens out.  Ummm, no.  If I am home on my birthday, who will shower me with love and adoration and presents?  When will my office be decorated?  THIS is what my birthday at work should look like:

He said that if I really wanted to come to work on my birthday that I could have any other day in that month off as my designated birthday day off.  Light bulb! Oh, I'm getting the Day after Thanksgiving off!!

This is how I proceeded to fill out EVERY piece of new hire paperwork (20 - 25 official documents) that I turned in at the end of our 5 hour meeting before HR had to drive 3 hours home. 

My guess is that they won't notice until today, so I am taking a personal day to allow them to cool off before what I can only guess is an upcoming one-on-one HR meeting...

Operation Sugar Daddy

Upon careful thought and consideration, I have come to the conclusion that I'm too pretty to work.  At a bare minimum, I'm too pretty to work full time.  So, in the words of my dear friend Rachel (she's very wise - check her out), I need to find a man to bank roll my rock and roll lifestyle.  With my 20s on a downward spiral heading into 30 like a freight train, I figured I should take advantage of my youth and good looks while they are still around. 

I know that this must sound a little overindulgent, but follow me here.  I bring a lot to the table, and am willing to negotiate the terms of our arrangement.  My staples are as follows: provide my basic needs (food, shelter, gasoline, etc.), 1 Diet Mountain Dew or Starbucks per day, 6 vacations per year (4 to Phoenix/Las Vegas where only a plane ticket and spending money are needed, 1 to Boston, and 1 tropical locale), and $200 per month wardrobe allowance; of which any remaining balance may be carried over infinitely.  Keep in mind that I am willing to work part time to help with these expenses. 

Ideally, I would like to stick to the terms of a traditional Sugar Daddy/Trophy Girl relationship: woo me, buy me nice things, take me out on the town to show me off, make a weekly or semi-monthly deposit into my checking account, and then go home to your house that is separate from mine.  Here's where the negotiations come in.  I'm willing to settle down and become a trophy wife with the added conditions that I get at least a 2 carat ring, my last name is hyphenated, bump that wardrobe allowance up to $350 a month, and I'm going to need 1 additional state side vacation of my choosing per year.

Sounds like a nice deal for me, I know, and I'm sure you're wondering what you get out of it, so I have taken the liberty of compiling a list of reasons why you should scoop me up and take care of me for the rest of my life.  This list is by no means meant to be exhaustive, and if you have any stipulations not seen below, please feel free to inquire about my willingness to provide.  Thank you, and I look forward to meeting you and your AmEx in the near future.

10 Reasons Why You Should Be My Sugar Daddy:

1.) I look great in formal wear
Have a fancy business dinner to be at?  A charity gala?  Best man in your brother's wedding?  I can rock a ballgown in any color.

2.) I am excellent with babies and small children
Don't get any ideas - none will be housed in my uterus, but if you come with them in tow, I can probably keep them alive.

3.) I'm not afraid of a theme party.

Cowgirl, sock-hopper, 80s cutie, some ill-advised college era 'bros & hos' parties that I won't post here, but I'm sure there is evidence of...

4.) I can hold my liquor.

My first three loves are: tequila, tequila, tequila, but I can down a Blue Moon like it's my job!

 5.) I'm a good hugger.

Handshakes are so formal.  Whether you hug back or stand straight as a board, I'm getting my loves in!

6.) I give good back rubs.

7.) I'm sporty.
Whether I'm running 13.1 miles, showing off my championhip miniature golf form, or dominating the batting cages, I'm basically awesome.


8.) I believe that variety is the spice of life.
You will never see me with the same hair style twice.

 

9.) I'm always ready for a photo op.

Catch me off guard when there is a camera around?  I dare you to try.

10.) I'm hot.

Let's face it.  I'm not going to look this good forever, so you should probably get me while the getting is good.  Go ahead, gentlemen, let the fighting over me begin...