Buon Capo d'Anno!

hello there sportsfans. i apologize for the absence of a posting. mommy called me a bit worried. so nobody needs to fret: i'm alive and well (okay, i have a nasty bacterial infection in my mandibular lymph nodes) and hanging in winston-salem for holli steelman's wedding. should be fun! i have no date and knee-high crocodile spike-toe boots. a lethal combination.
stay tuned for mandy's "best of 2006" list. just kidding. i hate those lame things.
of note: this is my new roommate, aaron. i have named him boy aaron. he is wicked cool.

Brevity being the soul of wit...

i promise to keep things shorter. apparently one of my fans (and possibly more) is suffering from eyestrain/boredom when poring over my bloggityblog. so i will appease him for the time being and keep things brief. or, brief-er.
that being said: all-in-one washer/dryer combos NUKE the living crap out of your clothes. i almost had to search out a local burn unit yesterday upon removing my steaming vestiments from the dryer. holy crap.
i am still trying to figure out how the thing works. it heats up the linen closet like nobody's business. i think i'll grow some penicillin in there to harness the extreme heat generated.
that's it for now. hopefully my adoring public will be temporarily placated. and i promise all future posts will be about something less pedestrian.
but, for good measure:
yes, people, that is a molar in my bike shoe. i picked it up at cyclo-cross nationals in 2004 and didn't wear those shoes for 2 years out of respect for whatever human sacrificed their dental well-being to me. perhaps nationals was run on an ancient indian burial ground? don't know. but that is freaky.

Now accepting applications

ever since i realized racing bikes is dope, i decided that there should be some sort of sweepstakes for racers. you win the big cardboard check and ed mcmahon comes to your door with balloons and awards you with a year of paid bicycle racng. don't laugh, boys (ha! stoooopid girl! it's called "pro team"!). you get to do it. girls do not. there are only 15 of us in the country (and i say us because i'm a girl, not cause i'm in the group) who can even eat more than ramen on what we earn racing. so a sweepstakes isn't so far down the "dreams" list. it directly follows "i want a pony" and "i want the 2006 holiday barbie" and definitely supercedes "i want the new adam myerson complaining about cyclo-cross dvd". but is waaaay below brian vernor's "pure sweet hell" dvd on the dreams list. which, by the way, i have asked santa for every year and i get NO LOVE!
so anyway...i couln't drum up adequate sponsorship ("adequate" means i can still buy frou frou lattes) for said sweepstakes endeavor, and i gave up temporarily.
but now the fever is back. but this time it's for something completely useless. hanging out on the timesuck that is myspace/blogspot/facebook/cyclingnews/pezcyclingnews/thebikegame. and getting paid. wouldn't that be great? all those guys who live in their mom's basements and play dungeons & dragons when not online need some financial freedom and wherewithall to move out and stop eating meatloaf every night. maybe i'll give it a shot, too. (though my mom doesn't live within 3000 miles of me and rarely makes meatloaf. come to think of it we didn't have much of a basement, either. it always flooded. oh, and they don't have real electricity, so running the computer/xbox/grow lights is a bit tough.)
i digress...
so, the sweepstakes committee (me) is taking applications to support some sad sap to do what i outlined above.i'm gonna whip up a cool webpage where you can apply to be a fully-supported internet loiterer. but i may put a clause in there banning dungeons & dragons.
it's gonna be cool. and the first 17 finalists get these:

that's street value $19.95 USD, for all you wanting to be in-the-know.

you know you wanna try.

Greetings!

caffeine rocks!

so today i woke up to the phone ringing. granted it was 10 a.m. so it's logical that i would be somewhere besides bed, clutching my stuffed fosterimposter chicken (long story). it was bossman (one of three) greg wolf asking why i wasn't available. i wonder what the heck he meant. he hadn't emailed, hadn't called previously. did he want me to magically appear in manhattan at his mental bidding, thus proving my availability?
whatever...it was funny nevertheless.
so i skeedaddled to the corner market to get ripped off for coffee. $1.23! i need to discuss a customer-loyalty program with them. i'll whip up a spreadsheet and everything. maybe a powerpoint. $1.23 is just dumb. i even brought my own mug!
but back to biznez
today will be spent interviewing potential roommates. two guys have rsvp'd, which poses good questions. they are useful for opening jars and providing a sense of security should the barracks road boogeyman come calling. and they are generally less passive-aggressive and catty than chicks. and they won't pollute my shower with evil sodium laureth sulfate-harboring garnier fructis crapola shampoo. but don't boys always come with huge entertainment systems that screw your feng-shui six ways to sunday? yeah, thought so. thus, this is one of the first questions i ask: do you like braveheart? this usually cues me that they like it on a big, bad movie screen with surround sound and the possiblity of a popcorn machine nearby. at which point i will run the other way. not really, but wouldn't that be a cool opener to a convo? i don't know how that rates in craigslist's anti-discriminatory housing policy. i am not asking about religion, just audio-visual preferences. they are welcome to be scared off by my tendecy to run around in spandex 75% of my waking hours.
sigh...my life is not very exciting at this juncture in the space-time continuim. but this morning i did unearth clothes i haven't worn in 10 months, so that was fun.
it's the little things, people...
and when bike racer buddies send me photos from belgium of their toga costume.

what?! if he's trying to impress me with his abs that's one thing. if he's trying to get me arrested, that is another. damn bike racers...they are all so young. that is what i get for being in a fringe sport in which you never have to grow up. sorry mom & dad. i promise that when i get my mba i will stop associating with those too young to rent at hertz. (for the record, towelboy is 21; thank heavens)
and what is he pointing at?

ps: thanks again mommy and daddy for my hello kitty slipper socks. they are so cute and pink and make my day every time i look at my feet. which reminds me of a joke: estonians are known introverts. so how do you tell an extroverted estonian? they look at YOUR shoes. go ahead, stifle a laugh!

for the culturally-unwise. estonia is a country, not an epoch between the cretaceous and paleogene. and for the even-more-cultrally-unwise, an epoch is...oh never mind! look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_time_scale highly useful and good for impressing dates.

all i want for xmas...

santa, please bring me a working garbage disposal. i have lived in this g.d. condo for 3 days and already i have mechanical difficulties. nothing compared to what those geniuses at nasa run into daily...but problems nevertheless. i have hardly used the disposal. it's not like i shove severed limbs down it. okay, a few, but hey, not my fault. when people pass out in my condo after a night of keg stands, they forfeit the right to decide what happens to their limbs.
but back to my original complaint. i have no garbage disposal. not that this halts the progress of the free world. but it does stop me from grinding up my eggshells. i shall call sears tomorrow. not likely that they'll want to help. but perhaps i'll get lucky. that'd be dope. and i still loooooove my hello kitty slipper socks. i'm at that age (read: freakin old!) that these things help me feel for one moment that i'm young again.
then again, hanging out with folks who dress like this:

and who like to point out the obvious:

helps me feel youngish.

as daryl tulimieri and riina tehver say: you can't be young forever, but you can always be immature.

ps: i just got an email from pietro illarietti, the admin for the ivan basso fanclub. i love the internet! any idea how i can send 10 euros (cost of membership) to italia, LEGALLY?

we belong together!

me and the basso. thus proving that we are meant for each other.

happy christmassy luv luv

mommy bought me some dope hello kitty slipper socks. so i'm cruising around my dope condo in my dope socks feeling old for using the word dope. she also bought me soap. this is good. i have no soap for my downstairs .5 bath. tomorrow i must go to the store and purchase various items for my new life. like silverware. going to the kfc drivethru to bogart plastic cutlery is only so dope. i hate adam mcgrath for introducing me to that word. damn teenagers. and in case you need a

Yay yay yay! I finally did it!

no, i did not cure cancer.
nor did i one-up the spork.
i created a blog.
ouch, i hurt my arm patting myself on the back.
happy happy christmassy love to all!
now, off to take some nyquil and kick this dumb cold that i seem to have acquired from my buddies at cyclo-cross nationals. cursed bike racers.