Cat got my tongue?

Believe it or not, I had prepared and written that last post before "Beauty and the Geek" started - and finished - its season! Somewhere between the inner workings of my Web site and the publication settings of Blogger, something got stuck, and I didn't unstick it until just now.

It is good to be able to post in a timely manner again. You can look forward to updates starting now.

Booty and the Bleak

I can come up with a few reasons why I'm fascinated with "Beauty and the Geek," the WB's reality show -- oops, I meant "social experiment" -- that just started its second season last night.

It had been a while since I latched onto a reality show involving people staying in a mansion. I had a light night at work during "Geek Week," when they reprised the entire first season. And of course, I'm a little bit beauty and a little bit geek, and a firm believer in the fact that no one has to be either.

Now that I am fervently attached to this Ashton Kutcher creation, even dragging Jim into it, I find I'm even more fascinated with my interest in the show than the show itself. And the source of that fascination is the fact that, while I would like to see geeky girls have their moment in the sun, I can't imagine participating in a "social experiment" like this if the tables were turned.

What if I were one of a gaggle of geek-ettes assigned to help bring out the brains in a tribe of mimbos? Or a bunch of specimens of one of the other brands of male stupidity, some of which aren't nearly as attractive as the beach-volleyball set?

All that time as a reporter taught me to size people up and sort them out quickly. I can't see past overly pumped muscles and blinding bleached teeth to the beauty within. Looks like I need an attitude adjustment, and it can only come through a "Beauty and the Geek" spinoff sequel. Let's have it, Ashton Kutcher.

Inevitable

There is a geek on the show who graduated from the University of Chicago. (I'd link to his bio, but the "Beauty and the Geek" page is Flash, and I am not geeky enough to get you straight to it. Go there yourself and look up Joe.)

Welcome, Boyfriend

All this talk of beauties, geeks and crosses thereof leads me to welcome Jim to the world of blogging. He calls himself an odd bird. I call him a magnificent boyfriend and an all-around good guy. Or, as my sister said this Christmas, "He doesn't suck -- at all!"

People, places and things

The fabulous Janna, who always has a travel bug, let me know today that the New York Times considers my latest hometown worthy of 36 hours.

Missing from their schedule is "2 a.m.: Admire the view of the News Center from the bridge over the Hillsborough River as you wait for Laura to finish work." But hey, you can't expect them to learn about the city's most-anticipated event after dropping in for only 36 hours.

Probably, to tell the truth, nearly as much as I have been able to learn in three or so months. I've visited several highlights of the Tampa Bay area, including some in the Times piece. (Special thanks to my boyfriend, Jim, for not passing up the chance to take me to Bern's for my birthday. Mmmmmm!)

Tampa is only the latest in a string of many places I have inhabited, with or without thinking of them as "home." And so far the only certain thing I can say about it is "At least it's big."

Which brings up a pattern I've noticed about my various residences. My dad can say he's a proud Roman, as in SPQR and all that. My sister boasts of clawing her way to New Yorker status. Jim is a native New Orleanian. All of those have a nice, unmistakable ring to them.

But let's count backwards here. From 2000 to 2003, I lived on the fringes of Charlotte. That made me ... a Charlatan.

Then I went off to grad school in Gainesville and transformed myself into ... a Gainesvillain.

Now, thanks to my new job (Paycheck! Yay!), I reformed, and became ... a Tampon.

I'm going to put a feminist spin on this and be proud of my new label. Tampons have done a lot of good in the world. And hey, it beats being a maxipad.

We have a winner!

It's Nancy, and I still owe her a T-shirt! I had hoped we would find one while wandering the malls last week. Maybe they're out of season -- even here in Florida, the stores were covered in sweaters to go with the Christmas theme.

Anyway, all who answered were right in the end, but Nancy was the first to chime in with the fact that electrons, of course, are negatively charged. So that's score one for her, and a great big "Negative" to the person who wrote the billboard.

This gives me a chance to scour the Internet for the wackiest shirt I can find...

Win a prize!

As I've spent the last several weeks settling into my new job and life in Tampa, I've often been tempted to sit down and write a big, comprehensive post about that whole process. But only something small and needling has finally prompted me to blog:

There's a billboard here in Tampa for Ford cars. "Sticks to the road like a positively charged electron," it says.

First person to write a comment telling me what's wrong with that gets a T-shirt.

Onward

There's a point in every move when I realize I'm really moving. Usually it comes when I'm waking up in something that isn't my bed, and may not be a bed at all. The walls above me are blank. My face itches for lack of proper skin-care products. I've broken about half my nails. In a few hours, I'll be sneezing uncontrollably because I've kicked up so much dust while packing. The next day, my nose will look a little tough and scaly.

These things arrived less intensely and less simultaneously than usual over the past couple days. Maybe I'm getting better at this moving business.

For better or worse, I'm moving again. Tomorrow morning (!) I begin work as a Web producer at TBO.com, the Web site affiliated with the Tampa Tribune and its sister TV station, Channel 8. It's a great Web site in a huge building in downtown Tampa, less than two miles from my new apartment.

Take that!

What can you give?

Life plays such strange tricks. This year, it seems like I've spent about half my time -- at least most of the really significant moments -- in New Orleans. Now that beautiful city has been all but wiped off the map.

I visited my boyfriend there just last week. Well-timed whimsy led us to do some touristy stuff, like a ghost tour of the French Quarter, a self-guided ramble through a historic cemetery, and an overnight trip to a casino in Biloxi. I'm glad we did. None of those places will ever be the same.

My boyfriend and his family are safe, holed up in Alabama. It so happens that many of my circle of friends here in Gainesville have ties to New Orleans. Most of us have spent the week watching way too much CNN and combing through blogs and satellite photos for any sign of what things are like at the homes of our friends and families. The amount of information out there is never enough, but still phenomenal. Hooray for things like Digital Globe, which let me peek in on the rooftops of New Orleans, just like I did on a plane trip not so long ago.

I found this news of corporate donations interesting. I'm not sure how useful the contents of five possibly flooded Office Depots will be, but the pharmaceutical company giving 40,000 vials of insulin warms my heart.

Years in school and in relatively low-paying jobs have made me into someone who's more likely to give stuff to charity than money. That's about to change. I am in the process of moving, and feel like I haven't got two dimes to rub together, but you can be sure that when I get that first paycheck, a chunk of it is going to the Red Cross for hurricane relief.

Those of you in a better place financially today should do your part as soon as possible.