hot pink with lightning bolts

Though I try to keep up with the hip-person vernacular, but once in a while I come across a new phrase.

I have heard the term "big girl panties" twice in as many days. Once in the comments section of a TLC reality show message board, and a second time in one of those not-funny, tries-to-be-psuedo-empowering forwards that I get once in a while from old acquaintances (of whom my opinion drops with every such forward) and both times in the context of, when life gets tough, put on your big girl panties and suck it up.

Is this a new thing? It's not exactly a biting comment, and it's not very clever, yet for some reason I felt the need to blog about this anomaly of speech. It seems like a legitimate thing to say and yet I'm left with the feeling that this particular expression is part of the sort of lower socio-economic class culture that frequents message boards to bemoan one's lack of a reality TV show and still thinks it's acceptable for a grown up to circulate emails with pictures of kittens and urban legends.

Maybe I've fallen a couple of rungs on the social ladder, one too many reality shows and not enough obsessive studying of Stuff White People Like.

Maybe I should really just stop finding new ways to procrastinate and get back to work.

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However, in the interest of putting off work just a little bit longer, here is a lovely story about the train wreck that is Melissa Wilson.

Last week I was on my way home to Burlington, wearing a flowy blue dress and my signature red, Old Navy flip-flops. Since it was raining, I decided to take the TTC instead of walking down to Union from my apartment. It was slippery out, and as I'm going down the steps into the College subway station, I was clutching the railing and making deals with God to let me get down the stairwell in one piece.

I'm sure you know where this story is going. The wind tunnel that is the College subway station, shot a gale force up at me and Marilyn Monroe-ed my dress right over my head. At the same time, I lost my footing, slipped, and slid halfway down the stairs on my butt, giving all the people behind me a nice shot of my pink underwear.

Moral of the story: Always wear clean underwear. You never know when you will fall on your ass and expose it to a dozen strangers.

The End.

Words of wisdom.

A friend of mine once made a comment about how the College streetcar only goes east when you want to go west, and vice-versa. At the time, I didn't take the TTC regularly and I just brushed it off as hyperbolic frustration.

Now that I take the TTC more, and live off Carlton, I see my friend's point.

Today, while waiting for the College streetcar to go West from Sherbourne St., I watched four eastbound cars, two Sherbourne buses and one woman get so frustrated that she hailed a cab instead of waiting.

I want my token back.

There is only one way to spell it

During the 1980s, over 10,000 babies were named "Melissa" and only 97 were named "Mellissa."

There is NO excuse for spelling my name wrong.