brunobaby

And my co-workers are wondering if I've just mentioned some new software we all have to learn.

This one is from Ms. Judy. The rules are:

1. Link to the person who tagged you.

2. Post the rules here

3. Share 7 random or weird facts about yourself

4. Tag 7 random people at the end of the post, linking to them.

5. Leave a comment on their blog so that they know they’ve been tagged.

Seven random facts about me:

• I worked as a waitress at the Howard Johnson's in Times Square for a month after I graduated college, because I'd been told actresses had to wait tables.


• I did Wang word processing in 1983, made good money and had to endure jokes about being "a Wang operator."


• I studied the guitar for two years and can still pick out a C chord


• My first pet when I was a kid was a parakeet named Aloysius


• My middle name is Ellen


• My favorite food is Mintz's Blintzes from Trader Joe's


• I've lived in my apartment for 30 years. It's a rental.

Okay, now I'm supposed to tag seven people, except almost none of the people I could possibly tag have blogs. However, they've all sent me e-mails that I have yet to answer with headings like "Three Facts About Me" "Things You Didn't Know About Me" and "Drive Your Girlfriend Wild With Extra Inches." Oh wait, that last one was something else.

I'm going to tag Ambivablog. Oh look, she just invented another meme.

If I owe you a phone call, once again, I don't hate you. I have another cold. This one seems to have settled in my sinuses and I have to sleep sitting up, like The Elephant Man. It's the same kind of cold my hair guy had last weekend so I had to reschedule my appointment to this weekend, so now my hair is big and lumpy like The Elephant Man's head.

I've been going to work every day and functioning at about 80%, but I look and sound like Elmer Fudd.

"Hewwow?...I have to hang up now. I'm vewwy vewwy tired."

By now, I've given up on being amazed that I've caught every virus circulating in the tri-state area and I'm just waiting for this nonsense to pass.

Their original road manager, Neil Aspinall. I remember reading about "Nell" in all the teen magazines and later in all of the Beatle-ologies.

Peter Tork, Advice Columnist.

I splurged this afternoon on a professional window washer, this old Ukrainian guy with two younger assistants--I'd thought they were his sons, but he introduced them as "No, they're family." 

Okay, pretend that Steve Martin is Bear Stearns.

I went to the radiology for the spot mammogram. They checked out the ex-rays and told me to stick around until 12:15 for a sonogram. 

"This is Lenox Hill Radiology..."

"Yes?"

"Is this Melinda Bruno?"

"Yes."

"You were in here for a mammogram on Tuesday?"

"Yes???"

"There is a tiny area..."

Long story short, I have to come back for a spot compression on Monday morning. This takes a close-up of the tiny area to get a better idea of what it is.

"We wanted to let you know on Friday so that you wouldn't worry this weekend."

Oh yeah, I'm not worried at all now.

Okay, so I had the mammogram last night at about 7, which would have been too late for the place to have called my doctor if they saw a big, whopping tumor then. So that means I would get the call today.

So every time I come back from the ladies' room I creep up on my desk holding my breath until I see whether or not there's a message light on my phone. And if there's a message light, I keep holding my breath until I retreive the message. I'm getting good at holding my breath. They tell you to hold your breath while the mammogram machine is taking the ex-ray. I remained as motionless as a statue, lest a blur on the film obscure something that could kill me.

Then I figured, maybe they don't know I'm in my office and they called my house. "No new messages," the machine said. Relieved, I went out for a walk at lunchtime. I justified a new handbag, a copy of Mojo Classic's "Summer of Love" special, and a bag of candy. I deserve this, to make up for the pain of waiting, I tell myself. Followed by telling myself, "Oh, if I have to get surgery, chemo and radiation I may lose time from work, so I'd better not buy anything."

This is a familiar feeling, this waiting. After Jim died, people were asking me, "How did you function through all that, and through all your own scares?" I functioned through a List of Things To Do. I multi-tasked, to show the anxiety I was stronger than it was. And I figured, whether the news is good or bad, at least I have all these things done.

It's time to go wax the Pentagon.

Okay, so the girls at Elliot Spitzer's favorite high-end ho-house were rated according to the "Diamond" system: Three diamonds, seven diamonds, etc.

So, what if you were a Three Diamond ho? Would you be jealous of the Seven Diamond ho? Would you go to the Madam and ask for more challenging assignments?

I'm going up to Lenox Hill Radiology after work for the mammogram I haven’t had in two-and-a-half years, which is enough time for something to sweep through my body and kill me. It’s unlikely, though. But another hurdle to jump over before I can get on with the rest of my week; a week of “I’m afraid of my phone again.”

I didn’t get very much sleep last night, partly because of restlessness about the mammogram. Also, I started watching the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony and I wanted to see the Dave Clark Five, which is now the Dave Clark Three. I’d been looking forward to seeing Mike Smith to see if he’d recovered from being paralyzed for life, but to my dismay, the other Dave Clark Five guys said that he’d passed away just a few days ago. Jim would have been very sad to have heard that.

Then at midnight I turned off the TV and started reading more “The Kite Runner” and I was starting to get sciatica pains, badly. But I had to see how the next part turned out and the next part and then when I went to lie down the nerve pain hurt too badly to breathe. My first line of defense is Capsaicin crème, a generic brand from the 99 cent store. But that did nothing, and I resorted to the nuclear option, half a Percoset.

This usually takes about a half-hour to work, so I got up and turned the TV back on and stood in front of it channel-surfing. I found a quirky little movie called Bruno on the Long Island station, about this cross-dressing whiz kid and his butch grandmother, Shirley MacLaine. I couldn’t sit and got tired of standing, so I lay down on my exercise mat in front of the TV.

At one point I’d thought I saw Brett Butler in a nun’s habit and figured I was hallucinating. But I checked out Internet Movie Data Base just now and it was her.

The sleep was good, but too short. And now I’m scared of the mammogram.

Artandghosts. HT.

Note to anyone, male or female, who attempts to put on lipstick when you can't feel your lip: No matter how good your eye/hand coordination is, you will end up looking insane.

In this city, that's 50 with a normal person's income.

What's your New York Age?

You can see entire Mary Tyler Moore Show episodes here, interspersed with annoying ads for Royal Caribbean.