The Sky Is Still Blue

So I’m not terribly despondent over being shot down, as that would be like going to bed one night hoping that in the morning the sky would be plaid and then getting depressed upon waking to find that it’s still blue.
Getting shot down was a foregone conclusion is my point.
Overall it was relatively painless, though there was one thing that was kind of bothersome.
When she said that she didn’t think it would be appropriate given her position, I rebutted that, since I’ve found employment without her company’s services, it seemed to me that there was no real conflict and that I figured it was worth taking a shot anyway.
Her response was to say, “Awww” in exactly the manner in which one would do so upon seeing a puppy perform a cute trick. It just felt strangely demeaning, as if she were saying, “Oh, look at him trying to use logic to talk me into going out with him! It’s adorable the way he’s not immediately taking the hint and thinks that he’s someone I would go out with if I didn’t have a built-in excuse not to.”
Of course, I’m sure that was all just my perception. It could be that she was genuinely flattered by my offer and disappointed that she was prevented from accepting due to her job.
Sure, and maybe tomorrow the sky will be plaid.
The “Awww” was followed with, “Well, I’m still going to have to decline.”
Meh.
You win some you…no, wait. Scratch that first part, then finish the expression.
On the topic of other attractive women who will never date me –in this case owing first of all to the fact that she lives on the opposite side of the country and will thus never even encounter me, and then moving on to all of the standard reasons – I’ve found myself largely foiled in my attempts to find a decent portrait-worthy image of actress Danielle Panabaker of the TV show Shark.
Not many pictures of her exist online, and one of the drawbacks to my Verizon DVR is that there’s no way to transfer recorded files to another device, such as my computer, which I could then use to make my own HD screen captures.
As an alternative, I tried downloading an HD episode from the newsgroups, but the only HD version I could find was in a format that can only be played by a specific player – a player that doesn’t have screen capture capabilities – and my attempts to convert it to a usable format were all, as my dad often liked to say, for naught.
However, one thing I like to do with my DVR is to pause a show when it goes to commercial, then go about the usual commercial time activities like going to the bathroom, grabbing a snack, or overthrowing the government of a small Baltic nation. You know, the usual stuff.
When I get back, I then have some time in the bank that I can use to skip through future commercials.
Anyway, while watching Shark, I paused it during the opening credits just in time to freeze an image of Danielle on the screen. It then occurred to me that there was a solution to my screen capture problem that straddles the line between high tech and low tech: take a picture of the frozen screen with my digital camera.
Thus, I was able to capture a reference picture from which I was able to produce this image:



Looking at her IMDb entry, it seems that in addition to being unbearably cute, Ms. Panabaker is also extremely smart, having graduated high school at 14 and earned her Bachelor’s degree (in English!) at 19.
Of course, the fact that she’s actually younger than my niece Jourdan ratchets up the creepiness of my infatuation with her, especially when you factor in the fact that she’s at her hottest when wearing a schoolgirl outfit, but what are you gonna do?
And, as mentioned, it’s not as though I’m ever going to meet her or start stalking her (stalking, of course, requiring far more effort than I’m willing to put into any endeavor), so there’s no real harm.
I will say that she might very well be poised to take the place in my heart currently occupied by my beloved Rachael Leigh Cook.
(Hey, it’s your own fault, RLC – I’m not the one who went and got married to Man-Wolf. Geeky note: RLC is married to the actor who played John Jameson in Spider-Man 2, a character who, in the comics, is a sort of werewolf known as Man-Wolf, and sometimes Stargod, but he’ll always be Man-Wolf to me.)
Anyway, my harmlessly creepy infatuation with women I’ll never meet that manifests itself primarily in the form of drawing pictures of said women aside, apart from the failed attempt at getting a date with a woman who lives in the same geographic region as I do, not much has gone on today.
I went out to Super Target to pick up a few things and had lunch at the Pizza Hut Express located there.
While I was sitting there eating my pizza, a very unhappy-looking woman came in with a heavyset and obviously developmentally disabled teenaged boy and sat at the table next to me. The woman proceeded to pretend that the boy wasn’t there, while the boy began having a lengthy conversation with himself on the topic, from what I could gather, of the soap opera General Hospital.
From there I ran the obstacle course of unmoving senior citizens and little screaming ballerinas and non-ballet-attired children, got what I needed, and was on my way out, overhearing a young cashier talking to another cashier about how she’d told someone, “To hold up, because I still have feelings for Josh and for this guy.”
On my drive home there was someone behind me driving as though he was in a movie chase scene, yanking the wheel hard to make even the slightest turn.
And that’s been my day so far.
On Sunday it appears that I’ll be going to a holiday ice-skating party hosted by my Realtor, David, along with Kathleen.
Being from the Frozen North, naturally I know how to skate, but it’s been a very long time since I’ve done any skating, so I think I’ll probably stay off of the ice.
I encouraged Kathleen to go simply because I thought it would do her some good to get out of the house. I would say the same about me, but it seldom does me any good to get out of the house.
In extending her condolences over today’s shoot down, Kathleen suggested that maybe I’ll meet someone at the party, and went on to say that she’ll try not to be too much of a cock blocker.
I don’t foresee any likelihood that cock blocking will be an issue.