Vortexia's Secret

Have you ever gotten a mass-emailed invite that you felt was not exactly meant to be sent to you? you can tell they just clicked send to all and away they typed. you're in their address book, but they really were just thinking of a predestined group of 20 or so of those 143 email addresses getting the email. it was easier to click one button rather than choose 20 emails, and they just assumed everybody else would self-eliminate themselves from the list of chosen ones (or they were too flaky to realize that the other people would get the email).

of course you know it has to be worse for people like professors or tech support guys. they're emailed frequently to consult for one reason or another, so inevitably their email address ends up in tons of address books. yet, who can they trust? did that cut coed really want them to come to their beauty and the geek watching party in their best beauty or geek getup? (had to plug my favorite little guilty pleasure. but more there later.) i mean, she did seem a little flirtatious when she turned in that midterm, and she always tries to speak up when she thinks she can say something intelligent. could it be??? yet... if this is all in the prof's head and he shows up in golf pants and suspenders because he was officially invited-yet-not-meant-to-be-invited, then he's the laughing stock of his students and peers.

another unrelated holiday dilemma. what are you supposed to do with those picture cards you're sent from random people. intuitively everybody begins to send out those pictures with the "happy holidays from the bensons" on the side the moment they produce offspring. yet, when you only have foggy memories of the bensons from about a decade ago (and you know they are only sending to you because they are too lazy to update their list), what do you do with it? it seems mildly offensive to just trash somebody's family portrait. perhaps in this age of identity theft, shredding it would be best so that shrewy lady who picks through your trash doesn't lift mrs. benson's face to create a fake ID to go with her stolen credit cards. keeping it is ludicrous, since you have no desire to flip through fond memories of the benson christmas cards "through the years" in montage format. so then what? i guess ultimately, to the trash it goes. seems important to choose carefully for these cards now, doesn't it? close family only next year.

p.s. i've been sick and am just not getting over it. i realized something. you don't realize that snot has an odor until you're almost through having the snot problem. works out kind of well. just about the time you could really get grossed out by it, you're over the problem.