successful shoes

I often find myself taking internet quizzes in my free time because they can provide valuable insights to one's personality. For example, I now know which Scooby-Doo character I am, what breakfast cereal I would be, and which Disney princess I am most compatible with.

The other day, I found myself taking a quiz entitled Are You Successful? It was explained that, by answering a few simple questions, you would be rated as to how closely your answers matched the responses given by successful people. And while I'm not currently successful, I felt that if I possessed these same traits then, surely, success may still find its way to me at some point in the future. Then I'd be able to include myself in the elite of success-dom. The upper class of success.

I breezed straight through the questions, after which I was told that I only scored a 10%. This put my 'success attribute quotient' squarely between that of a used styrofoam cup and a mollusk. This was disheartening since, according to the internet, I had virtually no chance of ever becoming successful. Still, I thought, the internet has been wrong before. That British lottery I supposedly won? Well, I'm still waiting for the check.

I stumbled upon an on-line article the other day called What Your Shoes Say About Success! This, I thought, was a chance at redemption. An opportunity to convince myself...and the internet...that I possess traits which will lead to a successful future. I wear shoes. I have shoes for both business and personal situations. What more could a successful person ask in a pair of shoes?

'Successful people', the article detailed, 'tend to buy three or four new pairs of shoes each year.' I looked over toward my front door where I had deposited my tennis shoes upon entering the apartment. These shoes, I realized, had been bought in 2002. That's six years of wearing the same sneakers. These shoes have seen the whole Britney cycle; from sexy Britney, to mommy Britney, to bald and crazy Britney. These shoes have seen the breakups of Brad and Jen and then Jen and Vince. So, unlike successful people who buy three or four pairs a year, I tend to buy one every decade or so.

Sadly, I had to admit that perhaps the internet knew what it was talking about. Simply, I'm not destined to be included in the upper class of success. Which means that I'm now looking for inclusion in the upper-middle class tier.

Now if I could only find an internet quiz for this.

insect evictions

I took care of my wasp problem yesterday. For weeks now, I've noticed little hives on the underside of my balcony's overhang. Not one large hive, but several little ones...as if the wasps that inhabit them value their privacy. A thriving colony of studio apartments. And each time I had noticed them in the past, I thought, 'I really should take care of this wasp problem'. But after a few minutes, this thought would be forgotten and the wasp problem continued.

Yesterday evening, though, having walked out onto the balcony and re-remembering the growing wasp population, I decided to tackle it before forgetting it once again. Now, I'm not certain how professional wasp technicians get rid of wasps, but I grabbed a broom and began poking at the hives. I had waited until evening in the hopes of catching the wasps asleep. Once realizing that they were being evicted, I was counting on the fact that they would be groggy, giving me enough time to get back inside my apartment before they had the chance to mobilize a task force and unleash some primal, wasp variety of vengeance upon me.

But the tiny hives were all empty. Perhaps they were all out for the evening, a thought which depressed me since I was alone on a Saturday night relieving my balcony of wasp nests while the wasps were out on the town. Since when should wasps have more fun than humans? It simply didn't seem fair that these wasps would have a more active social life than I did. As I walked back into my apartment, I consoled myself with the fact that when these wasps came home for the evening, they would find themselves homeless while I would still have a home. One that I could return to...if only I ever had a reason to leave it.