2010, we need to talk...

dear 2010,
i think it's more than fair to say that you were a little rough on me this year. as i sat down to write this, i reflected on the 365 days that have gone by since we met...and some of those days were among the hardest of my life so far. i could go on and on about what a jerk i think you are, and how ready i am to have you out of my life for good...but i think it would serve me better to focus on the good times that you and i had together. because while the lows were excruciatingly low and often painful, the highs were way too good to write you off as being a bad year. look at everything we did together. in challenging me to stand on my own, you gave me the opportunity to branch out in new ways and take on things i didn't think i was capable of.

because of you i was able to go back home and do something proactive and hands on by working in the lower 9th ward. have i ever tiled a floor before or used a wet saw or designed a pattern for fireplace tiles? no. but you didn't let that stop me. i learned a lot about myself on that trip, and in a time in my life when things were looking pretty bleak, it also gave me a chance to experience the simple goodness of helping another person in need.

you saw me through a milestone birthday when i turned 30 this april. i thought i would begrudge you for taking me out of my 20s, but i am more comfortable in my own skin now than i ever was at 21 or 25, and turning 30 felt like a good time to really push myself to get over some fears. hence the flying trapeze lesson (which, by the way, i am dying to do again). you gave me one of the best birthdays i can remember (aside from my 9th birthday, when i got that purple scooter that i rode around until the wheels fell off), and i can credit you with giving me a good reason to get my best friends together in our finest Mad Men attire to toast my oldness in style.

you took me to costa rica this year. my parents got to celebrate 40 years of marriage because of you, and we had a wonderful and exhausting trip. niki renewed their vows. i hung upside down on a zipline in the rainforest. we ate beans and rice every day. we also got rained on every day. you sparked the wanderlust that's been asleep inside of me for far too long, and inspired me to make a list of places i want to go next year and the year after that, and the year after that, too. we also went back to nola for a second time this year, and spent a long weekend with my favorite city in the world.

the crap you threw my way this year did motivate me to get serious about running. i have shaved minutes off my mile pace in the last 12 months i've spent with you. when i started back in february, i ran mostly because i felt like if i ran fast and far enough, i could outrun everything that was going wrong. but now i feel more like i'm running towards something instead of away. i haven't figured out what it is that i'm going towards yet, but i know i'll get there soon. since the beginning of august i have put over 200 miles on my tennis shoes, which might seem like peanuts to some people, but i'm really proud of that. i'm shooting for a half marathon in 2011, and you know, 2010, i really have you to thank for that. i have also lost about ten pounds, and i am not mad about that, either.

you saw me through a promotion and you also gave my sister a chance at her dream job, which she found in june. she (and my camera) went to africa this year, so i guess you figured if you were going to be such an a-hole to me, that maybe you should be nice to my sister. i've seen her photos and i've heard the stories she came back with and although i'm awfully jealous that she's been to 3 more continents than me, i am so proud of the work she does and of the wonderfully big hearted and loving person that she is. maybe some of that could rub off on me, who knows. but also job related, you did give me a chance to sit in on a meeting with chuck close in his studio this summer, which is an experience i will never, ever forget. it is not every day that one gets to meet someone they admire on that level, and getting to work with him - even in the limited capacity that i do - has been amazing beyond words.

i did have to move out of that kick ass apartment i had with the beautiful rooftop views and the polished concrete floors and the full sized kitchen that i totally took for granted...but i'm saving money in my new smaller, much simpler place, that hopefully i will be able to use to travel in 2011. if i can swing a trip abroad, awesome. if not, there is a long list of cities in the US that i need to get to. you were pretty hard on me financially, 2010, and i know we did have our good times, but i can say with all honesty that it won't be all that hard for me to watch you go.

i feel like you got a few lucky punches in...but in the end, i still came out on top. i know 2011 will come with its own set of rough days, but spending the last 12 months with you has really prepared me to deal with them head-on, and i'm stronger and better for the time that we spent together. but this is it. it's really over now and i want you to know that i gave you the best of me while i had you, but i'm totally and completely ready to let you go. so please...erase my number out of your phone and don't get mad if i defriend you on facebook. i have to do what's best for me and that means not being with you anymore. i promise to always cherish the good times we had together and i will always wish you well. but i belong to 2011 now. i hope one day that you can understand.

always,
lindsey

really, monday? REALLY???

so this past monday was not the greatest day of my life. in fact, this past monday REDEFINED the term "one of those days" and i do not mean that in a good way. first off, my mom called me at 6:30 am to tell me my father had gone into the emergency room earlier that morning and had been diagnosed with pancreantitis. my sister and i left work early to go to the hospital to visit him, and by the time we get there, she is in so much pain that she ends up going down into the ER and checking herself in. Turns out SHE had a kidney infection. she was released later that night, but after sitting and waiting with her for all her test results, etc., it was 11 pm by the time i got home. i take lincoln for a walk as soon as i get home and we come across 2 dogs that live in my neighborhood, running around off leash around their house, and lincoln has played with them before so i figure i'll take him off the leash, too, so they can play. bad. idea. lincoln runs up to the dogs and is immediately attacked by one of them - who knows why, but the dog's owner later guessed that it was because lincoln approached her while she was chewing on a bone (as if this is a good reason to attack someone). silly me tries to break up the fight because all i can think is, that dog is going to kill my dog and i have to get my dog out of there. i reach for the back of his neck to get at his collar, and my hand ends up in the mouth of the other dog. i don't know if you've ever been bitten by a dog before but let me tell you, IT EFFING HURTS. so i was in a bit of a state of shock, standing there bleeding all over the sidewalk and hoping that my dog still has all his appendages. the other dog's owner runs over and breaks up the fight and then helps me clean up my hand (again, OW), then i go back home and check lincoln out to make sure he's ok. and i notice he's got a pretty big gash in one ear and he's bleeding and he won't let me touch it to clean it up, so...since i have no car and it's midnight at this point, i have no choice but to call my sister and wake her up to come get us. luckily she was not all drugged up from her hospital stay, but i kinda was since i had taken some codene when i got back home since my hand felt like it had been through a meat grinder (note to self: stop thinking that you can take codene without becoming violently nauseated. you have tried this move on multiple occasions and it has never, EVER failed to make you completely and utterly sick.). so, despite being a little bit loopy from pain and codene, i drove niki back home and took lincoln straight to the 24 hour animal hospital. we got there at 1 am and after 5 hours, 4 stitches (in his ear, my baby!!), and $500, my dog was returned to me, doped up and completely useless, with his tounge hanging out of his mouth and absolutely no sense of who he was or what was going on. not to mention having a giant plastic cone on his head. we got home at 6:30 am as my alarm clock was going off to wake up for work (needless to say, i did not go to work that day), and i managed to get lincoln out of the car and into the apartment (which was no easy feat considering that he is almost 90 pounds and his limbs were not exactly functional at the time). the only thing i managed to accomplish on tuesday was getting a tetanus shot and going to sleep at 6pm. i'm still catching up on sleep, but at least lincoln has emerged from his sedative coma and aside from the humiliation brought upon him by the cone of shame, he seems to be doing pretty well, all things considered.

what irks me the most is that the other dog's owner has not even offered to help me pay lincoln's vet bill, and he actually suggested that we should have let them continue fighting since now there will be tension between our dogs. hey, idiot, they are not the capulets and the montagues. they are DOGS. and had i let your dog have another round with my dog, my dog would no doubt be missing his WHOLE EAR. get a grip on your life and keep your damn dog on a leash next time.

next week had better be much, MUCH nicer to me...

on giving thanks

it is the friday before thanksgiving. i am at work. there is something wrong with this picture. i am pretty sure that trying to focus on anything work related when thanksgiving is on the horizon is a pretty futile mission, because all i can think about is a 4 day weekend, the delicious bourbon apple pie i plan to bake, and lounging around with my family while my body deals with all the tryptophan i intend to load it up with. since next week will be a short work week, i'm also pretty sure it will be a small miracle to get me to accomplish anything, but apparently other people around here don't think that the whole world needs to stop for an entire week just so i can eat 19 pounds of turkey. i haven't even eaten any turkey today and my eyelids feel like i have weights attached to them, so how i am going to make it through next wednesday is beyond me. i just wish that all the stores hadn't totally overlooked thanksgiving and gone straight into the christmas hoopla - i've never entirely understood why this happens every year. the day after halloween has apparently become the day when stores indulge themselves in a christmas free-for-all, and the second the witches and goblins come down, the christmas trees and jolly elves go up in their place. i hope all the pilgrims and cornacopia decorations that get relegated to the bottom shelf aren't too upset about this (because i know i would be), but i guess the tacky holiday decorations/useless crap you don't need industries feel like christmas is a bigger money maker than poor old thanksgiving. hello, does the president PARDON anyone at christmastime? no. does the city of new york shut itself down to parade 45 foot inflatable cartoon characters down the street on christmas? NO. do sales the day after christmas inspire people to camp out in front of department stores at ungodly hours just so that they can save a few bucks on a flat screen tv? NO. so why all this rush to get to christmas? i mean, i flippin LOVE me some christmas, but i love thanksgiving, too, so i just don't get why we are always in such a rush to blow through a perfectly lovely holiday (so what if it's really just an excuse to eat more in one sitting than one should consume in a week??) to get to the next one. chill out, people. the year will be over in about 5 minutes anyway, so slow your asses down and let me enjoy it while it lasts. because god knows once new year's has come and gone, i will actually have to start getting some work done, and we all know how much of a good time THAT is.

there's no place like home...

there are few things on this earth that excite me as much as a short work week. however, having a short work week because i am taking off on thursday for the MOTHERLAND (that is new orleans to those of you who may not know) is just about the greatest thing on earth. ever. last time i was down was back in march, when i went to do some volunteer work, and while i did get some time to love up on my favorite city on earth, i did actually have work to do during the day, so i didn't get to spend as much time making googly eyes at nola as i would have liked to. NOT SO THIS TIME. i figured that since 2010 has been a bit rough on me, i totally deserve a trip back home to recharge my batteries, see my best friend, catch some kickass live music, and maybe even drink a daiquiri (or four). seriously, just the wafting smell of popeyes when you land at msy airport makes my heart smile, and i have been known to cry tears of joy just standing in the sun on the steps of st. louis cathedral and listening to the beautiful concert of sound that the french quarter makes on a daily basis. you know that feeling that you get when you are with someone who just gets why you are the way you are and you don't ever have to explain yourself or apolgize for seeing things the way you see them? they just feel like home, in every sense of the word, and that is how new orleans feels to me, even though my sarsgaard (don't ask) of a cousin insists that i never actually LIVED in new orleans (which is ridiculous, because NEITHER DID HE since gretna technically is not new orleans). being in new orleans just makes me feel more like me than i ever feel anywhere else, including DC. actually, i also feel this way about florence, but i see much less of florence than i do of lady nola. (hmm, that would make an awesome stage name, but that is a digression of what i'm talking about and i think maybe lady gaga owns the rights to "lady" anything nowadays which is sad cause i always wanted a title with "lady" in front...) ANYWAY, the point is that i am going home and i am freakin excited. i am going to bring my tennis shoes and run all over the french quarter and down st. charles so that i can then eat fried catfish and drink 1200 calorie slushy drinks (mmmm, white russian daiquiris!!!) and not feel all that terribly awful about it. i am going to spend time with my best friend and laugh at all the stupid things we used to do back in grade school and i am going to hold her son and marvel at the fact that this girl that used to play in the woods with me after school is now someone's mother and he in fact seems to be a pretty normal and happy child despite the fact that she is a nut job. i am going to fill my ears with all the live music i can get and i am going to stop and listen to all the amazing street performers in the quarter (i will not, however, even so much as stop to look at all the mimes because they can smell my fear of them and they prey on me because of this). i am going to go home and soak up every bit of that place that i can, and i am not going to think about work, or anything going on in my life except for the poboy that is in front of me. except my dog. i might think about him. he likes crawfish, and he is a lazy bum, so i know he would fit right in in nola. so. two more work days and i am off to restore my sanity in the craziest city in the world. i. can't. wait.

things i learned in costa rica

-not only is it totally acceptable to eat rice and beans at every meal, it's pretty much expected. had i known this earlier, i would have shunned smoothies, yogurt and oatmeal ages ago. rice + beans = HEAVEN (actually, it equals casado, but that's another story).

-there is a reason they call it the rainforest. because IT RAINS. a lot. and in rainy season, that means pretty much every single day. however, just because it's raining (and i'm talking like the second flooding of the holy land kind of raining) doesn't mean that costa ricans will call off any sort of outdoor activities. including ziplining. apparently, being soaked to the bone and strapped into a 20 pound harness while hiking half a mile up a mountain is not out of the ordinary for them. i also learned that it takes me a solid 20 minutes of misery to get over myself, embrace the suck, and actually enjoy something i was previously complaining about. this is how one ends up hanging upside down from a cable hooked to a tree 30 feet above the ground in the pouring rain. only in central america. i highly recommend that everyone do this at least once, though. despite the rain and the bird sized mosquitos, it is a rather thrilling experience.

-wild monkeys cannot be trusted. don't ask me why, just take my word for it. and never let them know that you have bananas. it's all downhill from there.

-costa rica is apparently where laptops go to commit hard drive suicide. so that slide show you worked on for over a week to show your parents on their 40th anniversary? GONE. your entire itunes library? GONE. every photo you've taken in the last 5 years? GONE. which brings me to another lesson that i learned while in costa rica: BACK YOUR SHIT UP. (ok, i'm being dramatic, i didn't lose EVERYTHING, but i lost enough to feel it where it really hurts, and the fools at the mac store are all like, "oh we don't do file extraction, you have to take it to a specialist for that kind of data recovery." HELLO, YOU are the specialists, are you not? clearly, they don't really mean that "genius" part of "genius bar." fools.)

-when you are ten latitidunal degrees north of the equator, tanning does not work the same way it does back home. you know why it's hotter down there? BECAUSE YOU'RE CLOSER TO THE SUN. so, laying out with no sunscreen on because you want to "get a little color" on your legs is really only going to lead to sunpoisioning (my mother can attest to that). i may be the only person in history to come back from a week in costa rica no tanner than when i arrived. i like my skin and i want to keep it. that means putting sunscreen on. more than once a day. and wear a hat while you're at it.

-no amount of bug repellant will protect you. we literally had about 20 lbs worth of mosquito repelling supplies between the 4 of us and i still look like i have the chicken pox. but that's because i'm the person who gets bitten while everyone else around me is like "what bugs??" my mother has always said the bugs are attracted to me because i'm so sweet but i'm calling her bluff. i think they just know how much it pisses me off. those mosquitos...they're organized. i expect a coup any moment now.

-costa rica is an amazing country with beautiful, friendly people, delicious food (when you leave your hotel), bizarre looking wildlife (like that raccoon looking thing that niki let kiss her in the ear), and very tiny horses. they aren't so much into paving their roads or putting their dogs on leashes. oh and also, one must watch out for niki from now on. she went and got herself ordained as a minister (that's "The Rev" to you!), and i'm a little fearful that one day i'm going to fall asleep around her and i'll wake up married.

vay-kay-shun

i'm not entirely sure how this happened, but it's monday again. normally i would complain about how quickly my weekend went by and i don't feel rested because i kept myself so busy because i don't know how to sit still and just relax on the weekends and whine that 3 day weekends should be the rule instead of the exception, BUT...i am kind of glad this weekend went by so fast. it means that i am now less than a week out from my trip to costa rica and since i haven't been out of the country (because i don't count canada, even though they do speak all that crazy french business in montreal and have different money and eat weird things like french fries covered in cheese curd and gravy) since 2008 and my passport is ITCHING to get the hey out of town. so we're trying to plan what all we're going to do while we are there and i think it's going to amount to a whole lot of nothing, which i'd like to say is fine with me, but i have never been good at relaxing anyway and there is only so much poolside reading and mai thai sipping i can do before i start getting bored and antsy and annoying the crap out of everyone that i'm with. so we've been looking into some "adventure tours" like ziplining (which i want to think i'd be ok with, but honestly, i'm really not sure if my inner ninny baby could handle this) and snorkeling, but what i really want to do is go horseback riding on the beach. i want to say i'd be down for diving or snorkeling because i've done both before and loved it, but that's when i was young and fearless and my older and wiser self is now consumed with fear of jellyfish to the point where i can't even look at them without going into full body paralysis. maybe i will be able to get over myself long enough to prove that i can too get into the water without being stung or freaked out or abducted by monster jellyfish and carried away to the depths of the ocean where i will be forced to serve the jellyfish queen until the end of time. this has happened to at least 3 people that i know of.

but i do have at least 3 books to read (yes, 2 of which i have already read once before), and i am bringing my tennis shoes because this place is supposed to have a nice gym and if i'm going to be privvy to all inclusive eating and drinking for 7 days, there will be lots of working out to counter that. plus i will have my family and they are pretty much a walking reality show anyway, so that promises to be amusing at the very least. anyway, i doubt being bored in costa rica is anywhere near as awful as being bored sitting at a desk for 8 hours a day, and i am, in fact, rather looking forward to being bored out of my mind at the swim-up bar that graces the hotel pool. i am also looking forward to living in sundresses for an entire week and not once getting up in the morning and thinking, what am i going to wear to work today?? because, oh, that's right, I DON'T HAVE TO GO TO WORK TODAY. i hope costa rica is prepared....

i need a weekend...to recover from my weekend

i finally managed to make it up to new york this weekend to visit a friend that i am forever promising i will visit but then i never actually do. it was a perfect weekend to make good on that promise, for as much as i love dc, i really did need to get the hell out of town and pretend like i was on vacation, even if it was only for a few days. i always forget that new yorkers are all vampires and don't do anything until after 10 pm, so the weekend of eating dinner at 11 and then staying out until 3 or 4 caught up with me pretty quickly and i am feeling rather like a hot mess today. although, when it's new york that is the reason that you are left feeling like a hot mess, i guess things can't be all that bad. i love that damn city. it's crowded, it's dirty, there is trash everywhere, it smells, it's loud and i constantly feel the need to wash my hands...but there is still no place on earth quite like it. i did manage to have the best sushi i've ever eaten in my life, see the cooper union building i've been itching to get my eyes on, find $50 on the ground (which was spent about 5 minutes later- damn that city is expensive!), buy about 3 pairs of sunglasses and a hat for my costa rica trip for around $10, go for an awesome run through central park, play beer pong (because i'm still 20 in my head), and get about 8 hours of sleep all weekend. so. there is my explanation for feeling like a hot mess. i am pretty sure that new york and i could never be in an exclusive, long term relationship. i love dc too much and in all honesty, i think dc would make a better life partner than ny. but every now and then, it is nice to run into the arms of ny for a weekend, just to remind myself that that kind of instablity (in small doses) can be very, VERY fun.

an open letter...

dear mr. "the situation"-

i had every intention of writing the a-holes over at MTV a frosty letter of grievance for continuing to churn out waste of space buffoons such as yourself and promptly declaring you to be celebrities. i now have to put up with fools like you and snooki and heidi montag and lauren conrad and j woww (which is not even a real name, by the way) and audrina patridge and the list goes on and on and on and yet none of you contribute ANYTHING of ANY value to society. NONE. but then i decided that MTV isn't holding a gun to america's head and telling us to watch or die, and that these people actually become "celebrities" because we are dumb enough to see them on tv a couple of times and then obsess over them and their silly catchphrases and get caught up in their lifestyles of doing nothing (yes, mr. "the situation," i'm saying going to work out, tan, and do laundry do not constitute as a worthwhile lifestyle) and then whaddaya know just like that, they are on the cover of trash magazines and CNN is reporting on how high snooki's bump was that particular day and i think it just goes to show you what a bunch of dumb ass fools WE the american public are.

i do, however, want to make a request of you and it's that you put your damn shirt down. yes, i see you work out. yes, i see you are hairless as a chinese crested terrier. no, i am not impressed. not only am i not impressed, but i am also not pleased, because i see more and more people walking around using the heat as an excuse to strike a "situation" pose themselves and hello, america, i do not want to see your pasty white underbellies when you are covered in sweat and your chest could easily be confused for a shag carpet. see, mr. "the situation," as a "celebrity," you have a lot of power and with that power comes a choice to use it for good or for evil. your influence is doing me no good and i implore you to reconsider your "situation" and keep your shirt on. think of it as doing something different for a change. making the ladies work a little harder for it, if you will. i don't feel this is asking too much, so i do hope that you will at least sleep on my request.

if you could also do me another small favor and go away and take all of the rest of your jersey shore cast members with you, i would really appreciate that as well.

please and thank you,

me

the reason for my tardiness

it finally hit me today why i tend to be late to work in the mornings. usually i have no problem getting on the metro, most of the time there are a few seats open, or if i have to stand, i pretty much have my precious bubble of personal space all to myself. this is because i get on the train between 8:50 and 9am. when one gets on the train in order to be AT work by 9 am, one finds themselves crammed into a car with about 497 other people who are also trying to be at work by 9 am, which is pretty uncomfortable, especially when it's 98 degrees, the car a/c is clearly not working properly, and you have 4 elbows in your face. this kind of sardine like lifestyle is obviously not healthy for me or my personal space, so i think i am perfectly justified in traipsing into work a little on the late side so i don't have to start my morning off with strangers breathing all over me. is that too much to ask? no. i didn't think so.

is it just me???

or does anyone else think that lady gaga is starting to resemble a punk rock version of the secretary of state?

that is all. carry on.

no. sleep. til brooklyn.

i know i say this all the time, but this time i really mean it: i am OLD. i went to dinner last night and had 2 martinis (which were delicious by the way) and still managed to get in bed before midnight. so of course i wake up at 3am with a pounding headache and have to get up, take excederin, get my trusty ice pack out of the fridge and arrange it and my smooshy pillow in a cocoon around my head so i can go back to sleep. and after all that hoopla, don't you know, i can't go back to sleep. maybe it's because i had put my head on ice and my mind was subconsciously afraid that i would fall asleep and wake up in the year 2185 after being frozen for half of eternity, maybe i had too much on my mind (such as pondering what i was going to wear to work the next day, what i should do over the holiday weekend, whether or not i want to get a tattoo...), who knows. all i can tell you is i got out of bed at 3am and by 4, i still was wide awake, staring at the ceiling. by 5 i figured it was a lost cause and considered getting up to go for an early morning run but my head was still pounding so that was out of the question. but 7am finally showed up and i dragged myself out of bed (although i did also briefly consider calling in sick and laying by my pool all afternoon) and into the shower with my headache still fully intact. which makes me wonder...what the hell are they putting in martinis these days?

i may suggest to my boss today that we adopt the 3pm "siesta" so that i don't feel quite so much like my face is going to fall off by the time COB rolls around. people in europe do it all the time. i'm not saying that i also want to start doing the double cheek air kiss kiss thing, cause i actually dread that whole crazy ritual (seriously, how do you know which way to go first??), but those europeans are totally on to something with their afternoon naps. and their 4 hour lunches. i'm just saying. i'm freakin tired.

the ratio of tall to stupid

seeing as how friday was the 1 year anniversary of the untimely death of the king of pop, niki and i went to see a michael jackson tribute band at the 9:30 club on saturday night. the band - aptly named Who's Bad - was great, and they alternated between 2 lead singers who came out as different "versions" of MJ depending on what song they were playing. There was Jackson 5 Michael, Thriller Michael, Billie Jean Michael, Military Jacket Lisa Marie loving Michael...it was all highly entertaining, the music was great and one of the "Michael's" had clearly dedicated his life to studying MJ's dance moves because he had it DOWN. that is not what i want to talk about, though. what i want to talk about is the DUMB ASS girls that parked themselves in front of my sister and i and did their absolute best to ruin our night and the night of everyone around us.

so niki and i spot this girl before the show starts. we're standing about 3 people back from the front of the stage and we see this girl who is tall and blonde and thin and has on white shorts and a black lacy top and her legs were about 6 years long and in perfect shape and both of us were in awe of how close to perfection her body was. now, i knew up front that this girl had to be either a spectacular BORE or a huge BITCH, because the way god works is that no one that is physically perfect can also have a great personality. i know this because i have spent a lot of time researching this topic. really really hot girls are never super smart, and super smart girls are never really really hot. i don't mean you can't be smart and pretty. i'm just saying you can't be jaw droppingly beautiful and also qualify for membership in MENSA. if you can disprove my theory, please, by all means...point this person out to me. anyway, i was right about Legs, cause boy did she turn out to be the most obnoxious person in the entire room. as niki and i stood there, more and more of her over 6 foot tall friends showed up and pushed their way to what they clearly felt was their rightful concert viewing place right in front of my 5 foot 3 self. one after another these girls showed up, screeching and jumping up and down and taking pictures of themselves and clearing more and more space around them so that they could have a grand old time while the rest of us peasants got shoved farther and farther back from the stage.

it is a good thing that i am such a brat at concerts, because some people might put up with this and some people might just say, oh well, i'll just move back. NUH UH. not having it. i held on to my square foot of space and refused to move. when one of the michaels invited some ladies up on stage for a song and a surge of women in minidresses moved forward and started shoving up against Legs and her friends, oh my god...look out. at one point, some guy pushed his way through to these girls and literally stood right in front of me - and i'm not lying this guy was at least 6'4", i tapped him on the shoulder and when he turned around i said, dude. WHAT THE F*CK. his response was to look at me and then turn back around. hello, jackhole, that is not an answer. luckily the guy next to me was a shorty, too, and the 2 of us ganged up on him and scared him away. and it wasn't just niki and i who were annoyed...pretty much everyone around us had had it up to their eyeballs with this group by the time they even got around to doing Thriller.

look, i love a good concert and i don't mind a crowd. what i mind is stupid people doing stupid things and taking the fun out of it for everyone else. we finally did give up our spots to hit up the bathroom and grab another beer, and it was probably for the best, becuase i totally needed more elbow room for dancing to man in the mirror. but i say to you, dumb ass tall leggy girls of the world: just because i am shorter than you doesn't mean you can walk all over me. i have a lower center of gravity and i know how to throw a right hook. check yourselves. MJ may be a lover, not a fighter...but i am not taking shit from NO ONE.

getting a new phone...and losing my mind

have i mentioned that i can't believe that it's 2010?? i feel like it was 5 minutes ago that i was trying to remember to write 1989 instead of 1988 on all my homework...either that was the longest 5 minutes EVER or i need to suck it up and face reality. that said, i FINALLY joined the rest of the free world and upgraded myself to one of those hoity-toity phones that allows you to access the internet anywhere, anytime, find yourself on a map and locate the nearest sushi restaurant, purchase and download music, and will probably babysit your children for you (cause i'm sure there's an app for that). i didn't get an iphone - because at&t SUCKS, but i did get myself a touch screen phone that i was rather thrilled with upon it's arrival at my apartment yesterday.

however. i have figured out what the problem is. with us. with the world. with EVERYTHING. when you wake up in the morning and your phone is sitting right next to you, with it's facebook widget all patiently waiting for you to touch it so it can tell you everyone's business before you've even brushed your teeth, the rest of the day is pretty much downhill. WE. ARE. ADDICTED. i fought the urge to check my facebook, comcast and gmail accounts, however, since i have officially decided that i am not going to be THAT PERSON. my sister is that person. it annoys the crap out of me. she checks her gmail every 30 seconds. i guess that's why i've held on to just having a regular old phone for such a long time: i really don't NEED to be all that accessible. my job isn't that important that i need to be on email at 11 o'clock at night. i'm not a surgeon, or a CEO, and there is pretty much nothing that anyone could say to me that couldn't just wait until morning. PLUS, i have to pay an extra $30 per month on top of my regular phone plan fee just for the privelege of accessing the internet whenever my heart desires.

i will say it will be nice to finally have a hand held device that can answer all the ridiculous questions that i come up with on a regular basis (because i think it really is important to know how postage works from country to country - hello, if i send a postcard from france to the usa, who's postal workers get paid from my stamp - ours or the french??). but it's going to be hard to not become an internet junkie. i already spend 8 hours a day in front of a computer. and along comes one more thing to attach myself to and become so dependent upon that i can't live without it (although i do have a kindle that is sitting around collecting dust because while i do see the advantage of the electronic book, it's just not the same as A BOOK, and you can't make notes in the margins or doodle on the inside cover which kind of makes it less interesting, too).

luckily, this phone is the most un-intuitive thing i've ever come across, so i will probably end up only using about 4% of its features anyway. i NEVER call anyone anyway cause i hate talking on the phone (everyone knows that if you want to get in touch with me, you'd better text), so i may be testing the waters on this whole smart phone phenomenon, but i am at least moderately confident that i will end up using my fancy new phone the way i used my not so fancy old phones: as an alarm clock.

one more reason to stop reading people.com

i have not ever seen an episode of the bachelor. or the bachelorette. or who wants to marry a millionaire, or any of those other reality datings shows that may as well be called "how low will you go to be on television for 15 minutes and claw someone else's eyeballs out over a man/woman who you will break up with within 3 months of the end of this show." but i guess it would be hard to fit that on the tv guide listings.

anyway, this whole jake and vienna breakup thing is polluting people.com right now and first of all, i don't know who the hell they are because i never watched that show, but it also strikes me as a little odd that anyone would be surprised that 2 people who got together in the name of fame whoring are not going to be living happily ever after. this breakup occured about 5 minutes ago and people is already boasting a magazine with this jake person on the cover, with a headline reading "why i left vienna" or sienna or whatever the hell city she is named after. i mean, i know people.com is not exactly where one would go to get the most pertinent news in the world (although, cnn.com is also reporting this breakup, which makes me question their reliability as a news source), but surely there must be some celebrity in some crisis or in the middle of a divorce or nervous breakdown or public drunken rant that would have made for a much more interesting headline. oh my god, 2 people who met on a reality television show broke up because he DOESN'T TRUST HER?!?! shocker. is anyone actually upset about this?? come on, people. lindsay lohan is a drunk, jeremy london just got kidnapped and had custody of his child taken away, and lady gaga FINALLY fell down because of the ridiculous things she puts on her body and tries to pass off as clothes. i DO NOT CARE about jake and vienna. and while i'm at it, stop reporting on every little move that every one of the "real housewives" make because i don't watch any of those shows either and i find it to be a rather tragic commentary on american society that we have made women like bethanny frankel and what's her face with that tardy for the party song famous for being spoiled, self absorbed a-holes who have no clue what an actual housewife would do. and let me clue you in, it's not shopping, lunching with the girls, buying bigger boobs and meeting with the interior decorator so that your toy chihuahua's new dog house looks as fabulous as yours does.

PLEASE AND THANK YOU.

kicking the habit

i am not shy about my diet coke addiction. i bring one with me to work every morning and i crack that baby open at 9am (with a smile on my face since i always associate the sound of a can opening with the taste of a cold beer on a hot afternoon, so i guess that pavlov guy was right after all). i shun the idea of a morning coffee - I SHUN IT! i don't actually really even like coffee all that much. you will not ever catch me drinking it hot, and while i will drink it cold, it's mostly milk with a little bit of coffee in it for color. during a trip to montreal a few years ago, i ordered a diet coke with my breakfast and the teenager across the table from me looked at me with disgust and said "you're SUCH an american." since he was about 13 at the time and drinking an espresso i really had no retort because canadians are so much cooler than we are. ANYWAY. i have started drinking more iced coffee lately...not because i've developed a taste for it (really, it's half milk and has about 5 splendas in it, so i hardly think it counts as coffee anyway), but because it's getting warmer and the days are getting longer and i need a reason to leave my desk every day for at least 30 minutes to go bask in the glory of the summer sun. it's kind of like when i was waiting tables in college and i started smoking simply because it provided me with a guaranteed 15 minute break every hour and a half. and if you've ever worked a double, you'll understand and sympathize. and you probably started smoking, too. since i do limit myself to one measly can of diet coke a day (yes, there was a time when i was up to about 4 or 5), i figure that one tall coffee from starbucks that doesn't really even count as a coffee won't really hurt me in the caffeine department.

although this week i've noticed that my eye has been twitching a lot. i either REALLY need a vacation, or i need to just tell my boss that i'm going for a walk without needing the coffee excuse. surely it's within my legal rights to say, i'm suffering from a vitamin D deficiency and need to immediately park myself in a sunny spot and people watch - i mean soak up the vitamin d - for at least 30 minutes.

i TOTALLY do need a vacation, though...

preach it

on my way to work this morning, i was blessed with the good fortune to have stepped onto the same car as a lovely woman who felt the need to share the word of god with me and my fellow train riders. at the top of her lungs. at 8:45 in the morning. it will probably come as no surprise to you that instead of listening to what she had to say (blah blah, REPENT, blah blah, SINNERS, blah blah, ACCEPT JESUS CHRIST AS YOUR LORD AND SAVIOR), i turned up my ipod in order to tune her out. just what i wanted when i'm hardly even awake yet. to permanately damange my precious hearing in order to avoid saving my soul. seriously, can this wait until i've had my diet coke?

really, cnn? REALLY?

since i really don't know all that much about what is going on in the world (this is because i do not have a television, therefore, i cannot watch the news, because i also do not really have internet access in my apartment, unless i take my laptop downstairs to the club room in my building and 95% of the time, i am too lazy to do that), i try to check in on current events while i'm at work. usually i get most of my news from cnn.com and the ny times online (i guess people.com and perez hilton don't really count as actual news, right?), which typically give me just enough information to know if the world is about to explode or not.

HOWEVER. i just discovered that one can actually watch live streaming video of oil spilling out into the gulf of mexico on cnn.com and my immediate reaction was WHY DOES CNN THINK I NEED TO SEE THAT?? maybe anderson & co. are trying to get some sort of emtional reaction out of me, so that i can actually see for myself the horrors that oil and greed and idiots who run oil companies have inflicted upon the environment down there, but if that's the case, i can tell them that all i really needed was that one photo of the pelican trying in vain to spread its oil-coated wings and fly. THAT WAS ENOUGH. since i grew up in the gulf coast neighborhood, it's especially painful to watch the powers that be pass the blame around like it's a game of hot potato, when dolphins are washing up dead on the shore and hundreds of thousands of people are worried about the economic well being of themselves and their families since no one really wants to eat oil-marinated seafood. anyway, it's just beyond my realm of understanding as to why one would need to watch live video of oil spilling into the gulf, because what is the point of that? i can see how some media outlets would want us to really truly KNOW what is going on down there and they want to shake us all out of our oil-consuming comas by streaming video that says SEE? SEE HOW AWFUL OIL COMPANIES CAN BE? LOOK AT THE POOR BIRDS AND FISH! because they know people like me, and how i will cry about those poor birds and fish and other marine life and swear off oil forever (good thing i don't have a car, or that might make this a little more challenging) and then dedicate the rest of my life to alternative energy sources.

this is how they kept me in front of my television (back when i had one) for 3 days straight after hurricane katrina, watching people being airlifted from the roofs of their houses, or footage of dogs and cats stranded in trees, or people looting stores and carrying out flat screen tvs (clearly, when a hurricane blows through and there is no power for weeks, one of the first things anyone will need to survive is a flat screen tv). i watch it because it's there to watch. it's like a train wreck or a car accident, you don't want to look, but you can't turn away.

but come on, cnn. you had me at

on being a girl

few things in this life bring me such joy as spending some quality time with my best good lady friends. while it is true that 2 out of these 7 or 8 ladies are blood related to me, i'm pretty sure we were all sisters in one life or another, which is the only explanation for why we have so much damn fun whenever we're together. seeing as how yesterday was a federal holiday and we all had the day off, my girls and i got together at a friends for something that only girls are allowed to do. yeah yeah, boys can get together and drink beer and watch football with their hands down their pants while they yell at the tv and argue about sports statistics, WHO CARES. only if one is blessed with girlhood can they then get all their friends together in their finest dresses and their highest heels to sip champagne cocktails, eat fancy homemade quiche and go see the newest sex and the city flick. no doubt the people of ashburn must have thought hollywood had come to the hills of virginia when we showed up at the movies dressed like we were going out for a night on the town and not a matinee (which, by the way, is still $9 a ticket, which is an OUTRAGE) showing of some silly chick movie. still, as far as i am concerned, one can never be over dressed for anything. i have been known to show up for junior high soccer tournaments in skirts and 4 inch wedge heels.

anyway, we had so much fun being fancy (although i'm sure the champagne had something to do with the level of fun, especially considering that we made drinks to go and brought them into the movies with us, lest we lose our buzz), that it makes me think i would never ever ever want to be a guy. first of all, i love having boobs way too much (is this TMI for the internets? guess i can't run for office now. oh well) and secondly, if a group of guys were ever to get all dressed up and go out to the movies after eating brunch at one of their houses (where everyone was instructed as to where to sit at the dining room table by way of really really cute place cards with their name on it), i'm pretty sure they would be getting some serious shit for that. even if it was a movie where everyone dies and everything gets blown up. it just would not be cool. thankfully, i am a girl, so i can wear 5 inch heels and a dress to the movies in the middle of the day and hold hands with my girlfriend during the part where they are about to kiss and giggle quite literally like a school girl and no one thinks anything of it. so there. you can have your positions of power and your brute strength. i will take stilettoes and quiche any day of the week.

out to lunch

i've noticed what seems to be a bit of a trend around our nation's capital. as soon as the first of may shows up, us winter-weary and sun starved office dwellers pretty much mentally check out of anything work-related and do not return from this sabbitical until the end of august. if it's not about taking 2 hour lunch breaks to sit in the sun, befriending complete strangers because we hear their apartment building has a rooftop pool, standing in line for upwards of 20 minutes for a single scoop of ice cream or drinking a pitcher of sangria to counter the summer heat, we really just do not care. work? what is that? the sun is here. the days are long. it's 90 flippin degrees outside. i do not need your spreadsheets or your power point presentations. i need new sundresses and a picnic basket. it has come to my attention that no one in washington really gets any work done between may 1 and august 31. but the best part of that is, that no one in washington really CARES if no one gets any work done between may 1 and august 31. we collectively take this "vacation" because that way, if we aren't working, and no one else around us is working, then we all pretty much look like we are working since we're doing the same thing everyone else is. genius.

i almost feel like this is an unconcious effort on our parts to reclaim summer, since it was snatched away from us the second we left the safety of college and were thrust out into the "real world," where jobs do not come with a 3 month break during the hottest months of the year. and, since we no longer have the seductive promise of 3 whole months of doing whatever the hell we want, whenever the hell we want to, we deal with it the best way we know how: by slacking off at work. honestly, who can focus through a 2 hour meeting about budgets when all i can think about is how nice it would be to sit by the fountain down at the navy memorial, drinking an iced coffee and people watching. seriously. IT'S ALL I THINK ABOUT. but i know i am not alone, since the rest of DC is on mental holiday right along with me.

so, while i daydream about laying on a blanket in the shady grass on the national mall with a good book and my puppy dog for company, i still manage to make it to work every day, and someone who looks just like me gets all my work done. maybe when i "come back" at the end of august, my boss will ask me for an essay entitled "what i did this summer," and i can write page after page about the road trips to the beach, the afternoons laying out by rooftop pools, the piles of books i went through while sipping frozen margaritas, the museums i visited, the concerts and movies i went to....in my head. while i was at work. cause i'm a grown up.

there should be an "out of office" email setting for this...

thank you for your email. i am mentally checked out and cannot respond because i am busy daydreaming about the sound of ocean waves and the feel of sand between my toes. i will return your email in a week or two when i emerge from this fantasy, unless i succumb to another one before then, in which case it will be the end of august before you hear back from me.

cheers,

me

59FIFTY

ok, i'm sure my parents could regale you with story after story about all the ridiculous fashion trends that i fell victim to in my youth...the multi-colored scrunchie socks that HAD to be worn to school (and that had to match the multi-colored scrunchies in my hair), the neon pink and green LA Gear high tops i insisted on wearing with every outfit, the doc martens that made my feet look about 4 sizes larger than they actually were. no doubt my parents would just roll their eyes and laugh at the stupidity as i begged and pleaded for them to please please please MAKE ME COOL.

now that i am older and wiser (and less susceptible to ridiculous fads) i look around me at what "kids these days" are wearing and think, oh my GOD, am i glad i am not 16 right now. one thing in particular that i do not understand is this concept of wearing one's fitted baseball cap as if it were still sitting there on the shelf, all shiny and pristine and the bill of the hat as flat and rigid as the day it came off the assembly line. now, where i come from, boys LIVE in their baseball hats. they sleep in them, shower in them, and give them a proper funeral when they finally do become too ratty to actually stay on their heads a moment longer. now i see kids on the metro with the freakin TAGS still hanging off their hats, and the stickers still on the brim, and i want to say, excuse me, you forgot to take the tag off your hat. my cousin's nephew (my 2nd cousin? 3rd? i don't know what the lineage term for your cousin's nephew is) is at the very impressionable age of 17 and recently came to dc for a visit over his spring break. since he is one of the followers of this "fitted hat" phenomenon, i had to ask him what gives with not buying a hat for the sole purpose of beating the crap out of it like any good southern boy would. the mere suggestion of mussing up his beautiful hat made him look at me like he was considering which nursing home they should put me in. i mean, don't you know this is the STYLE? this is what everyone is WEARING right now, and IT LOOKS COOL. i guess now it's my turn to roll my eyes and throw my hands up and mutter about how kids nowadays don't have any common sense.

this fool 2nd or umpteen cousin of mine also was wearing a hat for a baseball team that he could care less about. he picked it for the COLORS. i saw the P on his hat and asked him how a country boy from louisiana got to be a fan of the pittsburg pirates. he again looked at me like i had suddenly grown a second head and informed me that hat selection was based entirely on color and he could not care less about what team he went around advertising on his head. again, where i come from, you wear one of 3 kinds of baseball hats: LSU, the saints, or a camo hunting hat. this whole brand new, i don't care which team i support, tags hanging off and stickers gleaming hat thing is totally beyond my realm of comprehension. but i guess my parents thought the same thing about those hyper-color tshirts that were all the rage at one point.

don't even get me started on the pants worn below your bee-hind thing, though. i could write an entire BOOK on how dumb i think THAT is! why bother with a belt? the entire purpose of existance for a belt is to serve to hold your pants up. if they are already hanging on the floor, isn't it then useless to put the belt on? someone explain this one to me, please...damn kids and their fads. when will they ever learn??

on musical theatre

i think i might like musicals WAY too much. as a kid (and when i say that, i mean i was 15), my favorite album was a collection of songs from various andrew lloyd webber shows (let me tell you how much this upped my cool factor in high school). i skipped out on spring break my sophomore year of high school to be in my school's production of godspell (and did the same thing the next year to be in anything goes). i have seen cats no less than 9 times. as a treat for my birthday last week, i took my cousin to see the phantom of the opera - which i have seen at least 6 times (are you surprised?) and last night, niki took me to see fiddler on the roof, which i actually had NOT seen on the stage before. i'd seen the film version and (duh) knew all the songs, so i was REALLY excited to see it. we had amazing seats and the show was FANTASTIC. i had a smile on my face throughout the entire performance and i actually managed to resist singing along with the cast (believe me, it's REALLY HARD for me to do that - i almost bit my tongue off at phantom last week). i do not know why i am so enthralled with people on stage who sing to each other instead of talking, but oh man...i'm hooked. does all of this make me a huge nerd? probably. is it lame to love musical theatre the way i do? my sources say yes. do i care at all that most everyone thinks i am a weirdo who will not stop singing showtunes? not at all.

with the greatest of ease...

so, for as many times as i've said i'm going to run away with the circus, i've never contemplated actually doing it. i just don't know that i'm cut out for that lifestyle, although i did read water for elephants and while it seemed awfully romantic to be on a train with a bunch of smelly animals and carnie freaks, i kind of like sleeping in my plush feathery bed and not having to shower with a bucket and a garden hose. HOWEVER. i recently turned 30, and as a little gift to myself, i finally signed up for one of the flying trapeze classes that i've been talking about for so long. i was a little surprised at myself, because i did take an airial silks class last summer (think those crazy people in cirque who fly around dangling from a silk rope like it's a totally normal and fairly simple thing to do) and there was a trapeze class also going on at the time. and it seemed like one of those things that i would say i wanted to do, but was actually too much of a ninny to follow through on. for one thing, i am TERRIFIED of things i can fall off of. blame the fact that i've cracked my head open too many times to count, but the idea of climbing up a rickety 25 foot ladder to throw myself off of a platform suspended in the air with a bunch of questionable looking cables seems a bit irrational to me. but, i talked myself into it and oh my god i am so glad i did.

the first time i had to climb the ladder i thought i was going to have a heart attack. that alone took me about 5 minutes, since i was clinging to the ladder and confessing all my sins the whole time. once i got to the platform, i was instructed to stand with my toes over the edge, hold on to the ladder on my left, and LEAN FORWARD. this is not what my brain wanted me to do. my brain, my sane and rational brain, was in full on panic mode with lights flashing and sirens going off and for a second i seriously considered telling the instructor i just couldn't do it. luckily, they really didn't give me the chance to chicken out, because the trapeze was in my hand before i knew it and then they gave me the signal to jump. for a second i almost forgot to hold on to the damn trapeze. but a half a second after i left the platform...i realized that i was flying. i wanted to cry and laugh (and honestly, i kinda wanted to throw up a little) at the same time, the feeling of swinging from that bar was so amazing. after i landed in the net after my first swing...i wanted to climb right back up and do it again. i got about 4 or 5 swings in before they let me try a catch with another instructor. i thought about being scared of that, but then i rationalized that if swinging on a bar by myself was so much fun, swinging from another human being must be even MORE fun.

i nailed a catch on my first try. THAT felt good. amazing, actually. completely and utterly amazing. i guess all that time i spent hanging upside down from the monkey bars as a kid was not such a waste of time after all. that may have been the best present i've EVER given myself and i cannot WAIT to do it again.

life on a train is starting to look pretty good...