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.