I Turned Out TV

Also...

2008-06-24T09:43:00.000-07:00

You only need an apostrophe in "its" if you can successfully substitute the words "it is" in the sentence.

"The cat licked its butt."
"It's hotter than a mofo outside."

I really shouldn't have to be teaching you this at this age (unless you're in second grade).

P.S. If you're in second grade, how did you end up here?

I'd like to teach the English-speaking world something

2008-06-04T10:07:00.000-07:00

The word "is" is a verb. If you have a title or a caption or a whatever in which you are capitalizing other non-prepositions, you need to capitalize "is" as well. I know it's a cute little word and all, but it's a vital one. I can't tell you how often I run across this unforgivable error, especially lately, and I've just had enough.

Heh.

2007-05-22T13:09:00.000-07:00

Thanks, LolCat Buildr!

(If this makes no sense to you, you are not watching enough G4 or spending enough time on the internets. You're welcome for the lesson.)

And, P.S., yes, that IS our cat AND our underwear!

It's not like you're doing anything better

2007-05-08T09:12:00.000-07:00

Hey, I know you're only reading this out of boredom (or because you're from Turkey and searching for lezbo tv), so fill a few minutes of your time "talking" about yourself. You know you like to.
Take my blog reader survey!

It's a thing that, um, lets you answer questions and stuff. And I guess I get to see the answers? I dunno. I really haven't done much research on this. But do it anyway!

In other news, the update on my dad and the DS: he DID manage to play it every day after I left him alone with it. However, he did not realize that he should be playing the same file every day. So, he had five different files all with his name on them and couldn't figure out why the game sometimes remembered him and sometimes didn't.

In other, other news, I have not blown up to a million pounds by adding carbs back into my diet. Though technically, I've only added healthy carbs...and the occasional chocolate-chip cookie ice cream sandwich.

Bits and pieces (and Japanese trinkets)

2007-04-23T16:26:00.000-07:00

At his request, N and I gave my dad a Ninendo DS for his 77th birthday (actually, he just requested Brain Age, having seen articles about it being used by seniors to ward off dementia, but I had to explain to him that he needed the DS to play it on). I don't know if you've ever been around seniors and video games (and please, comment here if you have!), but it's pretty funny to watch a 77-year-old try to figure out how to use a hand-held video game system (or any video game, though after an initial hesitation, my mom ended up being a ringer at Wii Bowling). Showing him how to use it was like teaching a penguin how to light a fire (work with me on this one). First, you have to explain what fire is. Along with wood, flints, and heat, for that matter. (Okay, enough of this lame analogy.) Anyway, once I got him up and rolling on it, he was laughing his ass off at having to speak into the game. All this laughing and not answering questions correctly caused him to have an initial Brain Age in the 80s, which did not sit well with him (though it's only a few years off of his real age). I left him with the game and the goal of getting his Brain Age down the 50s. My guess is that once he turned the DS off, he wasn't able to get it back on again. I'll let you know if I'm right after our weekly dinner (not OUR weekly dinner, but the one I have with my dad).

In other news, N and I had a little adventure this weekend. We made it to the California Science Center's Star Wars exhibit one week before it closed (as opposed to our usual, "Hey, we should go to that thing...what? Oh, it closed last week? Damn."). It was kind of lame and full of KIDS. And, they mixed in all this other stuff (I think the exhibit was called something along the lines of the Science of Star Wars--once again, I'm too lazy to do your Googling for you. Anyway, you could use the exercise) that wasn't even Star Wars-related. Like the Roomba. (No kidding.)

After we got the heck out of that kid-germfest, we drove around in the general direction of where we guessed Little Tokyo would be. We eventually found it, but man, downtown LA has all these little surprising pockets around every turn, like Pinata Row (I'm just calling it that, but that's what it should be called), which had dozens (nay, hundreds!) of pinatas all lined up on the sidewalk and hanging from every nook and cranny for an entire block! If I'd had my camera with me, I would've taken a picture. Oh wait, I did have my camera with me, but that laziness I'm known for caught up with me, sorry. When we got to Little Tokyo, we walked around a bit, picked a random curry restaurant for lunch, desserted on some frozen yogurt, and perused the shops. It was a nice little vacation in our own backyard.

In other news, I think I am hereby, officially, you heard it here first, denouncing my 3-year-old low-carb lifestyle. I think. I'll report back, hopefully not 20 pounds heavier.

This is my brain on drugs

2007-04-12T20:46:00.000-07:00

N's washing about a week's worth of dishes right now, and I'm waiting for this little yellow muscle relaxer to kick in. Because I'm so old now (happy birthday to me on Monday! Thank you! Thank you very much!), I have old-people problems, like a bad neck. I just found out that my old herniated disc problem will most likely be chronic unless I get some sort of surgery (yeah, no thanks).

Anyway, now I'm taking some drugs to try to calm it (and me) down. Apparently, these pills make me loopy, and sleepy, and angry! I tried really hard but failed at staying awake for the entire Lost episode (partly because I'm old, and staying up that late on a weeknight hurts me anyway). And when I woke up at the end, I. Was. Pissed! But I'm not sure why. N stood back and let me stomp off to bed, though he said he was scared. Of me.

Oh, N's done now so I better go watch The Office with him before he gets all caught up in something else. Too bad, I had all kinds of hallucinogenic stories to tell you about these drugs, too! (Not really.) (And, N and I just took a few precious seconds trying to figure out how to spell hallucinogen. For the record, that's the right way.)

Crap, this entry sucks eggs. Sorry about that. This is my brain on drugs. Dammit. That would make a good blog title. Pretend you only read it once.

Chaos! (weather and otherwise)

2007-03-27T14:29:00.000-07:00

Part I

What the?? Did anyone else just get caught in that MONSOON?? I left my office at noon for a leisurely walk to the mall under clear blue skies, spent all of 10 minutes in Ann Taylor, and came out to find I’d somehow time- and distance-traveled to Florida during hurricane season! I had to practically run the half-mile (give or take…okay, quarter-mile…maybe a few blocks), in the rain, with the wind whipping my long-ass hair all over the place, glasses all fogging up (I’ve been having some contact issues), and skirt flying this way and that. And, to make matters worse, I was dragging a GIANT Brookstone bag that has my new Tempur-Pedic pillow in it. (Sheesh, this paragraph highlights at least two of my recent medical problems. Makes that looming birthday really hit home!). Anyway, an hour later, I’m looking out the window and it’s clear skies again.

Part II

Last week, N and I got our asses out of the house on a weeknight to walk up to The Grove to catch Guster’s free show sponsored by Indie 103.1 (I’m really too lazy right now to link all these things, but you know how to Google). We got found ourselves a nice little spot on the grass among what turned out to be every kind of weirdo jerk in LA:

Woman who would not put her camera down the entire show. She held it above her head or to the side or practically in my face the whole time. Come on, man! Watch the show through your own eyes, not the camera’s! Not only is it lame, it’s just annoying to your fellow concert-goers who are blocked by your body and distracted by the glowing blue screen.
Weird threesome group. There was a guy who had his arms wrapped solidly around two girls the entire show. And I don’t mean in an “oh it’s cold, let me warm you up because I’m a good guy friend” kind of way. This guy was actively caressing the necks and backs and hairs of both girls. N and I couldn’t figure out which girl "belonged" to him, so we just figured that’s what young kids do these days. You know, MTV and dating reality shows and all that.
Drunk or possibly drugged-up (or just crazy) guy. At first, N and I thought he was David from MTV’s Real World Venice (Los Angeles? What did they call that season?), but we quickly learned otherwise (we think). This guy somehow (we missed the beginning of it) got into it with a leather-and-spikes (but otherwise pleasant-looking) punk guy. Not thirty seconds into the show (and thirty inches from us), those two were throwing down, with Punk getting "David" into some wrestling hold that he eventually used to shove him outside the perimeter of concert goers. Then, after crashing into a temporary fence, "David" came back into Punk’s space, pulling something out of his pocket. By this time, I was hiding behind N, who had deftly (and very valiantly) tossed me back there for protection. I fully expected to see some sort of weapon (we’d already seen him toss his cigarette at Punk), but instead, he pulled out a rosary and held it in the air. Eventually...finally...a "security" guard came and pulled him away. Sort of.

Anyway, it was a good show, but it really emphasizes what I hate about going out. People.

More celebs [and RIP old couch]

2007-03-13T11:17:00.000-07:00

[Here’s where I removed a long story about our couch being rejected by the Salvation Army. That sentence is all you really needed to know anyway.]

But anyway, on to the exciting things! A couple weeks ago we were shuttling around my visiting mom, which meant we were out and about much more than we usually are in a given week (or month). And what happens when you’re out in LA? Celebrity sightings! The first night my mom was in, we ate at Larchmont Grill, one table away from George Takei! Surprisingly, I was the one who spotted him and had to whisper to N to turn around and check him out. Also surprisingly, this is not the first time we’ve dined with the man. A few years ago we were also a table away from him at Mishsima.

A day or so later, we were out shopping at Old Navy and I spotted this kid from Weeds (and Nemo’s voice!). I had the urge to go up and ask him for his autograph, because I thought he might think it was cool, but then I got a threatening image of Chris Hansen in my head and backed off.

That same night, we went to Pastis. We were sitting there checking out the wine list and facing the doorway, when suddenly, what has now become my most exciting celebrity sighting ever happened: Michael C. Hall! I never knew I’d be so excited to see him in person, but I squeezed N’s leg so hard when he walked into our line of sight that there just might still be fingerprints in his knee socket! You’re watching Dexter, right??

Unfortunately for my mom, not one of these actors was within her range of TV knowledge. It’s okay, though, because she thinks she sees celebrities wherever we go in town anyway. You should’ve seen the woman she thought was Whitney Houston. She also thought she saw Jennifer Hudson at Doughboys. I probably should just let her think she’s seeing actors she knows, and shut up about the ones she doesn’t. Maybe next time.

Strange strangers

2007-02-19T13:53:00.000-08:00

I check my stats occasionally to see if there's anyone out there aside from people I know reading this blog. Turns out, Google sends lots of people my way! Almost all the search terms are quite funny (and puzzling! Sometimes I never figure out how they landed here based on their search words.). Here are the most recent:

senior warm-ups and cooldowns
john greier
honeydew melon sore throat
steven tyler restroom
something that's fun
gyu-kaku comments
aruba nintendo wii
someone crashed into my car and drove off
indigenous nudity television
the dreaded needle
kombai tribe
strapon tonight
lezbo tv
mutual peeing
mu shoo pork
internet fame
to know when my car is towed

My favorite is "mutual peeing"! WTF?

An open letter to the video game industry

2007-02-12T11:09:00.000-08:00

Dear Nintendo and Playstation Bigwigs:

You owe us. You owe us big time! N and I have had two very successful video game gatherings that have resulted in the following purchases by our guests immediately after having experienced video game magic in our home:

2 Nintendo Wii systems
1 Guitar Hero game and controller (actually, I think we were instrumental—no pun intended—in an earlier Guitar Hero purchase as well, so let’s change that to 2 Guitar Hero games and controllers)

These are just preliminary numbers. I’d like to also take credit for any future Wii video game purchases made by those Wii system buyers (you can’t own a game system without buying games for it). I estimate the early totals come to approximately $650 (including additional Wiimotes and nunchucks) for Nintendo purchases and $140 for Playstation. Nintendo can also expect future income of $50 for each purchase of Wario Ware Smooth Moves, which I’m sure our latest party elevated to “must-have” status.

All this being said, I think it’s reasonable to ask for some sort of acknowledgement for creating consumers out of previously indifferent citizens. I don’t need money (though I’d take it!), but perhaps you could toss some freebies our way. Maybe some copies of new games before they’re released? We'll expose our friends to them and bump up your sales when the games are released. Perhaps a couple free Wiimotes, so we can get our doubles tennis on? Free Virtual Nintendo downloads? A poster for our game room wall?

If you don’t like those ideas, I’d also be willing to accept a few bucks to help pay for the chicken wings and booze.

In any case, I’m not saying you should pay us to have fun. We love your products and have purchased them willingly. What I’m saying is, we got people who hadn’t even given a second thought to gaming to buy the Wii. And isn’t that what a great salesperson does? Encourage our gift of sales with a reward. Please?

Oh, and hey, Sony, if you’re listening? We might also have sold a 50-inch TV for you. Just thought you’d like to know.

There's probably something on TV that's more interesting than this

2007-02-05T14:35:00.000-08:00

I'm discovering that I’m a pretty bad blogger. I probably should’ve written about my trip to Aruba within the last four weeks that I’ve been home, but obviously I didn’t get around to that. Aruba is gorgeous, and blue, and windy (did you guys know about the wind? It’s nonstop, literally.). If I lived closer and it took any less than the 16 hours total it took to get back home (that’s three plane changes, people!), I’d go again in a heartbeat.

Okay, that’s done with!

Meanwhile, back at home, N and I have been spending a ridiculous amount of time on the crappy couch with all our new toys. That HDTV is about the best thing we’ve ever done as a couple (and it’s educational, too! Ask us anything about wildebeests and the Kombai tribe! Speaking of the Kombai, one of my favorite parts of this show is the "indigenous nudity." Not the nudity itself, but the disclaimer that warns us that we will be seeing some.).

And, just when we thought the TV would be entertainment enough, we hooked the Wii up to it. My lord, that’s fun! There’s nothing like having a virtual version of yourself kick a virtual version of your boyfriend’s ass at tennis (to be fair, that only happened once...which is probably why I say there’s nothing like it)!

Then! Just when we thought THAT would be the ultimate in fun, I bought N an Xbox 360 for his birthday. And I know you’re gonna think I’m high when I say this, but I’m addicted to a game about tending a garden so piñatas will move into it. So you’ll excuse me if I’ve been away from the computer for awhile. You’d think the wi-fi we set up to allow the Wii to receive automatic updates would make it easier and more fun to blog, but no, 50 inches of TV is way more interesting.

Just a quick one to say...

2007-01-25T08:53:00.000-08:00

....happy birthday, N!

You're only young once, but you can be immature forever.
-John Greier

(Anyone know who John Greier is?)

Informal poll

2007-01-19T11:04:00.000-08:00

Did you have plastic covering on your couches when you were growing up?

N's house did; mine did not.

Internet fame!

2006-12-30T20:25:00.000-08:00

Someone in our household is enjoying some internet fame! No, not me. It's the cat! She's officially a "Wii Kitty"! See her here under the alias "Casey" (she prefers anonymity, too). Here's her close-up, if you don't feel like searching for her.

**This post brought to you by our sponsor, Jack Daniels.**

Double celebrity sighting

2006-12-28T15:13:00.000-08:00

Last weekend we walked up to the Farmer's Market to grab some breakfast and a token of appreciation to bring to our party hosts for that evening. We ate at the little outdoor cafe there, whose name I actually don’t know (I know that ALL the Farmer’s Market eating establishments are outdoors, but this is the one that has sit-down wait-staff service). Anyway, as we’re sitting there looking at the menu we’re distracted by the conversation at the table next to us. There’s a guy going on and on about Battlestar Galactica. His two dining companions hardly said a word, and seemed to not be able to get out of there fast enough. When they finally left, I was all set to talk about the Battlestar geek, but N said, "That guy was someone." So I said, "The Battlestar geek?" and he said, "No, the other guy," who, of course, I barely got a glance at. N said he thought he was in a band or something, but couldn’t quite place who he was.*

After breakfast, we headed to Littlejohn’s Candies, where N was too distracted by all the choices to notice a guy kind of cut in front of us to order his load (four one-pound boxes of toffee and all manner of inquiries about other bits and pieces behind the glass). It took me about a second and a half to realize it was Giovanni Ribisi, though he looked very little and his hair was shorter than I’ve seen it. His voice was spot-on, though, and what sealed the deal was a viewing of a recent Jimmy Kimmel episode on Tivo, which confirmed the new short hair. Anyway, N didn’t even see him or hear him or anything! And he’s the one who’s always, always pointing out the most random "celebrities" to me when we're around town.

*Finally, four days later, N said to me, "Hey, I figured out who that guy was! It was a Phish band member!" So there you go.

P.S. If you're Giovanni Ribisi and you did NOT actually buy candy at the Farmer's Market on Sunday, feel free to correct me.

P.P.S. I'm going to Aruba on Tuesday.

Head case

2006-12-26T14:57:00.000-08:00

They looked inside my skull today. Isn’t that exciting? I had to have a CT scan to follow up on a headache issue, and I’ve been freaking out about the appointment since I found out I had to have it.

I don’t know about you, but I’m horribly claustrophobic (which has been getting worse as I get older. I can hardly stand to be in the Indiana Jones ride line at Disneyland anymore. Have you seen those narrow cave passages??). Anyway, when I went online to help calm myself about the CT scan and go in with proper expectations, I freaked myself out even more, because there were mentions of an intravenous contrast medium (I’d heard my doctor mumble something about not being allergic to contrast mediums, so I think I was right to assume I’d be faced with this). Needles and narrow tunnels!! Ugh!

So I’ve been dreading and dreading this thing all weekend, knowing I was going in first thing this morning. I pictured myself getting nauseous from the injection, having a panic attack from being inside the tunnel of the CT machine, freezing from having to remove all my clothes, losing all the jewelry I had to remove and leave in another room (I know, I’m a great worrier. Thanks, Mom!), and all manner of other things that are even more embarrassing than those! But, I was pretty well able to talk myself down every time I felt a panic rising over it (this is cool technology, you’re lucky this is the only kind of test you need, there are children starving in Africa), so I went into the appointment this morning with what I thought was minimal nervousness.

I got there early, checked in, and they took me right away. The technician walked me down the hall and asked if I’d ever had a CT scan before. I said I hadn’t, but I’d had an MRI (which was the cause of all this panic in the first place. That’s one loud, narrow, scary-ass tunnel!). He said, "Oh, this is way different," and opened the door to the test room. A surprisingly huge flood of dread rushed out of my body and I laughed out loud!! The machine was like a donut! No tunnel! No dark hole! It was a freakin’ donut, with a "tunnel" no longer than the top of my head!

But still, I dreaded the needle and the clothing removal. Then he said, "Okay, just take off your earrings, put your purse down, and lie down here." That’s it! No clothing removal, no scary confiscation of every object in the room because they could come flying into the machine—nothing! Take off your earrings and lie down here! My lord, the whole thing was over in three minutes. Literally.

I’m so lame.

Can't think; blogging.

2006-12-22T10:59:00.000-08:00

The problem with not blogging for so long is coming up with things to blog about when you do feel like coming back. There have been major events (that scarcely aforementioned trip to San Francisco and emergency room visit, Thanksgiving in Chicago, Nintendo Wii purchase, and the giant TV purchase, among others). There have also been minor events (I just picked up and ate off my desk what I thought was a remnant of a dry-roasted edamame, but turned out to be part of an unidentified office supply).

Seems I've lost the ability to discern what to log for posterity. Any requests?

Happy Holidays!

2006-12-18T15:02:00.000-08:00

My present to you... (Per N's request. How good am I?)

Will this hold you bitches over for a while??

2006-10-11T16:22:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry. I know I've been neglectful. I've been busy. Or lazy. One of those is true. I was also on vacation. And in the hospital (just for a few hours. Everything's OK. I just liked the drama it added to this long-overdue post. But it is true. I'm fine now. I swear.). I've been cooking (seriously. And everyone's still alive!). And reading. And playing with my Nintendo DS (anyone with Animal Crossing, please come over and test out the Wifi with me!). And watching endless hours of shiny new TV. I've been doing anything but feeling like writing, so for that I apologize. I'll be back. Sometime. With more to say than this. I think.

And I'm sorry to all the people who got here searching for Out TV. I believe this is what you're looking for. How you ended up here and not there in the first place is beyond me.

Hey, guess where we were!

2006-09-12T17:53:00.000-07:00

They say there's some kind of bridge there, but this is all we could see of it...

Dude, where's my car?

2006-08-22T12:34:00.000-07:00

How was your morning? Mine? Glad you asked! I got up, got ready for work, said goodbye to the cat, and walked out to my car. Or, to the place where I had last seen my car. My car! Was gone! Snatched from our street!

I stopped short, looked at the spot I thought I'd left the car, turned around, looked behind me, looked across the street, and back to the original spot. But, nope, it was gone! Then I thought, "Well, I've been kind of brain-muddled lately, so maybe I actually parked it down there." I ended up walking up and down the entire block holding my car remote’s "panic" button to try to locate the sucker, but it was gone! Stolen!

I ran into my landlord on my way back to the apartment to call the police. He said he’d seen a "funny-looking" guy around the neighborhood, and a few days ago his son’s car’s window had been smashed. He was very nice and seemed way more upset than I was about the whole thing, saying his day was ruined!

On my way up the stairs, I went through all the scenarios about it being vanished for good, about it being found but trashed (remind me to tell you my other story about that happening to me when I was 17!), about all my stuff being stolen from the inside, about what kind of new car I was gonna get, etc.

When I called the police to report the incident, I gave them my license plate number. The lady on the other end said, "Oh, that car was towed." Towed?! That lady couldn’t tell me why, but said that it was towed off our very block! When I called the impound lot, they said it was towed because it was parked in front of a driveway. What the?? I know I didn't do that! So N and I came up with all these scenarios: Someone took it for a joyride and then dropped it back off on our street! Someone crashed into my car and pushed it into a driveway! I left the car in neutral and it rolled down the block!

At the impound lot, we got a copy of the report. My car was towed two hours after I'd come home from work because a neighbor had reported it was blocking 90 percent of his driveway. Well, two hours after work—in daylight—didn't seem like enough time for someone to steal and replace my car, so the only thing that could've happened would've been an accident, right? Right? Well, no, it turns out. My car was perfectly intact, no scratches, no dents, not a hair on the inside touched, down to my trusty The Club still on the wheel, and the shred of ribbon on the floor from some long-forgotten present. Huh.

After much thinking about it, I think I'm just retarded. I seem to remember an unusual lack of parking when I got home last night, so when I saw a guy vacating a spot, I did a quick U and pulled into it (I remember distinctly having to do some fancy parallel parking, so I know for sure that I was between two cars). I also remember walking past a spot closer to our apartment on my way there and thinking, "Hmmm, that one would've been better." Now that's where something should've clicked. Duh, if there was no parking and I was making a U to grab someone’s spot, that was the spot! Not the one I took! The one in front of someone’s driveway! The even dumber part is that I passed by my car twice before the time it was towed when I left for and returned from an evening walk. Lame!!

Rockin' the free world

2006-08-01T11:52:00.000-07:00

So, remember my wildly popular Neil Young post? Well, I suppose this is a follow up to that, because last night N and I went to the Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young concert at the Hollywood Bowl. As N said, there’s nothing quite like hearing thousands of people singing "Let's Impeach the President"! It was a very anti-Bush, anti-war show, and it was filled with aging hippies rocking their grey-haired heads off! I went into the show only knowing a few CSNY songs (but all the Neil Young "Living with War" songs, obviously), and left with the desire to chill out and become a hippie myself. Perhaps it was the contact high (even Mr. Crosby said, "Gee, it sure smells gooooood in here!"), but I left there really wanting to help and love my fellow man. Peace, man.

Except! There was this guy sitting next to me, and if you’ve sat on the benches at the Bowl, you’ll be able to picture this. He was practically right on top of me, with his smelly burrito, smellier armpits, gross tobacco dip or chew or whatever you call it and spitting cup, loud, chatty-ass girlfriend who made cell-phone calls DURING the show, and stupid feet he propped up on the bench in front of us and picked at. I left there vowing to love my fellow man except for that guy. And the jerks who kept walking back and forth in front of us during the show so we had to keep getting up to let them out. They can eff off. Oh, and fuck you, Mel Gibson.

You asked for it (you know you did)...

2006-07-30T22:25:00.000-07:00

Alright, because I teased it, I guess I'll follow up on Comic Con. I'm not really in the mood to do it, though, so bear with me.

I was actually surprised at how much fun I had. Sure, there were lots and lots of geeks, and comic books I don't care about, and TV shows represented that I never watched, but there was a giant Snakes on a Plane display! Lots of Simpsons toys! Lost action figures! Cute animal animation! Crazies in costumes! Free crap from movies and TV shows! Other things! Okay, I'm tired. Here are some photos.

I tried really hard to take a photo that would capture the overall craziness of being in the middle of all this crap, but most of my pictures came out blurry (probably because I was trying to hold the camera above my head and take a crowd shot. Most of what I saw was the back of N's shirt the whole time. Did I mention I'm short?). Here's the best of my poorly executed crowd photos. I guess you can get some idea from it.

Hey, it's Lou Ferrigno!

N was all excited about this guy (he can chime in to tell you who it is). He was equally saddened when we spotted him a few hours later, lugging his own crates of junk out of the convention center.

The best part of our crap hotel? This view. That's the Master and Commander ship down there (we only know that because we checked it out when our cruise stopped in San Diego a couple years ago).

Um, yeah, that's all I got.

Comic Con 2006

2006-07-23T22:24:00.000-07:00

I don't know who you are, kid, but I know how you feel.

Real update with pictures soon!

Further brain deterioration

2006-07-07T13:28:00.000-07:00

I took myself to Starbucks during lunch today and got an iced coffee. At the counter where you add your milk and such, I poured myself some half & half (that part went well). Then, I picked out my packet of Splenda, ripped it open, and poured it directly into the trash while tossing the packet into my drink (that part did not go so well). The good news is that there was no one around me to see it. Oh wait, that's not true at all. There was a girl right next to me, not pouring sweetener into the trash, and a guy sitting at a table next to the counter looking directly at me. Sheesh.

It's the mad cow, I tell you.

Why I prefer to stay anonymous, thanks.

2006-06-23T15:42:00.000-07:00

The internet is a weird and scary place. And its web is so sticky! We're all tangled in it, aren't we? Some of us are stuck closer to others. Case in point:

When I'm bored at work (ha! "when"!), I often visit and linger at chowhound.com(which I've mentioned before, I know). I've been there enough that I recognize a lot of the prolific posters and lean toward reading their posts. Anyway, there's one poster (who I will do the honor of keeping anonymous, though after you read this, it won't make much sense about why I would need to) who I particularly seek out because she writes fun stuff that I enjoy reading (she seems like a funky, out-on-the-town party girl, and while I'm pretty much the opposite of that, I appreciate her quirky style).

[Here I'm skipping over the stalker-y part of the story where I found her myspace page a few months ago. I'm harmless, really. But you know that already.]

Now, here's where it gets interesting (maybe). Today, she added a link on one of her chowhound posts to a personal web site. I visit the site, and it's a full-blown, all-my-information-for-the-whole-world-to-see, make-myself-vunerable-to-all-kinds-of-internet-stalker-shenanigans site, with her resume and email and phone numbers included. When I read her resume, I realize that, whoa, she totally worked in the same place at the same time as my friend L! I shoot an email to L asking if she knows her, and yep, she does. And she has all kinds of scoop about her personal life, and now I know way too much about a girl who likes to post little reviews of restaurants online.

Yeah, so that was that thing. It seemed more interesting when I just had it in my head.

Um...what??

2006-06-20T14:22:00.000-07:00

You tell me.

I heart kitties

2006-06-13T18:24:00.000-07:00

I fear I may be turning into an old cat lady before my time. There's no doubt I've been enjoying my "joke" Cat Fancy magazine subscription, I check Stuff on My Cat faithfully, and now I'm obsessed with the Meow Mix House. I had this window open all day at work. Is that wrong? I mean, it's a reality show…with cats! (I may have even cast a vote for my favorite. Seriously.) As if that weren't enough, I enjoyed a good amount of time clicking various links for Limecat today. I might as well throw in the towel now and buy a bunch of moo moos (mu mus? mummus? big Hawaiian-print dresses?).

In other news, we had a fun weekend during which we actually left the house on a Friday night to see Colin Hay at Largo. We were supposed to go with other people, but ended up on our own, which I think worked in our favor because we ended up at a nice table for two five feet from the stage (so there!). Mr. Hay is surprisingly funny and puts on a heck of a good show. His wife opened for him, and though I'd never heard of her before, I downloaded one of her albums from iTunes the very next day. Speaking of the very next day, N hosted a geek poker night at our place, so I got the hell out and saw Prairie Home Companion with Tigerpants. Ehh, I think I'm missing that part of my brain that would make me enjoy this. Perhaps that part of my brain is stuck in a red state somewhere. (There may be hope for me actually, because I think an old cat lady might very much enjoy this film!) According to Roger Ebert, I have no heart if I didn't love this movie. Thanks, Roger. You wanna know what I got out of it? This joke:

One penguin says to another penguin, "You look like you're wearing a tuxedo." The other penguin says, "What makes you think I'm not?" (If I knew how to program cricket chirps to play the minute you read that, I'd have done it.)

Middle-of-the-night freak out

2006-06-09T09:19:00.000-07:00

(No, N, you're not having deja vu. This IS almost an exact replica of the email I just sent you.)

So, I was having this kind of idyllic Huck Finn dream about my childhood in Chatsworth last night, in which I was making the walk from C's childhood home to mine, playing in the mud and catching snakes along the way. I was still a kid and going home to my room in the house and it was all nice and good, and then I sort of woke up and turned over to change positions. When I rolled over, I saw N there in my bed and I freaked out! What was a MAN doing in my bed?! I'm just a KID in Chatsworth!! Then I remembered I'm an adult in LA and went back to sleep. Weird.

An omen or THE omen?

2006-06-05T18:28:00.000-07:00

Anyone else in the general Hollywood area notice the skywriting around 5:15 tonight? I was driving home from work and I looked up to see a rapidly fading "6" in the sky above me. Another lopsided 6 followed, and then I sat and waited for the third, assuming this was an (awfully lame) ad for The Omen. But no! An "0" followed that! "660"? What the hell is that crap? But then, a long time later, another 6 followed, and then the plane added dashes in between = 6-6-06.

I dunno, if I were the The Omen marketers, I might just go for 666 instead. I mean, this way it just looks like a reminder of tomorrow's date. Unless it isn't a marketing scheme for The Omen and it's actually a warning of something to go terribly wrong tomorrow (or a reminder to vote! Are you voting? Am I?) (And, all kidding aside, I am slightly freaked out about something going terribly wrong tomorrow. There are a lot of crazy people out there. Does that make me crazy?) (Help me stop talking to myself in parentheses, please!!). Either way, the first 6 was so faded by the time the plane was done, that if you hadn't been with it from the start, you'd have no idea what it said. If I'd had my camera with me, this post would be a lot better.

Anyway, is skywriting really an effective method of communication? I'm thinking no. However, if you were into conspiracy theories, you'd have a good time here.

Why manufacturers should stop using that hard plastic packaging

2006-06-02T17:53:00.000-07:00

Yes, that is the tip of my thumb sliced open. Gross, isn't it? You're lucky I spared you last-night's bloody version. I hate that hard vacuum-sealed crap everything is coming in these days! How the hell are you supposed to open it without doing what I've done here?? Sheesh.

Luckily, it didn't hurt much (in fact, I didn't even know I'd done it till I saw the blood on the floor) because it was my numb thumb tip. Maybe the new skin will grow back with some normal nerve endings! Woo hoo!

Dogging the blog

2006-05-23T18:43:00.000-07:00

Blogging has felt a lot like homework lately, so I'm sorry I've been less than entertaining in the last few weeks (if you use this site for entertainment. And, if you do, by the way, it's really time to start going outside a bit.). Rest assured I've been busy but not too busy, and we WERE out of town, so that was a valid excuse, at least. Chicago is cold and overcast this time of year, but then again, so were we yesterday. Now I'm sitting here sweating my arse off, stupidly using the first real "hot" day to try out a recipe in the oven.

We haven't had much success with the crockpot lately, so after a semi-failed beef stew, I decided to use the ingredients we bought for crockpot chicken to make dinner in the oven instead. Check in with me or N tomorrow to make sure I didn't kill us!

So, that's all I have to say right now. I know, hardly worth your time, isn't it? But, here's a photo of cute dog that I sure hope was adopted at the big adopt-a-dog (not its real name) fest they had a couple weeks ago at the La Brea Tar Pits. Hundreds of dogs, right down the street! It was a fun day.

Oh, and here's a little pug doing its darndest to keep up with the bigger dogs on the obstacle course (I don't think he needed adopting).

How'd YOU get here?

2006-05-10T14:33:00.000-07:00

So, I don't know how search engines work, or even if they all work the same, but I think that recent flurry of activity on the Neil Young post bumped my blog into a higher place for search engine landing pages.

Before Neil Young, I never ever got a hit from someone searching for something and landing on my page. Since then, all manner of searching people out there have landed here. Some of the things are quite surprising, like the person searching for "gassy girls." I also got a number of hits for different variations of "big balls," along with someone searching for "www 99 lezbo" and "candies invented in the 60s." My favorite by far, though, is the one that let me know that I'm number one (number one!!) on a google search for "mu shoo pork" (seriously!: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=mu+shoo+pork). I guess you're supposed to spell it "mu SHU pork," but tell that to the people who ended up here!

I went to a conference and all I got was this lousy post

2006-05-05T15:29:00.000-07:00

I just got back from a two-day conference in Irvine, and damn is my brain tired. Not from gaining too much knowledge, though. Oh, no, not me! It was a huge piece of crap, which is too bad because I had high expectations from the 5th Annual Health Literacy Conference (name changed slightly--I think--to protect the innocent), which was to highlight alternatives to printed material in treating low-literacy patients. (That's not sarcasm you're reading there--I know, it's hard to tell with me.) Unfortunately, the conference was full of presenters reading off their not-interesting-to-begin-with PowerPoint slides and telling me things like "the internet is used for emailing, chatting, entertainment, and research." Really?? THAT'S what the internet is used for?? Shit, I've been doing this all wrong!

Anyway, there were two highlights to the conference. One, there was a papillon show going on right in the same hotel. What's a papillon, you ask? Well, it's a yappy little dog that's probably cute when seen alone, but creepingly frightening by the dozens! The highlight was seeing all the showdog moms and dads up close. I wish I'd had the guts to take out my camera and shoot their tables and tables of papillon merchandise, but I did manage to get a shot or two of some dogs hanging out outside.

Highlight two, because I can be kind of mean, was a woman who, for no reason we could figure out (believe me, my coworkers and I read every piece of the conference schedule to see if this was part of the agenda) had with her at all times a box of stuffed animals. She came in each morning and sat the box right in front of her on the table. What is that? Is it a weird form of autism? An assignment for a psycho parenting class? The toys of her long-lost daughter (ooh, that would be sad!). Here's a picture of it. You can't see the woman who they belong to because she's actually to the left of the woman it looks like they belong to. So, I don't feel so bad posting it because her identity is concealed. But, anyone have any idea of what's going on there?

And, here's a bonus conference highlight. Bunnies in the parking lot! Run, bunnies, run! (And why do you live in the parking lot, anyway?)

A Day without...Traffic!

2006-05-01T15:10:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I'm driving home from work on Friday listening to NPR, which is talking about today's big "Day without Immigrants" work-walkout/protest/rally thing, and they mention that the mayor is encouraging everyone to go to work, but to join together after work at 4 p.m. (I don't know who that's AFTER work for, by the way) at La Brea Tar Pits. D'oh! Immediately, I panicked. That's right down the street from us! Just last week there was some sort of protest at the Turkish Embassy (which I found out in a hurry is also not too far from us at home) that threw all the local streets around us into chaos. It took me 45 minutes to navigate the two miles around our apartment with much frustration, aggravation, and possible bird-throwing. So you can imagine my panic when I heard the mayor's announcement. I decided, screw it, I'll make up an appointment and leave early today.

Long story short, I'm sitting here a mere 40 minutes after leaving work (a full 10 minutes shorter drive-time than usual), with not one bit of aggravating traffic or parking issue. I've got laundry in the machine, I've changed out of work clothes, taken out the trash, eaten a snack, and talked to the cat. I'm IMing with N right now, I intend to read some magazines, and possibly watch some TV (ha!). Let me tell you, if a day without immigrants means a day without traffic like today, then bring it on!

But I kid, really (I mean, not about the traffic; that's my number one least favorite thing about Los Angeles). I won't go all political on you because that's really not like me, but listen, with so many countries around the world hating us and disagreeing with our politics and actions, isn't it nice that there are people out there who think we're so great that they're risking their lives and leaving everything behind to get here? Should we be pushing away allies at this point in history? Because when you get right down to it, these are the people whose sons and daugthers are going off to fight Bush's stupid war. Am I wrong?

Dude, what's up with Finland?

2006-04-28T08:32:00.000-07:00

Seriously, after the U.S. and Canada, I've gotten the most hits on that Neil Young post from Finland. Like, hundreds of them! Any idea why?

Pssst, come here...

2006-04-24T18:04:00.000-07:00

So, shhhh, you guys, you don't want the others to hear, but see that post down there? The one right below this one? Well you wouldn't know it by looking at it, but in the just over 24 hours it's been there, it's gotten oh, more than 2,400 hits! I know! I have an invisible hit counter, so I know it's true. And they're coming from all over: the U.S. (duh), Canada, UK, Australia, France, Ireland, Finland, Norway, Thailand, Philipines, Netherlands, Belgium...and the list goes on.

I sent my link to the nice guy at Reprise who invited us down for the Neil Young preview as per his request for links to blogs talking about it, he posted it on the Neil Young blog about the album, and voila! Half the world is down there reading about my Friday night! Weird, eh? Just thought I'd warn you guys in case you bumped into a stranger on the site. Don't worry, you're still my favorites. Try to play nice!

Living with war in Burbank

2006-04-23T14:52:00.000-07:00

When Friday started, I had no plans for the evening. Little did I know I'd end up sitting with just a handful more than a dozen people in a listening room at Reprise records in Burbank, given exclusive access to Neil Young's yet-unreleased album, Living with War. I know! Weird, eh? But, N emailed me during the day about this post, and yada yada yada, we ended up being two of the chosen.

It was a pretty cool experience, I have to say. Just being in the record company office, signing in, surrendering our cell phones, and waiting in the lobby under a giant poster of Madonna (Maverick offices were in this building too...thank you N, for allowing me to be excited about that without making fun of me. At least out loud.) was exciting. (I do have to say, though, that while we were waiting, and for a good few minutes into the album, I was fully expecting to be punked. Seriously, isn't this exactly how people get sucked into being subjects of lame-ass reality shows? But, we made it out of there without having to sign release forms of any kind, so that was good.)

Anyway, the point of this tiny listening party was to encourage some grassroots marketing and good old-fashioned word of mouth. The guy who invited and greeted us there asked us to use our blogs and emails to put the word out about the album and its message. Apparently, the album was made in record time, and will be released online sometime next week. N told me he read that after sitting back and hoping the younger generation of artists would speak out against the war in Iraq (among other things), apparently Mr. Young decided he could wait no more (I'm still holding out for the Mandy Moore protest album. Come on, Mandy!).

It was pretty cool to just sit and listen to an album in its entirety without the distraction of driving or reading or whatever you usually do while listening to music. The fancy screening room didn't hurt, either (though someone really needs to dust the bookshelf that held the sound system. What? I'm easily distracted!). The album rocks, really, and definitely sends a message. Let's just say that Mr. Bush and his Red State Posse will not be happy.

Anyway, plenty about the album can be read online, in particular on the blog that I linked to up there. You can also check out the lyrics on this site. I know that N and I will be downloading/purchasing this album as soon as its available. I think you'll like it too. (Well, maybe not you, but I'm guessing you'll appreciate the message.) Read more about others' experiences at the listening party at the blog linked above as well. (They tend to be more specific about each song's contents.)

Back to our regular programming tomorrow!

Stop the presses!

2006-04-18T16:27:00.000-07:00

Tom and Katie had the baby! (What, I can't jump on the bandwagon?? There will be NO other news today, you know.) Anyway, they named the kid Suri, which has an interesting meaning according to this web site:

"Suri" appears to be a noun or adjective from the
Aymaran language, one of the two Native American
language groups in the Andes mountains along the
Altiplano of Bolivia, Chile and Peru. According to
native informants, the term "suri" means "straight"...

Hmmm. Interesting.

I probably still have some 'splaining to do

2006-04-14T12:51:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry I left you hanging and looking at kangaroo balls for so long, but it's been a busy/lazy week. And now, I'm posting from work (technically, I still have three minutes left on my lunch hour, so I'll make this quick).

The short story is that I had a lovely birthday for which N bought me a brand-new camera that we tested out on all the animals at the LA Zoo. I was very excited to use the camera and came back with dozens and dozens of photos of our day. Sure, there are prettier and better composed photos, but I couldn't resist posting animal genitals here! So there you go. Ooh, we also made a very fine bbq rib meal in the crockpot that we let cook while we were playing at the zoo. I have a picture of that, too. In fact, I have pictures of all kinds of mundane things from the last week! I'll post as I see fit.

Dammit, three minutes go by fast!

I'll explain later

2006-04-09T21:20:00.000-07:00

Hey, check out the balls on this kangaroo!

And the genitals on this chimp!

At least the house didn't burn down

2006-04-04T18:13:00.000-07:00

Have you ever used a crockpot? My first early birthday present (well, besides the Cat Fancy, which, really, how can you beat?) was a crockpot. N and I were pretty excited about the thing, running out Sunday morning (okay, afternoon) to buy ingredients for a brisket (hi, have I mentioned we're Jewish?), which turned out fantastic beyond our expectations. So of course I spent all day online reading crockpot recipe sites (I mean working). I picked what had to be the easiest one out there: whole chicken, bottle of barbecue sauce, set on low while you go to work. I happily got up a few minutes early today, dropped the chicken into the pot, covered it with the sauce, flipped the switch, and went on my merry way to work (where I spent only half the day looking for more recipes).

I just got home, and well, it looks...good? (You tell me.) I poked it with a fork and the meat just fell off, which is a good sign, but it fell off into this pool of oil, which I assume is the remains of what used to be chicken skin. That's kind of gross. The tiny piece I tasted was alright, but a little bland and, well, oily (and oddly dry at the same time). The top pieces of chicken are looking a little burny, and come to think of it, the whole house smells a little burny. I think the problem here is that I'm away from the house too long, what with that horrid commute and all, and chickens just aren't supposed to be in there all day, especially with the skin still attached. Next time I'm going boneless. Oh yes, there will be a next time! (But first we've gotta cook up that second brisket we bought on Sunday. I told you we were excited!)

Attack of the giant fly!

2006-03-29T18:30:00.000-08:00

Dude, this is nuts. For the past week, there's been a GIANT fly buzzing around the apartment every night when I get home! I'll be innocently doing something like looking in the fridge or typing on my laptop, and I'll hear that little "bzz bzz" sound. The first time I heard it I couldn't figure out what the hell it was. I finally found out when I went into the hallway and saw this massive (I swear this thing could attack Kong and make it out alive) fly ramming itself against the light. It was so big, there was no way I could kill that thing and feel good about it, so I went through this elaborate scheme of turning off and on lights in the kitchen, the dining room, the living room, and finally the outdoor porch, while it followed me (well, the light) around and eventually out the door. I repeated this same scenario two nights in a row (same fly? I don't know!). The third night, I was exhausted, so I got out the cleaning fluids and starting squirting till it died on the floor. I picked it up with a Swifer. Blech. So I figured if it was the same fly, he was gone. But no! The next night, yet another giant fly! All this time, N has not been home to witness said giant flies. He keeps trying to tell me I'm making it up. And now, there's another one buzzing on the window as we speak. Except this one is really tired, probably near death, so he's not nearly as scary as the others. I'm gonna keep him till N comes home to see for himself, because when I just emailed him this picture of it, he didn't think it looked that big. But it is, I swear.

Okay...

2006-03-27T17:53:00.000-08:00

...which of you jokers is responsible for my new subscription to Cat Fancy magazine?? I can tell it's a birthday gift because according to the label, it's paid up through April '07. Go on, fess up!

(Gotta go now; the "Fang Shui" article--I'm not joking--is calling my name!)

Big brother might be watching

2006-03-22T19:53:00.000-08:00

Some of my best work is wasted on the cat. I just had this "conversation" with her after she ran out of the room, scared of some random noise:

Me: "Why are you running away like a pussy?"
Her: [blank stare]
Me: "Ohhh, because you ARE a pussy."

Does anyone else live their life like they're on reality TV?

Something clever with the word "run" in it

2006-03-19T17:25:00.000-08:00

The LA Marathon ran right by our apartment today! Okay, not right in front, but down the street perpendicular to our block. The runners were even visible out our bedroom window. I had anticipated going down there to check it out, but I guess I was more excited than I thought because I had marathon dreams all night long, and woke up every hour after the sun rose. I knew it was time to get up when I heard drums and periodic cheering coming from outside. Turns out, not only were we half a block from the excitement, we were right at one of the "Entertainment Stations," so there was a band, a decent-sized crowd, and my dad. What? My dad? Yeah, I was surprised too, when I was walking up Fairfax and saw a man carrying a chair who looked JUST like my dad. When it turned out that it WAS my dad, he seemed just as surprised to see me, though you'd think he'd have realized that he was just a block from his daughter's apartment! Anyway, he was there to watch for his girlfriend, who was running. Because my dad was there, I ended up staying for a good 3 1/2 hours or so and came away with a nice sunburn. It was pretty cool to see everyone waiting for and cheering on friends and family members. I thought this little girl was particularly cute. Her sign says:
Go Fra-
nk!! You
can do it!

You gotta love the hyphenation on that!

This entry will cost you 99 cents

2006-03-17T17:56:00.000-08:00

So I just popped into the 99 Cents Store to see about tonight's dessert options (jealous?). Anyway, when I was checking out, the cashier actually held up an item and asked, "Do you happen to know how much this costs?" In the 99 Cents Store. But, to her credit, it was one of those 3 for 99 cents deals, but really, if you look at it and you work in a store that does nothing but combos of 99-cent items, you shouldn't have to ask that question.

It should be the easiest job in the world, that 99 Cents Store cashier position! They could have a cash register with just one giant button that says "99 cents!" (yes, with the exclamation point). No need for all those other freakin' buttons! How much is it? 99 cents! And this one? 99 cents! Two of these? 99 cents! That car out back? 99 cents! Your first-born child? 99 cents!

Please don't tell my dad about this blog

2006-03-14T16:07:00.000-08:00

Something triggered this memory today (unfortunately, my memory works in such a way that I remembered this part but not the part that includes the thing that triggered this early memory):

When I was a kid (Oh boy, I hope this isn't included on the post I did a while back on "when I was a kid" things. I'm too lazy to check, so I'm hoping your memory is just as bad as mine is. I don't know how it could be, though. Who are you again?), I overheard my dad and my grandmother talking about an elderly relative who had died (this could all be wrong, but go with it). Apparently she had slipped in the shower. In my kid brain, I interpreted that to mean that she had fallen and been sucked down the drain, never to be seen again. It only occurred to me years and years and years later (like maybe last year) that she probably hit her head or something. I don't even know who this relative is--and I guarantee you, money-back guarantee, in fact--that if I ask my dad about a relative who died in the shower, he'd look at me like I was nuts (much the way he looks at me when I contradict anything--everything--Larry Elder has to say. Yes, I'm serious).

Step 1 (I think it's step 1)

2006-03-13T12:12:00.000-08:00

Too many random companies have my email address. Because I’m an internet addict (the first step is admitting you have a problem), I check my email, oh, a hundred times an hour. Whenever that little “new mail” indicator shows up on the Yahoo page, I get all excited. I should know better by now though, because more than half the time the email is from some cookie company I ordered a birthday gift from last year or the user group from my high school class that I subscribed to after the reunion and that only gets flames from spammers (which are then conveniently emailed to me. For the record, I just removed myself from that list).

I can’t be the only one who constantly visits web sites throughout the day (when I should be working), right? Sites I can’t live without (almost based on frequency of visits throughout the day, in order of visits (first = most daily visits):

Yahoo
Yahoo News
My Yahoo”
Chowhound.com
Tvtattle.com
Tvgasm.com
eclektra
tigerpants
Stuff on My Cat
Bean’s Blog
mimi smartypants
Daily Kitten
Cute Overload: Kittens
Daily Dancer

Seriously, I visit all of these daily. Oh, and there are others. Many, many others. I absolutely have a problem. Help me!

(And, that took a long time to make all those links, so if they don’t work, well, you know how to work the internet...do it!)

Nooooooooooooo!!

2006-03-07T08:40:00.000-08:00

Not Edgar! You bastards!

I hate when that happens

2006-02-24T17:36:00.000-08:00

Oops, I just had an inadvertent flirting-while-driving moment. I was getting down to some Poison (thanks, Jack FM!), drumming away on my steering wheel and singing out loud. In my peripheral vision, I could see a guy in a delivery truck drumming a similar beat, so I turn to look at him, right when I get to the unfortunately worded chorus: "Talk dirty to me!"

So then we pulled over and made out. I had no other choice, right?

We are PUMPED!

2006-02-22T10:09:00.000-08:00

What? The wrapping paper and LA Weekly pages hanging over the window in the living room? Oh, that. Well, funny story (not really funny. Not funny at all, actually. But a story nonetheless. Wait, what counts as a story? Maybe I should just explain why the window looks that way without worrying about the intro so much.).

Okay, so last week I bought Kinetic for Playstation 2. It uses the EyeToy technology, which is a little camera you put on top of the TV so you’re on the screen in the middle of the action of whatever game you’re playing. Kinetic is like a workout video on crack! You get a personal trainer (choose a sexy British woman who reminds me of the bitchy trainer on The Biggest Loser, or an equally sexy American dude) who takes you through a 12-week program. You set up a profile, take a photo of yourself, answer a few questions, and *boom*, you’re off and running your personalized workout program!

The series of workouts include games that you interact with as an image on the screen. Objects fly at you and you have to punch or kick or sweep to eliminate them or bob and weave to avoid them. There are walls of bricks to punch out, discs to move along a target, asteroidy things to knock into space, and even optional yoga and floor exercises. Your trainer talks you through the workout, leads you through warm ups and cooldowns, and grades you for the day. Let me tell you, this thing blows the Jane Fonda video I did as teenager out of the water! The camera can be a little twitchy and it took us several configurations with the lights and furniture in the room to figure out the best set up, but once we got going, we were so into it! I’ve been rushing home from work to do it every night (my freakin’ arms are freakin’ killing me!), and N even woke up early to get his workout in! Next time you see us we’re gonna be RIPPED!

Oh, so the wrapping paper thing. If you’ve been to our place, you know how we don’t have anything covering the windows and we can see right into the neighbors’ place (and vice-versa). Well, this game requires a lot of waving at the TV to change modes (no controller is used), not to mention all the punches and kicks and yoga and floor exercises. There’s nothing like having the neighbors think you’re obsessively waving at them! When I saw the neighbors were home last night, I scrounged around the house to find something to cover the window. First I tried tacking a sheet up, but the wall is like solid concrete or something, so the tack did nothing. Then I remembered a roll of ugly wrapping paper that I knew I’d never use anyway, so I put that up, but found out I didn’t have enough for the whole window. Finally, I found an old LA Weekly, so I pulled a few pages out and taped them up as well. It’s a nice little collage! Eclektra, you’d be so proud (or disgusted. Don’t worry, I’m going to find a more permanent temporary solution this week.).

Anyway, so that’s why you won’t recognize us next time you see us (or why you, neighbors, can’t see us eating our dinners in front of the living room TV anymore).

Livin' on the Edge

2006-02-13T17:53:00.000-08:00

Okay, so I might be a little sick of the blog thing, but I wanted to tell you this (don't worry, I might get back into it more regularly...someday). Last night N and I decided to go out for our "Valentine's Day" dinner to avoid the crowds on Tuesday. We had reservations at Gyu-Kaku on La Cienega, but once we got there, I saw it was right next door to Fogo de Chao, a Brazillian steakhouse that I'd heard about. A pricey one, at that. So, after a minute of debate (not debate, really, but heavy-duty decision-making), we decided to ditch Gyu-Kaku and live it up at the $$$$ meat-on-a-stick extravaganza. It was good, but whatever with that. Halfway through our meal, I see N is distracted, so I ask what's up. He's looking over my head and says, "I'm trying to figure out if that's someone fame...oh my god, it's Aerosmith!" Seriously, Joe Perry, Steven Tyler and a gaggle of people were walking in! It was a motley crew (pun sort of intended) of people, with young kids (not their dates, as N would like you to believe), senior citizens, possible bodyguards, and roadies, all traveling as a pack, even to the restroom (we think), and especially to the salad bar, which is exactly where we were sitting (not on the salad bar, but three feet from). For the record, Steven Tyler piles his salad plate high and eats off other people's plate in line (presumably people he was with), and Joe Perry puts olive oil (or it might've been vinegar) on his bread slices. It was funny to watch little pockets of the restaurant and their reactions to the group. People our age were not-so-subtely pointing or taking cell-phone pictures. A group of nicely dressed seniors were completely oblivious. It was pretty exciting, I have to say.

In other news, things I haven't felt like writing about include finally unpacking every last box, N's birthday (thanks for coming to the party. I think the neighbors have recovered by now), my mom's week-long visit, my new commuting hours (I haven't felt like killing myself in a week!), and Dick Cheney shooting some guy (that is just classic).

Have you tried the targ?

2006-01-24T16:15:00.000-08:00

Yes, I'm still alive! Were you worried? We didn't run off with all our Vegas winnings, if that's what you thought (we'd have to turn back time to let the money fly back INTO our pants to have gotten anywhere with it). Despite having won NOTHING, we had a great time playing with the Eclektras and staying in the nicest room we've ever been in. Seriously. I'm talking sitting area, pivot-mounted flatscreen TV in the main room AND in the bathroom, wall-to-wall/floor-to-ceiling window with a view of the strip, touch-button controls for the drapes, fancy-schmancy mini-bar snacks and accessories, robe and slippers, some-high-thread-count sheets, Andy Warhol reproductions on the walls (none of those typical hotel crappy "oil" landscapes), and all manner of other impressive crap I could go on about.

Now, here's something I thought I'd never say: While in Vegas, I had dinner in a Star Trek bar. I know, but my travelmates were all gung-ho for it (and in fact, were practically regulars. I swear, if N wasn't so darn fun to be around...). I ate something with the word Targ in it. It was either pork ribs or some space animal. I don't know. I swear, there were portions of that dinner during which I was sure I'd lost my ability to understand English. That, or they weren't speaking it. I had to go to the little happy place inside my head several times. But don't worry guys, I had fun! The Targ was great! (Seriously, what the hell is up with that place?? Star Trek. Sheesh.)

Ehhh, I was just given some work to do. I guess I should do that. Perhaps more Vegas later. Oh, hey, everyone wish N a Happy Birthday tomorrow!

Small, weird scare

2006-01-13T18:20:00.000-08:00

So, I just walked in the door after work to find the house completely dark. Where's N, I wonder? He didn't mention anything about not being home tonight. I see a flashing message on the phone, and knowing that I left a message for him on my way home 15 minutes earlier, I punch the Caller ID button that lets you see who's called. There's a 213 number there with a one-word name attached to it: Prison. Holy crap! Prison! N's in prison and he made his one call home! Then I had the fleeting thought that maybe he knows someone who works on Prison Break? (But in a 213 area code?) Before I could think too hard on any of this, I called N's cell, which he picked up with a cheery "Hello!"
"Uh, where are you?" I ask.
"On Highland, on my way home right now."
"So, you're not in prison?"
"Prison? Why would I be in prison??"

Turns out, I forgot he had a doctor's appointment this afternoon. Phew!!

Other funny scare:

I was driving home the other day, when I hear what I thought was a song with a really bad layer of yelling lyrics running just under the music track. I turn down the sound and realize it's not on the radio, it's a man yelling behind me. So I look out the back window and out the rear view mirrors to see what's going on, but I don't see anything. I think he's yelling, "I've got my eye on you!" and "What are YOU looking at?" The more I hear it, the more panicked I get, because he's moving with me as I'm driving, and it sounds like he's IN the car with me! Just when I reach the height of fear, I recognize the voice. It's the stupid talking Monster's Inc. Mike doll I've had in the trunk since the move. I guess it's time to unpack the car!

Awww!

2006-01-09T20:06:00.000-08:00

Okay, so I added the socks, but she found the basket herself. Unfortunately, that laundry was clean. Eh, what's a little fur in your underwear, anyway?

Inspired by one line from the last entry

2006-01-08T15:21:00.000-08:00

Dear Blog,

Today I went to the store. I bought two bottles of wine and an ice bucket for our ... new bar! Yesterday we went to the store too, and bought the bar of my dreams (well, dreams that I can afford), the picture of which has been hanging in the spot where that very bar now sits. Because N is the manly-ist (how would YOU spell that??) of all men, he spent a chunk of yesterday putting it together (did you know that you had to put together Crate & Barrel furniture? What a rip!). And I spent the same chunk of the day disposing of the various packing materials and boxes that sucker came in. I'm sure I amused any neighbor who may have been watching with my attempt to put a very large and flat box into the recycling bin. I thought, because it was thin, I could just somehow fold the thing in there and make it fit so the lid would close. No dice. I tried for a very long time, with much effort (even bringing out a hacksaw at one point), but I just couldn't do it. So now the bin is sitting there wide open with a huge piece of cardboard sticking out of it at least three feet.

Anyway, today's trip to the store marked the third time in two days I was at The Farmer's Market. Yesterday afternoon for the bar purchase, last night to use our gift certificate to Maggiano's (mmmm Chianti), and today, to get out of the house and buy a much coveted ice bucket (and more Chianti).

N's watching a commentary for a movie, and I can't for the life of me figure out what it is. I can only hear it, not see it. Right now there are kinda explosions, someone is saying something about the church at Hollywood and Highland, something about Paramount, and something about kids. Any guesses? I just asked, so now I know. Did you guess? It's the original War of the Worlds.

Okay, so you know how Samuel Jackson is going to star in "Snakes on a Plane" later this year? (Really, go look it up.) Well, I'd like to see some other combinations of that: "Cougars on a Jetski"! "Pandas on a Skateboard"! "Flamingos on a Cruise Ship"! "Wombats on a Tourbus"! Okay, I'll stop now.

Yes, the rumors are true. We're going to Vegas with the Eclektras (yeah, I'm too lazy to link that--or look up the correct spelling, for that matter. Change your name already!) next week. We're totally gonna be the Beverly Hillbillies at The Wynn. The web site says there's a TV in the bathroom of each room. "TVs in the Bathroom"!! Unfortunately, the timing of it all meant I had to give up my time as a volunteer at my employer's newly minted Martin Luther King Day of Service, which allows us to not get the day off, but spend some time away from the office packing up supplies for the local food bank. I'm sure Dr. King would understand. Seriously, TVs in the bathroom!!

I'll title this later. For now, let's call it: Pancakes.

2006-01-04T20:47:00.000-08:00

Evidence we're like 9-year-olds: N and I just spent 1/2 hour playing with dry ice in the sink. (Part 2: N just stood over my shoulder while I was writing this and said: "Dear Blog, Today I went to the store.")

Other things:
So you know how I work in Pasadena? Hey, and you know how the Rose Bowl is in Pasadena? Yeah, so the entire population of Texas was in Pasadena this afternoon while I was trying to do my lunchtime errands (Joke: Why are they changing the state of Texas' name to Tex? Because the ass moved to Washington. Huh, that joke doesn't work so well in the written form.). There were Longhorns everywhere. Tons of SC fans, too. I was waiting for a fight to break out right there in Paseo Colorado (that's a mall), but it didn't. Add to that chaos the mess of dismantling the bleachers lining the street from the Rose Parade (speaking of, My lord! Did you watch any of that disaster?? I wonder how many of those drill team girls left California with pneumonia! That was pretty entertaining, I have to say.), and you have a day I should've gone to the office cafeteria (I was hoping for a better ending to that long and winding sentence, but it kinda petered out there at the end. Sorry. I never said I was good at this!).

Oh, so New Year's Eve was fun. It was a lot of yelling. Mostly at the TV trivia game. But also to be heard over everyone else's yelling. Why are we so yelly? It was almost literally the only time N and I left the house for the three-day weekend (minus the walk to Caffe Latte for "breakfast" the next afternoon, and a short walk to Blockbuster to return a video game (see sentence #1, above). The rain kept us huddled on the couch like pussies. That's right, I said it: pussies. We did see a rainbow from the Pink Room though, and managed to watch all manner of DVD, including most of season 1 of The Shield (don't tell us ANYthing! We're Netflixing the rest of 'em).

Anyway, N's sitting around waiting for me to watch yet more DVDs. He picked up The Simpsons season 7 today (finally) and we've still got those Shields to get through. Thought I'd pop in here to keep up with the other blogging Joneses (you know who you are).

I'm much smarter now (stop laughing)

2005-12-30T09:45:00.000-08:00

I've been having flashbacks to weird childhood thoughts and actions of mine. Is it just me, or were we all this dumb as children? Observe.

1. I had a very specific idea of how cartoons were made, and this was it: Cartoons were people dressed up in animal costumes that were smeared with butter. Yeah, I don't know either.

2. After reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, I asked my dad if you needed to pay money to get a good job. I couldn't figure out why anyone would take a job that kept you in the poorhouse when you could just get a better-paying job. Duh.

3. Once, when I was about 7(?) 8(?) my mom was having the carpets cleaned. She told me to stay outside and play while they dried. I took this so literally that when nature called, I decided to squat in the (front!) yard rather than go inside and disobey. The next day, my dad, exasperated with what he thought was a rude neighbor, came into the house and said, "Sheesh, some dog took the biggest shit in the front yard!"

4. I once wrote a diary entry about how it was the worst day of my life because my parents had put salt on my watermelon.

5. I had a grand idea to get a pen pal in another state (or country!) by writing a letter with my name and address in it and attaching it to a kite. I got the thing flying and somehow shook it till the letter fell off. It ended up two houses down the block.

6. In fourth grade, I decided I wanted to be the girl everyone came to when they needed to know the name of a song or band that sang it. I was determined to keep a three-ring binder full of this information. I think I wrote down three or four songs in one of those blue canvas folders before abandoning the whole operation.

7. I thought that color wasn't invented until the 60s. Not color photographs, mind you, but color in general. Hey, there were no pictures of color before then, right?

8. I wanted to be a waitress when I grew up, so I could taste the food I was serving all day long (yes, my food issues rooted themselves early!).

I wish...

2005-12-27T14:44:00.000-08:00

-I were not at work bored off my ass
-Work could be more fulfilling
-I were sure that "were" not "was" is right in that first wish (and this one) without having to look it up (cuz I'm not gonna)
-My (our) apartment would spontaneously decorate and furnish itself
-That the apartment could also self-clean
-I always knew what I wanted for dinner
-I always knew what I wanted to watch on TV
-I could make a decision, any decision, without much deliberation
-I weren't so damn lazy all the time
-I needed less sleep
-I wanted to work out
-My brain would remember things better (or at all)
-All the things I wanted to buy suddenly went on sale
-I had a tropical vacation planned
-That the vacation started tomorrow
-That I had a perfect-fitting, great-body-making bathing suit for said vacation
-There were no negative consequences for eating what you wanted
-There were no negative consequences for doing what you wanted
-Everyone on the planet had the option to eat and do what they wanted
-I knew the meaning of life
-I knew the meaning of "epipelagic" (first word I flipped to in the dictionary. Oh, wait, the meaning is right there: "of, relating to, or constituting the part of the oceanic zone into which enough light penetrates for photosynthesis." Duh.)
-I had a good conclusion for this list

Just pretend you never saw that last thing you think you saw

2005-12-21T12:49:00.000-08:00

What post? I don't know what you're talking about.

Someone please tell me why I should keep watching Nip/Tuck. There was just one "WTF" after another on last night's finale. I can't even get into it now, but I'll be happy to talk to you about it Saturday night at the thing I'll probably see you at (let's face it, my reading audience doesn't spread very wide).

So, I didn't win the Mega Millions draw from last night (I apologize to those who live with me for having to learn it this way--stop that XBOX 360 order, now!), but I didn't even remember to check on that till just now, which made the anticipation of it, well, not very exciting. Remind me to remember better when I buy lotto tickets. (If you remember.)

Anyway, I'm at work and I just did some last-minute shopping at lunch (including the purchase of what I'm sure will be the White Elephant/Yankee Swap hit of the night at that thing you might see me at on Saturday). I ended up buying my dad a white dress shirt, because that's what he hinted at, even though a) I wasn't sure of his size, so it's probably all wrong (do you know how many numbers there are on men's dress shirts??), and b) my original thought was to take him to a basketball game. It was just easier (even if it doesn't come close to fitting). Do you know they have a whole line of Donald Trump clothing at Macy's? Don't worry, I didn't buy my dad one of those shirts.

I also, once again, failed to understand what a homeless/mentally unstable man in a wheelchair said to me outside the Starbucks, so I just smiled. He said, "Merry Christmas anyway," which made me feel bad, because that probably meant he'd asked me a yes-or-no question, not a nod-and-smile question. This also happened last week, when I realized too late that the (entirely different and not-wheelchaired) guy was asking if I wanted my windshield cleaned. I did the nod-and-smile then, too. I felt so guilty about it that I spent the bulk of my trip into the drugstore trying to figure out what food item I could buy and offer him. Cookies? Something more nutritious? Trail mix? Energy drink? Candy bar? Peanuts? Anyway, I ended up with nothing for him, but happily, some much-nicer-than-me girl was letting him wash her window and taking care of him while I was on my way out. At least I had the thought to be nice, right? Damn, I should've gotten today's guy a coffee. Or a Frappuchino. Or a Mocha.

Step away from the chocolate!

2005-12-16T15:58:00.000-08:00

So, it's been a while, and I intended my next post to be about how excited I was that N was home (where was he, you ask? In Vegas with boys, leaving me alone in the big-ass apartment scared to go to sleep by myself in the new neighborhood. Except that I ended up not being as scared as I had anticipated I would be, and I did just fine alone in the place. And the cat was a fantastic bed companion, if not a little furrier than I'm used to in there.). And while, yes, it was still very exciting to have him back, the momentum of that feeling has sort of passed so the post wouldn’t seem as genuine or necessary now, five days later. Plus, he's got a nasty cold and I prefer my Ns healthy. (Sorry, honey.)

Meanwhile, I've had all these random ideas to post about, which I now present to you, in no particular order:

-Someone knocked over the fire hydrant at Sunset and Highland Monday morning. The water was almost as high as the building it behind it! It was kind of exciting, like a snapshot of a hot summer day in 1950s Brooklyn, but then I saw the backup of traffic (luckily on the opposite of the street) and my little fantasy world was broken (for the other people. I just sailed on by in my lane).

-It's that time of year where I'm constantly confronted with finding a good answer to "Are you done with your Christmas shopping?" or "Are you going anywhere for Christmas?" I never know what to do with those because inevitably, the other person ends up apologizing for the question, which isn't my intention, but really, what else am I supposed to do except say, "Well, I don’t celebrate Christmas. My Hanukkah shopping is done, though."?

-Speaking of this time of year, I've been extra generous for some reason. I bought a Starbucks gift card for the mail carrier because he always manages to get our mail in the right place, even when the pesky "1/2" is left off (oh, how I hate that "1/2"!). I also bought toys for four kids I don't know, but who, according to our adopt-a-family list here at work, live with their mom and grandmother in a two-bedroom apartment along with another four-kid family. I bought small gifts (is that inappropriate? I mean, but really, how much room can there be for toys with 12 people in two bedrooms?? Damn, I think I ruined all my good intentions.).

-It's also the time of year when there's all manner of crap to eat in the office. Now, I have no problem avoiding it, but my boss thinks that she's being kind by getting me tons of sugar-free chocolate so I "won't be left out." I appreciate it, but I don't know if you've ever had sugar-free chocolate. They don't put that "excessive consumption" warning on there for nothing. Despite what you think about my self-control, I can't control myself around stuff that's "okay" to eat (I know, my brain is whack), so I keep eating it. Needless to say, my belly has been a mess for weeks. Weeks! bleh.

-N's mom and my mom met up for lunch today in Chicago. Their first meeting alone. That surge in the temperature today? That was the collective burning of my and N's ears.

I have ball issues

2005-12-08T17:40:00.000-08:00

So all this talk about Valerie Bertinelli and Eddie Van Halen's pending divorce (didn't this happen a long time ago?) has given me a flashback to the only time anyone has ever said I looked like celebrity. It was just the one time, and I was about 17. This lady at a doctor's office told me I looked like Valerie Bertinelli. I can kind of see it in pictures from her "One Day at a Time" days (especially if you knew me in my younger days). I think it's the round face and the hair. Anyway, I bring this up as a point of discussion. Who have you been told you look like?

I just got back from my office's holiday party, which was a day of silly bowling. I'm (not so) proud to say that, for the second year in a row, I earned the Lowest Individual Score, aka, Find Another Sport Award. It'll go on my cube wall next to the other one. I really suck at bowling. I just do NOT have the hang of it at all. At some point, the guy who worked there even told me I'd "be better off using both hands like a five-year-old." Yes, that's an exact quote. I have ball issues. I don't like sticking my fingers in the holes, and I don't think hurling a heavy ball off your fingers is the greatest idea. It was still a fun day, though. I'm just glad we didn't have the usual potluck in conference room 6A.

I've been thinking about my doorbell

2005-12-06T21:14:00.000-08:00

Holy crap, I totally have Mad Cow Disease! (Based on rigorous medical research, i.e., last week's Boston Legal.) Apparently some of the symptoms mimic symptoms of Alzheimer's and I totally have that. You know how my brain is always screwy! I told you that, right? And, I spent all that time in England in the '90s (the height of Mad Cow madness!) and I ate a TON of British beef. A TON! Well, at least I know my brain wasting has a cause.

Speaking of meat, five days later and we still have mu shu (moo shu? mu shoo?) pork in the fridge. Four orders is a lot, let me tell you.

I wish I had more to report, but I was so excited about finding out the cause of my memory loss, I jumped right on the computer without any other planning.

Oh! A guy just rang our doorbell (and our cowbell. Yep, we've got one of those outside the door, too. Jealous?) and started giving N a schpeal (schpeel?) about something or other and N just said, "Yeah, no thanks," and shut the door. Then we saw the guy walking around our little apartment area talking to passersby (not that we have a lot of passersby). We kept peeking out the window at him and I think he saw us looking. Especially when we turned out the light for a better view. He was wearing a nice shirt and tie, so it wasn't like he was homeless, but it's weird to have someone ring your bell(s) at 8 p.m. and try to sell you something, even if it's a religion, which is what we ended up suspecting when we saw him jump into a van of other well-dressed men and drove away.

Speaking of religion, for the record, don't call it a "holiday tree" for me. Those of us who don't celebrate Christmas don't have trees with ornaments on them. There's no such thing as a holiday tree! It's a Christmas tree no matter how you look at it. Stupid asses.

Mu shoo, anyone?

2005-12-02T13:16:00.000-08:00

Chaos!

That's what the last three days have felt like. It all started Wednesday morning mere minutes after arriving at work. The office ladies were all aflutter about something while I was putting my things away and turning on my computer. Turns out there was a gas leak somewhere either in our building or the neighboring building, so we took it upon ourselves to evacuate. What's slightly disturbing is that there was no official evacuation order, even though you could clearly smell the problem, six fire trucks surrounded the building, and the street was blocked off at both ends. We spent the morning at Starbucks, which left only two hours of office time to empty my deadline-riddled inbox before leaving for an overnight work conference in Anaheim.

The conference, to make a long story short, was hectic and poorly organized. I was working at our department's book sale table, which was located out in a hallway that might as well been the North Pole, what with the continual blast of air conditioning and the Christmas music set on an hour-long loop. We were out there for about 10 hours, so please forgive me if Feliz Navidad is not my favorite song of the season anymore. Plus, the not-redecorated-since-1983 hotel was kind of icky, so I didn't sleep too well (I don’t like finding someone else’s hair on my pillow) and had to be up at 5:30 a.m. to set up.

Needless to say, I was pretty excited to get home last night. There was a ton of traffic, and I was starving, so I called in a request for Chinese delivery to N, who promptly fulfilled my wish. Per my request, he asked for a full order of mu shoo pork. Now, I don't want to stereotype or place the blame on anyone in particular, but when our food arrived, it contained four orders of mu shoo pork. Mmmm, accidental pork.

Now I'm back at work and can't get excited about proofreading the fast food nutrition guide we're publishing. Luckily, someone's 3-year-old grandson was visiting, so we had a nice little chat. He told me about his black and white cat and asked me if I had one. I said, no, mine was striped with white feet. The kid's jaw literally dropped as if that was the most amazing thing he'd ever heard. Ah, preschoolers. If only the rest of the population was so easy to impress.

So many degrees from Kevin Bacon, it's not even funny

2005-11-29T18:22:00.000-08:00

So, I just got back and already, I'm packing again. I have a work conference in Anaheim on Thursday, for which I'm expected to be awake and ready to work at 6:30 a.m. No kidding. Anyway, at least I volunteered to work the thing so I could get the overnight stay. Other people in our department who are just attending need to travel through Orange County traffic and be there by 7:30 a.m. to check in. I think I got the better deal. At least I get to hang out with my friend A the night before in The O.C. (yeah, I feel a little lame calling it that).

Before I forget, you guys with cats (are there any of you??) HAVE to get this Super Cat Scratcher thing from Target. Man, our cat goes NUTS over the thing. She's cracking me up right now playing with it (it's infused with catnip and irresistably scratchable, apparently). She must've hit the bud early this morning because she was throwing herself all over the house by the time I woke up, and talking about it the whole time.

Anyway, on to the blog about my trip...

First, it was C.O.L.D. Sixteen degrees on Thanksgiving night, to be exact. Second, the highlight of my trip was spending countless hours on the phone with tech guys who were probably in India trying to figure out just what the heck was wrong with my mom's computer. Oh, wait, that wasn't a highlight at all. To make a long story short, my mom had adjusted a setting so deep in the control panel, it took all those Indian guys, a trip to Best Buy, and two Geek Squad geeks to figure out how to change it back. Sheesh.

We mostly ate and shopped and saw musicals and documentaries (by the way, I think the cat is now hallucinating. She's glancing around the room like crazy, as if the walls were crawling with jiggly strings!). One of the musicals was the Licolnshire Marriott's production of Footloose. Don't laugh, Lincolnshire is known for its cutting-edge productions. Oh, okay, laugh. It was pretty hard to watch. I don't know if it compares to the "Broadway" version (was Footloose on Broadway?), but let's just say that I prefer my 'loose men to be in Kevin Bacon form.

We also saw the movie version of Rent, which I enjoyed very much (I'm still singing one of the songs from it on a daily basis--at least it got Footloose's "I Need a Hero" outta there), and March of the Penguins, which made me cry a thousand tears of amazement at the way nature works (okay, maybe just two or three tears). I bought a sweater. I tested my mom's new Dish Network DVR (no comparison to TiVo at ALL). I ate some ribs. Er, I think that sums everything up for Chicago. Doesn't sound too exciting, does it? That's possibly because I'm trying to just get something out and up on Blogger so I can go about my evening business without feeling low-blog-output guilt. (The cat keeps staring at me with her head all cocked funny. She's totally high!) Is that good enough for you?

I heart turkey gravy (I don't know, just go with it)

2005-11-18T16:41:00.000-08:00

Okay, I'm going to be gone for a little while, which may make some of you sad (and most of you say, "meh"), but don't worry, I'm not far away. In fact, I've been away from blogging longer without giving you a warning like this. Meanwhile, I promise to fill you in on my chilly, chilly trip to Chicago when I get back. Brrr, I'm cold already (though that might be the overactive air conditioner at work).

I'll leave you with this (boy, I really wish I'd planned this better. I got as far as "I'll leave you with this," then had nothing to follow up with. Sure, I know I could just delete that part, but it sounds like a great introduction to a conclusion—I also like the way that sounds, so I didn't want to delete it either. You're really not gonna miss posts like this, are you?).

In which all I talk about is food

2005-11-14T16:20:00.000-08:00

Oooh, cool, Los Angeles was named the nation's smog capital! But didn't we know that already? I hate when there are "studies" on such obvious and stupid things. Like the other day, I read a headline on Yahoo News to the effect of "Study: Sleepy Students Aren't Good Learners." Did we need to pay someone to research that??

Anyway, that's not why I called you here today. I guess I can start (and probably finish) with the weekend. Actually, it was a big weekend in the TV-N household. We did something we've never done together, and something N's never done before at all. Something he was a little scared of, but I was able to gently talk him into it and allay his fears. We went to Sizzler! That's right, Sizzler. We happen to live directly behind one, but, like I said, N's never been, and had some preconceived notions about the place (for some reason, he said he pictured it like an adult Chuck E. Cheese's, which I can't for the life of me imagine why or even understand, for that matter). I told him it was more like a notch and a half above a Denny's, and almost on par with Red Lobster, except for the ordering-before-you-sit-down part. Anyway, it was a decent meal. We both got steak and shrimp, mine grilled, his fried and all-you-can-eat. We even got cocky and ordered a rib sampler add-on (don't do that, by the way).

What was even more remarkable was that we did this on a Sunday night, which if you know us, is a HIGHLY unusual venture from the settle-in-for-night-to-prepare-for-the-work-week Sundays we usually have. PLUS, it was one night after another out-to-eat night (that time at RJ’'s in Beverly Hills, which used to be really good but is now kinda crappy at best, unfortunately, because I'd been talking it up to N for a few weeks now) AND it marked the first weekend in I don't know how long during our entire 4 years together that we did NOT order any food IN. Phew, that was a lot of emphasizing caps!

Around all the food adventures, we also managed to get out to a friend's baby's first birthday party, rearranged some furniture, finally unpacked the box marked "Simpsons Stuff" (I know, exciting, isn't it??), and hung a tiny bit more on the walls. The place is actually starting to look like a normal home, rather than a box depository.

My friends L and A also came over to check out the place and go for lunch. We went to Mani's Bakery on Fairfax, which had very good food but an inexcusably long wait-time between ordering and getting the food delivered to our table. Seriously, it took a full hour! I may go back for take out, but wouldn't sit down there again (that's an FYI for anyone googling Mani's for reviews. Hey, I like to perform a service once in a while.).

So, in conclusion, Sizzler, not as bad as you think; RJ's, worse than you think; Mani's, longer wait-time than you'd think.

Call me obsessed

2005-11-08T22:51:00.000-08:00

Okay, so Eclektra got me addicted, ADDICTED to this site and now I can't stop chasing the poor cat around with objects to balance on her. I just had to post a couple that I'm pretty proud of. She doesn't look TOO traumatized, does she? A few more practice rounds and we may be ready to submit and get famous!

Damn, dude, where you been?

2005-11-06T19:28:00.000-08:00

Oh wait, that's me. I've been...not blogging. Sorry about that. I wish I could remember anything even close to amusing that's been keeping me away from the computer, but it's most likely been TiVo buildup along with a dose of general laziness. Speaking of dose, I had a very weird reaction to the flu shot this year. I don't always get the shot, but because it's offered at work right when it's first available (sorry general public, health care workers get first dibs...even when we work in an office that doesn't come close to interacting with patients). Anyway, I got it because I knew I'd be traveling quit a bit in the next few weeks (oooh, that's something I can tell you about. Hold tight a minute.). So, I go with some coworkers to get the shot, both of whom are being a little bit pussy about the needle. I got mine first, at their request, and was all proud of not even feeling the thing, when I suddenly got a rush of... weird...throughout my body. I ended up at the employee health center for about 1/2 an hour. I guess some people get a nauseous, light-headed kind of thing from it, though I've never had that before. I'm not really a big believer in putting something foreign in your body to avoid the possibility of getting sick later, but whatever, I was peer pressured into it. Remind me of this incident when flu shot season comes around next year, would ya? Thanks.

So, we traveled to Bethesda, Maryland, for a total of 45 hours (approximately. I'm trying to make a point and am no good at math) for N's cousin's daughter's bat mitzvah. That 5-hour cross-country flight is brutal, let me tell ya, especially when you have to be in the middle seat and end up in Bethesda instead of Honolulu. But, it was good to see his family. I was totally gonna tell you about the party itself, but I've lost the desire. Maybe it was the three glasses of wine I just had with our teriyaki chicken wing dinner (you should see the typos I keep having to correct. By the way, I apologize for another drunken post. I mean, a drunken post. Not that I've typed drunk before. Like you'd care anyway, so shut up.). What was I saying? Oh yeah, the wine (I know, but I also wanted to tell you about the wine). It's from a box with a spigot. From Target. Seriously. It's...something. Actually, it's pretty good, I have to say, but maybe that's because I've drunk a few glasses already. It comes in cute little square boxes and there are a variety of options. You might just see a box or two at our housewarming party...which is going to be held...er, sometime.

Okay, so the other travel I'm doing is going to Chicago for my usual Thanksgiving Week Mom Visit. Apparently there's a feud between cousins about who's having the T-day dinner, so we might just end up eating Chicago pizza that night. N'll be home alone for the week, so make sure to check in on him.

I think we were still in recovery mode from our travel weekend last week, because the only real outing we had this weekend was to go to Target to buy Revenge of the Sith for $14.99. A hundred bucks later, we walked out of there with that, along with the Titanic special edition that was just released. We also got the R. Kelly "Trapped in the Closet" DVD, which we picked up from Best Buy. Ahh, R. Kelly. Anyone in need of a laugh is invited over to watch anytime (just give us some warning to clean a bit...and possibly order some chicken wings).

Free love on the free love freeway

2005-10-19T20:39:00.000-07:00

Okay, you may think I'm crazy, but I swear on my life I think that someone trimmed the bushes outside the Hollywood Bowl sign to look like penises. Seriously. They're pointing up into the air and have a set of balls each. If you don't believe me, go north on Highland toward the 101 entrance. If you go to the left to get on Cahuenga instead of the freeway, there's a little grassy island on your left. The bushes in question (and I swear, there will be no question when you see them) are just sitting there in all their erect glory. Let me know what you think (you know you want to see it).

(It occurs to me that I just may get some porn Googlers from the vocabulary in that paragraph. Sorry to disappoint you if that's how you ended up here. "Trimmed the bushes"--heh.)

(However, if you got here by searching for something The Office-related, well then, welcome. If you don't know what I'm talking about, then shame on you--set your TiVo for BBC America!)

(Most likely you got here because you either: a. Live with me, b. Are one of, oh, two people who tend to comment here, or c. Are a spammer, in which case, get the hell off my blog!)

(Now that I've done so many parentheticals, I'm finding it hard to go back to a regular update. I think I'll just leave it at that.)

(If that's okay with you.)

A list (for lack of better title)

2005-10-17T12:46:00.000-07:00

I'm back! Didja miss me? Anyway, because it's raining like a mo-fo and I certainly don't want to go outside in THAT (yes, I grew up in Southern California; shut up), I decided to give you the extremely rare workday lunchtime update (even though we finally have reliable internet at home).

For lack of better organizational skills, I'm just gonna throw a list of things that have happened since the last update at you (and, for fun, include the name of the songs that my iPod shuffles at me as they come). Here goes:

1. Celebrity sightings. (Cheeseburger in Paradise: Jimmy Buffet)

a. A literal run-in with Pauly Shore at the Farmer's Market. He bumped into N and then apologized.

b. The Arrested Development creators/writers at Caffe Latte on Wilshire, which has become our favorite breakfast destination (I See Monsters: Ryan Adams). We talked to them briefly after one of them made an off-color joke they thought we heard. One thing led to another and they mentioned what they were working on (even though my eavesdropping self had already figured that out). A week later, there they were on our TV accepting an Emmy.

c. One of the girls from Laguna Beach at the Cheesecake Factory in Beverly Hills (I'm 90 percent sure, anyway. I choose to believe it was her.)

d. Big Brother's Marcellas at Jerry's Deli.

2. N and I were both sick. Him first, then me. (Dr. Livingstone: Crowded House) It was our first experience with being sick that one of us wasn't able to go home to escape. That was fun.

3. We saw Keane in concert at the Greek with the best friggin' seats I've ever had. The concert, good seats or no, was pretty great. Those guys are amazing performers! If you ever get the chance to see 'em, go. (Chocolate: Snow Patrol)

4. My TiVo is freaking out. Practically everything it records cuts in and out, sometimes so much so that the show is unwatchable. Any suggestions (TK, I'm talking to you!)??

5. We were caught in the middle of a hijacking! (Okay, not really, but something was happening down Wilshire Blvd. Friday night while we were dining at Big Wasabi, our first foray into our neighborhood all-you-can-eat sushi joint--not great, for the record--and there was a bus being emptied of passengers with their hands up, a shitload of cops and cop cars, and the street was blocked off right where we were. N made me go across the street to Blockbuster anyway, even though I thought we should probably move as far away from a possible crime scene as possible. Anyway, it must not have been anything too big because no news show mentioned it. (Borderline: Madonna. Hee.)

6. N and I introduced Eclektra and husband to the wonder that is Katamari Damacy. I wonder if they're still up playing it? (I Can't Take It: Tegan & Sara)

Woo hoo!

2005-10-15T16:07:00.000-07:00

Our DSL is (finally) up and running! Expect more posts more often, starting right...well, maybe starting tomorrow.

Hi, honey, I'm home!

2005-09-17T21:40:00.000-07:00

Yeah, so I've been a little busy, what of it? Actually, it's been busy, but good. Not much has gone wrong since I wrote all that stuff about stuff going wrong. Well, nothing that significant, anyway (I mean, really, there's always stuff that goes wrong, like the post office forgetting the "1/2" in my address change form. I'm still not sure where all my mail is.). The movers were two hours late, but really made up for it in their efficiency. However, losing the two hours meant that we had to sacrifice our naps, and perhaps more importantly, our showers, before going out the Hollywood Bowl the night of the move. Gross. We had tickets the next night, too, which we also rushed to get to, but all in all, the weekend of the move went relatively well.

And how is the place, you ask? Well, it's great, but that first week we kept finding little oddball things wrong with it, like, oh, the inner back door that suddenly stopped being able to close, or the painted-over phone jack, or the bedroom door (every interior door, actually) that doesn't close without plenty of force. But, it's certainly got character and a ton of new appliances (omigod, I've never enjoyed doing laundry so much as I have here! And N's in love with a dishwasher), so we're pretty happy with it. Oh! Did I mention the unbelievably narrow drive we have to take to get to our parking spot? It took me 7 minutes (yes, I was watching the clock) and a lot of deep breathing to back out of there my first morning back to work. I haven't parked back there since. Luckily, street parking hasn't let me down yet (damn, I shouldn't have jinxed myself like that. I blame you.). We've found some great little restaurants to walk to, and today I strolled over to Hancock Park/LACMA/La Brea Tar Pits and wandered around there for a bit. It's a nice little bit of the city to be able to walk to.

Right now, N's putting his massive CD collection in the three new Ikea Benno CD Towers we purchased this afternoon. I've got load number three in the dryer, and we just finished up a pretty good delivered pizza (I just eat the tops, for those concerned about my having fallen off the wagon). Life is good. (Oh, but our internet isn't hooked up yet; remember that painted over phone jack? We've only got one functional jack, which is working overtime for our one phone and two TiVos. I'm gonna have to pirate someone's wireless to post this. Shhhh.)

So, when're you coming over?

OMG! Then there was THIS

2005-09-02T07:22:00.000-07:00

Ugh, I'm so mad, I just sent this:

Subject: Terrible Customer Service

MCI is a goddamn joke! You will never EVER get my business, or the business of any of my family or friends again! This started last week when I tried calling to cancel my service as of September 4 because I am moving. It took three days of calling and being on hold for 30 minutes to finally talk to someone. I spoke with Hugo Velo, who claimed he was a supervisor in customer support. I asked to cut off my service starting SEPTEMBER 4. I can't tell you how many times I said that date. He even repeated it back to me. The next night, I come home to find my long distance service cancelled. Today, September 2, I have no phone service whatsoever!!

Do you know how important it is for someone who is moving to have a fucking working phone??? I AM SO PISSED OFF AT MCI RIGHT NOW! I am moving tomorrow and currently live in a security building that relies on the phone to buzz people in. I have a million phone calls to make and receive regarding my move. You people have screwed me like you wouldn't believe.

I won't even consider calling you to complain about this because a) I know it'd be impossible to get through your goddamn hold system, and b) I know someone on your end would screw up reconnecting my service for just two days. Congratulations, you've lost a customer (and as many others as I can tell this story to) for life. Assholes.

Oh crap, I effed up

2005-09-01T22:54:00.000-07:00

In the haste to pack up the DVD player and VCR, I somehow knocked the little thingies that make the TiVo know how to change the channel so far behind the TV that they're lost till the furniture is moved. Now the TV is stuck on CBS. Thankfully, I just checked my To Do List and there's not much recording between now and tomorrow when I'm turning in my cable box. Think good thoughts...I'll be without access to cable for a good 16 hours or so. I think I can do it.

Oh, and so I don't sound completely ass-ish, I realize there are people out there with actual life-threatening problems. Go give 'em some money (if you're so inclined; don't do it for me).

More from the "what could go wrong?" department

2005-08-31T18:21:00.000-07:00

So, every day since this whole moving thing has come into play, something has gone wrong. At first it was a little funny, but now I'm wondering what I did to piss off karma so much (I'm also questioning the training of people who answer phones at various utility companies. I'm sure they're all very nice people. I'm just sayin').

The first thing to go wrong:
-The very morning after I sent in a form telling the postal service to start forwarding my mail September 1 (let's say that was around August 23), I checked my often-neglected mailbox. I saw the mail in there, wondered what the important-looking envelope was, and left it in there to pick up after work. After work, I return to collect my mail and the box is empty, junk mail and all.

The second thing to go wrong:
-I wake up to no hot water in my current apartment. I panic, thinking LADWP has turned off my power, and then realize that I've just been woken by the radio alarm and the lights are all on.

The third thing to go wrong:
-I call MCI, who provides both local and long-distance service to me, to tell them I'm moving and would like to cancel my phone service as of September 4. The guy says, "Okay, your phone service is now canceled." I say, "As of September 4, right?" He says, "Yeah, September 4." I go home the next night and attempt to call Chicago. My long-distance service has been disconnected (but not my local, so tell me what went wrong there).

The next thing to go wrong:
-I call to update my address on my car insurance. The guy tells me my premium will not increase. Woo! Something's gone right! I come home to a voicemail telling me he was wrong, and in fact, they'll be asking for an additional $800 annually. But, in order to get that message, I had to practically jump through hoops because my usual MCI voicemail retrieval system had been disconnected. Oh, and that day when I came home, I checked my mail on a whim. The junk mail and Time magazine reappeared, but not the real mail.

The next thing to go wrong:
-The day after I call Citi Cards to change my billing address, I try to use the card at a gas station. I input my new zip code, the machine rejects it, and makes me go inside to pay.

The next thing (which brings us up to today, just now in fact) to go wrong:
-I get home to a voicemail from Citi Cards about fraudulent activity on my credit card. It turns out there's an extra $100 charge on my card from that gas station, which may or may not show up on my bill according to the guy on the phone. Someone remind me to check my next bill carefully, please.

It's been an interesting week.

Did I mention I'm moving?

2005-08-28T19:00:00.000-07:00

Holy shit, I've been up and down the apartment stairs about, oh, a million times today. I went to Goodwill, packed another half dozen boxes, and cleared my closet of excess hangers. Did you know that I have more shoes than will fit in a Dell computer box? Yeah, and to think, I just bought a 10-pair hanging shoe bag. Talk about miscalculations! Anyway, I (we) need help! We gotta cover windows and floors and there are waaay too many choices out there! I spent an hour in Linens 'n' Things touching duvet covers and sheets and curtains and rugs. And I'm tired, did I say that part?

Oh, I highly, HIGHLY recommend doing an annual cleaning (spring cleaning, if you will). It's amazing what'll accumulate in your home. I still have a box of shit that I never unpacked from the last time I moved...and I still don't know what to do with it. The thing of it is, it's a box of toys I got from the VERY LARGE COMPANY I used to work for. Anyway, I was friends with the receptionist in the Toys department and she gave me some stuff off their sample shelf. Now, I THINK these are actual samples before they were manufactured and released to the public (there's a typo or two on one of the boxes), so they MAY be worth something, but how can I find out? I can't very well go on eBay and say "I snatched these off the sample shelf of [VERY LARGE COMPANY]," can I? I mean, I don't know exactly if they're samples that differ from what was released or what, so I don't know what to do with them. I guess I could just give them away. How much could they be worth? (*cue Brady Bunch fade-to-future-music*-- Woman on the news: "And can you believe that the sale of this little [HUGE MONEY-MAKING ANIMATED FILM] toy I got from Goodwill in 2005 enabled me to buy this very large beach house and cheese platter?") Any suggestions?

Today's '80s packing background movie: Lucas. I don't think I ever need to see it again. I'm just saying.

Some kind of what-the-eff

2005-08-22T21:28:00.001-07:00

So, I'm in a jungle of boxes right now, and the only thing saving me from going nuts has been my self-imposed '80s movies marathon (thanks, TiVo for your suggestions). Last night was The Karate Kid; now it's Some Kind of Wonderful. You know, watching it now, though it remains one my favorites for sentimental reasons, this movie is a little cuckoo bananas (as, I guess, all '80s teen movies were). I mean, seriously, if some guy you hardly knew asked you out and took you on this over-the-top first date that included a rented fancy car with your friend as chaffeur, dinner at a fancy restaurant (with caviar!), breaking into the art museum, seeing a painting he did of you hanging in said art museum, a trip to the Hollywood Bowl (while no one else is there...can you say "date rape"?), and gave you a pair of diamond earrings he tells you he spent his entire life savings on, would you a) kiss him and think he's the man you've been looking for, or b) grab your mace and run screaming? Yeah, me too! And, if I'm the tomboy friend who's in love with the guy, do I want the earrings he bought for the other girl when he finally decides he wants to be with you instead? Hell, no! Buy me something new, bitch!

Okay, gotta pack more shit now.

Thanks for joining me for another edition of (okay, the first, and possibly only, edition of) '80s Movie Minute.

Blow me (my nose, I mean)

2005-08-18T22:11:00.000-07:00

I've got the flu (that's not the secret; we'll get there in a minute, though it's anticlimatic because I'm sure you know already). I stayed home all day and felt very bad. Thanks for the sympathy. I'm still deciding about tomorrow's plan. I hate to use another day off work, but if I must, I must, right?

Anyway, drumroll.....N and I are moving in together. But you knew that already, right? There's a lot to do, so anyone who has any suggestions for movers, or Direct TV versus cable, or high-speed internet providers, or getting rid of a bed and refrigerator, or packing tips, bring 'em on! If we're lucky and we get our asses in gear, we should be doing this Labor Day Weekend. God help us all.

I know something you don't know

2005-08-15T22:54:00.000-07:00

Do you ever have a secret that's not really a secret but something you know and that you have to let other people know but you like holding onto it by yourself for a little bit so it's still kinda like a secret? (Come on, that makes sense--read it again!) Anyway, I have that. But I think by the time you read this it'll be getting around, so you probably know already. Cool, eh?

Cup o' Random

2005-08-10T20:52:00.000-07:00

Something N alerted me to today that's been puzzling me all day: Cup o' Noodles is actually called Cup Noodles, no "o." It's true, look it up. (Doesn't that site look like a kid's fansite? I'm pretty sure it's official, though.) Anyway, how did we all start calling it Cup o' Noodles? We all do, right? Did it once have the "o"? If so, what happened to it? Too Irish for a Japanese food? Thoughts? Comments?

Wait! Hold the phone! I did my own damn research on that site (isn't it nice how I saved you the trouble?). Here, it explains that the product was renamed in 1993. But why, Nissin? Why??

On my way home from Dinner with Dad (yes, that's Wednesday's proper name around here), I saw this: A big gold Cadillac being driven by a middle-aged man. The other seats were filled with a bunch of teenage goth girls, all bopping their dyed-black hair to whatever they were forcing the dad to play on the radio. The one in the back blew me a kiss out the window as I passed her. Kinda funny.

Speaking of teenage girls, how bad do you hate every girl on My Super Sweet 16? What? You're not watching? Oh, please do. Then we can discuss.

What goes on in Vegas...

2005-08-03T20:07:00.000-07:00

So, I just returned from three nights in Vegas with Mom. Without going into detail (my mom wouldn't stop incorrectly using the phrase "What goes on in Vegas, stays in Vegas" no matter how many times I said, "It's happens! What happens in Vegas..."), Vegas in the summer is like being in a steamy, retarded cattle farm. America is fat and slow and old. Seriously. Take a good look around Vegas and you can see why other countries hate us so much. I was so happy to be on my own without a crowd or noise or smoke around me once I got home that I don't know if I can make it outside for work again tomorrow.

I lost all my money, ate at only one buffet, had only one friggin' drink, and sweated my way down the Strip. We did manage to visit Wynn, which is quite fabulous, if you like that sort of thing (did I tell you about the $50 breakfast? Berries, an omelet, an orange juice, and two coffees. Fifty bucks.), and the huge, nicely air-conditioned mall. Oh, and took a ride on the crappy monorail that takes longer to walk to in the back of hotels than the distance it takes you down the Strip. Sorry, I guess I'm a little pissy about the whole thing right now. Maybe I'll write nicer things tomorrow. But then again, I have to go to work early for a meeting about a menopause booklet, so how good a mood will I be in then??

So, this happened

2005-07-26T20:52:00.000-07:00

The short story is, I ended up sleeping on the couch last night. The long story? Read on...

I was sitting in my bed reading, when something on the ceiling caught my eye. "Oh," I said to myself, "phew,
that's not a spider." But then I thought, "Gee, I haven't done a 'ceiling spider check' lately," so I began the slow scan of the ceiling (against my better judgement, mind you). Lo and behold, I found one. Right. Above. My. Head! So, I grabbed a bottle of cleaning crap (I don't have a can of Spider Killer handy) and a pile o' tissue, moved the mattress and pillows away from the wall, and squirted. Of course, the thing was smarter than I am, and it leapt straight down the wall to...under the bed? between the mattress and the box spring? I had no idea. After standing there in shock for a moment, I shook the mattress and tried to move the bed around, but didn't see it. Again, I stood there for minutes trying to decide what to do...and if I could sleep under these unknown circumstances. I considered, briefly, inviting myself into your [whoops, that should read "N's"...I might've copied and pasted this from an email to him] bed for the night, but it was midnight already and that would've been ridiculous. So I took the pussy way out and let the spider have my room, while I bedded down on the couch in the living room. Meanwhile, I had this dream: My living room was completely covered in a HUGE spider web, in which a rat and a frog were caught. Plus, Stray Cat We Know [names have been changed to protect the innocent] was walking around in there too. I guess my brain was trying to tell me that I am a pussy.

--End Copied Email Text--

Sorry for the jumble. I might've finished off a bottle of wine in anticipation of having to share my room/bed with a vengeful spider (and possibly his pissed off posse). I knew you'd understand.

Five paragraphs about last week

2005-07-24T15:43:00.000-07:00

Boy, time flies. I meant to update as soon as we got back from Chicago, but somehow over the last week I forgot I had a blog (not that anyone's reading it, but still).

Chicago was a good time. We arrived a little later than expected, got a ride to our hotel from N's friend, checked in, and walked straight over to Uno's, which was right next door. At 11:30 p.m., there was a 45-minute wait (we think. There seemed to be a slight communication problem with the hostess. Maybe it was our accents.), so we went to Due's instead, where we sat right down. Note to future Chicago tourists: It's the same thing! Anyway, we had pizza (or pizza tops, in the case of those of us who are avoiding carbs) and a few drinks, took a walk in the opposite direction we meant to go, then made it back to the hotel, where we were so happy to have air conditioning to sleep in, we turned it down to like 30 degrees. I swear, it was freezing in there!

The next day was the wedding, which was fun. The reception hall actually had an Irish pub right inside it, so N's friends all spent a good-ass chunk of the wedding pulled up to the bar and a pint (or what have you). The wedding started at noon. We tried to leave the reception/pub around 7 p.m., till we were dragged back in by a guy who N's "boyz" had gone to high school with (later, N admitted he had no idea who the guy was). I swear, we were getting in the car when the guy called us in. I was so tired and wine-full that I might've done a little whining about going back in (I think my exact words were, "So close! SO close!"). So, we spent a couple more hours at the pub, stumbling out around 9:30, at which time we shoved 6 good-sized people in a car meant for 5. That was fun. I feel very close to some of those people now. Later, we tried to go out and "party" some more. We ended up at a bar ordering food and drinks, and eventually petering out earlier than planned. Fun, but man, were we tired. So overtired, in fact, that N and I had the biggest giggling fit ever, which prevented much-desired sleep for quite a long time.

The next day was spent at N's mom's place, where N's family (mom, sister, niece, nephew) and mine (mom, stepfather) had a lovely luncheon laid out by N's mom. Everyone got along nicely and nothing was spilled (believe me, this is an issue with my stepfather). The next day I went shopping with my mom (for being in a really hot and humid city, I spent way too much time freezing my ass off! I'll never understand why stores, who have to know you're dressed for extreme heat, will turn up the air so high that you can't shop without wrapping your arms around yourself or at least borrowing one of the store's SALE sweaters.).

All in all, a nice trip. This weekend, N and I dragged the mattress from my room into the living room in front of the air conditioning unit and spent quite of bit of time there watching TV (I added the "watching TV" part, though it really is true, so you didn't think I was bragging about spending the whole weekend in bed). It was like indoor camping! We also saw two movies, Wedding Crashers and The Island, which I've just lost the energy to talk about. Plus, this is already too long (I'm sure you've stopped reading by now. I've always known you were a quitter.), and the air conditioner that I'm sitting right in front of is freezing my ass off. Must move to couch!

A panic, a conspiracy, and most likely some crying

2005-07-13T22:10:00.000-07:00

Okay, I just had a claustrophobia panic attack. Why? Because I couldn't get my bracelet off. Something's really wrong with me, right? I mean, who has claustrophobia from a stubborn bracelet clasp? I'm not sure what I thought would happen if I couldn't get the bracelet off, but it really sent me into a little tailspin for a few minutes there. Please let me know if this has happened to you! I think I also have a touch of the Alzheimer's (have I told you this before? No, seriously, that wasn't meant to be a joke.). Today I called a coworker Jose. She was not amused. It just slipped out and I have no clue why. At the time I was saying it, it seemed correct.

In other news, inanimate objects are conspiring against me:

The freeway did not want me to go to work. All kinds of debris was in the road: glass, a load of boxes (possibly containing Gateway computers), a very large and very dead animal.
My TiVo thinks I'm fat. It's subtly "suggested" five different fitness programs by recording them for me on its own.
My electric toothbrush thinks I should brush more. When I press the "off" button, it continues spinning for minutes without any way to stop it.

In other, other news, this is the last opportunity I'll have to chill until next Tuesday night. Tomorrow after work I'm babysitting my friend C's two kids (I know! Sorry, I should've asked if you were sitting down for that one). Our friend M, who has her own kid, will be there, too, so it won't be completely my fault if the kids go to bed hungry, naked, dirty, and weeping. Friday N and I take off for a whirlwind few days in Chicago. Whirlwind because we're going to his friend's wedding, which also involves all manner of activity surrounding it (read, barhopping), plus fitting in family visits, etc. It'll be one of those "need a vacation from our vacation" type, er, vacations, but fun all the same. See ya when we get back!

How I discovered that I'll be renting for a long time

2005-07-11T20:06:00.000-07:00

The weekend was a typical one...lots of hanging around and not going to events we'd planned to. But, we did try to be spontaneous and go to a different restaurant. Unfortunately, we made this decision on Friday night. At 7 p.m. In Hollywood. Everywhere we thought of to call was too busy for the likes of us. Every place we passed in the car drive around town was spilling over with people. After about an hour and blood-sugar levels reaching the critical point, we ended up going to Chan Dara, which was not different for us, except for the mass quantities of food we ordered (and subsequently taking home). We managed to get free sake and 10 percent off dinner, though, when we pointed out the small insect floating in N's cup. So, all's well that ends well, really.

Saturday we ended up at The Grove, ate, wandered around for a bit, petted some dogs up for adoption, came home, did I don't know what to fill the time (I might've been sleeping in front of the TV), ended up ordering even more Asian food and downing some wine (That was just me, really. I'm totally a wino now. We can talk about this more later.), and, before we could make a decision about how to fill our evening, got sucked into watching Anchorman before calling it a very early night.

Here's something interesting (sort of): There's a house a few blocks down on N's street that we've been watching being rebuilt from the ground up. It was finally complete a couple weeks ago, and a big For Sale sign went up in front of it. Sunday, there was an open house, so we decided to go check it out. On the way there, I guessed out loud that it would be going for "not less than $600,000." We picked up a flyer, and guess what? The asking price was $1,600,000! I was a million dollars off! A million dollars! Off! We couldn't believe it! Seriously, I mean, N's neighborhood is decent and it's located two blocks from the shopping on Melrose, but there's also a bum who hangs out with his cart on the corner and we hear others going through the trash in the early mornings. The Hills of Beverly it's not. I guess I'm totally out of touch with the real estate market right now. If that house sells for a million-six, I will never, ever, be able to afford a home of my own (unless I move to Idaho, which might not be so bad).

There I go, wine-ing again...

2005-07-05T19:03:00.000-07:00

Do you ever get wasted by yourself by accident? It's happening to me right now. Yes, now! So, I had a bit of a bad day, so I came home and poured a glass of wine. After drinking all day Sunday with not much happening, I didn't think this glass would do much, so I poured another. And maybe another (it's hard to keep track). But suddenly, I find myself not at all upset about my day and getting a little ferklempt over an episode of Queer Eye. This doesn't mean I have a problem, though, does it? Boy, the room's a little spinny sitting here at my computer, even. What have I done?? Speaking of that, have you ever left a message on someone's machine/voicemail about someone else and then have the fear that you accidentally called the person you wanted to bitch about? I think I just did that. I'm pretty sure I heard N's voice before I left the message, but shit, I have had 3 (or 4 or 8) glasses of wine, so who knows what I just did. Don't worry, it wasn't about you. I swear. I double, triple swear. Because if you're reading this, then it can't be you. Unless you're psychic!

ITurnedOutTV's drunk tip o' the day: When booking hotels, use an online service (Orbitz, Travelocity, Hotels.com, etc.) to see what's out there, but then go directly to the hotel's own web site to book. In my experience (with flights, too), it's always, always cheaper that way. Trust me. (I thought of this when I wasn't drunk, so really, you can trust me.)

Okay, peace out! Gotta see what's left in that wine bottle.

P.S. I've never held a sparkler in my life

2005-07-04T21:38:00.000-07:00

Okay, I think I'm over the fireworks thing. I'm sitting here at home and the fireworks are constantly going off all over the place. They make me jump. Make it stop! I'm totally on edge! It's like that firecracker scene in Boogie Nights. Ugh. I never really loved fireworks as a kid. They always scared the crap out of me. One time, I literally peed my pants at a local fireworks display. Did I mention that I was sitting on my mom's lap at the time? Yeah. Checkmark in the "no kids" box.

Anyway, I'm not out watching fireworks now because N and I didn't feel like dealing with traffic and parking and, ultimately, people. You know how you just don't like people sometimes? Not specific people. The people we would've been with tonight are perfectly fine and we have nothing against them. It's the other people out there. The unknowns. They tend to get in the way.

Speaking of things that get in the way (well, not really, but I've been struggling with a transition for the last 5 minutes), N shaved off the beard this weekend. I had no idea it was coming and didn't get a chance to say goodbye to Beard-N. He answered the door on Friday with just a mustache and a soul patch. I was totally shocked! He looked very West Hollywood for a good 10 minutes there till he finally shaved the rest off. Yes, this WAS an event worth blogging. Shut up.

Smooth-Faced-N and I managed to fit two movies in this weekend: War of the Worlds (traumatized!) and Land of the Dead (yes, a zombie movie, and surprisingly, not half as traumatizing as WotW!). We also went to a friend's bbq in Irvine (traffic!), watched MTV's Live 8 eight-hour coverage (crap! MTV, you are crap!), played a ton of Burnout 3 on the XBox (smashing cars is fun!), drank all day Sunday (somehow, I barely got drunk), slept very late Monday (zzzz), and didn't touch the DVD we rented (Ocean's 12). All in all a good weekend. And a four-day work week to boot! Woo!

A pic from our trip! (thanks, blogger, for letting me post pics!)

2005-06-30T19:28:00.000-07:00

Pretty, no?

(Don't steal it, it's copyrighted by me, jerk!)

I have many complaints

2005-06-30T18:39:00.000-07:00

Wanna hear 'em? Well, unless you stop reading right now, you're gonna!

1. There are too many people in this city. And they're all slow, dumb, and in my way. (Many of the following complaints involve them.)

2. I am not eating El Pollo Loco right now, as my belly dreamed about doing all day, because I ran out of patience in the drive-thru after waiting several minutes in a line at least 7 cars long without moving. I lost my shit and got out of there when a woman cut in front of me to "return" something she'd just gotten out of line with.

3. Adelphia is all fucked up. I hate it. (Right now I'm stealing someone's nearby wireless because my Adelphia's "high-speed" internet takes too long to load. If this is your wireless account I'm using, thanks so much! I'll be off in a minute.) They also keep changing cable channel locations so my TiVo is going NUTS! I get a new "lineup change" message every day--EVERY DAY!--telling me something's been moved, deleted, or added. Poor TiVo can't keep up (though it thinks it can, so I wind up with a "Seinfeld" that's actually a CNN report).

4. Stop talking out loud to yourself! If you need attention, just start a real conversation, please! You don't know who you are because you wouldn't recognize yourself (and you don't know about this blog), but it makes me feel better just writing it down.

5. What's the deal with Hotwire? Why is it cheaper if we don't know what hotel we're getting? What is the hotel gaining from this charade (I'd prefer if you'd pronounce that "sha-ROD," thanks.)? Is it embarrassed to let us know how cheap they'd give it away for? I don't get it.

6. Adam, you yelly three-year-old (I'm guessing) in the apartment building next door, SHUT UP! Why are you always yelling? Sure, you sound happy-go-lucky, but do I need to know every time you get into your mommy or daddy's car? Why are you so LOUD? Don't you want to know why I know your name? It's because your parents are loud-talkers too! Shut up, all of you!

Not a complaint, but an interesting fact I just learned from David Letterman: Julian McMahon's dad used to be the prime minister of Australia! Who knew? (Well, probably an entire nation in the, er, Oceanic part of the world...)

That's it. My complaining's getting on my nerves, too.

Look ma, no cavities! (Is that a saying?)

2005-06-23T17:48:00.000-07:00

Is there anything more humiliating than sitting in a dentist's chair? You can't see what's going on; you've got a light shining in your face; your mouth is stretched to its limit; because you're such a drooling slob, a loud-ass machine is sucking the crap out of your mouth for you; your own spit and blood and plaque are splashing back up into your face; you can only grunt to answer questions; you're afraid to move or wince or uncross your legs for fear of accidentally bumping the dentist's arm and therefore cutting open your gums; and you're completely at the mercy of some guy or woman you only see once a year, if that.

Seriously, I just had the worst dentist chair experience ever, and this was only a cleaning and check up! I don't know what that chick was doing, but it felt like she was shoving tiny little needles under each damn tooth's gumline! I've never had pain like that during a cleaning. It got to the point where I shut my eyes and pretended I was a soldier being tortured for my country's secrets: I'm strong enough to handle this! You foreigners can't break me! Bring on more torture! Luckily, the pain was over before I had to really test my limits. In an actual torture situation, I don't think many secrets would be safe with me. Unless they were just doing a quick cleaning.

My three-mile drive home from the appointment was almost more painful than the appointment itself. What idiot decided that closing the onramp to the 405 AND the 101 at Sepulveda and Ventura was a good idea? That friggin' detour backed up Ventura Blvd. for miles. And confused jerks can't drive! Just so you know, I HATE you confusing driving jerks. None of you all know how to drive. Period.

Up the coast without a paddle

2005-06-19T19:48:00.000-07:00

We're back! Did you miss us? Actually, we were only gone two nights, so, yes, that WAS us you saw at the Chinese seeing Batman on Saturday! Here's the rundown of our adventure...

We started out Wednesday morning driving up PCH. The weather was a little overcast and bleh, but we ventured on nonetheless, getting sidetracked somewhere around Oxnard and Port Hueneme (Coastal Scenic Route, my ass!). We stopped in Carpenteria for lunch. Back on the road for another couple hours till we hit Pismo Beach. There, we checked into the very retro Kon Tiki Inn, "where every room features a panoramic ocean view." Unfortunately, when we got there, the view was of an extremely overcast and chilly sky. BUT, after a little bit, it cleared up, and we enjoyed a lovely private "cocktail hour" on our balcony (you all travel with your own cocktail kit, too, right?). N even went for a swim. Then we watched the fog roll back in and sort of mess up the sunset. Still nice, even so. THEN, we went for a fabulous dinner at The Cracked Crab, where they dumped a huge bucket of shellfish on the table in front of us. Glaaaauughhhh. It was fantastic...except for the misleading printing on the menu, which led us to believe we were adding an extra crab to our bucket for 8 bucks, when in fact, it was 28. We still don't get it, but whatever, we were on vacation!

The next day, despite having looked at a billion "things to do" brochures from the hotel lobby, we just took a walk to the Pismo Beach Pier and then plopped down on the beach under our hotel (accessible by the longest-ever flight of stairs down a cliff, which dammit, I forgot to take a picture of like I said). We were practically the only ones on the beach and it was awesome. Then we went back to the room for another balcony cocktail-hour-slash-foggy-sunset, before heading off for another shellfish dinner, this time at Brad's. We were the last customers standing at 9:30. Let me tell you, Pismo is an early-to-bed town.

The next day was up in the air, so we decided to drive north a bit and see what we saw. What we saw were some very nice views of oceanic things, and then a restaurant with an ocean view. As we sat there, the fog rolled in like you'd never believe! We could hardly see each other through it! (Okay, that was an exaggeration.) We thought we'd drive just a little bit more to check out San Luis Obispo, which didn't impress us, so we decided to head home and make some pit stops along the way. These included, in order, The Madonna Inn, where N peed into a waterfall; Arroyo Grande, which featured buildings built over a hundred years ago (I'm invoking Eddie Izzard here, can you tell?); Solvang, which wasn't as Epcot-y as we would've liked; Chumash Casino, which didn't have cheap enough blackjack tables for N; a just-closing berry stand (dammit, I really wanted those roadside berries!); and finally, back home in LA, Buffet City, where the entire UCLA graduating class was eating a post-graduation Asian buffet. It was a very silly dinner, which even if I tried, I couldn't explain.

All in all, a very nice little trip. What'd you do?

Hold all my calls

2005-06-14T21:29:00.000-07:00

We're going on a trip! Tomorrow morning, instead of going to work, I'm driving up the coast with N. And I won't be back to work till Monday! Wooooo! I'll give a full report next week.

Meanwhile, I just watched some extras on The Office Special disk (there's just NOTHING on TV anymore, is there?), and now I'm watching the Freelove Freeway "video" for about the fifth time. Damn, that shit is funny. Problem is, I'll be singing it for weeks, I'm sure. Other problem is, I don't feel like watching or doing anything else, so (hold on while I press Play again) I'm sure that's not the last time I'll watch it tonight. Maybe I'll just go to bed so tomorrow's here sooner!

Where oh where has my little town gone?

2005-06-13T21:08:00.000-07:00

Boy time flies when you're not writing blogs. What the hell did I do with myself all week? Well, there was the weekend...

It started bright and early on Saturday with a trip to my dad's to get the cars detailed by my cousin, the detailer. While that was being done, and because my dad flew the coop to get to his weekly Indian gaming destination (seriously, every weekend), I decided to take N on a tour of my childhood neighborhood. I hadn't been there in a very long time and let me tell you, things weren't where I'd last left 'em! We wanted breakfast, so I thought we'd walk to Biscuits & Gravy, next to the Hughes, which is now a Ralph's, but the Biscuits & Gravy is now a Two Guys from Italy. My second thought was Patricia's Tea House, which was on the other side of the Hughes/Ralph's, but is now completely empty. This was just the beginning. The stationery store is now a dog wash. The Royal Dynasty, where we ate almost every week when I was growing up, had awhile back turned into something else, which was now something even more else! The library is 300% bigger than it used to be and the Alta Dena Dairy is now an IHOP (which turned out to be good news, because by the time we walked all that way, we were damn hungry!). Weird.

After the cars were shiny, we went back to N's to await the arrival of his out-of-town friends, who we took to Cat & Fiddle, and then to the Cineramadome to see...take a guess...Star Wars (again)! (By the way, I don't think I need to see it again.) That night, among other things, we caught something on MTV2 called Wonder Showzen. Do a search on your TiVo. You won't regret it. The next day we went to Canter's for breakfast, and then to Santa Monica to play on the pier. These are some partying friends, by the way. I couldn't come close to keeping up with the likes of them! And ya know, it's tiring entertaining people for a weekend (especially when you're letting the cat sleep with you so as to not completely disturb the guests with her antics). When I got myself home, I nearly crashed in the bed right then and there.

Hey, Dockers is using a very old The The song in their commercials now! (I don't see commercials much, so if this is old news to you, ignore me.) That was an ADD moment...the TV's on in the background.

Public Service Announcement: The speed limit is 65! Drive it, Asshole! Thank you for listening.

[Insert title of your choice here]

2005-06-06T21:17:00.000-07:00

Is it so wrong to be crying at the beginning of Beaches in anticipation of the ending? Sometimes I can be such a girl, I can't stand it! Anyway, that Mayim Bialik didn't get enough credit as a child actor. She's fantastic! I'm turning off the Beaches in favor of reading a book as soon as I'm done here, I swear.

Okay, here's the thing I said I was going to blog about and then forgot what it was and then even later (i.e., now) remembered what it was again. Ready? Here goes: When did the Kool-Aid guy get pants?? We were watching the TV over the weekend and caught a Kool-Aid commercial. There he was...wearing pants! Seriously, are we such a prude society that we can't see a pitcher-full-of-punch's bare legs?? A punch pitcher! What might we see, his bare ice cubes? JEEZ!

My pedometer says 4224 (ooh, nice and symmetrical!) right now. Over the weekend, N and I took a 10,000-step walk in one shot! (That's 5 miles to you lay people!) I was hugely impressed with us, as you should be, too! I'm also impressed with this pedometer. It went through the washing machine, didn't work for several days, but now it's back! Way to endure!

My apartment manager just knocked on the door to remind me that I forgot to pay the $7 surcharge that was due on this month's rent. I'm wearing black pants and a tank top when I answer the door (I must've had a premonition that someone would see me tonight; usually I change into PJs as soon as the door shuts behind me). As he stands and waits for me to write the check, he says in his funny little accent, "In dark colors, you look, you look much beautiful!" Sweet yet creepy, eh?

Here's the story

2005-06-05T21:44:00.000-07:00

I'm (finally) watching some of The Brady Bunch DVD N got me for my birthday. I started with the first episode, which has commentary from Sherwood Schwartz, who really must be super-old by now, right? He talks as though he didn't know the child actors on the show at all, never referring to them by name, but merely as "the little girl" or "the little boy," as though they're just some random kids who were in a pilot that tanked. Sheesh.

Anyway, what got me up to the computer was that I remembered that as a kid, I thought that the actors playing characters in TV shows or movies who got married actually had to get married to do the scene. I thought the act of hearing the words "I now pronounce you man and wife" and saying "I do" made you married. I don't know what I was thinking.

Even dumber, and this is really weird, so bear with me, was what I thought about cartoons. I thought--I really don't understand my logic on this, so don't ask, really--that cartoons were people dressed up in animal costumes that were smeared in butter. Yep. I dunno, I guess I thought that animation had a buttery look to it. I don't know, really! Either I had a very active imagination or I was a little retarded.

On the active imagination side, I had a list of 30 or so "invisible" siblings, two of whom were my identical triplets. Except that I didn't quite understand what the "identical" part meant, because one was a boy. I couldn't have been too dumb though, because I worked out everyone's ages so it was actually possible, had my mother started when she was a child herself and popped out children every year, to have all those siblings. That being said, I truly enjoyed my only-childness. I think had I had all those siblings I would've run away very early on. Anywho, back to the DVD. That Cindy sure was cute!

P.S. This is something I meant to mention to N the minute it happened, but got distracted: I swear I saw the name Todd Lookinland in the Revenge of the Sith special effects credits. And I'm pretty sure he's Mike Lookinland's (Bobby Brady) brother, who also, if I remember correctly, guest starred on The Brady Bunch at some point. Hold on, I'll go check. Yep, I'm a Brady geek.

"I never thought I would fall for a nerd"

2005-06-01T22:07:00.000-07:00

Did you see it?? I didn't plan on watching Beauty & the Geek, but then Kevin & Bean's Ralph highly recommended it this morning, so I decided to give it a shot. Plus, N sent me a boatload of good reviews he read on the internet. Man, am I glad I watched! I loved it! I even heard the neighbors across the alley laughing at it! What a brilliant idea...the geeks learn social skills from hot dumb girls and the hot dumb girls learn stuff they should've picked up in fifth grade. I'm sure there's probably some feminist reason I should hate this show, because it shoudn't be okay to not be able to name two U.S. states that start with "New," but, it's really pretty fantastic all around. One thing, though, the "geeks" are really not as geeky as they could be. It's the total Patrick Dempsey, "Can't Buy Me Love" kind of geek, where he can dress geek, but then turn stud with a touch of mousse and ripped-off sleeves. Even the hot girls thought a couple of them were adorable right off the bat. And there was even kissing! They're re-running it again Thursday night, so please try to catch it so we can share. (Note of irony: After an hour of watching these girls struggle to answer the easiest questions ever, I searched TiVo to add the show to my Season Pass, but I misspelled "beauty." D'oh!)

Speaking of the dumbing down of America, have you heard this new McDonald's Fruit & Walnut Salad radio commercial? It's all "blah, blah, blah, Fruit & Walnut Salad, blah, blah, Fruit, blah, blah, Walnuts, blah, Fruit, blah, Walnuts, Walnuts, Walnuts, blah, blah, blah, Fruit & Walnut Salad at McDonald's. Contains nuts." Contains nuts! Are they kidding? Who's that disclaimer for? Please introduce me so I can kick him in the balls.

Diary of a bridesmaid (aka N is a god)

2005-05-30T19:40:00.000-07:00

Part 1: Hair and make-up
Arrive at hotel where wedding is being held. Immediately run into two other bridesmaids, my mom and stepfather, the bride's father, and the groom. The day has begun! Check into room. Leave N with parents while I find other bridesmaids. Go to room where four girls slept the night before. There's half a sheet cake in there. Woo, they had a good time!

Run around like crazy, getting ready in different rooms, using everyone else's hair products, find bride getting made up in the bridal suite. Hey, there's a huge sheet cake in here, too! Use five bridesmaids to get bride into dress. Forget to ask if she needs to pee before getting into that huge thing.

Part 2: Papparazzi
Watch the bride and groom take a zillion pictures. Eventually join in and take a jillion more. During photo breaks, some bridesmaids indulge at the bar. I pride myself on thinking ahead that that's not a good idea (foreshadowing, anyone?). Try to figure out what to do with purse. End up taking it back to hotel room and giving N things to hold. N's been drinking (with parents and on own)! Wooo, everyone's already having a good time!

Part 3: The waiting
The guests are arriving while the bride and groom are still taking pictures. The bride puts a stop to that and goes to await the rabbi and the signing of the ketubah (Jewish marriage contract). The rabbi is late. Very late. While we wait and wait, half the bridal party is in the bar. I still don't think that's a good idea before going to stand for a long time in front of a jillion people.

Part 4: The ceremony
Finally, finally, we get to start the long aisle walk. Ceremony, ceremony, ceremony, vows, vows, oops, one of the bridesmaids feels faint and has to sit down. Small panic among bridesmaids, but everyone ends up fine. Ceremony, ceremony, break the glass, mazel tov! Walk back down aisle to cocktail hour. I comment to the groomsman who's escorting me: Can we make a pitstop at the bar?

Part 5: The party
Woo!! It's time to party! The bar is open! There are hors d'oeuvres! Cheese! Drinks! Woo! Get in line for bar! Get a drink! Get handed another drink by stepfather! And another by boyfriend! Woo! Drinking!

Go into reception hall. Open bar has moved inside. N gets us drinks. Waiter pours wine and champagne. A little dancing. Make a toast with another bridesmaid. N gets us drinks. Drink champagne. Sample wine. N gets us drinks. Talk, talk, talk, laugh, laugh, laugh. Love everyone in the room! I'm the funniest girl here! This is so fun! Finish wine! Finish drinks! Get more drinks! What? The band is done playing? Let's go to hotel bar! Yeah! More drinks! Drink, drink, drink!

At hotel bar. One more drink. Others from the wedding party trickle in. Best night ever! So much fun! There's the bride and groom! Wooo! Drinks! Go to bathroom. On walk back to bar, stumble into wall. Realize I've had waaay too much to drink. Tell N I think I should go (though he says he made me go). Head outside for fresh air. Go up to hotel room.

Part 6: Oh. my. god! (aka, N is the greatest boyfriend ever)
The toilet bowl is my best friend. The toilet bowl is my best friend! Will not leave toilet bowl! N makes me leave toilet bowl. Hardly remember anything else, but N can tell all in great detail. I suck, he rocks. One of most intense drunks of my life. N is a god. I am forever in N's debt. Screw the toilet bowl, N is my best friend.

Woke up in morning. Bleh. Bleh! The toilet bowl is my best friend. Realize I'm still wearing all make-up, pearls and earrings, and not much else. Don't remember getting out of dress. Have to meet mom and stepfather for breakfast. Bleh, food! Mom is very concerned about hangover. Can't stop talking about it. I order coffee and nothing else. Can't drink coffee. People from wedding party stop by and say: How are YOU feeling today? Lots of people say it, but others are suffering from the night's antics, too.

N drives us home in my car. Take hotel laundry bag, just in case hurling needed. Get to apartment. Lie on couch for hours and hours. Feeling better now. Great party, guys!

Part 7: Vow to not drink like that again
Really, I do.

In which the vision of my bank account dwindling doesn't hurt (too much)

2005-05-24T20:48:00.000-07:00

So, I'm watching a show (the name of which will remain anonymous to protect the innocent...the innocent being my cool reputation) about girls who have escaped from a polygamist cult. They'd been raised to believe that men are superior, that getting married off to an old man at age 14 is normal and expected, that sharing that old husband with 20 other women is the way to heaven, and among other things, that dinosaurs never existed.

Somehow, the girls on the show had the idea that they should get out of this lifestyle, and at the risk of losing everything they've ever known to be true, escaped. Now they're struggling with the idea that they might go to hell because they've left the lifestyle. Shown dinosaur bones at museum, they still weren't sure if they believed in their existence. It made me think, you know. I can't imagine being pulled out of this lifestyle and being told that everything I know is wrong. How do you start to believe that? But, I think that with these girls, they were finally beginning to see that they could control their own lives, they didn't have to do everything they were told, and they certainly didn't have to marry a man just because they were told it was time. They specifically said that they were happy just being able to make decisions for themselves.

I guess what I'm taking a long time getting to is that we should appreciate being able to make a decision, any decision, about our lives. We can do anything we want. Pick a career, any career! Go on vacation, any vacation! Empty the dishwasher tomorrow...or never! Get a dog, get a cat, get a plasma TV! Jump up on the couch to declare your love, however retarded you may look (I'm talking to you, Tom Cruise)! Eat ice cream for dinner! Pay your bills in pennies! The point is, if it makes you happy and won't land you in jail, don't question it! Do it! Rah, rah, rah! Up With People! (I really should look that up before I reference it, but I'm too lazy.)

OK, time for Rob and Amber to get married now. See ya!