How are you today? I'm superfantastic.

Why yes, I did use Lucy Ricardo as a verb.

People on The Twitter do these things called "Tweet Ups" - you know, Twitter meet ups. I've never been to one, largely because I don't follow many local people and didn't even know that they had them here. But then I met Lynn and she told me that they do, and then she invited me to one on Friday for lunch. Sushi!

I told her that I'd certainly try very hard to talk myself into going. She mentioned that there were a lot of journalism types, and since it's the journalism types who get to decide who gets paid for writing, they seem like people I should make some effort to meet.

Naturally, I was running late. It was at noon and I'd slept in after staying up until almost 4am writing first draft movie lines for you people. I did take the time to cover the dark circles under my eyes, although I briefly first considered just trying to convince everyone there that I was part raccoon.

Then I went to get dressed. I realized that, not only were most of my clothes either dirty or in some stage of being cleaned, but that every single non-push-up bra I own was in the dryer.

So my choices were to wait for the dryer and be even later, show up to meet a bunch of new people at a workday lunch with giant padded knockers, or pull a bra out of the dryer and shoot it with the hairdryer. I went with option C.

The day may come that I don't have to Lucy Ricardo my way through, but Friday wasn't it.

I texted Lynn to tell her that I was on my way and ask her to save me a seat. It was at the very end of the table, so I really only talked to about four new people, but that was good. One of them was a founder of the new website Savor SA and a serious foodie. When I asked him whether there was an Ethiopian restaurant in town, the depth of sadness and frustration in his "No." told me that this was a man I could trust to tell me where to eat.

So maybe I didn't make any important networking connections or BFFs, but I did find out where to get the best Greek food in town. And if anybody noticed that my bra was damp, they didn't say a word.

I have a guest post up today at Hobo Trashcan. You can read it and behold my giant orange head here.

Pay no attention to the woman behind the internet persona curtain

It is possible that I misled the internet just a little bit yesterday with this tweet:

So what if I wore a tight tank top to the auto parts store? The point is, a helpful young employee kindly installed the blinker bulb for me.

Here come the really shocking parts: it was intentional and it was not the first time.

Let me explain. As I was driving to my sister and brother-in-law's house on Sunday, my right turn signal started doing that double-fast blinky thing indicating that a bulb was burned out. I will check and see which one it is when I get to their house, I told myself, then I will ask whether there is an auto parts store nearby. I had to signal a right turn mere yards from my sister's house, meaning that naturally I forgot all about it by the time I parked.

So I was going to go to the auto parts store by my house on Monday. But then Melissa asked me if I wanted to come to her apartment for pizza her treat. And I was hungry and my internet was out, so I made my way to Casa Fascinating posthaste without passing go and without, since it was pouring rain, stopping for a blinker bulb. I spent pretty much all day there, most of which we spent, I kid you not, ignoring each other entirely. I brought my computer and she had hers and, well, thanks to the ADD, we are not girls who multi-task well.

Finally, on Tuesday mid-foisting my resume on various school offices, I stopped for a bulb. A lot of times, the guys at auto parts stores will offer to help you out with that kind of stuff, but it was a girl helping me and she seemed very concerned with which employee was leaving when so she could take her break, so I paid and took my bulb home. I was pretty sure I could handle it anyway. I had helped my dad put one in a couple of years ago and once we figured out which phillips-head screw the manual meant we should remove, it hadn't been that difficult.

I got home, changed out of my Please Hire Me outfit, and got to work. First order of business: find the page number for changing a turn signal bulb in the index of my owner's manual. Second order of business: check all of the pages around that number to discover which page it's actually on since NONE OF THE PAGE NUMBERS MATCH UP. This has made me a little crazy over the course of the six years I've owned this car.

I found the page eventually and just went ahead and removed all three screws in the general area, as well as the plastic wing nut thingy inside the trunk. Then I spent a rather embarrassing amount of time trying to get the big red plastic thing to come off the car. You know, the thing I sort of cut off in this picture from that post about my couch.

But come off it finally did and I was left only with the last step: turn the light socket counterclockwise and then pull it straight out. Turn. Pull. Pull. Pull. Not budging. Pull. Pull. (Repeat for, you know, a long time.) Realize in current agitated state, I'm likely to break it if I continue. Quit.

So I put the big red plastic thing back in place and decided I'd go back to the auto parts store the next day to see if I couldn't get someone there to get the damn socket out for me. I changed out of the Please Hire Me clothes before going back on Wednesday and yes, I happened to put on a tank top, but as those of you in the San Antonio area know, it is hot as hell and twice as humid around here these days. My purple tank top and I went to the auto parts store (I'm not being coy here about the name of it. It's not Auto Zone. Beyond that, I can't tell you what it is.) where we were actively ignored by four auto part store employees for quite some time.

Finally, a different girl from the one who helped me the first time told me she could come out and look at it as soon as she made two more phone calls. I was comforted to see that she also struggled with it for quite some time before finally getting the damn thing out. I'd say that I loosened it for her but that would be an out and out lie.

Unlike that tweet, which contained no falsified information, merely misleading information. Sure, nobody offered to help me. I had to ask. And the helpful young employee was not a boy. And the tank top likely played no part whatsoever. But I think we can all agree that the most important thing is that my tweet got twenty favorites, putting me on the first page of the Favrd Leaderboard for that day.

Because to be honest, the internet is kind of propping up my self-esteem these days. Maybe I can't get a job, but invisible internet people think I'm funny. Probably I can't put that on my resume though. You think?

I remembered clean underwear, if that makes anyone feel better.

At some point I started phrasing it "I have The ADD" because it sounded funnier to me that way.  Now I can't even say it without The, the same way I started saying Pflugerville pronouncing the P and now hear it that way in my head every time I see it written.

So, anyway, Holly and I have had numerous recent conversations which involve me having The ADD, including on Saturday, when I was getting ready to leave for my parents' house to catsit for the weekend.  I stood in the kitchen, writing out a deposit slip for the security deposit check from my Madison apartment, which I finally received last week.  The plan: drive through the bank, drive to parents' house, meet Holly (who would be giving me a bank-related headstart) at the parents' and then go to the pool.

Me: I think I have everything. Pajamas, toothbrush, clean clothes...my swimsuit and towel are at my parents' house already.  Ok, I'll see you there.

Begins walking out of kitchen.

Holly: Did you want to take this check?

Me: Damn it.

Holly: It's ok.  You have The ADD.

Me: Now you know I'm not making it up.

Holly: Oh, I already knew that.

I went ahead and reinforced it anyway by leaving and immediately coming back in for my sunblock.  Then calling fifteen minutes later to ask if she'd bring my book.  She doesn't know yet that I wore my contacts and brought the case, but no contact solution or glasses. 

You'd think a grown up person could pack for an overnight stay in less than five minutes without benefit of a list.  And you'd probably be right.  But you wouldn't be thinking of me.  I have The ADD.

One more for the road

I keep wondering which will happen first: I'll think of something to post or the Charter person will come and disconnect my cable and internet.  So far neither. 

But I'm not likely to be online again until Wednesday night, when I will hopefully have no interesting tire and/or car malfunction problems to report to you.  Regarding my car anyway.  Jake (driving up here with his brother in his truck, loading my stuff into a trailer, and pulling it back to Texas) has already had engine trouble in Kansas last night, which was fixed miraculously quickly, and he should be here in three hours or so.

In the meantime, since I have thought of nothing more interesting to tell you, allow me to share a couple of packing lessons learned. 

There is no good way to pack hangers.  On the way up, I threw all of my clothes in a big pile in the back seat, still on hangers.  This time, since I had gotten rid of so much stuff, I had room to pack the clothes instead.  Leaving me with one million hangers to somehow pack.  My solution involving my laundry basket and a lot of packing tape across the top is probably far more Lucy Ricardo than it is MacGuyver.  I suppose I'll find out in a couple of days.

Secondly, if you think you have an extra box lid, probably look around to make sure there aren't any lidless boxes sitting around.  I'm not saying it's impossible that you somehow lost the box that went to that lid, just that if you discover that you did in fact need that lid after you've already put it in the recycling and then go to retrieve it, you may wind up scaring the crap out of yourself and the squirrel who was rooting around in the recycling bin.

I better quit playing chicken now with the Charter guy and publish.  I'm sure I'll be Twittering from the road.  Stay tuned...

The Not Ready for HGTV Players

There are actual serious things to say, but Thursday night hardly seems like a time to say them, especially since most of you will read this on Friday, not a serious time at all.  So until I get around to that, here: enjoy this true tale of my ineptitude creative home repair solution.

My alarm goes off at 6:00.  This is so I can snooze a few times and still get up at around within twenty minutes of 6:30.  So I mean to go to bed by 10:00 so I can get eight hours of sleep.  This never, ever happens.

So, at 10:30 one night last week, I was working on reinstalling my wireless router and getting through the pile of To Be Ironed items that had been living on my ironing board for a while.  I heard the smoke detector beep once.  Then again.  Then it was beeping pretty much once a minute or so.  This was going to be problematic for sleeping, seeing as how I can't shut my bedroom door to block out the noise, what with there not being a bedroom door.

Also problematic: my hugely high ceilings.  In my first apartment here in Madison, I'm pretty sure I could have reached the smoke detector by standing on tiptoes.  This apartment, not so much.  Nor could I get within a foot of it by standing on tiptoes on a chair.  The tallest movable item in my apartment that seemed sturdy enough for standing on was my kitchen table.  I know that it will support my weight (recent Girl Scout Cookie binge notwithstanding) since in that first apartment, it was only by sitting on that table that I could get cell service.

I cleared off the table and carried it over to the smoke detector area.  I climbed up.  I was still a good six inches short.  What to do?  There are built-ins on either side of the smoke detector.  Sitting on either would get me up high enough to reach the ceiling.  Unfortunately, with the smoke detector centered between them, I was going to need some go-go gadget arms to reach it from there.

There's this plastic stepstool I have that my parents bought me for my first apartment lo these many years ago, in large part because the thermostat there was located above eye level, so I couldn't see from the ground what temperature I was requesting.  It was getting on 11:00 by this point and the beeping OH MY GOD THE BEEPING so I plunked the stool on top of the table, climbed up on top and angrily clawed at the smoke detector.  Ok, I didn't claw but I did pull that sucker off the ceiling and remove the battery posthaste.

Then I climbed down and put in an online maintenance request for some tall men in possession of a ladder to put a new battery in the following day.  Which they did.

The End

Now with far more backstory than the punchline actually warrants!

Recently the group I'm temping for moved from the fourth floor of one building to the basement of another.  So not only did we go from enjoying a very nice view to not seeing daylight all day, but my cube neighbor's radio station went from probable slogan South Central Wisconsin's Twangiest Country! to Now with even more static!  (Hello, Lori's iPod!  Now with Christmas music!)

Anyway, we're in the basement and the door nearest to my assigned parking lot leads into the basement (once you've swiped your badge and punched in your PIN code).  Except it leads to a part of the basement that is not connected to the part of the basement where I work.  I could instead walk farther outside in the freezing cold and then cut through a cold parking garage to come in to the correct part of the basement.  But in order to get into the heated indoors more quickly, I choose to go in the door closest to where I park, walk up two flights of stairs (or ride up two floors in the elevator, where you have to swipe your badge again, unlike the stairs - apparently this company is only concerned with security threats from lazy people), cut through the first floor to a separate stair case (stairs again, for I am all healthy-like!) and come back down two flights. 

You should also know that the other building offered free coffee.  It was pretty standard coffee, but it was there and it was caffeinated.  Here we have Starbucks coffee, but you have to pay for it.  Thus, I am bringing my thermal mug of coffee (Now with eggnog-flavored creamer!) to work every morning.

So, there I was coming down the stairs first thing in the morning when my boot heel got caught on the edge of the last stair and I briefly pitched forward.  Had I actually fallen, this would have put my face into rather forceful contact with the wall, most likely breaking both my nose and glasses.  But this was not my first thought.  No, no.  What immediately went through my head?

MY COFFEE!!!

And that, folks, is called having your priorities in order.

Deja Vu All Over Again

Those of you who were around here a year ago may remember me writing some posts about NaNoWriMo. 

For anyone who wasn't here last fall and doesn't know what the heck I'm talking about, NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month.  Every year, tens of thousands of people world-wide sign up here and then attempt to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November.  Last year was the first year I'd attempted it and I finished at noon on November 30 with a whopping 50,002 words (I'll leave it up to you to decide whether the two extraneous words were "a novel" written under the title on the cover page or "THE END" typed with great zeal when I finally finished.)

Those of you who were around here, and more notably around ME, last November will also remember that I complained about it.  A LOT.  It is a challenging thing to do, this writing a novel in a month.  You have to average 1,667 words a day.  These words are intended to go together, forming a plot.  With characters.  And dialogue.  And some sort of (although this is in no way enforced) coherence.

Last year's novel was called Nora Stern is No Hero (a novel).  I decided to start with a wordy title, just to get myself going.  I also gave each of my chapters a long, wordy title, despite the fact that I have never before even been tempted to title a chapter.  Because I never knew what was coming next, I couldn't write an accurate chapter title before beginning the chapter, but I felt a need to boost my word count right off the bat.  So several of my chapters were temporarily titled something along the lines of "Will anything happen in Chapter 13?" or "Probably the plot should finally move forward in Chapter 17."  Once something had happened (or not) and the chapter was complete, I would change the title, usually to something involving even more words.

I did it last year in large part because I had an idea for a book and I didn't think I'd ever finish it without some sort of externally imposed deadline.  Also, I had moved to Austin a few months earlier and I wanted to meet some people there.  I remember thinking partway through how insane it was and how I'd never do it again.

I remember my next thought being that I'd probably forget how hard it was and sign up the very next year.

Because, see, I have this idea for a book and I don't think I'll ever finish it without some sort of externally imposed deadline.  And I just moved to Madison a few months ago and this could be an opportunity to meet more people here.

Plus, now there's the whole not having a job thing.  Maybe someone in the Madison NaNo group would like to give me a job.  And, novel procrastination being as powerful as it is, I should actually want to write more cover letters.  And if anybody asks me during November "what do you do?" I can say with total honesty, "I'm writing a novel."  I won't TELL them that I'm getting paid for it, I will just let them THINK that I'm getting paid for it.  See the difference?

So if you didn't enjoy the whining last November, you might want to stick around until the end of October and then rejoin us in December.  It's going to get complainey around here.

Spoiler Alert: If you're in your twenties and do not want to know what your future holds, stop reading now.

I did not think that the deterioration of my body after my thirtieth birthday would be so immediate.

I have injured my shoulder.  Was I playing tennis?  Swimming, perhaps?  Diving into the bushes in order to escape a biker attempting to run me down on the sidewalk?  Nope.

I was sleeping.

My age is apparently now sufficiently advanced to the extent that I don't even need to be conscious to hurt myself.  I can sustain an injury despite total inactivity.  Inactivity carried out in the most favorable environment possible.  Comfortable mattress, excellent pillow.  I did not fall out of bed or anything.  I got in bed, I slept, I woke up like this.

Thirty is a bitch.

Yes, there was a first half of this trip that I have not yet told you about

But right now I am very sleepy, so all you get is this anecdote from today, the first full day of the San Antonio/my sister's wedding portion of my trip.

I was at the pool in my parents' subdivision with them, my brother and sister-in-law, San Antonio Roommate Holly, and Lisa and her fiance Gary.  When I noticed what appeared to be a giant insect swimming toward Gary.  And I very helpfully shouted:

THERE IS DEFINITELY SOMETHING SWIMMING TOWARD YOU.

Which, naturally, alarmed him.  The thing turned out to be a frog and the situation was diffused by its removal from the pool.  But it did make me wonder about my ability to be of use in a crisis situation.  That "definitely" was just window dressing there, wasn't it?  Wasted time.  It wasn't as if Gary would have doubted my sincerity if I had been more brief. 

What next?  IT DOES NOT SEEM UNREASONABLE TO THINK AND I DO NOT BELIEVE THAT I AM UNJUSTIFIED IN DISPLAYING SOME DEGREE OF ALARM WHILE POINTING OUT  THAT YOUR HOUSE APPEARS TO HAVE VERY POSSIBLY CAUGHT SOMEWHAT ON FIRE?  God help us all if our survival ever depends on my ability to speak concisely. 

Coming soon:  My trip to New York!  The Sharon and Eili's Wedding Recap! 

Coming much sooner:  Brushing my teeth and going to bed! 

Nighty night, Internet.

I have suspected this all along.

I have a rather painful bruise on my hip.  I figured out that it must have resulted from doing laundry yesterday.  That's right, I sustained a laundry-related injury.

Ok, so it's not so much from doing laundry as from schlepping my very full laundry basket a couple of blocks to and from my car.  Apparently my hips are not so sturdy as they once were.  I would not hesitate to show you a photo, but it doesn't look nearly impressive enough to give you the proper feel for its seriousness.  I fear it might be a contusion.

(This is an old inside joke between Amy and me.  One of her coaches told her that she must have a contusion.  We decided that a contusion sounded like something much more serious than it is, which is, essentially, a bruise.  So after that, whenever one of us had any kind of pain, the other one would say "Uh oh.  I bet it's a contusion."  To which the injured party would respond by going into hysterics about being too young to die, etc.)

In conclusion, housework is bad for you.

The End.

You didn't think of a title either, did you?

Let's say you've decided to spend your beautiful Sunday afternoon on a long walk and hanging around the park in the sunshine.  You have been remarkably responsible by applying plenty of spf 45 sunblock and wearing a tube top so as not to get tan lines that are incompatible with the strapless dress that you'll be wearing in Amy's wedding (which is the best bridesmaid dress ever, if you do say so yourself, which you do, and it's a good thing since you yourself picked it out).  You even thought to loop the wire between your earphones behind your head so you wouldn't get a skinny little line from it across your chest and neck.  You were on top of this visible tan line prevention thing.

Maybe you could have thought at some point to TAKE OFF THE GIANT SUNGLASSES.  Dumbass.

Maid of Honor, Incognito.

Amy: I promise that on your wedding day I will not stay in bed enough extra minutes to leave myself no time at all to do anything presentable with my hair like I did today.  Also, this is the necklace I told you about.  Is it ok?

Probably some people would just say "stubborn". Probably their couches came all in one piece too. Aren't they fancy?

Seeing as how my couch wouldn't fit through the door, I left it on the curb for some lucky college students and ordered a Ty Pennington Style sectional from Sears that would arrive Some Assembly Required.  Because I am cheap, I decided to take a chance on getting it into my Ford Focus rather than pay the $60  delivery fee.  And because I am stubbornly independent, I went by myself to pick it up rather than trouble anyone to come with me.

Once I saw the box, I was pretty convinced that it wasn't going to fit in my car.  But hey!  It did!  The Focus has been terribly convenient that way.  As opposed to my previous car, a Saturn SC2, the trunk of which was large enough to accommodate about six standard sized grapes.  So the two Sears guys, working together, got it loaded up and I drove home.  I had, at the time, no idea how I was going to get it out of my car, up the steps into my building, and downstairs to my apartment, but I'd cross that bridge when I came to it.  Present Me loves nothing better than screwing over Future Me.

When I got home, I tried lifting the box and found that there was clearly no chance of me moving it anywhere on my own.  Fortunately, this piece of furniture came Lots of Assembly Required.  I used the Swiss Army Knife on my keys to open up the box and made several trips to my apartment with the various pieces of my couch.  Then I took the empty box to the trash.  But not before I took a photo of it, because I am a sick person who must find blog material in every last thing I do.

Except that is nowhere near the end of this story.  No, no, there were TWO of these boxes.  Only one would fit in my car at a time, so I drove back to Sears, drove home, and repeated the entire process.  Leaving me with not one, but two piles resembling this in my living room:

Which then became this:

I built it with my own two hands.  And, you know, large pieces fabricated in China.  But the point is that at no point in this process did Ty Pennington lift a finger to help.  Did he even show up?  No.  Ty Pennington, MOVE THAT ASS!

Anyway, ta-da!  Couch!  Done!

Wait...

Rat bastard. 

Yet another post in which I go ahead and tell you something embarrassing that I swore I wouldn't tell the Internet.

Here's a movie line (from Notting Hill) that I didn't include in that other post, but which was stuck in my head Saturday morning as I prepared to go to the open house to meet Amy:

This is one of those key moments in life when it's possible to be really, genuinely cool and I'm going to fail just a hundred percent! 

I wouldn't say that I failed a hundred percent.  Maybe only 25%.  Read on, dear Internet, and you make the call.

Melissa showed up at my house around 11:00 dressed casually and yet bearing cute tops and heels.  She changed into one of these and, after inspecting my closet and finding nothing acceptable there, gave me her other top to wear.  She told me to wear this with jeans and pointy-toed heels.  I obeyed because I am fashion-impaired.  Then, after hair and make-up and a stop at the liquor store for Grey Goose and juice, we were off!

Melissa's navigation system, Bianca, led us to Jennifer's house.  Where we saw people sitting outside.  Casually-dressed people.  Realizing that we were way overdressed, we drove right on past and started heading back toward my house to change.  Except Jennifer lives far north of me, and I-35, a.k.a. The Vortex of Traffic Doom, was packed even on a Saturday afternoon.  It was nearing 1:00 and the party was scheduled to last until 2:00.  What to do?

Target, as usual, came to the rescue. 

Bianca found us a Target nearby and Melissa dropped me off at the door and then went to park and change in her car into her casual clothes.  I made for the shoes to pick up some flip flops before realizing that the jeans that fit with the four inch heels were clearly just not going to work out with flip flops.  I called Melissa who came in and started grabbing things off racks and tossing them at me so that mere minutes later I had a cute and casual new skirt and t-shirt, flip flops that Melissa grabbed while I was in the fitting room, and a new bra since the pink one I had on, showing through my new white shirt, was not going to make the statement I was hoping for.  I changed in the car and we were off!  Again!

Yes, Internet, I bought a whole new outfit because mine was ALL WRONG.  And I really wasn't going to tell you that.

Ok, so we arrived at Jennifer's once again and people were no longer outside, but this time we took the extraordinary step of parking the car, getting out, and actually going into the house.  Once inside, we met Jennifer, who was hosting and whose house is completely adorable.  And then we met Amy herself.  My first impression: she is teeny tiny.  And then we started talking and Heather B. you could not have been more correct in your comment on Melissa's post.  Which, for you lazy asses who can't be troubled to click on the link said, among other things:

She'll be one of the sweetest, least intimidating people that you will ever meet. I promise. And she's fun and funny and she actually is that pretty in real life.

All true.  She was so not indimidating, in fact, that I even spoke some actual words, not merely in her presence but directly to her.  We conversed, people.  (This should not imply that I didn't spend 90% of the time sitting mutely while other people talked.  I'm just saying that it wasn't the 100% that I had been anticipating.)  And she did not seem freaked out at all by all of the Internet fan-people, although she did admit to wondering whether it would be awkward, what with it being a party full of socially maladjusted Internet people.  (She was including herself in there - that sounded mean otherwise, didn't it?)  And she let us take pictures so we could post them on our blogs with long and drooly posts.  AND she said we should totally email her because we're, like, her people now.  How sweet is that?

Really, Lori?  You could buy a new outfit but not bother to de-frizz your hair? 

Oh, and there were other nice people there too!  Including Lisa, who really did bring tie-dyed pound cake (mmmm...) and jalepeno lemonade (right, as if I am not way too wussy to try that) and who told me that I look like Amy.  Which, while not true at all, was still one of the nicest things anyone has said to me in a good long while.

And today I am again wearing my new Target shirt which I now realize that you can sort of see down.  Awesome.

Keeping the Customer Satisfied

Remember: you're the ones who asked for more photos.

Borrowed red dress: $0

Gold toe socks: $3

Hair: $75

Deciding to go ahead and post that photo you took just in case you decided to tell the Internet about how you stuffed your bra with socks rather than pay to have your dress altered: idiotic priceless

Vegas, baby! Shibuya!

We arrived in Vegas Thursday night, immediately greeted on the way to our hotel room by two drunk guys shouting "Hello, hot chicks!"  We felt sure that we would enjoy our stay here.

Then, Friday morning, the two Hollys met.

The space-time continuum was not disrupted, so we celebrated with sightseeing and overpriced Starbucks.  That night there was a wedding rehearsal which was blessedly short as it was outdoors in the 20-something windchill.  Afterward we ate and drank.  And drank.  And possibly sent some text messages.  Oops!

Saturday was the wedding.  So I got my hair done.

It cost $75 and so let us look at it from another angle.

I think, for that price, we should all keep on admiring it.

Then Holly and Adam got married.  And ate cake.

 

After the reception, we changed clothes and went to the Big Apple Bar at New York, New York. 

 

Where the waitress asked me, despite the fact that I was sitting between two girls, whether I was the one who got married.  Then she carded me.  Apparently I appeared to be some sort of child bride who was in a pretty good mood after having been already deserted by her brand new husband.

Drinky

Drink

Drunk

Then, no longer minding about the cold, we walked to the Bellagio to see the fountain.

On the way back to New York, New York, I fell directly on my ass.  Holly and I were walking arm in arm at the time, so either I am a kind drunk and let go of her or she is a mean one and let go of me.  Not only were the red apple martinis interfering with my already subpar coordination skills, I was wearing irresponsible shoes and there was water on the sidewalk and one of those Slippery When Wet cones.  Normally this would have been a little humiliating, but there on the Strip I think it just really made me fit in.  So no harm done to my pride but I think I may have cracked my tailbone.  It didn't hurt until late the next day, but then it sure did make the two and a half hour plane ride less fun than it otherwise might have been.

Then back at our hotel, we watched The Dynamite Band.

 

Which was truly hilarious.  The Violent Femmes a la Kip.  Madonna as performed by Deb.  Good times.  Sadly, you can't see Deb's fanny pack in that photo or really see Napoleon on drums at all. 

When I woke up Sunday morning, I discovered that the $75 hair had not moved.  Naturally, I documented this for you.

While I am apparently not quite awake enough to be bothered with opening both eyes all the way, there is obviously no hangover.  Amy thinks it has to do with the extra oxygen pumped into the casinos, but I think I finally just learned my damn lesson about drinking enough water.  Either way, yay!

After removing 38 bobby pins and using an entire bottle of hotel shampoo, I was back to regular hair in time for sight-seeing.  SA roommate Holly and I visited many hotels on the Strip, including the MGM Grand, where we discovered a restaurant bearing the name that is our new favorite exclamation.

Shibuya!

That evening, we returned to our hotel for dinner before leaving for the airport.  We decided, what the hell, we would have steak since really what was a few more dollars and a little more cholesterol at that point.  We had spent the weekend discovering what the Vegas slogan really ought to be: What happens in Vegas stays ON YOUR ASS.  Seeing as how we had only each gambled $1 (we lost), the bulk of our Vegas experience revolved around empty calories.  Apparently we still looked good enough for the drunk men of the Orleans casino, judging by my favorite pick-up line of the weekend: "Hey!  I'm single!"  Can't imagine why, drunk guy, with smooth lines like that.

Then we came home. 

The end Shibuya!

Let's uh...call this a post, ok?

How about a picture of me dressed for the party last Friday?  One where I am standing awkwardly and also sort of appear to be wearing the Santa hat that actually lives on top of our tree?  Ok?  Ok.

The reason why my hair looks like that instead of how it was supposed to?  Well, it was a tragic accident, but one that could have been prevented.  Let this be a lesson to all of the kids out there: wine and curling irons do not mix.  Whatever you do kids, don't drink and style.

Yes, I burned the heck out of my finger attempting to curl my hair while slightly tipsy.  But obviously we are going to have to think of a much better story to go along with the giant scar that I'm about to have.  Let us put our heads together.  I'm counting on you, Internet.

Dry clean only? I THINK NOT.

I wore light-colored linen pants yesterday.  You know where this story is going already, don’t you?

First of all, I am not qualified to own linen clothing due to my complete inability to iron effectively.  I iron things and they tend to come out looking roughly like they did before I started, except with a new crease that I have inadvertently added.  This could be because I don’t iron very often, and therefore lack practice.  I have also not once remembered, in an estimated 300 trips to the grocery store and Target since moving here, to buy starch.

But Lisa gave me some clothes recently, which included several pair of dress pants.  This was very exciting for me since most of the pants I already own are rather ill-fitting.  Which has not been an issue for the past couple of years since I wore jeans to work every day.  And I wear jeans to this job a lot too.  But then I had a meeting at the corporate headquarters, where people dress professionally, and it occurred to me that I should wear something besides jeans. I have several nice skirts, but would clearly freeze to death in a skirt in the subarctic environment that is my cubicle.  The linen pants were the only new hand-me-downs that didn’t require hemming to be worn even with my highest of heels, so linen it was!

I ironed them, and they looked, well, not so great.  But not so terrible either.  So I put them on with my old stand-by Old Navy black button down shirt and my new fancy schmancy black boots, the effect approaching Actual Dressed-Up Professional results.  And I went to work.

And then I went home for lunch, as usual.  And I let the dogs in when I got there, as usual.  It did not occur to me to go to my room and change my pants first since the dogs never get my pants dirty.  And they didn’t get them dirty yesterday either.  They DESTROYED them.

The unusual thing was, it had rained the night before.  This does not happen often, and so I forgot what rain would mean.  Namely that Feta would be a huge furry ball of mud.  Mud which, while I toweled her off before letting her in, of course wound up all over the bottom of my right pants leg.

Then while I was eating an apple with peanut butter, Colby very sweetly laid his head on my left knee and began power-drooling.

So I thought, to end the drooling, I will give him some peanut butter!  Which of course ended up all over my right knee.

Dogs 3, Linen 0

I intended to go and change just as soon as Passions was over.  Change into what, I did not know.  And then, a lunchtime miracle happened!  The mud and drool had dried in such a way that you could not even see them!  So I wiped the peanut butter off my knee with a washcloth, blowdried the resulting wet spot and went to my fancy corporate meeting, drool, mud, peanut butter residue and all.

And then I told the Internet.

Black Tuesday

Let's begin with Valentine's Eve, shall we?  I was in SuperTarget, looking for this shirt, which my friend Vicki was wearing for her own V-Day observance.  Remember how I told you the thing about my ankles being bad?  So there I was, walking along when suddenly my boot heel went out from under me and my right ankle, the feckless wimp, did nothing to stop it.  I thought for a moment that I was going to recover, but it was not to be.  I landed smack on my knees between two racks of yoga pants.  On a positive note, the ankle was not sprained, so I was not forced to hobble, or worse, hop on one boot all the way out of SuperTarget.  Ideally, I would wear nothing but sensible, flat, rubber-soled shoes to avoid this type of situation, but what fun would those be? 

(And also, the worst ankle sprain I've ever suffered happened while wearing tennis shoes.  I was walking down some extremely uneven porch steps and landed on the side of my foot.  I also scraped the hell out of the back of my hand, but did not drop the campaign literature that I had been in the process of hanging on doors.  Now that's commitment.  Or total inability to make good split-second decisions.  Because I so would have sacrificed those door-hangers if I had realized that it meant keeping all of my skin.)

So anyway, I discovered when I got home from Target that my fall was executed in a spirit of great patriotism!  Because it was in keeping with the falls of several members of the US Olympic team.  Sure their falls happened while propelling themselves over sheets of ice or hurtling down snowy mountains, but allow me to say that Target linoleum is nothing if not slick.  Sadly, as is the case for so many Olympians, my fall put me out of medal contention.

Valentine's Day itself dawned bright and beautiful.  Sunlight streamed through my bathroom window, the better to see the new zit above the corner of my mouth by!  And then I went to the pool and got all ready to swim.  Then I pulled my swim cap over my hair, at which time it promptly ripped right up the back.  And I decided to pack it in and go home since there wasn't time to drive to the store, buy a new swim cap, drive back and swim enough laps to make it worthwhile before it was time to go to work.  (I know I haven't talked much about the swimming recently, but rest assured, it continues.)

Then for the real high point of my day.  I got to work to find a dozen roses and a balloon on my officemate's desk.  No big deal until she complained about it being embarrassing and how her boyfriend should have had to come into their meeting to deliver them so he'd have to be as embarrassed as she was.

Valentine tip #1: Whining about receiving roses for Valentine's Day makes you sound like a spoiled princess, upset that you didn't get that gold-plated pony instead.

I did, however, receive a box of Godiva chocolates from one of my students, God bless his mother.  And Newsweek still loves me, judging by its prompt appearance in my mailbox.  So it was an exciting night full of current events, dinner (I cooked, Internet!), Gilmore Girls, and Olympics with the roommates.

And now, if you'll excuse me, a new swim cap is not going to buy itself.  Nor will its cousin, a spare swim cap.

When ADD and French baked goods collide

I had a plan, folks.  Which can only lead to one thing: unmitigated disaster.

It was last Friday and we were hosting a Christmas Party/Dessert Buffet (or as I preferred to call it: the holiday sugar orgy) and I had the afternoon to bake fudge-mint brownies and a buche de noel cake (from the French for "giant Swiss cake roll"), clean the entire house, and become party-presentable.

The plan was: 1)bake the buche de noel cake, 2)bake brownies while buche de noel cools, 3)fill cooled buche de noel with cool whip, 4) clean house, 5)shower.

So I started baking the first buche de noel.  (See that word first?  That's what we in the business call "foreshadowing.")  I didn't exactly read the directions though and instead of beating the sugar in with the eggs separately, I combined it with the dry ingredients (flour, cocoa, baking powder, salt) but went ahead with the cake.  While it baked, I did make the brownies.  Still on schedule.

Then I opened the oven to find a cake that was half charred/half bubble.  No problem.  Throw away cake, put brownies in oven, start making buche de noel #2.  Remember the thing about the sugar.  Check.

Once you bake the buche de noel, you need to roll it up in a towel that has been covered with powdered sugar.  So I did the sugared towel thing while the cake baked and then went to pour the leftover powdered sugar into a baggie, but thought wait, I should leave this in the bag so I can tell the difference between this and the flour in the baggie....NOOOOOOOOOOO!

Holiday Baking Tip #1: If you use powdered sugar instead of flour, your cake will NOT turn out.

Because of course the flour was not so much flour so much as it was powdered sugar from the time I made the buche de noel for my company Christmas party last year (which I might point out not only turned out on take 1, but my boss was sad that I couldn't make it to the party this year because I couldn't bring the cake.  Which may not say much for my boss's desire to hang out with me, but should prove to you people that I can in fact bake a mean buche de noel given the correct ingredients.)  So I tossed yet another cake, drove to HEB, bought flour, and executed an edible, if not perfect buche de noel upon my return.

Ta-Da!!!!!!!!!

Oooh, something shiny!

So I'm pretty sure I have ADD.  I haven't actually consulted a medical doctor about this.  What if the doctor said I didn't have it and then I had no excuse for being absent-minded and directionless?  No thank you mister med school.

Case in point: Saturday night.

3:30-5:29 Clean house.  Aren't I a good and responsible roommate?  Wouldn't you like to have a roommate like me?  Well too bad because the house is full up, so back off!

5:30 Realize that I'm supposed to be at Amy's house in 20 minutes and have not dried hair or put on presentable clothes.  Freak out.

5:31-5:50 Dry hair.  Put on clean clothes.  Apply make-up in slapdash manner.  Put glasses back on because there is no time for contacts!

5:51-5:55  Get in car.  Pull out of driveway.  Drive 0.1 miles.  Remember that drivers license is still in pocket of skirt worn out last night.  Use foul language.  Execute 3-point turn and drive back home.

5:56 Park in driveway.  Realize am idiot.  Dinner isn't until 6:30 and I have an extra half hour.  Walk into house chanting get drivers license, get drivers license...

5:57 Reach bathroom and decide to use some of extra time to put in contacts.

5:59 Walk into bedroom.  Have no idea what I went in there to get.  See cute Paris picture frame sitting picture-less in pile of stuff on dresser and decide to use extra time to deal with European souvenir collection.

6:00-6:15 Put picture in frame.  Get Swiss picture clippy thing and find picture for it.  Remove old items from designated shelf on entertainment center and obsessively arrange and rearrange European souvenir items.

6:16 Realize am late again.  Leave old shelf items on floor, grab purse and leave.

6:18 Exit neighborhood.  Remember that license is still in skirt pocket!  Use more foul language.

6:20 Pull back in driveway.  Run to bedroom and extract license from skirt in dirty clothes pile.  Call Amy to see if I'm now too late to stop at her house on the way to the restaurant.  Be reassured that yes, we've met, so she was expecting me 10 minutes late.  So I'm right on time.

Still don't think I have ADD, Dr. Smartypants?