A couple weeks ago, I drew attention to my lazy blogging of late by saying I'd written only seven posts since July. You know what, though? That was actually a lie. You could say I've been cheating on you. Or rather, cheating on my blog. Or actually, not cheating at all; just spreading the love around. Or something like that. What I'm saying is I have actually written a wee bit more than you've seen here. On Thursday, for instance, I wrote about that PedalPub outing I took on Halloween. Last month, I wrote about how I removed the persistent (albeit unladylike) gym stank from my workout clothes. The month before that, I wrote about the Shampoo Slumber Party my friend Jamie hosted a while back. And in the midst of my South Dakota road trip, from a motel with free Wi-Fi in Wall, South Dakota, I gave the Internet a glimpse into what dinner looks like at this spinster's abode.
So you see? I'm actually about 50% more prolific than I appear initially! (It's a weak claim, but I'll make it anyway. I'll even go so far as to argue this short post--hey, it's a short week!--counts as four, four, FOUR posts in one!)
If you're not already doing so, pop on over to The Greenists every now and then. You never know what (or who!) else you might find there.
Showing posts with label Blogging. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Blogging. Show all posts
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Thursday, July 02, 2009
Three quick things
- I finally got my car's air conditioner fixed... and immediately thereafter, the temperature dropped and has stayed below 72 degrees since. To everyone in the Twin Cities who was tired of that heat wave, you're welcome.
- I got a hundred bucks knocked off that AC repair bill pretty much just by asking if they could do better than their seemingly unreasonable labor rate. Who knew I was a master negotiator? Not me! I already bragged about this on Facebook, but I am proud enough that I feel the need to mention it again anyway.
And finally, - I have a post up at Allie's Answers today. You should go read it.
That is all. Carry on. Happy long weekend, if you've got one coming. (My condolences to you if you don't.)
Monday, January 19, 2009
Don't you love it when I say I'm not going to talk about something and then I talk about it anyway? Yeah, this is one of those posts.
A few status updates...
License plate: Still sitting on my passenger seat, rather than affixed to my bumper.
Weather: Still in the balmy above-zero range.
Bush's term: Mere hours from over. HOURS! Wheeee!
I think that about covers all the important stuff. No? Oh. Right. You probably want to hear about The Buddhist.
To be honest, I'm not entirely sure how much I want to say about that on-blog. If I know you in person, I will be happy to share my muddled jumble of thoughts on that evening, but I'm not so keen on trying to corral those thoughts into a logical post that will live on the Internet indefinitely. Fair enough? Maybe? I hope so.
I will tell you this, though. It turns out that a Buddhist center, in this case, is really just a house. A beautiful old brick house divided into two apartments, in which a combined total of seven people (specifically, seven urban Buddhists) live. Not only is it a lovely and cozy home, but it is furnished! With a multitude of chairs and tables and dressers and bookshelves that my ex-boyfriend the ex-pothead OWNS!
I'm sorry; have you met me? Then perhaps you're familiar with my tendency to blurt out the first thing that comes to mind, no matter how strange or inappropriate that thing may be. Hence, as I walked into the Buddhist's home on Saturday, after the expected hellos and "Wow; it's been a long time"s and "You look good!"s, the first comment out of my mouth was, "You have FURNITURE!!" My ex-boyfriend the Buddhist just laughed at me. "I do! I have furniture," he said. He seemed confused by my surprise. Perhaps he forgot that when I knew him last, he slept on a twin-sized mattress on the floor and his dresser was a laundry basket. Ah, good times.
I don't suspect the decor is in particular what you are curious about, however, but the rest is the part I'm less willing to commit to print. In short, we had a lovely time. I don't know what it means or where (if anywhere) it will go, but regardless of whether or how often I see him again, I am glad we had the chance to cross paths once more. (Note: If he flakes on me and I never hear from him after this, despite his repeated claims that he wants to see me again, please remind me that I said that, OK?)
It doesn't seem possible that I should be able to get together with someone I haven't seen in eight years and fall instantly into the same comfortable rapport we had back then, and yet, we sort of did. He remembers more than I thought he would. I remember more than he thought I would. It may turn out to be no more than just a few hours of reminiscing with an old friend, but I almost don't even mind if that's the case. Above all else, I am happy I saw him again simply for the validation that I am not a clinging-to-the-past crazy person, that I actually was more than a long-forgotten blip in his storied history. Though we dated for only a few months, Jimmy has always been significant to me, but I had no idea if it was at all mutual. He's one I've wondered about often, thinking if we'd met at a different point in his life, things might have gone differently. Turns out I'm not alone. Jimmy told me on Saturday that when we broke up, he thought, "This is a girl I should meet five to ten years from now." He smirked when I admitted to Googling him over the years, not because he was surprised, but because he had Googled me as well. And when I said, "Your Facebook page is all locked down!" he quickly replied, "Yeah... yours is, too."
Essentially, it played out exactly like I imagined it on those rare occasions when I let my mind stir up silly little fantasies or daydreams, wondering "What would happen if I ever ran into Jimmy again?" He said everything I would have wanted him to say. It went just like I would have wanted it to go. It was one of those very rare times where life actually DOES work like it does in the movies, at least for a little while (which is the only part movies show you anyway before they cut to credits). So. It was nice. I don't know what will happen from here. But it's lovely to hold on to some good memories, at least for a bit, anyway.
In other news, I had a blind date tonight with a stranger from the Internet. Yes, yes, that is nothing new, but in this case it was with another Stefanie, a sometimes-commenter who found me while vanity Googling her name a long while back. She is in town helping her mother move, and we met for dinner this evening. As it turns out, Internet strangers who read my blog can be at least as charming and interesting as most of the men I've met on meMarmony and Catch dot Mom. Or maybe it's just a Stefanie thing. We're thinking of holding a reunion. Or rather, a union, as most of us Stefanies on the Internet haven't actually ever met. How many more of us are out there anyway? And how many of you are in?
License plate: Still sitting on my passenger seat, rather than affixed to my bumper.
Weather: Still in the balmy above-zero range.
Bush's term: Mere hours from over. HOURS! Wheeee!
I think that about covers all the important stuff. No? Oh. Right. You probably want to hear about The Buddhist.
To be honest, I'm not entirely sure how much I want to say about that on-blog. If I know you in person, I will be happy to share my muddled jumble of thoughts on that evening, but I'm not so keen on trying to corral those thoughts into a logical post that will live on the Internet indefinitely. Fair enough? Maybe? I hope so.
I will tell you this, though. It turns out that a Buddhist center, in this case, is really just a house. A beautiful old brick house divided into two apartments, in which a combined total of seven people (specifically, seven urban Buddhists) live. Not only is it a lovely and cozy home, but it is furnished! With a multitude of chairs and tables and dressers and bookshelves that my ex-boyfriend the ex-pothead OWNS!
I'm sorry; have you met me? Then perhaps you're familiar with my tendency to blurt out the first thing that comes to mind, no matter how strange or inappropriate that thing may be. Hence, as I walked into the Buddhist's home on Saturday, after the expected hellos and "Wow; it's been a long time"s and "You look good!"s, the first comment out of my mouth was, "You have FURNITURE!!" My ex-boyfriend the Buddhist just laughed at me. "I do! I have furniture," he said. He seemed confused by my surprise. Perhaps he forgot that when I knew him last, he slept on a twin-sized mattress on the floor and his dresser was a laundry basket. Ah, good times.
I don't suspect the decor is in particular what you are curious about, however, but the rest is the part I'm less willing to commit to print. In short, we had a lovely time. I don't know what it means or where (if anywhere) it will go, but regardless of whether or how often I see him again, I am glad we had the chance to cross paths once more. (Note: If he flakes on me and I never hear from him after this, despite his repeated claims that he wants to see me again, please remind me that I said that, OK?)
It doesn't seem possible that I should be able to get together with someone I haven't seen in eight years and fall instantly into the same comfortable rapport we had back then, and yet, we sort of did. He remembers more than I thought he would. I remember more than he thought I would. It may turn out to be no more than just a few hours of reminiscing with an old friend, but I almost don't even mind if that's the case. Above all else, I am happy I saw him again simply for the validation that I am not a clinging-to-the-past crazy person, that I actually was more than a long-forgotten blip in his storied history. Though we dated for only a few months, Jimmy has always been significant to me, but I had no idea if it was at all mutual. He's one I've wondered about often, thinking if we'd met at a different point in his life, things might have gone differently. Turns out I'm not alone. Jimmy told me on Saturday that when we broke up, he thought, "This is a girl I should meet five to ten years from now." He smirked when I admitted to Googling him over the years, not because he was surprised, but because he had Googled me as well. And when I said, "Your Facebook page is all locked down!" he quickly replied, "Yeah... yours is, too."
Essentially, it played out exactly like I imagined it on those rare occasions when I let my mind stir up silly little fantasies or daydreams, wondering "What would happen if I ever ran into Jimmy again?" He said everything I would have wanted him to say. It went just like I would have wanted it to go. It was one of those very rare times where life actually DOES work like it does in the movies, at least for a little while (which is the only part movies show you anyway before they cut to credits). So. It was nice. I don't know what will happen from here. But it's lovely to hold on to some good memories, at least for a bit, anyway.
In other news, I had a blind date tonight with a stranger from the Internet. Yes, yes, that is nothing new, but in this case it was with another Stefanie, a sometimes-commenter who found me while vanity Googling her name a long while back. She is in town helping her mother move, and we met for dinner this evening. As it turns out, Internet strangers who read my blog can be at least as charming and interesting as most of the men I've met on meMarmony and Catch dot Mom. Or maybe it's just a Stefanie thing. We're thinking of holding a reunion. Or rather, a union, as most of us Stefanies on the Internet haven't actually ever met. How many more of us are out there anyway? And how many of you are in?
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Mid-week post of no import
So it looks like I'll be regaling you with even more dating stories come November. Thank you to everyone who voted in the poll. I thought perhaps those stories had grown tiresome, but it seems where my social awkwardness is concerned at least 26 of you are a tireless bunch. I may actually still do a more true-to-the-original take on that x365 idea at some point. Or, you know, I may forget all about it, just as I apparently did the last three letters of the Encyclopedia of Me. Time will tell.
Of course, I still haven't officially signed up for NaBloPoMo, which means I could still back out. (Changing mind, woman's prerogative and all that.) I have this possibly misguided and overly optimistic idea, however, that once I've decided to do it, I will DO it, despite my lax participation on the Internet of late. Then again, I decided to clean out my closet last weekend, and the unfinished remains of that project are still strewn about several rooms of my home, taunting me and my lack of stick-to-itiveness, so maybe I'm not so against abandoning my best intentions after all. I am inherently lazy(ish)... Hmm. Perhaps I should give this some more thought.
Speaking of laziness, I did manage to overcome that long enough to finally put in a few volunteer hours for the Obama campaign last night. Those of you in Minnesota, when you receive a flyer on your doorknob next week reminding you to vote, be aware that yours truly might have counted that very flyer out and bundled it in stacks to be delivered to your neighborhood. That's pretty exciting, I know. Almost makes you want to keep it forever, rather than recycle it Tuesday evening, right? What? If I told you that flyer was possibly touched not just by me, but by one of the regulars from "Crairie Pome Hompanion," THEN would you be more impressed? No? No crazed NPR nerds here? OK then. That said, "ue-Say ott-Scay" did spend her evening sorting and collating along with us common people last night, presumably of her own accord as a concerned and active Democrat, not just as a local celebrity. I'm sure the Homegrown Democrat she works for would be proud.
Let's see. What else? Well, I am both pleased and sad to report that there will be no more stories about my least favorite coworker, because as of last week she is no longer my coworker. Luckily, I can confidently say that her release had nothing to do with the big scary mess with the economy that we keep hearing about and had everything to do with her being an insufferable and near-useless drama queen. So yay for that, though boo to the fact that I'm now stuck doing about half of the work she previously did poorly.
Speaking of which, my Lean Cuisine tray is empty and my lunch break is just about up, so I'd best be getting back to that. What's new with all of you this fine Wednesday?
Of course, I still haven't officially signed up for NaBloPoMo, which means I could still back out. (Changing mind, woman's prerogative and all that.) I have this possibly misguided and overly optimistic idea, however, that once I've decided to do it, I will DO it, despite my lax participation on the Internet of late. Then again, I decided to clean out my closet last weekend, and the unfinished remains of that project are still strewn about several rooms of my home, taunting me and my lack of stick-to-itiveness, so maybe I'm not so against abandoning my best intentions after all. I am inherently lazy(ish)... Hmm. Perhaps I should give this some more thought.
Speaking of laziness, I did manage to overcome that long enough to finally put in a few volunteer hours for the Obama campaign last night. Those of you in Minnesota, when you receive a flyer on your doorknob next week reminding you to vote, be aware that yours truly might have counted that very flyer out and bundled it in stacks to be delivered to your neighborhood. That's pretty exciting, I know. Almost makes you want to keep it forever, rather than recycle it Tuesday evening, right? What? If I told you that flyer was possibly touched not just by me, but by one of the regulars from "Crairie Pome Hompanion," THEN would you be more impressed? No? No crazed NPR nerds here? OK then. That said, "ue-Say ott-Scay" did spend her evening sorting and collating along with us common people last night, presumably of her own accord as a concerned and active Democrat, not just as a local celebrity. I'm sure the Homegrown Democrat she works for would be proud.
Let's see. What else? Well, I am both pleased and sad to report that there will be no more stories about my least favorite coworker, because as of last week she is no longer my coworker. Luckily, I can confidently say that her release had nothing to do with the big scary mess with the economy that we keep hearing about and had everything to do with her being an insufferable and near-useless drama queen. So yay for that, though boo to the fact that I'm now stuck doing about half of the work she previously did poorly.
Speaking of which, my Lean Cuisine tray is empty and my lunch break is just about up, so I'd best be getting back to that. What's new with all of you this fine Wednesday?
Sunday, October 26, 2008
If I keep this up, I'll end up accidentally marrying one of these guys
Him: So, do you want to go out again?
What I was thinking: Um, I don't know... I mean, I like you, and I've been having fun hanging out with you, but I'm not sure I really feel it going anywhere. It sort of feels like a friend thing. Maybe something more could build from that, but maybe not. Frankly, to be blunt, I'm not sure I'm ever going to want to rip your clothes off. Plus, I've been dating this other guy at the same time, and I feel weird that I haven't told you that, even though we've in no way said we're doing anything exclusive here (and even though I'm not sure I want to rip his clothes off either), so my attention is sort of divided and frankly I'm just not sure I want to keep making time to date both of you. Or either of you. GAH; I don't KNOW!
What I SAID: Sure!
Seriously, who am I, and what happened to the date-and-run girl who used to live here???
In other news, NaBloPoMo is quickly approaching. Seeing as my blogging's been less than prolific of late, I don't know why I think signing on for that might be a good idea, but as I've done it the past two years, it does feel wrong not to give it a go a third time.
I realize, though, that the only thing that got me through NaBlo last year was a theme. Those of you who were around for that may remember I did this "Encyclopedia of Me" thing that several other people picked up on as well. (Some of you may also remember that I never actually finished the alphabet, but I did finish my full month of posting, so let's just forget about that little detail.)
Anyway, so I need a theme. And I thought I'd come up with one. I decided to do a "30 Dates in 30 Days" collection. Not that I would actually go on 30 dates in 30 days, mind you. (Aside from the fact that with all that dating, I would have no time to write about the dates, I think my four-date week a while back proved that no good can come from a marathon like that.) Instead I would simply write about 30 dates, current ones or amusing or painful ones from my past. You'd read that, right? Maybe?
But then tonight I read about this x365 project, and I thought that could make a good theme as well. Instead of 40-word posts about 365 people I've known, however, I'd do 30-word posts about 30 people. That could be fun, right? It would also guarantee all my posts would be short, meaning that those of you whose feed readers fill to capacity during NaBlo could happily zip through my line in your list in a minute or less. (I'm here to help, people. I have only yourshort attention spans best interests in mind.)
So help me out here, folks. What should I do? I'm not ready to let you guys pick my future husband quite yet, but I will let you pick my NaBloPoMo theme. (Maybe. I think. Aw, hell, just vote!)
This is my first attempt at including a poll, by the way. If it doesn't work, I think you can go here to complete it instead. Let's see!
What I was thinking: Um, I don't know... I mean, I like you, and I've been having fun hanging out with you, but I'm not sure I really feel it going anywhere. It sort of feels like a friend thing. Maybe something more could build from that, but maybe not. Frankly, to be blunt, I'm not sure I'm ever going to want to rip your clothes off. Plus, I've been dating this other guy at the same time, and I feel weird that I haven't told you that, even though we've in no way said we're doing anything exclusive here (and even though I'm not sure I want to rip his clothes off either), so my attention is sort of divided and frankly I'm just not sure I want to keep making time to date both of you. Or either of you. GAH; I don't KNOW!
What I SAID: Sure!
Seriously, who am I, and what happened to the date-and-run girl who used to live here???
In other news, NaBloPoMo is quickly approaching. Seeing as my blogging's been less than prolific of late, I don't know why I think signing on for that might be a good idea, but as I've done it the past two years, it does feel wrong not to give it a go a third time.
I realize, though, that the only thing that got me through NaBlo last year was a theme. Those of you who were around for that may remember I did this "Encyclopedia of Me" thing that several other people picked up on as well. (Some of you may also remember that I never actually finished the alphabet, but I did finish my full month of posting, so let's just forget about that little detail.)
Anyway, so I need a theme. And I thought I'd come up with one. I decided to do a "30 Dates in 30 Days" collection. Not that I would actually go on 30 dates in 30 days, mind you. (Aside from the fact that with all that dating, I would have no time to write about the dates, I think my four-date week a while back proved that no good can come from a marathon like that.) Instead I would simply write about 30 dates, current ones or amusing or painful ones from my past. You'd read that, right? Maybe?
But then tonight I read about this x365 project, and I thought that could make a good theme as well. Instead of 40-word posts about 365 people I've known, however, I'd do 30-word posts about 30 people. That could be fun, right? It would also guarantee all my posts would be short, meaning that those of you whose feed readers fill to capacity during NaBlo could happily zip through my line in your list in a minute or less. (I'm here to help, people. I have only your
So help me out here, folks. What should I do? I'm not ready to let you guys pick my future husband quite yet, but I will let you pick my NaBloPoMo theme. (Maybe. I think. Aw, hell, just vote!)
This is my first attempt at including a poll, by the way. If it doesn't work, I think you can go here to complete it instead. Let's see!
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Stuff and whatnot 2? I really need a better title for the posts of no import.
So we all have someone in our life for whom e-mail is apparently still a novel phenomenon and from whom we can therefore expect no fewer than 18 pointless e-mail forwards a week, right? What's that? No? It's not 1998, and you have somehow managed to put an end to that nonsense? How, pray tell... HOW??
Actually, I suppose I don't have nearly the string of offenders for this that I used to, but I still find myself somewhat routinely visiting Snopes.com to dispel some myth or absurdity that my mother received and thereafter forwarded to everyone in her address book. Yes, that's right, I said my mother. And in case you are wondering, no, she does not read my blog. At least, not that I know of. Um, hi Mom?
I bring up my mother and her forwards not because I want to talk about the ridiculous message she forwarded implying that my choice for our next president attempted to assume the highest office in our land with only 143 days of experience under his belt, nor to ponder the egregious pandering to the right wing in the absurd "let's blame Obama for botched late-term abortions" YouTube video she sent recently. No, the e-mail I'm referring to was decidedly less controversial but no less questionable. It was a message titled "The most dangerous chocolate cake in the world," and it claimed that one could, in fact, bake a legitimately tasty single-serving cake in the microwave in three minutes flat from ingredients I might actually have in my kitchen right now.
People, I was skeptical. I thought this would be a fun experiment, my own Snopes.com-esque research task. I expected to report back on the disastrous results and confidently steer you away from absurd three-minute e-mail cake. But you know what? It was delicious. Granted, I have had three glasses of wine tonight, for no better reason than it sounded like a tasty accompaniment to my dinner salad, and perhaps my currently a wee bit tipsy state might make any chocolate cake taste divine, but I'm pretty sure that's not fully the case. One can make chocolate cake in three minutes by stirring up a few tablespoons of ingredients in a coffee cup. Who knew?
Speaking of food (nice segue, Stef), you know how some of us occasionally introduce some new link by saying, "A friend of mine just started a blog, and you should check it out"? Yeah, I haven't done a whole lot of that here, mainly because none of my real-life friends have blogs, and now that one of them does, I feel compelled to tell you about it, even though it is a blog with a decidedly specific niche, and it's a niche that I can only imagine isn't necessarily useful or compelling to those of you outside the greater Twin Cities metropolitan area. (By my unscientific calculation, I'd say that's, oh, roughly 95% of you. Oh well.) In any case, my friend Carrie (she of the highbrow guilty pleasures and my partner in crime for infiltrating the RNC) is exercising her writing muscles by reporting on her dining experiences around the city, and if that sounds interesting to you (and why wouldn't it?), you should check it out. (Um, hi, Carrie. Should I have waited until you had more than three posts up before I linked to you? Perhaps. I guess this just means you have to go out to dinner with me to gather up some more new material. Deal?)
Next? Let's see. What old business did I have to attend to? Well, there is the fact that I had dinner with -R- last night, and although I did not bring a camera to document it, I can confidently assure the Internet that our pal -R- is, in fact, pregnant, and not merely telling "pregnancy card" stories just for fun. Mind you, the pregnancy card is not necessary. -R- was just as cheery and delightful as usual (well, cheery and delightful with the twinge of deviance and subdued rage that I so appreciate in her), and she looked just as adorable as you'd expect an eight-months-pregnant -R- to be. (Again, I can provide no photographic evidence, but you'll just have to take my word on this.)
Oh. Also, I neglected to comment back to comments on that last post, so to sum up and fill you in, 1. No, I have not gone on my second date with the yet-to-be-Internet-aliased prospect yet, but I will keep you updated once I do; 2. Sauntering Soul, yes, your next house should have a garage, but you should make sure it has no-maintenance siding; and 3. the Little House musical was good but not phenomenal; had the series and books not held a fond place in my heart, I can't say Melissa Gilbert's performance would have moved me much nor that more than two of the songs in the score would be anything more than forgettable. As Little House does hold a fond place in my heart, however, I fully enjoyed the experience anyway. Do with that conflicting review what you will.
Hmm. I also had a Facebook story I was going to share with you, but first of all it is past my bed time yet again and secondly I fear mentioning Facebook in three out of five consecutive posts is overstating its importance in an unsettling way. So we'll table that one for later, shall we? I promise you, however, it is absurd, and it proves I am not the only one among my blood relatives for whom a sitcom titled [insert name here]'s awkward life could be in the works. Really.
Actually, I suppose I don't have nearly the string of offenders for this that I used to, but I still find myself somewhat routinely visiting Snopes.com to dispel some myth or absurdity that my mother received and thereafter forwarded to everyone in her address book. Yes, that's right, I said my mother. And in case you are wondering, no, she does not read my blog. At least, not that I know of. Um, hi Mom?
I bring up my mother and her forwards not because I want to talk about the ridiculous message she forwarded implying that my choice for our next president attempted to assume the highest office in our land with only 143 days of experience under his belt, nor to ponder the egregious pandering to the right wing in the absurd "let's blame Obama for botched late-term abortions" YouTube video she sent recently. No, the e-mail I'm referring to was decidedly less controversial but no less questionable. It was a message titled "The most dangerous chocolate cake in the world," and it claimed that one could, in fact, bake a legitimately tasty single-serving cake in the microwave in three minutes flat from ingredients I might actually have in my kitchen right now.
People, I was skeptical. I thought this would be a fun experiment, my own Snopes.com-esque research task. I expected to report back on the disastrous results and confidently steer you away from absurd three-minute e-mail cake. But you know what? It was delicious. Granted, I have had three glasses of wine tonight, for no better reason than it sounded like a tasty accompaniment to my dinner salad, and perhaps my currently a wee bit tipsy state might make any chocolate cake taste divine, but I'm pretty sure that's not fully the case. One can make chocolate cake in three minutes by stirring up a few tablespoons of ingredients in a coffee cup. Who knew?
Speaking of food (nice segue, Stef), you know how some of us occasionally introduce some new link by saying, "A friend of mine just started a blog, and you should check it out"? Yeah, I haven't done a whole lot of that here, mainly because none of my real-life friends have blogs, and now that one of them does, I feel compelled to tell you about it, even though it is a blog with a decidedly specific niche, and it's a niche that I can only imagine isn't necessarily useful or compelling to those of you outside the greater Twin Cities metropolitan area. (By my unscientific calculation, I'd say that's, oh, roughly 95% of you. Oh well.) In any case, my friend Carrie (she of the highbrow guilty pleasures and my partner in crime for infiltrating the RNC) is exercising her writing muscles by reporting on her dining experiences around the city, and if that sounds interesting to you (and why wouldn't it?), you should check it out. (Um, hi, Carrie. Should I have waited until you had more than three posts up before I linked to you? Perhaps. I guess this just means you have to go out to dinner with me to gather up some more new material. Deal?)
Next? Let's see. What old business did I have to attend to? Well, there is the fact that I had dinner with -R- last night, and although I did not bring a camera to document it, I can confidently assure the Internet that our pal -R- is, in fact, pregnant, and not merely telling "pregnancy card" stories just for fun. Mind you, the pregnancy card is not necessary. -R- was just as cheery and delightful as usual (well, cheery and delightful with the twinge of deviance and subdued rage that I so appreciate in her), and she looked just as adorable as you'd expect an eight-months-pregnant -R- to be. (Again, I can provide no photographic evidence, but you'll just have to take my word on this.)
Oh. Also, I neglected to comment back to comments on that last post, so to sum up and fill you in, 1. No, I have not gone on my second date with the yet-to-be-Internet-aliased prospect yet, but I will keep you updated once I do; 2. Sauntering Soul, yes, your next house should have a garage, but you should make sure it has no-maintenance siding; and 3. the Little House musical was good but not phenomenal; had the series and books not held a fond place in my heart, I can't say Melissa Gilbert's performance would have moved me much nor that more than two of the songs in the score would be anything more than forgettable. As Little House does hold a fond place in my heart, however, I fully enjoyed the experience anyway. Do with that conflicting review what you will.
Hmm. I also had a Facebook story I was going to share with you, but first of all it is past my bed time yet again and secondly I fear mentioning Facebook in three out of five consecutive posts is overstating its importance in an unsettling way. So we'll table that one for later, shall we? I promise you, however, it is absurd, and it proves I am not the only one among my blood relatives for whom a sitcom titled [insert name here]'s awkward life could be in the works. Really.
Friday, August 01, 2008
Scorpions and aliens and space ships--oh my! (a.k.a. CYOB 2.0)
Note: This post is my portion of the massive adventure in organization that is NPW's Choose Your Own Blogventure. You remember those "Choose Your Own Adventure" books of our youth, right? It's sort of like that. Be sure to head on over to NPW's site to start the story (and to tell her how fabulous she is). The story segment below is my continuation from that intro.
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Click here to start the story.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Xinni froze mid-stride. The glowing man at the top of the hill might be her salvation. On the other hand, hadn't her father (and countless televised public service announcements) told her never to talk to strangers? She was on an unknown planet amid unknown inhabitants. How could she know whom to trust?
She glanced to her left, and then to her right, considering her choices if she shifted course. To the right, far off in the meadow, Xinni saw a gleaming mass of metal shining in the sun. From this distance, it looked like her own ship, the one she knew was destroyed on Aguas. That was impossible, of course. But Xinni didn't know where she had landed. Could it be she was on a planet that the Melmacian army had visited before?
Xinni turned right and began trudging towards what she knew might be no more than a mirage. She hadn't had food, water, or even an energy pellet since well before the Sea Scorpion attack the night before. She'd been too preoccupied with thoughts of Jax to eat anything at dinner with her crew. She might well be hallucinating. Still, she kept walking.
As Xinni cleared the next hill, she saw the unmistakable green and gold waves of her crew's crest and the letters UAM in bold type below it. United Army of Melmac. It WAS a ship from her own army! With a new burst of energy, Xinni broke into a sprint towards the ship. Perhaps the transmitter would still work. Perhaps she could send a signal that the Pullers would receive.
The ship had obviously landed in distress. The landing gear hadn't activated; the bottom of the vessel was distorted from the force of the impact, and the windows were shattered in pieces. Xinni stepped carefully over the bits of glass and metal and approached the broken window at the front of the control station. She took a deep breath before she climbed inside, knowing she might be horrified by what she'd find within.
Xinni looked immediately to the center console, hoping that by some miracle, the red light on the transmitter unit was still flashing. But where the transmitter should be was instead just an empty slot, a tangle of wires protruding from it haphazardly. Xinni quickly surveyed the rest of the ship. No signs of either survivors or victims. The ship appeared empty from this vantage point. Then she glanced back out the control station window. How had she not noticed it before? Between the wreckage of the ship and the nearby forest was a deliberate trail of metal and wires, flotsam obviously left to mark someone's way out... or way in.
Xinni stepped out of the ship and examined the trail. Should she follow it? Would it lead her to friend or foe? Just then, she heard a familiar voice calling her name. Jax? It couldn't be. He was still with his own crew, on Dunan. Surely her mind was playing tricks on her... or someone else was.
If you think Xinni should follow the trail (and the mysterious voice) into the forest, click here.
If you think Xinni should stay and examine the ship wreckage more carefully, click here.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Click here to start the story.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Xinni froze mid-stride. The glowing man at the top of the hill might be her salvation. On the other hand, hadn't her father (and countless televised public service announcements) told her never to talk to strangers? She was on an unknown planet amid unknown inhabitants. How could she know whom to trust?
She glanced to her left, and then to her right, considering her choices if she shifted course. To the right, far off in the meadow, Xinni saw a gleaming mass of metal shining in the sun. From this distance, it looked like her own ship, the one she knew was destroyed on Aguas. That was impossible, of course. But Xinni didn't know where she had landed. Could it be she was on a planet that the Melmacian army had visited before?
Xinni turned right and began trudging towards what she knew might be no more than a mirage. She hadn't had food, water, or even an energy pellet since well before the Sea Scorpion attack the night before. She'd been too preoccupied with thoughts of Jax to eat anything at dinner with her crew. She might well be hallucinating. Still, she kept walking.
As Xinni cleared the next hill, she saw the unmistakable green and gold waves of her crew's crest and the letters UAM in bold type below it. United Army of Melmac. It WAS a ship from her own army! With a new burst of energy, Xinni broke into a sprint towards the ship. Perhaps the transmitter would still work. Perhaps she could send a signal that the Pullers would receive.
The ship had obviously landed in distress. The landing gear hadn't activated; the bottom of the vessel was distorted from the force of the impact, and the windows were shattered in pieces. Xinni stepped carefully over the bits of glass and metal and approached the broken window at the front of the control station. She took a deep breath before she climbed inside, knowing she might be horrified by what she'd find within.
Xinni looked immediately to the center console, hoping that by some miracle, the red light on the transmitter unit was still flashing. But where the transmitter should be was instead just an empty slot, a tangle of wires protruding from it haphazardly. Xinni quickly surveyed the rest of the ship. No signs of either survivors or victims. The ship appeared empty from this vantage point. Then she glanced back out the control station window. How had she not noticed it before? Between the wreckage of the ship and the nearby forest was a deliberate trail of metal and wires, flotsam obviously left to mark someone's way out... or way in.
Xinni stepped out of the ship and examined the trail. Should she follow it? Would it lead her to friend or foe? Just then, she heard a familiar voice calling her name. Jax? It couldn't be. He was still with his own crew, on Dunan. Surely her mind was playing tricks on her... or someone else was.
If you think Xinni should follow the trail (and the mysterious voice) into the forest, click here.
If you think Xinni should stay and examine the ship wreckage more carefully, click here.
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
And by "I'll probably follow up tomorrow," of course I meant "No I won't"
Thank you all for your careful responses to the question I posed yesterday. I told you I would provide some context, but that context is turning into a rambly navel-gazing post that I can tell I'm not going to wind my way out of before anywhere close to a reasonable bed time. So alas, it will have to wait. Maybe even indefinitely, as currently there's likely nothing in that post I haven't already expressed at some point numerous times before, and I do hate to be repetitive about anything aside from the really important stuff (you know--like proper use of possessive pronouns vs. contractions).
Besides that, Date #3 with the guy we'll call Part 2 of the context is tomorrow, so I may have an entirely new perspective (or a whole new paragraph of complaining to do) after that. We shall see. Regardless, I do want to thank all of you for your input. You honestly have helped me. Quite a bit, in fact.
Meanwhile, before I forget, you should all go over and say hi to the lady now known as Flurrious. Many of you might remember her by a different name (a name I will gladly repeat here if she wants me to do so, but don't want to post publicly in case she doesn't). In any case, whether you know her already or not, she is hilarious. I'm sure you'll enjoy your stay.
And with that, it is officially past my bed time. Again. How's that New Year's resolution coming, Stef? Oh hell, it is only JULY.
Besides that, Date #3 with the guy we'll call Part 2 of the context is tomorrow, so I may have an entirely new perspective (or a whole new paragraph of complaining to do) after that. We shall see. Regardless, I do want to thank all of you for your input. You honestly have helped me. Quite a bit, in fact.
Meanwhile, before I forget, you should all go over and say hi to the lady now known as Flurrious. Many of you might remember her by a different name (a name I will gladly repeat here if she wants me to do so, but don't want to post publicly in case she doesn't). In any case, whether you know her already or not, she is hilarious. I'm sure you'll enjoy your stay.
And with that, it is officially past my bed time. Again. How's that New Year's resolution coming, Stef? Oh hell, it is only JULY.
Monday, May 12, 2008
Not So OK Computer
As promised, today we have a guest post. But first, an introduction.
Once upon a time, I started a blog. And soon afterwards I discovered that blogging is not like Field of Dreams. If you build it, they won't necessarily come. I kept telling myself that I wasn't doing it for readers or for comments, that it was just a writing exercise for myself and it didn't matter if anyone else was out there. And then I felt the rush of seeing my very first comment arrive in my Inbox... and the subsequent deflated disappointment of realizing that first comment was actually spam.
Eventually, I learned what we've all learned by now: that if you want anyone to know you're out there, you need to speak up. I stopped lurking and started commenting on a few of the blogs I read regularly, and eventually, wonder of wonders, some of those people started stopping by. They even left me comments! Comments that weren't spam! It was all very exciting.
One of the first bloggers to pay any attention to me--to leave me real comments and put my name in a coveted sidebar spot--was a guy in New York named Darren. I can't link to Darren, because he closed up shop on his "Look at Me" blog last summer, but those of you who read him know that he was routinely brilliant and hilarious. When I removed his dead link from my sidebar several months ago, I considered creating a "Blogs I Miss" category for his name instead.
Darren and I have stayed in touch via email, and recently I told him that if he ever missed having an outlet to tell the Internet what's on his mind, he could guest post for me any time. And what do you know? He took me up on it.
Darren, you have the floor. Stefanie Says readers, let's give him a warm welcome.
_________________________________
Not So OK Computer
There was a cartoon in a recent issue of The New Yorker featuring a man seated in front of a laptop announcing to a woman who appears to be his wife that he's working on a think piece about himself. I start this post off not because I'm attempting to appear more erudite and cosmopolitan than I actually am by mentioning up front that I read The New Yorker. Nor am I bringing it up at the beginning because it's one of the rare New Yorker cartoons with a punch line that can't be summed up as "Being married to you is slowly killing my soul." No, I'm quoting the New Yorker cartoon because I thought it nicely summarizes what it is to be a blogger: assuming that anyone else gives a damn about what you think of yourself.
I used to be a blogger, you see. I blogged. And over the course of a few years, I developed a small, devoted following (hi, Mom!). I made friends and felt that I belonged to a community. And I miss those things. But I also took my posts way too seriously and drove myself nearly crazy on the days when I couldn't think of a topic to write about or whatever I did come up with didn't meet my own exacting, classy standards – such as my masterwork, "Shit Happens," in which I gave an account of the time I crapped my pants in the New York City subway. And so in order to reclaim my sanity, I shut down my blog in July of last year.
I've stayed in touch with some of the people I once listed in my sidebar, and a few have asked me if I ever miss blogging. My answer has always been, "Eh." I mean, I do, and I don't. It's been liberating going all of this time without forcing myself to transform every mundane experience of my life into a witty and captivating essay. But when I see that some of us have graduated to profiles in The New York Times and guest segments on Nightline, it makes me feel... What's the phrase? Pissed off. Happy for these newly famous bloggers, of course, but also so jealous of the attention I desperately once sought for myself that I now know what anger tastes like.
So when Stefanie, one of those former sidebar people I've remained friends with, told me that I could guest post on her blog any time I felt the urge, my "Me too! Me too! Me too!" instincts kicked in. And thus, my first post in nearly a year.
For anyone who isn't familiar with my back story, I returned to New York last fall after an absence of about ten months. And because I returned to New York with little more than clothes and couldn’t readily resupply myself with the things that so many of you probably take for granted (furniture, dishes, shower curtains, etc.), I have been living in a furnished sublet. Living with someone else's things has its advantages, sure. I can, for instance, reheat leftovers in the tinfoil containers they come in without batting an eye at the resulting storm of sparks because, pft, it ain't my microwave. But I also have to live with whatever's in the apartment – or, for the purposes of this post, live with what isn't.
I have no TV. Except for the stray episodes of 30 Rock I've caught on the NBC website, I'm missing out on an entire medium. I could buy a TV, but that would require, for the sake of good reception, also investing in cable. That would add another seventy to one hundred dollars to my already staggering New York City expenses. And as I see it, if I have to choose between seven or ten visits to Chipotle a month or finding out if Bret Michaels went with Daisy or Amber on Rock of Love 2, I'm going to go with steak fajita burritos each and every time.
I also don't have a radio. This seems to shock some people, but how many people own a radio? Maybe you inherit one or an ex-boyfriend or girlfriend leaves one behind after moving out. But I've never heard of anyone in 2008 intentionally leaving his or her home, walking into a Best Buy, and parting with the money it would take to listen to "Jungle Jay and Captain Wacky's Morning Zoo Crew" when you can just as easily listen to the streaming audio on your computer.
That's not to say that the last six months haven't felt like some bizarre, self-imposed media deprivation experiment, but I've gotten by. I listen to podcasts, for instance, while making and eating dinner rather than leaving the local television news on in the background. And I open a lot more books at night than I do Netflix envelopes. It's been different but manageable.
That is until my computer died one night about a month ago. As in dead. As in funky electrical smell coming from the back of the PC. I will spare you the details of just what went wrong and what the Dell technician told me over the phone I needed to replace (such a description would entail multiple uses of the word "motherboard"). Suffice it to say that my life went from "quaint" to "oh-my-God-I-am-so-fucking-bored!" in the blink of an eye.
I could have gotten another computer, true, but you read the part where I can't afford an additional seventy to one hundred dollars a month for basic cable, right? Perhaps, I thought, I could take matters into my own hands by repairing the computer myself. I don't know anything about computers, but I have seen a few that had been opened up and none of them looked that complex. Computers aren't made of alien technology that fell from space and we've managed to jury-rig for our own purposes even though we have no real understanding of how it all works. It's just some parts and wires, and even though I'm not so handy with these big, meaty paws of mine, I figured it was worth taking a shot at trying to fix on my own.
"Okay, Dare-een," said the Dell technician on the other end of the phone. "I am very pleased I can tell you I can provide you with a replacement of motherboard, however, at this time, it is available no longer." I was put on a waiting list, and waited I did.
I was patient at first. I even saw it as a "fun" kind of challenge. Each night I would come home after work and microwave my tinfoil leftovers in near complete silence. I use the word "near" because early on I attempted to maintain an illusion of normalcy by doing my own one-man podcasts, but I could only get as far as, "Well. From WBEZ in Chicago, this is 'This American Life'" before admitting that I was fooling no one and collapsing into a dejected heap on my subletter's faded loveseat. I had books to keep me entertained, and I know that there was once a time when books were virtually the only form of personal entertainment, but people also once drilled holes in their heads to let out the evil spirits.
As much as I enjoyed the notoriety of being the only Amish person in Manhattan, after three weeks, I had had enough. If technology had gotten me into this mess, maybe technology could get me out. I wondered: If I could find the same Dell model on eBay, could I swap out the parts? It was worth a shot. And so, after placing a winning bid and waiting another ten days for the hard drive to be shipped, I had, I hoped, everything I would need.
The downside of my sublet is that it's illegal, meaning the guy whose name is on the lease is technically not allowed to rent it out to anyone else. I'm not supposed to receive mail at the apartment because doing so could tip off the building management that something fishy is going on. So I had to have the hard drive shipped to a friend's apartment, pick it up after work the day it arrived, put it into the back of a cab, and get it home that way. That was the easy part. The hard part was lugging the box through the lobby of my building only to find that the notoriously unreliable elevator was broken that night. Having no other choice, I carried the nearly forty pound machine up seven flights of stairs.
Once I got everything up to my apartment and suppressed the urge to vomit, I tore into the battered cardboard box the hard drive had come in. At first, I wasn't entirely sure what all I was looking at. I thought of every movie I've ever seen in which someone diffusing a bomb has to make a decision between cutting the blue or the red wire. That big, flat, green piece with all the silver lines zigzagging everywhere – how important was it exactly? After a few minutes of staring at the electronic guts, I dug in.
An hour and a half later, I had the good parts from the replacement PC safely inside my old machine and was ready for a test run. The snap of a few sparks, a quick whiff of ozone, and I saw the Windows logo come to life on my monitor for the first time in what felt like my whole life.
I'd like to be able to end this by writing something along the lines of, "And, you know, the strange thing is that even though I now had what I had spent a month longing for, I discovered I had gotten used to the low-tech lifestyle that had been thrust on me and barely even use my computer anymore." The truth is, I squeal with delight and nearly dry hump the thing every time it boots up. I lost all of last weekend catching up on email, downloading pirated software from LimeWire, hourly changing my Facebook status, and looking at blurry paparazzi photos of Mischa Barton's cellulite on Defamer.
Okay. It felt good sharing a not-particularly interesting episode of my life with random strangers again. Not so good that I'm going to run out and re-launch my TypePad account, but good just the same. Thanks for letting me borrow your blog, Stefanie. Maybe I'll drop by again some time.
Once upon a time, I started a blog. And soon afterwards I discovered that blogging is not like Field of Dreams. If you build it, they won't necessarily come. I kept telling myself that I wasn't doing it for readers or for comments, that it was just a writing exercise for myself and it didn't matter if anyone else was out there. And then I felt the rush of seeing my very first comment arrive in my Inbox... and the subsequent deflated disappointment of realizing that first comment was actually spam.
Eventually, I learned what we've all learned by now: that if you want anyone to know you're out there, you need to speak up. I stopped lurking and started commenting on a few of the blogs I read regularly, and eventually, wonder of wonders, some of those people started stopping by. They even left me comments! Comments that weren't spam! It was all very exciting.
One of the first bloggers to pay any attention to me--to leave me real comments and put my name in a coveted sidebar spot--was a guy in New York named Darren. I can't link to Darren, because he closed up shop on his "Look at Me" blog last summer, but those of you who read him know that he was routinely brilliant and hilarious. When I removed his dead link from my sidebar several months ago, I considered creating a "Blogs I Miss" category for his name instead.
Darren and I have stayed in touch via email, and recently I told him that if he ever missed having an outlet to tell the Internet what's on his mind, he could guest post for me any time. And what do you know? He took me up on it.
Darren, you have the floor. Stefanie Says readers, let's give him a warm welcome.
_________________________________
Not So OK Computer
There was a cartoon in a recent issue of The New Yorker featuring a man seated in front of a laptop announcing to a woman who appears to be his wife that he's working on a think piece about himself. I start this post off not because I'm attempting to appear more erudite and cosmopolitan than I actually am by mentioning up front that I read The New Yorker. Nor am I bringing it up at the beginning because it's one of the rare New Yorker cartoons with a punch line that can't be summed up as "Being married to you is slowly killing my soul." No, I'm quoting the New Yorker cartoon because I thought it nicely summarizes what it is to be a blogger: assuming that anyone else gives a damn about what you think of yourself.
I used to be a blogger, you see. I blogged. And over the course of a few years, I developed a small, devoted following (hi, Mom!). I made friends and felt that I belonged to a community. And I miss those things. But I also took my posts way too seriously and drove myself nearly crazy on the days when I couldn't think of a topic to write about or whatever I did come up with didn't meet my own exacting, classy standards – such as my masterwork, "Shit Happens," in which I gave an account of the time I crapped my pants in the New York City subway. And so in order to reclaim my sanity, I shut down my blog in July of last year.
I've stayed in touch with some of the people I once listed in my sidebar, and a few have asked me if I ever miss blogging. My answer has always been, "Eh." I mean, I do, and I don't. It's been liberating going all of this time without forcing myself to transform every mundane experience of my life into a witty and captivating essay. But when I see that some of us have graduated to profiles in The New York Times and guest segments on Nightline, it makes me feel... What's the phrase? Pissed off. Happy for these newly famous bloggers, of course, but also so jealous of the attention I desperately once sought for myself that I now know what anger tastes like.
So when Stefanie, one of those former sidebar people I've remained friends with, told me that I could guest post on her blog any time I felt the urge, my "Me too! Me too! Me too!" instincts kicked in. And thus, my first post in nearly a year.
For anyone who isn't familiar with my back story, I returned to New York last fall after an absence of about ten months. And because I returned to New York with little more than clothes and couldn’t readily resupply myself with the things that so many of you probably take for granted (furniture, dishes, shower curtains, etc.), I have been living in a furnished sublet. Living with someone else's things has its advantages, sure. I can, for instance, reheat leftovers in the tinfoil containers they come in without batting an eye at the resulting storm of sparks because, pft, it ain't my microwave. But I also have to live with whatever's in the apartment – or, for the purposes of this post, live with what isn't.
I have no TV. Except for the stray episodes of 30 Rock I've caught on the NBC website, I'm missing out on an entire medium. I could buy a TV, but that would require, for the sake of good reception, also investing in cable. That would add another seventy to one hundred dollars to my already staggering New York City expenses. And as I see it, if I have to choose between seven or ten visits to Chipotle a month or finding out if Bret Michaels went with Daisy or Amber on Rock of Love 2, I'm going to go with steak fajita burritos each and every time.
I also don't have a radio. This seems to shock some people, but how many people own a radio? Maybe you inherit one or an ex-boyfriend or girlfriend leaves one behind after moving out. But I've never heard of anyone in 2008 intentionally leaving his or her home, walking into a Best Buy, and parting with the money it would take to listen to "Jungle Jay and Captain Wacky's Morning Zoo Crew" when you can just as easily listen to the streaming audio on your computer.
That's not to say that the last six months haven't felt like some bizarre, self-imposed media deprivation experiment, but I've gotten by. I listen to podcasts, for instance, while making and eating dinner rather than leaving the local television news on in the background. And I open a lot more books at night than I do Netflix envelopes. It's been different but manageable.
That is until my computer died one night about a month ago. As in dead. As in funky electrical smell coming from the back of the PC. I will spare you the details of just what went wrong and what the Dell technician told me over the phone I needed to replace (such a description would entail multiple uses of the word "motherboard"). Suffice it to say that my life went from "quaint" to "oh-my-God-I-am-so-fucking-bored!" in the blink of an eye.
I could have gotten another computer, true, but you read the part where I can't afford an additional seventy to one hundred dollars a month for basic cable, right? Perhaps, I thought, I could take matters into my own hands by repairing the computer myself. I don't know anything about computers, but I have seen a few that had been opened up and none of them looked that complex. Computers aren't made of alien technology that fell from space and we've managed to jury-rig for our own purposes even though we have no real understanding of how it all works. It's just some parts and wires, and even though I'm not so handy with these big, meaty paws of mine, I figured it was worth taking a shot at trying to fix on my own.
"Okay, Dare-een," said the Dell technician on the other end of the phone. "I am very pleased I can tell you I can provide you with a replacement of motherboard, however, at this time, it is available no longer." I was put on a waiting list, and waited I did.
I was patient at first. I even saw it as a "fun" kind of challenge. Each night I would come home after work and microwave my tinfoil leftovers in near complete silence. I use the word "near" because early on I attempted to maintain an illusion of normalcy by doing my own one-man podcasts, but I could only get as far as, "Well. From WBEZ in Chicago, this is 'This American Life'" before admitting that I was fooling no one and collapsing into a dejected heap on my subletter's faded loveseat. I had books to keep me entertained, and I know that there was once a time when books were virtually the only form of personal entertainment, but people also once drilled holes in their heads to let out the evil spirits.
As much as I enjoyed the notoriety of being the only Amish person in Manhattan, after three weeks, I had had enough. If technology had gotten me into this mess, maybe technology could get me out. I wondered: If I could find the same Dell model on eBay, could I swap out the parts? It was worth a shot. And so, after placing a winning bid and waiting another ten days for the hard drive to be shipped, I had, I hoped, everything I would need.
The downside of my sublet is that it's illegal, meaning the guy whose name is on the lease is technically not allowed to rent it out to anyone else. I'm not supposed to receive mail at the apartment because doing so could tip off the building management that something fishy is going on. So I had to have the hard drive shipped to a friend's apartment, pick it up after work the day it arrived, put it into the back of a cab, and get it home that way. That was the easy part. The hard part was lugging the box through the lobby of my building only to find that the notoriously unreliable elevator was broken that night. Having no other choice, I carried the nearly forty pound machine up seven flights of stairs.
Once I got everything up to my apartment and suppressed the urge to vomit, I tore into the battered cardboard box the hard drive had come in. At first, I wasn't entirely sure what all I was looking at. I thought of every movie I've ever seen in which someone diffusing a bomb has to make a decision between cutting the blue or the red wire. That big, flat, green piece with all the silver lines zigzagging everywhere – how important was it exactly? After a few minutes of staring at the electronic guts, I dug in.
An hour and a half later, I had the good parts from the replacement PC safely inside my old machine and was ready for a test run. The snap of a few sparks, a quick whiff of ozone, and I saw the Windows logo come to life on my monitor for the first time in what felt like my whole life.
I'd like to be able to end this by writing something along the lines of, "And, you know, the strange thing is that even though I now had what I had spent a month longing for, I discovered I had gotten used to the low-tech lifestyle that had been thrust on me and barely even use my computer anymore." The truth is, I squeal with delight and nearly dry hump the thing every time it boots up. I lost all of last weekend catching up on email, downloading pirated software from LimeWire, hourly changing my Facebook status, and looking at blurry paparazzi photos of Mischa Barton's cellulite on Defamer.
Okay. It felt good sharing a not-particularly interesting episode of my life with random strangers again. Not so good that I'm going to run out and re-launch my TypePad account, but good just the same. Thanks for letting me borrow your blog, Stefanie. Maybe I'll drop by again some time.
Friday, April 18, 2008
We get by with a little help from our friends
A dear blog friend of mine (actually, scratch that "blog" qualifier; she's totally a real friend by now) had a bit of a rough week, for ridiculous reasons that I still can't quite wrap my head around. Anyone who reads Noelle's blog already knows all the nonsense she's had to put up with the past few days, all because a bunch of people with no sense of humor or perspective couldn't tell the difference between a sarcastic, self-deprecating post and a sincere, shallow jab at a nameless man, and they decided that disagreeing with a couple hundred words on a stranger's personal blog (a couple hundred words that weren't even written to be taken seriously or literally by any means) was cause to spew hate and judgment and in some cases, actual calls for bodily harm. It was absurd. And although I'm sure Noelle herself knows it was absurd and would probably much rather just move on and forget about all this than have any of us dwell on it any longer, I'd still like her to know that the people who actually know her and have read more than that one isolated (And also? Hilarious.) post know that there are plenty of reasons every rude, thoughtless word typed about her is entirely wrong.
So with that, today’s Friday Five is for you, my friend.
Five reasons Noelle is awesome
On top of all that, she is smart and clever and pretty and she lives on a Christmas Tree farm! What's not to like about any of that? I could go on, but you get the point. Noelle is the proverbial cat's pajamas, the bee's knees, and all sorts of other non-animal-related superlatives as well. Show her some love in the comments, if you'd like. And happy Friday, all.
So with that, today’s Friday Five is for you, my friend.
Five reasons Noelle is awesome
- She had the strength to end a relationship with a man whom she loved but couldn't give her what she needs. A whole lot of us know how easy it is to make excuses, to tell yourself things are "good enough," to coast along in a situation that's comfortable but not entirely fulfilling because it's easier than acknowledging that something important is missing and having the guts to break away and start over again from scratch. Knowing what's best for yourself in the long run is one thing. Having the strength to do what's best even when it's scary and sad and lonely is quite another.
- She gets to work with books every day of her life, and she spends her weekends working with books some more. Also, in an age when so many people assume the independent bookseller is doomed, she makes her living getting books to them.
- She managed to post every day of NaBloPoMo, despite landing in the hospital with a broken ankle on the very first day of the challenge and being laid up with (one would think) little to write about for several weeks thereafter.
- She has more discipline than I can comprehend or relate to in any way. Getting up two hours before the sun in the cold dead of winter to shiver her way to a swim workout? Eschewing cheese and ice cream for an entire month and all forms of pasta for the following one? I cry a little bit inside just thinking about it. Noelle, you’re some kind of superhero as far as I'm concerned. Go you.
- She created a brilliant recap of The Ruins that by several accounts is far more entertaining than the film itself. If ever a post of Noelle’s deserved a flurry of 136 lively comments, it was this one, not the one that proved to us that the Internet is not always the warm, happy supportive place we've grown to love. I am telling you, if you have not yet seen Noelle’s Dollar Store doll reenactment of The Ruins, you must click over immediately. I promise it's the funniest thing you will read all week.
On top of all that, she is smart and clever and pretty and she lives on a Christmas Tree farm! What's not to like about any of that? I could go on, but you get the point. Noelle is the proverbial cat's pajamas, the bee's knees, and all sorts of other non-animal-related superlatives as well. Show her some love in the comments, if you'd like. And happy Friday, all.
Friday, April 04, 2008
It's Choose Your Own Blogventure Day!
Note: This post is my portion of NPW's soon-to-be-famous Choose Your Own Blogventure game, which I mentioned last week. What follows won't make much sense unless you end up here from the segments that precede it. So don't read this just yet. Instead, head over to NPW's blog to see how it all begins. If you make the right choices, hopefully I'll see you back here again soon.
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Click here to start the story.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
(If you've ended up here, you likely came from here. The story proceeds as follows.)
Emma considered turning back. How badly did she really need those cupcakes, anyway? Besides that, even if she got past this zombie, who knew what awaited her inside? Maybe behind the front doors to that convenience store was a whole pack of zombies shuffling their way through the aisles, seeking brains but settling for beef jerky and pork rinds?
"NO," resolved Emma. "I am going in. I will have my disgusting orange cupcakes, and I will have them now."
As Emma walked towards the groaning man, she grasped her keys tightly, wondering if a sharp blow to the forehead with her long, pointy ignition key would be enough to do the creature in. After a few more steps, she raised the key in her hand, ready to strike with all the force her malnourished arms could muster.
"Woah!" the zombie cried. Except it wasn't a zombie. Emma could see at this range that what she thought was a member of the living dead was really just an unusually pale and slightly doughy kid whom she remembered from her freshman year psychology class. She took a closer look at the would-be blood stains smeared across his face and shirt.
"Is that... cherry pie filling?" Emma asked.
"Um... yeah," the not-zombie replied. "I know they're revolting, but I can't get enough Hostess Fruit Pies." He sheepishly reached his hands in his pockets and pulled out several crumpled red and white wax paper wrappers.
Emma smiled. "I understand. No one understands why I like orange Hostess cupcakes. Everyone says..."
"...that the chocolate ones are better," the not-zombie finished.
"Yes!" Emma replied. "You too?"
"Me too," he smiled.
Emma softened a bit. It wasn't every day she found a kindred spirit, even one who thus far shared only a penchant for late night snacking on convenience store foods. But there was still the matter of the strange groaning, the shuffling, the inability for a grown man to eat a neatly contained, hand-held snack without requiring a bib or drop cloth.
"Don't I know you from the U?" Emma asked. "Psych 101. Professor Taylor. I think you sat near me."
"Good memory," the man replied. "I'm Jake. Jake Ryan."
"Emma," Emma answered.
She looked the man in front of her up and down. "Jake Ryan??" she thought. "How did I sit two feet away from that guy for an entire semester and not know he shared a name with a man every girl in the 80s fantasized about?" Suddenly, in her mind, Emma was a 16-year-old Molly Ringwald, sitting face to face across from Jake in front of a picture window, a birthday cake with 16 burning candles placed between them.
"Do you bake, Jake?" Emma asked, a faint but wistful smile suddenly spreading across her face.
"What?" Jake looked confused, partly because of the abruptness of the question and partly because he hadn't realized they'd decided to start speaking only in rhyme.
Emma snapped out of the fantasy in her head and focused again on the cherry pie filling smeared across Jake's chest. Jake's suddenly very manly looking chest. She felt her face turn red.
"Look, I know it's late," Jake said, "But are you doing anything right now? I live just around the corner from here. I don't have any orange cupcakes, but I do have microwave popcorn and a bottle of wine. Care to keep a fellow insomniac company for a bit?"
If you think Emma should go with Jake, cupcakes and good sense be damned, click here.
If you think Emma should politely decline and proceed in to Store 24, click here.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Click here to start the story.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
(If you've ended up here, you likely came from here. The story proceeds as follows.)
Emma considered turning back. How badly did she really need those cupcakes, anyway? Besides that, even if she got past this zombie, who knew what awaited her inside? Maybe behind the front doors to that convenience store was a whole pack of zombies shuffling their way through the aisles, seeking brains but settling for beef jerky and pork rinds?
"NO," resolved Emma. "I am going in. I will have my disgusting orange cupcakes, and I will have them now."
As Emma walked towards the groaning man, she grasped her keys tightly, wondering if a sharp blow to the forehead with her long, pointy ignition key would be enough to do the creature in. After a few more steps, she raised the key in her hand, ready to strike with all the force her malnourished arms could muster.
"Woah!" the zombie cried. Except it wasn't a zombie. Emma could see at this range that what she thought was a member of the living dead was really just an unusually pale and slightly doughy kid whom she remembered from her freshman year psychology class. She took a closer look at the would-be blood stains smeared across his face and shirt.
"Is that... cherry pie filling?" Emma asked.
"Um... yeah," the not-zombie replied. "I know they're revolting, but I can't get enough Hostess Fruit Pies." He sheepishly reached his hands in his pockets and pulled out several crumpled red and white wax paper wrappers.
Emma smiled. "I understand. No one understands why I like orange Hostess cupcakes. Everyone says..."
"...that the chocolate ones are better," the not-zombie finished.
"Yes!" Emma replied. "You too?"
"Me too," he smiled.
Emma softened a bit. It wasn't every day she found a kindred spirit, even one who thus far shared only a penchant for late night snacking on convenience store foods. But there was still the matter of the strange groaning, the shuffling, the inability for a grown man to eat a neatly contained, hand-held snack without requiring a bib or drop cloth.
"Don't I know you from the U?" Emma asked. "Psych 101. Professor Taylor. I think you sat near me."
"Good memory," the man replied. "I'm Jake. Jake Ryan."
"Emma," Emma answered.
She looked the man in front of her up and down. "Jake Ryan??" she thought. "How did I sit two feet away from that guy for an entire semester and not know he shared a name with a man every girl in the 80s fantasized about?" Suddenly, in her mind, Emma was a 16-year-old Molly Ringwald, sitting face to face across from Jake in front of a picture window, a birthday cake with 16 burning candles placed between them.
"Do you bake, Jake?" Emma asked, a faint but wistful smile suddenly spreading across her face.
"What?" Jake looked confused, partly because of the abruptness of the question and partly because he hadn't realized they'd decided to start speaking only in rhyme.
Emma snapped out of the fantasy in her head and focused again on the cherry pie filling smeared across Jake's chest. Jake's suddenly very manly looking chest. She felt her face turn red.
"Look, I know it's late," Jake said, "But are you doing anything right now? I live just around the corner from here. I don't have any orange cupcakes, but I do have microwave popcorn and a bottle of wine. Care to keep a fellow insomniac company for a bit?"
If you think Emma should go with Jake, cupcakes and good sense be damned, click here.
If you think Emma should politely decline and proceed in to Store 24, click here.
Wednesday, April 02, 2008
Not everyone in Boston knows my name, and it is not always sunny in Philadelphia (but I had fun in both places anyway)
All right then. Spring vacation recap. I promised you one of those, didn't I? Of course, by now, NPW, Noelle, and Lara have it pretty well covered, but I'd feel remiss in not posting my version anyway.
I had a lovely long weekend, and I hope the lovely ladies and gentlemen with whom I spent it did as well. There are those who might say the Internet is not real life, that I'd be insane to plan an overnight visit at the home of a blogger I'd never met in person in real time (or moreover, that said blogger would have to be insane or downright foolish to provide her home address and invite me to fly to her city and stay with her). But as Lara, NPW, Noelle, and I chatted in NPW's living room in our pajamas Friday night, I looked at each one of them and couldn't help saying, "I don't feel at all like I just met any of you tonight!" In our case at least, who we are online translates quite accurately to who we are in real life, and I feel like crying "No fair" because I don't get to hang out with them again any time I like.
I have a hard time summing up the past few days in any sort of coherent narrative, so instead I'll recount the weekend photo essay style, with random and possibly incomplete and incohesive segues in between. Sound fun? I thought so. Let's go.
Lara and her husband Rob picked me up at the Philadelphia airport early Friday afternoon, and I got in their car to drive several hours to Boston with them immediately thereafter. One might think a road trip into New England rush hour might be a surefire way to unravel an Internet friendship in record time, but luckily, we made it to NPW and Chris's house in Boston still excited for the weekend of togetherness ahead. Unfortunately, Aaron bailed on our group dinner plans due to an alleged stomach bug, but the rest of us had a fine time enjoying noodles and ice cream anyway.
The next morning it was off to Harvard for Noelle's swim meet. After my brief visit to that campus, I'm pleased to think about how I can now casually drop the line "Yeah, I went to Harvard. No big deal, really..." into future conversations. Noelle, on the other hand, gets to say she not only went there, but swam there, so I'm very excited about that on her behalf.
From there, we commenced our sightseeing adventures, but we didn't make it very far before we realized it was after NOON and we'd not yet had a drink, which, while on vacation is simply not right. So off to John Harvard's Brew Pub we went.
You'll note that I had a cider rather than a beer, which I'm sure is some sort of travesty within spitting distance of Sam Adams's grave. Luckily, Lara and NPW had greeted Sam with a hearty "Thank you, Sam!" moments earlier, so I felt a bit better about betraying Boston with my beverage choice.
Besides that, while Boston may be a notably beer-centric town, it is also home to the Omni Parker House, which, in addition to having invented the Boston Cream Pie, had the ingenuity to bring us the Boston Cream Pie martini as well. Should you make it to Boston at some point, I highly recommend you sample one of these.
If you could also try the pumpkin martini and report back to me on your thoughts, that'd be great. We have a tendency to neglect the pumpkin from December through September, and I'd like to do whatever I can to remedy that.
When NPW first pointed out the Omni Parker House (hereafter known to me as, simply, "the hotel with the delicious Boston Cream Pie martinis), it was actually too early for a drink. Not too early in our view, mind you (we did have our first drink of the day at 1:09, after all), but those crazy folks at the "the hotel with the delicious martinis" seemed to think a bar need not open until 4:30. To keep ourselves busy in the meantime, we walked to Mike's Pastry for Florentine cannolis--a detour I highly recommend should ever you find yourself in the area (or within reasonable distance of it) yourself. If you've read NPW's and Lara's recent posts, you may think the cannolis have already been well documented to an unnecessarily thorough degree, but you would be wrong, my friend. You know that guy in The Godfather? The guy who says, "Leave the gun; take the cannoli"? If that was a Florentine cannoli from Mike's Pastry, I can say with resolute certainty that he made the right choice.
Once we started drinking and snacking, I had an even harder time than usual focusing with any sort of reverence on things of historical significance, so instead we just made friends with statues and curbside mascots around Boston.
After oursightseeing eating and drinking adventures, we were a tad worn out, so we retired back to NPW's house to rest up for dinner. That is, if your definition of "rest up" means cracking open a bottle of wine and playing Wii tennis and bowling. Nothing says "down time" like getting your ass kicked in fake bowling; wouldn't you agree?
Eventually, we did tear ourselves away from Chris's giant TV long enough to walk to dinner, where we met up with the hilarious and charming Red of The Cupcake Tent fame (along with her lovely friend Carly) for late-night burritos and drinks. I think a fine time was had by all, even if the restaurant did run out of guacamole before we arrived. Seriously! A Mexican restaurant with no guacamole! I was at least as verklempt about the news as Red was, but no one captured a photo of it in my case.
Luckily, Red's friend Sam was there to soften the blow. And clearly the rest of us managed to cope as well. Lack of guac didn't prevent any of us from enjoying our fine meal.
All in all, we had a lovely time together, as evidenced by this post-dinner group photo.
(Sing it with me now: "One of these things is not like the oth-er"... Red, perhaps you'll want to invest in some eyewear before you hang out with us again. Obviously in this group, being a four-eyed brunette is the way to go.)
Sunday morning we had a lovely breakfast and said our goodbyes to Noelle, Chris, and NPW, and then Lara, Rob, and I headed off back to Philadelphia. It would be entirely too boring to go straight to Philly, however. Instead, we enjoyed a detour in Marblehead (where I bought a book, saw a lighthouse, and met Rob's mother) and another stop for dinner in Salem--home to the expected witch-related museums and trinket shops but also to a gem of a liquor store named "Bunghole." Seriously, I couldn't make a name like that up. (Or, I could, but I didn't. See?)
Hence, we arrived at casa del Guinness Girl and Wilman well after midnight, a fact for which the "high-compliance" Rob (note: his word, not mine) apologized at least 17 times. For the record (even though I know he will not read this): Rob, I absolutely did not mind stopping in Marblehead so you could see your mom and grandfather, and I was not seething that you left me waiting at the airport for an extra 20 minutes earlier in the weekend either. Internets, I assure you: Rob is one of the nicest and most considerate men you will ever meet, but it is a good thing he did not accompany Lara and me on our rainy day adventures in Philly Monday, because I am 100% certain he would have spent the day apologizing for the weather on the city's behalf.
By this point, Lara had already figured out that I generally require little more in terms of a sightseeing plan than "let's just walk around and look at things (oh, and maybe stop for wine and snacks several times)," and she had no problem being my tour guide with that in mind.
I couldn't justify being in Philadelphia and not seeing the Liberty Bell, so we popped over for a quick photo there. In case you haven't heard, it's a big bell with a crack in it. And that's still just about all I know about that.
We also tried to go to the U.S. Mint, for no other reason than it was right there and we'd both heard it was a worthwhile tour (and one Lara hadn't yet done). If ever you happen to attempt this yourself, here's a tip for you: the U.S. Mint does not allow cameras or camera phones carried anywhere on your person. The man at the door will be very official and adamant about that rule, but he will offer no solution as to where you might safely stow or check your camera, and he will act as if this is a problem that has never come up or occurred to him before. He will also not do much to sell you on the interestingness of the U.S. Mint tour, though (Us: "Well, what does the tour involve, anyway?" Him: "You see how money gets made."), so you could probably just do what we did, which was say "Screw you, Mint" and go get a Philly-style soft pretzel instead.
From there, we went to the Mutter Museum, at the College of Physicians of Philadelphia. Although they did not confiscate our cameras nor force us to leave them on the street for a vagrant or hoodlum to walk off with, they also do not allow photography within the museum, so this is the most I can show you of our visit there.
Suffice it to say that "Disturbingly Informative" is an entirely apt tagline. I made it through the conjoined twins, the wall of skulls, the wax model samples of encephalitis and other infections, and the rows upon rows of babies in jars, but when we got to the tumors and skin diseases, Lara and I both agreed we'd seen about enough. Oh, and also, surprisingly, we said, "I'm hungry. How about lunch?" and we headed off for a cheesesteak at Jim's.
Are you tired of my lengthy play-by-play yet? Don't worry. I assure you; I am almost done. Most of the rest of the afternoon was spent posing as and near statues and public art, because I am apparently six years old and that sort of thing is still amusing to me. Luckily Lara is still six years old as well, so we had great fun with it, obviously.
That last one, of course, is the Rocky statue outside the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where I had to run the steps just like Rocky did. There are 72 of them, in case you are curious. Perhaps that will help you out in a game of bar trivia some day.
We finished off the day with a tasty Thai meal in Lara and Rob's neighborhood and then retired to their gorgeous old house in Manyunk, where I nearly died when I forgot Rob's warning that the bathroom is the BROWN door, not the GREEN one. "Be sure you don't open the green door!" he stressed when they first gave me the tour around their house. I thought maybe they just didn't want me to see that their basement was haunted (or possibly is where they store illicit substances), but it turns out it's just an abrupt and unexpected pit of death. So. Should ever you visit Rob and Lara, word to the wise: BROWN door, not green. Remember that.
After my luckily not-fatal fall, we had some more wine and played some more games, which is when I discovered that Lara is not only a Wii bowling savant but an unbeatable Boggle pro as well. People, I swear to you, I am tremendous at Boggle. I think most of my real-life friends will attest to that. But Lara could beat Peggy Hill in Boggle tournament play. It was a humbling experience that was good for me, I suppose ("This must be what it's like for other people when they play Boggle with me," I said), but not so secretly I'm actually a little glad Lara lives so far away, so I don't have to face her as competition again any time soon.
And that about wraps up the trip, I think. I had a fantastic time meeting everybody and like I said, I am sad that I can't go hang out with them again next week. I very much hope this blogger meet-up was not the last. Meanwhile, I'll be brushing up on my skillz with my electronic Boggle and killing time reading all the books I acquired from my generous and bookwormy friends. When I left on Friday, I had one book with me (the one that's been in my sidebar entirely longer than it should be). When I returned yesterday, I had crammed ten more in my luggage and carry-on. I'd better get reading, hadn't I?
Thanks, Noelle and Lara, for giving me ten more reasons to stay up too late. Thank you NPW, Chris, Lara, and Rob for your generous hospitality in your fair cities. And thanks to all of you plus Red for being just as awesome in person as I'd hoped.
I had a lovely long weekend, and I hope the lovely ladies and gentlemen with whom I spent it did as well. There are those who might say the Internet is not real life, that I'd be insane to plan an overnight visit at the home of a blogger I'd never met in person in real time (or moreover, that said blogger would have to be insane or downright foolish to provide her home address and invite me to fly to her city and stay with her). But as Lara, NPW, Noelle, and I chatted in NPW's living room in our pajamas Friday night, I looked at each one of them and couldn't help saying, "I don't feel at all like I just met any of you tonight!" In our case at least, who we are online translates quite accurately to who we are in real life, and I feel like crying "No fair" because I don't get to hang out with them again any time I like.
I have a hard time summing up the past few days in any sort of coherent narrative, so instead I'll recount the weekend photo essay style, with random and possibly incomplete and incohesive segues in between. Sound fun? I thought so. Let's go.
Lara and her husband Rob picked me up at the Philadelphia airport early Friday afternoon, and I got in their car to drive several hours to Boston with them immediately thereafter. One might think a road trip into New England rush hour might be a surefire way to unravel an Internet friendship in record time, but luckily, we made it to NPW and Chris's house in Boston still excited for the weekend of togetherness ahead. Unfortunately, Aaron bailed on our group dinner plans due to an alleged stomach bug, but the rest of us had a fine time enjoying noodles and ice cream anyway.
The next morning it was off to Harvard for Noelle's swim meet. After my brief visit to that campus, I'm pleased to think about how I can now casually drop the line "Yeah, I went to Harvard. No big deal, really..." into future conversations. Noelle, on the other hand, gets to say she not only went there, but swam there, so I'm very excited about that on her behalf.
From there, we commenced our sightseeing adventures, but we didn't make it very far before we realized it was after NOON and we'd not yet had a drink, which, while on vacation is simply not right. So off to John Harvard's Brew Pub we went.
You'll note that I had a cider rather than a beer, which I'm sure is some sort of travesty within spitting distance of Sam Adams's grave. Luckily, Lara and NPW had greeted Sam with a hearty "Thank you, Sam!" moments earlier, so I felt a bit better about betraying Boston with my beverage choice.
Besides that, while Boston may be a notably beer-centric town, it is also home to the Omni Parker House, which, in addition to having invented the Boston Cream Pie, had the ingenuity to bring us the Boston Cream Pie martini as well. Should you make it to Boston at some point, I highly recommend you sample one of these.
If you could also try the pumpkin martini and report back to me on your thoughts, that'd be great. We have a tendency to neglect the pumpkin from December through September, and I'd like to do whatever I can to remedy that.
When NPW first pointed out the Omni Parker House (hereafter known to me as, simply, "the hotel with the delicious Boston Cream Pie martinis), it was actually too early for a drink. Not too early in our view, mind you (we did have our first drink of the day at 1:09, after all), but those crazy folks at the "the hotel with the delicious martinis" seemed to think a bar need not open until 4:30. To keep ourselves busy in the meantime, we walked to Mike's Pastry for Florentine cannolis--a detour I highly recommend should ever you find yourself in the area (or within reasonable distance of it) yourself. If you've read NPW's and Lara's recent posts, you may think the cannolis have already been well documented to an unnecessarily thorough degree, but you would be wrong, my friend. You know that guy in The Godfather? The guy who says, "Leave the gun; take the cannoli"? If that was a Florentine cannoli from Mike's Pastry, I can say with resolute certainty that he made the right choice.
Once we started drinking and snacking, I had an even harder time than usual focusing with any sort of reverence on things of historical significance, so instead we just made friends with statues and curbside mascots around Boston.
After our
Eventually, we did tear ourselves away from Chris's giant TV long enough to walk to dinner, where we met up with the hilarious and charming Red of The Cupcake Tent fame (along with her lovely friend Carly) for late-night burritos and drinks. I think a fine time was had by all, even if the restaurant did run out of guacamole before we arrived. Seriously! A Mexican restaurant with no guacamole! I was at least as verklempt about the news as Red was, but no one captured a photo of it in my case.
Luckily, Red's friend Sam was there to soften the blow. And clearly the rest of us managed to cope as well. Lack of guac didn't prevent any of us from enjoying our fine meal.
All in all, we had a lovely time together, as evidenced by this post-dinner group photo.
(Sing it with me now: "One of these things is not like the oth-er"... Red, perhaps you'll want to invest in some eyewear before you hang out with us again. Obviously in this group, being a four-eyed brunette is the way to go.)
Sunday morning we had a lovely breakfast and said our goodbyes to Noelle, Chris, and NPW, and then Lara, Rob, and I headed off back to Philadelphia. It would be entirely too boring to go straight to Philly, however. Instead, we enjoyed a detour in Marblehead (where I bought a book, saw a lighthouse, and met Rob's mother) and another stop for dinner in Salem--home to the expected witch-related museums and trinket shops but also to a gem of a liquor store named "Bunghole." Seriously, I couldn't make a name like that up. (Or, I could, but I didn't. See?)
Hence, we arrived at casa del Guinness Girl and Wilman well after midnight, a fact for which the "high-compliance" Rob (note: his word, not mine) apologized at least 17 times. For the record (even though I know he will not read this): Rob, I absolutely did not mind stopping in Marblehead so you could see your mom and grandfather, and I was not seething that you left me waiting at the airport for an extra 20 minutes earlier in the weekend either. Internets, I assure you: Rob is one of the nicest and most considerate men you will ever meet, but it is a good thing he did not accompany Lara and me on our rainy day adventures in Philly Monday, because I am 100% certain he would have spent the day apologizing for the weather on the city's behalf.
By this point, Lara had already figured out that I generally require little more in terms of a sightseeing plan than "let's just walk around and look at things (oh, and maybe stop for wine and snacks several times)," and she had no problem being my tour guide with that in mind.
I couldn't justify being in Philadelphia and not seeing the Liberty Bell, so we popped over for a quick photo there. In case you haven't heard, it's a big bell with a crack in it. And that's still just about all I know about that.
We also tried to go to the U.S. Mint, for no other reason than it was right there and we'd both heard it was a worthwhile tour (and one Lara hadn't yet done). If ever you happen to attempt this yourself, here's a tip for you: the U.S. Mint does not allow cameras or camera phones carried anywhere on your person. The man at the door will be very official and adamant about that rule, but he will offer no solution as to where you might safely stow or check your camera, and he will act as if this is a problem that has never come up or occurred to him before. He will also not do much to sell you on the interestingness of the U.S. Mint tour, though (Us: "Well, what does the tour involve, anyway?" Him: "You see how money gets made."), so you could probably just do what we did, which was say "Screw you, Mint" and go get a Philly-style soft pretzel instead.
From there, we went to the Mutter Museum, at the College of Physicians of Philadelphia. Although they did not confiscate our cameras nor force us to leave them on the street for a vagrant or hoodlum to walk off with, they also do not allow photography within the museum, so this is the most I can show you of our visit there.
Suffice it to say that "Disturbingly Informative" is an entirely apt tagline. I made it through the conjoined twins, the wall of skulls, the wax model samples of encephalitis and other infections, and the rows upon rows of babies in jars, but when we got to the tumors and skin diseases, Lara and I both agreed we'd seen about enough. Oh, and also, surprisingly, we said, "I'm hungry. How about lunch?" and we headed off for a cheesesteak at Jim's.
Are you tired of my lengthy play-by-play yet? Don't worry. I assure you; I am almost done. Most of the rest of the afternoon was spent posing as and near statues and public art, because I am apparently six years old and that sort of thing is still amusing to me. Luckily Lara is still six years old as well, so we had great fun with it, obviously.
That last one, of course, is the Rocky statue outside the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where I had to run the steps just like Rocky did. There are 72 of them, in case you are curious. Perhaps that will help you out in a game of bar trivia some day.
We finished off the day with a tasty Thai meal in Lara and Rob's neighborhood and then retired to their gorgeous old house in Manyunk, where I nearly died when I forgot Rob's warning that the bathroom is the BROWN door, not the GREEN one. "Be sure you don't open the green door!" he stressed when they first gave me the tour around their house. I thought maybe they just didn't want me to see that their basement was haunted (or possibly is where they store illicit substances), but it turns out it's just an abrupt and unexpected pit of death. So. Should ever you visit Rob and Lara, word to the wise: BROWN door, not green. Remember that.
After my luckily not-fatal fall, we had some more wine and played some more games, which is when I discovered that Lara is not only a Wii bowling savant but an unbeatable Boggle pro as well. People, I swear to you, I am tremendous at Boggle. I think most of my real-life friends will attest to that. But Lara could beat Peggy Hill in Boggle tournament play. It was a humbling experience that was good for me, I suppose ("This must be what it's like for other people when they play Boggle with me," I said), but not so secretly I'm actually a little glad Lara lives so far away, so I don't have to face her as competition again any time soon.
And that about wraps up the trip, I think. I had a fantastic time meeting everybody and like I said, I am sad that I can't go hang out with them again next week. I very much hope this blogger meet-up was not the last. Meanwhile, I'll be brushing up on my skillz with my electronic Boggle and killing time reading all the books I acquired from my generous and bookwormy friends. When I left on Friday, I had one book with me (the one that's been in my sidebar entirely longer than it should be). When I returned yesterday, I had crammed ten more in my luggage and carry-on. I'd better get reading, hadn't I?
Thanks, Noelle and Lara, for giving me ten more reasons to stay up too late. Thank you NPW, Chris, Lara, and Rob for your generous hospitality in your fair cities. And thanks to all of you plus Red for being just as awesome in person as I'd hoped.
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
What I did on my spring vacation, minus all details about what I did on my spring vacation
Hello, friends. I thought I'd best pop in to let you know that I did, in fact, make the trip to and from New England without any adverse incidents, and while I'm working on a photo essay-style recap, it's taking a bit longer to assemble than I anticipated. So meanwhile, you can read NPW's, Noelle's, or Lara's follow-up posts on our excellent weekend (if you haven't already done so). Also, feel free to peruse my Boston/Philly photoset on Flickr, provided you promise to pretend all the photos are new to you when I include them in a post here later this week.
And with that, I'm off to bed in the hopes that my body will somehow recover from sleep-deprived, liver-soaked, stomach-stuffed vacation mode in time to return to real life bright and early tomorrow morning. Wish me luck on that, obviously.
I hope you all had as lovely a weekend (and start-of-week) as I did. More details (with pictures!) to follow shortly.
And with that, I'm off to bed in the hopes that my body will somehow recover from sleep-deprived, liver-soaked, stomach-stuffed vacation mode in time to return to real life bright and early tomorrow morning. Wish me luck on that, obviously.
I hope you all had as lovely a weekend (and start-of-week) as I did. More details (with pictures!) to follow shortly.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Book of Revelation...Fire-breathing lion's head...tail made out of snakes...Who else is it gonna be?
Hello, friends. While it is still my Very Special Birthday Week, it is no longer my actual birthday, so I'd really better post something new, hadn't I? First, though, I should say that I had a lovely birthday, which involved dinner with (and excellent presents and prizes from) several good friends, as well as four different cakes. Four cakes is not a record, of course, given that whole five-cake birthday when I turned six, but it was exciting nonetheless. Also, my sixth birthday did not involve vodka, so there are some advantages to getting older, I suppose.
Because comparison is fun, check it out:
Haven't changed a bit, have I? Well, my excitement about cake hasn't, anyway.
Also, while I was busy recovering from my own birthday, my blog had a birthday as well. Stefanie Says turned three yesterday. Presumably we're potty trained and ready for preschool now. It's all very exciting, of course.
As if all of that (not to mention St. Patrick's Day) weren't cause enough for celebration, those wacky Christians who are in charge of the holiday calendar went and put Easter in the same seven-day span as well. I will be enjoying that the same way I have for the past few years--by stuffing myself at a brunch with several of my favorite fellow heathens. It's amazing how easy it is to get a group reservation on one of the busier days of the year, even mere days in advance of the holiday, if you're simply willing to take a late morning time slot during which all the real Easter celebrants are at church. Score on that, I say. An early meal just means I'll be home sooner to get a jump on that inevitable afternoon nap.
I'm sure my very Catholic mother would be shaking her very disapproving head at that last paragraph, calling me out in shame at my seeming disrespect for our Savior's rising from the grave. And while I apologize for my flip remarks, I still say Easter always was one of the weaker and less eventful holidays, despite what they said in my grade school religion classes. Metalia's the expert on this, not me, but it actually seems that Jews have all the fun, what with the Bag o' Plagues and the Huggable Matzah Ball and the Let My People Go board game.
Actually, scratch any enthusiam about that "Let My People Go" board game. It just called to mind a not-so-rousing game of Bible Trivia that my sisters and I were once roped into playing at a family friend's house when we were kids. I have always enjoyed winning board games, but I remember my poor showing in that one being not unlike Bart and Lisa's miserable failure against Rod and Todd Flanders in their game of Bible Bombardment. No stickers for me, obviously. Eight years of Catholic school and little aside from pervading guilt to show for it, I guess.
But enough about me. How will you be spending the most Cadbury-friendly holiday this year?
Because comparison is fun, check it out:
Haven't changed a bit, have I? Well, my excitement about cake hasn't, anyway.
Also, while I was busy recovering from my own birthday, my blog had a birthday as well. Stefanie Says turned three yesterday. Presumably we're potty trained and ready for preschool now. It's all very exciting, of course.
As if all of that (not to mention St. Patrick's Day) weren't cause enough for celebration, those wacky Christians who are in charge of the holiday calendar went and put Easter in the same seven-day span as well. I will be enjoying that the same way I have for the past few years--by stuffing myself at a brunch with several of my favorite fellow heathens. It's amazing how easy it is to get a group reservation on one of the busier days of the year, even mere days in advance of the holiday, if you're simply willing to take a late morning time slot during which all the real Easter celebrants are at church. Score on that, I say. An early meal just means I'll be home sooner to get a jump on that inevitable afternoon nap.
I'm sure my very Catholic mother would be shaking her very disapproving head at that last paragraph, calling me out in shame at my seeming disrespect for our Savior's rising from the grave. And while I apologize for my flip remarks, I still say Easter always was one of the weaker and less eventful holidays, despite what they said in my grade school religion classes. Metalia's the expert on this, not me, but it actually seems that Jews have all the fun, what with the Bag o' Plagues and the Huggable Matzah Ball and the Let My People Go board game.
Actually, scratch any enthusiam about that "Let My People Go" board game. It just called to mind a not-so-rousing game of Bible Trivia that my sisters and I were once roped into playing at a family friend's house when we were kids. I have always enjoyed winning board games, but I remember my poor showing in that one being not unlike Bart and Lisa's miserable failure against Rod and Todd Flanders in their game of Bible Bombardment. No stickers for me, obviously. Eight years of Catholic school and little aside from pervading guilt to show for it, I guess.
But enough about me. How will you be spending the most Cadbury-friendly holiday this year?
Sunday, February 10, 2008
I'm a winner (and you can be, too)
People, I have news. The unthinkable has happened. I had two dates and a phone screening this weekend (yes, phone screening--haven't I told you that dating is a lot like work?), and believe it or not... none of them sucked!
I'll just pause for a second while you absorb that. Frankly I'm as shocked as you. I am reminded suddenly of one of Lara's very earliest haikus, written during her Match.com days...
Because I am nowhere near the shining ray of unbridled optimism that Lara is, I do not honestly anticipate falling in love with all three of these men and having to either move to Utah or hold some sort of awkward rose ceremony as an elimination round. But still. Two dates and a phone screening and I'm not writing any of them off yet? I'm pretty certain this is a first for me.
Bachelor #1 is six-foot-seven (six-foot-SEVEN!) and lives a mile and a half away from me. He is tall and geographically desirable! And he cooks, too! Also, he is an editor by day, which means that even though he inexplicably eschews capitalization in emails, he most likely knows the difference between its and it's. Obviously a second date is in order to find out more. On the negative side, if it doesn't work out, since he lives so close, we all know I am bound to run into him at Target. At least at 6'7" I'll see him coming. Advance warning always makes for an easier escape.
Bachelor #2 is a bit soft-spoken and hard to read, but aligns with me on several important life views (political, cinematic, etc.). He'd also very effectively round out my life menu with all sorts of useful skills I lack. He's worked as a chef, so he's likely even a better cook than the neighborhood giant, and he used to refurbish houses, so he could probably tell me exactly what I'm doing wrong with the half-assed basement beautification project I'm in the midst of currently. Incidentally, I might not actually have a second date with either of these men, as I may have picked up some sort of potentially fatal respiratory ailment by not wearing the proper safety equipment as I scraped the loose [undoubtedly lead-based] paint off said basement walls today and swept years of dust and debris into the trash. [Cough.]
I don't have much of a report on Bachelor #3 at the moment, as we haven't actually met in person yet. But we know that he digs bookish girls in sensible shoes, so clearly why wouldn't he like me, right?
Know who else likes me? My pal NPW, who was kind enough to bestow on me that "E for Excellent" award that's been making the rounds. You know the one...
Thanks, NPW. I'm sending an "E for Excellent" nod right back at you, my friend. Actually, I was planning to repay that kindness by passing the award on to other excellent bloggers, but I have such a damn hard time narrowing those things down, and attempting to do so was creating entirely more stress than seemed reasonable or necessary. You're all excellent, really. Well, maybe not you. Kidding. You too. Give yourself a little pat on the back today.
I do have to pass out some other prizes, however, so let's get to that, shall we? I've been terribly remiss in not acknowledging Poppy's recent Pay it Forward contest, wherein NPW and I both won fabulous prizes from the Popster. NPW got a quiz bowl t-shirt in honor of her brilliant little nerdlets, and I got this:
You remember Jim Halpert, don't you? He was on this television show that we all liked to watch before that never-ending writer's strike took it away from us. I'll wear this shirt and think of you, Jim. Please come back to us soon, OK?
Anyway, to keep the good vibes and prize-winning going, I need to pass along some prizes here as well. I'm going to keep this simple and borrow Poppy's rules. I'm thinking of three numbers (I'll even write them down, to be all official, though of course I won't tell you what I wrote just yet). If your comment number is one of the numbers I choose, you win! I have no idea what your prize will be, but I promise it very likely will not suck. It also will (hopefully) arrive more expeditiously than the fabled Funky Carter prize packages. We shall see. So. In summary: leave me a comment (a nice one, please), and you might win a prize. Comments for me, prizes for you. It's a win-win, I say.
I'll just pause for a second while you absorb that. Frankly I'm as shocked as you. I am reminded suddenly of one of Lara's very earliest haikus, written during her Match.com days...
Polygamist?
Have received emails
From various match.com
Boyfriends today. These
Guys are great! Honest!
What if I fall in love with ALL
Of them? Might happen.
Because I am nowhere near the shining ray of unbridled optimism that Lara is, I do not honestly anticipate falling in love with all three of these men and having to either move to Utah or hold some sort of awkward rose ceremony as an elimination round. But still. Two dates and a phone screening and I'm not writing any of them off yet? I'm pretty certain this is a first for me.
Bachelor #1 is six-foot-seven (six-foot-SEVEN!) and lives a mile and a half away from me. He is tall and geographically desirable! And he cooks, too! Also, he is an editor by day, which means that even though he inexplicably eschews capitalization in emails, he most likely knows the difference between its and it's. Obviously a second date is in order to find out more. On the negative side, if it doesn't work out, since he lives so close, we all know I am bound to run into him at Target. At least at 6'7" I'll see him coming. Advance warning always makes for an easier escape.
Bachelor #2 is a bit soft-spoken and hard to read, but aligns with me on several important life views (political, cinematic, etc.). He'd also very effectively round out my life menu with all sorts of useful skills I lack. He's worked as a chef, so he's likely even a better cook than the neighborhood giant, and he used to refurbish houses, so he could probably tell me exactly what I'm doing wrong with the half-assed basement beautification project I'm in the midst of currently. Incidentally, I might not actually have a second date with either of these men, as I may have picked up some sort of potentially fatal respiratory ailment by not wearing the proper safety equipment as I scraped the loose [undoubtedly lead-based] paint off said basement walls today and swept years of dust and debris into the trash. [Cough.]
I don't have much of a report on Bachelor #3 at the moment, as we haven't actually met in person yet. But we know that he digs bookish girls in sensible shoes, so clearly why wouldn't he like me, right?
Know who else likes me? My pal NPW, who was kind enough to bestow on me that "E for Excellent" award that's been making the rounds. You know the one...
Thanks, NPW. I'm sending an "E for Excellent" nod right back at you, my friend. Actually, I was planning to repay that kindness by passing the award on to other excellent bloggers, but I have such a damn hard time narrowing those things down, and attempting to do so was creating entirely more stress than seemed reasonable or necessary. You're all excellent, really. Well, maybe not you. Kidding. You too. Give yourself a little pat on the back today.
I do have to pass out some other prizes, however, so let's get to that, shall we? I've been terribly remiss in not acknowledging Poppy's recent Pay it Forward contest, wherein NPW and I both won fabulous prizes from the Popster. NPW got a quiz bowl t-shirt in honor of her brilliant little nerdlets, and I got this:
You remember Jim Halpert, don't you? He was on this television show that we all liked to watch before that never-ending writer's strike took it away from us. I'll wear this shirt and think of you, Jim. Please come back to us soon, OK?
Anyway, to keep the good vibes and prize-winning going, I need to pass along some prizes here as well. I'm going to keep this simple and borrow Poppy's rules. I'm thinking of three numbers (I'll even write them down, to be all official, though of course I won't tell you what I wrote just yet). If your comment number is one of the numbers I choose, you win! I have no idea what your prize will be, but I promise it very likely will not suck. It also will (hopefully) arrive more expeditiously than the fabled Funky Carter prize packages. We shall see. So. In summary: leave me a comment (a nice one, please), and you might win a prize. Comments for me, prizes for you. It's a win-win, I say.
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