emotionaltoothpaste

Detour

2010-01-26T13:46:00.003-08:00

I started a tumblr a few months ago. At first I only used it to reblog my friend Josh's post and every once in awhile I'd post a youtube clip. I planned to save any real writing for this blog. But the thing is that Tumblr is much, much easier to use than blogger. And it looks so much nicer. So I'm pretty much just posting (regularly!) on my Tumblr now:

http://awpeeps.tumblr.com/

Come on over!

Yeah, I know it looks a little weird, but it's easier to get the hang of it if you just create a Tumblr account and look at it through the Dashboard (you'll have to click the little "Follow" button at the top of my Tumblr for my posts to appear in your dashboard.) Also, for now you can't leave comments, but you can ask me a question, which is pretty much the same as leaving a comment.

I'm not getting rid of this blog, but I don't know how often I'm going to post anything here.

This post is brought to you by a Cranberries music video I watched this morning that reminded me of middle school

2009-11-19T09:00:00.001-08:00

Several years back Nick Hornby wrote a collection of essays all about different songs. The first essay was about a Teenage Fanclub song, and it started with a charming little recollection about how Teenage Fanclub were playing at the benefit/opening for one of his other books, and during their sound check they were playing one of his favorite songs, and in that moment he knew it was going to be a wonderful evening. It was a perfect little memory told as only Nick Hornby can. But then, as Missy Elliott might say, he puts his thing down, flips it and and reverses it, as he goes on to say that while you might expect a book of essays about music to be "straightforward time-and-place connections" this is not what the book is going to be about.

Oh.

He explains that if a song simply reminds him of a moment, then doesn't mean anything to him as music, it's just as a memory, and he's not going to write about it because he doesn't want to write about memories.

I have thought about that statement anytime I've ever written about a song, a book, a movie. Because I take the opposite approach. If a song doesn't remind me of a moment, then I don't really have anything to say about it. The only thing I want to write about are memories.

I always thought that the best job ever would be to be a movie critic, or a music critic, or a book critic, or--and this is the best one--a food critic. But it turns out that I'm a terrible reviewer. I'm total crap at objectively breaking things down and analyzing the parts and the sum of the parts, and then explaining why they work, or why they don't work. Mostly because I don't really care. I just like certain things, and I don't particularly care to spend a lot of time thinking about why. I like things that manage to capture and hold my tiny little attention span, and make me feel happy or nostalgic. Anytime I sit down and try to write a review of something, the only thing I produce is a personal reaction, and maybe no one really cares about how that this one song totally reminds me of that one time in sixth grade. But that's all I have to offer you.

I don't know the first thing about melody, tones, harmony, etc. I can't separate one musical instrument from another. I don't even really pay attention to lyrics at all, unless someone points them out to me*, or unless the song is written by Prince. The only thing I got is that sometimes a song, or even a whole musical artist will remind me of a particular moment or period in my life, and I can talk about that. It's not even talking about the music at all. It's just talking about me. Me, me, me, me.

That's probably why Nick Hornby got a book published and all I have are my sad little explanations of why I gave a book four stars on Goodreads rather than three, even though it is probably a three, but it reminded me of the lumpy recliner in my parents' old house.

*For example, in the song "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" my friend Erin pointed out how perfect this line is: "And I never had a girl looking any better than you did." And now every time I listen to that song (which is pretty damn often, and I'm fine admitting that), that line stands out a bit to me.

I just ran the NYC marathon

2009-11-01T13:36:00.002-08:00

Everything hurts too badly for it to sink in. I'm going to go drink a bunch of beer and go to bed. I love you all.

Speaking of celebrity sightings

2009-10-28T14:11:00.000-07:00

I wish I were someone who could draw from memory. The other day during my lunch break, I saw this guy at the local branch of the public library that I go to, and he looked really familiar. But I couldn't tell if he looked familiar because he was a famous person, or because he's just someone I've seen before. Does that ever happen to you? Maybe you have to live somewhere like New York or LA where celebrity sightings happen fairly frequently. Like, one time I was walking to the subway after work with my co-worker, and we passed this guy walking in front of the business school. I turned to my co-worker and asked, "Was that one of my scholars? He looked really familiar. Did I process his visa documents?" And she was like, "Dude. That was Gabriel Byrne."

So, yeah, this guy at the library. He could have been that guy from that show, or he could have just been the maintenance guy in my office building. If I could draw from memory, I could put together a little police sketch, post it to the Internet, and you could all tell me if he famous. Problem solved.

Some sort of crazy future-technology eyeball camera thing would work, too. Like, in the future, we'll all be able to recall any image that we've ever seen, screen cap it in our brains, and upload it to Flickr or whatever through brainwave Bluetooth wireless technology. Eventually, we'll probably be able to upload video, too.

Sadly, he was not playing a bango

2009-10-26T10:02:00.002-07:00

I sat next to Ed Helms for about 20 minutes in Washington Square Park on my lunch break. Okay, not right next to him, but a few benches away. We were the only two people sitting on that particular row of benches so it would have broken NYC's Code of Personal Space to sit on the bench next to him. I say it counts as next to him because there weren't any people sitting in between us. He looked over at me, we made eye contact, I smiled, he smiled back.

With this encounter, I set a personal best for spending the longest amount of time in close proximity to a famous person. The parameters for judging your personal records include:

1. Physical distance between you and the celebrity
2. Amount of time spent in said celebrity's company
3. Level of celebrity of the person

I would say that my previous two personal bests included the time I rode in an elevator with Lou Ferrigno for 8 floors when I was nine years old (points for proximity and level of celebrity, but amount of time was short), and the time I sat next to Elia from the 2nd season of Top Chef for half an hour at a Starbucks on Lexington (points for amount of time and proximity, but negative points for considering a reality show contestant a celebrity). An honorable mention for the time that I bowled in the lane next to the members of Grizzly Bear.

One of the few instances where I am 100% sure I would have swept the category in Jeopardy!

2009-10-22T08:46:00.000-07:00

How do you not know the Beastie Boys and/or LL Cool J? Are you deaf? For shame, Gonzaga. For shame.

Remember, years back when I actually updated my blog and I got A LOT of shit when I made fun of the blind chick who was on Teen Jeopardy! because she pretty much sucked? It was after that one blind dude totally killed on Jeopardy!—back when the max you could stay on was five nights and he coasted through all five nights and then won…wait for it…a car—so I had high expectations. Am I going to get shit for making fun of this girl’s obvious hearing disability? Bring it.

Touché

2009-10-10T16:31:00.002-07:00

Chris is peeing and also eating an ice cream cone at the same time. I know this because he always pees with the door open.

Me: Dude.

Chris: What? What I am supposed to do with the ice cream cone? I can't just set it down.

Me: I could hold it for you.

Chris: No way! You can't be trusted not to eat it.

Tell the Smell

2009-10-08T11:02:00.002-07:00

I had an ill-formed idea for a game show-type challenge called, "Meatloaf or Fart?". It's sort of like a Crack or Rack? guessing game, but only with smells. The idea came to me one day when I farted after eating some pot roast, and I was like, "Man, it smells like someone's cooking something awesome in here!" It was a horrifying moment of realization when I realized I was actually smelling the smell of my own fart. But then I thought: this could be a thing. A thing that could make me rich! For the game, you'd have someone blindfolded and they'd smell various smells, some of which would be meat, and others would be farts. The person would have to guess which is which. Hilarity ensues! Instant youtube hit!

Here are some potential hurdles and considerations that I've identified:

1. Can't play it on the Internet. Yet. Preferably, someone will invent smell-o-vision in the near future, but in the meantime it will have to be played in a live setting, like on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon or The Amazing Race or something.

2. Is is possible to contain and save the smell of a fart? I don't think it is. Yet. So, someone would have to fart live, on cue. This leads to a potential audio problem, as an audible fart would give it all away. A few ways around the audible fart problem would be a. put sound-blocking headphones on the contestant. or b. fill the room with a constant stream of piped in fart noises over the P.A. so that any live fart sounds would be confused with the normal background noise.

3. The other problem with a live fart is that there's no quality control. Basically, there's no way to ensure that the person's fart will smell sort of like food, which is really what we're going for. You can't risk a not-smelly fart, or a give-away egg fart.

4. Will we have to audition farters? I don't want any part of that.

5. Possible tie-in with Top Chef? Quick fire?

Okay, so I have some things to think through/some technology to invent.

FYI: I just accidentally played the game myself and lost. I had set out my delicious lunch of spaghetti and homemade meatballs (And by "homemade" I mean "I made Megan come over and slave away in my kitchen for hours last night and make me her renowned homemade meatballs") on my desk. I left my desk area to get some water, and I came back, and sniffed, and was like, "Oh, man, someone totally cut one!" Then I realized it was the meatballs. That line is pretty thin, guys.

After 6 years, you don't even have to try anymore. It just comes naturally.

2009-10-06T09:17:00.005-07:00

Last night I was talking to my mom on the phone while I was getting stuff ready for dinner.

Mom asks: "Isn't your anniversary coming up?"

Me, chopping garlic: "Uh, yeah, it's tomorrow actually!" (I was only aware of this because it had just come up in conversation with another friend moments earlier.)

Mom: "Are you and Chris doing anything special?"

Me: "We're going out to eat next weekend. Speaking of food, man, the best part of training for a marathon is that I can eat whatever I want. Tonight I'm making steak! Filet mignon! And I'm cooking it in butter!"

Mom: "That sounds like a nice dinner. Did you plan that for your anniversary?"

Me: "No, I just found these steaks in the freeze--wait, YES. Yes. I totally planned this for our anniversary the whole time. Completely intentional."

Fast-forward an hour to Chris getting home from work.

Chris: "Something smells good! Are you cooking?"

Me: "Yep!"

Chris: "What are we having?"

Me: "STEAK!"

Chris, gets a little misty eyed, comes over and kisses me on the mouth, "You are amazing."

Me: "I thought I'd make something special for our anniversary."

Chris, blanches: "I thought that was tomorrow."

Me: "It is."

Chris: "I didn't get you anything."

Me: "Wait, are we getting each other things? I didn't get you anything either. We're just going out to dinner."

Chris: "Okay, phew. Oh, wait, I got a six pack of beer!" (Holds it up excitedly)

Me: "Yay! Oh, look! It's [Sierra Nevada] Anniversary Ale! Aw, did you get this on purpose?"

Chris: "No, it was just the first thing that I--no, hold on, YES. Yes. I completely bought this particular beer on purpose for our anniversary."

Seriously, though, who would do that?

2009-10-05T13:50:00.002-07:00

Before a race this past Saturday, I was waiting in line for FUCKING ever to use the porta-potty right before the race. The dude who was in the bathroom that I was queued up for had been in there for 15 minutes, I swear. I assumed he was, you know, taking an extra long dump. It happens.

But no.

Oh no.

I go in there to discover a suspicious white gooey substance EVERYWHERE. Naturally, I flipped out and ran out of the porta-potty. And Chris and my friend's dad (who were also running the race) just magically happened to walk by me at the exact same time. As soon as I saw Chris, I screamed, "SOME DUDE JUST BEAT OFF IN THE PORTA-POTTY!" Then I saw my friend's dad. I made eye contact. And then all I could think about was I just said "beat off" in front of a dad. And not just any dad, but this particular friend's dad; a dad to whom I have given a custom tour of Central Park, and who I know to be much more refined and well-mannered than myself. I kept thinking, "Oh my god, my friend's going to kill me for screaming about masturbating in a porta-potty in front her dad."

Later I told Chris that I was sort of embarrassed about screaming that in front of our friend's dad, and Chris was like, "Oh, really? I kept bringing it up! I kept asking, 'Who would do that? Who would jack off in a porta-potty?'" Chris said her dad never responded.

I told my friend about it, and she said her dad never mentioned it all weekend. So, phew.

Everyone likes sports, right?

2009-10-01T09:05:00.007-07:00

Oh, the woes of being a Cleveland sports fan. We just gotten through all those disappointing years with Romeo "Roast Beef and Cheddar" Crennel, and then the Browns go and make the worst coaching hire in NFL history by bringing on Eric Mangina. I lived here in New York last year. I know how much he sucks. I know how much everyone hates him. What? Do the Browns not read the New York Post? Christ.

And then there's the Indians. They FINALLY fired Eric Wedge yesterday (BTW, nice move, fire the guy with 6 games left, which he will still manage. That's not awkward or anything.) Other than using his mind control forces to summon the swarms of midges to defeat the Yankees (suck) in the first round of the post season in Aught-Seven, he did absolutely nothing other than not shave for weeks at a time. Good riddance.

Anyway, I could go on and on, but the real point of this post is to talk about Shaq. More specifically, Shaq's twitter account. I've been following @THE_REAL_SHAQ for ever since he became a Cavalier, and I'm 100% convinced that he's illiterate. Confirmation:

I started following him out of spite. (I also hate-follow Diablo Cody, yet another famous person who most likely never learned to read or write). I'm going to be polite (because I'm sort of terrified that Shaq's agent has some sort of google alert and will find this, and I definitely don't want to hurt Shaq's feelings. Or get crushed by him) and say that I am weary of his addition to the Cavaliers. I think he's sort of old and huge and washed up. I'm fearful that all he's going to do is stand around trying to figure out how to text and get his giant ogre body in the way anytime Lebron tries to drive through the paint. But anyway, Twitter.

As I mentioned, I started following him out of spite, but as these things tend to go, I've sort of grown to love the guy. He's such a big dumb idiot that it's endearing. Example?

I think this is maybe the most useful thing anyone has ever posted on Twitter. I mean, if you can't trust Shaq on a restaurant recommendation, who can you trust? That man can clearly eat a lot of lasagna. Like Garfield times a million.

Of course, the restaurant Shaq recommends is actually called Lago. No s. Also, there is no lasagna on the menu. So I'm not entirely sure where he thinks he ate, but I am sure it was delicious.

We've reached the point where all I ever post about any more is poop and underpants:

2009-09-03T07:03:00.002-07:00

Me: Do you still have keys [to our apartment]?

Megan: Yes

Me: Just let yourself in. I might be switching out the laundry or something.

Megan: Be sure to have pants on

Me: Eh, probably won't.

Megan: Underpants at least.

Me: Fair enough. Although I'll tell you right now I'm wearing a pair that say "Tropical Tuesday" on them.

Megan: But...but...It's Thursday.

Me: IT'S LAUNDRY DAY

Megan: Also, I remember those underpants.

Me: Yeah, they're old!

Megan: Those are from HIGH SCHOOL.

Me: College, not high school.

Megan: BUY NEW UNDERWEAR

me: Well, I've lost, like, all but 3 of the days. They're all stretched out and roomy! I like 'em!

Megan: Dear god.

Soapy Shorts

2009-07-31T12:11:00.002-07:00

This morning I had to get up and do a long run since I'm an idiot and decided that running a marathon would be a good thing for me to do. The forecast was for possible showers and thunderstorms this afternoon, so I woke up at 6:00 am, and of course it was raining. Dang it. I had some breakfast, and the rain stopped. Wee! I headed into the city and when I got to Central Park, the skies were lighter. Things were going my way!

I'm jogging along listening to an old mix that Chris made when we first started dating. I'm about 2 miles into my 10 mile run, and I'm feeling pretty good. For once, there aren't many people jogging in the park, and there's a stretch where I don't see any other joggers. I have a little moment with Central Park, and it's great, I love the Park. Then I notice that the sky has gotten quite dark all of a sudden, and I realize why no one else is in the park. I see lightning, and as soon as I hear the thunder, the skies completely open up and dump their shit down on me. It's a fucking monsoon. I'm drenched the instant it starts raining, so I just keep running because it's not going to do me any good to stop. At this point, I'm up at the top of the park near the North Woods, and all I can think about is that dude who got hit by a tree branch in Central Park during the storm on Wednesday, and it knocked him into a coma. (Oh, just google it. I'm too lazy to find you a link.) So I'm not just running through a downpour, I'm zig-zagging all over the place (it's harder to hit a moving target), trying to stare up at the trees to keep alert for any branches that might snap off, hit me in the head, and put me in a coma/kill me/prevent me from driving to South Carolina tonight. It rains for about 10-15 minutes, and then abruptly stops. I mean, abruptly. One second it's pouring, the next the sun is all like, "Helloooooooooooooo!"

The minute the sun comes out, the park fills up with other runners. Other runners who were undercover during the storm and are therefore dry. They are all staring at me because I look like I just fell into the lake.

I look down and realize that maybe they're not staring at me entirely because I'm dripping wet. When I glance down, I see that my legs are entirely covered in giant, white, soapy bubbles that are cascading down my legs from my shorts. Here's the thing, I usually hand wash my gym shorts so I can reuse them, and by "hand wash" I mean, I soak them in a sink full of soap and water and then hang them out to dry. No rinsing necessary.

Turns out, the rinse is necessary. I tried to wipe the soap off my legs, but it just kept coming out of the shorts. There was nothing I could do to stop it because even though it had stopped raining, it was humid enough and I was ~~sweaty~~ glowy (girls don't sweat, they glow--and I was glowing like a pig) that the wet shorts just stayed wet and kept producing soap. Did you ever see the picture of that guy who shit his pants while running a marathon? (Okay, I'll go ahead and find the link for you on this one. Here you go.) Yeah, it was like that, but with soap instead of poop.

Sample of a typical IM conversation between me and my sister

2009-07-13T13:02:00.002-07:00

Megan: We can either poach or grill pan [the chicken]

Me: cool
poaching makes it nice to shred
so moist
moooooooooooiiiiiist

Megan: ew

me: moyyyyyyyyyst

Megan: why
why do you do this

me: oyyyyyyyyyyyntment
moyyyyyyyyst oyyyyyyyntment

Megan: Panties!
Paaaaaaaaaaaaanties!
you don't like that word, right?

me: DAMNIT!
i hate that word!
underpants! they're called underpants!

Megan: PAAAAAAAAANTIIIIIEEEEEEEEEES

What I'm doing this afternoon: trying to figure out how to type out angry cat-fight noises

2009-07-09T12:24:00.004-07:00

You know how when two people are engaged in some bitchy, petty little argument and some observer always makes a noise like a cat would make in a fight? How the hell does one phonetically type that out?

Reoowwwwww?

No, there's not really an "ow" sound to it. It's more of a "reeeaaaaarrr" sound. That doesn't look right either.

Raaarrrrrr?

Roooooooeeeeooowww?

Rar!

I think maybe part of my problem is that I don't actually know how to make this angry cat noise.

Let me see what happens when I google "how to type angry cat fight noises".

Okay, so that wasn't helpful at all, but I did find some sweet .wavs of cats fighting and also this site: http://pussy-cat-fight.blogspot.com/

Let me see if Megan's online and ask her.

me: question: how would you type out a cat-fight noise?
Megan: MROWR
hissssssssssssss
me: oh, the hiss is good

Chris is online, too. Let's see what he has to say.

me: how do you think one would type out an angry catfight noise?
Chris: raaarow
tssssss
or just a simple "me-ow"
me: nice. those are good

I like the addition of the hiss noise at the end. I think I'll go with the sass of the "Me-Ow" and add the hiss as a finishing touch.

Me-ow! Hisssssssss!

There it is!

Questions that I have asked my pregnant friends lately:

2009-06-24T11:20:00.001-07:00

1. How fat have you gotten?
2. Are you concerned that because your baby is due on December 22nd, it's birthday will be too close to Christmas, and it will get totally shorted on its presents because everyone will give it combo birthday/Christmas presents?
3. (To my friend who lives in the mountains in Colorado, an hour away from the closest hospital) Dude, how are you going to get to the hospital when you go into labor? Are you worried about giving birth in the car on the side of the road? What if the mountain road is closed because there's too much snow?
4. Are you upset that you'll be too pregnant to fly home and see your family for Thanksgiving and Christmas?
5. How do you think the cats will react to the baby? The reason I'm asking is because I heard that cats get really jealous when you bring a baby home, and they will try to kill it by sitting on the baby while it's sleeping and suffocating it, or clawing the baby's eyes out.
6. You're still naming it after me, right?

Things that set the tone of my day:

2009-06-18T16:16:00.001-07:00

1. I split my pants putting them on at the gym this morning. The only NYU gym that opens early in the summer is conveniently enough, the one that does not have air conditioning. The entire gym is like a sauna, which, hey, free sauna! But the humidity and stickiness doesn't really go away after a shower, so putting on a pair of jeans is not as easy as you would think. Sure enough, this morning I Incredible Hulked my way through my jeans, except in this case, my impression of the Hulk was not an angry, green genetic mutant, but simply a damp lady with fat thighs.

2. In the fluster that followed the splitting of the pants, I accidentally put my shirt on inside out. Not a huge deal, except it was a black shirt, and I had already put on my not-as-clear-as-promised-on-the-label deodorant. Yay! Deodorant marks all over my shirt!

3. I decided to part my hair in the other direction today. (I follow a regimen of 3 months left side parting, followed by 3 months right side parting). Did I mention it was humid? Needless to say, the part did not take, and I looked like Conan O'Brien all day.

The rest of the day was filled with more of the same--didn't realize the cap was off my water bottle and dumped it all over myself, further split my pants bending over to retie my shoe, fell asleep at the library on my lunch break and snored so loud I woke myself up. It was just one of those days.

But, anyway, hi! How are you? I think we all know well enough by now that I'm a bit of a dead beat dad with this thing. How many times can I bring you Burger King and a 40 to split and tell you I love you and I promise to try harder in the future?

Well, that backfired

2009-04-30T12:11:00.003-07:00

I just asked my co-worked, "If our office was The Office, who would be each character?" thinking that of course she would say I was the Jim, because, uh, duh. I'm totally normal and hilarious and always up for a prank.

Instead she said, "Who would be Creed? I guess you would be."

T-shirt Obituary

2009-04-06T09:54:00.002-07:00

I loved Volumes I and II of T-Shirt Obituaries on The Plug and I contributed one to the Volume III. Check it out.

Get it?

2009-03-30T13:08:00.000-07:00

I just came up with a new slang term. I think that a queef should be called The Wind in the Willow.

Om!

2009-03-26T12:22:00.002-07:00

Last night I went to yoga class for the first time ever. The only pose I could do was corpse pose, but I considered the class a success for one reason and one reason only: I did not fart out loud.

Woz should have gone home

2009-03-18T08:24:00.000-07:00

Chris, reading the celebrity gossip part of The Huffington Post where there was a picture of Lily Allen eating ribs in bed, "This is so awesome. Lily Allen is so hot."

Me, eating Double Stuff Oreos and watching Dancing with the Stars, "Dude, I'll eat ribs in bed any time you want. Just say the word."

Chris then shows me a picture of Lily Allen on stage in some sexy lingerie get up, "Would you also wear this?"

I roll my eyes and lick the double stuffing off my Oreo, "Not likely."

"Then it's not the same."

"Well, I just dropped part of Oreo down my bra. How 'bout I let you watch while I fish it out and we call it even?"

"How is that different from any other night?"

I shrug, "Whatever, Lily Allen is really whiny on her Twitter."

I wish they could do a Watchmen/Dancing with the Stars crossover

2009-03-11T15:34:00.006-07:00

I was watching Dancing With the Stars (judge me) on Monday, and they showed a clip from a few seasons ago of Jason Taylor. I had one of those annoying moments where I realized that he reminded me of someone, but I couldn't think of who it was*. Then I figured it out. He looks exactly like Dr. Manhattan.

Here is a picture of Jason Taylor:

Now let me just do a few things. Hue, saturation, brush tool, brush tool, brush tool, and voila!

Uncanny, isn't it?

*Did anyone watch Top Chef this season? Does anyone remember Melissa, one of the crappy chefs with blonde hair and the huge straight bangs? She totally reminded me of a cartoon character--an annoying blonde girl with straight bangs and big scary black eyebrows, but for the life of me I cannot think of what cartoon/comic it's from. Driving me nuts!

What it's like to live with me:

2009-03-04T12:58:00.002-08:00

Chris goes to give me a good morning kiss, and recoils in horror, "You got something weird all over your face. It's like you grew a giant mustache over night!"

"What?!" I run to the bathroom to look in the mirror, and sure enough, I appear to have a nice thick five o'clock shadow of a mustache, only it extends partway out to my cheeks on either side and is blue in color. I take a closer look.

"Ha! You know what this is?" I shout to Chris from the bathroom.

"No, what the hell is it?"

"Remember how I ate all those wings last night before I went to bed? And then I slept in the Snuggie? Yeah, this is just Snuggie fuzz stuck to the wing sauce on my face!"

"God, there are just so many things to love about you."

Several unrelated things that I'm putting into one post

2009-02-27T10:35:00.003-08:00

Unrelated Thing #1: I hate Quiznos

You know what place sucks? Quiznos sucks. I hate that place. Their stupid toasty gimmick just means I have to wait freaking forever to get my sandwich after it travels through their stupid toaster oven on that slow ass conveyer belt, and then after all that I have to pay for it and then I'm still not done because I have to walk all they way over to their stupid pickle and pepper stand, unwrap the sandwich and make a huge mess trying to add some delicious pickle slices and banana peppers. Quiznos can toast my balls. But I heard they were giving away coupons for a free sub, so even though I'd probably never actually pay for a sandwich there I was like, "Sweet, dude. Free sandwich." So I went to their stupid sucky website and gave them some fake email address and printed my coupon for a free sub. But the problem is I can't find a single Quiznos in Manhattan that will actually accept the coupon. Yesterday I walked to all three Quiznos that are within a one mile radius of my office, and I was turned away at every single one. It really pisses me off because it's indicative that the corporate office basically just wants to dick over the franchise owners by not reimbursing them for all the free subs they should be giving away. Way to think through this, Quiznos. Just for that I'm going back to calling you Jizz-nos.

Unrelated Thing #2: Intentionally messy hair

I'm the first to admit that I don't put any sort of effort into my appearance. I shower at the gym every morning, and I towel dry my hair and then either throw on a hat or walk to work with my hair freezing into its towel-dried shape. So every time I get a haircut, the stylist seems to take note of the way my hair is when I walk in--messy, unbrushed, cowlicky--and somehow concludes that the mess is intentional and proceeds to give me the "messy, shaggy look" when they style my hair at the end. Every single time! I'm so sick of hairstylists telling that they're going to make my hair look like awesome bedhead. Listen, if I want awesome bedhead, I will just wake up in the morning. That's all it takes! My hair looks like a mess because I spend zero minutes on it most days. If I want to spend time on my hair, I'll get out the flat iron and make it look like I spent some time on it. Why would I ever spend upwards of 20 minutes getting my hair to look insane? Unless maybe I was dressing up like Nancy Spungen. And the woman who did my hair yesterday sprayed some magical serum on my hair that worked like a pied piper and caused every single gray hair on my head to rise to the top and then frizz out into a crazy nest of gray, wiry spaghetti sitting on the top of my intentionally messy hair. Thanks, lady, I love riding the subway home during rush hour with hair that looks like I haven't showered in 6 days.

Unrelated Thing #3: Grey/Gray

I know that there is no standardization in the spelling of grey/gray and that gives me a weird and uncomfortable feeling in the pit of my stomach. How can they both be right? Where did we go wrong?

Unrelated Thing #4: I can't get enough of the Abbey

It's gotten to the point where I can tell who's bar tending at the Abbey based solely on the handwriting on the chalkboard outside. Last night, as I was walking home from the subway hoping that pigeons wouldn't try to roost in my scary nest of gray hair, I recognized a woman that I chat with from time to time at the Abbey. She was out having a smoke outside the Abbey, and the handwriting indicated that my favorite bartender was working, so I decided I might as well stop in for a pint. She introduced me to some of the other regulars who I'd seen there before but hadn't really ever talked to. They inducted me right into their group of misfit regulars, and the bartender brought us all a shot of whiskey. We fell into the easiest conversation I've fallen into with strangers, talking about the bar and the neighborhood and that most fucking retarded protest ever that took place at NYU last week. I was there for maybe 30 minutes and walked away with 4 new friends and a warm belly lined with whiskey and IPA. It was probably one of the happiest little parts of my life.

Unrelated Thing #5: MSG Dreams

I ate Chinese food at like 10:15 pm last night, and then I had a dream that I was back in high school, only the building was my middle school, and I couldn't find my math class, and then I finally did find it but all the chairs were the different vehicle options from Mario Kart for the Wii, and I was the last person to arrive so I had to sit in Baby Toad's baby buggy car. Then I was attacked over and over and over and over again by my friends Adam and Danielle's cat. He kept jumping on me and sinking his claws into me, and nothing could get him to stop.

What does this mean?

Unrelated Thing #6: Life Alert

This morning I treated myself to an extra hour of sleep and skipped the gym. I should have known I would pay for my indolence. As I stepped out of the shower and reached for my towel, I somehow slipped and fell. Like one of those cartoon falls where all of a sudden you're horizontal in the air. I fell mostly onto my right ass check and wrist, and I whacked my head against the door jam. Luckily I drink assloads of milk so my bones are made of titanium and I didn't break anything. I fell so hard that the oven door actually popped open. It happened so fast that I had no clue what had just happened. All of a sudden I was naked on the floor, soaking wet, and the oven door was springing open and whacking me on the knees. Chris had already left, so I just sort of stayed there for a few moments trying to figure out where the hell I was. Then I started to laugh really hard, the kind of laugh where you're just laughing because you're super embarrassed, so it was really breathy and hyena-like. I've never felt like more of a winner in my life.

Edited to add a picture of the wonky layout of our kitchen:

Lost

2009-02-25T13:21:00.000-08:00

So I caved into the peer pressure from the entire English speaking world, and I Netflixed the first season of Lost. I watched bits and pieces of the first two seasons but totally lost interest during that shithole of a third season. That, and pretty much every single character on that show is the most annoying person ever, and once it became clear that they weren't going to kill them all off, I threw in my towel. The same thing happened to me with Alias--about halfway through the fourth season I just completely gave up trying to keep it all straight--her mom's evil, her mom's not evil, she has a sister, her sister is evil, her sister is not evil, her dad is evil, her dad is not evil, Vaughn is not really Vaughn, Vaughn is evil, Rambaldi?. But then after the show ended once and for all, my sister brought over the entire series on DVD, and I watched it all in about a week, and it turns out that 4th season really wasn't that bad, and as terrible as JJ Abrams is about letting his story lines get completely incomprehensible and insane, he's also quite good at tying up most of those loose ends by the time the series ends.

Now that I've heard from enough people that this penultimate season of Lost is awesome, I'm ready to apply my The Fourth Season of Alias Wasn't Actually That Bad rule, and dive in. I figure I can hopefully get caught up in time to watch the last season live. One of my friends has promised me some actually intelligent insight and determinist philosophy comes into play, and I'm intrigued.

In other exciting news, is there a term for those little balls of wool that form in the armpits of sweaters? Wool boogers? Armpit dingleberries? I feel like there should be a term for that.

Just got back from an awesome trip to Colorado, which I may someday write about if my eye ever stops twitching

2009-02-17T15:11:00.002-08:00

Today I had my annual physical, and no one stuck a finger up my butt, thank god. I am the opposite of most people; I make every effort to go to the doctor only when I am healthy. Ignoring the variety of life-threatening 18th century diseases I've contracted over the years, I can't think of the last time I went to see a doctor for anything other than an annual physical. I figure there's nothing much that a doctor can do for a cold or flu that can't be home-remedied with an assload of Advil Cold and Sinus, a nap, and a whiny call to my mom crying about how it sucks that I live 500 miles away and how I want her to come make me soup and rub my back. See, no need to go to the doctor. That, and if I'm really sick, there's no way in hell I want to take two subways and then walk 15 minutes to my doctor's office which is in the Siberia of Murray Hill.

Since I tend to only go to the doctor once a year, I try to keep a list of the various ailments that I notice throughout the year with the intention of asking my doctor about them. Per the usual, this year I lost/forgot the list, so when she asked if I had anything to report, I remained mum. Then, the second I returned back to the office, my left eye started to twitch uncontrollably. The twitching continued throughout the day, and after about an hour or two, water started to pour out of my eye. Like I had turned on a secret eye spigot. It watered my shirt for about an hour and then the twitching resumed.

About the same time that my eye started twitching I noticed a weird and persistent itch on the back of both my thighs. I ignored it as best I could, but by the time I walked towards the subway home, the gentle itch had turned into a fiery burn. I ran home from the subway and ripped off my pants as soon as I got in my apartment, and the fresh air was a momentary distraction before the burning fired up again. Thinking maybe they were just dry, I rubbed some super strength aloe vera lotion on them. Bad idea. The burning! It burns! Have you ever tried to blow on the backs of your own thighs? It's not easy. In fact, I'm forced to write this reclined on the couch, balancing my laptop on my stomach while I prop my ankles up on a stack of pillows trying to prevent my thighs from touching anything.

I am starting my list for next year's doctor's visit.

Livin la vida loca

2009-01-29T12:27:00.000-08:00

I made the fatal mistake of packing a brand new, unbroken-in pair of jeans to wear today. I should know better. When you got dumps like a truck truck truck and thighs like what what what you have to break in a pair of jeans before you can ever hope to get them to button. I have a tried and true jean-breaking-in method. It involves a strict regimen of lunges, squats and high kicks. It works like a charm, but it must be done in the privacy of one's own home, and the jeans should be left on for at least an hour afterward to make sure the stretching out lasts. I completely forgot to do this before I packed these jeans this morning.

To make matters worse, I go to the gym at NYU in the mornings and I shower and get dressed there, so an entire locker room full of svelte 18-year-olds got to witness my epic giant-thighed struggle. And to make conditions worse yet, I was fresh from the shower and fat, damp legs + unstretched-out denim = fail.

After much pulling and yanking and even a few kicky-feet jumps in the air while heaving on my belt loops I was able to get the jeans about halfway up my ass. They didn't button, but I could mostly zip them up and I could get the belt on, so I called it as close to a victory as I could get. Further hilarity ensued as I tried to bend over and put my socks and shoes on. Then I lunged my way to work. The end.

See, this is what happens when I guilt myself into updating this thing. Dear Diary, Today I put on pants. Glad I've preserved this memory.

I WANT:

2009-01-23T09:53:00.002-08:00

Two in the jello, one in the HELLO!

2009-01-14T14:26:00.003-08:00

I went to my new lady doctor today for my annual woman exam, and near the end of the exam, without warning, my new doc stuck his finger right up my pooper. Is this normal? Is this some New York thing? This had never happened to me before. So, naturally, as soon as my made my clenched-cheek dash from his office, I called Chris at work, and exclaimed:

"My new gyno stuck his finger up my butthole!"

Chris nonchalantly replied, "Yeah, you'll have that."

"No, I won't! It's never happened before! It was unexpected!"

To which Chris stated, "That's why they call it the shocker."

Watching a commercial for some at-home pull up machine thing

2009-01-13T06:47:00.003-08:00

Commercial voice: The most explosive workout ever!

Me: Ew.

Chris: What?

Me: An explosive workout sounds like you're going to be shooting wet poop out your butthole while you're doing pull ups.

Chris: I'm so lucky I found you.

2008

2009-01-11T13:46:00.001-08:00

Now that we're far enough into 2009 that I've stopped writing the date incorrectly, I think maybe I should reflect a bit on 2008. Every new year I intend to do one of those let's-look-back-at-the-year-here's-a-list-of-my-tops pieces that are all the rage with Ye Bloggers. But never once have I ever been with it enough to do it. And I'm sure this year will be no different because I'll probably get distracted by something in a few minutes and chuck this.

I know that for a lot of people 2008 was a total shit of a year, possibly the worst of their lives. Well, not to thumb my nose at you, but, dudes, 2008 was maybe the best year of my life. (Other great years: the academic years of 1992-1993; 1999-2000 and 2003-2004). This was the year I made some of the best friends ever, got a job that I enjoy and find challenging enough but not too much, and I actually got out of the apartment and did stuff. In the beginning of 2008 I decided I would say yes to as many things as possible, and that was the best bit of self-improvement I've ever accomplished, better even than training myself to floss daily. I've never had more fun in my life. Sure, there's less money in my savings account, and I've gained some beer weight, but that seems like a small price to pay for all that I got in return.

I just read something recently in a Garrison Keillor book, and one of the characters has just decided to stop drinking and get her shit together and get her life back on track and she thinks to herself,

"A person cannot coast along in old destructive habits year after year and accept whatever comes along. A person must stand up on her own two legs and walk. Get off the bus and go get on another. Climb out of the ditch and cross the road. Find the road that's where you want to go. ... The only sermon that counts is the one that is formed by our actions. She would quit drinking and thereby show Kyle: life is what you make it. A person can grab hold of her life and change things for the better. This happens all the time. We are not chips of wood drifting down the stream of time. We have oars."

I really like the thought that we can always work to make ourselves better. I'd like to think that's what I'm going to continue to do this year, to build on the efforts I made last year to meet people, to volunteer, to get in shape, to stay busy. I've never been so consistently happy before in my life, and so much if it has to do with these connections I've made by simply saying yes to invitations.

One of my goals for 2009 is to do a better job documenting things. I realize I've more or less let this site go to pasture lately, which is a shame because it would nice to be able to look back in a few years and read back on all that I did this year. I guess that was another consequence of never being home any more, is I spend a lot less time sitting in front of my computer. But I really would like to get back in the habit of writing here, for no one's sake other than my own.

And on that note, I'm late to go meet up with the Chris's for beer and football.

IM with Megan

2008-12-19T06:54:00.001-08:00

Megan: Side note, guess where I'm going for lunch today.
Me: ?
Megan: Hooters
Me: hahahahahahaha
Megan: I'm going with a bunch of women in the office. Apparently they love their wings.
Me: That's awesome. Where is hooters?
Megan: Heaven
Me: Ha!
Megan: I don't know. I think you take a left off of Awesome St and it's a couple blocks down on Woo Hoo Ave.

Home in one piece

2008-11-30T18:20:00.003-08:00

I'm having a hard time typing because my hands are so cramped from the death grip that I had on the steering wheel of my rental car for the last 10 hours. Yes, it took 10 hours to get home from Pittsburgh, a drive that usually takes six and a half hours...maybe seven depending on how long I sit at Waffle House to let my food digest. I drive a car a few times a year now, so I found it especially cruel that I was confronted with every single one of the worst driving conditions on this trip. On the way to Ohio, it was snowing, then today, it was foggy, raining, cold, windy, and eventually very, very dark. And the traffic! My god. It got to the point where, after the 20 millionth block of stop and go traffic, I was demanding to see evidence of an accident so at least I felt like the stopping was for a reason. And I swear to God, Google Maps intentionally tries to get me lost in the ghetto. WHY DID YOU TELL ME TO EXIT IN NEWARK? I've never been so glad to not own a car before. This trip took years off of my life. I don't know if my heart rate will ever be normal again. I'm going to make out with the subway tomorrow.

Carol of the Bells by Megan

2008-11-29T13:32:00.003-08:00

Megan on Daniel Radcliffe in Equus:

2008-11-28T21:24:00.006-08:00

"I don't care if I'm gay, I'm still curious to see Harry Potter's wand."

I mean it

2008-11-27T15:29:00.004-08:00

Drunk stream of conscious entry II

2008-11-26T19:09:00.003-08:00

Megan just reminded me that I need to post something. I was curled up in front of the fireplace like the family dog, content to lie there and digest my Thanksgiving Eve meal. It snowed a foot here yesterday, and it's making Ohio feel like a foreign land. Holy crap, they made a Hallmark Original Movie starring Candace Cameron and Tom Arnold. Crap fest! My grandparents are over. Megan and I picked them up earlier today, and we got back to the house at 5:09 and they loudly announced that they were 9 minutes late for cocktail hour. No we're all watching "Iron Chef America" and, hey wait, was that Lou Diamond Phillips? It totally way. Ew, those are whole ducks. With heads and feathers and little webbed feet. Okay, I don't think I ever want to de-feather a bird. But I do want to deep fry a turkey. Lou Diamond Phillips is one of the judges. Dude, I can't wait to eat the shit out of some food tomorrow.

So nice to be home: a drunk stream of conscious entry

2008-11-25T18:11:00.005-08:00

What time is it? All I know is it's early, and awhile back I looked at the clock and it was 6:27 pm and I was drunk and had already eaten dinner. I haven't eaten dinner before 8:00 pm in ages. Megan and I drove back to Ohio for Thanksgiving break today. We arrived home around 2:15 and then started drinking beer and playing Euchre by 4:00 pm. I've laughed so much tonight that my lungs ache. I think my tuberculosis might be back. Megan just farted so rumbly-like that she blamed it on the house settling, then fanned the stank in my direction. Now my entire family is watching Dancing With the Stars and my dad is asking who Alicia Keys is. Megan just made up a word: "Rumoredly".

I will choose free will

2008-11-24T17:46:00.001-08:00

A few weeks ago I purchased the 30th anniversary edition of Faces of Death. When I told Chris that I bought it, he just rolled his eyes and shook his head at me in the way that silently conveys, "You disgust me." So I think I can safely add "Purchased 30th anniversary edition of Faces of Death" to my ever-lengthening list of Things I Thought My Boyfriend Would Love About Me That He, In Fact, Resents

Here's part of the list:

Things I Thought My Boyfriend Would Love About Me That He, In Fact, Resents

1. Am not embarrassed to fart out loud, and rather am very amused with myself
2. Wall-shakingly loud belching ability
3. Can make a fart noise with my arm pit
4. Love Quiet Riot, and have met them in person, and have a signed, framed picture of them, and the drummer, Frankie Banali, told me he liked my mullet t-shirt
5. Thought it would be funny to get a mistletoe belt for Christmas time
6. Think it's funny to shimmy every time I take off my shirt in front of him
7. Have the following movies memorized: Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, Ace Ventura 2: When Nature Calls, Old School, Anchorman, Wayne's World, Zoolander, Tommy Boy, Billy Madison
8. Asked for a Storm Trooper costume for my 26th birthday

Strangely enough, want to know what impresses guys every single time without fail? The fact that I know A LOT about the band Rush. It works time after time. So all you single ladies, get to Wikipedia and pick yourself a favorite Rush song that isn't "Tom Sawyer". You'll thank me later.

What I did today

2008-11-23T17:53:00.002-08:00

Slept in until about 10:00

Moved from bed directly to the couch and cleared through 2 Netflix DVDs (final disc of Season 4 of The Wire and Recount)

Ate some barbecue chips

Ate some tortilla chips

Ate some pita chips

Did some Google research on prosthetic arms for the Masek Family Christmas letter

Wrote the Masek Family Christmas letter

Ate a slice of pizza

Went into the city to try to see Quantum of Solace

Upon discovering the movie was sold out, got a Cherry Coke and came back home

Returned to couch to watch a History Channel program about FSU, the straight edge gang

Read the wikipedia entry on Elgin James

Bring your green hat

2008-11-22T22:27:00.003-08:00

Hey, you think KFC is still open?

Dude it's cold outside

2008-11-21T20:47:00.002-08:00

So, I think we can all probably agree that after an evening of drinking, ordering clam chowder is a bad idea. Fair enough. But according to weather dot com, it's 27 degrees outside, and it feels like 14, which is horrifying because this time last week I was walking around comfortably in a tshirt and jeans. So you can forgive us for thinking chowder was a good idea because we were cold and hungry and, yes, a wee bit drunk.

And actually, it wasn't really the chowder that was the problem. It was the fact that "bread bowl" sounds an awful lot like "red bull". But I just let Chris and Chris further confuse the waiter by rapping about their bread bowls and red bulls, and tucked into my clam chowder.

And actually it did hit the spot.

This sort of illustrates something that I noticed about myself today. I tend to think I have something funny to say and start to tell a story thinking it will be great and will make sense, and then it just pitters out with no real conclusion.

Many delicious meals

2008-11-20T19:26:00.003-08:00

I went over to Megan's new place tonight because she promised to make me green bean casserole. Yeah, doesn't that sound awesome? Because it did, and it was. So awesome, in fact, that I ate an entire half of the casserole. I went up not for seconds, not for thirds, not for fourths, but for fifths.

And as if green bean casserole weren't enough of awesome, Megan also fried up some bacon and made me a fancy BLT complete with cheese and avocado. Bacon! Freshly fried! That is how you treat a guest.

On a side note, I'm sooooooo sick of posting every day. I just want to read Twilight (shut up) and go to bed. So this is what you get, me telling you what I ate for dinner. Deal with it. It was either this or detailing for you the plots of Scream II & III, which Megan read aloud to me from Wikipedia while I was digesting the half can of fried onions that I consumed tonight. There were a lot of random celebrity cameos in the third one.

Food You Can Hear

2008-11-19T19:06:00.002-08:00

On the subway home from Girl Talk on Saturday night, Chris, Amy, Bridget and I came up with a pretty awesome idea for a restaurant called "Food You Can Hear". It only serves food you can hear. And we could only think of three foods you can hear, so the menu's pretty limited.

First Course:
A bowl of Rice Krispies, milk poured at the table

Main Course:
Fajitas

Dessert:
Pop rocks

Favorite Food Songs

2008-11-18T19:20:00.001-08:00

"Hey Megan, what should I write about in my blog tonight?"

2008-11-17T19:23:00.002-08:00

"Hell if know dot com. Shhhh, I'm watching Dancing with the Stars. Ooooo! Did you see that? She did splits one way and then the other! She split and then she splat!"

Really!?! with Amy and Seth

2008-11-16T10:53:00.002-08:00

I think we all know there are some pervs and weirdos on Flickr. This is, after all, the Internet. But today some clearly insane degenerate, who also happens to be the admin for a Flickr group called "Dorm room hotties" invited me to add this picture to the group:

Really, dude? Really? This picture? I am wearing pajama pants, a bikini top, and SKI GOGGLES. I am giving a double thumbs up.

Really? Huh?

Mr. Pibb & red vines equals crazy delicious

2008-11-15T13:14:00.002-08:00

It's 4:14 pm and I'm still in my pajamas. I haven't had a weekend day like this in over a year, and, oh man, this has been awesome.

Only Chris and Sarah have a chance of understanding this

2008-11-14T21:18:00.001-08:00

Every time I walk to the G train in Fort Greene from Sarah's and I pass Gates St., I mutter outloud to myself, "Gates!" a la National Treasure II.

All dressed up

2008-11-13T19:25:00.002-08:00

On a day to day basis, I dress like Ellen DeGeneres. Or a 12 year old boy going to church. To work, I wear pants-that-are-not-quite-jeans and a plain t-shirt with Converse shoes and call it business casual. It's my thing. My style. I own it, Tim Gunn.

Today we had a reception for our international scholars, so I dressed up:

See, I can look nice if I have to.

Dear Crazy Man Standing on the corner of 14th and University,

2008-11-12T17:42:00.002-08:00

I wasn't talking to you!

I was talking to my mom on the phone. I said, "I love you!" to my mom, NOT to you. I just so happened to make very ill-timed eye contact with you when I said it. That part was my fault.

Just the same, thank you for not following me home.

A la prochaine,

Um, I'm not telling you my real name

When is Thanksgiving? Next week? What month is this? Obama?

2008-11-11T20:25:00.003-08:00

For whatever reason today was the first day that I realized, hey, crap, it's fall! Actually, the realization was more like, hey, crap, it's almost winter!

I stopped into Trader Joe's and it was filled with gravy and Advent calendars and truffles and even though it was only 4:30, the line was already out the door. I had a brief period where I quietly freaked out, having momentarily convinced myself that I'd messed up the dates and Thanksgiving was actually this week. (When your general mental stability is as watery as mine, moments like this are quite common actually.)

Then when I was walking home tonight the air was so cold and crisp and I could see my breath. It's at times like this where I always wonder, "If you fart when it's this cold outside, is it visible like your breath?"

You are not alone

2008-11-10T15:00:00.004-08:00

Whatever was causing me to vomit during the past 48 hours is apparently sweeping through New York City. I never seem to catch the bugs that are going around, and it feels strangely comforting to be included in this round. The virus likes me!

But I guess this thing is pretty contagious, so, um, sorry to everyone attending the NAFSA Region X conference. I didn't know how contagious I was when I licked all those bagels at breakfast.

What's the only thing worse than spending your entire Sunday at an immigration regulation training seminar?

2008-11-09T13:17:00.002-08:00

1. Spending your Sunday morning trying not to puke at an immigration regulation training seminar.

2. Failing

Ok, I think I need to lie down again.

Blerg

2008-11-08T00:58:00.000-08:00

I just came home from an evening of drinking with my parents. It's a miracle I can still type. We ended up at the Abbey, which is generally where I both start and end. Tonight we started at the Charleston because you can get a free mini pizza with every drink and we needed food. However, the Charleston is a shit bar other than the free pizza. The service almost always sucks because the bartenders are notoriously terrible. But the pizza is decent (for free pizza) especially if you add enough hot pepper flakes and Parmesan cheese. (And it's free, so what the fuck?)

But the Abbey, oh the glorious, glorious Abbey. Mark, one of the owners and occasional bar tender was working tonight and as a joke every time he sees me he asks if my mom is with me. (When my mom came to visit in October, I introduced Mark to my mom so he always asks about her.) So tonight I was like, "Both Mom and Pops are here!", which lead to a round of shots from Mark as well as several free beers. My parents are so proud of me. Mark even asked them to consider staying an extra night to attend the Abbey's 11th anniversary party tomorrow night.

Anyway, it's now post-Abbey time and I'm home and I had the genius idea to buy the 2nd season of 30 Rock off of amazon.com. And while I was there I also happened to buy two 3-cup French presses as well as the 30th Anniversary edition of Faces of Death. And I charged it all to Chris's and my joint credit card, so...happy Abbey anniversary, Honey!

I'm going to drag this celebration out a little longer

2008-11-07T11:45:00.004-08:00

Eventually I'll stop using Barack Obama as my filler when I don't have time or energy to write anything, but part of me still hasn't quite figured out that the election is over, and so I have to keep reminding myself that I don't have to worry about Sarah Palin anymore. My excuse for not writing something more substantive today is that my parents are here and I'm going to spend the evening drinking beer with them at The Abbey and playing euchre. As a Masek, it's acceptable to use this excuse to get out of most things.

P.S. My office has smelled like Doritos all day long. At first I was really into it, but it's gotten sort of old.

I have to retrain my brain to think about things other than polls and election scenarios. It might take awhile.

2008-11-06T19:12:00.003-08:00

I hate living on the eastern edge of a time zone. It gets dark at 4:15 pm.

There is no point me saying this. I just wanted to complain.

Yes we can!

2008-11-05T13:45:00.002-08:00

Today has been awesome, for one giant obvious reason. I'm on cloud nine. It already feels like a new country.

The only thing is that now I have to get back in the habit of actually figuring out what to wear rather than simply putting on my Obama tshirt every day as I have been doing for the past month.

In other news, I'm reading a very appropriate piece at Cringe tonight. It's the essay I wrote to get into Girls State, and, man did I love me some democracy when I was 16. Not to spoil things, but here's my favorite line: "I'm attracted to all three branches of government." But however will I decide which one to date, and which two to politely cast aside! Oh, woe is me!

The reasons I never had a boyfriend are just endless.

VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE

2008-11-04T09:16:00.002-08:00

Let's make this happen.

If you're looking for an awesome, non-partisan way to volunteer, here's an idea: Spend your evening distributing snacks to people who are stuck waiting in long lines to vote. Every vote should count, so why not grab some cookies and granola bars and hand them out to people who are patiently waiting to vote even though they probably haven't eaten dinner yet.

But I don't want you to think for even one second that I'm interested in being non-partisan today.

Mystery Can II

2008-11-03T08:58:00.001-08:00

You guys all read The Plug a.k.a. The Greatest Thing on the Internet Ever, right? Ok, cool, just making sure.

You should definitely check out this month's issue because I participated in the Mystery Can II feature. It's definitely worth reading.

Bucket List: Marathon

2008-11-02T12:39:00.001-08:00

Something I've been meaning to do for awhile is to make one of those cheesy lists of things I want to do/accomplish/partake in at some point in my life. I've already accomplished a few of them, like living in Spain, moving away from home, learning another language, and eating 33 chicken wings in one sitting. I need to start writing them down and keeping track of them because I'm one of those people who is strangely motivated by a to do list.

Today seems like a good day to start the list because today was the New York City marathon. Last summer I sort of half-assedly started running, and in about a month I will have run enough races to qualify for next year's marathon. I'm slow as shit and have not run more than 5 or 6 miles, so I've waffled back and forth about whether or not this is a realistic goal for me, but today I decided once and for all to just go for it.

About two months ago, I got called by the Dial a Stranger folks (I'm on episode 42 if you are perusing the episode archive), and the question they asked me was, "If you could accomplish anything without fear of failure, what would you do?" I was trying to think on my feet and give them the first thing that came to mind, figuring that would be the most honest answer. The first thing I thought of was, "Run a marathon." At the time, it struck me as an odd and sort of lame thing to say (so I later blabbered on about becoming a writer, which is a much, much lamer response), but the more I thought about it the more I realized that running a marathon is one of the few things in life that I'm hesitant to attempt because I fear I will fail. A lot of my other goals involve road blocks like money, vacation time, and the fact that I am not actually an astronaut. But the only thing really stopping me from running a marathon is my belief that I am slow and lazy and incapable of running 26 miles. That and that thing about your toe nails falling off and your nipples bleeding.

So, fuck it, I'm going for it. It feels nice to put it in writing.

Jane Wine Box

2008-11-01T15:24:00.003-07:00

I'm consistently amazed by my ability to make terrible decisions. Especially when I know going in that it's a bad idea and I go for it anyway. What I'm really trying to say here is that I spent my Halloween drinking boxed white wine and PBR mixed together. I called it a "God Bless America" and for some reason I found it tolerable. Then I convinced a lot of other people that it was tolerable, so sorry to all of you who woke up with a headache this morning.

But I have to give my drunk self a lot of credit because I bought 2 pieces of pizza on the way home and put one in the fridge so I could have it for breakfast. Genius!

Question: Wanna know what's embarrassing?

2008-10-08T18:37:00.002-07:00

Answer: Tripping and falling inside a revolving door!

So, the other day, I was walking into the building where my gym is located. Like most buildings in most cities, one is encouraged to enter through the revolving door. As I entered into my pie piece in the revolving door, I paused for one second to dig through my bag for my gym ID to show the guard as I entered the building. I will fully acknowledge that was a dumb, dumb thing to do. Never stop in a revolving door! That's, like, the thing about revolving doors! Always keep moving! That one second pause was my fatal mistake. Because while I was distracted by my quick search for my ID, some 'roid ragin' fucking meat head MBA frat boy asshole comes barreling out of the gym through the same revolving door, nary giving me a glance.

He pushed the door so hard that it knocked me clean into the wall of my section of the door so that my face smooshed up against the glass, and then before I even knew what was going on, I was ass over tea kettle inside the revolving door pie piece. And there's not a lot of room in there. I don't even think the dude knew someone else was in the door because he pushed my crumpled, balled-up heap of a body clear through to the inside of the building, where I spilled out in a spectacle of limbs onto the welcome mat in front of the security guards.

I am still mad at myself for not asking if they by any chance had caught that on their security tape.

Brought to you by Cinco

2008-10-06T13:47:00.002-07:00

Today is the 5th anniversary of Chris’s and my first date, which was on a Monday (just like today!). Our second date was the next day, a Tuesday, and it was then that he referred to me as his girlfriend while on the phone with a friend. On our third date, Wednesday, I introduced him to all my friends. On Thursday—date number four—we went to see a band play at the Union and got wasted drinking $1 PBRs and Chris said “I love you!” and I said it right back. We accomplished in 4 days what it takes most serious couples months to complete. It was that easy.

I haven't posted for months, and now I'm going to talk about poop

2008-09-12T16:26:00.002-07:00

I started a new job about a month ago. I'm still at NYU, but I have a shiny new position, and, granted I'm still in the honeymoon phase, but so far it is going very well. Almost every aspect of the new job is better than the old job except for one: the bathrooms.

The new office is located in the first floor of an old, shitty apartment building. Therefore, all of the offices are actually rooms that were formerly bedrooms, living rooms, etc. It's not all that noticeable until you try to find a bathroom, and you realize that all of the toilets are in someone else's office. So we're clear, what I'm saying is that I have to go into my boss's office to pee.

This might not seem like that big of a deal, but I have a long history with phobias of going to the bathroom with public. I thought I'd gotten over it, but the bathroom situation at work has seemed to have rekindled my psychosis. Here's something you might not have known about me: I did not go to the bathroom at school until high school, and even then it was a rare occurrence.

I have very specific memories of being terrified of the bathroom in kindergarten. It was a single room, and it was right in our classroom. Convenient, right? NO. I was convinced that everyone would HEAR ME PEE, and then I would be the Girl Who Peed Loudly. And that was unacceptable. For second through fifth grade I attended a school that was built in the early 1900s and everyone knows people were tiny a hundred years ago. Right? Well, that's how they explained to us why the stall doors were the size of magazines. There was no way I was going to pee in a stall where the first graders could peer over the stall door and watch me pee. Because first graders are pee-watchers.

In middle school, we had proper sized bathroom stalls, but Krissy Crazypants, you know, that girl in middle school who's had a troubled home life and has bounced from foster home to foster home, and clearly needs attention and someone to love her, once stood up in class in 6th grade and announced that she was pregnant, then she went to the bathroom and peed her pants and said that her water broke, so I wasn't about to go near that. That, and sometimes people smoked in the bathrooms, and I was paranoid that a teacher would walk in and falsely associate the cigarette smell with me and my life would be over. And, also, I wasn't really scared of the bathrooms, I was mostly constantly terrified that I would be late for class and if I was late three times I would get a lunch detention (AND THE WORLD WOULD END!), so I never felt like I had time to pee during class change, and there was no way I was going to take a bathroom pass in class and risk missing what would surely be the most crucial bit of information, so crucial that by missing it, I would never get into college, I would never get a job, and I'd end up living in a van down the river. As neurotic and type A as I am today, just be aware that I have CALMED THE FUCK DOWN quite a bit since I was a youngster.

Perhaps because of the kindergarten bathroom situation, I hate single-room public bathrooms to this day. I much prefer the anonymity of the multi-stall public restroom. If a rogue fart escapes, you can always hope that people will assume it was someone else. If you have to poop, you can just hide in the stall until everyone who might have known you were pooping has left the bathroom. There is safety and comfort in invisibility.

I hate walking out of a single room bathroom because I ALWAYS end up making eye contact with the next person in line, and in NYC, there is ALWAYS someone in line. It's like they know what I was doing in there! They will know if I farted, and they will judge me. I will not poop in a single unless the other option is shitting my pants because that one person will know that I pooped, and I cannot handle it. For example, in college, I spent pretty much all of my free time at a coffee shop known as Donkey. It was the most wonderful place on Earth except for the bathroom, which was a single room, directly across from the register. I came to terms with peeing there, but when I had to poop, which was pretty much every time (thank you, coffee!), I would ask someone to watch over my bag, and I would run down the street to Wendy's, where there was a multi-stall bathroom in the back. This whole post is probably the best example of my neurosis because I cannot stand the thought of a stranger in the flesh knowing that I just pooped--in a bathroom--but I clearly have no problem telling the Internet all about it.

So, today. I was congested and sort of spaced-out this morning, and had a lot of work to do, so I thought I'd get a cup of coffee to help be focus. BIG. MISTAKE. I don't know what I was thinking. Halfway through the cup of coffee, and I felt the familiar rumble. Oh, no! But there was NO FUCKING WAY I was going to go poop in my boss's office. NO. FUCKING. WAY.

Technically, there are two bathrooms that are not directly in someone's office. However, one is right next to the copy machine, and the other is off the conference room. I wasn't going to go poop by the copy machine either, so I figured the conference room was my best chance. I logged onto the Conference Room schedule to see if it was free...FUCK FUCK FUCK! Booked solid (hee!) all day long. DAMNIT!

So, I did what anyone else would do. I snuck out of the office, and ran down the block to the library where the bathroom 8 gloriously anonymous stalls. SUCCESS!

Anyway, how was your summer?

Soy un perdador

2008-08-12T09:45:00.002-07:00

One time when I was a sophomore in college, I got invited out to a party, but I told the girl that I couldn't make it because I had other plans with some friends.

And by "some friends" what I really meant was that I was planning on staying in and watching Friends on Must See TV.

Mi esposa

2008-07-29T09:45:00.005-07:00

This past weekend I was a bridesmaid in my best friend Jenny's wedding. This was my first foray into bridesmaiding, but aside from accidentally flashing the photographer as I was getting ready, and belching loudly enough that I had to blame it on a groomsmen, I managed to not destroy the wedding. High five.

I don't mean to take away anything from the other weddings I've been to, but this one was pretty much the best wedding ever. Jenny and John are such a great pair that it was impossible not to be super excited the whole day. I had a gigantic "I am a complete idiot" smile plastered on my face the entire day, even as I was openly weeping as Jenny walked down the aisle, and as I saw John's chin quivver as Jenny was saying her vows. But the thing that really raised this wedding above all others was the food. If you're planning a wedding or will do so in the future, listen up. The best decision you can make is to serve barbecue for dinner. And I'm talking pulled pork, ribs, corn bread, macaroni and cheese, and--this is the most important part--bowls of sweet, spicy, delicious barbecue sauce to ladle on top of everything. I went up for seconds, and even though I was so uncomfortable that I couldn't even drink a gin and tonic afterwards and had to resort to a dose of Pepto before I was able to dance, I refuse to regret how much I ate. Plus, nothing is classier than having your entire wedding party pose for a picture with napkins tucked into their dresses and barbecue sauce all over their faces. These are memories that will last a life time, people.

Jenny asked me to be in charge of selecting the wedding music, which was a leap of faith few would dare to make. I'm just going to go ahead and admit that one my biggest character flaws is that I love chachi wedding music. There are few things I love more than drunken conga lines during "Celebration" by Kool and the Gang. I do the entire YMCA dance, I twist, I get down on the floor during "Shout", I jump around, I dance like Dan Akroyd during "Soul Man", I do "The Elaine", and at all other times I do the sprinkler, the lawn mower, the flash dance, the fish on a hook, and my own little number I like to call the Superstar White Girl Dance. I'm the worst dancer you've ever seen, but, my god, I love to dance at weddings. And, man, did I dance. I already had the food sweats from eating so much dinner, but I danced so much that I sweated clean through my bridesmaid dress. On that note, sorry to everyone who gave me a hug goodbye!

I was just so glad that it turned out to be such a great day for Jenny and John, and that they had so many friends and family members present to celebrate with. I already knew and loved the Hoffmans, and the Margesons welcomed me into their fantastic family with open arms. As soon as I met John's sister and her girlfriend, I felt like the three of us had been friends forever. By the end of the weekend, we were pretty much speaking our own secret language.

Okay, I lied, as much as I loved the food, the thing that really made this wedding awesome was seeing my best friend at her happiest. Te amo, mi esposa!

It's still your birthday until you go to sleep

2008-07-04T03:17:00.002-07:00

Happy Birthday to me! Even though it's 6:18 am on July 4th, I haven't gone to bed yet, so it's still my birthday. I don't mean to rub it in to all of you who had mediocre birthdays, but this year was pretty awesome. I ate a muffin, went to the beach (which means I had no pants on for a large part of the day, which = awesome deluxe), had a burrito and margarita, took an awesome nap, ate dinner at midnight in a diner, went on a historical candlelight walking tour of Revolutionary War Manhattan that started at 2:00 am, ditched the tour because it was super boring, got a milkshake at 4:00 am and watched the sunrise from the Brooklyn Bridge. Thanks to everyone who wished me a happy birthday, and a special thanks to the Nerd Gang for extending my birthday an extra six hours. Go take a shower!

Multi-tasking

2008-07-02T08:15:00.005-07:00

I’m not really prone to hypochondria; in fact, I tend to let the strange, icky feelings and rashes go unchecked until they fester into something un-ignorable like scarlet fever or whatever the hell those weird splotches were that covered my entire stomach and back for a few months. That being said, I’d like to jump on the crazy train of imaginary diseases today and announce that I’m pretty sure I have adult-onset ADHD.

I can spout tons of evidence to back this claim, but perhaps there is no better example than the fact that I will be 26 tomorrow, and in all this time on earth, I still haven’t nailed down a morning routine. There is some semblance of pattern, meaning there are certain things that I try to remember to do every morning: brush my teeth, floss my teeth, wash my face, put on deodorant, poo, take my birth control and vitamins, eat breakfast, pack my lunch, put on clothes. Depending on the day, I might shower.

But there is no rhyme or reason to the order in which I do things, and that list is not exclusive. Yesterday, I woke up, ate breakfast, and then felt the need to dust part of the office, which lead to me finding a file box of old notes and papers from grad school, which lead to me going through all of them and throwing most of them out, which lead to me running late and jumping into the shower 10 minutes before I usually leave for work. (Still made it to work on time by using my patented Wash My Hair and Then Use the Shampoo Suds to Wash My Face and Body Three Minute Shower Method.) Another day last week I woke up and spent nearly 45 minutes making an elaborately complex breakfast that involved a food processor, all four burners of the stove, sauteed arugula, and the broiler.

All of this lack of routine and getting distracted by other not-related-to-getting-ready-for-work projects means that I consistently leave the house forgetting something. Most of the time it’s deodorant; I’ve only forgotten to brush my teeth once.

This morning I couldn't settle on what to wear. I changed my outfit about 3 or 4 times. As I was waffling between shirts, belts, shoes, and pants, I was busy completing all my other morning checklist items. Put on pants. Wash face. Brush teeth. Try on shirt. Make toast. Decide to wear another shirt. Take birth control. Floss teeth. Change belt. Butter toast. Change shirt again. Eat one piece of toast. Change pants. Fix hair. Decide to go back to the original shirt. Eat second piece of toast. Assemble lunch. Read part of an article in The New Yorker. Look at the time. Grab wallet, keys, phone. Slip into closest pair of shoes. Head to work.

It wasn't until I got on the train and looked down that I realized I'd completely failed to put on a matching outfit. Somehow in my running around, I'd combined awkward combinations from each of the rejected outfits. Brown pants. Black belt. Ugly red shirt. Brown shoes. I was wearing the completely wrong shirt and belt. Or maybe the wrong shoes and pants? Maybe just the wrong belt? I don't even care any more.

And I also forgot to put on deodorant.

Senior moment!

2008-06-25T20:04:00.003-07:00

I got pooped on by a bird on my way to work tomorrow. Luckily it landed on arm, so there was no hair-to-poop contact. Everyone at work kept trying to tell me it was good luck.

If it was good luck, would I have just tried to plug the plug end of my headphones into my ear instead of my computer? I thought not.

While watching a teaser for an episode of Cosmos about the intelligence of whales:

2008-06-22T17:01:00.001-07:00

Chris: Are whales that intelligent?

Tracie: Yeah, they can communicate.

Chris: But they don't have iPhones.

The Abbey Trap

2008-06-20T07:20:00.004-07:00

I was walking home last night around ten after hanging out with my best buddy Alicia, and I passed by my favorite neighborhood bar, The Abbey. We live around the corner from The Abbey so I pass by it every day on my walk home from work. Everyday, I glance forlornly at its sandwich board announcing the daily specials and try to resist the urge to stop in and have a beer. Everything about The Abbey makes it my kind of bar (the only exception being that the jukebox hasn't worked in years, but they always play awesome music, so I can let that one slide). It's the divey-est of dive bars. It has a nice long bar to greet you as you walk in, cheap beer, a pool table and seating in the back, friendly bartenders, good music, TVs playing all sorts of weird shit, free popcorn, it's quiet enough for conversation, and the icing on the cake is that it used to be a church, and the sacrilege makes it that much homier to me. I have a hard time getting anyone other than Chris to go there with me because everything about The Abbey that makes it my favorite bar, tends to make it a place other people avoid. It's dark, there's no "garden", there's no dancing, it's not hip & trendy, and, okay, occasionally it smells a little funky. You get used to it.

Last night was one of those full moon summer nights that blessedly aren't too hot. The kind of night that would be nice to sit outside around a bonfire. The kind of night that makes a dark, quiet bar that much more appealing to me. As I passed The Abbey, I couldn't resist its pull, so I called Chris to see if he was home and wanted to grab a beer, keeping in mind it was 10:00 pm, which is pretty close to our bed time.

Me: You don't want to go grab a beer at the Abbey do you?

Chris: Uh, not really, I don't really feel like putting pants on and going out. We have beer in the fridge.

Me: (Sigh) Fine. I'll be right up.

But the magnetic pull of The Abbey's mysterious interiors must have gotten to him, too, because by the time I got upstairs, he was looking for his pants.

One of my favorite things about Chris is that he likes sitting a bar and having a few drinks just as much as I do. There are table people, and there are bar people. We are bar people. I love sitting at a bar and having a chat, joking around with the bartender and fellow patrons. I come from a long line of bar people. When I go out to eat with my parents, our first question to the hostess is almost always, "Are there seats at the bar?"

Last night we sat and shared a beer, and talked about Tim & Eric skits, ordered another round, ran out for a slice of pizza from next door, talked about who we think they'll chose to replace Tim Russert, ordered another beer, Chris lamented his inability to grow facial hair, "I wish I could grow a fuller beard. I want the kind of beard that food gets stuck in.", and then our bartender brought us our final round on the house. As we were finishing up our last beer, she asked if we would like another, and we declined, explaining we only meant to come in for one. She laughed and said, "That's why they call this place the Abbey Trap."

Last night was absolutely my favorite type of night. The kind of night where one turns into a few, but not a few too many, and you walk home (not stumble home) arm in arm still giggling about something someone said earlier, crawl into bed and fall into a blissful, contented sleep.

Happy Birthday Mom!

2008-06-14T05:05:00.001-07:00

Ascension

2008-06-06T10:42:00.000-07:00

I'm having kind of a weird day. I don't remember going to bed last night. And before you ask, I only had two beers, so it wasn't won of those "not remembering" nights. I remember going out and meeting up with Erin, I remember coming home and eating some Doritos, and I remember watching the Lakers game on the couch. But then the next thing I knew it was daylight, and I was bolting up in bed trying to figure out where I was, and where Chris was. Turns out Chris was right next to me, and he said I was already in bed when he got home from working late. So, I guess I sleep walked (slept walked?) into bed. Or I was abducted by aliens. Shit, I should go look for scars. Will someone look and see if there's an implant in the base of my neck?

So then this morning, after my where-are-the-children freak out, I just got out of bed, and went through my normal morning routine, and left for work. I never bothered to look at a clock (because the aliens wiped out the functional parts of my memory!), and it wasn't until I was on a nearly empty L train that my powers of observation kicked in. Why is the train empty? It's usually packed when I leave for work at 8:30? Wait, what time is it? Oh, it's only 7:40, the time I usually drag myself out of bed. Well, that explains it.

So, I came into work an hour early this morning because I never bothered to look at a clock. Wanna know what else I never bothered to look at? A mirror.

Several people asked if I got a haircut and commented that my hair looked different today. It was at this point that I realized I never actually brushed my hair this morning or looked into a mirror. I went to the bathroom, and sure enough, I rocking some awesome bed head. I like to think that I'm pulling it off.

And all of a sudden, it's 2:00 pm, and I have no idea what I've done all day. I've been at work an extra hour, and can't figure out how I've spent the time. Give me back my brain, aliens!

More things I'm not proud of

2008-05-29T18:57:00.002-07:00

I forgot to pack a hair brush when I went to Hawaii, so I didn't brush my hair for an entire week. When I got home and scratched my head, I discovered my scalp was still covered in sand.

Someone walked into my office while I was putting deodorant on at my desk.

I made the mistake of thinking of something funny while I was going to the bathroom at work, and when I attempted to stifle my laugh, I made it sound instead like a horrifyingly intense grunt. I stayed in the stall until I was sure everyone who had heard it had left.

I missed my stop on the subway because I was too busy daydreaming about all the places I could wear a storm trooper costume if I bought one.

That contact is still stuck to the floor.

I'm not going to lie, I've always wanted to be tagged for a meme.

2008-05-12T07:19:00.003-07:00

From Sarah

Total number of books I’ve owned:
I'll never know the actual number, but I think I can make a decent guess based on the following pieces of information.
1.) I just counted all of the books I could find in my apartment, and there are 464, which to be honest, is not as many as I thought.
2.) There are at least 3 giant boxes of books in my parents' attic, one of which contains every Babysitters Club book ever written. I'm guessing there are at least another 200 books in my parents house.
3.) Add to this the quantity of books I sold when I was in college (or last week) so I could buy beer and burritos from a street buggy at 3:00 am. I'm going to low-ball this and say about 50.
4.) Throw in another 10 that I've lent out to various people

The estimated total: 724

I still feel like that should be higher. But I guess I'm not counting library books. Most of the books I read come from the library.

The last book I bought:
The Plug Anthology: Volume 2. It just came in the mail today! Prior to The Plug, I bought the dad book, and also a book for Chris called Mystery Cats that I found at the library book sale for fifty cents.

The last book I read:
Almost by Elizabeth Benedict. I was reading it for a reading group, even though I didn't go to the meetings this month. I've only gone to one meeting, two months ago and I'm reluctant to go back because everyone was intimidatingly opinionated. It felt like grad school, if grad school was populated only by me and 15 old ladies and was held in a living room in a Universalist church on the Upper East Side. I got overwhelmed, and ended up using the term "post-modern" to describe something. I don't really have any idea what that means.

Five books that mean something to me:
For some reason, all I'm thinking of are books I read when I was a lot younger. The Wizard of Oz by Frank L Baum, Hatchet by Gary Paulsen, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, High Fidelity by Nick Hornby, The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, The Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo, all of the Harry Potter books. Sorry, that's more than five. I could go on all night.

Tag five people and request they fill this out on their blogs:
Danielle Sickmiller, Adam Sickmiller, Cara, Erin, and your mom.

This was fun! Tag me for something else! I'm too lazy to think of my own content!

Conrad, alternately titled: Prelude to the Nut House

2008-05-04T15:21:00.001-07:00

I have this thing where I'm constantly personifying inanimate objects. Most of the time it's a fairly run of the mill, harmless practice, like naming my plants, or my television, or my pillow. Except that it almost never stops with just giving something a name--I usually also give it a personality and the ability to having feelings. I've done this my entire life. When I was a kid I knew for a fact that my stuffed animals came to life whenever I was out of the room. And everyone knows that if a human ever sees a stuffed animal moving or out of place from where they were last seen, then the animal is frozen forever, like Han in the carbonate. I never wanted my stuffed animals to suffer this cruel fate, so anytime I walked into my bedroom or the playroom, I'd close my eyes, and announce my entrance so they could all get back into place.

I'm sure this is a fairly common practice among kids, and like most reasonably functional adults, at some point I grew out of it. For the most part. While I no longer walk into rooms with my eyes closed, there have been some lifelong repercussions. The first is that I am a giant pack rat. It's hard for me to get rid of things because I always imagine that it will somehow hurt the thing's feelings.

The second repercussion is that I've now had a dried, used contact lens stuck to my kitchen floor for a month and a half. His name is Conrad. Conrad the Contact.

Chris wears disposable contact lenses and he's total crap at actually getting them in the trash can. He must just flick them willy nilly after he's through with them because I cannot tell you how many I've scraped off the wall of the bathroom. Well, somehow one made it out into the kitchen. I left it on the floor when I noticed it because I intended to point it out to Chris later to say, "Look. There is a contact on the kitchen floor. Stop. Flicking. Them. Put. Them. In. The. Trash." Which I did the next morning while we were getting ready. Chris tried to clean it up, but by this point it had dried to the floor, and was not going to be easy to get off. We were in a rush like we are every morning, so he said he'd take care of it later. He never did, and somehow in the time it's been stuck to our floor, I developed an affection towards it. I named it Conrad the Contact, and started saying hi to it in my head when I noticed it, thinking of it as my little kitchen floor friend.

And as if this isn't already an indication of my steadily suspect mental stability, it gets a little bit worse. Because it's not like I haven't mopped my floor in the month and a half that Conrad's been stuck there. I totally have. More than once. And each time I've gone out of my way to mop around Conrad.

I might need to seek help for this.

The Masek sisters prepare for a night out at a Broadway show:

2008-05-01T12:17:00.003-07:00

Megan: I might take my bra off before the show
Megan: It's driving me nuts

Tracie: I was going to tell you that I might have to unbutton my pants
Tracie: they're a little too small

Tracie: We are ladies of the town, we are!
Megan: Indeedy!

I feel happy!

2008-04-29T18:35:00.001-07:00

March 31st marked my one year anniversary of moving to New York City. In the months leading up to it I had planned to do some sort of reflective, witty, insightful look back on the year. But then that never happened. (See also: my reflective, witty, insightful look back on 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, and so on.) I'm really good at thinking I should be reflective, but not so good at actually reflecting.

Part of the reason--most of the reason--I never got around to sitting down for a couple of hours and hashing through my memories from the past year is because I've been busy. Not busy in a stressful work-related way, but mostly just busy having the time of my life. Yes, hello, this is going to be sappy and boring because my first year in New York has been, well, fantastic. Sure, there have been some dips and low points but I have a super awesome memory that tends to cling only to happy memories. And I know no one wants to read about how happy I am. It's not interesting. But, whatever, this is what you're getting. I know that if nothing else, my mom might enjoy reading this. She likes it when I'm happy.

A few months ago I read a book recommended to me by my friend Erin. The book is called Yes Man, and essentially the premise is that this dude starts saying yes to everything and recounts where it's lead him. To be honest, I didn't even totally love the book--I mean, it's a nice, amusingly fluffy read, and the guy's British so he uses funny words, but I never reached that point with it where I couldn't put it down. I think I only gave it two stars on Good Reads. But, yet, somehow it stuck with me. I started saying yes to more things, which might not sound like a big deal, but for me it sort of was. Most of my life, I've been content with my quiet evenings at home. I generally preferred to stay in with a book or a movie and relish in my introversion. Going out one night a week would wear me out to the point of needing another six days before I could manage to drag myself out again. But suddenly I've found myself with plans--multiple plans even--for nearly every night of the week.

And guess what? It turns out that if I leave my apartment once in awhile, I am capable of making friends. Lots and lots of friends. I mean in no way to diminish all of the beautiful, lifelong friendships that I've developed over the course of my life--you all mean more to me than I can express--but right now at this very moment, I feel like I have more friends than I've ever had. It's the most overwhelming feeling ever to feel like I constantly want to hang out with about 30 people all at the same time all the time. It feels like Christmas morning. It makes me feel like I want to skip down the street and make out with the entire world and jump up and down on a couch while holding hands with Oprah.

Which saccharine love fest should I bore you with next? How about how awesome my boyfriend is? Go team! This part Saturday I commented that it was the one year anniversary of that time I went on live TV modeling a swimsuit. Chris was thoughtful enough to remind me that it was also the one year anniversary of the day we moved into our apartment together. Dudes, living together has been so fun. Sometimes he makes me laugh so hard first thing in the morning that it hurts because I haven't had anything to eat yet, and a belly laugh on an empty stomach just isn't right.

Unlike a lot of other people who have moved to New York from elsewhere, it was never my dream to live in New York City. In fact, when Chris and I were deciding where to move when I was done with grad school, I had initially vetoed New York City. It was too much. Too loud, too crowded, too jaded, too impersonal, too cementy. I eventually agreed to consider moving here, but only if we lived in Brooklyn, and only for a set time period, one to three years, tops. But now I'm having a really hard time figuring out how I'll ever be able to pull myself away. Unless all of my friends want to all leave together and go start our own commune somewhere. We can get a pet hedgehog!

Chris's reaction to a Pizza Hut commercial at 12:17 am, while half asleep

2008-04-02T21:17:00.001-07:00

"I remember when I was like 12, it'd be a Friday night, and I'd be like, let's go to Pizza Hut! And it was like a big deal. There were lots of people there. Now, I whenever I drive by one, it's always empty. It's like a boulevard of broken dreams."

Things I have done lately that I'm not proud of:

2008-03-19T13:41:00.005-07:00

Ate boxed mashed potatoes

Used the same frying pan four days in a row without cleaning it in between uses

Looked at the wrong crosswalk sign when crossing the street and walked directly into on-coming traffic

Salivated at a cat food commercial

In my haste to catch the subway that had just pulled into the station, I forgot to swipe my fare card and took a turnstile to the gut with such force that I emitted an audible, "Ooof!"

While riding the subway, I noticed that a woman's scarf looked particularly soft and then reached out to touch it before I realized what I was doing

Found part of a french fry in my hair several hours after lunch

Things that I have done lately that I am proud of:

Did not eat the french fry that I found in my hair.

I am a man who will fight for your honor

2008-03-14T23:49:00.002-07:00

I think to myself at 3:00 am as I eat the very last Samoa Girl Scout Cookie, "I will regret this."

The two quotes I wrote down from our vacation:

2008-03-12T12:33:00.003-07:00

Chris (walking around one morning): Dude, if Bono married Cameron Diaz, he'd be Bono Diaz! Get it?! Like, "Buenos dias!"

Tracie (while watching a pet food commercial on the TV): Does dog food ever look sort of tasty to you?

Made with chocolate and peanuts

2008-03-10T07:18:00.002-07:00

Want to know what makes coming back to work after a week long vacation a little better?

Finding a mini Mr. Goodbar in your desk drawer.

Awkward places where I got sunburned

2008-03-09T11:12:00.003-07:00

Ranked from lowest to highest awkwardness:

9. Between my boobs. I was wearing my swimsuit model swimsuit, which has a wooden ring connecting the boobie holders, and I now have a perfect circle of sunburn betwixt my melones.

8. My right ear. I feel like a leper because only one of my ears is peeling. And it looks really gross.

7. My hairline. Again, the peeling looks weird and gross, like I have some 18th century disease.

6. The inside edge of my right boob. Guess I missed this little strip when I was putting on the lotion. Overall, my sunburn resembles a strange, geometric abstract painting. Like a Kadinksy or something.

5. The strip of skin on my lower stomach, exactly where the waist of my pants rub.

4. The strip of skin on my lower back, exactly where the waist of my pants rub.

3. The inside of my thighs. How is it even possible to be burned there? Was I laying spread eagle?

2. The part of my body where upper thigh meets lower butt cheek. This has taken all of the fun out of sitting down. Also, there is no lady-like way to scratch that part of your body.

1. The inner edge of my armpits. By far, the most awkward and uncomfortable place I got burned. Did you that every single movement you make, from blinking your eyes to wiggling your toes, produces friction against the sensitive skin of the inner armpit? Did you know there is no article of clothing you can wear that won't rub against this part of your body?

Buenas tardes

2008-03-08T12:25:00.002-08:00

We just returned from a week in Mexico--beautiful, warm, colorful, vibrant, friendly, Spanish-speaking Mexico--and, predictably, I'm feeling a little crabby.

Not helping matters is the fact that we arrived last night to a chilly, rainy, gray New York City where no one greeted me with a buoyant "Buenas noches!" as I had become accustomed to.

Also not helping matters is having to unpack--all of my clothes smell like sunshine and ocean and sunscreen. Back into the bin under the bed with you, my sweet smelling summer clothing.

Additionally not helping the grumpiness is that fact that I no longer have an excuse to not to the gym. ("I'm on vacation!" "There are gyms in New York!", "It's 10:00 am and I'm sorta drunk!"). Not only do I not have an excuse, I now also weigh roughly 450 pounds. Nearly every meal I've eaten the past week was of the "all you can eat" nature, and if you've ever met me, you know I take that challenge seriously. Very seriously.

And then there's this little tantrum that I just threw:

Me: You know how everyone gets back from vacation and is all, "I had a great time, but it's nice to be home"?

Chris: Yeah...

Me: Well, they're full of shit. It's not nice to be home. It's nice to be in Mexico. (proceeds to get dressed). Goddamnit, I forgot to put on a bra. I DIDN'T HAVE TO WEAR A BRA IN MEXICO. I DON'T WANT TO BE HERE. I WANT TO GO BACK TO THE BEACH! THIS TOTALLY SUCKS! (stomp stomp, thrash around angrily shaking a bra, stomp stomp stomp)

Chris: You've left me speechless.

Anyway, we had a great trip. I want to go back. Now. But instead I guess I'll just sit here and scratch my sunburn.

Another successful trip around the sun

2008-02-18T13:54:00.000-08:00

Today is Chris's Birthday! In the honor of tradition, here are 26 more things that I love about Chris:

1. He always puts the toilet seat down.

2. He agrees with me when I say that if we ever build a house, it has to have a loft and a fireman's pole.

3. He lets me sleep on the outside edge of the bed even though in the summer, it's the only bed spot that gets any refreshing fan air.

4. He's been lifting weights at the gym and is starting to look super hot.

5. He has more products in the medicine cabinet than I do.

6. He volunteers for Obama's campaign.

7. On Sundays, he likes to wake up early enough to catch the Sunday Puzzle with Will Shortz on Weekend Morning Edition on NPR.

8. He seemed genuinely honored when I told him that he will be my lifeline if I ever go on a trivia show where you get a lifeline.

9. He pays every time we go out. (Granted this is the deal we've worked out, but still, there's no gun to his head.)

10. He's a unicorn

11. He puts up with ALL OF THE LARGE AMOUNTS OF STUFF that I moved out to New York with me. So much stuff that we had to build our bed five feet off the ground so we could fit more stuff under it. So much stuff that it's possible I have three different types of blenders.

12. He puts up with an insanely large amount of crap from me, like the time that I totally flipped out because Chris told me the food I was eating--salsa mixed with sour cream--looked disgusting, and then I went, "Oh, yeah, well, your black-bean burger looks like a pile of turds on a bun!" and then proceeded to yell and scream about how rude it is to tell someone the food they're eating looks gross; in fact, I yelled and screamed and flipped out to such a degree that Chris quietly moved from sitting next to me on the couch to the chair because I was too crazy to sit next to. Yet, he still gave me a kiss goodnight.

13. He'll go see Broadway musicals with me, even though he hates musicals.

14. His New Year's Resolutions were to "be more positive and drink more skim milk".

15. He finds the best stuff on the innernette.

16. He's gotten very into The X-Files

17. His nickname for me is Peeps, and it's reserved for those instances--which are becoming more and more frequent--when I say or do something that makes people question how I manage to dress and feed myself. We were watching some Files when Mulder mentioned Scully's honors thesis. Chris goes, "I wonder what she wrote her thesis about?" And I was all, "Oh, it was titled Einstein's Twin Paradox and it was about time travel or something." Chris: "I thought she went to med school?" Me: "She did, but her undergraduate degree was in physics. Oh my god, why do I know all of this?" Chris: "Because your brain is filled with marshmallow Peeps."

18. He finally joined Facebook, so now I can say that I am in a relationship with Chris, instead of leaving it just as "In a relationship" which makes it look like I'm secretly referring to my cardboard cut out of Han Solo instead of a real person.

19. Chris was very supportive of all the incarnations of Han Solo that I brought to our apartment. And also of the box of books about aliens and UFOs. However, he was not as thrilled to find out that Return to Me was now part of "our" DVD collection.

20. He makes more references to Time Cop than anyone I've ever met before.

21. His idea for Daniel Day Lewis's next sure-to-win-an-Oscar crazy method-acting role: starring as Louie Anderson in a Louie Anderson biopic.

22. He is not a gossiper and is very good at keeping secrets.

23. He once wrote a letter to Nancy Kerrigan.

24. I swear, he gets funnier every day.

25. He's the best roommate I've ever had.

26. The red hair.

Happy Birthday, Chris!

3.14

2008-02-15T12:00:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I had some apple pie for breakfast. I figure, hey, it's not that different from a sugary bowl of cereal, right? And apples = fruit = healthy! As I was eating it, I noticed that every once in awhile a bite would taste sorta funny. It tasted a little bit like soap, maybe? Well, that's what I told myself because I had made the pie (actually, pies; they were little mini apple pies that I baked in cupcake pans) and I figured there was a chance that there was some soap residue on the pan that I used for baking. Don't judge me, I don't have a dishwasher.

As I took my plate back into the kitchen, I considered having a fourth mini pie, and as I was selecting my next victim, I noticed little splotches of green and white on the remaining pies. Mold. On the pies. The pies stored the same container as the three pies I had just eaten. So, awesome, I ate moldy apple pie for breakfast. Let me just go stick my head in the oven.

I do have to give some credit to my stomach and digestive system for just rolling with the punches on this one, and accepting and processing the moldy pie without inducing vomiting, cramps, or other forms of indigestion. I'm sure after all the weird things I've accepted payment to eat over the years I have it pretty well trained to expect the worst. Stomach was probably all, "Well, what do we have today? Moldy pie? Meh, I've seen worse." Like that time my sister paid me to eat all that birdseed that was on display at the bird store.

I've been replaced

2008-02-14T08:11:00.002-08:00

This is the Valentine's Day card I got from Chris.

There are plenty of other reasons why I voted for Obama.

2008-02-13T10:37:00.002-08:00

So I had a dream last night that I was back at my parents' house in Westerville, and Hillary Clinton came over*. Just showed up like I had been expecting her. I invited her down to the basement for a game of foosball. She passed on the foosball, and opted to stand there and browbeat me while I played foosball against Chris. She kept loudly repeating bits from her campaign speeches and she kept moving my goalie so that Chris scored repeatedly.

Finally, I reached my tipping point, and turned and screamed at her face, "Okay, shut the fuck up, and stop and listen to me for a minute! This country is ready for a change! We've had 20 years of Bushes and Clintons. Don't you know how much people hate you? If you're the nominee, and you somehow manage to beat John McCain, there's almost no way you'll get re-elected in 4 years, and in the meantime, you'll most likely lose control of congress during the midterm election. If you really cared about this country, and the good of the Democratic Party, you'd drop out. And I swear to God, if you somehow find some sneaky ass way to get those delegates from Michigan and Florida to count, I will resign as a member of the Democratic Party. I WILL VOTE FOR THE GREEN PARTY!"

Then I stormed upstairs, and woke up.

Guess I've got a little repressed bitterness towards H. Clin. In a vacuum, I think she's a perfectly capable president and commander in chief, but I'm legitimately worried about her electability in November, and I am scared shitless about her ability have half the country not hate her. But I've been trying to ignore all of my qualms about her as best as I can because despite my awesome tshirt, there's still a very good chance she's going to be the nominee, and I want to be able to be okay with that. I guess at that point I'll just be all, whatever, woo Lady President. Is it the weekend yet? Can I start drinking now?

*My dad hates Hillary so much that the fact that I so much as dreamed that Hillary Clinton had set foot in my parents' house will creep my dad out to the point that he'll want to sell the house. Which is okay, because my parents are actually in the process of selling the house. So, there you go, Dad. There's my gift to you. If you had any qualms about selling the house, I've just assuaged them by making you picture Hillary Clinton standing in the kitchen, admiring the granite counter top. Of course, now he's going to want to have the house exorcised.

Dear Construction Workers Building the Giant New Apartment Building Next Door:

2008-02-12T06:21:00.000-08:00

PLEASE STOP WITH ALL THE JACK HAMMERING. I AM TRYING TO WATCH HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL.

Heathen

2008-02-06T10:54:00.000-08:00

Megan: OH MY GOD
Tracie: What???
Megan: I'm a fucking idiot
Megan: I just told someone who is celebrating Ash Wednesday they had printer toner on their forehead.

Not so fast, Patriot Fucktarts

2008-02-04T10:39:00.000-08:00

As Chris so succinctly put it last night at the Giants beat the Patriots, "I have such a schadenfreude hard on right now."

Asking the important questions

2008-01-21T18:57:00.000-08:00

While watching the Democratic Debate:

Me: Okay, Marry, Fuck or Kill: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards.

Chris: Oh, man, this is tough. My first instinct is to kill John Edwards. (thinking) Okay, so I guess I'll fuck Hillary Clinton, since she is in fact a woman. And you know what, I bet Barack Obama is the most fun to hang out with out of the three of them, so, yeah, I'd marry Barack Obama. Sorry, John Edwards.

Me: I think I'll fuck John Edwards, marry Barack Obama, and kill Hillary Clinton. And I'm basing these choices on the fact that I like dudes, not on how I feel about them as political candidates.

Chris: Yeah, you have it good with this one. Those are two pretty good looking men sitting right there.

Later on they were discussing if John Edwards could beat John McCain.

Chris: Edwards is certainly better looking than John McCain.

Me: I think any of the three democratic contenders are better looking than anyone in the republican camp.

Chris: I don't know about that. Mitt Romney is a beefcake.

This morning

2008-01-08T09:09:00.000-08:00

Me: Hee! Your shorts are all twisted to the side and it looks like you're wearing a little skirt.

Chris: It's a sarong!

Squeeee!

2007-12-19T17:44:00.000-08:00

OH MY GOD DAVID DUCHOVNY IS MOVING TO NEW YORK CITY

My weekend

2007-12-16T14:12:00.000-08:00

Friday: Left work early with a terrible cold and came home to attempt a fitful Sudafed nap through When Harry Met Sally. Rallied to put on my ugly Christmas sweater and head out to a party, where I washed down some Advil Cold and Sinus with about 100 glasses of champagne and a beer or two. Founded The Players Club. Tried dark chocolate M&Ms. Danced, apparently. Chased a cab down the street and got it to pull over and take us home.

Saturday morning: Woke up 20 minutes late for my last web development class where I was due to give a final presentation. Could not tell if I was severely hung over or severely sick or maybe a little bit of both. Arrived at class an hour late with absolutely nothing prepared for my presentation. Showed the class my website and while demonstrating my rollovers, went, "Weeeeeeeeeeeee! Javascript!" May not have passed the class.

Saturday afternoon: Came home, ate an entire bag of potato chips for lunch, took some more Sudafed, passed out on the couch for a 3 hour nap. Walked down the street to borrow Guitar Hero III from our friends. Ordered fried chicken box dinner from Pies & Thighs and got booed off the stage attempting to play "Talk to Dirty to Me", the easiest song in the entire game on the easiest level. Watched Chris tie a tie around his head and chug Perrier while playing Guitar Hero in his underwear from 8:00 pm until midnight. Fell asleep on couch.

Sunday: Woke up at 9:30 to Chris playing more Guitar Hero. Made some scrambled eggs and watched NFL Sunday Countdown. Showered for the first time since Friday morning. Gave Guitar Hero another try. Was pronouncedly better. Opened the window because I was getting a little sweaty from all of the rocking out. Didn't even notice that it's now dark outside and Chris and I haven't stopped playing Guitar Hero since 1:00 pm this afternoon. Checked the score of the Browns game; they won. Steelers lost. It's been a good weekend.

UPDATE: Sunday, 11:00 pm: Just beat the game on the easy setting. Won my guitar battle against the devil on the 7th try. Still can't beat the Slayer song even on the easy level. Might try a medium or two before bed.

I Need Your Help Thinking of Crappy Yet Loveable Music that I Should Download

2007-12-12T12:53:00.000-08:00

I've recently come into a 60 song credit on iTunes, and I need your help coming up with awesome songs to download. So far I've only downloaded one: R. Kelly's "Ignition (Remix)"

That's about the caliber of music I'm after. I'm looking for the guilty pleasure songs that you love to sing along to when you're drunk. Songs you always select on a jukebox. Obscure 70s and 80s songs that you somehow still know all the words to.

I will go ahead and warn you that I probably already own most of what you're itching to suggest. I will hereby confess that I own the following: George Michael's Greatest Hits, Huey Lewis and News' Greatest Hits, Journey's Greatest Hits, Rush's Greatest Hits, Phil Collins' Serious Hits: Live!, Meatloaf's Bat Out of Hell I & II, and 3 or 4 different Van Halen albums, spanning from the David Lee Roth years through Van Hagar.

Send your suggestions my way! Then come to my awesome dance party!

Sunday Morning Karaoke Game Plan

2007-12-02T08:20:00.000-08:00

Chris: I think we should alternate verses.

Tracie: Yeah, definitely.

Chris: If we nail this at karaoke, we could do in the subways. It'd be awesome.

Tracie: We have to practice, though.

Chris: Yeah, we need to put a lot of work into this.

Tracie: I think for now the best plan of attack is to each individually memorize the song, and then work on the duet.

Chris: I'll listen to it everyday on my way to work.

Tracie: Me too.