Hometown: The Roch, MI (aka. The Crotch, aka. Crotchscratcher, aka. Crotchmolester, aka. Rochester)
Currently Living: Clawson, MI
Height: 5'8
Weight: Ha ha, yeah right
Favorite Color: Blue (preferably navy)
Profession: Researcher
Favorite Nickname: Trick, Sloan
Favorite Drinks:Vodka Tonic, Guinness, Diet Dr. Pepper, Dirty Martinis, red wine
Favorite TV Show: Friends, Sex & The City, Project Runway, The Amazing Race, Iron Chef America
Least Favorite TV Show: A Baby Story, I Love Lucy, Martha Stewart, Everybody Loves Raymond, every hour long drama
Favorite Books: The History of Love, Beloved, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Fight Club, A Prayer for Owen Meany, The of Being, SurUnbearable Lightness vivor, Empire Falls, The Corrections, The Bell Jar
Favorite Movies: Little Miss Sunshine, Anchorman, The 40 Year Old Virgin, Wordplay, American Beauty, Life is Beautiful, Amelie, Breakfast Club, Singin In The Rain, Sixteen Candles, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Sleeping Beauty, Dancer in the Dark, Duets, The Virgin Suicides, The Manchurian Candidate (1962), Austin Powers I, II & III, My Best Friends Wedding, Moulin Rouge, Tommy Boy, Billy Madison, The Shining, Gone With The Wind, Bridget Jones' Diary, Chicago, Love Actually
Guilty Pleasure Movies: Xanadu, Dirty Dancing, Overboard, Groundhog Day, Steel Magnolias, 10 Things I Hate About You, Bond movies, Footloose, Clue, Murder By Death, High Spirits, A Cinderella Story
What I Do Too Much: Check email, crossword puzzles, complain about my job to friends and family,
Obsessions: sushi, Indian food, ranch dressing, toenail polish, song lyrics, hands, awards shows, symmetry, avocados, maps, dreams, This American Life, the display in my car that tracks my MPG
Pet Peeves: loud eaters, slurping, gulping, arrogance, snoring, bad grammar, repetition, late mergers, ripping cardboard, the word "chunky", intolerance, couples in a restaurant sitting on the same side of a booth, pop-up ads, privacy manager, men that drive without shirts on, being foolish, unfairly jumping to conclusions, being made fun of, cat-calling, people who type too hard
Greatest Fear: crossing bridges
Relaxing Activites: late night drives to sing by myself, headstands, hot baths,
Wish I Was: Ansel Adams, Jenifer Aniston, in love, living alone
Prized Possessions: ring from my grandparents, flower pot of my Grandma's, electric blanket (temporarily broken), tongue scraper, my bed
Craziest Thing Ever Done: getting a tattoo, strip Jenga
Things I Eventually Want To Do: skydive, buy a guitar, learn how to play the aforementioned guitar, take flying lessons, travel to France, write a novel, learn how to play the harp, tap dancing lessons, run a marathon
Sunday, November 14, 2004 And there's too much going on, but it's calm under the waves, in the blue of my oblivion....One goal I think I need to set for myself is to try to write a little bit more of this damn thing during the weekend, so that when I get around to it, there aren't three full days to try to explain in one shot. Because that seems to be where the bulleted lists come from. And where full days get reduced to "Yesterday (Thursday, Saturday, etc) was so much fun/a great day,". Much like the rest of my life, I can accomplish things much better and far more efficiently when they're broken up into single tasks (picked up from What About Bob? perhaps?). And when I let time go by, writing it up becomes one beastly task that I don't feel like doing. And then I end up skipping over tons of amusing details simply out of sheer laziness.
So now that I've spent a full paragraph complaining about having too much to write, you're still going to get a bulleted weekend recap. Even though I have scores of randomness that I've been mentally saving up, we'll see how much I feel like writing that once this is done. Before I start into this, I'll give an preface, saying that my voice has, for the most part, been shoddy at best. I still sound like the octogenarian chain smoker, but by the end of the day (read: end of the night at the bar after shouting over a general din) it's pretty reduced. So when reading this stories, you can imagine me honking like a gander during most conversations.
~ Always the easy convince, Suzy called on Thursday night to see if I was interested in meeting her friends Chris and Mike (we were also accompanied by Kelly, Todd, and Charles) at a jazz club in "Ferndale". Which actually means Detroit, in a pretty shady area. But the club, Baker's, is apparently a pretty famous place, rumored to be the longest continually operated jazz club in the world, having played host to any famous name you can think of (Charlie Parker, Sarah Vaughan, you name 'em). I've never actually been to a jazz club before, and not ever seen a band perform that has at least 15 musicians and be able to sit up close to watch them play. And from the moment we walked in the door, there was something so unique and intimate about having that many people playing in such a small area. It's been a long time since I've heard the sound of saxophones and trombones that weren't high schoolers playing them in a parade. Something enjoyable to experience. My favorite though, hands done was the drummer. Maybe because he was sitting closest to us, but I still can't figure out how one can get each hand and each leg to be working at entirely different beats, going in different directions, none at the same rate. Getting my two legs working in opposite directions to walk proves challenging enough for me sometimes. It was pretty amazing, and if I still had that flute I played in middle school....oh who am I kidding, I would have sold it off for parts a long time ago.
~ Friday, I was damn determined to stay in for the night, citing health requirements of a long restful sleep. It's a good thing I'm a pushover and decided to mend myself with vodka tonics instead. Ohhhh the vodka tonics. I met Kelly, Suzy, Shelly, and Shannon at Tom's for some pre-fun. After eats, a couple rounds, and a conversation involving the phrase, "Make a move or get out," we headed over to Cinq, a bar that I recall mentioning loving for its name alone. But that I think I love in general now, partly because on the flat screens around the bar, they had on Fight Club, and although you couldn't hear the sound, it was nice to occassionally look up and see Brad Pitt's chiseled abs adorning the walls. After Suzy and Shannon called it an early night, Kelly and took it upon ourselves to close the place down. I was genuinely surprised when the lights came on.
But holy crap did we have a blast. I remember having an extended long conversation with someone about running the marathon and about the 3-day walk. I got a couple compliments on my smile, which although pretty cliche, I seem to have gotten a lot lately. Rule of thumb though, you should be careful who you give your phone number to. Because if you're not careful, his friend may call you in the middle of the night after you've gotten home and passed out. And his friend may have the dirtiest mouth ever created. It's a good thing I'm not easily offended by four-letter words that start with "c". In fact it's a good thing that I would actually laugh out loud at that. Loud enough to probably piss off my neighbor downstairs. And if you're really lucky, the guy who originally got your number to won't call you at all.
~ When Amy and I were little, right around this time of year, our mom would go to the mall and pick up one of our most treasured items. The Wishbook. I don't even know what catalog it was (Sears? JC Penny?) but it was just called the Wishbook. And we would pour over the pages with the toys in it at least a couple hundred times. So much so that the pages must have been worn from zealous page-turning and the hope of 7-year olds. I can remember thinking about how I would play with the Barbies and fashion ensembles that were on those pages, as we would carefully craft our lists to Santa.
Things haven't changed all that much as a 25-year old, except now for me, the catalogs have changed to IKEA and any kind of scrapbook supply catalog. Because even now when I look at them, I envision my apartment with white Tullsta chairs and an Amiral birch veneer entertainment system. Or I envision the glorious, beautifully laid out pages of the scrapbook formulating in my head.
To get to the point here, yesterday, Amy hosted a scrapbooking party where after showing you some of the basics and the neat tools to facilitate scrapbooking, you get a catalog to shop to your heart's content. And more than anything that I actually purchased, I'm going to love the catalog the most -- you should see how worn the other catalogs I have are. It kind of sounds like porn doesn't it? But we had so much fun scrapbooking (you can stop laughing now, thanks) in spite of Kelly and I being so horribly hungover. It's can be difficult to actually assmeble photos when your hands are shaking uncontrollably from dehydration. After we went to dinner and we got our fill of fresh Mexican food!, we were feeling much better. Such a fun afternoon, and now everyday when I come home, I can run to the mailbox in anticipation of my corner rounder and tropical vacation sticker set.
~ The plan for yesterday night was to go see Bridget Jones's Diary 2. But apparently the stars were not aligned and the forces of fate were working against us big time. Kelly's computer has a virus where, the computer works, and you can still surf the net, but you can't type anything in. Which makes searching for movie times online impossible when you can't enter a zip code or city. And because we don't absorb advertising very well, we couldn't remember that magic number you can call for movie times. So out comes the archaic phone book. After calling movie theatre #1, the movie wasn't showing there. So we consult Suzy for suggestions on a different theatre. But movie theatre #2 isn't in the phone book, so we bite the bullet and pony up $1.75 to use the damn information service on Kelly's cell. Movie times: 8:10 and 10pm. The likelihood of two hungover girls making it awake until midnight, notgonnahappen. Likelihood of Suzy getting to the theatre by 8:10, notgonnahappen.
So Suzy opts not to go to the movie, and Kelly and I start shopping around for another, closer theatre. Theatre #3 is also not in the phone book so there goes another $1.75 for information. Movie times: 7:05 and 9:45pm. Both, notgonnahappen. So it's on to theatre #4 and another call to information. Theatre #4 isn't showing the movie, but the nice phone operator suggests theatre #5 which is showing the movie. Movie time: 8:45. Juuuusst right. So we make our own popcorn and buy pops, stash them in a big purse, and head out to theatre #5 over a half an hour early. At this point we've probably spent more time trying to figure out how/where/when to go see the movie that the actual length of the movie itself.
So you know what I'm going to say next right? Of course we get there (after I discover that I apparently cross streets without any regard for traffic lights), and the movie is already sold out. We would have stood on the sidewalk in stunned annoyance and disappointment a little longer if it wasn't so damn cold outside. So instead of fulfilling our mission, we went back to Kelly's and watched the first Bridget Jones instead. I was hoping for some miraculous mix-up and there would be an advance copy hiding in her DVD case, but no such luck. But it was ok, I can still laugh out loud at that one no matter how many times I've seen it.
Ok massively long entry written and studying effectively neglected. But this time, I really do have to study, or I will certainly fail my quiz tomorrow. From now on: more frequent. Shorter. Less time. More funny. Got it? Good.
11:20 AM
