OK, you know how I hate sports? Especially that one time I had to live in a small Southern city for three years and everyone in the whole joint was obsessed with SEC football?
Today, I ask you to forget all that.
Continue reading "Forget What I Always Say About Hating Sports" »
Cleaning my office yesterday was empowering. I took the power back from the piles of papers and books and folders, not to mention the dog hair and dirt tracked in daily as the dogs traipse inside and out via my office's French doors. That clutter was having a serious effect on my sense of sanity and ability to accomplish anything.
Now, with dozens of magazines stowed in a sturdy box, thousands of papers organized in hanging files in a banker's box, and hundreds more in a vintage tin Porta-file in the official color of the 1970s and my life, avocado, I feel like I can do it. I have a lot on my plate, but I can either surrender to being a crazy or I can deal with each task at hand.
This cleanse was also theraputic. This calendar year has not been a good one as far as my writing career, but it was so helpful to see, via old paychecks, writing contracts, and magazines where my writing has appeared, where I've been and how far I've come. And it felt cathartic to shred my old pay stubs, the records of wages I got to sit in a tiny cube each week, each one gone in less than two seconds. (Not so theraputic was sorting through bills, wondering how many times over I've paid for whatever it was I charged on credit cards over the years.)
Aw yeah. We got power back on Friday evening. When it happened, whoops and hollers and cheers and applause and shouts were heard up and down the street. People on lazy strolls ran home, presumably to turn on as many lights as possible.
Unfortunately, Tenny did not fare so well.
RIP, Tenny the Telephone Pole.
Just kidding! Tenny's head was put onto another pole. He got a body lift-- and who couldn't use one of those, am I right, ladies?
On Friday, Power BFF'er KarTek took the day off to act as my wingwoman in the search for the smashing vintage gown I will get married in (as opposed to a vintage wedding dress, since I most likely won't be wearing a white offically-designated wedding dress). While we have a date and exactly zero other concrete plans in place for next year's wedding (ugh stress), I jumped at the thrilling girly task of looking for the prettiest dress I will ever wear.
And, the search was a dismal failure. There were a few highlights, though: saying, "I can't believe I'm trying on wedding gowns!" was one, at the beginning. We must've gone into 20 shops, but I tried on just two dresses: the first was a yellow Chanel strapless gown. Not my color, for one thing. Then, as Karin tried to button me in and I did my best impression of Scarlett O'Hara hanging onto the bedpost while getting laced into her corset, and sucked in the gut which I'm pretty sure Scarlett O did not have, I heard a button fall off and go bouncing away. Oops, sorry, vintage Chanel gown.
Another highlight was discovering a rack of wardrobe items from "Sex & the City" at Ina in SoHo.
The tags didn't specify who wore what, but we instantly pegged this as a Samantha number. I'm not sure why they were letting a regular sweaty slob like me paw this piece of our collective cultural heritage. Like, Kim Cattrall's most private lady areas were covered by this scrap of Spandex fabric. Not so long ago, this sling contained Mannequin's coochie! At this point in our societal degeneration, doesn't that make it more valuable than an original Civil War uniform?
At least Ina recognized the gravity of their "S&TC" finds; this bathing suit cost the same as the Chanel gown had back at the other shop. That day, I also got to put my mitts on couture I'd never knowingly seen in real life before, like Versace gowns (pronounce it like Showgirl, of course). Most of them were like, BFD, other than having a fancy name on the tags.
Further delayed milestones after the jump.
On the elephant dump in the room.
Only my friends will know what I'm referencing here. I consider myself too young to not blog, but too old to overshare. Let's just say regarding the Urgent Business I had to rush to NYC to address in mid-July: it was shitty, and people can be awful, but it brought me to NYC two weeks earlier than orginally planned, which turned out to be GREAT!
And now, some treasured NYC moments.
A birthday party! Supercute cupcakes and what was left behind.
To paraphrase the birthday girl's reaction to the above cupcake arrangement, "I can't imagine who at this party, 90% of which is gay men, would be thinking of anuses."
I feared that Rome might be a little too fast-paced to enjoy: too much too do, too many other people trying to do it at the same time and doing it while zipping along on scooters in every direction. While that was more or less true, you just have to know what to focus on and what to filter out. We focused on eating, and filling the recovery spans between meals with sightseeing.
We rolled into town in the evening, and were finally greeted by summer weather. Aside from the slightly down-at-the-heels area around the train station, I was delighted to discover the city still looked exactly how it had in the classic movies, and just how it must have looked for centuries.
I see this guy around so much lately that he's now named Co-Worker BJ Blue Jay.
And now without further ado, in case Typepad loses the intro section of my newer posts again, on to the Friday linky bonanza.
