Category Archives: Friends & Family

thank you for this site

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I saw Henry Rollins do a live spoken word show almost a year ago, and one of his rants was that if you want to know how to spot a d*ckhead, he’s the guy behind the wheel of a Hummer. Ever since, I think of that every time I see someone driving one of those stupid gas-guzzling “I’m a guy who needs to overcompensate for some personal shortcoming but obviously money isn’t the problem” vehicles.

Apparently I’m not the only one who thinks so, either. I snagged this link off of gclark’s web site, and I loved it, so I thought I’d share.

Speaking of which, it’s now officially the 21st, so happy birthday, gclark. Hope the old-age police don’t come & repossess your stuff.

HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY!!!!!

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Ok, first the little things…. The vet narrowed down Teenie’s limping problem to one toe on her front left paw. He X-ray’ed it, but it showed nothing abnormal, so he gave me pain medicine to give her. I explained to him that I can’t give her pills, so he gave me liquid stuff and told me that he’d mix it with something to make it “not taste so bad”. I was still thinking that I’d probably end up with more of the liquid medicine on me than down her throat, but I said I’d give it a try. Turns out, Teenie LOVES it. She laps it off the end of the medicine dropper, and then when it’s empty, she starts biting on the thing like she wants more! My little narcotic drug-seeking kitty.

The other little thing is that I woke up this morning & my tummy was upset, which thoroughly annoyed me because I started Atkins so my stomach would stop being upset. I was thinking to hell with it, I was at least going to add in fruit or something, because it’s just not worth it. Then I got on the scale & discovered that I’ve lost 6 pounds in the past 4 days. Sigh. Ok, I guess I’ll stick with it a little longer.

Now the big happy news: I’m going to get to see Kris!!! My parents ok’ed this, so we made a plan. On Christmas Day, she’s going to drive from Memphis to Jackson , then she’s going to come with me & my family to New Orleans for the family reunion after Christmas. I haven’t seen her since May, so I am just so-so-so-so-SOOOOO happy about this! I’ve been really stressed about the family visit thing for a number of reasons, so this will make the whole trip so much more fun. I absolutely cannot wait. I don’t even care if my entire extended family thinks that she’s my lesbian girlfriend. (I have a feeling that they wonder about me since they’ve never met anyone I’ve dated, and most of my younger cousins have brought their respective boyfriends/girlfriends to at least one reunion by this point.)

Anyway, here I was all bummed that I didn’t know when the next time was that I’d get to see her, and it turns out that I’m going to see her in like 11 days. How cool is that?!?!! The reunion thing will be on the night of the 26th — afterwards, Kris & I will be going out to par-tay in the Big Easy. Awwww yeeeeeah….

Also, our friend Leslie is also talking about buying plane tickets for both herself & Kris to come visit me here in Seattle on the weekend of my birthday (January 16th, for those of you who are keeping track so you can send cards/gifts/money/etc.). So that would mean that I’ll get to see her twice in one month. WOOO-HOOO!!! I am so excited right now, I’ve been dancing around my apartment for the last half-hour. YAY!

Alright, I’ll stop before my enthusiasm starts to annoy people.

revenge of the mid-90's

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Last night Nate & I chilled out and channel-surfed for a while. We watched 2 movies that I hadn’t seen in years. First was “The Crow”, which I absolutely loved when it first came out. In fact, it was the first movie I went to see in the theatre by myself because no one I knew was interested in seeing it. (Did the same thing with “Trainspotting” a couple of years later.) The strange thing is, when I saw it again last night, it occurred to me that it’s really not that great a movie. The concept is pretty cool, and I suppose that if you’re into that whole comic-books-on-film genre, it’s probably one of the best ones out there. And of course there’s the added real-life tragedy of the whole Brandon Lee thing. But other than that, the dialog was pretty lame and some of the characters were pretty ridiculous. It does have one of my favorite soundtracks, though.

The other movie we watched was “From Dusk Til Dawn”. I think I only saw that once, and it was years ago, so I didn’t remember most of it. (Except, of course, Cheech Marin’s famous little speech outside of the bar about the variety of female anatomy, which most guys I knew in college could recite by heart.) Anyway, it’s kind of a lame movie, if for no other reason than Tarantino should never cast himself in his own films. He’s a horrible actor and someone just needs to make him stop. In fact, the best thing about “Kill Bill” was that Tarantino wasn’t in it. But, “From Dusk Til Dawn” does have one major redeeming quality… George. Ah George. Sweet sweet George with his painted on tattoos. Yum. He could do damn near anything for 2 hours & I’d watch it happily.

old crushes & trash tv

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This past weekend, Kris ran into a guy that I once made out with in the front seat of my dad’s car. I had the biggest crush on that guy for ages — I think it was about 5 years ago (late ’98/early ’99). Kris once kissed him too, now that I think about it. I know some people probably think that’s weird, but I don’t. She & I have shared more than a few guys over the years. Must say something about our discerning tastes…. Anyway, she said he’s still cute. He bought a house that’s only about 8 blocks from her place. They exchanged numbers & she said she’s thinking about inviting him out for a beer sometime. I think she should, he was a really good kisser if memory serves.

Not much else is new. We moved to a new office as of Monday. It’s ok, just different. It added a couple of minutes onto my morning commute, which I’m less than thrilled about since I’m always 5 minutes late anyway, but I’ll adjust.

Did anyone else watch that Paris Hilton reality show on FOX tonight? Wow, that was hilarious. Just to recap all the things that she said “what’s that?” to because she didn’t know what it was:
* roadkill (a possum, specifically)
* a well (as in, where water comes from)
* Wal-Mart
* a soup kitchen

I know that my brain is rotting while I’m watching it, but damned if that isn’t one of the funniest & simultaneously most painfully awkward shows I have ever seen. And Lionel Richie’s daughter is blonde?! We’ve all seen the mullet-fro that her pop sported in the 80’s, does she honestly think she’s fooling anyone?

i heart ny?

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The trip to NYC was really fun. Here’s the day-by-day recap:

Wednesday:
I got in late, chatted with the fam for a while, ate some awesome leftovers that they had saved for me (that’s the thing about showing up at 11:00 at night — you miss dinner in the fancy restaurant), then we crashed for the night. Nothing really notable about the flight, except that my back, which had been hurting for the previous couple of days already, was made significantly worse by sitting on a cramped plane seat over 8 hours. Mom’s painkillers helped.

Thursday:
We got up & I was dragged against my will to the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade. “So you can tell your grandchildren you’ve been there” was my mother’s reason for going. Hmmm. Yeah. Not much to say about that. We got there pretty late, so we really only saw the end of it (which I was incredibly grateful for). I saw Kermit, Garfield & Jimmy Neutron. Oh, and Atomic Grover. Very exciting.

After that, we did the sight-seeing stuff — we started off at Grand Central Station, then walked up 5th Avenue to Rockefeller Center. The tree is up, even though it’s not decorated yet, but it was cool to see it. My parents decided sometime while we were walking around that my winter coat is less than sufficient, so they dropped $100 on buying me a new one, which was pretty sweet. The store also had a sale on pashmina’s and my parents offered to get me one, but I said no. I’m such a cheap shopper, I was a bit overwhelmed by the $100 already. I was also tempted to get one of the fake Prada purses that people were selling on the street for $20 — I don’t know why I like the idea of having a Prada purse so much, I’m usually not a designer-brand kind of girl. Doesn’t matter, though, because I didn’t buy one. Anyway, we also walked through St. Patrick’s Cathedral (awesome) & Central Park (also awesome) before we headed back to Tracy’s.

For Thanksgiving night, we got our to-go Thanksgiving feast (everyone carried a bag), walked down to Times Square, got on a subway & headed out to Brooklyn to have dinner with Tracy’s friend Amanda and Amanda’s parents. Funny thing, Amanda & her family are British, so this was their first Thanksgiving. It was a very fun evening, and the food was incredible.

Friday:
It was rainy so we went to the Met. Everybody got to pick an exhibit, except Dad who was basically just along for the ride. Mom & Tracy wanted to see the Egyptian exhibit (some of those relics are sooooo cool!!), then I wanted to see the 19th century European painters. I’m honestly not sure who I like better between Van Gogh & Seurat. I love the sort of craziness & the 3-D texture of Van Gogh, but the painstaking detail that Seurat used in all those millions of little dots just makes me want to cry because I can’t imagine ever being THAT dedicated to something. Anyway, loved them both. Then Chris wanted to see the Asian/Islamic art exhibit, which I thought might be kind of dull, but it totally wasn’t. I really dig the Hindu icons & artifacts — there was one sculpted piece of the Goddess of Transcendent Wisdom who was sitting cross-legged on a lotus flower, and I just loved her. I want her in my living room. The Met was probably my favorite part of the whole trip, except that by the time we were gettng ready to leave, the crowds of people were really starting to get to me. I don’t usually get claustrophobic, but I started to feel kind of panicky & anxious after a while.

Friday night, we went to dinner at a very cute little restaurant in Tracy’s neighborhood called Rachel’s. Then we sent Dad back to Tracy’s apartment to watch football (his choice, not ours) while the rest of us went to see “Movin’ Out”. I was really kind of dreading that, and while it was somewhat cheesy, it wasn’t as painfully cheesy as I was expecting, and a couple of the dancers were pretty amazing. So the fact that I am willing to relent & say something nice about the show at all is pretty impressive.

Saturday:
Got up at 5:45 a.m., got dressed, walked to the Port Authority Bus Terminal to catch the 6:30 shuttle to the Newark Airport. Flew home. Realized once again how much I love Seattle — I love that there’s the big-city aspect of having tons of things that you can choose to do on any given day, but that there’s also enough room to breathe.

Nate & I went out for crab legs for dinner (god, that was delicious), then we came back here & chilled and watched a movie. And in the interest of keeping this blog somewhat PG-rated, that’s all I’m going to say about that.

thanks, Mom

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My mother has this tendency to send me little care packages every few months or so. It usually consists of one actual gift (typically make-up — Mom sell Beauti-Control cosmetics, so she gets it wholesale), plus some other random stuff. Here’s what I got today:

* The actual gift – a buckwheat pillow for my neck. Not sure how it works, I think you’re supposed to put it in the microwave to get it warm first.

* A bunch of comic strips, mostly “Dilbert”, “Arlo & Janis” (Mom loves the cat in that one), and “Boondocks”.

* An article she cut out of the paper about Bret Michaels of Poison’s solo album. Dear god, will I ever live down the fact that I liked hair bands when I was 14? It was actually kind of sad, the article was a promotion for his upcoming show at The Dock in Jackson. The Dock, by the way (as anyone who’s lived in Jackson knows), is a tiny depressing dive of a place that’s been stuck in a time warp since 1985. Not entirely inappropriate for Bret Michaels’ target demographic, I imagine, but still. What a miserable existence. (I’m not sure if I mean him or his fans. Maybe both.)

* An article she xeroxed (I can only imagine that since I didn’t get the original, this means that my brother & sister both got copies as well) about how “30 is the new 21”. I appreciate the thought, although it somehow doesn’t cheer me up about that 28th birthday that’s looming less than 2 months from now….

In other news, I’m leaving for NYC on Wednesday. I’m getting stressed, I hate flying. I like the part of traveling that involves getting to see new places, I just don’t care for the process of getting there.

Right now I’m listening to an MP3 that I just downloaded of Rufus Wainwright doing “My Funny Valentine” on the David Letterman show. Damn, that’s good. He’s going to be playing at the Moore next month and I can’t afford to go. Waaah!