Author Archives: Cindy

so true

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I was reading this article on MSN Slate, which is a journal written by an ex-stripper who married an Army officer & moved to West Point. Most of it is pretty entertaining in its own right, but this quote struck me as so dead-on accurate, and it pretty much sums up how I feel about today:

“Wednesday blows. Monday, for all its problems, at least offers the prospect of a fresh start; and Friday we love, of course. But Wednesday? Vile. Squatting between what you hoped to have accomplished by now and what you might eke out if you haul ass for the rest of the week, Wednesday points to where you come up short. It’s a captious narc of a day. Wednesday, you suck.”

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!

I know it's Friday & all, but….

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Ok, we have this client that sells lumber, or roofing, or something like that. I don’t really care, I just fix their network. Anyway, they upgraded all of their computers (trust me, it was long overdue), so they needed somebody to set up the pc’s at all their satellite offices. And “somebody” means me. So this morning, I go & get on a ferry for about an hour to get to this little hick town on the other side of Puget Sound. From there, I have to drive a few more miles to get to an even more distant (and far sketchier) hick town. I think it’s worth noting that within a block or two of this place are a strip club (with the charming name of — I swear I’m not making this up — Tony’s Topless Bar & B-B-Q), a sex shop with no windows, and several tattoo places.

So I go there and set up the new computers. The guys that work there are all very hot, but dumb as rocks. The hottest of the guys, we’ll call him Dude #1, seemed to be flirting with me a little bit. He kept leaning over my shoulder (like way closer to my personal space than necessary) to ask what I was doing — and the crazy thing is, he doesn’t even use the computers in the office. But hey, I have no problem with getting a cheap ego boost from a cute dumb guy. Meanwhile, one of the sales reps (Dude #2) also seemed to be flirting a little, which made me start to wonder if maybe these guys just don’t know how to act because they aren’t used to having women in their office. It seemed like a good probability. But then, when Dude #1 was out of the office for a minute, Dude #2 asked me if I “like to party”. Being the naive little thing that I am, I honestly wasn’t sure what that meant. I knew it was something bad, and I figured it probably had something to do with sex or drugs, or possibly both. I kind of shrugged and said I didn’t know what he meant. He kept asking me, “Come on, do you like to party?” So finally I went with what I thought was a safe answer and said “Well…. I suppose that on occasion, in my own little yuppie, girly sort of way, I guess I like to party.”

Turns out my suspicion was correct. He & Dude #1 were about to go smoke weed over in the lumberyard, and he said I seemed like a cool girl & asked if I’d like to join them. So there’s a first, I’ve never been offered drugs at work before. I politely declined the invitation — I explained that I had another appointment after I left their office, and at least an hour & a half driving time to get back home, and that I just possibly couldn’t do that stoned. (Nevermind the fact that I haven’t smoked weed in a coon’s age & have no desire to do so because all it does is make me sleepy & quiet.) They left & came back about 20 minutes later, completely baked out of their minds. They seemed like relatively harmless guys, so the whole situation actually struck me as quite funny.

Oh yeah, and one of the computers is set up in one of those hutch-style desks, and the guy had back issues of “Playboy” stacked on the little shelf above his computer. I suppose I should be thankful, it could’ve been one of the more graphic or offensive magazines. Still, porn & drugs in the office — that’s quite an operation they’re running over there. (Hey gclark, I finally saw “The Girls of Starbucks” issue; you were right, it was lame.)

Amelie & Kris

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Just got home from having dinner with Scott & Ted over at Scott’s place. Scott made baked chicken (yum), I made my fried zucchini with parmesan (yummy-yum), and Ted made creme brulee (the goddess of all yummy-yum-yums). And I finally saw Amelie for the first time. Very cute movie, but god, the French are a weird culture.

Talked to Kris this afternoon, which made me a little sad. We talk every weekend, and sometimes it doesn’t really hit me just how much I miss having her around. Today it did. She’s the only thing I miss about Memphis, I just wish she’d move here. She wants to, it’s just not really financially feasible at this point. But dang, sometimes I miss her so bad I could just cry. I’ve lived in lots of different places over the last 4 1/2 years, and I have yet to meet anyone who I can have that kind of conspiratorial fun with like I can with her. The vast majority of my friends in Washington at this point are guys — which is cool because they’re all really awesome guys, but there’s a certain comfort level that’s just never going to be there like it is with her. Oh well.

Weird changes happening at work. I’ll know more this week. Stay tuned.

ow ow ow

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Tossed back one too many last night, I think. Nate & I watched Wonder Boys — he had never seen it, and I love that movie (“Vernon, go home to your mother!” “Why is he calling you Vernon?”). And we started to watch Old School but we got distracted by I Love the 80s Strikes Back on VH-1. It was 1982 — the recap of Wrath of Khan alone is worth the entire episode.

Oh yeah, and I invented a new cocktail last night:
* 1/3 Orange Stoli
* 1/3 Orange Bacardi
* 1/3 Orange Juice
* Splash of sweet & sour just for taste

It’s surprisingly delicious — the orange flavoring in the liquor really makes it taste like there’s almost no booze in it at all. Which is, naturally, what will get you in trouble. I made Nate barf — I swear it was not my intention, but I do feel a little bit special about it since he’s never gotten tanked to the point of yacking before. We kissed a little right before that. I’m hoping that’s not what induced the vomiting.

So sometime around 3 a.m., I left Nate on his bathroom floor — I felt pretty guilty about that, but I brought him a bowl and asked him to go lie down in his bed, and he wouldn’t. And you can’t really argue with a guy who’s a foot taller than you. So I started to leave, but his cat Spike made it out the front door ahead of me, and he’s supposed to be an indoor kitty, so I spent several minutes chasing him through the parking lot before I was able to retrieve him, toss him back inside Nate’s apartment, and leave. I walked the 1/2 mile back to my place, and I realized that even though I live in one of the safest neighborhoods in the Seattle area, my street is very dark at night and a little creepy. Then I finally make it to my apartment, and there’s a downhill slope right as you enter the parking lot, which would be where I slipped & fell. Skinned my knee (it’s also swollen & bruised at this point), and tore a hole in my jeans in the process. I repeated lots of bad words over & over as kind of a mantra while I hobbled to my front door. I’m actually more pissed about the jeans than the skinned knee. They were really comfy, dammit.

Anyway, I’m off to get something disgustingly greasy for brunch.