Distraction

I got a Nintendo Wii. Precious little is getting done. Except boxing with my Polar Opposite Friend and shooting plungers at rabid rabbits with Wavy.

My arms are so sore I can barely lift them from this game. But boy am I going to have some toned arms in a couple of weeks. I justify my Wii purchase in the name of exercise. Also in the name of getting out some aggression, especially after I make Mii's of people from work so that I can punch them in the face in the boxing game. No, I kid. Kind of.


This game just cracks me up. Lots of little tasks and games but my favorite so far is shooting plungers at these crazy rabbits. I love rabbits, crazy or not. Rabbits = love. Monkeys and plants and things with tentacles = not love.

Irreverent Art

While we searched for a place to eat before our movie, Ballet Dancer, her friend, and I wandered the Farmer's Market/The Grove and stumbled into the Jack Art Gallery, featuring Todd Goldman's silly artwork. Long ago, I owned one of his t-shirts, the one featuring this slogan:


It shrunk to the size of an 8 year old's tee just in time for me to stop wearing it anymore when it got banned on the list of bad things for little girls to wear to school. Parents were complaining it spread anti-boy messages and lowered their precious sons' self-esteem. I think I'll stop right there before I launch into a long-winded tirade.

Anyway, Mr. Goldman has tons more gems where that one came from. Here are a few of my favorites:



Hilarious to look at but I don't know if I'd like a giant painting of any of them hanging in my home. Maybe some postcard size ones. Maybe to hang in the bathroom. Seems fitting.

Music is to Looks as Lyrics is to Personality

With a smile plastered to my face the whole time, I finally watched the movie Music and Lyrics. And I enjoyed every moment of it! From the silly music video to the cheesy songs to Hugh Grant trying to dance. It was the perfect romantic comedy for a Saturday night with friends.

One of my favorite metaphors from the movie comes from Drew Barrymore's character Sophie. She explains to Hugh Grant that the music is like a person's looks. It might catch your attention at first and hook you in. But the lyrics are the personality - it's what you learn to really love about the song once you get to know it and understand its words and meaning. That is exactly how I feel about songs.

On another note, while driving to the theater to meet my ballet dancer friend, my newly revived Ipod (thanks to the awesome ITrip docking station for the car) pulled up a song I hadn't heard in awhile. Annie Lennox's rendition of the song "Waiting In Vain" from the Serendipity soundtrack.


This was the song I sent to the "soulmate" to tell him how I felt. I even spelled it out for him by sending him the lyrics (you know, just in case he was too stupid to hear it through the song). I had watched too many romance movies. Didn't it always work out at the end with a song? Apparently not.

While we were in a store, the original Bob Marley version of the song came on and I turned to Ballet Dancer to reminisce about the song and the movie. Before our movie started I told her about Mr. DD's breakdown. She made a face and said "Thank God you didn't end up with him!" There's nothing quite like hindsight and the perspective of a loyal friend to help you cope and enjoy a lovely romantic comedy completely angst-free!

Mortification, Violence, and Gluttony

Last night, I dodged out of work before 7 and met up with friends to see Get Mortified. It's a show where people are invited to read their journals, letters, random poetry, etc from junior high and high school to a live paying public. Thus, the mortification.

It was a last minute decision to drag myself all the way to Hollywood, but I had been feeling kind of bummy and figured going out and being around friends was the way to go. Oh and laughing at other people's pain from 20 years ago. That's always fun. It puts everything into perspective - my silly diaries from the first one at age 8 all the way to the current one. All fourteen of them filled with questions, angst, complaints, hopes, and fears. Some more melodramatic than others. But all equally mortifying and eye opening as a chart for emotional growth.

Tonight, though I'm starting to feel tired and achy, I left early once again to watch a hockey game. My Spelling Bee friend offered me free Kings game tickets from her firm. Since I love watching live hockey games and I especially love free seats close enough to smell the ice, I continued the going out trend of keeping busy and being around friends.

I took the biggest hockey fan friend I knew, and we crawled through traffic to Staples Center, missing the entire first period but still enjoying a huge part of the exhilarating game. I love their brawls, the players flying across the ice, the sound of the players getting smacked into the plexiglass... and the beauty of it all is they just get up right away and keep going. No whining or flopping on the ground hoping to get a foul call from the referee. It's nonstop action and the perfect sport for people with ADD.

Being at the Staples Center, I also indulged the moody, achy me with some McDonald's. Something I've rarely had in the past couple of years, but still really love. However, I went a bit overboard. Quarter pounder with cheese, fries AND a hot fudge sundae (because I need to dip my fries in something!). OH it was a sinfully delicious and enjoyable meal but I'm going to pay dearly for it tomorrow I'm sure. To compensate, I came home and ate a whole orange and chased it with some Tylenol. That should make it all better, right?

TV Talk

Discussing one of my favorite shows with my brother:

Me: Oooh, Grey's Anatomy is on tonight. Think they'll kill off Meredith?
Brother: Yes. I hope so. Then they can call it George's Anatomy.

Out of Sight, Out of Mind

How do you stop caring or worrying about someone who doesn't want you or need you? It's completely ludicrous.

Beat down from the physical and mental exhaustion of work over the past year, Mr. DD finally broke down. He's been sick for over a week and couldn't summon the will to work anymore. So he's taking a four week break effectively immediately. To recuperate and do absolutely nothing. Which is great and all but something that could have been prevented if he had taken better damn care of himself and pushed back on taking too much work.

Watching him day in day out get the life sucked out of him is not a fun thing. Even if we're not dating. Even if we're barely friends. Even if he's given me absolutely no reason to waste my time caring or worrying at all. And yet, there was still a pang of worry, a smidgen of missing his presence, and the realization that I'm still not there yet - the point where I won't bat an eye if he left forever.

My only consolation is that this will be the longest amount of time that I won't have to see him. And then, after he comes back for a couple of weeks, I will be off for 3 weeks for my own vacation. The best kind of therapy - pure absence.

New Addiction

Thanks to Wavy, not only is the song "Pop, Goes My Heart!" still stuck in my head, I'm also addicted to Pinkberry, the latest frozen yogurt craze here in LA. Supposedly, it's healthier at only 20 calories each and I AM eating it with fruit. The first time I had it, I hated it. It was too tart for my humongous sweet tooth. Now, I want it EVERYDAY. It's all part of my grand "diet." Hmmm, maybe the diet thing isn't so bad...

Pop!

Wavy is addicted to watching this fake music video from the movie Music and Lyrics. The song is actually quite catchy and now is stuck in my head. I haven't seen this movie yet but we're now on a mission to learn those awesome dance moves. God bless the 80's.

Nonscary Flowers

Tulips from SC Homey's house on V-Day. The camera flash didn't do these justice but they were gorgeous. One of the few kinds of flowers that don't freak me out.

V-Day

Got into a bit of a baking frenzy for V-Day. Chocolate cupcakes for my friends, and a bundt cake for the coworkers.



Icing cupcakes and adding the sprinkles is the best part. I had leftovers so I gave some of them to people I like at work. Ah, the joy of playing favorites... Guess who didn't get one?

Statute of Limitations

Some days I still grieve about the same things. Long after what most people would consider the normal grieving/obsessing period. Long after the period people still talk about it out loud. And even long after the period most people would still lament about them to their closest friends.

And because I know even I would be sick of me and my same old complaints and angst, I learn to keep it quiet after the socially accepted period. Smushing it down inside, or writing it down in the private journal, keeping busy so that I don't have to think or dwell, waiting it out until the bad moment passes by.

On that note, this is my all time favorite song. At times it sounds melancholy, other times uplifting and hopeful. Most of the time, it comforts me. And though I'm not particularly sad lately, I've been going back to this song a lot in the past few weeks.



The band once explained that after so many years together, they were on the verge of breaking up from creative differences. The creation of this song brought them back together, which also explains why it represents hope and sadness to me - perfectly encapsulating this strange mood and sensibility that's been accompanying me so far in 2007.

Status Quo, Or Lack Thereof

In the past month, I've heard from many old friends, most of them with the lead in line of "we have some news..." And of course, we know what that means.

Four different friends are pregnant, another one's engaged, and one of my younger brother's best friends? He and his wife just had a daughter.

I used to hate change, with the passion of a child who's lollipop was being taken away. I'm a teeny bit better with it now, but it still stresses me out. Of course, when I was chatting with my brother, lamenting that I felt old with all these huge life milestones surrounding me, he just wisely answered, "Bound to happen."

And We Are Live Once More...

Huzzah! We are with internet again! And when I say "we" I mean me and the cat because I know besides sleeping in my bed, she also surfs the web while I'm gone. I've been feeling like I live in the middle ages, but did manage to keep busy with all sorts of arts and culture while being disconnected from the world.

1) Last Friday, after a terrible day at work, I had a terrible time in traffic stumbling towards my alma mater to see Bloom, a series of modern dance performances set to Rufus Wainwright's music. A friend had comp tickets and since I'm all over the "free" I made my way out there, running up the steps and making it into the auditorium 15 minutes after the scheduled start time, just as the lights were dimming.

Some of the dances were beautiful but some were a bit too interpretive for my tastes. Like the one where they writhed on the floor for quite a while. Is it dancing if they don't get up on their feet?

2) On Tuesday night, after over a year of not drawing, I joined my polar opposite friend for a night of life drawing. I swear my pencils shuddered a little when I brought them into the light, having not been used since late 2005.

There were, however, a couple of strange things about this class.
- It runs from 10pm-2am
- It's in a dark sketchy looking industrial part of downtown LA, about a block away from the American Apparel factory
- It's not listed anywhere. Everyone heard about it from a friend of a friend of a friend...
- There is a bar
- There is a DJ
- There is a pool table in the corner
- People are smoking in there
- There's nearly 100 people in there. Half the people are sitting around the podium sketching and painting where the model(s) are posed but the other half are just milling about, socializing, smoking, and not drawing. That creeps me out.

I loved the music and unique ambiance, but I lasted only about an hour before the smell of cigarette and marijuana smoke nearly choked me to death. I'm not sure if and when I'm going back.

3) Last night, I once again trekked up to the alma mater to watch the Animation Show. I had planned on actually buying tickets, but one of the organizers sent me 20 comp tickets for the company. It was a big stress case to organize the group of coworkers and make sure they knew where to go, what to do... Basically doing my job outside of work. To the point where I wasn't enjoying myself as much as I should. I was so frazzled that I actually forgot my Polar Opposite Friend and left him behind at home. Something I've never done and something I felt so awful about, it plagued me for the rest of the night when he decided not to come to the show.

I liked over half the shorts but was exhausted by the end. Most of the people I invited showed up for dinner and the show but a few of them, the usual few, flaked. Though organizing large groups for these outings are stressful, I've also learned to let it go and not be too sad or disappointed when people bail at the last minute. Today, when one of those fools, aka The One, started in on his excuses of why he bailed, I just nodded, looked at him and said "You can't disappoint me anymore." I baffled him with my statement so elaborated a little more. "My expectations of you have been too lowered. There's not much you can do that will disappoint me now." It didn't play out as dramatic as it sounds - he kind of laughed it off and I gladly let him. But inside, knowing it was true, it felt great.

Paper Trail

It's been a rough couple of days at work and at home. My internet connection at home has lost its will to live since last Wednesday and because Time Warner sucks ass, they kept me on hold for two hours, until nearly midnight, before telling me they'd send someone Thursday to take a look.

"Oh tomorrow?" I asked hopefully.
"Oh, is it not Thursday yet for you? We meant next Thursday." the snide customer service rep replied.

So, I have lugged my beloved ibook to a cafe, subjected to the cafe's endless ABBA CD, to catch up on my personal emails, blog to my heart's content, and catch up on all my own blog reading. For the past few days, lost and bewildered on what to do without an internet connection at home, I've managed to:
1) clear out the 2 foot pile of statements on my kitchen table into their respective binders. My first step to organizing my finances for the year!
2) given up hope on sewing and thrown out all socks with holes in it
3) clean my apartment once again
4) shower at my neighbor's place - yeah that has nothing to do with the internet itself. However, in an effort of solidarity with the internet, the bathtub declined to drain too, and my landlord thought calling a plumber out late at night or the weekend didn't warrant the extra costs for my comfort
5) sorted and threw out a giant bag of receipts, some dating as far back as 1998.

Did I mention I'm a pack rat? And a nostalgic sappy fool? Everything reminds me of something. The reason I saved all my receipts is because back in the day, I once managed to balance my checkbook every month, and had high hopes to itemize every single thing I ever bought diligently.

Nearly ten years later, I have a paper trail of expenditures and memories - receipts from:
- Lake Tahoe in 1998, the first time I went snowboarding
- Coffee Bean, tons of them from 1998 - 2002 indicating the days when I could eat a muffin and an ice blended coffee for lunch several days of the week without batting an eye or worrying about weight
- Storyopolis, 2003 - a children's book store with artwork from famous illustrators, the time when I took the boy who broke my heart to share in one of my favorite places
- San Francisco, 2002 - a roadtrip with a dear friend from my childhood who for reasons unknown to me no longer reciprocates my friendship
- Beastie Boys concert 2004, when I took a random assortment of friends with me, including my favorite surly tattooed boy that no one would ever guess I'd date
- My sofa, "Oscar the Couch", and Ibook, "Christopher aka Ashton", from 2005, my first big purchases ever, items that weren't hand me downs from my parents
- Target, 2002-2003 - dozens and dozens of cans of cat and dog food from when my sweet geezer cats were still alive and the dog hadn't disappeared

I threw away a bag full of receipts, knowing that pieces of paper like these didn't mean anything to my memories. And boy did it feel freeing. (OK, I kept some. The ones where I might need for warranties and the ones that had REALLY significant memories tied to them. I'm not THAT strong.) I can't wait to rid my place of more junk. But I'm still pissed at Time Warner.