I found this in some stuff from college. My sophomore year, I think? I’m not sure what it is. Maybe some kind of half-dreamed idea for a play? I like that my handwriting hasn’t really changed though.
Category: Sentiment
Last weekend, we celebrated my friend Liz, who is getting married in November. Yes, her bachelorette party was a little early (like 6 weeks before the wedding), but it was one of the few times that the three of us (Liz, Molly and I) could get together.
First, we all met up at Molly’s apartment in San Francisco. Note the stellar SF parking:
Then we got all dressed up to go out. Because I felt very underdressed, Molly loaned me a giant sparkly necklace.
Once we got outside to the sidewalk, we realized we were not underdressed, as it was not cocktail hour in the city, but rather, 5 pm. But we didn’t let that sway us.
First, a grungy man said “Are you three Charlie’s Angels? I’ll be your Bosley.” Then, a very young-looking (like 12 years old) man with super long hair walked straight up to Liz (who was wearing a tiara) (and had like a foot on him) and said, “Hey princess, I heard you were looking for a man like me.” Molly said, “Probably not, since she’s getting married,” and he very politely backed off, saying, “Oh, I guess it was someone else.”
On the bus, a man drinking a 40 out of a paper bag told me he liked my necklace, then asked another girl (who I doubt was older than me) if she was my mother, because we were both very pretty. Yikes.
Finally we arrived at our destination: The Cheesecake Factory. (We have good associations with this place, and Liz has a special fondness for cheesecake.)
After dinner we jumped in a cab and headed to the Castro Theatre, where they were showing The Little Mermaid, but with a very special twist:
OMG! A sing-along! They also gave us a gift bag with: a paper crown, a plastic pearl necklace, a dinglehopper, a noisemaker (to clack whenever Sebastian talked), bubbles to blow, and a glowstick.
It was kind of wonderful. But dark. So the pictures are lit by glowstick.
Here’s a clip of the entire theatre singing along:
After the movie, as the credits rolled, Part of Your World started again, and the entire theatre began singing it as we exited…out of the balcony, down a couple flights of stairs…and you can’t hear the movie playing anymore, but every single person is singing out loud, and as everyone around us spilled out onto Castro Street, we all finished the song (a big finish), and then everyone clapped and cheered.
One of those moments where you just feel like people are good.
(My apologies to those certain people who have heard this story too many times.)
Then Erin picked us up, and we went to Martuni’s, a piano bar, where we proceeded to drink very colorful cocktails and sing along with the rest of the crowd. Right as we started to leave, he started Cee-Lo Green’s “F*** You” and so we stuck around for that one.
Then back to the Haight for late-night pizza!
And then back to Molly’s to eat chocolate and talk girl talk, and eventually fall asleep all over her studio.
All-in-all, one of the best bachelorette/slumber parties I’ve ever been to. Great job us for planning, and congratulations Liz on your upcoming nuptials! Parties are awesome!
You know what’s underrated? The old-fashioned business letter.
I remember learning the format for these things in keyboarding class in high school. I sort of loved making my own letterhead (mine always had a strong Phantom of the Opera theme) and typing up important letters to important people.
We don’t really get to do that very much anymore.
I mean, even though I try to keep my emails nice and professional, I still get tons of work emails from people, using little punctuation or capitalization, and ending with that ubiquitous “Sent from my iPhone.” Like that’s supposed to excuse this mediocre attempt at communication:
“i see no thank you i do not have transportation but im sure other students will jump on this offer”
Also embarrassing is the email signature incorporating some song lyric or “Chinese proverb” that’s not really a Chinese proverb at all.
I got an email from someone the other day – it ended like so:
I’ve heard it said that people come into our
lives for a reason, bringing something we must
learn, and we are led to those who help us most
to grow, (if we let them) and we help them in return.
Also? No credit on that. So…plagiarism? (To avoid plagiarism myself, that’s from Wicked.)
Meanwhile, I gleefully typed this up this morning:
Not saying it’s perfect, but at least it’s not embarrassing. Simple pleasures…but pleasures nonetheless!
I woke up this morning with my socked foot sticking out from under the covers. I felt very warm under the covers, and outside (while still the inside of my apartment) felt very brisk. This is the point at which I gave up and welcomed in fall.
It’s been feeling more and more autumny for days now – I can’t put my finger on what it is exactly. A smell? A certain snap to the air? Maybe the trees are changing colors and I just haven’t really been paying attention? Suddenly all I want to do is shop for new boots and sweaters. Not to mention school supplies…oh, the school supplies…
I can’t stop reminiscing, as of late. Mostly I’ve been thinking about being in high school. Which isn’t to say that I want to go back to high school. I mean, even the memories I’m getting trapped in are of being in bed when the alarm goes off, and it’s so early and dark out. It’s not particularly welcoming.
I will try to steer my thoughts toward fall in college – with its classes that start later. (Remember when we were all in high school and we would get up at like 6:00 to go to zero period? And it’s just what you did? That ish is crazy.) College is good fall memories. I’ll have to buy some strawberry conditioner (works every time) and a pumpkin pie spice candle.
Or I can think about being in New York – working at the haunted house in October (October is even the coolest word!), and everything gets windy, but not cold yet, and leaves are everywhere, and you’re just so freaking happy that it’s not summer anymore. The landlord turns your heat on for the first time in 6 months… Everything is burgundy and burnt orange and brown. I mean the clothes, of course.
I’m really looking forward to the fact that this show and the next show we’re doing are in Mountain View. Downtown Mountain View in the fall is pretty darn perfect. Again with the leaves and the wind. And soon it’ll be Halloween. I don’t like dressing up for Halloween, but I love every other single thing about it.
I will bemoan one more time the fact that, living where we do, we don’t really get seasons. This just means I’ll have to be sure to go to Lake County this fall to enjoy it. And take advantage of every second I’m down at work.
I love spring and I love summer and I even love winter, but above all else, man I love the fall.
On our way home from Labor Day dinner with my family in Santa Rosa…we stopped to check out the Golden Gate Bridge from high up.
Everyone else had had the same idea, so we had to pass the first two vista points and stop at the third, which is a little further away and so the point is slightly less vista. But that’s okay!
Then we got back into the long line of cars to drive slooooowly over the bridge.
Long live San Francisco!
I might hate CDs. I feel like they multiply, and they are everywhere in our apartment. But when do I play CDs? Occasionally, in the car. But why play a CD when I have all my music on my ipod? The CD in my car player right now is disc 1 of the PBS “Broadway – The American Musical” 5-disc series. It’s been there for months. I never listen to it. Not sure why I even picked disc 1 and stuck it in there. I should switch to a different one. (For a full listing of all the songs on each disc, click here.)
The down side of going through all your childhood stuff is that, if you’re a child of the same time period that I am, you have collected a lot of CDs. A lot of factory CDs, but also, a lot of CDs with unfamiliar handwriting – The Rocky Horror Show, or Poe’s Haunted, or even non-music CDs, like Mario’s Into The Woods Pics. It’s actually a relief when I flip a disc over and discover that it’s scratched beyond repair, and I can just toss it. Otherwise, I have to sit and think about whether I need a CD version of Poe’s Haunted, when I have the entire thing in digital form.
When I Google “recycled CDs,” I find this website telling me ways I can use old CDs for fun crafts. Here is an excerpt from that site:
Others have used old CDs to make disco balls, sun catchers, wreaths, mosaics, mobiles, party invitations and even bird treats — just coat the disc with peanut butter or bacon grease, dip it in bird seed, attach it to a tree with yarn and watch the birds flock to your yard.
Um, yuck. For some reason, the idea of using a CD for a bird feeder – covered in bacon grease, no less! – just grosses me out. What’s wrong with the good old-fashioned bird feeder, using a pine cone coated in peanut butter and seed?
Anyway. For now I’ve just been kind of stockpiling the CDs that I can’t bring myself to throw away, and chucking the ones that I can justify.
Future generations: You are so lucky (or, potentially, so unlucky in some way that I can’t even fathom) to have everything be digital. It’s so much easier, and you don’t constantly feel like you’re being wasteful. Although it makes me nervous to have everything just be floating around in cyberspace, I can usually tamp down the urge to print out everything and store it in a box for 12 years.
In a crossword puzzle yesterday, a clue was “a button on a cassette player” and the answer was “rewind.” Do you even know what that means, people who were born after 1995?? (A coworker suggested we call them “Generation Text.”)
PS. This is even crazier – I found this:
If I hadn’t already found the bound paper version of this Nanowrimo, that I had printed at Kinko’s back in 2003 (before it was Kinko’s/FedEx), the discovery of this floppy disk would have thrilled me, while also panicking me, as I have no idea where I could even put this thing.
As it is, I tossed it in the trash as well.
So long, past.
Categories
Inspiration
Late at night is when I get my bursts of inspiration for cleaning. Tonight I went through two boxes of stuff my parents gifted me with months ago…and pared it down to the throwaways, the donatables, and the keepsies.
Example throwaway: notebooks from college classes filled with notes about the Puritans and protest theatre. (Two different classes.) Nothing really of note to keep here. Although Drew pointed out my copious margin notes: “Syche + Drew” and then one page where I apparently decided to practice signing my first name with his last name. As we pondered this, I said, “Whoops!” and he said “GAWD, you’re obsessed with me or something.”
Example donatable: Pretty tin box, that I remember always having, but don’t have any specific attachment to, and which I will be much happier giving away than moving two more times.
Example keepsie: A diary I kept around the time I was 5 and 6. My bffk (best friend for kindergarten) (well, sort of…I mean I guess she was my best girl friend, but I’d still say my two best bffks were boys) actually went through and wrote “I love Kelly” on most of the pages (she’s Kelly), but some of the pages still have my original journal entries. I present you with two of them:
And from later…I would say around 4th or 5th grade:
That being said, today I tried out a set of hot rollers that a friend gave me, and they worked great! And I spent much time looking in the mirror and admiring my pretty hair, and taking pictures of myself. So don’t worry about me, I’ve got plenty of self-confidence now. A generous amount. Maybe even too much?
Ah, the joys of being a girl. 
I thought this would be a good time to go over all the ways Drew and I have ever celebrated the Fourth of July. (I actually thought I might have done this last year, but it appears I didn’t.)
2005 – In Davis – We made egg rolls and probably watched Sex and the City.
2006 – Still in Davis – We hung out with some good friends, swam all day, then we dragged the guys out of the pool because the girls were starving, and we bought way too much KFC.
2007 – In New York – We hung out with some new friends, and there was drinking and game playing. Later, we went up on their roof to watch the fireworks. It was raining and so we were under umbrellas watching Manhattan.
2008 – In New York – Drew and I were home alone and we realized we could sort of see the fireworks from our living room window. We went upstairs and found out we could get onto our roof, so we stood out there for awhile. It was raining.
2009 – Our last summer in New York – Megan came over, we made buckets of guacamole and margaritas. Later Joe came over as we were on the roof watching the fireworks…you guessed it, in the rain. Lasting memories, y’all! I miss New York.
2010 – In San Bruno – Erin and her (underaged) sister came over and we drank, and popped poppers, and watched the fireworks from our balcony.
2011 – Who knows what tonight will bring??
UPDATE: Fog. Tonight will bring fog.
Duh.
Categories
Top 5 Memorable Moments
Sarah and Vinnie (a San Francisco radio morning show, that I probably spend too much time listening to) reported a recent poll from the UK, in which people listed the 5 most memorable experiences of their lives. Women and men actually had the same top 5, albeit in different orders.
(The poll and more info is here.)
On the radio show, they start by asking each other what their top 5 memorable moments are. I took that time to think of some of my own: getting married, sure. I’d like to say stage managing something – my first show, my first big show, my first NY show? Maybe seeing my first Broadway show?
I bet buying a house will be quite memorable when we get there one day; ditto having kids.
But “leaving home” doesn’t really feel like a single quantifiable act – when I left to go to college I was still basically living at home, and then it’s been a gradual purging, thanks to my parents, to get my stuff out of their house. I’d say that process is still ongoing.
And I’m not even sure what to count as my “first job.” I guess my first full-time adult job was Samuel French, and I do remember getting that job, so maybe that counts.
I intended to wrap this up with a really concise list of my most memorable life landmarks. I’ll just say:
- Moving to New York – and the second day when we took the train to Bryant Park and came up out of the subway and all my worried about moving, and my anxieties about how ugly Brooklyn was, melted away;
- Getting engaged – specifically the moment I realized what was going on, and by that time we were really into the actual proposal; and
- Getting married – after I was all dressed and everyone but the photographer had left the suite and Drew was going to come in, and I realized I didn’t have any of my jewelry on, and I had to shout through the door, “Wait, I need another sec, don’t come in yet!”
And that leaves me room for more things on my list. Because there’s lots of good stuff ahead!
I am the perfect target audience for marketers. The kind of person who sees a pizza commercial and thinks, Let’s have that tonight. One strong memory I have from New York is of watching Kung-Fu Panda on DVD with Drew one night, and during one scene where they’re all eating noodles, we paused the movie and went to Duane Reade to get Cup Noodles because they just sounded so good.
I know, right?
(Side note: Is it just called “Cup Noodles”? I feel like when I say it out loud, it’s like “Cup-a-noodles” but this was what they had on the official Nissin website, so…)
So what’s a girl to do with 8 hours of free time, no chaperone, and a book called Kabul Beauty School? She gets an idea to have her own little beauty school. And with still-damp hair from the shower, and a two-thirds-full card of bobby pins, nothing sounds better than putting her hair in pincurls.
I finished Kabul Beauty School, Drew said he was swinging by the apartment to pick something up, and suddenly I felt kind of stupid. So I unwrapped all the curls and was left with a head full of very crimpy, still slightly damp, hair. After I brushed it out it became very crimpy and now fluffy, too.
This is my friend Kirsten’s dog. He’s a schnoodle named Attila. We now look somewhat alike.
In fact, I remember having this same revelation years ago in college, when Kirsten spent like two hours braiding my hair into tiny braids, while I chatted on AIM with some guy. The reveal at the end of that escapade – which, I’m sorry to say, lasted a couple days as I left the braids in for maximum style – was much the same at this, and our third roommate, Hailey, dubbed me “Weird Feet Poodle Head.”
(The “weird feet” part came from a whole separate story, involving the interesting patterns in which I wore out my flip-flops.)
I guess what I’m trying to say is, it’s true that if you don’t learn from your mistakes you’re doomed to repeat them. And yes, I fully believe that in a few years I’ll be watching some movie or reading some book, and have some free time, and go, Hey, pincurls are easy and might be interesting!
The Cameraphone Diaries 